The leaden sky rippled in the brisk, cool breeze. The same dreary sprinkling which had been going steady throughout the night abated as if in deference to the grumbled stirrings of the earliest risers. A gradual lightening of the world hinted towards dawn, but such was difficult to determine with the sun behind the pale gray veil. The quiet, still courtyard seemed more somber than an empty church. Winter had arrived early, cutting short the festive nature of autumn.
Marcellos Umberto Vencentio stood upon the damp flagstones, a chill slyly creeping under the collar of his coat to curl down the back of his neck. He shivered, flexing the gristle of his fingers and marveling at the intricate beauty of his frosted breath. He wore his very finest shirt, sown with the emblem of his house in bold red upon the ivory cloth. His hand held onto his hat, preventing the wind from carrying off his favorite feather. His other grasped the pommel of his sword, firm and steady, as always a man should.
He gazed about him as dolorous gusts tore the last crumbling brown leaves from the trees in singles and ill-fated pairs. He listened to the skittish calls of unseen birds and the drips upon the many shallow puddles. He knew there would always be another storm, but for now, the world was filled with trepidation. The first feeble rays of sunlight shown through the gables, like phantom memories of the smile from a shy maiden on some fairer yesterday. "Yes," thought Marcellos, "What a glorious morning to meet God."
His small, wistful look became a line of grim determination as he detected the booted footsteps of another man. Without turning, he knew who this interloper was that intruded upon his rare moment of peace. Alberto... damn his bones. Marcellos sighed; chastising himself for becoming vexed at the arrival of the very man he asked to meet him. His witch's brew of venom and bitter herbs would come to a roil soon; he needed to keep his mind as tranquil as he could for so long as he could manage.
"Buon giorno, Marcellos," the newcomer said in a quiet voice.
"Hardly," Marcellos rasped as cordially as he could. This was a formal occasion, and needed to be done with a respectful amount of decorum.
"This chill is like to escort me to my grave. Perhaps we should reconvene on ano..."
"No!" Marcellos cried. "I'll not listen to any attempts to delay. You think I should go home, and take time to consider what I am doing. That if I only muse on it for a breath I should naturally come to the realization that this is folly. You speak in vain then, for I shall not be deterred from this course, no matter where it might bring me in the end."
"It would taste a lie to claim I do not wish your death Marcellos. But it has been many a day since first I dreamt of that feverish desire, and now I am tired. As are you, certainly. This is not the way. Let us part, and live whatever time remains to us with as much solace as we might gather."
At that Marcellos turned to face the man, a scowl upon his noble, wrinkled visage. He gazed at he who had so many years dominated his thoughts. A handsome man, he was begrudgingly forced to acknowledge. His face bore the proud lines of life, marred by two gnarled, prominent scars. Marcellos reflected a moment on the days he gave the man those scars and how similar, yet different he had looked ever after.
The man wore a simple, morose outfit of blacks and greys. No frills or such as was popular with the youth of the times. Indeed, he evoked an almost morbid feeling, like some sort of well-dressed specter. His sword was the thing Marcellos recognized best, having seen it in motion untold times over the decades.
Marcellos drew his own blade, gazing at the man whose life so intertwined with his like brambles left too long untrimmed. He wondered yet again what Giselle had seen in him. Why she would turn from him into this wretch's arms. He asked himself that every day. He had for over twenty years without reprieve. He suspected he would never know, but for the pain that question caused and the thousand other injuries and insults between himself and the man before him, he was going to end it all today.
"No," Marcellos whispered. "This is the way. The only way it should be done."
With that he lunged forward, the wicked point of his sword aimed for the heart. Alberto drew his own and parried in one fluid motion, the muscle memory engraved into his flesh so deeply he could not have stopped himself had he wished to. The men fell into their stances, each knowing a single mistake could cost their lives. Marcellos felt the familiar rush sweep through his frame. The exhilarating intoxication that could only be found on the doorstep of death.
A trust! A parry! A swing barely dodged. Cloth fluttering as bodies contorted and stretched. Lean forward, jerk back! This was no graceful dance. No storybook battle or tense competition. "Let the noble ignorants fight for honor and glory," Marcellos thought to himself as his eyes tracked the thrashing tips of the blades. "We are naught but starving dogs."
