Bone Jack

A duel. Itzal missed it in all the pageantry. It should have been obvious. He felt sick to his stomach to think that Ben had a duel to fight. Duels turned Itzal stomach as a rule.

He kept telling himself that Ben had good sword skills. His trade required it. Slandersmiths knew well how to use everything they made, or else they would not be considered skilled.

Watching Ben thump around, like a rolling boulder, did not give Itzal much comfort. The champion from Gurvan Arduu comforted Itzal less. He was a thin man with a huge scimitar and a grey robe. If Itzal had been a khan, placing his trust in one man to defend his kingdom, Itzal would have picked him too. He had the half-bored alertness of a seasoned fighting man looking forward to the drinks and women later in the day.

Ben sorted through his weapons with a casual air, every inch the unconcerned workman checking for flaws in his goods before a trade show. Itzal could not detect the trembles that might come to Ben if he was putting on an act. Perhaps it wasn’t an act. Or perhaps Ben hid his nerves well.

Itzal frowned. He looked across the open space where the duel would take place. Like everywhere else in Khuurai Dalain, it stood amid ruins. Broken columns surrounded them like the bones of giants. Itzal supposed it had once been some kind of forum. The space where they stood had probably once been a large reflecting pool, but the square stones of its floor had not been wet except by rain for time outside of memory. It was an open space free of obstacle. Since it sunk a yard and a half down from the surroundings, it provided a good space for spectators. And spectators gathered, sitting around the edges of the former reflecting pool, with their feet dangling over the edge. They talked and laughed and passed bottles.

Grass struggled through the gaps between the large squares of the paving stones. Aside from the weak grass, the long space was all stone. At the far end of it, Bat-erdene Khan and his cohort raised a pavilion. Bat-erdene Khan sat on a cushion and ate from a low table, watching the day as if it bored him. He probably feigned the boredom, but it would not do for a khan to act less than sure of his successes.

The champion of the Gurvan Arduu had been introduced to them as Hayato. He had been formal and proper and polite, and Itzal had liked him right away. That bothered him. If he liked someone—respected them—then he felt sure he had intuited something of value in them. A fighting man that he could value would be a fighting man that he ought to beware. In spite of all that Hayato had the air of a bully. A refined and intelligent one, but still with a few cues that spoke volumes about his breaking points. He blustered in the right way. In the end, beating him would not only be a matter of fighting skills, but also a matter of resolve. Itzal half-mentioned that to Ben, and Ben grunted as if he had already noticed. Itzal left it at that, although Ben failed to comfort Itzal about it, and he kept worrying over it like he might do over a scab.

“Hayato seems awfully chummy with that other fellow,” Itzal said.

“You remember that name but none of the lads on the Riot?” Ben said. “Singular.”

“I cannot help it,” Itzal said, though he thought he probably could if he tried.

Ben glanced over his shoulder at Hayato. “Naturally they’re chummy,” he said. “That’s Hayato’s second.”

“His what?” Itzal said before thinking. Then, thinking, he said, “oh…” then, thinking more, he said, “that’s unfair.”

“How do you figure?” Ben said.

“You haven’t got a second,” Itzal said.

“I have,” Ben said. “A proper, honorable one.”

“Who is it?” Itzal said. “One of these…oh.” Itzal stopped talking. Ben raised one of this bushy eyebrows. His flabby frown had some upward curl to it, almost like a smile. Itzal began to catch on. “Oh,” he said. Then he frowned and squinted. “I said I wouldn’t fight for your property.”

“If all goes as it ought to go, you shan’t have to,” Ben said. “Seconds hardly ever take over. Hayato looks pretty, but he’s all flash.”

“I disagree with that assessment.”

“This will be over quickly,” Ben said.

“Yes. You’ll be splattered all over the field,” Itzal said.

“You’re a real comfort, Blue Jay,” Ben said, rolling his eyes.

