singlesticks, and mottled skin showing under his heavy winter coverings?the man was more like a badlands beast that a nomad. But nomad he was, and he had already assumed a stance of combat. His long arms and heavy chest suggested enormous power; he would be savage with those sticks! Mottled skin.... 'Var the Stick!' Neq cried, amazed. The other spoke, but it sounded more like a growl. By concentrating, Neq made out the gist. 'You followed me for days. Now give cause why I should not drive you off.' Neq unveiled his sword. 'Cause enough here. But first you must answer my questions, for I have sought you long.' 'A changeling!' Var rasped, seeing Neq's arms. 'Do you know the circle?' Neq was surprised. 'You speak of the circle? You, slayer of children?' 'Never!' Var roared, coming at him. There was something wrong about his legs; though he wore boots, he did not walk like a man. A true beast in nomad outfit... it was no longer a mystery why he had killed the young girl Soli. He had probably eaten her. Var struck at him and Neq parried, smiling grimly. He had no fear of hand-hewn weapons, and a clumsy charge was the simplest to terminate. But first he needed information. Var was more artful than his appearance suggested. As Neq dodged aside, so did he, so that they met squarely. One stick shot toward Neq's face while the other blocked his sword. Var had met many a blade before! So much the better. Neq's pincers also blocked defensively while his sword whistled. He struck first at the other's weapon, seeking to cut a stick in half. He preferred to disarm this monster gradually, lingeringly, not hurting him much... until after the truth was known. 'Before I down you,' Var grunted, 'tell me your name.' 'Neq the Sword.' This courtesy of identification was due even for a beast. Var fought for a while, quite skillfully, pondering behind his overhanging brows. 'I know of you,' he grunted. But he showed no fear, only caution. It was increasingly apparent that this was no warrior of the decadent post-empire ilk. Var's technique was unconventional, but he was years younger than Neq, and much larger, so that even with his considerable stoop he stood taller. He had quick brute power, and the crude-seeming sticks were more solid than they looked, blocking sword-thrusts with considerable authority. The wood tended to catch the blade, holding it instead of bouncing it back, and that was dangerous indeed. The two sticks beat a tattoo on both his metal arms, their violent force bearing him back. Had his sword not been part of him, Neq could have been disarmed early, and certainly he was giving way before the onslaught. Yet there was a certain eloquence about Var's attack, ferocious as it was. His balance was excellent. Without pausing, the man kicked off his boots and exposed homy bare feet?and then his footing was not clumsy at all. He was astonishingly agile for his bulk, yet his motions were economical. A master sticker, in fact. Neq had encountered only two empire stickers with power and finesse like this. One was Tyl?greater on the finesse, less on the power?and the other was Sol... whose whereabouts Var must know. But the sticks were not like the sword, and Neq's sword was not like others. His wrist was invulnerable. Though he was not young himself, he knew of no man who could match him in fair circle combat today, other than Tyl. Var might hold him off for some time, but Var had to tire, to make mistakes, to overreach himself. The real strength of a sticker lay in his endurance under stress and his continuing judgment. There was where Neq had him: experience. Neq fended off the blows and maneuvered for a clean opening himself. This was difficult, for Var danced about on his hooves and ducked his shaggy head sometimes almost to the ground?without ever exposing it. 'You are skilled, man of metal hands,' Var muttered. 'As befits a chief under the Master.' Neq eased his fencing, spying an opportunity to leam something. If Var were attempting to lull him by conversation, he would fail. 'You are skilled too. I heard the Weaponless trained you himself.' 'The Master is dead,' Var said, relaxing his attack. Neq let the pace slow, but remained vigilant. Var's companion might be near, ready to pounce treacherously during the double distraction of battle and dialogue. What kind of woman would mate with this kind of man, if not a beast-woman? 'You could not have slain the Weaponless.' 'Not in the circle,' Var said grimly. Neq stiffened. In that moment the sticker could have scored, had he been alert. Then the sparring resumed. 'Sol of All Weapons followed you. You could not have slain him either.' 'Not with the sticks.' This time Neq stiffened deliberately, proffering a seeming opening. Still Var did not strike. He was either too clever or too stupid. 'You admit you killed them treacherously?' 'The radiation.' That blotched skin of his! Neq remembered now?there had been a story that the beast-boy could feel radiation, avoiding lethal concentrations himself while leading others into some badlands trap. So it was true, and Var had doomed both his friend and his enemy by luring them through an unmarked radiation pocket! Now he dared to return with his bitch, thinking his crime unknown or forgotten. So Neq's sources of information were gone. But there was one more thing to know. 'Soli?the child of Helicon?' Var actually smiled. 