darkening.
And he was small and alone and wanting, so desperately wanting, to be helped.
The miracle came in a bubble.
Dumarest watched as it came from over the horizon, a shimmering ball of rainbow colors to drift toward him, to settle and turn into a chamber fitted with a mass of medical equipment staffed by solemn-faced attendants. The plain too had changed; now it was an expanse of rolling sward dotted with brilliant flowers and the sky held the hues of spring, soft greens and delicate yellows tinged with cool violet and warming orange.
And he felt no pain.
Not when, suddenly, he was lying on the gleaming surface of a table with a golden-haired woman leaning over him, her face filled with admiration. Not when, somehow, she healed his wounds and he sat up, his clothing undamaged, the knife back in his boot.
And, as there had been no pain, now there were no corpses either of men or the things which had attacked him.
A thought and they had gone.
But the girl?
Dumarest looked at her as she stood as if waiting for him to speak. Tall, golden haired, her face round and impassive. A nurse or a physician-certainly she had healed him. Or at least he had been healed at the touch of her hands. Hands which, seemingly, had also repaired his clothing and replaced his knife.
Iduna?
She blinked as he asked and looked her astonishment.
'My lord I am Tarunda. To have served you is a pleasure I shall treasure for always.'
Her voice was like the caress of a breeze on scented roses and her perfume sent fires running in his blood. A woman and one vaguely familiar. Where had he seen her before?
And why had he been attacked by giant insects?
They had come from the sand, boiling from the plain, too many to find food in such a place and too ferocious for things so large. They had come as if in a dream, a nightmare, and even when dead and dying they had held a sickening horror.
But he had met such forms before and had no fear of different forms of life. Sand and a red sky and creatures which had attacked without warning and, vaguely seen in the background, the watching figures of cybers.
They at least he could understand, the tall shapes dressed in scarlet represented a danger which had threatened him for too long now. They and the organization they served, the wide-flung and powerful Cyclan which manipulated men as if they were puppets.
But here?
The girl worried him with her vague familiarity and he stared at her trying to fit a place and background to the face and figure. The hospital on Shallah? No, he had not seen her there. In a tavern somewhere? There had been too many. Tarunda? He mentally spoke the name. Tarunda of… of… Tarunda!
And it was there before him.
The ring with the circle of watching faces, the smell, the avid gleam of watching eyes. The animal-stink of fear and oil and blood. The reek of anticipated pain. The knife gripped in his sweating palm, ten inches of honed and polished steel, a match to the one held by the man facing him. A tall, smiling, feral shape with the blotch of a tattoo smeared across his torso.
The shriek of a woman's voice.
'Get him, Spider! Slice him open and let's see the color of his guts!'
His first commercial fight.
Dumarest could feel the impact of the floor beneath his naked feet as he waited for the bell. Feel too the hunger gnawing at his stomach. Fight and be fed. Win and get a stake. Lose and what the hell has gone?
A young man, little more than a boy, still mourning the death of his only friend, now forced to fight in order to survive.
'Kill him!' screamed the woman again. 'Kill him, Spider-and tonight you can crawl right into me!'
An invitation which sent slanted eyes flickering in her direction as the bell jarred its harsh note. A moment in which Dumarest acted, moving to the attack, cutting, drawing blood, backing-to feel the burn and rip as steel laced a ruby path over his ribs.
A mistake. He should have thrust and aimed for a vital point or, no, he should have cut and cut again and not given the man time to get in a blow of his own. But how to gain the experience of years in a few brief minutes? How to match such acquired skill?
How to live long enough to learn?
Dumarest dodged as the man attacked, steel flashing, seeming to vanish, to reappear again in an unexpected place. Speed alone saved him, the thin, vicious whip of slashed air casting a transient breeze against his side. A blow which if it had landed would have cut him deep to show his insides.
A momentary display of anger on his opponent's part. Confident in his skill, he wanted to extend the bout so as to gain a cheap reputation. The wound he had taken was a minor cut, blood making it seem worse than it was, and it would be better to give the crowd a spectacle rather than a quick kill. The savage cut was a mistake he would not repeat.
Instead he would dart in to cut sinew and nerve and tendon, to leave Dumarest maimed and crippled and a mass of shallow, gaping wounds. An eye ruined, perhaps, an ear removed, the nose converted into gaping orifices, the lips slashed.
The young bastard would pay for getting in first!
He weaved, lunged, blinked as his edge missed flesh, felt the burn of another wound, the wet warmth of flowing blood. Dumarest, backing, watched the interplay of muscle on his opponent's thighs and calves. The set of the feet which signaled an attack, the lift of the hand to position the knife, the flash which he confidently parried-to feel the shock, the pain, the sear of slicing metal as another bloody adornment was cut into his torso.
A cut which could have been a thrust which could have found his heart. Blood which flowed from his ribs but which even now could be spurting from his stomach. A mistake the man had made. He should have gone in for the kill while he had the chance. Now, grimly determined, Dumarest realized that to survive he must kill.
Steel clashed, parted, blades meeting again to emit thin, high ringing notes which hung in the fevered air like the distant chiming of bells. Dumarest dodged, felt the burn of another wound, cut back in turn and dodged again as the more experienced man continued his attack with a sweeping backhanded cut which changed to an upthrusting lunge. A master of his trade, one who had killed so often he had forgotten the count, one who now decided the fight had lasted long enough.
One whose confidence dug him a grave.
Dumarest was young and obviously a novice. He could be deluded and be made to appear a fool. For a moment only he would appear to have the advantage and then he would become meat for butchery. A screaming, whimpering, bloodied thing which would lie on the canvas and stain it with his blood.
Then the blades touched again and the target which should have been within reach had vanished to dart in, to sting with naked steel, to back and dodge and run and hit again, and again, and again until the tattoo was lost beneath red and all thoughts lost but the need to get in and strike. To hit and kill!
A moment in which the watchers saw oiled bodies seeming to embrace, the glitter of blades, the pant, the meaty impact, the sudden spurting of crimson as, slowly, one fell to leave Dumarest standing, knife in hand, his torso a mess of blood.
And then Tarunda who had taken him to her home.
A harlot, she had been touched by his youth and ignorance. A haunter of taverns who chased the flattering gloom of fire and candlelight and who, yielding to a whim, had nursed him back to health. Sewing his cuts and supplying antibiotics when they had festered and food to restore his energies and, later, that which had made him one of many.
Tarunda-how had he forgotten her?
The years held the answer. Too many years and too many journeys and too many fights and too many other women who had wanted to help him and who had loved him in their fashion. But had she really looked as this girl looked now?
Dumarest studied her as she stood beside him patiently waiting. Young, lovely, the hair a mane of natural