He finally picked the sword he wanted. Or, rather, sword and dagger pair. It was sort of like a rapier-and-dagger set, except that the rapier had a blade as wide as a broadsword’s. It still had a guard for Ben’s hand. He took up his weapons, cast Itzal a last “this will be easy” smile, and he walked toward the open space where the duel would happen.

The Tal Khumuus approached these things with near religious seriousness. When it became clear that Ben felt ready, all voices hushed to silence, and all eyes watched close. And, though they had a religious attitude toward it, they did not have much ritual surrounding it. An old man—old, but still straight-backed and strong—stood nearby to act as referee. He pointed with a flat hand to the two spots where Ben and Hayato ought to start. The duelists went to those places, some eight yards from each other. The referee barked something in Yaria which Ben seemed to understand. He saluted Hayato with his sword. Hayato returned a slow bow. The referee barked something else. Then he back away from the duelists, allowing the widest possible space for them.

And that was that. With the ceremony concluded, a stuffy silence puffed across the scene. It breathed so still and silent it could have been any sort of summer afternoon, with the men gathered there for a picnic.

Ben and Hayato showed no sign of doing anything. Itzal began to wonder if they would start. Perhaps he had missed something in his reading. Perhaps all the talk of Tal Khumuus dueling had been interpreted by the authors, and they never actually fought but merely stared at each other and sweated in the hot sun and thin breeze.

It sounded dumb even to think it.

From the look of him, Hayato was not a son of the Tal Khumuus. He looked like he came from Sokoku, a land in the far far east. They learned there to fight as a philosophy, deep in the mind. If the Tal Khumuus approached duels with religious fervor, the people of Sokoku approached them as profound puzzles with complex meditative elements. They would fight in cold blood, when they were any good.

Itzal knew less of the slandersmith fighting style. He did know that slandersmiths practiced reaction. Their entire discipline shaped as a response to the needs of the fighter. They did not believe in original action. They believed that what they did ought to fit around something that already exists in order to enhance it.

So on the one side of the duel was a man who’d think about it before he started, and on the other was a man who would not start but only react.

Itzal sat down on the warm stone. It might take a while for things to begin.

Eventually they did. They started how Itzal expected them to. Hayato charged forward. He drew his scimitar as he ran. From his movements it looked as if he’d turn the movement into a long, upward swing. At the last moment, he leapt and brought his scimitar down at an angle that would be awkward to block. He brought it down on the side of Ben’s dagger arm too.

Itzal’s heart fluttered. He feared it would end there. If Ben had only the one speed he had always moved at—lumbering—then he would not get out of the way of Hayato’s scimitar. Somehow, Ben got his sword up and behind his head. He moved just enough to get out of the way of Hayato’s scimitar. The big sword clanged into the ground. Ben riposted, slashing toward Hayato’s belly with his dagger. Hayato got the round guard of his scimitar up with surprising deftness, given the size of the weapon. He blocked Ben’s dagger. Then he tried to kick Ben. Ben didn’t bother trying to get out of the way. He brought up his arms and blocked the kick. Hayato recoiled like he’d kicked a stone wall.

The fight continued like that, with Ben always faster than he ought to be and as solid as he ought to be and quicker with his strikes than he ought to be. It surprised Itzal, and he felt glad to be surprised. Plenty of people shared his surprise, but one person’s surprise exceeded everyone’s.

Hayato had the crazed-eyed look of a man witnessing the end of an organized universe. He had so grievously misjudged Ben that now his grey robes had stains of red where Ben’s blades had cut him. Ben stood so far unscathed, except that he panted and dripped with sweat.

Ben and Hayato parted from a blurred exchange of clanging blows and seemed to come to a secret agreement to catch their breath. They both stepped back several yards. Ben panted as if his lungs would burst. But his limbs stayed steady, both his weapons pointing at Hayato.

Hayato’s eyes had widened over the fight. Any air of lazy superiority had gone from him. It left behind something else. Itzal sat up, looking closer. He had not been able to see Hayato’s eyes well until this moment. What he saw worried him.

