The King of Attolia (29 page)

He tucked his wooden sword under his right arm and extended his hand to Costis, pulling him out of the corner.

Costis moved carefully, moaning. With the excitement of the sparring over, he was realizing that some of the blows hadn’t been light.

“Serves you right,” said the king. “You haven’t even apologized.”

“I’m very s-sorry, Your Majesty,” Costis said immediately.

“For what exactly?” the king prompted.

“Anything,” said Costis. “Everything. Being born.”

The king chuckled.

“Will you serve me and my god?”

“I will, Your Majesty.”

“Then come out,” said the king, helping him, “knowing that you’ll never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you.”

“Y
OUR
Majesty,” said a humorless voice, and the king turned away from Costis. The cheerful atmosphere faded. The guards shuffled their feet.

“Teleus,” said the king. His smile gone, he looked at the captain with a waiting expression.

“If a man can expiate his debts in bruises, Your Majesty, there are others who would clear their accounts.”

“I think not, Teleus,” said the king, and started to step around him. Teleus moved to block him.

“You won’t get out from under your debt so easily, Teleus,” said the king, “and you have little to gain by trying.”

“And little to offer Your Majesty,” Teleus agreed. “Except a challenge.”

He flicked a glance at Costis, and the implication was obvious.

The king shook his head, still not rising to the bait.
“If I were to beat you, Teleus, your Guard would only think that you had let me. There’s little point in that.”

“What, then, if I beat you, Your Majesty?”

“The day hasn’t come, Teleus, that I would let you beat me.”

“I think you wouldn’t have to, my lord.”

The king warned him, “Teleus, I can have your head off.”

“Of course you can, Your Majesty.” He ducked his head in submission, and the king had started away when Teleus added under his breath, “With a word.”

The king stopped and his head went up. “I can do it with a sword, too, Teleus.”

Teleus stepped back and into a guard position.

“Very well,” said the king, and he raised his own sword. “But I won’t have you accused of not trying your hardest. I know that it is worth my while. How shall we make it worth yours? Shall we make a bet, Teleus? I beat you, and the queen reduces the Guard by half. You win, and she doesn’t.”

The guards standing around them looked at each other in horror.

Teleus thrust his chin forward. “I know that you have badgered her to weaken the Guard,” said Teleus. “I will die before I let you do it.”

“You don’t have to die, Teleus. Just beat me.”

Feeling that all his good work had been undone, Costis could do nothing but leave them to it. He turned and was walking toward a bench along the wall where he could sit and nurse his bruises when he heard the wooden swords clack and the king yell. He whirled in time to see the king still in the air, both feet off the ground, the sky suddenly blue, the morning mist gone, the sunshine glowing in the sky and on the stones and on the king, and everything frozen for a moment like the carved frieze in a temple, as the flat side of the king’s extended sword smashed against Teleus’s undefended neck.

Teleus went down like bricks falling. He dropped his sword on the way and clutched at his neck with both hands, digging his face into the ground, struggling to hold the pain and trying to breathe. Half-controlled impulses made his legs twitch, and he shuddered.

The king looked him over and said impassively to the nearest barracks boy, “Ice.”

The boy ran, and the soldiers parted to let him through. The king went to Teleus, first squatting down, and then sitting beside him.

“You didn’t know I could do that, did you?” he asked, conversationally.

“I did not, Your Majesty,” Teleus gasped.

“My grandfather killed a man that way once, using the edge of the wooden sword.”

“I hadn’t realized the Thieves of Eddis were so warlike.”

“They aren’t, mostly. But like all men, Teleus, I have two grandfathers.” Teleus rolled his eyes to look up at him, and the king said, “One of mine was Eddis.”

“Ah,” said Teleus.

“Ah, indeed,” said the king. “Here is the ice.” He took a canvas bag from the barracks boy and felt the lumps of ice through it. Then he laid the bag on the hard ground and used the metal cuff at the end of his arm to crush the ice into smaller pieces and then lifted the bag onto Teleus’s neck.

“Does that feel better?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Teleus.

“Well, Costis will hold it for you. I see I have business with Aristogiton.”

He got to his feet and walked away. Costis stayed with Teleus, holding the ice on his neck until he took it himself and got to his feet. Teleus looked around. Costis did as well. The king was in the center of the courtyard circling warily around one of the men in Aris’s squad.

Costis asked, “Where’s Aris?”

