arrogant man, with large nose and ears, sat beside her.
Centaine was watching him with that disconcerting enigmatic expression in her dark eyes that he had come to recognize so well. He turned his back on her deliberately, trying to convey the full force of his contempt and hatred, and watched Cyrus Lomax climb into the ring across from where he stood.
The American had a well-muscled body the colour of milk chocolate, but his magnificent head was all African, like one of those antique bronze castings of an Ashanti Prince, with deep-domed brow and wide-spaced eyes, thick lips sculpted into the shape of an Assyrian war bow, and a broad flat nose.
He wore the red, white and blue stars and stripes on his chest and there was an air of menace about him.
This one is the worst you will ever meet, Uncle Tromp had warned Manfred. If you can beat him, you can beat them all. The referee called them to the centre of the ring and announced them and the crowd roared at Manfred's name.
He felt strong and indomitable as he went back to his corner.
Uncle Tromp smeared Vaseline on his cheeks and eyebrows and slipped the red gumshield into his mouth.
He slapped Manfred's shoulder, an open-handed stinging blow that was like the goad to the bull and he hissed in his ear.
Fast as a mamba! Brave as a ratel! Manfred nodded, mouthing the bulky rubber shield, and went out to the chime of the gong, into the hot white glare of lights. The American came to meet him, stalking him like a dark panther.
They fought matched and equal, they fought close and hard, blows with the power to maim and stun slipping by just a shade wide, sensing each other's intention with almost supernatural concentration and shifting the head, pulling back, ducking, using the spring of the ropes, blocking with forearm and glove and elbows, neither ever quite connecting but both of them hostile and quick and dangerous.
The gong tolled the rounds, five, six and seven, Manfred had never been forced to fight this long. Always his victories had come swiftly, ending in that sudden barrage of blows that smashed his opponent into the canvas. However, the hard training that Uncle Tromp had imposed upon him had given him long wind, and toughened his legs and arms. He felt strong and invulnerable still, and he knew it had to come soon. He had only to wait it out. The American was tiring. His punches no longer snapped with quite the same velocity. The mistake must come and Manfred waited for it, containing his passionate hunger to see the American's blood.
it came halfway through the seventh round.
The American threw one of those straight hissing lefts, and not even seeing it, sensing it with animal instinct, Manfred reared back pulling in his chin and the blow brushed his face but stopped short.
Manfred was poised on the balls of his feet, with his weight back but ready to move forward, his right arm was cocked, the fist clenched like a blacksmith's hammer, and the American was a hundredth part of a second slow on the recovery. Seven hard rounds had tired him and he dragged a fraction, and his right side was open. Manfred could not see the opening, it was too minute, too fleeting, but again that instinct triggered him and experience guided his arm; he knew by the set of the American's shoulders, the angle of his arm and the cock of his head where the opening was.
it was too quick for conscious decision, and the punch was already launched before he could think but the decision was made instinctively and it was to end it in one.
Not his usual two-handed, swarming battering finish, but the single stroke, decisive and irretrievable, that would end it all.
It began in the great elastic muscles of his calves and thighs, accelerating like a stone in the swing of a slingshot through the twist of his pelvis and spine and shoulders, all of it channelled into his right arm like a wide roaring river trapped in a narrow canyon; it went through the American's guard and burst into the side of his dark head with a force that made Manfred's teeth clash together in his own skull.
It was everything he had, all his training and experience, all his strength, all his guts and his heart and every finely tuned muscle was behind that blow, and it landed solid and cleanly.
Manfred felt it go. He felt the bones of his right hand break, snapping and crackling like dry twigs, and the pain was a white electric thing that flared back up his arm and filled his head with flames. But in the pain was triumph and soaring joy for he knew it was over. He knew he had won.
The flames of agony cleared from his vision and he looked to see the American crumpled on the canvas at his feet, but the wild soaring of his heart stopped and turned to a plunging stone of despair. Cyrus Lomax was still on his feet. He was hurt and staggering, his eyes dull and sightless, his legs filled with cotton waste and his skull with molten lead, tottering on the very brink, but he was still on his feet.
Kill him! screamed the crowd. Kill him! Manfred could see how little it needed, just one more with the right hand, for the American was out on his feet, just one more. But there was no more, nothing left. The right hand was gone.
The American was reeling about drunkenly, bouncing off the ropes, knees sagging and then by some immense effort of will recovering again.
The left hand. Manfred summoned it all, everything that remained. I've got to take him with the left. And through his own agony he went after him again.
He threw the left hand, going for the head, but the American smothered it with an uncoordinated forward lunge, and he threw both arms around Manfred's shoulders and clinched him, clinging to him like a drowning man. Manfred tried to throw him off and the crowd noise was a berserk thunder, the referee shouting above it Break! Break! but the American held on just long enough.
When the referee got them apart, Cyrus Lomax's eyes were sighted and focused; and he backed away in front of Manfred's desperate efforts to land with the left hand, and the bell rang.
What is it, Manie? Uncle Tromp seized him and guided him to his corner. You had him beaten. What went wrong? My right, Manfred mumbled through the pain, and Uncle Tromp touched it, just above the wrist and Manfred almost screamed. The hand was ballooning, the swelling spreading up the arm even as they stared at it.
I'm throwing in the towel, Uncle Tromp whispered. You can't fight with that hand! Manfred snarled at him, No! His eyes were fierce and yellow as he looked across the ring to where they were working on the dazed American, cold compresses and sal volatile, slapping his cheeks, talking to him, talking him round.
