by Lawrence Raphael Brothers
in Issue 83, December 2018
The dashing capitaine des fusiliers who called herself La Panthère glanced covertly at the sorcière de la Lune and smiled nastily. It was a chance encounter with her rival at the sumptuous sideboard of the Casino D’Or, one of the fancier gambling houses on the right bank.
Tonight, La Panthère wore court attire, a red brocade half-cloak embroidered with fleurs-de-lis in metallic gold thread over a midnight-blue uniform tunic. The sorcière was clad in the severe black doublet, breeches, and hose of her service, set off on this occasion by the ruby pin and ribbon of the knightly order she’d just been awarded, which matched her hair in color and brilliance.
“Hmph,” said La Panthère, turning away to speak casually, as if to the air. “It’s gotten to the point where one can’t go anywhere anymore without tripping over a sorcerer. And to think, just a few generations ago they were burned at the stake!”
The sorcière curled her lip, and just as nonchalantly remarked, “I scent a foul odor floating on the air. Reminds me of cat piss.”
La Panthère reddened, and swiveled to face her rival, pretending just then to notice her presence. She put the dish of petit-fours and macarons she had been assembling down on the sideboard. “Ah. De la Lune. What a surprise. I will not say it is a pleasant one, however.”
The sorcière likewise put her champagne flute down on the counter. She took an aggressive step forward, revealing the rune-covered sword hanging at her hip. “You know,” she said. “I do believe we have some unfinished business to attend to.”
La Panthère and de la Lune were heroes of the recent war with the Spanish, and tonight they were cynosures for having attracted the Queen’s favor at the royal soiree earlier that evening. They had famously crossed blades in two duels this year without shedding a drop of blood. The first was interrupted by an officious ensign of the Royal Guard enforcing the recent decree against violence in the public park. The second duel was suspended even as their seconds were pacing out the ground, interrupted by the news of the Spanish invasion; both combatants had to hasten to rejoin their respective regiments. But now the war was over, honors handed out, and the two rivals were free to resume their dispute.
At de la Lune’s words, a hush fell over the salon. Piquet-players paused their trick-taking, casts of the dice went uncheered, and the roulette croupier took up the ball from the spinning wheel when he saw that no one was paying attention to its course.
“I am at your service,” said La Panthère, and she shrugged her half-cloak back for more convenient access to the gilt-pommeled rapier at her own belt. “But do you know, I hate to kill someone without knowing why, and what with the war and sundry interruptions, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten what our argument was about.”
An angry look passed over de la Lune’s face, but then she frowned and cast back through her memory.
“Oh!” she said after a long pause. “I know! It was over the duc. Do you recall, now?”
La Panthère squinted. “The duc — the duc — Duc de Berry, do you mean?”
“No, no, d’Elbeuf. Don’t you remember?”
“D’Elbeuf!” La Panthère exclaimed. “But of course. It was at the Hôtel de Chevreuse. He had just snubbed the two of us at once, going off with that hulking grenadier he liked so much….”
“Yes. I said I didn’t know his tastes ran to the masculine.”
“And I said I didn’t either, and it was a shame that we had been wasting our time.”
“Ah! And then I said that considering your figure, I was surprised you hadn’t been successful with him in any event.”
La Panthère frowned. “Was that all? It doesn’t seem enough somehow. I have never pretended to be petite. Did you mean it as an insult?”
The sorcière smiled in reply; despite her sanguinary intentions, La Panthère had to admire those arch, red-tinted lips.
“Hm,” said de la Lune. “I don’t know. I rather fancy a muscular build like yours. Why, with those brawny shoulders straining the seams of your uniform tunic, you could very well be a new d’Eon come to grace us with your ambiguous charms.”
La Panthère colored. She was proud of her height and her athletic build, but she was secretly addicted to an interminable series of cheap romances that treated with the many amours of the infamous chevalier. Still, that could hardly have had anything to do with their dispute.