One of the guards turned to look at them in surprise. “He already whacked Aris on the head. Let him off lightly,” he added, looking significantly at the captain holding the ice to his neck. “Now he’s working on Meron.”

Costis protested, “He can’t fight all of them.”

Aris arrived beside them, and Costis turned on him. “What were you thinking?”

Aris shrugged. Obviously hoping that the captain would take no notice, Aris said quietly, “Nobody minded seeing you knocked down. It was good fun. But they started to get angry again when he knocked down the captain. I thought if he did to me what he did to you, they’d relax again. But he didn’t. He just knocked my sword out of my hand after about three exchanges and tapped me on the cheek.”

If Aristogiton had hoped the captain wasn’t listening, his hopes were dashed. Teleus turned around. “And then?” he said harshly.

“Then he waved Meron out. I swear I didn’t mean for him to take on the whole squad, sir.”

Costis said in a worried voice, “I think he hurt himself, fighting the captain. That jump must have taken everything he had.”

“I think he did, too. He’ll have to stop after Meron. What is it, Aris?”

“It’s Laecdomon, sir. I haven’t told you, sir, and I didn’t know who else to tell, but it was Laecdomon who wanted us to go help pen the dogs. He suggested it. And when we were arrested, he wasn’t with us in the cell, sir. He said he was kept in a different cell, but I never saw him until after the queen pardoned us.”

“I see,” said Teleus grimly. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe he isn’t here this morning,” said Costis hopefully.

“No,” said Aris, “I saw him earlier.”

“And you think he’ll come out to challenge the king?”

“I think he’s Erondites’s man, Captain. He’s not landed, and his family is from the baron’s demesne. Everyone knows how the baron feels.”

“You can kill a man with a wooden sword,” Costis said, echoing the king’s words.

“If you don’t care what happens to you afterward,” said Teleus. “Would Laecdomon care?”

“I don’t know,” said Aris. “The baron would reward his family.”

“The king can’t beat a fresh opponent,” Costis warned, “and he won’t know that it isn’t just sparring for Laecdomon.”

“Don’t worry,” said Teleus. “As much as I would like to see it, I am not going to stand here and watch him get knocked down dead by a zealot with a wooden club. Find Laecdomon and get him out of here.”

Aris and Costis moved away through the crowd. The king finished his opponent. Meron rubbed his chest where the point of the king’s sword had struck and smiled. The king looked through the crowd for the next man in the squad. Searching the crowd himself, Teleus was too late to signal the man to hang back. Teleus, from behind the king’s back, waved to get his attention and then mouthed silent instructions.

But the king caught the expression on the guard’s
face and turned his head slowly to look over one shoulder at Teleus. He looked back at his opponent. “Did he tell you to give me an easy match?”

The confused guard shook his head.

The king shook his head. “Oh, no, no, that won’t do. I’ll have to make you the same offer I made the captain. Beat me, and the queen won’t reduce the Guard; lose to me, and she’ll cut the ranks in half.”

The man looked in panic from Teleus to the king.

“He still wants you to go easy, doesn’t he? That’s what he’s saying behind my back. What are your brothers saying? What does the Guard think?”

“Pound him!” someone safely anonymous shouted from the back of the crowd.

The king nodded. “Come on, Damon. I know what you can do. I may be tired, but nothing less than your best is going to be enough.”

Damon attacked. Laughing, the king retreated. Damon attacked again, and they settled to the business of thrusting and parrying, and if Damon had meant to give the king an easy fight, his intentions were soon swept away as the king leaned in as they closed over the practice swords and whispered something in his ear. No one could hear what he said, but its effect was galvanic.

Damon was a better swordsman than either Costis or Aris. The king wasn’t using his flashy technique. He parried and attacked carefully and precisely, wasting no energy. He hung back occasionally to catch his breath,
and he began to favor his left leg just a little.

Damon pressed him, but the king always slid away. Then the king attacked with a sequence of moves that forced him back and back, barely parrying as the king swung and swung again and missed.

“Dammit,” said the king, retreating. “I thought I had you.”

Damon smiled. “I thought so, too.”

Eugenides sighed dramatically. “Oh, press on, then,” he said as he raised his sword. He was too tired to press an attack fast enough to touch Damon, but Damon wasn’t good enough to get past the king’s defense. The king began to twit him as the attacks failed. “That didn’t work last time either. Are you going to try it again?” Frustrated, Damon was driven to overextend himself, and the king disarmed him. He stood ruefully as the king tapped him on the head and said, “Done.”

