dark moving past his line of sight towards Aramis. At the same time, Aramis had his sword out, and his cloak wrapped around his arm, and was defending himself from two adversaries at once.
D’Artagnan in turn found himself fighting two men, attired all in black and wearing what looked uncommonly like monkish cowls. They had sword and dagger out, each of them, and there were at least six. They fought fiercely, with quiet intensity, their only noise being grunts of surprise when their attacks were parried, or sudden exclamations of pain, when first Porthos and then Aramis put his sword through one of the adversaries.
Faced with two of them, D’Artagnan, for the first time in his life, found himself sweating to hold his own in a duel. He’d fought two guards of the Cardinal before, and wounded them both. He’d fought more than two of them, sometimes, truth be told. But this—this was something quite different. These men fought with unerring ability, as though each of them had been as well trained as D’Artagnan himself had been by his battle-veteran father. It was all he could do to meet each of their thrusts and push them away.
In his mind, his late father’s voice echoed, in quiet reproach, never be happy that you are parrying each of an enemy’s thrusts, my son. The truth is that if you’re only parrying you have already lost, for you’re never attacking. You have to be lucky every time they attack, and they only have to be lucky enough to let the sword go through once.
But though his father had trained him on how to respond to sudden attack, and given him intensive practice on dueling two experienced swordsmen—often recruiting his friend, Monsieur de Bhil for the occasion—he had never trained him in fighting two people who were intent only on murdering him.
“Holla there, what goes here?” a voice called, out of the shadows.
On that sound, one of the adversaries lunged, and his sword blade thrust towards D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan had only the time to interpose his arm to push the blade away from his chest. And then his opponent was gone; vanished, as though he’d come out of the night, and left via the night itself.
And D’Artagnan realized, only then, that he’d been wounded and his arm was bleeding profusely. He watched the blood drip from the cut which had pierced both the velvet of his doublet and his flesh and, from the pain of it, had grazed the bone of his forearm.
“I see, musketeers with their swords out,” the voice that had spoken out of the shadows said again. “Dueling, were you?”
Into the relative light of their position—in the middle of the garden where neither shadow of tree nor of wall fell on them—strode Jussac, one of the Cardinal’s favorite guards. “Porthos, Aramis, D’Artagnan. Tell me, who was dueling whom? Not that it matters, as you have undoubtedly been dueling, and therefore you are all arrested and you’d best hope that the new edicts weren’t signed tonight, else you shall all be beheaded by first dawn.”
Porthos answered only with a long stream of swearing—inventive swearing, D’Artagnan noted, even in his shocked state, his hand holding his wounded arm up and staring in disbelief at the stream of blood pouring forth. He was fairly sure whatever the Cardinal might or might not have done to or for his niece Madame de Combalet, it could not be what Porthos had just said he did. Mostly because it was anatomically impossible and probably fatal.
He felt light-headed and as though he would presently lose consciousness; only Aramis touched him on the arm and said, “D’Artagnan.” And D’Artagnan, looking up from his arm, realized that Aramis had put away his sword, and was holding up one of his immaculate, embroidered, silk-edged handkerchiefs, and trying to remove D’Artagnan’s doublet.
“Can you remove your arm from the sleeve without my cutting it away?” Aramis said. “Your doublet might be salvageable with the insertion of some panels. I’m sure Mousqu—Well, one of our servants should be able to help with that. Only I must tourniquet your arm as soon as it may be, else you will bleed out very quickly.”
As though in a dream, D’Artagnan opened his doublet and removed his arm from its sleeve and watched Aramis tie the handkerchief around his arm. A gulp escaped him when Aramis tightened the handkerchief, and then Aramis made D’Artagnan lift his arm. “It will help stop the flood,” he said.
Meanwhile, the guards of the