I leaned into Lorenzo and said, ‘They’re not duelling, they’re performing. This is all choreographed.’
Lorenzo gave me a smile. ‘Well, yes. We can’t really have our Greatcoats injuring each other, can we?’
I was shocked. This was the worst possible way to train fighters: having them work out the choreography together and then performing it. It was as if they thought the speed and sharpened blades somehow made it more real than true fighting with wooden blunts. What were these people thinking?
The fight came to a finish with a delightful flourish of bladework that ended with Etricia standing over Mott in a preposterous pose with the tip of her sword an inch from his eye. The applause was thunderous.
‘This is madness,’ I said to Cairn. ‘Why don’t you train properly?’
‘I think it’s a bit rude, don’t you, to come into our home and criticise our training systems?’ Lorenzo said.
‘I have suggested—’ Cairn began.
‘No one asked you to speak, Cairn,’ Lorenzo said, the warning clear in his voice. Though perhaps not clear enough for Cairn.
‘Everyone has a say at a Greatcoats meeting,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Why not train the way Falcio suggests? Wooden swords, but real fights, real training.’
Lorenzo sighed and rose from his chair. ‘All right then,’ he said, pulling a wickedly long rapier from its sheath. ‘Let’s train, Cairn: straight ahead combat, you and me.’
The crowd moved aside for him and Cairn looked around nervously. If he was hoping someone would object, he was out of luck.
‘But I’m not ready … I’m—’
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘That’s not what I—’
‘Come, come, Cairn,’ Lorenzo said, his eyes locked on his opponent. ‘A Greatcoat needs to be ready at any time, doesn’t he?’
Cairn reluctantly walked towards the centre and drew his own sword, a short and obviously cheap weapon. I had the impression that Cairn was not quite so well off as the rest of the people here, and not all that well respected.
‘At least use wooden swords,’ I said. ‘You’re going to bloody kill yourselves like this.’
Lorenzo ignored me. He continued to smile as he kept his gaze fixed on Cairn. ‘You’re not afraid, are you, Cairn? Reassure our guest that your honour matters a lot more to you than a scrape here or there.’
‘Fuck your honour,’ I said. ‘Honour’s for Knights. Use some sense, boy.’
The crowd arrayed themselves in a circle, penning the two men inside.
Cairn looked at me like an animal who has just realised that the door to his cage has been closed behind him. ‘No, no, he’s right. I want to be a Greatcoat. I have to be able to fight.’ He put himself into a rough approximation of a guard position and waited.
Lorenzo signalled to his woman, Etricia, who came over and gave him a wanton kiss on the mouth before smiling wickedly at me. I realised then that this had been a trap, of sorts: Cairn wasn’t well-respected; he wasn’t well-liked, and he had embarrassed Lorenzo by bringing me here. They’d all been safe and sound in their make-believe world of Greatcoats and honour and swordplay, but here I was, the ugly truth of the matter. Cairn probably had a lot more idea about what we Greatcoats were really about than the others, and he probably complained a lot more. Now he was going to get a beating.
‘Will our guest call the start of the bout?’ Lorenzo asked.
‘Fine,’ I said, an idea coming to mind. ‘When I call the start of the match, you may begin, and you will fight until first blood. Any man goes past first blood shows himself unable to control his blade and forfeits the match.’ There: see what you can do with that, you pompous cornstalk.
‘As you say,’ Lorenzo said, bowing towards me.
Cairn nodded.
‘Fine. Begin,’ I said.
Lorenzo’s blade whipped out and I thought it might be over before it began, but he held the blow before it could connect. A feint, and well executed, for certain – and convincing enough that Cairn had flinched and put his arms up in front of his face, looking to all the world like a child trying to avoid a slap.
The crowd laughed.
‘Are you all right?’ Lorenzo enquired solicitously, pulling his blade back and leaning forward with an expression of utter concern.
More laughter.
Cairn came back into guard. Lorenzo attacked again, using almost the exact same move. It’s not an uncommon trick to make it appear as if you’re going to repeat a feint, but this time to follow through with the blow. But in this case, with embarrassment as his aim, Lorenzo simply feinted exactly the same way, and produced exactly the same result. Poor Cairn was humiliated and left off-balance.
The audience was stingingly unsympathetic.
At first I was relieved: this would just be a way for Lorenzo to embarrass Cairn and reassert his dominance of the group. But I was mistaken. Lorenzo was an excellent swordsman, and he had all the control he needed to dominate the fight and not draw blood. But as the fight went on, he used that control not to scare Cairn, but to beat him mercilessly with the flat of his blade. No blood was drawn, but Cairn was being badly struck, over and over. When he tried to fight defensively, Lorenzo would sneak past his guard and hit him with the flat. When he tried scoring a touch, Lorenzo punished him with much harder strikes.
To his credit, Cairn kept getting up, taking his punishment – then Lorenzo knocked the tip of Cairn’s blade down towards the ground and delivered a vicious strike against his wrist with the flat of his blade. I heard a crack.
‘Enough!’ I said. ‘Fighters separate.’
Lorenzo stood back for a moment. ‘First Cantor? I don’t understand – I thought you said we fought to first blood?’
I looked out into the crowd. A few looked horrified at what was happening but more, many, many more, looked gleeful at the show they were getting.
‘The boy’s had enough,’ I said.
‘I—’ Cairn began.
‘He can withdraw if he wishes,’ Lorenzo said soothingly, ‘but any man or woman who runs from a fight is no Greatcoat and has no business here with us.’
I laughed. ‘“Runs from a fight?” You child. We run from fights all the time – we run from any fight we can get away from. “Judge Fair, Ride Fast, Fight Hard” – fighting is always our last resort.’
It was Lorenzo’s turn to sneer. ‘Well, perhaps that explains why you ran so quickly the last time there was a fight worth winning! Perhaps that’s why there’s no King and no Greatcoats any more. Perhaps we –’ and here he turned and swept his arms out wide – ‘perhaps we plan on fighting, not running!’
Aline put a hand on my arm. ‘Let’s go, Falcio. I think we should go now.’
I shrugged her arm off.
‘You’re a fool, Lorenzo, and so is anyone here who listens to this tripe. You think you’re going to take forty men and women and fight an armoured division of Knights? In plate-mail? The army that came for the King had a thousand men on horseback. You think you can fight your way out of that?’ I felt the sting of irony myself, since I had tried very hard to convince the King to let me do that very thing.
‘You know, First Cantor, you look tired. Perhaps you need to rest, and dream sweet dreams of the past, while younger and better men do the fighting for you. Or perhaps –’ he turned and smiled wolfishly – ‘perhaps you’d like to show us all a thing or two about how you used to do it in the old days?’
‘Come on, Falcio,’ Aline said. ‘This isn’t your fight.’
But she was wrong: these people were calling themselves Greatcoats. I had devoted my life to this cause, and a hundred and forty-three others had done the same. We had fought and bled and died for this cause. My King had lost his head for this cause.