The Magic Labyrinth (30 page)

The events immediately following the explosion in the boiler deck set off by Burton’s group were swift, confusing, and blurred. For some time, Burton was either chasing or being chased, attacking or retreating. Mostly, he was retreating, since the enemy usually outnumbered them. By the time that Burton’s group was forced into the great room of an armory, it was larger than when it had started. Though it had lost eight, it had picked up enough so that it now counted thirteen men and ten women. For all he knew, these were the only survivors of the
Rex.

Neither side had any ammunition left for their firearms. From now on it would be cold steel only. The enemy withdrew to rest and to get their wind back. They also had to confer. The entrance to the armory was two and a half men wide, and storming it would be very difficult.

Burton looked over the array of arms and decided to discard his cutlass for an épée. This was a sword with a triangular edgeless blade three feet long. Its guard was bell-shaped; from the slightly curving handle protruded two wooden stops for better gripping. Burton tried the temper of the blade by placing its point against a beam of wood and bending it. The blade formed an arc to within a foot of the shell and sprang back to a straight line when the pressure was released.

The armory stank much of sweat and blood and not a little of urine and feces. It was also surprisingly hot. He removed his armor except for his helmet, and he urged the others to emulate him, though he wouldn’t order them to do it.

“When we get to the deck, we won’t have time to shuck off our iron,” he said. “We’ll have to dive into The River the moment we get to the open deck. It’ll be much easier taking off the armor now than when you’re in The River.”

One of the women was the lovely Aphra Behn, no longer so lovely. Gunpowder smoke grimed her face; sweat and blood had made streaks and splashes on the blackened skin; her eyes were red with powder and fatigue; one eye was twitching. She said, “The boat must be sinking. If we don’t get out soon, we’ll drown.”

Though she looked hysterical, her voice was calm enough, considering the circumstances.

“Yaas, I know,” Burton drawled. He considered for a minute. They were on the B deck, and the A deck was probably filled with water by now. It wouldn’t be long before this deck would be awash.

He strode to the hatch and stuck his head around its corner. The lights were still on in the corridor. There was no reason why they should go out since they were being fed from the batacitor. This would operate even if it was under water.

There was no one alive in the corridor. The enemy must be hiding in the rooms nearby, waiting until the
Rex
ites tried to sally out.

“I’m Captain Gwalchgwynn of the marines of the
Rex
!” he said loudly. “I’d like to talk to your commander!”

No one answered. He shouted his request again, then stepped out into the passageway. If anyone was just inside the open doors near the armory, he couldn’t see them.

Had they gone to the two ends of the corridor and were waiting around the corner, hoping to surprise them?

It was then that he saw water flowing toward him. It was only a film, but it would soon be swelling.

He called to the guards at the hatchway. “Tell the others to come on out! The Clemensites have left!”

He didn’t have to explain to his people what had happened. They saw the water, too.

“Save himself who can,” he said. “Get to the shore as best you may. I’ll be joining you later.”

He led them to the railing and said good-bye and good luck before they plunged in.

“Dick,” Aphra said, “why are you staying?”

“I’m looking for Alice.”

“If the boat sinks suddenly, you’ll be trapped in it.”

“I know.”

He didn’t wait for her to jump in but began his search at once. He ran down the passageways calling out her name, stopping now and then to listen for her voice. Having covered this deck, he climbed the grand staircase to the grand salon. This occupied one-fourth of the stern area of the hurricane deck as did the grand salon of the
Rex.
But it was much larger. It was ablaze with ceiling and chandelier lights, even though blasts had blown many out or apart. Despite the damage from the explosions and the few mutilated corpses, it was very impressive.

He stepped inside and looked around. Alice was not here unless she was behind the immensely long bar or under or behind the smashed grand pianos or billiards tables. There seemed to be no reason for him to stay, but he was held for a few seconds by the grandeur of this room. Like its counterpart on the
Rex,
it had known many years of laughter, wit, humor, flirting, intrigue, gambling often playful but sometimes desperate, trysts of love and hate, music composed and played by some of Earth’s masters, drama and comedy high and low on the stages. And now…It was a shameful loss, something to be very much regretted.