“Well, my dear,” she said, “there is no question whatsoever regarding your gender. If I hadn’t found the duc’s pretty face so appealing….” La Panthère trailed off, feeling this sentiment was out of place considering they were about to meet in a martial rencounter.
“Are they fighting or flirting?” The whispered remark issued from amongst the assembled gamblers, obviously meant for the ears of a close companion; yet in the hushed, attentive silence of the casino it was clearly audible throughout the room.
The two rivals turned simultaneously on their heels to face the salon. La Panthère’s hand was on her sword hilt and her teeth were unconsciously bared in a snarl few of her enemies had ever seen twice. A terrible spark of red heartfire shimmered in de la Lune’s palm, reflecting eerily in her eyes and making it clear she was on the verge of casting a deadly spell. For a moment all was silent, then someone coughed nervously, and the card-players turned back to shuffling, the dice-throwers returned to their cups and their ivories, and the roulette croupier called out in an artificially loud voice, “Place your bets, mesdames et messieurs, place your bets!”
“Perhaps this encounter is best not played out in a gaming salon,” said La Panthère after a moment.
De la Lune turned to face her, the heartfire vanishing from her grasp. “I seem to recall this casino boasts a rooftop garden. I daresay it is not in use tonight, seeing as it is quite October and the night will be too chilly for us to trip over any furtive lovers. We should have privacy there to resolve our little dispute.”
“What?” asked La Panthère. “No seconds? No judge of honor?”
The sorcière shrugged. “We had those for our first two attempts and yet both encounters came to naught. They seem supererogatory to our needs, really. Unless you wish to stand on ceremony?”
“Oh no,” said La Panthère. “I am entirely in agreement. A thing done has an end. Let us go.”
The garden was as spacious and deserted as could be desired. Some silvery leaves had fallen from the protective wall of linden trees planted around the edge of the garden, and the flower beds were bare, but the long central lawn flourished despite the lateness of the season. The grass shimmered with an eldritch gray-green glow in the light of the full moon. It was the perfect fencing piste.
“Well met,” said La Panthère, as they stood facing one another, ten paces distant. “Your patron goddess shines bright and full overhead. We shall have no need of further illumination.” She drew her rapier and the blade gleamed in the moonlight as she saluted her opponent.
The sorcière drew her own sword in automatic response and saluted, but then she hesitated.
“Did we quite establish the original basis for our dispute?”
La Panthère shrugged. “We were both rather irate, I’m sure. Frustrated, as it were. We had our reasons, no doubt, and hot words were exchanged. In any event it would be a shame to waste such a beautiful evening and such a lovely dueling ground.”
De la Lune nodded. “Very well,” she said. “I am satisfied. In honor of my past self’s indignation, let us begin.” She assumed an en-garde position.
“Ah, ah,” said the taller duelist. “Recall, my dear foe, that this is a rencounter, not a formal duel. There are no holds barred. And yet I see no heartfire in your hand or gleaming on your blade.”
De la Lune smiled. “If I used magic I could snuff your life out in an instant, my captain. It might be barely acceptable by the rules of rencounter, but– honestly! I daresay you would hesitate, too, before sniping me from hiding with your rifle.”
La Panthère bowed. “You’re quite right; I must salute you. But I am twice your size with triple your strength. And my sword is longer too; be sure I will not hold back.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said the sorcière. “I am undoubtedly the faster blade; and moreover, I am the hero of this tale. I cannot fall.”
“You, the hero? And not me?” La Panthère chuckled. “Now that is a legitimate cause for dispute. En garde!”
De la Lune was the first to extend her blade; as she promised, her attack was fast as lightning; it started with a straight lunge. La Panthère leapt backwards to avoid the attack, agile as her namesake. Her first parry in carte missed due to de la Lune’s disengagement; she retreated another long pace, returned to parry in sixte, but the sorcière’s blade eluded her again. Another backwards leap and she was aware of the danger of running out of lawn. Then her last-ditch counter-parry clashed against the sorcière’s attempted coupe and La Panthère riposted strongly with a powerful thrust moving from high to low line. Only the sorcière’s writhing displacement of her body saved her, but as it was the riposte pierced her breeches and laid open a narrow wound on her thigh.