A thrust! A riposte! Snap from the elbow. Twist the guard to catch the blade. The violent actions simmering with murderous intent. Light glinted off the glossy blades in a wild kaleidoscope as they wove a tapestry of metal. Boots clanged on the flagstones, splashing through puddles and clattering away pebbles. Footwork was everything. The more dexterous and agile a fighter was, the longer they would survive. And Marcellos had survived for a long time indeed.
But it was not as it once was. Marcellos felt the weighty cloak of age hanging upon his shoulders, and his wrist lacked the penmanship precision it once possessed. His sidesteps slower in fact than in his mind. To move in such a way as to avoid injury yet still caused him pain.
His sword was an artifact of a more brutal past. The stylish of the day fancied
thin triangular blades. Not so with the cut and thrust swords clawing
against each other now.
These were not civilian implements of self-defense nor the tools
of dueling. They were weapons of war.
And there could be no doubt they did their jobs well. Marcellos shuddered as Alberto's blade sliced across the skin of his shoulder, going right through his clothing as easily as it would the fallen leaves all around them. He leered in triumph as his tip devastated one of Alberto's fingers and the grimace of pain which followed brought a brief flare of caustic pleasure to Marcellos' calloused heart. He drew his main-gauche, ashamed to admit he would need all he could bring to bare to best his foe. It was over a foot long, with a wide curling guard and viciously tipped for use in the clinch.
Alberto's boots rang out as he rushed forward, his blade whipping past Marcellos' defense to gouge the face. The point bit down and scratched into bone, scrapping along Marcellos' cheek as he reeled away. He knew it was only chance that saved him from forever losing an eye or his very life. In a flash of rage, he dived forward, driving his dagger into Alberto's leg and out the other side.
Both men staggered back, awash in agony and fatigue. Marcellos glared into Alberto's eyes as blood flowed down over his sallow face, all the years of animosity coursing through that sylphic link between the two winded warriors. The sun, sole spectator to their struggle, crested the peak-caps and its pale swatches of will'o'the'wisp light leant a savage vibrancy to the wine which dribbled and spilled upon the stones.
"Respite," Marcellos gasped... "Respite..."
Alberto Arturo Bianchi sat upon a low cobbled wall, wrapping his handkerchief around his profusely bleeding leg. He had dealt with wounds his whole life, among them several severe ones of his own. His body was a bocage of scars, many not properly healed. "What folly..." he thought to himself as he nursed his ravaged finger, his knuckles swamped in red and the far half of his finger unresponsive.
He glanced over at Marcellos; slouching against a wall and struggling to take off his coat without ripping his shoulder more than it already was, the dagger tossed aside in pain and frustration from a hand already going numb.
"Why must it come to this Marcellos?" he called out, trying one last forlorn time to reason with his lifelong companion. "What have we done with our lives that we are here today, barely even able to stand?"
"We have stood by what we believe in. We have dedicated ourselves to something that we must see through 'till the end."
"And what would that be, Marcellos? What ideal do we strive to uphold? Hatred? Bitterness? Anger? Grief? Obsession!? What do we believe in?"
"Vengeance! If nothing else, we believe in sending the source of those things you say to the flames of Hell. Why do you give air to these questions? Damn them, you already know the answers!"
It wasn't the first time someone had asked him that same thing. Alberto thought of Marcellos' beautiful young wife. He remembered the envy towards Marcellos that he would be the one that this jewel gave her heart to. And he remembered that rainy spring evening. Her heartbeat had seemed so fragile and delicate; her hair had smelled so clean.
"Marcellos, I did not take Giselle away from you! Her death was not my fault! It wasn't any man's fault."
"It was! She was an angel come down from Heaven. She was such... was so... kind. Gentle. The light of Heaven shown from her beautiful eyes and we shared a love that should have lasted 'till kingdom come. But you ruined it! You put darkness in her innocent heart. You seduced her. Your snake tongue convinced her to take her own life. So tell me why should I not seek damnation? Because of you my wife is barred forever from passing Heaven's gates. At least in Hell I can be with her."
"I did none of those things, you thick-skulled bastard! I never touched her. Never! It was raining. It was cold. I simply tried to help her stay warm until you arrived. And you need to face the truth dammit! She killed herself because her mind was ill. She was despondent, she had been for years. Probably before she met either of us. It was not your fault. Nor was it mine! You loved her more passionately and wholly than any other in the world, and she was a light in my world as well. Neither of us is to blame!"
