quelled by the realisation that he was trying to provoke me. I ducked and wheeled just as Clarissa shouted a warning and the three-legged Yatsill thrust from behind, aiming between my shoulder blades. I was lucky. As I sank down and twisted, he missed my face by a hair’s breadth, and the edge of my blade caught the flat of his with all the force of my spinning body, breaking his weapon clean in half. The point clattered away across the cobbles. I completed my gyration and raised my blade just in time to block my principal adversary. Now I settled into defending myself and did so without a single riposte, hoping the Aristocrat would exhaust himself. Dimly, under the chimes and scrapes of battle, I heard the two creatures behind me run from the square, probably under threat from Clarissa’s heavy spanner. That was the last thing, beyond my opponent, to impinge on my awareness, for now a sudden focus descended upon me—a sharpness of attention quite unlike anything I’d experienced before. It was as if time itself changed, so that every alteration in the angle of my adversary’s shoulders, every adjustment of his stance, could be examined and analysed in meticulous detail. Indeed, my mind appeared to encroach upon the immediate future so that my reflexes operated slightly ahead of his, allowing me to dodge every thrust, parry every sweep, evade every trick.
It felt as if many minutes were passing, although in truth they were mere seconds, but they were enough to drain his energy. Then I saw a slightly too careless thrust coming, deflected it with ease, stepped in, and used my left hand to punch him in the head. He staggered back in the direction I wanted—toward the fountain in the centre of the square.
The tables turned. I changed my tactic from defence to an all-out assault, putting into practice every technique I’d developed at Crooked Blue Tower Barracks. To earthly connoisseurs of swordplay—the Alfred Huttons, Egerton Castles, and Richard Burtons—no doubt I’d have appeared woefully clumsy. However, while I was no d’Artagnan, I began to feel myself a match for my opponent, and now forced him into retreat with a flurry of slashes and jabs that, I’m sure, from his perspective made my point seem everywhere at once. I struck the mask from his face, cracked the shell of his upper left arm, and scored a furrow across his trunk. “Stop!” he cried out, but I didn’t. Instead, I pressed my attack and demanded, “Who are you? Why did you try to murder my friend?”
“I don’t know!”
“Are you following orders?”
“Yes!”
“From whom?”
In an act of wild desperation, he exposed his entire torso to a thrust—which I didn’t take—and swung his weapon full force at my head. I raised my own at an angle to meet it, causing his sword to hiss along its length, showering sparks a good six inches above me, then stepped in and kicked him savagely between the legs—a barbarous move that was just as effective on a Yatsill as it was on a man. He doubled over, moaned, and dropped his weapon. I delivered an uppercut to his face, my fist squelching into the boneless flesh. He rocked backward, spraying blood into the air, tripped over the lip of the fountain, and went plunging into the water.
After kicking his sword out of reach, I waited for him to emerge. He struggled to his feet and swayed, weighed down by wet clothes and exhaustion. Blood streamed from his wounded arm.
“Answer me!” I snapped, levelling my blade at his chest. “Who ordered this attack?”
With difficulty, he clambered up onto the fountain’s low wall.
His four bead-like eyes met mine. Though they were expressionless, as was normal with the Yatsill, I detected a peculiar blankness in them, as though his mind wasn’t his own. He shook his head, then whipped up a hand, grabbed the tip of my sword, and propelled himself forward onto it. The metal sank through the vertical seam of his body shell and emerged from the middle of his back. His corpse thudded against me, causing me to tumble to the ground with it on top. My head cracked against the cobbles and everything blurred.
When the world came back into focus, I realised that Clarissa was dragging the dead creature off me.
“Are you all right?” I groaned. “Your shoulder is bleeding.”
“A small wound. Nothing I can’t fix with a poultice. And you, Aiden? Your hand is spouting blood and your cheek has