Blood of the Mantis

As she set foot onto the dock she saw her first blood shed in the city. Without any warning there were two men shouting at one another, standing almost face to face and bellowing, and yet the exchange had a formal quality, the insults extravagant and convoluted. For a moment she was unsure whether it was not some kind of play. Then the blades came out, thin, curved steel whisking from scabbards, and it seemed they would cut each other to pieces right there. They were two of the sand-coloured Solarnese, dressed in near-identical white tunics, save that one wore a flat hat with a red badge and the other had hair shaved close to the skull.

Then they had stopped, and taken a few wary paces backwards, and the crowd was giving them what seemed to be a precise amount of room, retreating in a way that put Che right at the edge of this impromptu arena. The two men, who a moment ago had seemed incandescent with rage, brought their blades up to their shoulders and gave each other a stiff little bow, before assuming identical stances, offhand flung forwards, sword held high and back a little. Che saw that they both wore heavy gloves, metal plated over leather, on their left hands.

A duelling society, she realized, and of course she was familiar with that. She herself had done her time in the Prowess Forum at Collegium. Still, those swords they carried were far from practice-blades.

The two men circled, still crouched in their odd poses. Around Che there was money changing hands as a dozen opportunistic bookmakers gave odds. She soon gathered that the man in the hat was a narrow favourite.

Then they leapt forwards, blades flashing, and were past each other, each having palmed off the other’s sword with his armoured glove. Back to back, they glared at the crowd, and then spun on their heels and went back at each other. Che heard four separate clashes of the blades as they passed.

This time the man in the hat had a narrow wound across his right arm, and Che thought this would be the end of it, because she had accepted the violence as a formal duel, and in her experience those were not fatal.

In Solarno they fought by different rules, she now discovered. The men turned, and the first blood seemed to mark some milestone, because then they just went at each other, the shaven-headed man pressing his advantage, lashing at his enemy from all sides with swift, sweeping strokes that looked as though they would cut him into ribbons, driving him around the circle and shouting out wordless war-cries as he did so. The cheering crowd was rapt, devouring the spectacle for all it was worth.

Then the shaven-headed protagonist missed a parry, his enemy’s sword slicing across his forearm beyond the glove’s edge and, as he flinched, the man in the hat continued his motion, spun all the way about, and drew the curve of his blade across the other man’s throat.

There was a gasp from the crowd and then a great cacophony of whooping and yelling. Without warning there were armoured men pushing their way through the crowd, cuffing left and right with metal gauntlets to make room. They were more of the locals and they seized hold of the winning duellist, who seemed not a bit concerned, and also several members of the crowd, apparently at random. The newcomers wore hauberks of metal plates on a white leather backing, and flat-topped helms the same shape as the duellist’s hat.

Their officer called out something like, ‘Who agitates?’ which in retrospect Che realized might have been, ‘Who adjutates?’ because she had heard the title ‘adjutant’ used for the master of ceremonies in a duel. She had seen no one appointed, but a Spider-kinden came out of the crowd with a reassuring smile and, with a few words, put the soldiers at their ease. Satisfied, they let go of their prisoners and took a few respectful steps back. The winning duellist strutted over to the body and then looked around at the crowd, who were obviously waiting for something more. Che had a moment of horror when she thought he would mutilate the corpse, but then he pointed out two onlookers: a Solarnese woman, and Che herself.

Everyone was expecting her to do something and she had no idea what. Hands pushed at her from behind, thrusting her out into the ring. Her look of wild panic clearly passed them by and then the duellist had hold of her, taking her in a sweat-smelling embrace, before kissing her as close on the lips as he could manage.

Che shrieked and tried to struggle out of his arms, and then he had let her go anyway, so that she fell to the hard planks of the dock. He began kissing the other woman, who seemed more enthusiastic about it, then he grinned at the pair of them and, by his gesture, Che saw she was meant to take up the body.