One of Itzal’s few classes without any books to read had involved trips to dungeons, where different professors gave lectures on the kinds of people in the world. Sometimes training did not matter, they’d said, as much as will. Anyone who truly had the will to kill you probably would manage it. And they’d do well to remember.

Itzal had not liked the look of the man in the deep dungeon, behind the iron bars, with that look in his eyes. A look of pure will, not simply to win, but to make an end. It was not hot or angry. It was cold. Cold like frostbite.

“This,” the professor that day had said, pointing to the murderer. “Today, this is your lesson. Learn it.”

To see the murderer had been disturbing. It had not been as disturbing as the months that followed, the months of fascination. Itzal had spent many waking hours remembering the look in those eyes. Not because they scared him. No. They didn’t scare him. They unsettled him for a reason he’d never mentioned to anyone: he thought he understood them.

Hayato had eyes like those, looking at Ben. He included the unfortunate qualities of calculation and sureness. Itzal started to his feet, unsure what he could do but sure he ought to do something.

The next moment happened fast. Ready again, Ben and Hayato leapt at each other. Their weapons flashed a few times too fast to track. Then the blood and the hoarse grunt.

Ben thudded to the ground. His right foot, hacked off below the knee, fell the other way. The blood rushed out. Hayato spun, raising his scimitar high into the sun. He intended to finish the job.

Without thinking—he had no thought to give to it—Itzal swooped to Ben in a few huge steps. He’d started moving before Hayato made his strike. The referee had seen it, which might have saved Itzal’s life right then. Letting loose a huge bellow, the referee held up his hand. It halted Hayato’s swing at its peak. Itzal had a sight to remember for the rest of his life: Hayato, limned by the sun behind his head. His face pulled tight on his skull in the beginning of a swooping cut that would have hacked Ben in two. He had no sight left in his eyes, only fury.

His cold mind still worked. At the referee’s cry, Hayato froze, still as a picture. For a moment he did nothing, simply stood there. Then he breathed again. Humanity came back into his eyes. Sparing the briefest glance for Itzal, Hayato turned and went back toward the pavilion of the Gurvan Arduu.

The sound of gurgled breathing intruded on Itzal. “Hells, tell me I’ve died,” Ben said.

Itzal turned around to look at Ben. Trying not to look at the puddling blood while simultaneously assessing the wound, Itzal knelt down next to Ben.

“Nonsense,” Itzal said in a gentle voice. “Hardly a scratch. Can’t tell anything happened.”

“Damn,” Ben said. His teeth pulled tight together, gritting as if his jaw wasn’t under his control anymore. His eyes started glazing. The shock would set in soon if the blood didn’t get staunched. “Damn,” Ben said again, as if the thing needed to be emphasized.

Itzal tried to think—he tried to remember. He had to have something in his brain that could fix this. He had to. His thoughts kept rushing away from him, gurgling with the blood leaking from Ben’s leg.

Ben’s big hand grabbed Itzal’s arm. “Help me up,” Ben said. “I need to finish this.”

Itzal’s brain stopped entirely. He looked at Ben, lying in the growing red puddle. He had nothing to think about this.

“Listen…” Ben said. He’d grown pale. His grip weakened on Itzal’s arm. “Listen. You can run. Run fast. Hide…hide in Younes’ ship. Go home. You don’t have to…be here.” Ben swallowed. It was a wet sound, like bubbles in mud. “Just…help me up first.”

Itzal watched Ben’s eyes. They couldn’t focus. His breathing came in wheezes. His hand lost its strength, falling to the stone. Itzal grasped it for a moment, deciding something.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

“Bring whiskey when you…” Ben said, took a breath, then finished, “come back.”

Itzal squeezed Ben’s blunt hand. Then he took up Ben’s sword, leaving the dagger behind. He stood up, and he turned to face Hayato.

Hayato’s casual disregard of the situation had returned. He rested his scimitar, tip-down, in a crack in the stone, and he leaned on it.

