Neq the Sword

are rocks to drop. Had you attacked him with stones while he was climbing, he might have had to fight before he knew, and he was deadly in rough terrain. So he might have killed you, and I could not bar Neq from combat until I was sure. It was my mistake; I am to blame for your husband's death?' 'No!' Neq and Vara cried together. There was silence again, as each person sifted his tangled motives. The conversation was unreal, and not because it emanated from darkness. Neq's emotions were partly in suspension. 'Why do you not curse me? Why do you not weep? I killed?' 'You killed because you did not understand,' Vara said. 'I have some share of guilt for that, for I agreed to play dead. Tonight I make you understand. Tomorrow I kill you. Then will I weep for you both.' She meant it. She was like Miss Smith, who died Neqa. Changed of name, precious beyond all imagination, but loyal to her man. Neqa had tried to kill Yod when Yod made ready to cut off Neq's hands. Would Vara do less? Yod had killed Neqa by accident. Now Neq had killed Var. The guilt was the same. Vengeance would be the same. She would not have it, any more than he had. Neq bent his elbow, bringing his sword-arm to his own throat. It was past time for him to die. 'I claim my price,' Tyl said, startling Neq as his muscles tensed for the fatal slice. Of all times! Yet Neq had a debt of honor, and he would have to acquit it. 'Name your price.' 'Give back what you have taken this day.' Neq delayed answering, trying to discover Tyl's meaning. Obviously he could not restore Var to life. 'What you have to do,' Vara said evenly, 'do before dawn. When daylight comes I will destroy you in the circle.' 'In the circle!' Now Neq could not fathom her meaning either. Women did not do battle. 'What is your weapon?' 'The stick.' The morbid situation could not suppress Tyl's interest. 'So Sol did train you in combat!' 'My father. Yes. Every day we practiced, inside the mountain. He hoped to take me away from Helicon some day, but Sosa wouldn't let him. And I have practiced since.' Now Tyl's voice was more concerned. 'Mere practice can not make a woman into a man. My daughter is older than you, and she has a child of her own now?but this would never have come to pass if she had ever entered man's province. The circle is not for you.' 'Nevertheless.' Sol's child, all right! 'This man,' Tyl continued persuasively, 'this man, Neq the Sword, was second only to me in the empire, when the Weaponless departed. Now he has no hands, but he retains his weapon. He is less clever in technique, but more deadly than before because he cannot be disarmed. His sword is swifter than his mind. I think no man can stand against that sword today.' 'Nevertheless.' 'I can not permit this encounter,' Tyl said. Her voice was cold. 'Your permission is irrelevant.' 'Var was my friend. He taught me to use the gun. I hurt with his loss, as you do. Yet I say this: do not lift stick against Neq the Sword. We must not make this terrible mistake again.' 'Var was more than friend to me,' she pointed out caustically. 'Nevertheless.' 'You have no right,' she said. Tyl did not answer, and the strange, tense conversation ended. Neq did not know whether he slept that night, or whether the others did, but slowly the morning came. Vara had changed. She no longer resembled an ineffective crazy woman. That guise must have been for the benefit of the local villagers, who were rather like crazies themselves in their dress, so that she could pass among them freely. Now she wore a nomad smock, and her hair was loose and long, falling down over her shoulders on either side and curling about the soft mounds of her breasts. She remained stunning by any definition. She carried sticks?the twin thin clubs that Var had used. Neq felt another chill. He had buried Var's weapon beside him, according to the normal courtesy of warriors. Neq's sword had cut open the ground and scooped it out, and his pincers had levered the stones into place: the work of several hours. Yet these were Var's sticks, for they carried the recent marks of the sword. Neq could recognize the scars of a weapon as readily as he could a face. 'As you fought my husband,' Vara said, 'so shall I fight you. As you slew him, so shall I slay you. As you buried him, I'll bury you. With honor. Then will my mourning begin.' 'Neq will not fight a woman,' Tyl said. 'I know him, even as I knew Var.' Vara lifted her sticks and stood beside the burial mound. 'He may fight or flee as he chooses. Here is the circle? beside my husband's cairn. The world is the circle. I will be avenged.' The words struck Neq like blows of the sticks. Her sentiments were so similar to his own when Neqa died! He could not have forgiven Yod and his rapist tribe; he had not forgiven them now. The thrust of his vengeance had changed, now applying to the entire outlaw society and its roots in the ashes of Helicon, but vengeance it remained. How could he say to her that a life for a life was not enough? 