Louis L'Amour (20 page)

Our food was served, but Rafe Bogardus seemed in no mood to talk. On the other hand, something had loosened my tongue, though normally I talked little. Now, here, I talked over much, perhaps because I could see that it got on his nerves.

“Have you ever fought Indians, Bogardus? They are remarkably good. Not so muscular as some of us but wiry and supple, very quick to move and deadly at close-in combat with tomahawk or knife. They have no discipline, fighting much as they will, each man on his own, so they are rarely a match for us in sustained combat, but for the sudden attack, the quick raid, they are remarkable.”

“You talk too much.” He stared at me with no liking. “It will be a pleasure to kill you.”

Finishing my meal, I pushed back the trencher and emptied what remained of the wine. “Then let's have at it, shall we?” I believed I had him off balance a mite and meant to keep him so. “I have no more time to dally.” I stood up abruptly and with a gesture swept the dishes into his lap. The crash made people look up, and he sprang to his feet cursing, but I slammed the table against him, pinning him to the wall. Reaching across with my left hand, I took him by the throat and smashed his head hard against the wall. “You talk of killing! Why, you paltry fool! I am inclined to—”

My sudden shoving of the heavy table against him had caught him unawares, and my left hand, powerful from much swinging of an axe, held him tight to the wall. With my right I drew my knife and held the point of it under his nostril. “I've a notion to let you have about four inches of this up your nose,” I said, “but you're hardly worth it.”

We had spectators then, a room full of them. I turned my head slightly. “He's been paid to kill me,” I said conversationally, “and I don't think he can do it. I am going to turn him loose now, for, after all, he took the money, and he must make his try.”

“Kill him,” somebody said. “Have done with it. I
know the man, and you'll never have him by the throat again.”

“He shall have his chance to run or fight,” I said, and I flicked his nostril only with the very point of the blade, but it drew blood, which trickled slowly down his lip and his chin. Then I stepped back and dropped the knife into its scabbard.

Rafe Bogardus shoved back the table. The way he moved showed the strength of the man. Surprisingly he was calm.

“All right, you have had your bit of amusement. Now I shall kill you.”

“Like I said,” the same voice said, “you should have killed him while you had him trapped. Never give them a second chance.”

Men pulled back from us, and their women, too. The light had a reddish glow, and there were shadows beyond the tables and chairs. The room, despite its size, was crowded. The atmosphere was hot and close, smelling of the crowded, often unwashed bodies. There was also the smell of rum and tobacco smoke.

Bogardus drew his sword. He was very cool now, and had I ever doubted his ability, I could not do so at this moment, for he held himself with an absolute certainty, sure that he could make his kill.

He discarded his coat, and I did likewise. I drew my own blade with less confidence. The only fighting I had done with a sword had been in these past few days, and little enough that was. My father had been said to have been a swordsman of uncommon skill and the others, also. I had good teachers,
but were they really that good?

What possible standard of comparison could I have?

Grimly the thought came to mind. In the next few minutes I would know.

He saluted me. “Now, Sackett, you die!”

He lunged swiftly, and I parried his blade. I think it surprised him, for he may have planned to end it all with that first thrust.

He was more cautious then, discovering that I knew a little, at least. He began to fence, working toward me, pushing me back, deliberately testing me, and I had the good sense to be clumsy, or was it actually that I was awkward? What skill I had I must hold in keeping, and I must fend off his attacks while watching for my chance, nor must I appear to be defending myself with skill.

He was strong. I could feel it in his blade, and he had the delicate touch of the master. He lunged again, and a quick skip back was all that saved me. As it was, the point of his blade ripped my shirt. I heard a gasp from some onlooker, and someone else said, in the almost total silence, “Good, isn't he?”

Aye, he was good. I discovered that quickly enough and was hard put to defend myself, having no need to feign awkwardness with the speed and skill of his attack. Had it not been for the few fights of the past days, I might have failed, but often it takes little time to recall old skills, and I had fenced hour upon hour with my teachers.