Sticking his sword under his right arm and pinching it there, Gen used his hand to push the sweat-damp hair off his forehead. Then he walked with Damon toward the wall fountain, trailing the wooden sword so that its point dragged on the ground, bumping along behind him. They had taken no more than a few steps together when a voice called from behind them. The king turned.

“Laecdomon. Of course. How could I have forgotten you?”

“I don’t know, Your Majesty. I hope that now that you have remembered me, you won’t forget me again.”

The guards fell silent. Teleus stepped forward, opened his mouth to speak, but the king shooed him away. Teleus had to content himself with a threatening look, which Laecdomon pretended not to see.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll forget you, Laecdomon. I’ll make you the same offer I made your colleagues. Beat me, and I will not reduce the Guard,” said the king. He made a face and lifted the sword crosswise to his mouth and bit down on the blade, leaving both hands free, and swung his arms as if to relieve tired muscles. He spat the sword back into his hand.

“You’d have a wider smile, Your Majesty, if you did that with a real sword.”

“It has not escaped my attention that everyone here objects to the way I handle a practice sword. Perhaps you’d like to tell me why?”

“The essence of the practice sword is to help you acquire the use of the real sword. If you don’t treat it like a real sword, Your Majesty, you thwart its purpose. Here in Attolia,” he said condescendingly, emphasizing Eugenides’s foreignness, “we are taught to treat a practice sword with all the respect of a real weapon, so that no thoughtless mistakes are made.”

“Oh,” said the king, sounding amused, “in Eddis, we learn to keep track of the weapon we have in our hand.”

He raised his sword. “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Laecdomon.

“Begin.”

“Captain?” Costis asked, worried.

Teleus shrugged. “I am not in charge here, Costis. If he chooses to walk into a trap with his eyes wide open, I have no authority to stop him.”

Anxiously they watched the match.

The guards around the two men were silent and uncomfortable. There were no heckling comments and no shouts of support for Laecdomon. Everyone knew that there was more at stake than a sparring match, but something in Laecdomon’s attitude discouraged any supporters. For the sake of the Guard, they didn’t want the king to win, but they found it hard to root for Laecdomon either, so they stood silently and watched.

The king, favoring his left leg, spun on the right foot as Laecdomon circled.

“Captain,” a nearby lieutenant said in an undertone, “Her Majesty is here.”

The queen and her attendants had entered the training yard. She was not the only onlooker that had arrived. Most of the court seemed to have gathered. They lined the terrace above the training yard and were gathering on the walls that overlooked it. Costis looked at Teleus in growing apprehension.

Teleus crossed toward the queen. She was directing servants to place a dais and a chair. As they became
aware of her, the men in the Guard opened their circle to give her an unobstructed view. As Teleus approached, she sat in the chair and calmly arranged the folds of her gown. Her attendants gathered behind her. The king’s attendants drifted to flank them. Teleus bent down in order to speak to her quietly.

Her raised hand forestalled him. She waved Costis to approach.

“This was your idea?”

“No, Your Majesty. I mean, yes, I asked the king to spar. I had no idea this would happen.” With an effort he avoided indicting Teleus with a glance.

“People do frequently seem to be surprised once my husband is involved.”

“Your Majesty,” said Teleus, “you must stop this.”

“I? By what authority would I command the king?”

“He would stop if you asked,” Teleus insisted.

The queen shook her head.

“Then I will stop it,” said Teleus, and he turned.

“Captain.” The queen’s voice was soft, but Teleus turned back, subdued.

“He’ll be killed,” he warned.

“We must hope not.”

“He’s tired. He’s injured. Laecdomon can kill him with one stroke. Let me arrest him before it is too late.”

“Arrest the king?”

“Arrest Laecdomon,” Teleus almost snapped, not appreciating the queen’s humor.

“Arrest him for what? What proof do you have that this is anything but a sparring match?”

“Let me arrest him, and I will drag the proof out of him.”

The queen shook her head.

“Why not?” Teleus asked helplessly.

“Because the king will not quit, Teleus,” said Ornon as he joined them. “You must have noticed,” he said. “He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty, and maddening, but he doesn’t ever quit.” Ornon shrugged. “Ever.”