personality. Hatch unsheathed his sword, discarded the scabbard, and ventured down the short corridor which led to the bridge.
Hatch went striding down the corridor, and entered the bridge. All those on the bridge were focused on display screens.
Asodo Hatch closed the distance to the seat where Lupus Lon Oliver sat.
'Lupus,' said Hatch, speaking softly, quietly.
Lupus Lon Oliver looked up.
'Hi,' said Hatch.
Then brought his sword slamming down.
Lupus dodged from the blade, almost but not quite evading it.
The blade slammed against skullbone and sliced away a crescent of blood, cutting away an ear in the course of its butchering.
Lupus scrambled to his feet, and as he scrambled he tried to pull his sidearm from his belt. Hatch whacked him on the side of the head with the flat of his blade. Lupus staggered. Hatch kicked his legs from under him. Lupus crashed down, deadweight falling.
Hatch, panting, steadied himself, steadied his breath, then said:
'Lupus.'
Lupus looked up. And Hatch chopped down. Lupus tried to pull away. Blade chopped into bone. Stunned but not dead, the wounded Lupus groped on the deck. All around the bridge, men were leaping from their consoles. The fastest-witted starwarriors were already sprinting toward Hatch.
But there was time, there was plenty of time for Hatch to swing into an executioner's stance, and this he did, and he brought his sword down hard and fast. Hatch chopped two-handed.
His blade impacted with flesh. With bone. But Lon Oliver's head was still attached to the neck by a hinge of skin and flesh. A mighty man was Asodo Hatch, but it had been a long time since he had chopped off anyone's head, and he had quite lost the knack of it.
'Well, the hell with it,' said Hatch. 'It's a killing, not a sacrifice.'
Then he threw back his head and laughed, and was still laughing as the first attacker slammed into him, taking him down in a tackle. Down went Hatch, the world wavering as if he had taken a deep-sea dive, and when the world ceased to waver -
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dalar ken Halvar: a political briefing. In the absence of the Silver Emperor, a revolution by the Yara – the Unreal underclass – has prompted the Free Corps and the Imperial Guard to seize control in a coup. The coup-makers, who have yet to secure proper control of the city, have been unable to prevent the Yara from setting much of the city alight in widespread rioting.
Asodo Hatch, who has enemies amongst the Free Corps, and who is opposed to the coup, is sheltering in the Combat College in company with his wife Talanta, his daughter Onica, his sister Penelope, and his lover, the Lady Iro Murasaki. All these – and a certain moneylender by the name of Polk – are likely to meet a swift yet unpleasant death if forced out of the Combat College.
Hatch has been competing in battle with Lupus Lon Oliver, son of Manfred Gan Oliver, the prize being a permanent position in the Combat College as instructor. Hatch has succeeded in killing Lupus in the world of the illusion tanks, but has yet to encompass his enemy's death in the world of the fact and the flesh.
Who has dared amongst the gods yet still Though golden in the living flesh Finds clay disputes him, He Endures intractables, and knows – While we, Though blind to face the gods, Still see the butterfly, and, Blinded by its transcendence, presume – Asodo Hatch entered Forum Three with a sack in his hand. The sack was of synth, and waterproof, which was just as well, for there was liquid within as well as something weighty.
'Ho!' said Shona, bellowing her approval. 'Ho, Hatch!'
Hatch raised the sack in salute.
Others roared applause. Above all, they loved the way the victory had been won. This was not a cheating stunt like the fractional win Hatch had earlier achieved by ejecting from his singlefighter, with the machine destroying itself and his enemy moments later. Instead, he had closed for an honest kill, a meatcleaving sword-kill, a work of bloody butchery. He had won with a bright-daring stratagem worthy of a hero – and there were few in that room who did not wish themselves heroes.
But no Frangoni Combat Cadet or Startrooper in Forum Three would look Hatch in the eye. For Hatch had disowned the Frangoni nation, had disowned the Frangoni god.
Hatch glanced at Talanta. That glance was sufficient to tell him that his wife had not understood his shipboard dialog with Sen Kaladan, couched as it had been in the Nexus Commonspeech, of which she was entirely ignorant.
But soon, doubtless, someone would tell her.
Soon, doubtless, he would know.
Asodo Hatch had renounced his god.
Asodo Hatch had renounced the Great God Mokaragash, and he had declared himself for Nu-chala-nuth.
A thing said is a thing said wherever it is said. Written by handscript or written in water, that which is said cannot be unsaid. Too many Frangoni had witnessed the saying for the thing to be kept secret. Hatch would be unwelcome hereafter on the Frangoni rock. His name would be given to a dog, and then that dog would be burnt alive in token of the community's displeasure.
He had lost his people, he had lost his nation, and there was no recovering them. He was an exile now, or would be soon, an outcast stranger in his own city, a man without tribe, a man without family, a man without a people.
But Hatch was a warrior, and though he acknowledged what he had done he nevertheless went on regardless, just as – in battle – he would have stepped over the fresh-dead body of his best friend to lead an attack which would win him victory.
'Lupus!' shouted Hatch.
Challenging.
Looking around for his rival, for Lupus Lon Oliver.
Where was he? Where was he?
As Hatch was searching for him, Lupus came stumbling into Forum Three, gray with shock. Lupus had just lived through the trauma of having his head hacked off, and Hatch – Hatch was not about to let him forget it.
'Lupus,' said Hatch.
Lupus Lon Oliver turned to face his enemy, the man who had outwitted him, who had outfeinted and outfought him, and had then dealt him a grievous punishment.
'Lupus,' said Hatch, grinning. 'A present for you.'
Then Hatch upended his sack, and out bounced Lupus Lon Oliver's head, and rolled across the floor in a spew of blood, and blood still splurged from the sack, pumping out in gouting orgasms. Hatch grinned like a lunatic, grinned – then laughed ferociously. As Hatch laughed, Lupus doubled up and vomited.
'The Season!' said Hatch. 'I live for the Season!'
'Enough,' said Paraban Senk, speaking from Forum Three's display screen. 'Hatch, you've won. Lon Oliver, you've lost. To the victor, the spoils.'
Forum Three erupted. The audience howled, cheered, jeered, stamped, and threw things.
As Hatch stood firm to receive this mixed derision and applause, a free-floating machine entered Forum Three, drifted toward the simulcrum-head of Lon Oliver, swallowed it, vacuumed up the artificial blood and was gone, satisfied with the competence of its performance – though some stains of pseudoblood remained as token of the outrage Hatch had just perpetrated.
Hatch was startled by the advent of the machine. He had seen such devices before, of course – many times. But he had presumed, on the basis of the evidence of the steadily mounting litter which had lately degraded the Combat College's environment, that all such cleaning machines were permanently disabled.
