Swordsman’s Resolve

Montricher’s scabbard clattered off the wet cobblestones as he lost his balance rounding the corner at full speed. The calamity of merchants and citizens being bowled over and their startled cries were all he needed to know the palace guards were hot on his tail.

Fortune smiled on him as a trolley of potatoes toppled over ahead and he nimbly swift-stepped over the rolling spuds before his pursuers were thwarted by the throng of poor folk who flooded into the street to snatch one or two before order was restored.

Ahead he saw yet another group of anxiously swivel-headed guards and he quickly cut down an alleyway, narrowly avoiding a fall of waste water that splashed his tall boots with all manner of filth. The end of the squalor lane led to much of the same – a busy rue increasingly thick with guards clearly on the lookout for someone and something. That someone, obviously, was Montricher himself, but of greater concern to them, and their sergeant-at-arms most particularly, was the silver pendant resting in his breast pocket atop his heaving chest.

He removed his plumed hat, and steeled himself to the rotten burlap sack that he wrapped over his tunic and the equally fetid mud he smeared across his face to disguise himself as one of the innumerable poor souls that shuffled through the streets of Havertreille. His father had wanted him to follow in his cooper’s footsteps but he had an exceptional skill for sword fighting and was drawn to the allure of defending the monarchy.

Luck again seemed to be on his side as he reached the steps of the honorable J.F. D’Ormonde’s residence without further incident. The respected magistrate and trusted long-time confidante was the only one he could trust to clear his name and prove that the pendant incriminated the sergeant in the kidnapping of Mademoiselle Descoteaux. Repeated knocks went unanswered, and the commotion that moved up the lane left him no choice. He picked the lock with ease in no time at all, as the King’s Elite Guard were equally well-trained in the illicit arts as well.

He removed his soiled boots and took care not to drip any blood onto the hall carpet as he made his way into the judge’s study. He took a seat at D’Ormonde’s writing desk, a beautiful crescent-shaped piece with marquetry inlays, a scalloped apron and long cabriole legs that fittingly had all the trappings of the intellectual elite. The good judge would sit at his Powell Masterpiece Hunt Desk and put his thoughts to paper with a quill pen and glass of fine cognac, and Montricher remembered this image fondly from his youth when the judge had taken him under his wing after his father’s passing. He had hoped he might have the same good fortune to be able to decorate a den of his own in a similar style with a visit to WritingDeskSelect.com , but it seemed such a life would never be his.

A series of impatient knocks at the door made it known time was of the essence. Montricher removed one of his custom-monogrammed black swordsman’s gloves, a gift from the magistrate years earlier, and dropped the pendant into it. A violent crash and the accompanying stampede of boots meant he had but seconds to spare. Even the old judge had vices, and Montricher quickly opened the baseboard in the floor in which D’Ormonde hid his opium and dropped the glove into it before re-concealing the spot.

He unsheathed his rapier in anticipation of their arrival and smiled to himself knowing they’d prefer to take him alive. Either way would have been fine, but as they escorted him from the building he saw the good judge standing in the crowd and winked at him with an all-knowing confidence.

It was only a matter of time, and pain was a temporary sensation.