shy or suprised. The underworld had sent a child to represent its interests.
Why? Surely they were not depending on some chivalrous dispensation to give the little girl the technical victory? Not when the fate of mountain and empire was at stake. Not when a thousand men had died already in the larger combat. Yet if they wanted to lose, it had hardly been necessary to make such an elaborate arrangement, or to sacrifice a child.
Var got up and disposed of his own harness, mainly to have something to do while he tried to think. It occurred to him that he should be embarrassed to be naked in the presence of a girl but his social conditioning dated only from his contact with civilization, and was not universally deep. The codes of honor were more immediate than personal modesty. And this was not a woman but a child. Except for her peeking cleft, she could be a young boy. Her hair was no longer, her chest no more developed.
He thought irrelevantly of Sola.
He came to meet the child cautiously, doubting that she could wield the full-sized sticks adequately.
Her slender arms moved rapidly. Her two sticks countered his own with expertise. She did know what she was doing.
So they fought. Var had size and strength, but the child had speed and skill. The match, astonishingly, was even.
Gradually Var realized that this outre situation was not at all a game. He had been prepared to battle a vicious man to the death, and bad trouble coping with a female child. Yet if he did not defeat her (he could not, now, bring himself to think 'kill'), he would be defeated himself and the Master's cause would be lost
Better to do it quickly. He attacked with fury, using his brute strength to beat the girl back toward the brink. She stepped back, and back again, but could not do so indefinitely. Stick met stick, no blow landing on flesh directly but Var applied pressure as he had done with dagger the day before, and improved his position.
She was two steps from the edge, one. Then she spun about without seeming to look, knocked one of his sticks up, ducked under it, scooted past him, and caught his wrist with a backhand swing that completely surprised him.
Var watched incredulously as one of his sticks flew from his numbed hand, to rattle down the mountainside. The maneuver had been so swiftly and neatly executed that he had not bad the chance to defend against it. Now, half disarmed, he was virtually lost. One stick could not prevail against two.
His inexperience in the circle had after all cost him the match. Hul would not have been caught so simply, and certainly not Tyl. Yet who would have expected such skill from a mere child?
Var waited for the attack that had to come. He was doomed, but he would not give up. Perhaps a lunge would catch her unaware in turn, or maybe he could throw them both off the mesa, making the battle a tie in mutual death. She looked at him a moment. Then, casually, she tossed one of her own sticks after his over the brink.
Dumbfounded, Var saw it clatter out of play. She could have tapped him on the skull in that moment without opposition, but she kept her distance.. 'You'
'So you owe me one,' she said. 'Fair fight.' And she came at him with the single stick.
Var had to fight, but he was-shaken. She had disarmed herself to make the match even again. When she could have had easy victory. He had never imagined such a thing in the circle.
There was no doubt that she meant business, however. She pressed him hard with her half weapon, and scored repeatedly on his unarmed side. It was a strange, off balance contest, requiring unusual contortions and reflexes to compensate for the missing stick, and the finesse of the dual weapons was largely gone.
Thus, clumsily, they fought. And Var, because the reduction of finesse brought her skill closer to his own level without correspondingly upgrading her strength, gradually gained the initiative. But he pursued it with restraint, for he did not need a second such lesson as the one that had cost him one stick. The child was most dangerous when she seemed most beleaguered. And he still wasn't certain what her sacrifice of her own stick meant. Surely she could not have been so confident of victory that she disarmed herself for the joy of enhanced competition! And surely she could not desire to lose....
Var had not survived his childhood in the badlands without being alert to the dangers of the unknown. Not all unknowns were physical.
She was tiring, and he slacked off some more, supercautious. The height of the sun showed they had been at it for some three hours, and now the afternoon was passing.
But how would it end, with their life-and-death battle reduced to mere sparring. Only one of them could descend the mountainside. Only one team could prevail. Delay could not change that harsh reality.
