Queen of Swords - Riposte

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: Riposte
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Queen of Swords
Characters: Helm/Montoya
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims.
Notes: With thanks to my beta-readers, Vicky and Gail.


Riposte

The wrought-iron gates of the back courtyard of the Colonel’s mansion opened at a push from the deferential manservant who had accompanied Dr. Helm to this point. He said, “The Colonel is inside, Señor. God be with you.”

Helm wondered wryly whether he said that to all Montoya’s visitors, or if he were a special case. When it came to Montoya, Helm wasn’t sure if even God were up to the task.

Without expressing his trepidation, he entered.

The courtyard had perhaps once been the stables. It was converted now into a large open space, most of it open to the sky, with high, blank walls on two sides and the tight-shuttered wing of the villa on the others. A roofed arcade covered the length of one side, dark shadows half-hiding chests and shelving, with equipment hung from hooks on the wall. Helm could see a tough rope; a whip; and by a closed door, the polished riding boots of Colonel Luis Montoya.

Montoya was not wearing them, but instead had light shoes on his feet. Montoya stood under the arcade, with an attendant and a servant. There was no possibility that he had failed to see Helm enter the courtyard, but he did not speak to him. He was unbuttoning his jacket with strong, impatient motions of his fingers. He removed the jacket, and tossed it to the servant.

Underneath, his shirt was loose, his sleeves pushed back to the elbows for maximum motion and comfort in the heat. He picked a black glove from the bench beside him, and put his hand carefully into it, straightening it finger by finger. Then the other glove.

Helm watched in silence.

The gloved hand lifted the foil which lay on the bench for his use. “Leave us,” he said to the servant, who, bowing, went through the door and closed it behind him. For the first time, Montoya looked at Helm. His eyes gleamed as always with secret thoughts, hidden knowledge. “Do you fence, doctor?”

“No,” said Helm, shortly. He was out of temper because he didn’t like being peremptorily summoned on Montoya’s whim, interrupted in his surgery, in his study, in his leisure, for a game of wits that Montoya liked to tease him with, for no purpose – or at least, no purpose that Helm could see. The purpose, perhaps, of proving that he had the power to keep an English doctor at his beck and call, whether he needed him or not.

He was out of temper with himself because he felt himself responding to this hellish game, meekly coming instead of defying the tyrant. He was unable to quell the anticipation that rose in his spirit when he faced Montoya, unable to justify the pleasure he too felt in their meetings. But he must never let it show, just as he must not admit he had skill and training in swordsmanship which he would never use again.

“Never?”

Helm shrugged. His skill with a sword might be better kept a secret; besides, it was years since he’d had time for regular practice or practical use of the skill. He might have no skill left at all. It didn’t matter. Healing was all that mattered. He wasn’t planning to fight any duels. “Monsieur Henri?” said Montoya, addressing the fencing master, his eyes still on Helm.

“You are ready, Colonel?” said the other man. He had his own foil, and a tight padded waistcoat. His movements were dancelike: a fencing master. His voice hinted at Parisian origins.

“Yes,” said Montoya, without looking at him.

The French fencing master took up his position, arm gracefully curved, feet light, balance exact. Montoya attacked him without preamble; one moment he had been casually standing against a column which supported the arcade, the next he was lunging, striking like a snake with extended blade. The movement was rough: Helm’s own teacher would have been growling.

The Frenchman had to be polite to the Colonel, who was his employer. He kept up a running commentary on Montoya’s style as they moved from position to position. In the still of the late afternoon, Helm could hear their feet slapping on the flagstones in their light fencing shoes, given the musical counterpoint of percussion as the foils touched each other with the unmistakable kiss of steel.

Like words in a song, he could hear snatches of Monsieur Henri’s suggestions and instructions. He caught words that he remembered from his own lessons, Italian words spoken now in French-accented Spanish: salute, lunge, parry; prime, seconde, tierce; passata sotto, outside line. Musical, all of it, and the motion like a dangerous dance.

It was all violence, a dance of death, and none the less alluring for it. Evil was always seductive.

