Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) (37 page)

‘As Seigneur Froelich’s cousin, I must also confess to being offended. I also wish to extend my compliments.’

Sten caught a glance of Sofia as the crowd gathered around. Very interesting, he flashed. In a dueling society like Nebta, she doesn’t seem delighted. She looks scared. For me? Come on, Sten, he reprimanded himself. Shut your clottin’ glands off.

And now Parral. ‘This is bccoming an interesting evening,’ he said. ‘Colonel, perhaps I should explain some of our customs.’

Sten shook his head. ‘Don’t bother. These two bravos want to fight. S’be’t,’ Sten mocked.

‘Then, tomorrow,’ Froelich’s cousin began …

‘Tomorrow I am very busy,’ Sten said flatly. ‘We fight now. Here.’

A murmur floated through the crowd, and then eyes brightened. This would indeed be a fete worth talking about.

‘As first challenger, then,’ Froelich said, ‘I believe I have precedence, if you’ll excuse me, Seigneur Trumbo?’ He bowed to his cousin.

‘Ye hae a problem, lad,’ Alex said. ‘Ye’ll nae b’fightin’ m’colonel. It’s be me.’

‘I have already told you that—’

And the great sword hung in Alex’s hand and then crashed down, splitting the thick overturned table down the middle.

‘Ah said ye’ll be fightin’ me. Ah challenge you, as Laird Kilgour ae Kilgour, frae ae race thae was noble when your tribe was pullin’ p’raties in ae wasteland. Now ye’ll fight me or ye’ll die here ae y’stand.’

Froelich paled, then recovered, smiling gently.

‘Interesting. Very interesting. Then we shall have two bouts.’

The dance floor was cleared and sanded in a few minutes, and the Nebtans ringed the fighting area. Alex and Sten stood fairly close together at one side of the floor, Trumbo and Froelich across from them. The two soldiers were flanked by Vosberh, Ffillips, and the still-unworried Kurshayne.

Since Sten and Alex were the challenged parties, they had choice of weapons as well as location and time.

Alex, of course, had chosen his claymore, and Parral had been delighted to provide Froelich with a basket-hilt saber that nearly matched the Edinburghian’s weapon.

Sten had thought wistfully of his own ultimate knife, then discarded the notion. He was, after all, supposed to be a bit of a diplomat as well as a soldier, and he figured that Parral would not be overly thrilled by having one of his court bravos butchered two seconds into the fight.

So he’d picked poignards – long, needle-tapered, double-edged daggers, almost 40cm long. Parral had lovingly selected a matched pair from his own extensive collection.

Sten hefted the weapon experimentally – it was custom-built, of course, and made of carefully layered steel, in the eons-old Damascus style. To compensate for the blade-weight and consequent imbalance, the maker had added a weighted ball pommel. It would do.

Alex padded softly up beside Sten. ‘How long, wee Sten, d’Ah play’t wi’ th’ castrati t’makit appear bonnie?’

‘Give him a minute or two, anyway.’

Alex nodded agreement and walked to the center of the floor. Froelich stood across from him, testing his saber’s temper by tension-bending the blade. And trying to look deadly, dashing, and debonair.

Alex just stood there, blade held casually in eighth position. And then Froelich blurred forward, blade slashing in on a high attack. Alex’s hand crossed over, point still down, and blades clanged.

‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘Y’fight th’ wae ae mon should, wi’out skreekit an’ carryint on.’

But Sten could tell by the expressions of the Nebtans that Froelich had already broken etiquette. Probably, he guessed, there was supposed to be some kind of formal challenge, offer to withdraw, and all the rest of the boring business. So? All Froelich was doing was shortening the time span before he became wormfood.

Froelich went back on guard. Alex still waited patiently. The next
attack was a blinding flurry of strokes into first and third. Or at least it was supposed to have been. Alex locked hilts with Froelich’s second stroke in a
prise de fer
, forced the man’s saberhand up level, and then shoved.

Froelich clattered back, falling, rolling, coming up, quite respectably fast, Sten thought, and then going on guard. Breathing hard, he closed in, cautiously clog-stepping forward.

And now Alex attacked, brushing past Froelich’s parry with a strong beat and flicking the claymore’s blade. The tiny cut took off most of Froelich’s ear. Froelich riposted and backhanded across Alex’s gut – which was no longer there.

Alex had leaped backward, almost ten feet. Again he stood waiting. As Froelich, leaking blood and reddening, howled and came in, Alex flicked a glance at Sten. Now?

Why not? Sten nodded back, and Alex’s blade snaked out, clashed Froelich’s saber out of the way and then Alex, seemingly in slow motion, brought the claymore’s hilt back almost to his neck and hewed.

Froelich’s head, gouting blood, described a neat arc and splashed into the punchbowl. The corpse tottered, then collapsed. Alex sheathed his claymore and strode off the floor to dead silence.

