quarterdeck, however, fell on an unfamiliar face. So there were Spaniards on board too, I thought. Given the fellow’s general appearance and the doublet he was wearing, he was clearly a professional swordsman.
I got to my feet, confused. This altered things, and not, by God, for the better. I tried to think what it could mean, but in the white heat of fighting there was no time to mull things over. I looked for some weapon other than my dagger, and found a cutlass; it had a short, broad blade and an enormous guard on the hilt. It felt satisfyingly heavy in my hand. Unlike an ordinary sword, with its more subtle blade and sharp point to inflict penetrating wounds, the cutlass was excellent for slashing one’s way through a throng. Which is what I did,
An enemy sword glittered before me. I raised the cutlass to deflect the blow and had barely completed that move when, with a sudden sense of panic, I realized my error. But it was too late, and at that moment, near the small of my back, something sharp and metallic pierced my buff coat, entering the flesh. I shuddered to feel the steel slide sleekly between my ribs.
A fleeting thought went through Diego Alatriste’s mind as he assumed the en garde position. It all made sense: the gold, Luis de Alquezar, the presence of Gualterio Malatesta in Seville and now here, on board the Flemish galleon. The Italian was acting as escort to the cargo, which is why they had encountered such unexpectedly stiff resistance: most of the men he had been fighting were Spanish mercenaries like them, not sailors. In fact, this was a fight to the death between dogs of the same pack.
He had no time to think anything more, because after the initial surprise—Malatesta seemed as taken aback as he—the Italian advanced on him, black and menacing, sword foremost. As if by magic, the captain’s weariness vanished. There is no greater tonic to the humors than an ancient hatred, and his burned as brightly as ever. The desire to kill proved stronger than mere survival instinct. Alatriste moved faster than his adversary, for when it came to the first thrust, he was already on guard, deflecting it with one short, sharp flick, sending Malatesta staggering backward as the point of his sword came within an inch of his face. When the captain bore down upon him again, he noticed that the bastard wasn’t even whistling his usual wretched little tune—
Before the Italian could recover, Alatriste moved in close, wielding his sword and jabbing with his knife, so that Malatesta had no alternative but to continue backing away, looking for an opportunity to get in his first proper strike. They clashed fiercely right beneath the steps leading to the quarterdeck, and then, still fighting, traveled as far as the shrouds on the other side of the ship, in hand-to-hand combat, wielding their daggers, the guards of their swords locked together. Then the Italian lost his balance when he collided with the cascabel on one of the bronze cannon positioned there; Alatriste savored the look of fear in his enemy’s eyes, then turned sideways on and gave a left thrust and then a right, point and reverse, but as luck would have it, he performed that last slashing attack with the flat of his sword not the edge. This was enough to provoke a ferocious yelp of glee from Malatesta, who, sly as a snake, drove his dagger forward with such vigor that if a startled Alatriste had not jumped out of the way, he would have surrendered his soul there and then.
“Well, well,” murmured Malatesta, out of breath, “what a small world.”
He still appeared surprised to find his old foe on board. For his part, the captain said nothing, but merely waited for the next onslaught. They paused, studying each other, swords and daggers in hand, crouched and ready to join battle again. All around them, the fighting continued, and Alatriste’s men were still getting the worst of it. Malatesta glanced across at them.
“This time, Captain, you lose. This time, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”
The Italian was smiling serenely, as black as the Fates themselves, the murky light from the lantern throwing into sharp relief the scars and pockmarks on his face.
“I hope,” he added, “you haven’t got the boy involved in this scrimmage.”
