Page 70 of Confounding Oaths
“And I’ve got your friend,” replied Captain James who, while unarmed, had a grip on his opponent’s carotid artery that would, with the application of a little pressure, prove extremely disagreeable.
The soft-voiced man seemed to consider this a moment. Then he raised the pistol. “Poseidon, we the army of King George grant you the blood of this man that our fleets will find calm seas, our cavalrymen strong steeds, and our people victory over France. Sorry, Charles.”
Captain James moved sideways at the same time the gun fired, catching the hapless cultist square in the forehead and pitching him into the Thames.
“You’re a fucking maniac,” observed the captain, taking the opportunity to close with the soft-voiced man before he could either reload or find alternative armament.
“Not mania,” the soldier-sorcerer replied. “Religion. Religion and grand strategy.”
If Captain James had any interest in further exposition (spoilers, reader, he did not) he quelled it and moved instead to strike his opponent on the jaw. But while the rest of the cult (if cult it was;these things are ambiguous in a world torn between cosmologies) had proved weak-willed and unskilled, the soft-voiced man had technique honed in battle and a drive rooted in divinity.
On the periphery of the fight, Major Bloodworth noted the three-to-one odds and the fact that he was the only man with a sword, and found those details to his liking. Drawing his spadroon, he rushed forwards for glory.
This, it turned out, was a mistake. The banks of the Thames were not made for rushing, and while Captain James was somewhat occupied with a more worthy opponent, he had not lived as long as he had in His Majesty’s service by ignoring incoming blades.
So when the major slipped in the mud, his balance faltering just as his sword came down to strike, the captain was able to shift his weight, catch the major’s forearm against his own, and then, with a motion so swift that even I could barely track it, lever the blade from his grip. And this, in the eyes of all present, shifted the calculus of the fight decisively.
“How about,” Captain James suggested, “you all run back home and we pretend this never happened?”
The soft-voiced man and the last remaining soldier-cultist were silent. Major Bloodworth was not. “You have my sword, James.”
“Which is why I get to make the rules.”
“It is my property. Return it to me.”
Captain James turned the weapon slightly in his hand. It was a fine weapon in certain ways, the blade stained blue to half its length and decorated with gold along all of it. “Don’t think I will.”
“So you’re a thief, as well as a ruffian, a blackamoor, and a sodomite.”
To a man more mired in the values of the ton, any one of those appellations would have been like a knife to the kidney. To thecaptain, they were merely words. “I’m a soldier,” he replied. “And the first thing King George taught me was that when you beat a man, you can take what’s his. You want your sword, come and get it.”
Kneeling in the mud at the point of a blade, the major was in no way inclined to try to take anything. Of course, he was also not inclined to admit defeat to a man he perceived as his inferior, but in this specific context self-preservation overcame propriety. He rose, rankling inwardly at the need to put his hands in the mud, spat on the ground, and then left, taking the other men with him.
The soft-voiced man followed, but not before making a strangely formal bow to the captain.
When the strangers had gone, the captain made his way to the water’s edge where Mr. Caesar was struggling to extract himself from the river. He bent down, proffered a hand, and, when it was accepted, hauled him up.
“I amsoaking,” Mr. Caesar complained. “And I am filthy. And I smell like actual shit.”
“The smell’s the river, it’ll fade as we walk. Also you’re alive.”
“You could have saved me in a way that kept me dry.”
The captain shrugged. “Could have. But this was safest. Besides, you needed a good drenching.”
“I did not need a good drenching.”
“I can always put you back.”
Although Mr. Caesar was relatively certain that the captain would not, in fact, put him back, he stopped protesting nevertheless, and remained silent all the way to the Folly.
Chapter Fifteen
The scent of human faecesdid, as Captain James had predicted, fade as they made their way further from the river, but the chill of the water and the clinging damp of the mud stayed with Mr. Caesar all the way back to his room.
“I don’t suppose there’s a chance of a bath?” he asked, wrestling off his shoes and tipping the remains of the river from them.
Captain James answered that with a look.