Montoya had style, grant him that. He was light on his feet, and fast as the devil. He didn’t clutch at the hilt the way Helm used to do, as if the muscles of hand and wrist would never tire. How he used to make his hand ache, and his arm – and then blame the teacher for working him too hard. He’d had a few lessons to learn, and not just about form. So he’d learned them the hard way.

Was there any other way?

He watched Montoya move, enjoying the sheer physical force of his action. It wasn’t just fencing, it was a study in musculature as his limbs followed the exacting moves with balance and growing precision. Helm pictured the strain on the muscles as they led and executed each movement: deltoid and biceps raising the foil, brachioradialis extending as the arm did, the extension of the rectus femoris as Montoya moved deftly aside, the powerful line of the gluteus as Montoya balanced strength for strength on the carefully placed, swiftly moving light-shod feet; one back, one forward, weight shifting, limbs stretching, light flashing on the blade.

In motion, Montoya was as beautiful as he was frightening. They moved in close, teacher and pupil, hireling and master, corps à corps, face to face, and back again. Monsieur Henri explained something to do with the wrist, and the balance of the foil: illustrating by pointing to his carpals and the flexor muscles. Montoya listened intently, and nodded. Then they were back at it.

The lesson Monsieur Henri was patiently giving him covered matters Helm had learned at fourteen or fifteen. He wondered what Montoya had been doing at that age. Something brutal, something pedestrian? It was nothing to him, of course, what Montoya had done at any time.

Montoya dropped and twirled, a move that any dancer would admire, and the blunted point of the foil touched Monsieur Henri’s breast. “Hit!” he said, triumphant. The fencing-master stopped, and bowed, proud of his pupil’s accomplishment.

Helm applauded with steady irony. Montoya glanced at him and smiled broadly. Montoya’s breathing had quickened and there was a sheen of sweat on his face, but he was not panting. Good lungs, then, to go with the good muscles. Helm met the smile with a brief, meaningless smile of his own.

Montoya spoke to the fencing-master, who bowed to him, and then to Helm, and, packing his own case of foils, left them, bowing again from the doorway. He was not a teacher of the first class – what master of any calibre would be here in this godforsaken town in California? - but he was more skilled than Helm would have expected.

And Montoya, the pupil. . . Montoya was a feral animal, with or without a sword.

The feral animal came to stand by Helm in the shadow of the roof. There was a sink of water beyond them, a fountain placed in the wall of the magnificent building, and he dipped his head in it, flinging it back so the drops of water caught the sunlight. As Helm’s eyes accustomed to the shadows, he saw that the basin was marble, and shaped like a sea-shell. He had seen something like it once, in Florence.

Montoya was high with the pleasure of the exercise, the triumph of his brief success. “Fence with me,” he said, his eyes light with excitement.

“I’ve been fencing with you since we first met,” said Helm.

Montoya nodded his acceptance of the thought. One-handed, he lightly tossed his foil to Helm, and one-handed, Helm caught it by the hilt, instinctively moving into offensive position – Hell! He hadn’t meant to reveal any knowledge of the sport at all. He let his stance loosen to shapelessness, let the foil drop haphazardly by his side, hoping Montoya, who noticed everything, had not noticed his brief slip into competence.

“Duel with me,” said Montoya. “Winner takes all.”

Helm raised his eyebrows. “All what?”

“All that he wants.”

Helm shrugged. “I don’t want anything, except to get back to my work. You can take anything you want from me anyway, and you will. What did you have me summoned for?”

“The pleasure of your company.” Helm made a face, and the Colonel laughed. “My pleasure in your company, then. You’ll take a challenge with words, but not physically? Why?”

“We each have our skills,” said Helm briefly.

“And you hide yours so carefully.” Montoya took Helm’s wrist in his gloved hand, and removed the foil from his grasp with the other. He did not immediately let go of the wrist. “Really, doctor, you should not work such long hours. It isn’t good for you.”

Helm bit back a rude reply.

Montoya took a practice foil from a rack on the wall. “Just this once,” he suggested. “Disarm me, doctor, and I’ll grant anything you ask.”

