User:JohnB/Fanfiction/The Three Arquebusiers

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by JohnB

(This is a scene taken from Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers in which D’Artagnan sets out on a journey from Gascony to Paris to meet his father’s old friend, also a Gascon, who happens to be the head of King Louis XIII’s body guards. D’Artagnan immediately runs afoul with the three most loyal and trustworthy men [if they can stay out of scrapes with Cardinal Richelieu’s body guards] who’ve been assigned to train him. Arquebus was the French pronunciation of the Dutch “haakebus” [a hook mounted rifle], and the “bus” part survives in the English word “blunderbuss”. I didn’t think it would matter if firearms don’t exist in Morrowind because they don’t really exist in the original story either, except maybe in the Siege of Rochelle scene. The three musketeers were otherwise too busy swashing their buckles to handle firearms.)

Get Out While You Can:[edit]

Eighteen-year-old Darta-nyan entered the yurt and sat cross-legged next to his father's mattress, where the former Ahemmusa gulakhan lay. Darta-nyan's mother helped the old man up, and she tucked some cushions behind his back to help him sit upright.

"Father, I heard you sent for me."

"That is right," he said panting with a gurgly voice. "I feel I am not long for this world and so must speak with you about an urgent matter. Your brother the gulakhan is headstrong and self-centered and does not mean well with you. I fear for your safety after I have left to be with my forefathers. When I was your age, I did a three-year stint in the Imperial Legion. I never met the present Knight of the Imperial Dragon, who heads the legion, but he should know from the census that I am an aristocrat, by ashlander standards, but an aristocrat nonetheless. I have asked our camp scribe to write this letter of introduction for you to hand deliver to the Knight of the Imperial Dragon and request admittance into the elite regiment of Duke Dren's bodyguards. You may take with you what you find in that chest over there."

Darta-nyan turned to the long chest at the foot of the old man's mattress and opened it. The red-lacquered "saya" (scabbard) looked too beautiful to be touched by mortal hands. He had often heard of this legendary katana but never set eyes on it as his father always guarded it jealously.

"Go ahead, it's yours now," the old man urged him. "I can't take it with me." His chuckle ended in coughing fit.

Darta-nyan took it from the chest and set it on the floor to his left.

"Now come, let me bless you."

Darta-nyan drew near, and the old man laid a hand on his head, murmured a prayer, then kissed him on the forehead.

"Go in peace, my son, and may fortune be with you!"

Darta-nyan rose and embraced his weeping mother. He bade them both farewell and wiped the tears from his eyes as he left the yurt.

Swaggering into Ebonheart:[edit]

Wearing stitched animal hides and the eye-catching katana held fast to his belly with a long "obi" (sash), Darta-nyan swaggered into Ebonheart resting his wrist confidently on the hilt to show that he wasn't afraid of using the sword. A quick grasp of the scabbard with one hand as his other hand flashed the blade therefrom, and his opponent was history.

As if the combination of savage clothing and exquisite katana wasn’t incongruous enough, he also wore the katana on his right side, a dead giveaway that he was left-handed. Common sense dictated that only right-handed people were qualified to wield a sword--"lefties" needn't apply; however, Darta-nyan compensated for this perceived “flaw” by training his right hand to wield a dagger, thereby becoming ambidextrous in his fighting style. Parrying wakizashis can only do just that, parry, but a right-handed opponent had to be very cautious with a left-handed fighter, especially one who handled a dagger equally well with the right hand. This wasn’t immediately apparent to an opponent until he found himself struggling to save his own life.

(This was certainly true in Japan. Samurai were required to be right-handed, so when one samurai visited another, seated on the floor, the visitor would take his sheathed sword from the left side and place it to his right as a sign that he came in peace. However, when a visitor came to assassinate the anti-Shogunate agitator Sakamoto Ryoma, he followed the protocol only to grab the saya with his right hand and sweep the katana with his left across Ryoma's forehead just below the hairline spilling his brains. Ryoma packed a six-shooter in his kimoto but had no time to draw and defend himself. It's believed the assassin was ambidextrous with the katana.)

When Darta-nyan arrived at the council chamber in Ebonheart castle, Vantinius accepted the letter of recommendation from Darta-nyan's father. But just as he was scanning the letter, three swordsmen appeared and presented themselves to him. One of them had a bandaged left shoulder.

“Master, we received word that you have called for us,” the big one, an orc, announced.

Vantinius’s eyes flashed as he looked up from the letter.

“Darta-nyan, would you be so kind as to step into the next room?”

He did as he was asked, but he was still within hearing distance of the thunder Vantinius unleashed on the three about a dust-up that had occurred with some temple ordinators in Vivec, in which one of the three men was wounded in the shoulder.

“I can’t afford to lose any men, so stay away from the ordinators! And if provoked, ignore them. Have I made myself understood.”

“Yes, sir,” they responded apologetically. “It won’t happen again.”

