A Duelist’s Second

Drinking heavily as usual, Ryzo was in no condition to fight. The kid was of the standard quality, cocky, nervous, loud--threatening the air with whistling slashes of untried steel. The glint of the blade, the smell of testosterone and wine-rotten breath, the laughter of some erstwhile friend who had put the poor fool up to this. It all swayed before him in the putrid darkness. Ryzo had been here often enough, scared spitless and certain he was finally getting what he had coming, swearing just as often this was the last time. He would clean up, lay off bars and drink in general, particularly the port that got his mouth moving faster than what wit was left him. Maybe he would even get out of this ancient wicked city for good. He was, as they said, too old for this shit.

And the promise of cheating fate was almost strong enough to set him free. His first duel, the first man he ever saw die, spit blood at him, laughing at their mutual surprise, promised someday Ryzo himself would be looking up at some young hotshot, wondering why he had waited this long.

Why had he?

Here was the punk now, doubtlessly the one Marcatto had seen through those death-clouded eyes. Ryzo was content to admit he was as superstitions as any Sunday-born washer woman. He had seen enough of luck not to trust beginners, fools, or cats; and wasn’t this kid a bit of all three ? Sleek and cold with his hair slicked in the rain, baby fat still making his cheeks pout like someone’s spoiled pet.

Marcatto might have been about Ryzo’s age then. Thirty-two, “old man,” a veteran among the blades on the Row with enough scars to get a space at the bar, insufficient years to stare down a duel without someone bleeding. A seasoned blade but no master. Ryzo knew he had arrived a week ago when he was called out for reputation alone.

“You the one called Ryzo?”

“Perhaps.”

“I hear he’s a coward, anyhow.”

And that was enough. Stupid as it was, a challenge had been made with witnesses aplenty. In these days of brokered peace mercenaries found employment scarce, but duelists enjoyed plenty. A professional second could make a respectable living provided he survived and his reputation kept business coming.

Rizo had won that night. Three local boys failed to prove their manhood; one of them would never draw a sword again, the other two drew no breath. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.

Would this kid make thirty. Was the number propitious or not? Ryzo failed to rally sufficient wit to recall. Instead bit down into his lip in hopes of clearing his head. It helped a little sometimes.

At the back of his throat, he tasted the reason he promised to give it all up, acid and the rancid egg of nausea. Until Marcatto’s rasping curse he had known no better, but now, each time he looked across a few scant paces into a man’s sneering face, he asked God why maybe Marcatto could not have died a little faster.

The idea of not drawing only teased him a moment. Walking away was no option. For some unfathomable cause as irrefutable and strong as tides or his own fear, someone had to bleed. It was not for the two men or even for the boisterous circle of on-lookers, but perhaps the foul air of the city which had acquired too many souls for its ancient stone walls.

He tested the sword tentatively, freeing it slowly from its scabbard. Nothing fancy, just a steel blade, quillions, a guard, the hilt worn smooth and intimately familiar with years of sweat. If he focused he could almost make the tip of the blade stop shaking. Marcatto’s eyes might have seen this moment through the clouds that lift when dying. Ryzo could easily imagine the smile had seen this night with the drizzle, cold, the smell of rotting seaweed, rotting offal, rotting timber blowing up into their faces. It was a bad night to pay the debt, a miserable night to die. At least Marcatto’s had been warm and dry.

Bastard.

The kid was anxious to start. Standing in the middle of the empty plaza, almost invisible in the murky night, swearing at him in some pidgin he could barely understand. Ryzo suddenly saw the whelp’s whole life in crystalline focus: recent arrival to the city needs fast coin and calls out the bottom of the respectable ranks on the Row for his first bout. Win and he could reasonably expect a patron within the month. A certain amount of prestige was to be had being the first to hire a new second. Ironic, since it was to be the boast of a noble too cowardly to fight his own duel.

“I hired Ryzo de Loriente for my challenge of the most honorable and late Monsieur de Roceur regarding the matter of my mistress’s chastity. Something about de Loriente’s swagger told me,” puffing out his cravated chest and pointing to a portrait of some long-dead progenitor in proxy of my self, “here is a man who can carve a petit count with discretion and dispatch.” Fat and stupid straightens his waistcoat. “And this, mind you, before his name had ever been heard. Now, I’m told, he has dozens to his name. Perhaps a little more sherry, my dear?”

More bastards. Almost all of them, Ryzo supposed.

But here is this poor child, fresh from some second uncle’s third-rate academy in the south of some obscure province, newly arrived and ready to try his skill or at least get the hell out of the stinking hell hole once and for all.