The art of the sword had developed greatly in the past few years, but as in all such things, it had come to be highly stylized. The weapon was controlled largely with the fingers; the cuts were made with the first few inches of the blade. The endeavor was to make light, slicing cuts and not to overpower with great slashing cuts. He was swift, sure, and very strong. My own efforts were largely to stave off his attack, and somehow I managed it.

Sweat began to bead on my brow, but as I warmed, I felt the old skills returning. He was better than Jeremy Ring, I thought, perhaps as good as Jublain, but not, I believed, as good as my father had been. Sakim? Ah, Sakim was another sort of man, and his style of fencing was much different.

My style was not orthodox, and I could see that disturbed him while it gave him added confidence, for to him it meant only that I did not know what I was doing or knew it not well enough.

The room was hot, the air close. He pressed me hard, striving to work me into a corner, which would impair my movements, for my speed afoot had surprised him. He thrust; I parried and slid my blade along his. He leaped back just in time, or I might have knicked his wrist. He shot me a sudden sharp glance and made a cut to my cheek that I parried with difficulty. He kicked a small bench toward my feet, and as I sprang out of the way, he lunged, his sword point tearing my shirt at the waist.

We fought savagely then, all pretense thrown aside; it was thrust, parry, head and flank cuts, and he drew first blood with a sudden thrust to the head that opened a thin red cut on my cheek. An instant later, and his point found my ribs, just an inch below the heart but wide of it. He grinned wolfishly. “Soon!” he exclaimed. “Soon you shall be dead!”

He pressed hard, and I fell back, working desperately to ward off his continual attacks. He dropped his blade a little, an invitation I declined to accept, but instantly he moved in with a dazzling series of movements that had the spectators cheering. A thrust followed by cuts to the arm, right cheek, head, and chest. How I parried them I will never know, but as he drew back, momentarily overextended, I thrust suddenly and sharply for his throat. The thrust was high and a hair wide of the mark. It ripped the ruffle at his collar but merely scratched his neck.

He was dangerous, too dangerous. I was in serious trouble and knew it. The man was good, very good. He made a riposte to the head following a parry of my thrust.

He was intent now, ready for the kill. Each fencer tends to favor certain moves, those that are easy for him, to the exclusion of others, and a skillful man with a blade will soon determine which of these his opponent is apt to use. Knowing this, I had deliberately been responding to certain moves of his with the accepted counter. Yet to continue to do so would be to let myself be killed, and the trap, if trap it was, could be used but
once. His responses were quick and easy, and at any moment now, having learned what he believed I would do to each move of his, he must be ready.

So far I had been lucky. My face was streaming with perspiration. Twice he glanced at my eyes. Was he trying to find fear there? Believe me, there was enough of that, for the man was good, and it had been long since I had fenced enough to matter.

Around us men crowded, gold gleaming from their ears. One huge bearded man had a heavy gold necklace that must have come from looted Inca treasure. They watched, intent, and I was conscious of them only as a backdrop to what happened here. The gleaming blades, the movement in and out, the circling, the darting steel, as in some weird ballet of death where I was at once the participant and the observer. The tricks I knew seemed to find no place here, for the man left no chance. For all his strength, he moved lightly, easily, and with confidence. My arm would grow weary; my strength would go.

He was smiling now, his eyes bright with purpose. He feinted a head cut and then thrust at my ribs. My parry was quick, but I was too far from him for a good thrust at the body, so with a flick of the wrist I cut him along the inner sword arm with the back of the blade.

It sliced, and deep. I saw him wince, saw him start to step back, and attacked instantly. His parry was slow.

There was blood on his sleeve now. Somebody gasped and pointed. There was a splash of blood on the floor. I feinted for the head; he tried to parry, and I thrust hard for the ribs. He stepped back quickly, and I moved in.