Darta-nyan, being from the barbaric Grazelands, was unaware that citified manners dictated one conceal one’s amusement at seeing burly fighting men humbled thus, and the slight grin on his face as he stood watching through the open door was not lost on the three.

The "Old" Katana:[edit]

“Oh, go call the young man back,” Vantinius said, and one of the three went to the doorway and motioned to Darta-nyan to come back in as Vantinius continued reading the letter of introduction.

"Tell me more about yourself," Vantinius said.

"My elder brother took over as gulakhan after my father's retirement, and seeing that I was a perceived threat to my brother, my father urged me to go out and seek my fortune as a professional swordsman, something I've been training myself for a decade, receiving instruction from anybody I met who could handle a sword."

“That’s a rather fine katana you’ve got there,” Vantinius observed. “May I see it?”

Darta-nyan withdrew the sword and handed it over hilt first.

“My father gave it to me. He received it from his father, who received it from his father, going all the way back to the battle of Red Mountain where it was picked up as booty,” Darta-nyan informed him.

Vantinius inspected the blade.

“The Battle of Red Mountain, you say. Isn’t this the maker’s mark of the armorer Yagak gro-Gluk in Godsreach?”

Darta-nyan looked where Vantinius was pointing with his finger and blushed.

“Well, you know, the old man always had a gift of the blarney,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Even so, it’s a very fine blade!” Vantinius responded turning it this way and that, and then noticed how Darta-nyan received it back with his left hand and sheathed it in the scabbard on his right side.

Without questioning Darta-nyan about his hand preference, he ordered the three arquebusiers to instruct Darta-nyan in the proper use of the sword. Their names were Porthos gro-Durgash, an Altmer named Athos, and a Breton named Aramis, who had his left arm in a sling.

Teaching the Young Pup a Lesson:[edit]

They took Darta-nyan back out the landward gate and hiked closer toward the gates of the Hlaalu Canton so as not to be observed by the Ebonheart guards. The last thing they wanted was to resist arrest by Vantinius's own men.

“Sera, it seems we’ve been ordered to teach you a lesson in the use of the sword and especially in good manners. This seems a suitable place for doing both. Who goes first?” he asked the other two.

"He's just a boy," Athos replied. "I'd hate to be the one who sends him to Oblivion."

"I can still fight," Aramis answered, "but I don't want to go first."

"Maybe we should pick straws," Porthos suggested because he was so much bigger than the young pup.

"I tell you what," Darta-nyan put in, "how about if I take you all on at the same time?"

The three looked at each other.

"I don't like this," Aramis said. "Master Vantinius said to teach him a lesson, not take him out and kill him."

"Oh, I can reassure you," Darta-nyan laughed sardonically, "I'm not the one who's going to be dead!"

In a flash, there was a katana in his left hand and a steel dagger in his right. He waved them around with a flourish then took his idiosyncratic fighting stance--left foot slid forward, katana held upright in the left hand and steel dagger in his right arching over his head like a scorpion tail--to show they'd better not get too close.

They drew their swords, and they stood at the ready but seemed paralyzed with indecision. Each thought his first move could be his last.

Their Disobedience:[edit]

As the stalemate wore on, there was a shout, "Drop your weapons!"

Four ordinators came running out of the Hlaalu gate.

"Dueling is prohibited by law! I order you to come in peace! Men, take their weapons!"

The three arquebusiers directed their swords toward the guards. Darta-nyan joined them.

"Boy, stand back!" an ordinator told him. "This isn't your fight!"

"You've made it my fight!" Darta-nyan responded. "I'm with them now!"

The ordinators pulled out their maces and attacked. What should have been an even fight was over in a few minutes with all the ordinators too wounded to fight on. The three arquebusiers, plus one, escaped back to Ebonheart.

"Sir," Porthos reported standing at attention with the others, "we have just returned from a fight with the ordinators."

Nobody was bloodied nor looked even the least bit harried.

"Was anybody killed?" Vantinius asked in trepidation.

"No, sir. This little guy really knows how to disable without killing."

"And what did you fellows do?"

"We stood at the ready just in case, but it was over almost before it started. It was a wonder to see."

"I used to watch my father butchering nix hounds he hunted," Darta-nyan explained, "and he would show me the muscles and tendons and then run a finger over his own arm or leg showing where the same muscle or tendon could be found in us. Sever a hamstring, and your opponent is like a helpless babe on the ground. The elbow and wrist are especially vulnerable. Jerked and twisted in just the right way can pull them out of joint, and there goes your opponent's sword arm."

"Sir," Athos continued, "we humbly request that Darta-nyan be inducted into our regiment and become one of us."

Vantinius could scarcely believe what he was hearing.

"Darta-nyan, is it true that you really did this."

"It is true, Sir!" he answered standing at attention like the others. "I had no choice. My comrades were being attacked."

Vantinius couldn't help laughing and shaking his head.

"Your request is granted," he said to Porthos, "after the four of you have cooled your heels for a fortnight in prison. Guards take them away, but treat them well."

The four comrades gladly surrendered their arms and marched out to serve their time.