“You’ll drop dead on the spot?”

There was an awkward pause. Montoya said, with unwonted seriousness, “I thought you wished to prolong lives, rather than to end them. Is that truly what you would ask of me?”

“No,” admitted Helm, feeling suddenly outmaneuvered. The insult had lost him a tactical advantage in their duel of words, as if suddenly his diplomacy were at fault. It was as if Montoya had guessed the startling intimacy of his thoughts as he had contemplated his body in motion; thoughts that were half-medical, half-inexcusable. Damn! Montoya understood him too well.

And it worked both ways.

“My dear Helm – think of the opportunity you would have to make me do something good! Isn’t that what you want?”

Helm smiled reluctantly. “If I asked you to pardon a man you were about to hang, you’d do it?”

“If you could defeat me.”

“Your word of honour?”

“My word.”

Helm removed his own jacket and tossed it onto the bench. Then, on an impulse, he removed his waistcoat and shirt as well, as it was a hot afternoon. Montoya smiled brightly, and handed him the foil. “Really, I fear I am leading a lamb to slaughter,” he said. “Are you not afraid I of what I will ask of you when I win?”

“No,” said Helm truthfully. He knew he could defeat Montoya with one hand tied behind his back. Or, more honestly, he could have, five or ten years ago, and in any case, he was not afraid of Montoya, though he was probably the only man in California who was not. “Would you ask me to kill someone?”

“If I did, would you do it?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I could have used you as my assassin against the Queen of Swords.”

“Fence with her, then,” suggested Helm, and Montoya, laughing, tossed aside his own shirt and attacked.

It had been easy, watching on the sidelines, to be critical of his moves. It had been easy to forget how muscles unused for years lose their precision. Practice, his teacher had told him, practice was the key: daily practice, twice daily, it is practice and practice alone that could make a master of a bumbler.

Well, he had never been a master, but he’d been damn good, once.

Now . . . . The heat was more of an obstacle than he might have anticipated. His shoes were heavier and more slippery than he had thought, the flagstones subtly uneven. Move, move, move, he thought, forcing his legs into positions they had forgotten, at speeds entirely unnecessary for the practice of medicine.

Montoya was quick, and despite his already being tired, not slowing down.

Helm should have remembered that he was no longer any sort of warrior, and certainly not the dashing hero on the white horse who disarms the villains with a wave of the rapier. Instead he was a backwater doctor in a despot’s town trying to make a difference to the people unfortunate enough to live here. The foils touched each other, sliding, and Helm had to draw back.

Focus, his teacher used to say. Watch the opponent. Watch his blade.

Hands in black gloves moved, faster and faster. A flexible wrist and strong fingers… Why had Helm not remembered how difficult this was?

No, in truth, he had remembered, and had overlooked that, because it was worth the effort for the tactical advantage it might give him. A saved life.

Or perhaps he would ask for something else. He could ask Montoya to reflect on his methods, reconsider his harsh laws and harsher rule. He could ask Montoya to stop playing the damned autocrat and start using the brain he was born with. He could ask him to read the works of Thomas Payne and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

But a man cannot change his nature, and Montoya was a natural-born predator. Perhaps asking him to drop dead was the thing to do, after all.

Helm was breathing heavily, but getting a feel for what he was doing. He hadn’t lost it, after all. There was a memory in his muscles that the brain had lost. All those French and Italian words he had long ago learned had disappeared, but the movements, the motions and the defenses had been second nature to him once.

There was nothing in the world but his opponent. There was nothing to consider but victory. Montoya’s eyes were feverish in their intensity, and something of the intoxication in them had infected Helm as well. This was a visceral thrill, the kind of thing that once he had lived for: the sheer joy of physical challenge, the overcoming of the enemy by any means at his disposal.

The two men closed, too close to use their foils. Corps à corps. For a moment, Helm smelled the aroma of Montoya’s body and they breathed the same air. He felt the tickle of the hair of Montoya’s chest on his bare arm, and the heat of his skin. Then they had moved apart, and Helm followed up the move with a feint, and found himself winded, tripped, and lying on his back. The blunt tip of Montoya’s foil touched his vulnerable throat, harder than was necessary.