"You lie! You say such nice things but I know you are lying! You think that if you, with false magnanimity, ascribe no blame to me then that somehow means you must also be faultless. But I see through your tricks! She used to trust me; we kept no secrets from each other. She would have told me if something was wrong. We could have worked through it together. I could have helped her, but your manipulative words put suspicion and doubt in her heart. You turned her away from me with your insidious unfounded implications of my vagarity. You were consumed by jealousy and so sought to destroy what you couldn't have. Her mind was not ill, you poisoned it!"
And there could be no doubt they did their jobs well. Marcellos shuddered as Alberto's blade sliced across the skin of his shoulder, going right through his clothing as easily as it would the fallen leaves all around them. He leered in triumph as his tip devastated one of Alberto's fingers and the grimace of pain which followed brought a brief flare of caustic pleasure to Marcellos' calloused heart. He drew his main-gauche, ashamed to admit he would need all he could bring to bare to best his foe. It was over a foot long, with a wide curling guard and viciously tipped for use in the clinch.
Alberto's boots rang out as he rushed forward, his blade whipping past Marcellos' defense to gouge the face. The point bit down and scratched into bone, scrapping along Marcellos' cheek as he reeled away. He knew it was only chance that saved him from forever losing an eye or his very life. In a flash of rage, he dived forward, driving his dagger into Alberto's leg and out the other side.
Both men staggered back, awash in agony and fatigue. Marcellos glared into Alberto's eyes as blood flowed down over his sallow face, all the years of animosity coursing through that sylphic link between the two winded warriors. The sun, sole spectator to their struggle, crested the peak-caps and its pale swatches of will'o'the'wisp light leant a savage vibrancy to the wine which dribbled and spilled upon the stones.
"Respite," Marcellos gasped... "Respite..."
________________________________________________________________________
Alberto Arturo Bianchi sat upon a low cobbled wall, wrapping his handkerchief around his profusely bleeding leg. He had dealt with wounds his whole life, among them several severe ones of his own. His body was a bocage of scars, many not properly healed. "What folly..." he thought to himself as he nursed his ravaged finger, his knuckles swamped in red and the far half of his finger unresponsive.
He glanced over at Marcellos; slouching against a wall and struggling to take off his coat without ripping his shoulder more than it already was, the dagger tossed aside in pain and frustration from a hand already going numb.
"Why must it come to this Marcellos?" he called out, trying one last forlorn time to reason with his lifelong companion. "What have we done with our lives that we are here today, barely even able to stand?"
"We have stood by what we believe in. We have dedicated ourselves to something that we must see through 'till the end."
"And what would that be, Marcellos? What ideal do we strive to uphold? Hatred? Bitterness? Anger? Grief? Obsession!? What do we believe in?"
"Vengeance! If nothing else, we believe in sending the source of those things you say to the flames of Hell. Why do you give air to these questions? Damn them, you already know the answers!"
It wasn't the first time someone had asked him that same thing. Alberto thought of Marcellos' beautiful young wife. He remembered the envy towards Marcellos that he would be the one that this jewel gave her heart to. And he remembered that rainy spring evening. Her heartbeat had seemed so fragile and delicate; her hair had smelled so clean.
"Marcellos, I did not take Giselle away from you! Her death was not my fault! It wasn't any man's fault."
"It was! She was an angel come down from Heaven. She was such... was so... kind. Gentle. The light of Heaven shown from her beautiful eyes and we shared a love that should have lasted 'till kingdom come. But you ruined it! You put darkness in her innocent heart. You seduced her. Your snake tongue convinced her to take her own life. So tell me why should I not seek damnation? Because of you my wife is barred forever from passing Heaven's gates. At least in Hell I can be with her."
"I did none of those things, you thick-skulled bastard! I never touched her. Never! It was raining. It was cold. I simply tried to help her stay warm until you arrived. And you need to face the truth dammit! She killed herself because her mind was ill. She was despondent, she had been for years. Probably before she met either of us. It was not your fault. Nor was it mine! You loved her more passionately and wholly than any other in the world, and she was a light in my world as well. Neither of us is to blame!"
"You lie! You say such nice things but I know you are lying! You think that if you, with false magnanimity, ascribe no blame to me then that somehow means you must also be faultless. But I see through your tricks! She used to trust me; we kept no secrets from each other. She would have told me if something was wrong. We could have worked through it together. I could have helped her, but your manipulative words put suspicion and doubt in her heart. You turned her away from me with your insidious unfounded implications of my vagarity. You were consumed by jealousy and so sought to destroy what you couldn't have. Her mind was not ill, you poisoned it!"
