“I’ll challenge him,” came a voice from the vestibule. All heads turned to see who spoke, and Tolley’s eyes widened when he saw Frank Rovzar standing in the doorway. Damn that inefficient Emsley! Tolley thought furiously.
Frank shoved the gaping, pale-faced Lord Emsley aside and strode up the central aisle to the altarlike speaker’s platform. As he approached he saw Tolley smile—he’s noticing my bloody shirt, Frank thought. Good; I hope he overestimates the injury. He swung up onto the platform and nodded politely to both Tolley and Hodges.
“Did you hope to become equal to him by killing him?” he asked Tolley with a wild, brittle cheerfulness. “It didn’t work—you’re still a Transport-loving slug whom I wouldn’t trust to clean privies.” Frank knew Tolly hated the Transport as much as anyone, but wanted to enrage him. He succeeded, especially when many of the thieves in the crowd snickered at Frank’s words.
“Ordinarily, Rovzar,” Tolley said through clenched teeth, “I’d scorn to smear my sword with the watery blood of a kitchen boy. Since you’re such an offensive and conceited one, though, I’ll make an exception.”
Hodges stood up and faced Frank. “Do you mean,” he asked wearily, “to invoke the ius gladii against his majesty here?”
“Yes,” said Frank politely. Cheers sounded in various parts of the hall. “Nail the bastard, Frank!” someone shouted.
Tolley, thoroughly angered, raised his sword and whistled it through the air in a curt salute. Frank unsheathed his own sword, the rapier Orcrist had been wearing, and saluted courteously.
“Go to it, gentlemen,” said Hodges, sitting down.
Frank relaxed into the on guard position, with his sword well extended to keep a comfortable distance. He met Tolley’s gaze and smiled. “It was you who hired those six bravos to kill me, wasn’t it?” Frank asked softly, with a tentative tap at Tolley’s blade.
“Emsley hired them,” replied Tolley in a likewise low voice. “I told him to. I guess the idiot hired inferior swordsmen.” Tolley tried a quick feint and jab to Frank’s wrist; Frank caught Tolley’s point and whirled a riposte that nearly punctured Tolley’s elbow. They both backed off then, measuring each other.
“They weren’t inferior,” Frank said. “If they hadn’t killed Orcrist before turning to me, they’d have earned whatever Emsley paid them.”
Tolley backed away a step. “They killed Orcrist?” he asked, beginning to look a little fearful.
“That’s right,” said Frank.
Tolley took another step back, lowering his point— and then leaped forward, jabbing at Frank like an enraged scorpion. His blade was everywhere: now flashing at Frank’s throat, now ducking for his stomach, now jabbing at his knee. Frank devoted all his energy to parrying, waiting to riposte until, inevitably, Tolley should tire. He retreated a step; then another; and then felt with his rear foot the edge of the marble block. Desperately, he parried an eye-jab in prime and riposted awkwardly at Tolley’s throat, leaping forward as he did it. Tolley backed off two steps, deflected Frank’s thrust and flipped his blade back at Frank’s face. Frank felt the fine-whetted edge bite through his cheek and grate against his cheekbone.
He struck Tolley’s blade away and forced himself to relax and stay alert, to resist the impulse to attack wildly.
“You’re on your way out, Rovzar,” grinned Tolley fiercely. Frank drove a most convincing-looking thrust at Tolley’s throat—Tolley raised his sword to meet it—and Frank ducked low, still in his lunge, and punched his sword-point through Tolley’s thigh. He whipped it out and, grinning, threw aside the older man’s convulsive riposte.
“Cut your throat, you bastard, and save me the trouble,” hissed Frank.
Tolley stole a glance downward and paled visibly to see the widening red stain on his pants. Frank threw a quick thrust at him and cut him slightly in the arm. Blood was trickling down Frank’s cheek and neck, and when he licked his lips he caught its rusty taste.
Tolley ran at Frank now in a fleche attack; the thrust missed, but Tolley collided heavily with Frank and they both pitched off the platform. As they rolled to their feet on the floor, Frank jabbed Tolley hard behind the kneecap, and the lord cried out with the pain.
“Damn you!” the older man snarled, aiming a slash at Frank’s head. Frank ducked it and Tolley swung backhand at him again. Frank jarringly caught the sword with the forte of his own and half-lifted, half-threw Tolley away from him.
"It’s time for the finish, Tolley,” Frank gasped. Sweat ran from his matted hair and dripped from the end of his nose. “Have you ever seen the Self-Inflicted Foot Thrust?”
Tolley said nothing, but lunged high at Frank, hoping to catch him while he was still talking. Frank carefully took Tolley’s blade with his own, whirled it up and then whipped it, hard, down.
Tolley crouched amazed, staring at his foot, which was nailed to the floor by his own sword. Derisive laughter sounded from all sides. Frank drove his own sword with savage force into Tolley’s stomach. “This is for Orcrist,” he grinned. “And this,” he said, with a punching slash that opened Tolley’s throat, “is for Blanchard.”
Tolley’s spouting body arched backward and sprawled, arms outflung, on the floor. His sword still stood up from his foot like a butterfly-collector’s pin.
Frank sank exhausted to his knees and panted until he’d begun to get his breath back. A minute later he stood up, pushed his bronze ear back into place and vaulted onto the platform.
“I present King Rovzar of the Subterranean Companions,” Hodges called loudly. “Are there any further challenges?”
There were none. Lord Rutledge began clapping, and in a moment the entire hall echoed to the sound of applause and whistling. Frank grinned mirthlessly and raised his bloody sword in a salute. Nobody who’d known him a year ago would have recognized as Francisco Rovzar this savage figure standing above a multitude of cheering thieves, his uneven black hair flung back and his face a gleaming mask of sweat and blood.
BOOK THREE: The King
Chapter 1
Bright torchlight flickered on the faces of the seven men seated around the oak table. A nearly empty brandy bottle and a litter of used clay pipes gave testimony to the length of the conference, and one or two of the men were obviously stifling yawns.
“However you argue it,” said one of them, obviously not for the first time, “you can’t hold the palace. You might just be able to take it, as you suggest, with an army of thieves and evicted farmers. But without a prince of the royal blood to set on the throne, you’d be thrown out within the week and your army would be cut to bits and driven into the hills to starve.”
“I guess you’re right, Hodges,” said the man at the head of the table. “We ... shelve that idea, then. But you haven’t given me a reason why you oppose the idea of night raids on the Transport shipment between Barclay and the palace.”
“Well,” said Hodges doubtfully, scratching his chin, “I guess I don’t really oppose it ... but there are two reasons why I don’t entirely like it. First, you’re saying we should make a direct raid on the Transport, which is bigger meat than the Companions usually go for. Second, it would be on the surface, and our boys aren’t used to working without a roof overhead and a sewer or two to scuttle down if things get tight.”
“Well, our boys are going to have to get used to it,” growled the leader. “You know as well as I do what that Transport last week whispered before he died. Their home base, their system headquarters, is what they plan to make of this planet. And do you think they’ll allow our little thieves’ union to continue when Octavio is nothing but a Transport office and parking lot? Not likely. We’ve got to impede them, as seriously as we can, or we’ll all be shipped off to some prison planet within the year.”