“Yield,” said Montoya.

Lying on his back on the flagstones, the foil inches from his hand and the breath knocked out of him, there wasn’t much else he could do. In a real life or death battle, he might have found a last reserve of strength to beat that blade aside and continue. In these circumstances . . . .

In truth, this was a real life and death battle, always had been, even if it wasn’t his own life or Montoya’s life at stake. He had to find the guts and skill to fight on. But . . . .

“Yield,” said Montoya, a second time.

Helm looked up at the man above him. Montoya stood bare-chested with one leg on each side of him, white trousers tight on those muscular thighs, the fabric now sticking to him after the exertion. His chest glistened. So did his eyes. At his crotch, you could see from the bulk there how much he enjoyed the thrill of winning.

Helm closed his eyes. “I yield,” he said.

He opened them again. Montoya had not moved the foil away from his neck. Montoya was not letting him get up.

Helm said, with a certain exasperation, “I said, I yield.”

“Yes,” said Montoya absently. “I was enjoying the view.”

“So was I,” said Helm.

He said it lightly, but the truth of it was blatantly clear. The atmosphere of the encounter had changed. The tension in the air between them had a new quality. This was the lure and challenge of another sort of dance.

Without moving the foil from Helm’s throat, Montoya dropped to his knees. Helm thought he could feel the heat from between Montoya’s legs, even though he was not quite touching him. A gloved hand touched his mouth. He let his lips fall open.

Montoya put his foil carefully aside, and, bending, kissed Helm’s mouth. The heat of his cock was touching Helm now, not heavily, through the fabric of their trousers. Sweat-slick chests touched. Lips lingered, savoured, returned to fill pressure. Tongues met and caressed experimentally. Montoya said, “Give me your body.”

“That is what you ask of me?”

“Yes.”

“How . . . flattering.”

Montoya put his hands on the stone by Helm’s shoulders, and pushed himself back to the length of his arms. “Doctor. I expected you to be yelping in outraged modesty, or screaming rape. Am I not blotting your honour? Besmirching your good name?”

“Is that what you call it?” asked Helm blandly. “I thought we were doing something else. No, you can’t blot my honour. Only I can do that, and I did it long ago. You certainly can’t do it with schoolboy sex games.”

In answer, Montoya reached for Helm’s belt, unbuckled it and pulled the fabric of the trousers apart, tearing his underwear ruthlessly, leaving him exposed to mid-thigh. “Schoolboy sex games? Ah, the reputation of the English. I intended something more substantial, shall we say. Something that will make you remember me.” His hand caressed Helm’s leg, then moved upwards and encircled his cock, the glove rough against the skin, the grip ungentle. “Say your body is mine,” he said.

“Just fuck me,” said Helm, taunting him. He tried to move his hips, but Montoya was giving him no leverage. “Go ahead. Prove your manhood.”

Montoya stood. He pulled off Helm’s shoes and socks and trousers, tossing the fabric aside and leaving him naked. His legs freed from the cloth, Helm bent his knees and stretched them wide. Montoya said, “Don’t move.”

Helm rested his feet on the ground, watching Montoya’s back as he went to the sink, dipping his face in the water again, shaking his head as before. Then he took Helm’s bag, removing one glove to rummage in it. Finding what he wanted, a vial of rose-oil, he came back and stood looking down at Helm. Slowly he pulled off the second glove. Less slowly, he released his own trousers, leaving his erection large and free in the air. He stood between Helm’s knees, pouring rose-oil on his hands, dripping and rubbing it on his cock, running a little trail of it across Helm’s belly. “Is this what you use,” he asked, “when you fuck the Queen?”

“Is that what this is about? You take me because you can’t have her?”

Montoya’s face relaxed a little. “No. The opposite, in fact. Does that disgust you?”