He started to cross the salon but stopped. A man had entered the great doorway at the other end. He paused when he saw Burton. Then, smiling, he walked jauntily toward him. He was an inch or two taller than Burton, grayhound-thin, and had extraordinarily long arms. His skin was blackened with smoke, his nose was very large, and his chin was weak. Despite this, his smile made him look almost handsome.

His glossy black ringleted hair fell to his shoulders. He wore only a black kilt and red riverdragon-leather calf-high boots, and his right hand gripped the hilt of an épée.

Burton had a swiftly passing
déjà vu,
a feeling that this meeting had happened a long time ago and under just such circumstances. He
had
encountered the man before and he had been hoping he would again. The long-healed wound in his thigh seemed to burn at the memory.

The man halted when he was twenty-five feet from Burton. He spoke loudly in Esperanto. It had a trace of French and a smidgeon of American English intonation.

“Ah,
sinjoro,
it’s you! The very talented, perhaps endowed-with-genius swordsman with whom I crossed blades during the raid upon your vessel so many years ago! I introduced myself then as a gentleman should. You surlily refused to identify yourself. Or perhaps you failed to do so because you thought that I wouldn’t recognize your name. Now…”

Burton advanced one step, his sword hanging almost straight down from his hand. He spoke in Parisian French circa
A.D.
1650.

“Eh,
monsieur
. I was not sure when you made your introduction that you were truly whom you said you were. I thought that perhaps you might be an impostor. I admit now that you are indeed either the great monomachist Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac or someone who could be Castor to his Pollux and is his match in swordsmanship.”

Burton hesitated. He might as well give his true name now. It was no longer necessary to use a pseudonym.

“Know,
monsieur,
that I am Captain Richard Francis Burton of the marines of the
Rex Grandissimus.
On Earth I was knighted by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria of the British Empire. This was not for making a fortune in commerce but as acknowledgment of my explorations in the far parts of the Earth and my many services to both my country and humanity. Nor was I unknown among the swordsmen of my time, which was the nineteenth century.”

“
Hélas,
you would not have been also known for being longwinded, would you?”

“No, nor for possessing a huge nose,” Burton said.

The man’s teeth shone whitely.

“Ah, yes, always the reference to the proboscis. Well, know,
monsieur,
though I was not honored by my sovereign, Louis XIII, I was dubbed a genius by a queen even greater than yours, by Mother Nature herself. I wrote some philosophical romances which I understand were being read centuries after I died. And, as you obviously are aware, I was not unknown among the great swordsmen of my time, which gave birth to the greatest swordsmen of any time.”

The thin man smiled again, and Burton said, “Perhaps you would like to surrender your blade? I have no desire to kill you,
monsieur.
”

“I was about to ask you to hand over your weapon,
monsieur,
and become my prisoner. But I see that you, like me, would then be unsatisfied as to which of us is the better at bladeplay. I have thought about you many times, Captain Burton, since I drove my rapier into your thigh. Of all the hundreds, perhaps thousands, that I have dueled with, you were the best. I am willing to admit that I do not know how our little passage in arms might have turned out if you had not been distracted. Rather, I should say that you might have held me off a little longer if it were not for that.”

“We shall see,” Burton said.

“Oh, yes, we shall see, if the boat does not sink too soon. Well,
monsieur,
I delayed my leavetaking to have one more drink to toast the souls of those brave men and women who died fighting today for this once-splendid vessel, the last of the great beauties of man’s science and technology.
Quel dommage!
But some day I will compose an ode to it. In French, of course, since Esperanto is not a great poetic language and, if it were, would still not be equal to my native tongue.

“Let us have one drink so that we may toast together those we loved but who have passed on. There will be no more resurrections, my friend. They will always be dead from now on.”

“P’raps,” Burton said. “In any event, I will join you.”

The many doors of the huge and long liquor cabinets behind the bar had been locked before the battle started. But the key was in a drawer below a cabinet, and de Bergerac went behind the bar and unbolted the drawer. He unlocked a cabinet and unshot the bar across a line of bottles and pulled one from the hole in which it was set.

