salmon-like, away from the dagger-stab he threw into my face.
It is not always an advantage to be a tall and heavy man. Something cracked against the back of my head as I slammed down, full weight, to the floor. Dazed, I smelled feathers and chicken-dung, the unswept remains of horse manure, human sweat (the latter mine); and my eyes filled with dazzles.
There, I had time to think, in less time than it takes the heart to beat. One misjudgement, one, and then fourteen inches of sharpened steel in the guts or heart—
A great weight crushed my chest. I thought, dimly, This is how a thrust through the lungs feels, and then realised there was no penetration, only weight.
I opened my eyes, and saw through one of them. My left eye was black. No: black shot with sparks of red and white brilliance.
Something pressed against eye-socket and ball, pressed flat— the blade of his dagger, I realised; freezing for a second as the tip of his knife poked into the place between eye-corner and nose. A sharp sinus-pain went through my head.
“You lose, messire,” a voice said, so close to my ear that I felt warm, moist breath on my skin.
The words were not easy for me to make sense of, stunned as I was. All my skin was tight with the anticipation of a thrust and my death. I felt the boy’s body hard on top of mine, felt that his free hand moved while I was still knocked half into unconsciousness—that he dragged my right hand out of the hilt of my sword; that my arm was pushed behind me.
It could only have been seconds before it became clear to me both what he was doing, and that he had succeeded. He pushed both my hands under me, rolling my body to either side by my shoulders. I lay on my back with my own weight pinning my arms.
His dagger point still pressed against my eye; did not dig into it. I was not dead.
“You lose,” Dariole repeated, sitting back up, straddling my chest and stomach. His weight was warm and damp with sweat, his face flushed, and the sunlight from outside made a dusty aureole around his hair. His chest rose and fell under the dirt-smeared doublet. He panted, “How about that, Rochefort?”
Idiot, not to have killed me! I thought, all my mind coming back to me. He pinned me, but, yes, even a year after our first encounter, he had only a young man’s weight and strength. For that very reason, he needed to stay at the full extent of his reach, and fence. And now he sat on my sternum and belly, thinking the threat of a knife in my eye enough to subdue me.
A man can live with one eye. A man can fight, still, with one eye, although vision is different; I might even train myself to be no less of a duellist. Half blind is better than dead.
I concentrated, so as to go from immobility to attack in a heartbeat without any tensing of the muscles that would warn him—and he shifted where his plump buttocks pressed down into my belly, glancing behind.
“Oh, now,” he said softly, in a different voice. “Will you look at that.”
The focus of a man’s mind is a strange thing. I had been aware solely of the concentration of the fight, of his knife-edge where it threatened to slice into my eyelid. I had not consciously felt the heat and solidity of his body, or of mine.
Now I was, all in a second, aware of how I lay helpless under him. That I could rip his arm from his shoulder-socket for the price of an eye was not in that moment relevant. I lay on my back with the cold of the flagstones seeping through doublet and trunk-hose at my shoulders and pelvis. My hands were trapped under me by my own weight. And the boy’s warm solidness rested on my belly; weight shifting as he moved his left hand to grope down under the seat of his breeches, where his buttocks pressed against the pit of my stomach.
He put his hand on my prick, through the velvet and linen of my hose.
Every muscle in my body tensed. What held me back from throwing myself up from the floor and beating him bloody was not the knife. The focus of
It is not always an advantage to be a tall and heavy man. Something cracked against the back of my head as I slammed down, full weight, to the floor. Dazed, I smelled feathers and chicken-dung, the unswept remains of horse manure, human sweat (the latter mine); and my eyes filled with dazzles.
There, I had time to think, in less time than it takes the heart to beat. One misjudgement, one, and then fourteen inches of sharpened steel in the guts or heart—
A great weight crushed my chest. I thought, dimly, This is how a thrust through the lungs feels, and then realised there was no penetration, only weight.
I opened my eyes, and saw through one of them. My left eye was black. No: black shot with sparks of red and white brilliance.
Something pressed against eye-socket and ball, pressed flat— the blade of his dagger, I realised; freezing for a second as the tip of his knife poked into the place between eye-corner and nose. A sharp sinus-pain went through my head.
“You lose, messire,” a voice said, so close to my ear that I felt warm, moist breath on my skin.
The words were not easy for me to make sense of, stunned as I was. All my skin was tight with the anticipation of a thrust and my death. I felt the boy’s body hard on top of mine, felt that his free hand moved while I was still knocked half into unconsciousness—that he dragged my right hand out of the hilt of my sword; that my arm was pushed behind me.
It could only have been seconds before it became clear to me both what he was doing, and that he had succeeded. He pushed both my hands under me, rolling my body to either side by my shoulders. I lay on my back with my own weight pinning my arms.
His dagger point still pressed against my eye; did not dig into it. I was not dead.
“You lose,” Dariole repeated, sitting back up, straddling my chest and stomach. His weight was warm and damp with sweat, his face flushed, and the sunlight from outside made a dusty aureole around his hair. His chest rose and fell under the dirt-smeared doublet. He panted, “How about that, Rochefort?”
Idiot, not to have killed me! I thought, all my mind coming back to me. He pinned me, but, yes, even a year after our first encounter, he had only a young man’s weight and strength. For that very reason, he needed to stay at the full extent of his reach, and fence. And now he sat on my sternum and belly, thinking the threat of a knife in my eye enough to subdue me.
A man can live with one eye. A man can fight, still, with one eye, although vision is different; I might even train myself to be no less of a duellist. Half blind is better than dead.
I concentrated, so as to go from immobility to attack in a heartbeat without any tensing of the muscles that would warn him—and he shifted where his plump buttocks pressed down into my belly, glancing behind.
“Oh, now,” he said softly, in a different voice. “Will you look at that.”
The focus of a man’s mind is a strange thing. I had been aware solely of the concentration of the fight, of his knife-edge where it threatened to slice into my eyelid. I had not consciously felt the heat and solidity of his body, or of mine.
Now I was, all in a second, aware of how I lay helpless under him. That I could rip his arm from his shoulder-socket for the price of an eye was not in that moment relevant. I lay on my back with the cold of the flagstones seeping through doublet and trunk-hose at my shoulders and pelvis. My hands were trapped under me by my own weight. And the boy’s warm solidness rested on my belly; weight shifting as he moved his left hand to grope down under the seat of his breeches, where his buttocks pressed against the pit of my stomach.
He put his hand on my prick, through the velvet and linen of my hose.
Every muscle in my body tensed. What held me back from throwing myself up from the floor and beating him bloody was not the knife. The focus of
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