The weasel of a friend behind the kid was a local, a prospector Ryzo knew well enough by sight, doubtlessly the one who had brought them together, pointed him out. Any trade that promises profit will support a certain number of peddlers. Rat-faced and handsome, the weasel was close at the young bravo’s shoulder, pouring advise and courage in his ear. Ryzo’s infamous limp, the proclivity for shots to the throat, the dagger in the boot. Even through the stupor and drizzle and disgust, Ryzo could none of it was sinking in. The kid was rehearsing his second uncle’s foreign phrases and secret techniques, what had worked in practice bouts, what had not, running over the last pointers he received before heading for the great city to make his fortune.

In his early days, Ryzo had done just that a half-dozen times. Maybe it had kept him alive. Fear alone was never enough. He had forsworn the litany of techniques along the way. Like Marcatto, he knew everything that mattered. After a certain amount of sweat and staring, one sharpened length of steal slid through the skin like a skiff cutting through a wake and clipped muscles like threads. If the fellow on the pointy end was lucky, the blade passed through and then time for talk. The alternative was the point carrying on into bone to leave a lingering death or, further on, some vital tissue to be perforated like so much soft cheese, the spongy stuff filling up with blood, the lungs finally still, and the real fight was over.

But this kid was thinking mostly about winning, about cash and glory and some whore with fleshy thighs and breasts. Maybe they could distract him enough from the point and get Ryzo out of this scrap.

But then Marcatto probably thought of that, too.

The rat-faced peddler was shouting something at him now, providing the stylized preamble so the constabulary could legally ignore the winner. Points of honor were perfunctorily covered, causes for the duel justified to the cobblestones and drunken revelers who cared equally, indifferent to everything but blood. Ryzo was struck for the first time how even these parasites provided vital services to their trade.

Still unable to focus, he let his eyes trace down the length of the rapier’s blade to the scars on his hand. Where had he left his gloves?

The right hand had been slashed and cut at least a dozen times, leaving a road map of victories. The left hand was cut so constantly he had stopped bandaging it. It had been pierced twice so now it failed to close completely but could still grip a dagger when the need arose. That was sufficient for his purpose.

Like most of the longeved in his trade, he had lost couple fights but lived to tell. He wore the consequences of those moments. On a sunny June afternoon the dagger of a country gentleman had laid open the flesh of his leg, leaving him curled on the ground in a seeping heap. The victory was sufficient for the gentlemen’s question of honor and, flush with his victory, his opponent’s personal surgeon was called to look after the wound. As fate had it, that debt had been repaid some months later with the death of his initial patron’s new champion. Ryzo repaid his benefactor some months later with a second duel, killing one of the more renowned blades on the Row. Eighteen. The debt in question, some thousands of marks, changed hands again, without reckoning the soul lost. Like race horses and fighting cocks, dueling seconds amounted to annual expenses of the nobility. Their survival was inconsequential to the ledger books, only wins and losses were accounted.

And was it not enough that they were there? This fool, this nestling who was just now realizing that the sword point in front of him was unblunted and, for the first time, he was quite probably going to die on a pin prick. If Ryzo could manage to clear his head, he might explain the stupidity. If the kid could understand enough of his words, they could head back to the tavern where it was warm and cozy, raise a glasses to that fat bellied whore in the corner and, who knows, maybe be friends. He had to respect the way the kid clenched his jaw as the truth settled over him. Maybe he did not really see he was about to die, but at least he saw that he could.

After Marcatto, there had been so many more. Marcatto was not really all that important in his life, not any more important than, say God or his mother. It could just as well have been Jacobo or Antonio or Machiabello. Some name that hung upon an idea he had never forgotten. Just a pair of eyes staring back at him with a need to understand. And a need to remember. In those eyes Ryzo saw suddenly and clearly across the intervening years the legacy of Marcatto’s Marcatto, and Ryzo’s Ryzo. Though always at the tip of the rapier, each duelist did have a second of sorts. Sooner or later they were all going to be passed along because none of them would die old men in their beds, few of them left children and none raised their sons, but they remembered each other. Little else was bequeathed by men like them but in those eyes, along with the curse, was the heirloom. A legacy of blood. If Ryzo could sober up enough to survive till morning he could record the men he had killed. He did not know all their names, but at least those he did. And maybe he could avoid this next death. Had the weasel just pronounced the kid’s name? Ryzo didn’t even bother listening to the names any more.

But perhaps he could find out what it was.