The referee shouted something in Yaria. Then he repeated in a language Itzal could understand, “Sir Benedict’s second will continue the fight.”

Hayato sucked his cheeks and cocked an eyebrow, making his contempt for Itzal clear to every onlooker.

“Who are you?15” Hayato asked. True, they hadn’t been introduced properly. Hayato had dismissed him when Ben had introduced himself.

Itzal just clutched his jaw. “Finish it,” he said through his teeth.

Hayato’s lazy calm evaporated. It left the impatient frown of a man who did not like his time being wasted. With no further ceremony, his scimitar sung through the air. It seemed almost to move faster than its sound. It swung fit to part Itzal’s head from his shoulders. Rather than ducking under it, Itzal leapt over it. It glinted under him. He didn’t bother making a counter strike, not just yet. He spun in the air and landed light on his feet. He didn’t rest his whole weight on the ground.

Hayato’s scimitar hummed and glinted at him, swift as a storm of lightning and hail. Itzal blocked sometimes with his own sword, sending a clang into the quiet afternoon. Mostly, Itzal ducked, spun, and jumped, being just out of the way of the blade.

Itzal could not have said what he was doing. He wasn’t thinking, that was blessedly true. He’d never felt like this before. He felt empty as wind and as quick. He didn’t look at what he did. All the time he watched Hayato’s eyes, never looking away. He navigated better with his sense of touch than his eyes anyway. If he looked for the sword he’d just misjudge it. He relied on its sound through the breeze and the brushing in the air it made. And he stared. His body seemed to know what to do next. It almost felt pulled in the required directions by something outside of himself. That would have unnerved him, except that what seemed to be pulling him—in retrospect—was his future self. It felt almost as if he had awareness of the moment on either side of the current one, and he could begin moving a moment ahead of where he knew Hayato would swing.

Then came an important point. A tiring Hayato overextended himself. Only for a moment—only for a heartbeat. But it did enough. Itzal could use it. He grabbed the guard of Hayato’s scimitar. Then Itzal punched Hayato across the jaw with the guard of his own sword. Surprised, but more importantly knocked off his feet, Hayato spun through the air. He fell to the ground, splayed out.

Itzal put a foot on Hayato’s head, pushing it into the stone. He put the point of his sword against Hayato’s neck, so that Hayato would know it was there.

Then he felt self-conscious.

“Um…” he wasn’t sure what to call the referee. He looked toward the old man, hoping that would be enough. It was, and the referee came nearer. “I don’t know the etiquette for a moment like this…or, at least, I know, but I don’t remember. Is there…is there some way I can avoid killing him?”

“Would you spare his life?” the referee asked.

“I would like to spare his life, if I can,” Itzal said. Hayato’s grey eye rolled around to look at Itzal. Itzal couldn’t read the expression. Not scared. Amazingly calm. Hayato seemed again to be assessing and calculating.

“He would have to admit defeat,” the referee said. “And you would need to leave a mark on him. He must bear a scar of defeat forever.”

“I do not wish to kill you,” Itzal said to Hayato.

“Do you admit you are beaten?” the referee asked Hayato.

Itzal expected Hayato to hesitate. Hayato did not hesitate at all. He nodded. “I am well beaten,” Hayato said.

“Mark him,” the referee said. “A cut on the cheek. That is often the way.”

Itzal nodded. He made a quick slash across Hayato’s cheek. Hayato flinched, but only just.

With no more thought for the fight, Itzal looked at the referee again. “I need help,” he said, and ran back to Ben. “I need help. Can I get help?” Itzal fell onto his knees next to Ben again. He took off Ben’s belt and made a tourniquet of it for Ben’s leg. Ben, still awake—barely—looked drunk. “Did we win?” he asked.

“Yes,” Itzal said.

“I hoped the cheers were for our side,” Ben said. “What’s that language? Not gentlemanly at all—at all.”