'Soli exists no more.' Neq could hardly speak. 'The radiation?' he whispered with biting irony. But this question Var avoided, as though some lode of buried guilt had finally been tapped. 'We have no quarrel. I will show you Vara.' Then the opening came, and Neq's sword struck true.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tyl returned at dusk, with a companion. 'Neq! Neq! Look what I found in the village!' Neq looked up from the caim he had been fashioning. As the two approached he saw that the stranger was a woman. 'I'm so glad to find you!' she exclaimed. Neq stared. It was a crazy woman! She wore the typical skirt and blouse despite the cold, and her long dark hair was bound the crazy way. And she was lovely. 'Miss Smith,' he murmured, reminded achingly of his love though there was little actual, physical similarity between the two women. This one was neat to the point of precision, as Miss Smith had been; she was beautiful in that fragile manner; and she was incongruous in the wilderness. That was the connection. Intelligent, literate, innocent. His heart felt as though a dagger had nudged it. 'This is one of the two we traced,' Tyl said. 'She was reconnoitering in the village, the same as I, and when we met?' 'She traveled with a nomad?' Neq asked, still bemused by the parallel to his own experience of six years before. 'A crazy?' 'I am Vara,' she said. 'I travel with my husband. He should be around here somewhere?' Neq still had not come out of his fog. 'Var? The Stick?' 'Yes! Did you meet him? From what Tyl says, we have a common mission?' Then Neq came to total and ugly awareness. He touched the fresh burial mound with one foot. 'I?met him.' Tyl looked at him and at the cairn, comprehending. He went for his sword, but stopped. He turned away. Vara went to the caim and carefully removed a section of the stone lining. She excavated the fresh earth and sand with her slender fingers while Neq watched. Finally she uncovered a foot, with its blunted, hooflike toes. She touched it, feeling its coldness. By this time it was dark, and night closed in completely as she contemplated that deformed, dead foot. Then she covered it gently, filled in the hole, and replaced the stones. 'My two fathers are dead,' she said wistfully. 'Now my husband. What am I to do?' 'We met. We fought.' 'I served Sol,' Tyl said from his section of the night, still facing away. There was an anguished quality to his voice that Neq had not heard before. 'I served the Weaponless. Var the Stick was my friend. I would have barred you from the circle with him, had I been certain of what I suspected. When I saw Vara, I was certain. But you met Var too soon.' 'I did not know he was your friend,' Neq said, hating this. 'I knew him only as a slayer of men by treachery, and of a child at Helicon.' 'You misjudged him,' Tyl said in the same quiet tone Vara had used. 'He was bold in combat but gentle in person. And he had an invaluable talent.' 'Var slew only of necessity,' Vara said. 'And not always then.' Neq was feeling worse, though it had been an honest combat He had struck too hastily, as he had so often before. His sword outreached his intellect. He could have disengaged, waited for Tyl's return.'Now he had to defend his action. 'What need had he to slay the child of Sol?' Vara turned to him in the dark. 'I am the child of Sol.' Neq's stomach heaved with the pang of unwarranted killing, knowing what was coming. 'He killed Soli at Mt. Muse, when she was eight years old. All accounts agree on that.' 'All but one,' she said. 'The true one. He claimed to have killed me, so that the nomads would win, and my two fathers could be together again. But then I couldn't get back to tell Sol the truth, and the Weaponless was seeking Var for vengeance?' 'Vengeance!' Abominable concept! 'So we had to flee. We went to China, and I took his bracelet when I came of age. Soli exists no more.' Now Neq recognized her face, though it was no longer visible in the night. The classic beauty of Sola! The crazy dress and his own dawning guilt had blinded him to her identity. 'The boy Var traveled with, going north?' Neq murmured. 'A girl with her hair hidden.' 'Yes. So no one would know I wasn't dead. I can't do that now.' She certainly couldn't! The child of eight had become a woman of fifteen. 'And Sol pursued you too, not knowing... he must have met the Weaponless on the way!' 'They learned in China. And gave their lives carrying radioactive stones into the enemy stronghold, so that we could escape. Var always felt that it was his fault they died, but it was mine. I knew they would do it.' Var had blamed himself... and so had let Neq's accusation stand. Now Var's assumed guilt was Neq's. 'It was a mistake,' Tyl said after a long pause. 'Var told everyone he had killed the mountain champion. Helicon itself was fired and gutted to avenge thai murder?it does not matter by whom. Neq did not know. Only _I_ knew Var would not have slain a child. And I know the kind of terms Sola makes. She was kind to Var, but her price was surely the life of her daughter.' 'Var did say something,' Vara admitted. 'He had sworn to kill the man who harmed me. And for a long time he was reticent, though he loved me....' Neq remembered Sola's comment about Var's sterility. Strange, driven woman! 'Yet I knew it could have happened,' Tyl continued. 'Mt. Muse is high and steep, and there
