Swords From the Sea by Harold Lamb

cool head, I vow," muttered the surgeon, calling Chancellor's attention to this. "He may not strike a good blow with his left, and so presses the tall fellow with his sword. Ha! "
    Durforth, feeling the blood drain from his wound, had advanced to the attack again, his dark eyes venomous. But Thorne's rapier coiled over his blade and forced him to give ground. Back and back he went, to the side of the field where they had entered. All his skill was bent to the task of guarding his life, for he was given no further chance to use the poniard.
    "A moment ago," quoth the surgeon critically, "the lad would have exchanged his throat for a blow, but now-a rare sword, he. Give you odds, sir, black beard."
    It fell out otherwise. Figures appeared in the dusk, running from the tavern, voices cried out and the ringing of steel ceased. Two gentlemen who came upon the scene had struck up the weapons of the antagonists, and between them stood a form there was no mistaking.
    "In the king's name, have done!"
    Master Cabot's thin voice was rife with anxiety. He breathed hard, having come in haste when he heard at the inn of the duel that was to be fought. With him were others in a green livery, and one especially, who, attired in all the splendor of costly sables and seal skin with a massy chain of gold around his throat, kept in the center of the newcomers as by right and stared about him thoughtfully, pinching his lip between thumb and forefinger.
    Durforth dashed the sweat from his eyes and flung down his weapons, calling upon the surgeon to bind his hurt, but Thorne confronted Cabot sword in hand, quivering with anger.
    "Sir, by what right do you come between us?"
    The old navigator leaned on his stick composedly.
    "Tush, lad, is the voyage to Cathay not a greater thing than thy wildfire temper? I cannot have Master Durforth spoiled for the venture. Nay he knoweth, above all others, the proper course to round Norway. Amend thy quarreling and cry quits."
    "Never!" broke in Thorne.
    Cabot fingered his long beard, frowning.
    "Thy father came to me at the manor house, and did ask that the duel be stopped, for like the loyal Englishman he is, he hath the success of the venture at heart."
    "Nay, your Durforth hath earned his death."
    "How? "
    Thorne opened his lips to reply, but beholding the new arrival who stood apart among the men in livery, he kept silence while the company in the meadow scanned him curiously.
    "I may not say, at this moment."
    Hearing this, Durforth, who had been bending over the bandage on his side, smiled and sheathed the sword that the surgeon handed him.
    "You are discreet-a trifle late, my young hotspur."
    "Here is a riddle," murmured Sebastian Cabot. "A youth who proclaims a just quarrel and a man grown who admits of none. Stay! Knowest thou this springald, Master Durforth?"
    "Not I. His face is strange to me."
    "Perhaps, gentlemen," observed a level voice, "I can rede ye this riddle."
    "Aye, we may well profit by thy wisdom, Renard," assented Cabot. "And so shall I be twice thy debtor, since thou hast been at the pains to come from London hither with a coach for my conveyance from the coast."
    Chapter VI
    Master Cabot Speaks
    The man addressed as Renard answered the navigator's courtesy with a bow. He had the assurance of one who makes himself at home in all company, yet the manner of one born in a high station. Carrying his head a little aslant, what with his beaked nose and his fur necklet he did somewhat resemble the fox that his name signified.
    "This youth, my masters," he went on, "is known to me and others as a follower of a certain person of the court. It is in my mind that his patron desired the death of your ship captain, and so dispatched this Thorne upon his mission of mortality. 'Tis said others have fallen by his blade in the duello."
    His words were tinged with a foreign accent, and he seemed to find in them food for a jest. At any rate he smiled, his thin face saturnine in the dusk.
    "Who sent you?"