Now those crowns should bear interest!
I changed my tactics, lunged no more; our blades became silent; they ceased to hiss like drops of water falling on live coals or hot iron; almost they lay motionless together, mine over his, yet I feeling through blade and hilt the strength of that black, hairy wrist which held the other weapon. Also, I think he felt the strength of mine; once his eye shifted, though had the moment been any other the shift would have been unnoticeable.
That was my time! Swift as lightning, I, remembering the dwarf's lessons of long ago--why did I remember also the little sniggering chuckle he used to utter as he taught them?--drew back my sword an inch, then thrust, then back again with a sharp wrench, and, lo! Morales' sword was flying through the air three feet above his head--he was weaponless! My own was drawn back a second later, another moment I should have avenged his assassin's thrust at Juana--yet I could not do it. For he, recognising he was doomed, stood there before me, his arms folded over his breast, his eyes confronting mine.
"Curse you!" he said, "you have won. Well--kill me. At once."
No need for me to say that could not be. In the moment that I twisted his weapon out of his wrist I had meant to slay him, had drawn back my own weapon to thrust it through chest and lungs and back, and stretch him dead at my feet--yet now I spared him.
Villain as he was--scoundrel who would traffic with a broken-hearted woman for her honour and her soul as a set-off against her father's safety, and, in doing so, also betray the country he served--I could not slay a defenceless man.
His sword had fallen at my feet; one of them was upon it. I motioned to him now to return to the fonda--to begone.
"You have missed your quarry," I said; "'twill never fall to your lure again. Away!"
Yet, still standing there before us--for now Juana had once more flown to my side, and was sobbing bitterly, her wild, passionate words expressing partly her thanks to God for my double safety, and partly her bewailings that her father had gone to his fate--he had something to say, could not depart without a malediction.
"Curse you both!" he exclaimed once more. "Curse you! Had I known of your trick you should all have burnt and grilled on the braséro ere this--ay, even you, wanton!--ere I had let you fool me so."