If the contest did not end soon, the victor would not have enough time remaining before dusk to make a safe descent. Mt. Muse was challenging at any time, and seemed impossible in the dark. -
It did not end soon. The battle had become a mockery, for neither person was really trying to win. Not immediately, anyway. Both were holding back, conserving strength, waiting for some more crucial move by the other that did not come. Stick still beat against stick; but the force was perfunctory, the motions routine.
Dusk did come. The girl stepped back, dropping her weapon. 'We shouldn't fight at night,' she said.
Var lowered his own weapon, agreeing, but alert for betriyal.
She walked to the edge, leaving her stick behind. 'Don't look,' she said. She squatted.
Var realized that she had to urinate. But if he turned his back she could run up behind him and push. Still, if he could not trust her during this period of truce, he had had no business agreeing to it. And there had been that matter of the extra stick. Her codes were different than his, but they seemed consistent.
He faced outward and relieved his own bladder into the gloom below.
Their toilets done, the two returned to the center of the plateau. Darkness filled the landscape like a great ocean, but their island remained clear. And lonely.
'I'm hungry,' she said.
So was he. But there was nothing to eat. All concerned had assumed that the battle would be of short duration, so no provision for a prolonged stay had been made.
Perhaps this had been intentional: if the champions did not fight with sufficient vigor, thirst and hunger would prompt them.
'You don't talk much, do you,' she said.
'I don't talk well,' Var explained. The mangled syllables conveyed the message more clearly than the language did.
Oddly, she smiled, a flash of white in shadow. 'My father doesn't talk at all. He got hurt in the throat, years ago. Before I can remember. But I understand him well enough.'
Var just nodded.
'Why don't you take that side, and I'll take this side, and we'll sleep,' she said, gesturing. 'Tomorrow we'll finish this.'
He agreed. He took his stick and skuffed it across the center of the plateau, making a line that divided the area in halves. He lay down in his territory.
The girl sat up for a while, looking very small. 'What is your name?'
'Var.'
'Growr?
'Var.'
'I don't see any bad scar on your throat. Why can't you talk?'
Var tried to figure out a simple way to answer that, but failed.
'What's it like, outside?' she asked.
He realized that he did not need to reply sensibly to her questions. She was more interested in talking than in listening.
'It's cold,' she said.
Var hadn't thought about it, but she was right. A hard chill was settling on the mesa, and they were both naked and without sleeping bags. He could endure it, of course; he had slept exposed many times in youth. But she was smaller then be, and thinner, and her skin was soft.
In fact, the cold would be more than an inconvenience to her. She could die from exposure. Already her hunched hairless torso was shaking so violently he felt the tremors in the ground.
Var sat up. 'That favour I owe you,