‘You might really be Laird Kilgour,’ Sten whispered.

‘Aye. Ah might be,’ Alex agreed.

Parral, looking a little shaken, walked up to the two soldiers. ‘That was, uh, quite a display, Sergeant.’

Alex gravely nodded his thanks.

‘Colonel? Seigneur Trumbo? I should caution you, the man is one of Nebta’s best. He has fought more than a score of duels and operates his own
salle
.’

Sten kept silent.

‘I am in a bit of a quandary. You should be aware,’ Parral went on, ‘that this man goes for the kill. On one hand, I do not wish to lose the able captain of my mercenaries.’

‘But on the other?’

‘The Trumbo family and mine have somewhat of an alliance. His death would be equally inappropriate.’

‘The question then, Seigneur Parral,’ Ffillips said quietly, ‘is which death our colonel would find least appropriate then, is it not?’

Parral had the good grace to smile before walking to the center of the dance floor as a servitor finished sweeping the last of the gore aside and sprinkling fresh sand. The body was being lugged out by two of Froelich’s long-faced retainers, who must’ve bet on their ex-leader.

‘It would appear,’ Parral said, relieved at finally being able to go through the rigamarole, ‘that both challenged party and challenger are unable to settle their differences except by blood. Am I correct?’

Sten nodded, as did Trumbo as the two men walked toward each other, each gauging his opponent.

‘Then blood is the argument,’ Parral intoned, ‘and by blood it shall be settled.’ He bowed twice and backed off the floor.

Trumbo went on guard. At least he wasn’t holding his poignard like an icepick. Instead he had his left hand flattened out in front of him, fisted into a guard and held chest-high. His poignard was held low, pommel lightly resting on his left hip. He crab-walked toward Sten.

Sten stood nearly full-on, with right hand, fingers curled, held forward, waist high. His poignard was held slightly to the rear and slightly lower than his right hand.

Sten, too, began crab-walking, trying to move to Trumbo’s off-side. Come on in, friend, he thought, eyes carefully wide open. Come on. A bit closer. And who trained you, clot? as Trumbo’s eyes narrowed and predictably he lunged, going for Sten’s chest.

But Sten wasn’t there to meet the blade. He sidestepped and snapped his right palm into Trumbo’s temple. The man staggered back, then recovered.

And came in again. And Sten’s knife flicked out, flashing under Trumbo’s guardhand, into the flesh of his knife wrist. Blood started dripping slowly as Sten went back on guard.

Trumbo was becoming canny. First thing in a knifefight is try for the cheap kill. But if you’re facing an experienced man, the only way of winning is to bleed your opponent to death.

And so he next tried an underhand slash, coming straight up for Sten’s knifehand. Sten easily parried the stroke, arm-blocked the blade, and stepped close inside Trumbo’s guard. The razor tip of his poignard sliced Trumbo’s forehead open.

And Sten doubled back, ready position, moving, moving, shuttling from side to side. Trumbo closed in again and … oh, clottin’ amateur … tried the old knife-flip, tossing the knife from his right to his left hand. The maneuver should’ve thrown Sten off-guard, and Trumbo would have continued his lunge, driving the poignard deep into Sten’s gut.

But somewhere between Trumbo’s right and left hand was Sten’s snap-kicked foot, and the poignard pirouetted high into the air, gleaming blade flashing reflection, and Sten reversed his grip on the poignard and smashed the pommel into Trumbo’s chin.

Trumbo thudded back, stunned. Sten waited for movement, then flipped his own poignard into the air. It thunked, point-first, into the dance floor. The fight was over.

Sten bowed to Parral, who was again looking surprised, and started back toward …

‘No!’ was the scream from what Sten thought/hoped was Sofia, and he was crouched, head-down, duck-spinning as Trumbo came off the floor, grabbing Sten’s poignard and driving it forward, and Sten’s fingers scooped, his own knife came out of his arm and he overhanded a slash from his knee.

His knife blade hit the poignard’s keen steel and cut through it like cheese.

Trumbo’s eyes gaped at the impossible and then Sten backrolled and was on his feet, Trumbo still stumbling forward as Sten sidestepped, whirled, and slashed again.

The knife neatly parted Trumbo’s skin, ribcage, heart, and lungs before Sten could pull it free. The body squished messily to the floor.

Sten sucked in air that tasted particularly sweet and decided he’d try another bow to Parral.

‘You disappoint me, Colonel,’ Parral said gently.

‘Ah?’ Sten questioned.

‘I thought all soldiers were hard drinkers. Poets. Men. I believe someone wrote, who have an appointment with death.’

Sten sloshed the still-untouched pool of cognac in the snifter and smiled slightly.

‘Most soldiers I’ve known,’ he observed dryly, ‘would rather help someone else make that appointment.’

Parral’s glass was also full.

The two men sat in Parral’s art-encrusted library. It was hours later, and the fete had broken up with excited buzzings and laughter. Parral had let Alex and Sten freshen and change in his chambers and then had wanted to talk to Sten alone.