He was a swordsman. Even now, his arm badly cut, he fought beautifully. Yet there was death in his face. I could see it, and he knew it. I feinted, held my thrust, then, on the instant, followed through. His parry was started too soon; my point slipped past it, and his recovery was slow. The blade slid ever so neatly along his ribs, through the hide and between the bones, and withdrew almost as if there had been nothing but a shadow there.

Bogardus missed a step, his whole side now stained with blood, red blood in a widening blotch on the side of his shirt.

My point lowered a little. “I have no wish to kill you.”

“I am dead. Finish what you have begun.”

“Have done. You have chosen a poor profession. If you live, choose another.”

“I took money to kill you.”

“Keep the money. You tried.”

Taking up my coat with my left hand, I turned my back on him and went into the crowd, and with my naked blade still in my hand it opened before me.

When I was on the street again, I looked carefully about. This was no time to be careless, but of one thing I was sure. My sightseeing in Jamaica as well as my business were over.

Tomorrow I would find John Tilly, and tomorrow I would take Diana Macklin home.

S
trong blew the wind, dark the angry clouds, vivid the lightning. Upon the deck, near the mainmast shrouds I stood, one hand upon them to steady me, my eyes out upon the sea, its dark, huge waves lifting like great upthrusts of black glass, ragged along the breaking edge. My father had gone to sea in his time, but I had no love for it. He had bred a landsman, whether he preferred it or not.

There was a challenge in the storm, a magnificence in the power of the sea, and I rode the deck like a gull upon the wind and confessed inside me that while afraid, I was also drunk with it. Salt spray stung my face; my tongue licked it, tasted it, loved it. She put her bows down and took a great sea over them, and the water came thundering back, the decks awash, the scuppers sucking and gasping.

John Tilly came down upon the deck and stood beside me. “ 'Tis a raw night, lad, a raw night! We be sailing north with the coast out yonder, and many a proud ship gone down in weather no worse than this!”

“I'll be glad when I'm ashore,” I told him frankly. “I want my feet upon solid earth.”

“Aye!” he said grimly. “So think we all. We think ofttimes in the night that once the storm is over and the storm gone, we will go ashore and stay there. We'll tell ourselves that in the night watches, but when the day has come, and our money is spent ashore, then we go seeking a berth again, and off to sea it is.”

“I am a man of the hills and forest.”

“It may be so. Your father made a good seafaring man, though, and belike you could do the same, given time. You are a strong one and active, and you've a cool head about you. I saw that ashore there.”

“Ashore?”

“In the fight with Bogardus. Ah, lad, I feared for you! I've seen him with a blade before, but you had him bested—”

“My father taught me, and the others.”

“It showed. I could see your father's hand there, but you've the greater reach and height. He never beat a better man than Bogardus. But you did not kill him.”

“I have no wish to kill. A man's life is a precious thing, though he waste it. A life is greater than gold and better than all else, so who am I to take it unless need be?”

“He intended to take yours.”

“He has not my thoughts, nor my wishes nor my desires, and if he lives, life may bring him wisdom. Who knows? It is a good thing to live, to walk out upon such a deck as this and feel the wind, to walk in the forest on a moonlit night or out upon some great plateau and look westward—”

“You, too?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah, you are your father's son! He looked to the westward, too! To his far blue mountains. But was it the mountains? Or was it that something beyond? We need such men, lad, men who can look to the beyond, to ever strive for something out there beyond the stars. It is man's destiny, I think, to go forward, ever forward. We are of the breed, you and I, the breed who venture always toward what lies out there—westward, onward, everward.”

We were silent then, riding the deck as it tipped and slanted. She was a good ship, even as she had been in my father's time, and she bore a good name.

“I wonder if I shall ever see her again?”

“Who, lad?”

“My mother. She went to England, you know, so
that Noelle would not grow up in the forest among wild men. My father sorely missed her.”

“Aye, he did that. But she was wise, lad, wiser than all, and you'll be proud of the lass when you see her. A fine lady she is, although but a girl yet, and Brian! What a gentleman! They tell me at the Inns of Court that he has a rare way with words.”