“First blood,” said La Panthère, returning to a defensive stance. “Is it enough?”
“Not nearly,” said de la Lune. “A scratch, only. But that was a pretty stroke. Let us try again.”
They resumed their guards. This time La Panthère struck first, trying to dash her opponent’s lighter blade out of line with her superior strength. A mistake; de la Lune disengaged from the beat and ducked under the blade; her return thrust just barely pinked La Panthère in the shoulder before she was able to recover herself.
“Evens,” said de la Lune. “Can you still fight?”
La Panthère nodded. “I can, indeed. Another pass should decide matters once and for all.”
Once more they came together, this time a bit more tentatively, as each fighter had gained respect for her foe. At last de la Lune darted forward with a thrust so rapid it was almost impossible to see except as a glint of moonlight reflecting off the blade. But La Panthère had anticipated the attack; she caught the sorcière’s blade in a violent croisé that nearly wrenched the lighter sword out of de la Lune’s grasp. They came together in a corps-à-corps. Both blades were crossed at their fortes, both fighters straining against one another, so close each could inhale the other’s scent and feel the heat of her body. For either duelist to relax for an instant would be to allow the opponent’s blade a free cut at their unarmored torso. Here La Panthère’s superior strength told, and she steadily forced the smaller woman’s sword back until her own rapier’s edge was pressing against de la Lune’s neck.
“Yield,” said La Panthère. “Yield and I swear honor will be satisfied.”
“Why?” gasped de la Lune, still straining to dislodge her foe’s sword. “Why relent now?”
“I– I suppose it’s because of what they said downstairs.”
“What?”
“Flirting or fighting. I’m– I’m not so sure now which I prefer. At the duc’s soiree… I think I may have chosen the wrong object of desire.”
“Oh….” de la Lune blushed so prettily La Panthère could hardly bear to maintain the pressure of her blade against the other’s neck. “I see…. I should admit I was not at all dishonest when I said I admired your physique.”
La Panthère felt an effusion of warmth from within her chest. She was unable to give an immediate reply.
“Very well,” said de la Lune after La Panthère’s moment of heady confusion, “I accept your surrender.”
The outrageous suggestion brought La Panthère back to her senses.
“My surrender? Are you insane?”
“Look down.”
La Panthère felt a prick at her belly. She looked down to see that de la Lune had covertly armed her off-hand with a poniard, which had been ready to thrust home throughout their extended corps-a-corps.
“Ah! Exquisite!” La Panthère reduced the strength of her pressure on the sorcière’s rapier blade just a touch. “But shall we say… in the circumstances… a mutual surrender might be a more desirable outcome?”
“A mutual surrender?” The poniard withdrew an inch. “Such a thing is without precedent in martial history. But let us make an experiment of it.”
La Panthère let her rapier fall to the grassy sward. A moment later the sorcière’s weapons followed. She took a half-step forward and de la Lune met her, her head slightly raised, her eyes eager, her lips half-parted. She felt a twinge in her shoulder at de la Lune’s touch, but when their lips met she forgot the pain.
“You know,” said La Panthère, a minute or an eternity later, when at last they paused for a breath, “you were wrong about one thing, before.”
“Oh, how so?”
“It’s really not that cold up here at all.”
“Indeed, I find it quite warm.” De la Lune smiled, and the moon shone in her eyes, making them gleam like stars. To La Panthère she looked like her celestial namesake. “And in your turn, you were quite right as well.”
“Really?”
“It is indeed a shame to waste such a beautiful evening.”
The former rivals came together once more, and the moon smiled down on their embrace.
©December 2018 Laurence Raphael Brothers
Laurence Raphael Brothers‘s work has appeared in Galaxy’s Edge, Nature,and on Podcastle, among other places. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.