Itzal noticed that the Tal Khumuus onlookers had rattled into cheers. It occurred to him like some dull and obscure feature of a painting he didn’t like very much.

“Will no one help?” Itzal said. He said it quiet, not sure what answer there could be. He tightened the belt around Ben’s leg. Ben winced, loud. His breath turned to panting.

“A brave fight,” said a voice behind him. Itzal spun to look.

The whole contingency of the Gurvan Arduu had walked toward him.

“Oh,” Itzal said, wishing they’d leave. “Could you go away? Unless you’ll help me with this old sod, I don’t want you…”

Bat-erdene Khan nodded. “I do mean to help,” he said. He said a few words to his entourage. The people he spoke to bowed, and they hurried to Ben. They began ministering to him. “Perhaps to you it seems strange. It is our way. He has no house of his own that will care for him, but he has earned the right to honorable treatment. We will see to him…” A stretcher was brought for Ben, and they lifted him onto it. Then they carried him away.

“Now,” said Bat-erden Khan. “There is this matter of what you have earned.”

Itzal took a long, deep breath. He nodded.

Bat-erdene nodded. “Behold,” he said. He gestured to seven men walking up after him. They all wore weapons and armor of similar craftsmanship and color—red as blood and black like forgetting. No two of them had exactly the same equipment. They ran the gamut from a broad and burly one at the left who bristled with an armory and clumped in armor that might have weighed more than Itzal, on to the slim one with only knives and the slightest armor whose movements seemed as firm and wispy as a snake’s. They all had the midnight eyes and sunset-on-deserts skin usual to the Alwatan. Ben’s crossed-swords-and-mouse emblem glinted here and there on their weapons and armor.

The middle-most one of them was the guard Itzal had seen patrolling the Bat-erdene estate—the same one who’d caught his eye at the circle of khans. He pressed a hand with two fingers raised to his chest in salute.

“I…” Itzal said, looking at the Alwatan men. He thought it rather unsporting of Bat-erdene Khan to outfit some of his men with the weapons and armor that Ben had made. It raised his gall, but only a tickle. He couldn’t conjure the energy for more than that. Now the fight had ended he felt fatigue reaching up for him. “I’ll need some way of carrying the weapons and armor, I suppose,” he said.

That seemed to amuse Bat-erdene. He laughed. “Perhaps Caesura Kimse can explain it to you. He is a poet at heart, I always say so.”

“Who is Caesura Kimse?” Itzal asked.

And the khol-eyed Alwatan guard stepped closer. He saluted again. “Master forgive,” he said, “if I speak out of turn. I am called Caesura Kimse.”

“Hello, Mister Kimse,” Itzal said. “I am called Itzal Dantzari. It seems that I am missing something…” Itzal let the words fade.

“Master forgive, if I speak out of turn,” Caesura said. “Perhaps you have never seen a troupe of Tam Kiti.”

“I…might have done,” Itzal said, trying to place the term somewhere in his reading. He felt remembering slowly dawning.

“Tam Kiti,” Caesura said. “A translation that Sir Benedict gave for the term was ‘Full Kits.’ ”

“I have heard that term,” Itzal said.

“We are not to be separated from our armament,” Caesura said. “We have been raised up to use it. You have no need to find further transport.”

“I see,” Itzal said, although he didn’t. “I suppose…” he rethought what he wanted to say. “Ben never spoke of any soldiers. He only mentioned property.”

“Master forgive, if I speak out of turn,” Caesura said. “That property includes the men in these suits of fine armor.”

And the pieces clicked into place with a grind, but right before Itzal had words or understanding of them. “Wait…” he said.

“That is correct,” Caesura said. “We are owned men.”

“Oh,” Itzal said, then realized what that meant. “Ah,” he said, then realized the improperness of it. “Oh,” he said with a deal of shock.

“Um…” Itzal the newly-made slave-owner said. “Right, then,” he said. Then he sighed. “If this gets out they’ll have a word or two for me back home.”