“This bottle was made in Parolando,” de Bergerac said, “and it has journeyed unscathed through many battles and much mishandling by various drunks. It is filled with a particularly good burgundy which has been offered from time to time in various grails and which was not then drunk but put into this bottle to be used for a festive occasion. This occasion is, I believe, festive, though in a rather gruesome spirit.”

He opened another cabinet and unlocked the indented bar holding a line of lead-glass goblets and took two and set them on the bar.

His épée was on top of the bar. Burton placed his own on the bar near his right hand. The Frenchman poured the burgundy to the brim, and he lifted his. Burton did likewise.

“To the dear departed!” he said.

“To them,” Burton said. Both downed a small amount.

“I am not one for drinking much,” de Bergerac said. “Liquor reduces one to the level of the beast, and I like at all times to remember that I am a human being. But…this is indeed a special occasion. One more toast, my friend, and then we shall fall to it.”

“To the solution of the mystery of this world,” Burton said.

They drank again.

Cyrano put his goblet down.

“Now, Captain Burton of the defunct marines of the defunct
Rex.
I loathe war and I detest bloodshed, but I do my duty when it must be done. We are both fine fellows, and it would be a shame if one were to die to prove that he is better than the other. Gaining knowledge of the true state of affairs by dying is not recommended by anyone with good sense. Thus, I suggest that he who draws the first blood wins. And if, thanks be to the Creator, who doesn’t exist, the first wound is not fatal, the winner will take the other prisoner. And we will then proceed with haste but in an honorable manner to get off this vessel before she sinks.”

“Upon my honor, that is the way it shall be,” Burton said.

“Good!
En garde!
”

They saluted and then assumed the classic épée on-guard positions, the left foot at right angles to the right foot and behind it, knees bent, the body turned sideways to present as small a target as possible, the left arm raised with the upper arm parallel to the ground, the elbow bent so the lower arm was vertical and the hand wrist limp, the right arm lowered and the blade it held forming a straight extension of the arm. The round
coquille,
or bellguard, in this position, protected the forearm.

De Bergerac, saying loudly the French equivalent of “Hah!” lunged. He was almost blindingly swift, as Burton knew from the Frenchman’s reputation and from his one duel with him. However, Burton was also exceedingly quick. And, having spent many years on Earth and here in practice, his reaction to any particular attack was automatic.

De Bergerac, without feinting, had thrust toward Burton’s upper arm. Burton parried and then riposted, that is, counterattacked. De Bergerac parried this and then thrust over Burton’s blade, but Burton attempted a stop thrust, using the bellguard of his épée to deflect his opponent’s tip and at the same time (almost) driving his own point into de Bergerac’s forearm.

But de Bergerac counterparried and then quickly thrust around Burton’s bellguard at Burton’s forearm again. This maneuver was called the “dig” or the “peck.”

Burton deflected the point again, though the edge of the blade drove along his arm. It burned, but it did not draw blood.

Dueling with the foil or the épée was something like trying to thread a moving needle. The tip of the attacker’s blade was the end of the thread; the defender’s, the eye of the needle. The eye should be very small and in this situation was. But in a second or less the thread-end would become the eye as the defender attacked. Two great swordsmen presented to each other very small openings which instantly closed and then reopened as the tip moved about in a small circle.

In competitive foil dueling, the target was only that part of the opponent’s body exclusive of the head, arms, and legs but including the groin. In deadly combat, however, the head and the entire body were a target. If, somehow, a big toe was open, it should be skewered, could it be done without exposing the attacker to his antagonist’s point.

It was an axiom that the fencer with a perfect defense could not lose. What then if both duelers had a perfect defense? Was it a case of the irresistible meeting the immovable? No. Human beings were neither. One of the perfect defenders would tire before the other or perhaps something in the milieu was to the slight or even great advantage of one fencer. This could be something on the floor to cause slipping or, in this situation, some object, a piece of blasted furniture, a bottle, a corpse over which one might stumble. Or, as when de Bergerac had fought Burton during the raid, a shout from a third party might distract a dueler for a fraction of a second, just enough for the cat-swift and eagle-eyed opponent to drive his sword into the other.