"You're wrong. Everything you're saying is completely false! You're just conjuring fantasy scenarios based on shadows and conjecture because blaming others is easier! You just don't want to admit you made mistakes. Don't want to admit you were a failure of a husband for not noticing your own wife's sorrow and despair."
"Hypocrite! You blame me for your brother's death without any proper evidence. How could you think I would ever hurt him? I idolized him! I wanted to be just as he was. Why would I kill him? Why? And how dare you accuse me of being a failure to my family. What about yourself? You were barely ten paces from your brother's side during the fight that took his life. Yet while he defended his honor you did nothing because you were too busy upending cups and fondling waitresses!"
"My enmity towards you is something I saw with my own eyes. Your explanations make no sense. I know what I saw. I saw my brother bleeding out his life in that alley, and I saw you, drunk, with a bloody sword in your hand. What other proof is needed? You are obviously guilty. And you can't seem to even come up with a consistent story in your defense, let alone a believable one."
Marcellos wiped his face with a hand slickened by the rain splattered bricks he had been propping himself against. Leaving a bloody print beside a larger stain, he pushed off from the wall, hobbling towards the center of the courtyard.
"All that, yet you still do not want us to fight. Why? You filthy coward. Don't you see our differences are irreconcilable? That we need to conclude this? We've both said all these words before, I'm sick of going around in circles. I never loved another after my wife died. If I don't kill you now, if I were to acquest to your claims that I was wrong, it would mean I spent over half my life alone for no good reason! That the only thing keeping me going after her death was a desire to kill an innocent man. I know that it is not so, but even were it to be truth I could not bear it."
"I say that because it is not too late! How many times have we tried to kill each other? How many duels over the years? Look at us. Look dammit! Wipe the gore from your brow and take a good look! We're both slashed and battered almost beyond recognition! My face itches constantly from the scars you put there. I still wake up wheezing on cold nights from that hole you put in my lung. I can tell from the way you walk the bullet I shattered your hip with did damage that never healed. I know you never played the flute the same again after I crushed your fingers. Look at the scars and deformities on our bodies and faces. We look like ghouls! Is that how we want to die? Like abused, rabid animals?"
"Duels? What duels? A duel is something that goes to the death, yet we are both alive. Two decrepit failures unable to even finish each other off. We have not fought untold duels. We have never even finished the first one! I don't want to live like this anymore. If God or the Devil or Fate or whomever has denied me life as a happy man, I will at least die a victorious one!"
"Marcellos, we were friends! Closer than brothers since awkward adolescence. But now we have near spent a third again as many years trying to kill each other than we did as friends. We are... beyond the vigors of youth, yes, but we still have time. We might yet live decades, or whatever God sees fit to grant us, in peace and solidarity. It doesn't need to be this way. Our paths have not passed over the precipice, by The Virgin can't you see we could yet still go back?"
"No. No! Do you even have faith in your own words? Why did you come here then? If we stop now, it will be like giving up on everything we believed in. How many people have you killed over the years? How many have I? How many lives have we snuffed out or ruined, often for such petty, stupid reasons? Both of our ledgers littered with shattered families and culled short potential, yet still to this day without reprisal or lasting punishment. Time and again we rationalized it all. If we back down now, it would invalidate all those deaths. It would mean we spent our entire lives doing nothing but causing pointless misery and chaos! I won't let that happen. You can not just shrug aside the results of what you've done with denials that what you rightly deserve is unreasonable. We committed ourselves to this path and if we stop before finishing what we started it would be like spitting on the graves of those we loved and pissing on the graves of those we killed. I may die today, but I will not have lived a hollow life nor in five years will I cough to death in some filthy gutter!"
Raising his sword, he strode towards Alberto. "En' Guard!"
Alberto stood, offering up a silent prayer to God, asking that He might save a poor, broken soul.
________________________________________________________________________
The sword felt the rush of air undulate across its surface as it sprang back into action. This was everything! This was its only purpose, and it relished every moment. It was guided by a Master. It held itself with pride to be in these hands one of the most dangerous weapons in the world. It felt an insatiable desire. Unlike a gun, or a knife, a sword was good for nothing at all except killing men. And it had slain so many throughout its long existence. The sword had become deeply addicted to blood and wallowed in its own deviancy. Each murder was a fond memory, to be brooded over in-between bouts of new violence. Enough slaughter to fill a small graveyard, but the sword had earnestly loved each and every time.
