Page 19 of Confounding Oaths
“’Specially since he’s not got any,” added Callaghan.
Captain James had, by now, crossed to the bar and ordered himself a drink. “I’ve got as much honour as any man in the British army.”
“I know,” Callaghan replied. “That’s what I said.”
Jackson, having dislodged Sal from his lap, was on his feet and stalking a circle around Mr. Caesar with a predatory shadow creeping across his naturally innocent face. “So what, you’ve brought him here so we can make a fighter of him?”
“I don’t think I’m under any illusions in that regard,” Mr. Caesar replied, turning instinctively to watch Jackson as he circled. “But I should probably at least know how to defend myself.”
Keeping his eyes on Jackson, however, meant that he lost track of Sal until her boot caught him in the back of the knee, driving him to the ground and leaving him kneeling with a knife at his throat. “Lesson one,” she told him. “Cheat.”
I have tried, throughout my collection of this story and indeedallof my stories, not to have any respect for any of the mortal species. But I have to confess that the elan with which Mr. Caesar bore the chill of a blade against his carotid artery did him credit.
“I am not sure,” he said very calmly and levelly, trying not to swallow, “that technique will be especially pertinent in a one-on-one duel.”
Sal spun her knife away and concealed it somewhere about her person. “True enough. Boy William, get the swords.”
The patrons of the Folly, happy as any group of Englishmen to receive free entertainment, obligingly cleared a wide circle in the middle of the floor. This left Mr. Caesar very aware that he was surrounded by vagabonds, common soldiers, a single officer, and (this last unbeknownst to him) a capricious fairy spirit.
“You’re not going to stab me, are you?” he asked, trying to make it sound like a joke.
“Only a little,” Barryson reassured him. “You’ll hardly feel it.”
Kumar entered the circle with a pair of light, thin blades, one of which he passed to Mr. Caesar. “You might want to start with this. It’s the proper weapon for an affair of honour—”
“Fuck proper,” called Sal from the sidelines.
“It’s the weapon you’re most likely tofacein a duel with a gentleman,” Kumar corrected. “Not that the majorismuch of a gentleman.”
Already convinced he was holding the sword wrong, Mr. Caesar swung it experimentally and found he didn’t much like the experience. “I’m not sure he thinks me a gentleman either.”
Captain James, still moving with that strange grace of his, came to Mr. Caesar’s side and guided his fingers into their proper position around the hilt. There was an intimacy to the gesture. One which tangled with Mr. Caesar’s apprehensions and uncertainties in an intoxicating cocktail of wanting and fearing. “What he thinks don’t matter,” the captain told him. “What matters is you win.”
“Or at the very least,” added Jackson, “that you lose without dying.”
“Now,” the captain went on, “Kumar here’ll show you the stance he learned at his fancy school, and you’ll mirror him. It won’t make a swordsman of you, but you might get out with your skin intact.”
Kumar leaned his weight back on his left foot and raised his sword to shoulder height, pointing directly into Mr. Caesar’s eyes. When Mr. Caesar tried to copy him, the attitude felt constrained and awkward. The blade was light enough, but by some trick of leverage a light blade at arm’s length felt a lot like a heavy blade in any other context.
Still, he appreciated the captain’s guiding hands on his arms and, occasionally, his hips, helping him stand as correctly as he was able. Had he been less concerned for his life he would have counted it one of the better ways to spend the morning. Especially a morning where he had been asked to rise early.
For a short while that turned into a long while they walked through the basics of thrust and parry, and Mr. Caesar tried not to think too hard about the fact that if he did any of this even a little bit wrong, he’d get two feet of steel through his intestines.
“I’m not sure,” he said, after the drills had gone on long enough that he was beginning to forget how they started and to sweat rather more than he’d expected from a series of repeated buteconomical motions, “that I’ll be able to do this right in an actual duel.”
There was a general laugh from the crowd.
“That’s good,” the captain told him, “because you shouldn’t. Not saying it doesn’t work.” He gave a respectful nod to Kumar. “Just that it doesn’t work on a day and a half’s training.”
That left Mr. Caesar feeling very slightly used. While he hadn’twantedto be in a position where he needed to defend himself in deadly combat, the part of him that included “swords” in the ever-lengthening list of things a modern man should be good at had been taking some satisfaction in learning. “Then what precisely was the point of this exercise?”
“If you’re to fight a gentleman,” explained Callaghan, “you’ll need to know how a gentleman fights.”
Captain James nodded. “But if you’re going tobeata gentleman, then you’ll want to fight like a soldier. Like all that matters is getting out with your life.”
“And how do I do that, exactly?” asked Mr. Caesar. For although it was reassuring to know he would not be required to do anything complicated, even the simplest fighting style seemed unlikely to be one he could learn in time.
Captain James held up one finger. “Keep your distance.” He held up another. “If you see something sharp coming at you, get it away however you can.” He held up a third. “If the other man gets close, stick something sharp at him.”