That was one of Malatesta’s weak points, thought Alatriste as he made a downward thrust: he talked too much and thus opened up gaps in his defense. The point of his sword caught the Italian’s left arm, forcing him to drop his dagger with an oath. The captain took immediate advantage of this “gap” and gave such a fearsomely fast, low thrust with his dagger that the blade broke when he missed and hit the cannon instead. For a moment, he and Malatesta stood very close, almost embracing, looking at each other. They both swiftly drew back their swords to gain some space and try to get their knife in before the other one did; then the captain, resting his free—badly bruised—hand on the cannon, gave the Italian a sly kick that sent him slamming into the gunwale and the shrouds. At that point, behind them, they heard loud shouts coming from the waist of the ship, and a renewed clatter of swords spread throughout the deck. Alatriste did not turn round, intent as he was on his enemy, but from the expression on the latter’s face, suddenly grim and desperate, he could tell that Sebastian Copons must finally have boarded at the prow. To confirm this, the Italian opened his mouth and let out a stream of blasphemies in his mother tongue, something about
Pressing my hands to my wound, I managed to drag myself over to the gunwale, where I could lean against some coiled ropes. I unfastened my clothes so that I could find out what damage had been done to my right side, but I could see nothing in the darkness. It hardly hurt at all, apart from the ribs bruised by the steel blade. I could feel the blood running gently over my fingers, down my waist to my thighs, and onto the already gore-soaked deck. I had to do something, I thought, or else bleed to death like a stuck pig. This idea made me feel faint, and I took deep breaths of air, struggling to remain conscious; fainting was the surest way to bleed to death. All around, the struggle continued, and everyone was far too occupied for me to ask for help, plus, of course, it might be an enemy who came to my aid, and an enemy would blithely slit my throat. And so I decided to keep quiet and manage on my own. Sliding slowly down onto my good side, I poked a finger into the wound to find out how deep it was—only about two inches, I reckoned. My new buff coat had more than repaid the twenty escudos I had given for it. I could still breathe easily, which meant that my lung was presumably unharmed, but the blood continued to flow, and I was growing weaker by the minute. I’ve got to stop the flow, I said to myself, or else order a mass for my soul right now. Anywhere else, a handful of earth would have been enough to clot the blood, but here there was nothing, not even a clean handkerchief. Somehow or other, I had kept my dagger with me, because it was there gripped between my legs. I cut off a section of my shirttail and pushed it into the wound. This stung most violently—indeed, it hurt so much that I had to bite my lip in order not to cry out.
I was beginning to lose consciousness. I’ve done all I could, I thought, trying to console myself before falling into the black hole opening up at my feet. I wasn’t thinking about Angelica or about anything else. As I grew steadily weaker, I rested my head against the gunwale, and then it seemed to me that everything around me was moving. It must be my head spinning, I decided. But then I noticed that the noise of battle had abated and all the shouting and the ruckus were happening farther off, toward the waist of the ship and toward the prow. A few men ran past, jumping over me, almost kicking me in their haste to escape and plunge into the water. I heard splashes and cries of panic. I looked up, bewildered. Someone had apparently climbed the mainmast and was cutting the gaskets, because the mainsail suddenly unfurled and dropped down, half filled by the breeze. Then my mouth twisted into a foolish, happy grimace intended as a smile, for I knew then that we had won, that the group boarding at the prow had managed to cut the anchor cable, and the galleon was now drifting in the night toward the sandbanks of San Jacinto.
I hope I have what it takes and that I don’t give in, thought Diego Alatriste, steadying himself again and grasping his sword. I hope this Sicilian dog has the decency not to ask for mercy, because I’m going to kill him anyway, and I don’t want to do it when he’s disarmed. With that thought, and spurred on by the urgent need to finish the business there and then and make no last-minute errors, he gathered together what strength he had and unleashed a series of furious thrusts, so fast and brutal that even the best fencer in the world would have been unable to riposte. Malatesta retreated, defending himself with difficulty, but he still had sufficient sangfroid, when the captain was delivering his final thrust, to make a high, oblique slashing movement with his knife that missed the captain’s face by a hair’s breadth. This pause was enough for Malatesta to cast a rapid glance around him, to see how things stood on the deck, and to realize that the galleon was drifting toward the shore.
“I was wrong, Alatriste. This time you win.”
He had barely finished speaking when the captain made a jab at his eye with the point of his sword, and the Italian ground his teeth and let out a scream, raising the back of his free hand to his cut face, now streaming with
