It was the moment for Laurent to assert his authority, and to discipline Govart, calmly and without prejudice. Instead:
‘Am I keeping you from fucking?’ said Laurent.
‘No. I finished. What do you want?’ Govart said, with an insulting lack of concern.
And it was suddenly clear that there was something more between Laurent and Govart than Damen knew, and that Govart was unfazed by the prospect of a public scene, secure in the Regent’s authority.
Before Laurent could reply, Orlant arrived. He had, by the arm, a woman with long brown curled hair and heavy skirts. This, then, was what Govart had been doing. There was a ripple of reaction from the watching men.
‘You made me wait,’ said Laurent, ‘while you bred your get on one of the keep women?’
‘Men fuck,’ said Govart.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. It was petty and personal, and a verbal dressing down wasn’t going to work on Govart. He simply didn’t care.
‘Men fuck,’ said Laurent.
‘I fucked her mouth, not her cunt. Your problem,’ said Govart, and it wasn’t until that moment that Damen saw how wrong it was going, how secure Govart was in his authority, and how deeply rooted was his antipathy for Laurent, ‘is that the only man you’ve ever been hot for was your broth—’
And any hope Damen had that Laurent could control this scene ended as Laurent’s face shuttered, as his eyes went cold, and with the sharp sound of steel, his sword came out of its sheath.
‘Draw,’ said Laurent.
No, no, no. Damen took an instinctive step forward, then brought up short. His fists clenched impotently.
He looked at Govart. He’d never seen Govart use a sword, but knew him from the ring as a veteran fighter. Laurent was a palace prince who had avoided border duty his whole life and who never faced an opponent honestly if he could attack sideways.
Worse. Govart had behind him the full backing of the Regent; and though it was doubtful any of the men watching knew it, he had probably been given carte blanche to dispatch the nephew, if there arose any opportunity to do so.
Govart drew.
The unthinkable was going to happen: the Captain of the Guard, challenged to a duel of honour, was in front of the troop going to cut down the heir to the throne.
Laurent was apparently arrogant enough to do this without armour. He clearly didn’t think he was going to lose, not if he was inviting the entire troop to watch it happen. He wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Laurent, with his unmarked body and his pampered indoor skin, would be fresh from palace sports where his opponents would have always, politely, let him win.
He’s going to be killed, thought Damen, seeing the future in that moment with perfect clarity.
Govart engaged with negligent ease. Steel grated along steel as the swords of the two men came together in a burst of violence, and Damen’s heart jammed itself into his throat—he hadn’t meant to set this in motion, for it to end this way, not like this—and then the two men came apart and Damen’s heartbeat was loud with the shock of his surprise: at the end of the first exchange, Laurent was still alive.
At the end of the second also.
At the end of the third he was, persistently and remarkably, still alive, and watching his opponent calmly, measuringly.
This was intolerable for Govart: the longer Laurent went unscathed, the more the situation embarrassed him, for Govart was after all stronger and taller and older, and a soldier. This time Govart didn’t allow Laurent any respite when he attacked, but pressed forward in a savage onslaught of cut thrust attacks.
Which Laurent turned back, the jar of impact on fine wrists minimised by exquisite technique that worked with the impetus of his opponent rather than against it. Damen stopped wincing, and started watching.
Laurent fought like he talked. The danger lay in the way he used his mind: there was not one thing he did that was not planned in advance. Yet he was not predictable, because in this, as with everything he did, there were layers of intent, moments when expected patterns would suddenly dissolve into something else. Damen recognised the signs of Laurent’s inventive deceptions. Govart didn’t. Govart, finding himself unable to close as easily as he had expected, did the one thing that Damen could have warned him not to do. He got angry. That was a mistake. If there was one thing that Laurent knew, it was how to prick someone into fury and then set about exploiting the emotion.
Laurent turned back Govart’s second surge with an easy grace and a particularly Veretian series of parries that made Damen itch to pick up a sword.
By now, anger and disbelief were really affecting Govart’s swordsmanship. He was making elementary mistakes, wasting strength and attacking in the wrong lines. Laurent was physically not strong enough to weather one of Govart’s full-strength blows straight on his sword; he had to avoid them or counter them in sophisticated ways, with those angled parries and shifting momentum. They would have been lethal, if Govart had landed any of them.
He couldn’t manage it. As Damen watched, Govart swung, furiously, wide. He was not going to win this fight with anger driving him to foolish mistakes. That was becoming obvious to every man watching.
Something else was becoming painfully clear.
Laurent, possessing the sort of proportions that handed him balance and coordination as gifts, had not, as his uncle claimed, wasted them. Of course, he would have had the finest masters and the best tutelage. But to have attained this level of skill he would also have had to have trained long and hard, and from a very young age.