The sky was very blue, the only clouds thin, white streaks on the eastern horizon, the sun settling downward in the west. The grass was golden and rippling. When he had been walking, the day had seemed rather hot, but, now that he was standing still and letting the breeze cool him, the weather seemed ideal.
He was not particularly fond of grass nor of grasslands; he had grown up around forests and served most of his time in the army in forests, and the open country felt bare and unprotected by contrast. The best thing about it was the vast, uncluttered sky.
The shatra paused, perhaps two hundred yards away, and watched him; Valder could see the sun glinting on the demon’s close-fitting black helmet. He suddenly realized that the shatra was well within the effective range of the sorcerous weapons that his kind sometimes used and might be debating whether to shoot now or draw closer. Against combat sorcery Valder knew he had no chance at all; he dropped flat, hiding in the grass. He had seen no wands or talismans, but his situation was quite bad enough without taking unnecessary risks.
He lay in the grass for what seemed like hours, halfway onto his left side, ready to thrust himself upward with the sword raised. He listened, but heard nothing but the grass rustling in the wind.
He looked, but from where he lay he could see nothing but the grass a few inches from his nose.
He debated crawling off into the grass, away from his trail, in hopes that the shatra would lose track of him, but gave up the idea after a trial poke at the surrounding plants. The grass in his immediate vicinity was not particularly tall and rustled quite audibly when he stirred it; the shatra would be able to locate him easily.
“Soldier!” a voice called, speaking Ethsharitic with a thick, unpleasant accent. “Soldier! Come out and we may talk!”
Valder lay still and said nothing.
“Soldier, you do not need to die. We treat prisoners well. Stand up and drop your weapons and you may live!”
Valder knew this was unusual, this attempt to coax a surrender. Ordinarily the northerners were no more eager to burden themselves with prisoners than the Ethsharites were; after all, prisoners had to be kept for life, since there were no provisions for exchange and the war had been going on since time immemorial and seemed likely to continue forever. The shatra had some reason for wanting Valder alive. Most probably, the Ethsharite guessed, the northerners wanted to find out how a lone enemy came to be wandering around behind their lines to begin with. They might also be wondering whether the dragon was a part of an Ethsharitic force.
As he thought back over what he had done, Valder realized that he had probably made quite an impression. He had appeared mysteriously out of nowhere, disposed of a coastal sentry, slain an expert swordsman in fair combat and then seriously wounded another man as well, and topped it all off by leading a hungry young dragon into a northern encampment that was presumably nowhere near the front.
He wondered how long he would live if he accepted the shatra’s offer of imprisonment and how long his dying would take. The northerners were said to be very ingenious in their use of torture. They were not likely to be gentle with someone who had caused them so much trouble. It seemed unreasonable to think that they might let him live out his natural span.
“Soldier, you are being very foolish. If you do not surrender by the time I count to five, I must kill you.”
Valder noticed that the notherner’s voice had come much closer. He had decided, without knowing it himself at first, that he was not going to buy himself a few days of life by surrendering, even though he had no important information that might be tortured out of him. He did not know where his unit was, or where the hermit had gone, or anything very useful about Wirikidor. He did not want to die — but he did not want to live in pain and disgrace, either. Besides, he could not drop Wirikidor if he tried; the sword would not allow it.
He listened carefully as the shatra began counting.
“One!”
He judged the northerner to be no more than thirty feet away now.
“Two!”
He was somewhere ahead and to the left. Presumably he knew Valder’s exact position and intended to take him from his bad side.
“Three!”
Valder adjusted his legs; he had changed his earlier decision and now intended to charge the shatra.
“Four!”
He launched himself upward, running through the knee-high grass toward the enemy, who stood roughly where Valder had expected him to be.
The shatra was not surprised. He smiled as Valder came toward him and raised his own drawn sword with leisurely grace.
Seeing the sword, Valder knew that the shatra either had no magical weaponry or preferred not to use it. He swung Wirikidor at the northerner’s throat.
As he had expected, the shatra’s sword snapped up and deflected Wirikidor.
As he had not really expected, however, Wirikidor responded on its own, twisting around the intercepting blade and striking down diagonally, stabbing into the shatra’s shoulder. Something hissed strangely, and sparkles of yellow light spat from the wound before ordinary red blood appeared.
Valder stared in delight. He had drawn first blood from a shatra! Wirikidor would save him after all! He tried to relax and let the sword do his fighting for him.
Wirikidor, however, did not cooperate. It swung back from the shoulder wound as if forced back by a blow, though the shatra, as surprised as Valder, had reacted by stepping back and assuming a defensive posture, without making any attempt to knock Wirikidor away.
Startled, Valder looked at his blade, and the two of them stood, scarcely four feet apart, both warily watching Wirikidor.
Naturally, the shatra was the first to recover. He brought his blade darting down toward Valder’s groin, apparently not troubled at all by his bleeding shoulder.
Wirikidor did nothing, but Valder managed to fall back out of the blade’s path. He lost his balance as he did so and landed in a sitting position. As he struggled to regain his feet, the northerner’s sword flashed toward his throat.
Wirikidor flashed up to meet it, then beat it back and slipped around the shatra’s hand and into the inside of his elbow.
There was no sound this time as the blade penetrated, but a single yellow flash preceded the first oozing blood. Wirikidor seemed to hesitate. It did not revert to lifeless metal but rather paused in mid-air, seeming to vibrate slightly.
The shatra was not so indecisive. The two wounds to his sword-arm, while scarcely more than pricks, nevertheless seemed to have affected his control; accordingly, he shifted his stance and tossed his sword from his right hand to his left before renewing the attack. This gave Valder time enough to rise to one knee.
For a moment Valder was unable to follow what happened, even though his own right hand was a part of it. At first the shatra was attacking, and then he was defending as Wirikidor met every attack and retaliated, pressing home its own assault, all in a blur of motion far too fast for a mere human like Valder to follow, never allowing so much as the fraction of a second the shatra would have needed to step back out of reach. Blood flowed redly down the northerner’s black tunic and spattered the grass.
Then, abruptly, it was over, and Valder found himself still on one knee, not yet having managed to arise, but with his sword thrust through the northerner’s heart. The northerner’s own sword had fallen from his hand, the blade still gleaming and unstained.
Shatra, however, were not mere mortals, and the northerner was not dead. He looked down at the sword that had impaled him and reached for it with both hands. The right was unsteady.
Valder stared in horror. He had no doubt that Wirikidor had found the shatra’s heart; the blade was buried in the northerner’s chest just left of center, yet he still lived.
Perhaps, Valder thought, he had no heart. He was shatra, not human, after all.
Valder tried to pull his sword free, but human reactions could not match shatra; the hands grabbed Wirikidor’s blade.
Wirikidor writhed, ripping open the shatra’s chest, and that was the end of it; the hands fell away and the northerner toppled backward, sliding off the enchanted blade. He lay in a heap on the trampled grass.
