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I wish these torches were more regularly placed, I-
“Kenna! No!”
“Lynne? Is that you? What is...oh, no!”
Kenna looked up just in time to see the leather straps across Rodrigo’s chest as she walked straight into him.
Rodrigo grunted.
His hand shot out so quickly that Kenna didn’t know he was reaching for her until she felt his leather glove on her throat.
“I...I can’t breathe!” She squeaked.
He squeezed harder.
“Put her down!” Red Ben barreled toward Rodrigo, red-faced and enraged, but the Spaniard simply dodged to the side, stuck out his foot and sent Ben barreling straight into the wall and then the floor.
John tried next, ripping his dirk from his boot. He lunged at Rodrigo with murder in his eyes. The first of three quick slashes caught and drew blood but the other two cut only air.
With his hand still firmly around Kenna’s throat, Rodrigo ducked a wild jab, kicked Red Ben’s foot out from under him as the big man was trying to stand, and whipped his rapier from its scabbard.
“You’re quick,” John said.
Rodrigo smiled.
John backed up, drew the long-knife from his belt and tossed the dirk to his two-fingered hand with the blade lying down his wrist to be used for blocking.
They stared at each other for a moment that stretched longer and longer. Slowly, carefully, both men moved closer, then further.
“We’re in a bit of a hurry, John,” Lynne said from behind him.
John was in a different world. The last time he drew, it was against three very large men in the tavern he and Gavin called home. They got drunk, got rowdy, and tried to rape the woman who owned the place. John didn’t like that, and so in a few seconds, he gained an ear, three fingers and somehow a toe before Gavin made him stop short of painting the walls red.
John was at peace.
Rodrigo squeezed Kenna when she wiggled.
“Put her down,” John said. “I’ll still fight you, but let’s not get her in the way.”
“Mhm.” He pushed her away.
Kenna ran over to join Lynne, who put her arm around the trembling girl, but never took her eyes off the two men who had resumed their slow, patient dance.
Round and round the two of them went. Neither man seemed interested in breaking the silence with a blow.
“Ben,” John said. “Get up and go over to them.”
When the big man made a move toward Rodrigo, John waved him away. “This is my fight,” he said in a whisper.
“I can’t decide if they’re going to kill each other or kiss,” Lynne said to Ben, breathlessly.
“Your stance,” John said. “It’s strange. Where did you learn to fence?”
Rodrigo grunted, his eyes never moved from the hand holding the long-knife. He lunged, but kept his rapier upright. John didn’t fall for the feint, but instead lashed out and drew blood from the Spaniard’s other arm, just above the wrist.
“You don’t have to talk to say a lot of words, you know.”
Rodrigo smiled and then raised his shoulder as though he was stretching out a cramp. His eyes never left John’s hand.
Each time John attacked, Rodrigo moved just enough to make him miss, never an inch more. It was as though he knew exactly the length of the knife and the precise length of John’s arms. Another swipe, another dodge.
“The way you move,” John said. “You’re practiced, aye? I’ve never seen anyone so fluidly, so – hyah!”
Rodrigo’s blade flashed, orange under the torchlight, and caught John on the chin ever so slightly, just to show that he could. John wiped the blood with the back of his hand and smiled a grim smile.
John moved next, a wild slash that Rodrigo parried with ease, and on the follow through, thumped the hilt of his sword on John’s back and pushed him into the wall.
“I can’t believe this!” John spun and crouched into a low stance and measured his opponent again.
John deflected a careless blow with his dirk and lunged forward, sure that his knife was about to sink ten inches into Rodrigo’s stomach, but again the main twisted at the very last second, turned away, and his sword whistled through the air, and struck John on the side.
“John, look out!” Lynne cried, but too late.
As he recovered from the stinging in his side, Rodrigo swept his feet out from under him and a half second later, Rodrigo’s eyes finally moved from the knife in John’s hand to the sword at John’s throat.
“No!” Kenna shouted. “Don’t hurt him! He’s just trying to save his friend! He’s trying to save my Gavin!”
She ran to where the two men had ended their dance, and straight into Rodrigo’s extended arm.
“Rodrigo, no! Stop! I know...I know about you and about the sheriff.”
His eyebrow rose, and Rodrigo relaxed his sword arm enough to keep the tip from piercing John’s throat, but he didn’t look away.
“I, uh, I yield if that helps your decision.” John’s knives clanked to the floor.
Kenna grabbed the outstretched hand and held on.
“I know your wife, Rodrigo, she told me about everything. She told me about Alan making you leave your home and making you come with him and about how she took a job at Macdonald’s horrible estate just so she could stay with you and she told me about-”
“He didn’t make me come.”
Four jaws hit four chests at the same moment.
“I wanted to come. I wanted away from Barcelona and the wars. I wanted to stop fighting.”
“You wanted to stop fighting, so you took a job as a bodyguard?” John said.
“It...makes very little sense when you put it that way.”
Rodrigo’s arm relaxed further and John scooted backwards.
“But I wasn’t forced. That warty little man couldn’t make me do anything.”
“And yet,” Kenna said, “here you are, fighting people you don’t know and standing guard outside a door while someone gets beat half to death!”
Lynne put a hand on Red Ben’s chest to stop him from getting any closer. “I think she has this,” she whispered.
“I don’t see what choice I have.”
“Yes you do,” Kenna said. “You know exactly the choice you have. You can take the sheriff’s blade away from your throat just as easily as you took yours from John’s.”
Rodrigo heaved a heavy sigh and sheathed his rapier.
“I’d drop it, but it’s very expensive. I’ll already have to oil the blade and hone it. If I dropped it on the ground, it’d need a smith.”
“Right,” Kenna said. “I’m sure that’s true. Tell us, Rodrigo. You dinna have to help, just tell us where the sheriff has Gavin.”
Behind Lynne and Red Ben, a great noise began to swell through the halls of the prison.
“What’s that?” Rodrigo said.
“Oh, that noise? That’s the prisoners.” Lynne answered. “We may have let them go.”
“May have?”
“I’ve known one Spaniard before you, and between the two of you I know you’re proud people and honorable ones,” Lynne said. “The people in this prison don’t deserve to be here, and you know that.”
Rodrigo pursed his lips and stiffened. He looked back and forth between Kenna and Lynne.
“She’s right, you know,” Kenna said. “I can see it in your eyes. You don’t like what’s happening here either. You don’t like injustice and cruelty. You could have slashed his throat if you wanted, but you dinna do that. You’re no simple tough, Rodrigo.”
“What am I, then?”
The clamoring grew nearer.
“You’re a man who can save a lot of lives. All with one decision.”
“And that’s a decision that should be made quickly,” John said. “The natives are restless, and they’re getting close.”
Something behind them crashed and the hooting, screaming cacophony was almost on them.
John started to talk, but Kenna waved him quiet.
Once more, Rodrigo looked around between the four people staring at him, lingering on Kenna longer than the rest. Slowly, he started to nod.
“Follow me.”