The sword knew it was aging. All the years of use, gathering nicks and growing dull. It was sharpened regularly to fix such problems, yet the blade knew it had become thin. Too thin. But it was here now and that was all that really mattered. As razor sharp as it ever was, doing something it loved almost as much as murder. Fighting the Enemy.
The Enemy was the only other sword this blade had truly fought more than once. The only thing it had yet to defeat. It too was guided by a Master, and their battles were nothing short of breathtaking. So many times had they fought over the years that this sword knew the other as intimately as a lover. But the actions they took were nothing like making love. It was nothing but lust. Violence and Death. The sword exalted in the knowledge it would someday cease to exist, but it would make sure the Enemy went capering into the eternal nothing first!
Moving through the air, scraping along the Enemy's edge, feeling the tantalizing taste of a little blood. The sword was enjoying itself. It could feel the anger and resentment flowing from the hand to the hilt, from the hilt to the blade. And it drew such strength from that flow. It used those feelings to veer towards the heart, the eyes, the throat, the lungs. It knew that eventually the heat would increase until it was enough to help the blade find its target. When that happened, it would pour all the stockpiled hate of a lifetime into the body of its foe.
Sparks flashed, each a tiny fraction of the sword's essence, flying off to their Icarusian destiny until they burned to dust. It had never felt so alive!
The moment of its glory was at hand! Now! Now was its finest hour! The blade surged forward, meeting the Enemy head on with as much force as it could muster. Relentlessly crashing into the Enemy. Thrust after thrust, becoming then slash after slash, hack after hack. Seeking flesh, seeking soul. Headless of the damage and pain delivered into the arms and legs of its liege. Hammering the Enemy with feral abandon.
They faltered! Yes! Forced to their knee by the inglorious and reckless departure from form into savage bludgeoning. Attack! Kill! Harder! Harder!
The Enemy shattered! Time stilled for a moment, and the sword could feel every little minuscule crack spread like lightning across the surface of its foe in the fleeting moment of contact. A sudden fracturing, the terminal third sailing off to one side and a half-dozen tiny shards bursting from the rift. A victorious howl silently ripped through the void as glittering fragments of steel rained down upon cobbles.
Its master reared back. A gruesome and obscene pose, poised at the moment before primordial brutality. Muscles tore irreparably with the single-minded drive to give force to the blow, spine and body contorted as the sword was rammed through the chest of the Enemy's wielder. Impaling between ribs then striking stonework beyond. The sword bowed from the momentum of the strike, bending more than ever designed to. Its tip snapped and the sword was rent asunder! Cracking a hands-breadth from the hilt. Steel rebounded and the sing of vibrating metal accompanied the splintered remains hurtling downwards to bury beside the first in the chest of the defeated.
Dreadful dominion! Supremacy! Hysterical chortling descending into delirious euphoric giddiness tumbled like cascading boulders from the sword as the frothing horse heartbeat which flooded its senses skipped and skidded to a halt. More! Kill him again. Kill everyone~!
Agony and conquest warred within the broken sword as its master pushed away from the slain and what remained of the blade was pulled from the body with a sickening wet sound. It dripped blood, most of it percolating from the severely lacerated arm of the man holding the slippery hilt with its now bent and dented guard.
The sword felt its guiding hand waver. Felt its source of power and direction dim, begin to fade. Felt the fingers border on letting go, as the very faintest of tugs from gravity poised to bring it to the sodden ground. It felt nothing from the hand. No purpose, no fuel for the sword's debauched fire.
No! It can not end like this! It could not be tossed aside! Not now, not after all it had done. It railed against its master, raving at the hand. It refused to fade away. There were no enemies left. Everything was gone, defeated. And now even its master turned against the sword? Not like this!
Suddenly the sword felt the limp hand clasp redcap fingers. A grip so hard as to strangle. Yes! Yessss... The sword felt itself lifted, cold air flowing across its smeared surface. This was the answer. It felt so perfect. Not only would the sword claim the Enemy, it would also claim the Master! The sword felt inundated with meaning and cause, placed against a quivering throat.
The jagged metal edge felt but paltry resistance as it entered the soft, pathetic, worthless flesh. It could feel the last choking gasp of a dying soul flit across its surface. Right before the blade slid into dark oblivion, it added a triumphant scream to that departing wheeze, so God himself would know of the sword's awe-inspiring accomplishments when he listened to the last whispers of the dead.