The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ won’t make that mistake again,” I told him. “From now on, whenever a fellow human being is close enough to hit you, you’re going to assume that he’s going to hit you. You’ll keep your distance, or you’ll be ready to avoid at a split-second’s notice. Got that?”

      “I think so.”

      “No exceptions,” I said. “Not any, ever. Your brother, your best friend, your wife, your six-year-old daughter, it makes no odds. Otherwise you’ll never be a fighter.”

      He stared at me for a moment, and I guessed he’d understood. It was like that moment in the old play, where the Devil offers the scholar the contract, and the scholar signs it.

      “Get up.”

      I hit him again when he was halfway to his feet. It was just a light tap on the collarbone; just enough to hurt like hell without breaking anything.

      “This is all for my own good, I take it.”

      “Oh yes. This is the most important lesson you’ll ever learn.”

      We spent the next four hours on footwork; the traces, which is backwards and forwards, and the traverses, which is side to side. Each time I hit him, I laid it on a bit harder. He got there eventually.

      My father wasn’t a bad man. He loved his family dearly, with all his heart; nothing meant more to him. But he had a slight, let’s say, kink in his nature—like the cold spot or the inclusion you sometimes get in a weld, where the metal wasn’t quite hot enough, or a bit of grit or crap gets beaten into the joint. He liked hurting people; it gave him a thrill. Only people, not animals. He was a fine stockman and a humane and conscientious hunter, but he dearly loved to hit people and make them squeal.

      I can understand that, partly because I’m the same though to a lesser degree, and I control it better. Maybe it’s always been there in the blood, or maybe it was a souvenir from Ultramar; both, probably. I rationalise it in forge-welding terms. You can heat the metal white-hot, but you can’t just lay one bit on top of the other and expect them to weld. You’ve got to hit them to make the join. Carefully, judiciously, not too hard and not too soft. Just enough to make the metal cry, and weep sparks. I hate it when they burst into tears, though. It makes me despise them, and I have to take pains to control my temper. Anyway, you can see why I like to stay out of people’s way. I know what’s wrong with me; and knowing your own flaws is the beginning of wisdom. I’m sort of a reverse fencer. I stay well out of distance, partly so that people can’t hit me, mostly so I can’t hit them.

      Once you’ve learned footwork, the rest is relatively easy. I taught him the eight cuts and the seven wards (I stick to seven; the other four are just elaborations). He picked them up quickly, now that he understood the essence—don’t let him hurt you, followed by make him safe.

      “The best way to make a man safe,” I told him, “is to hurt him. Pain will stop him in his tracks. Killing doesn’t always do it. You can stab a man and he’ll be past all hope, but he can still hurt you very badly before he drops to the ground. But if you paralyse him with pain, he’s no longer a threat. You can then despatch him, or let him go, at your pleasure.”

      I demonstrated; I flicked past his guard and prodded him in the stomach with my rake-handle; a lethal thrust, but he was still on his feet. Then I cracked him on the knee, and he dropped. “Killing’s irrelevant,” I told him. “Pain wins fights. That’s unless you’ve absolutely set your heart on cleaving him to the navel, and that’s just melodrama, which will get you killed. In a battle, hurt him and move on to the next threat. In a duel, win and be merciful. Fewer legal problems that way.”

      I was rather enjoying being a teacher, as you’ve probably gathered. I was passing on valuable knowledge and skill, which is in itself rewarding, I was showing off and I was hitting an annoying sprig of the nobility for his own good. What’s not to like?

      You learn best when you’re exhausted, desperate, and in pain. Ultramar taught me that. I kept him at it from dawn till dusk, and then we lit the lamp and did theory. I taught him the line and the circle. Instinctively you want to fight up and down a line, forwards to attack, backwards to defend; parry, then lunge, then parry. All wrong. Idiotic. Instead, you should fight in a circle, stepping sideways, so you avoid him and can hit him at the same time. Never just defend; always counterattack. Every handstroke you make should be a killing stroke, or a stopping stroke. And for every movement of the hand, a movement of the foot—there, I’ve just taught you the whole secret and mystery of swordsmanship, and I never had to hit you once.

      “Most fights,” I told him, giving him a chance to wipe the blood out of his eyes before we moved on, “in which at least one party is competent, last one to four seconds. Anything more than that is a fitting subject for epic poetry.” Judging that he wasn’t ready yet, I shot a quick mandiritto at the side of his head. He stepped back and left out of the way without thinking, and my heart rejoiced inside me, as I side-stepped his riposte in straight time and closed the door with the Third ward. So far he hadn’t hit me once, which was a little disappointing; but he’d come close four times, in six hours. Very promising indeed. He just lacked the killer instinct.

      “The Fifth ward,” I went on, and he lunged. I almost didn’t read it, because he’d disguised the Boar’s Tooth as the Iron Gate; all I could do was trace back very fast and smack the stick out of his hands. Then I whacked him, for interrupting me when I was talking. He very nearly got out of the way, but I wanted to hit him, so he couldn’t.

      He had to pick himself up off the ground after that. I took a long step back, to signal a truce. “I think it’s time for a progress report,” I said. “At the moment, you’re very good indeed. Not the best in the world, but more than capable of beating ninety-nine men in a hundred. Would you like to stop there and save yourself further pain and humiliation?”

      He got up slowly and dabbed at his cut eye. “I want to be the best,” he said. “If that’s all right.”

      I shrugged. “I don’t think you ever can be,” I told him. “In order to be the best, you have to lose so much. It’s just not worth it. Being the best will make you into a monster. Stick with just plain good, you’ll be so much happier.”

      He was a pitiful sight, all cuts and bruises. But still, under all the blood and discoloured tissue, a hopeful, pretty boy. “I think I’d like to carry on just a bit longer if you don’t mind.”

      “Please yourself,” I said, and let him pick up his stick.

      Actually, he reminded me a lot of myself at his age.

      I was a brash, irritating boy when I went to Ultramar. I’d known all along that I wasn’t going to get the land, having elder brothers in good health. Probably I’d always resented that. I think I’d have made a good farmer. I was always the one who wasn’t afraid of hard work, who saw the need to get things done—not tomorrow, or when we’ve got five minutes, or when it stops raining, but now, right now; before the roof-tree breaks and the barn falls down, before the fence-posts snap off and the sheep get out into the marsh, before the oats spoil on the stalk, before the meat goes off in the heat; now while there’s still time, before it’s too late. Instead, I saw the place gradually falling to pieces—and decline and decay are so peacefully gradual; grass takes so long to grow up through the cobbles, it’s imperceptible, therefore not threatening. But my father and my brothers didn’t share my view. I was keen to get away from them. I wanted to take a sword and slice myself a fat chunk of the world off the bone. There’s good land in Ultramar, they told me, all it needs is a bit of hard work and it could be the best in the world.

      The СКАЧАТЬ