Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) by John James Read Free Book Online Page B

covered with little leather bags to protect the finery.
    These two men, Bear-shield and Bird-shield, stood on the cloak. The shields were of limewood, covered with leather, and strengthened with iron. The fight they made was nothing you’ll ever see at the games; it was too slow, no audience would ever pay to see it. They stood face to face, on the cloak, a pace apart. When Haro shouted ‘Start!’ each began to move crabwise to his left, keeping his shield between himself and his opponent. Then Bear-shield struck, a wide slashing blow, and the other turned it on the edge of his shield. They crabbed again, and then Bird-shield had a cut, the weight of that long blade far forward. He leaned forward too far, and almost overbalanced, and I waited for Bear-shield to go for the back of the knee and hamstring him, but no, the idiot stood aside and let his opponent recover. Then they went around again, and Bear-shield had a go, and again the blow was turned. They went on like that, turn and turn about to cut, for what seemed to me like hours, always careful to keep their feet on the cloak.
    After a few dozen of these blows, the shields were pretty tattered. Bear-man looked at his shield in disgust, and flung it behind him. It seemed this had to be done when you were due to receive a blow, not when you were about to deal one, and your opponent then had to throw his shield away too. Bird-man wasn’t very pleased, obviously, but he struck, and though Bear-man swayed back, the tip of the sword caught him on the ear. The blood ran down his neck, slowly. A number of the audience were down on their hands and knees at the edge of the cloak. Everything was quiet, and the torch flames made everything dance in silence. Then Bear-man had a slash, Bird-man parried with the flat of his blade, but the other with a flick of his wrist changed the direction of his cut in mid-air, and chopped sideways along the Bird-man’s arm. The blood spouted down his fingers on to the cloak, and the kneelers shouted and Haro shouted and we all shouted and the two swordsmen embraced and rubbed each other’s wounds with the trinkets from their swords. It seemed that drawing first blood didn’t mean you’d won; but the man who first dropped blood on the cloak lost.
    There were a number of fights after that, and a fair amount of betting. I did well on one fight between a big local man, and a small stranger who was left-handed; I reasoned that the right-hander would be put off, while the left-hander probably fought right-handed men every week. He did too, and won in about three or four cuts.
    Then there were a pair of elderly men, rather fat, who were so inept that we just threw mutton bones at them and laughed them off the cloak. They were followed by a grudge fight, in earnest, between the local expert, who elected to fight without a shield and take the firststroke, and a novice who was to keep his shield – there was much bad blood in this one. However, while the expert was circling for his second blow, and that, I am sure, would have been the end of the novice, he put his foot on a mutton bone and down he went. He turned the ankle, and couldn’t get up, and there he lay while some argued over the bets, and a gaggle of local doctors talked over whether the poultice would be better mixed with pig’s blood or with bull’s urine. None of them bothered to look at the patient, so I did. It didn’t take a moment tofeel what was wrong with that joint, not to anyone with my training. The clever thing was to do something about it. I tipped the wink to Donar, who stood ready to hold the shoulders.
    The problem was finding the leg under about seven layers of wrappings, without alarming the patient. How would you do it? Just a bit of skill, and you’d never believe the things I took out of those wrappings. Mutton bones, chicken legs, a drinking horn, all with a flow of more or less obscene patter that got the sufferer and everyone else into fits of laughter. When I