Reluctantly Alex, Kurshayne, Ffillips, and Vosberh had left the mansion. After all, Sten had pointed out reasonably, I’m in no particular danger. No one except an absolute drakh-brain would kill his mercenary captain before the war’s won.

‘I find you fascinating, Colonel.’ Parral observed. touching his glass to his lips. ‘First, we in the Lupus Cluster are . . . somewhat isolated from the mainstream of Imperial culture. Second, none of us have had the advantage of dealing with a professional soldier. By the way, aren’t you rather … young to have held your present office?’

‘Bloody wars bring fast promotions,’ Sten said.

‘Of course.’

‘The reason I asked you to stay behind is, of course, primarily
personally to compliment your prowess as a warrior … and to gain a better knowledge of what you and your people intend.’

‘We intend winning a war for you and for the Prophet Theodomir,’ Sten said, being deliberately obtuse.

‘No war lasts forever.’

‘Of course not.’

‘You assume victory, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And after that victory?’

‘After we win,’ Sten said, ‘we collect our pay and look for another war.’

‘A rootless existence … Perhaps … Perhaps,’ Parral continued, staring intently into his snifter, ‘you and your men might find additional employment here.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Do you not find it odd that we have two cultures, both very similar, at each other’s throats? Do you not find it odd that both of these cultures espouse a religious faith that you – a sophisticated man of the Galaxy – must find somewhat archaic?’

‘I have learned never to question the beliefs of my clients.’

‘Perhaps you should, Sten. I know little of mercenaries, I admit. But what little my studies produce is that those who survived to die without their swords in hand became … shall we say, politically active?’

Parral waited for Sten’s comment. None came.

‘A man of your obvious capabilities … particularly a man who could develop, let us say, personal interests in his clients, might find it more profitable to linger on after his contract was fulfilled, might he not?’

Sten stood and walked to one wall, and idly touched a gouache of a merchant’s tools – microcomputer, money converter, beam scales, and a projectile weapon – that hung on the wall, then turned back to Parral.

‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that the key to success as a merchant is an ability to fence with words. Unfortunately, I have none of that. I would assume, Seigneur Parral, that what you are asking is that, after we destroy the Jannisars, you would wish us to remain on, with a contract to remove Theodomir.’

Parral managed to look shocked. ‘I would never suggest such a thing.’

‘No. You wouldn’t,’ Sten agreed.

‘This evening has run extremely late, Colonel. Perhaps we should
continue the discussion at a later date. Perhaps after more data has become available to you.’

Sten bowed, set his full glass down on a bookcase, and walked to the door.

Sten walked down the steps and yawned broadly at Nebta’s setting moon. A very long night, Sten, he thought to himself. And you still have four hours to go until you make contact.

‘You look tired, Colonel,’ came the silken voice from the shadows.

Kill a man, love a woman, Sten hoped. It could turn out to be an interesting evening. He nodded to Sofia as she rose from her seat on the balustrade.

Not to mention interesting things like my dawn meeting yet to come, not to mention Parral’s wanting me to sell out the Prophet, not to mention this incredible woman who I do not believe wants to make love to me because of the cut of my hair.

And I will momentarily ignore the fact that my gonads are suggesting it’s perfectly proper to sell out Emperor, mercenaries, Theodomir, and Uncle Tom Dooley for this woman. He smiled back at Sofia.

‘You provided quite an entertainment,’ Sofia said.

‘Not my idea of an enjoyable evening.’

‘After they removed your opponents, I looked for you.’

‘Thought it best to leave, Sofia. I do not think it’s proper to dance with a woman with blood up to your elbows.’

Sofia was surprised. The script was not going as it should.

‘The only thing I could be sorry about,’ Sten improvised, ‘is thst my late friends intervened before I could tell you how lovely you are.’

Sofia brightened. Things might proceed. And Sten suppressed an urge to laugh.
MANTIS SECTION/COVERT OPERATIONS
Instruction Order Something, Clause I Forget, Paragraph Who Remembers: ‘When approached on a sexual level, covert operators should remember that they have not necessarily been found attractive beyond the moon and the stars but rather that the person making the approach is allied
with the opposition and attempting to subvert, to maneuver into a life-threatening situation, or to provide the opposition with blackmail material. In any event, until a life-threatening situation occurs, it is recommended that operatives pretend to be seducible. Interesting intelligence has been produced in such situations.’

And so Sten stepped very close to Sofia, lowered his voice, and gently touched a finger to her cheek.

‘Perhaps we might walk. Perhaps I might have a chance to tell you what I wasn’t able to.’

Sofia’s smile vanished. Then it returned to her face. Very interesting. The woman is an amateur, Sten concluded. Parral, you should never have sent your little sister to do a whore’s work.

Then, arm in arm, the two walked down the steps into Parral’s sprawling garden.