“Infinitely,” lied Helm. His breathing was out of control and he was hard put to it not to touch himself, since Montoya hadn’t touched him yet, but he didn’t want to show the extremity of his eagerness. He couldn’t stop watching Montoya’s hands moving on his own erection, cock-head rosy with its own heat.

Then, on hands and knees over Helm, Montoya lapped at his chest, licked and sucked his nipples, strained at his neck. Their cocks touched casually. Helm pressed his upwards against Montoya, moving against his belly. Montoya pulled back. His hand reached between their bodies, and fingers still slick with oil caressed his arsehole. Teeth, tongue and lips worried his nipple and he could feel the sensations overcoming him, his mind losing track, his body clamouring with no thought but his need. The flagstones under him were hot from the sun, but the greater heat was within him.

Montoya impaled him, hard and swift, and he responded with a cry, taking him in, feeling him slip away, and then come back further and harder. Helm wanted more. He was biting his own hand to silence the cries. Montoya pulled his hand away, stretching it out, fingers intertwined. Helm made loud, guttural noises like an animal, feeling the intensity of it, his body filled, possessed, over-stimulated. There was a tongue in his ear and a fingertip stroking his thumb over and over, and a hand on his cock, gentle and then rough by turns, a finger smearing the wetness of its tip, and then he was lost to the power of it.

It must have overcome Montoya as well, because he pulled out of Helm’s body, his cock soft and wet, and he held Helm in his arms while tremors died away. When Helm moved his head to look up at him, he smiled. “Doctor. What a surprise. I had no idea you had such - passion - in you.”

“Fighting and fucking,” said Helm. “Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

“Is it? I thought you were the idealist.”

“Only on Tuesdays,” said Helm. Shivering suddenly, he held Montoya’s body tightly against him. He had no intention of telling Montoya his weaknesses, but for a moment they were allied in pleasure, in need, in the warm rush of satisfied lust that crept perilously close to affection.

Montoya thought for a moment. His voice was warm with amusement. “Robert, I hate to have to tell you, but this is Tuesday.”

“Imagine that. This must be idealism,” said Helm. He moved his forehead against Montoya’s shoulder, against deltoid, chest, armpit.

“Now we have a bond,” said Montoya. “And a secret.” He lay supine on the ground, restlessness abated for the moment. His eyes closed in relaxation.

Helm sat, leaning on one arm, looking down at him. “We always did. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Montoya looked up at him and said slowly, “You are a dangerous man.”

“More dangerous than you know.” Helm rose, unselfconscious in his nakedness, and gathered his clothes. The trousers were torn, but not badly: a few moments of sewing would fix the damage. His underwear was unsalvageable. He began to dress.

“I should have taken you to the bedroom,” said Montoya. “You will be bruised.”

Helm had no answer to that. He had discovered a streak in Montoya that he might, if he were forced to put a name to it, call kindness. He had used the oil, he thought about bruises. This was unexpected.

“I’ll survive,” said Helm dryly. He buttoned his shirt. He might, if he didn’t watch himself, develop an unwise sympathy for the enemy.

Perhaps he already had.

“Next time,” promised Montoya, “I will take you to my bed. It is comfortable and large.”

“Oh?” inquired Helm. “To accommodate the sheep?”

Montoya laughed out loud, and jumped to his feet. “I am sure that, in it, we will both be comfortable and our parts will become large.”

“When next I visit to fence with you. Because you have commanded me.”

“Yes.”

“And you will challenge me . . . on the same terms.”

“Or on any terms at all,” said Montoya. “Helm, I swear to you, there is nothing I would not do for your sweet body.”

Helm smiled, not sweetly at all. “How gratifying,” he said. “Since you are undressed, I will let myself out.”

But at the door, he paused and turned back. “My sport next time,” he said.

“Your sport?”

“Chess.”

“As long as there is a next time,” said Montoya, “I will play any game you wish.” The desire was still in his eyes, a mixture of greed and fondness. Helm looked away, afraid of the implications, afraid that Montoya’s feelings might mean something to him. He knew that a line had been crossed, they would never be as they had been. Enemy, lover – what middle ground could there be?

There was no foil in his hand now, but he knew the game had not ended. En garde.