'Var was my friend,' Tyl repeated. 'He shamed me before my tribe when he was but a child, a wild boy of the badlands, and I meant to take him to the circle when he became a man. But Sola interceded on his behalf, and when I came to know him?' Vara gripped her sticks and moved purposely toward Neq. He saw the savage grief in her eyes, the kind he had had, the kind that cast aside all thought of honor and permitted murder by stealth, the kind that was futile. But he had done it; he had killed without cause. He would not lift his sword to perpetrate further evil. Tyl stepped between them. 'Var was my friend,' he said once more. 'In any other case I would avenge him myself. Yet I forbid this conflict.' Vara did not speak. She whipped one stick at Tyl, a lightning stroke, her eyes not leaving Neq. It was no feeble womanish blow; lovely as she was, she did know the use of her weapon. Tyl caught it on his forearm. 'Now you have struck me,' he murmured softly, though a massive welt was forming. Had there been a man's weight behind the blow, or had Tyl been unprepared for it, his arm could have been broken. 'Now give me leave to fetch my weapon, for this conflict is mine.' Vara waited stonily. It was obvious she had not wanted to battle Tyl, and did not wish to engage him now. But she had struck him, and he had been unarmed?deliberately, for Tyl always knew where his weapons were. She was committed by the code of the circle. Tyl fetched his sticks. Neq was relieved; had Tyl taken the sword to her, that death would have been charged to Neq's own conscience. Tyl intended only to interfere. Yet why was he bothering? First he had balked Neq's own attempt at suicide; now he balked Vara. He was preserving Neq's life?when he should have been satisfied to see it end. Now Vara threw off her smock and stood naked but for sturdy hiking moccasins, despite the chill of the air: as fine a figure of a woman as Neq had ever seen. She was full-breasted and narrow-waisted, well-muscled for a girl yet quite feminine. Her black hair flowed proudly behind her, almost to her hips. Full bosomed... Neq was fascinated. Each breast stood round and true, a work Of private beauty, an aspect of passionate symmetry. He had serenaded a breast like that, so long ago.... It was fitting that such a breast now declared vengeance against him. But Tyl stood between, and if Vara thought to dazzle him with her bodily attributes and so diminish his guard, she had forgotten that he had a daughter older than she. She fenced with him, impatient at the delay Tyl represented. She wanted only to get at Neq, who had not moved. The sticks spun and struck, wood meeting metal. Tyl had the advantage of superior Helicon weapons, and his experience was more than Vara's whole life. He parried her blows without effort. Neq could not bring himself to care particularly about the fight or its outcome. The twin shocks of this final unjustified slaying of Var, and the identity and appearance of Vara, had almost completely unmanned him. Discover what had gone wrong with Helicon? He could not discover what had gone wrong with himself! Meanwhile, man and woman fought. Vara ducked and whirled about, her hair spinning about her breasts and hips like a light cloak. From that floating coiffure her sticks came up to rap sharply at Tyl's wrist, one side and another. A deft maneuver! Vara was, if anything, a better sticker than her husband had been. But Tyl flicked his wrist out of the way and engaged in a counter maneuver that sent her stumbling back far less gracefully. 'Very nice, little girl! Your father Sol disarmed me with a similar motion and made me part of his empire, before you existed. He taught you well!' But there was more to the circle than good instruction, obviously. Tyl had never since been defeated by the sticks. Had Neq been fighting, even with no guilt-related inhibitions, he would have been bemused by those dancing breasts playing peek-a-boo behind that black hair, and completely unable to strike at Vara's lovely lithe body. In fact he was bemused now. Her femininity was as potent in combat as her sticks. Suddenly she turned away and kicked back, her heel striking for Tyl's knee. But again he moved aside in time. 'The Weaponless?your other father??crippled me with that blow when he was driving for the empire himself. But after my knees healed they became leary, and have not been injured since.' If Vara had not realized she was sparring with the top warrior of the old empire, she surely knew it now. Tyl was no longer young, but nothing short of Neq's sword had hope of moving him out of the circle. Vara was fifteen and female; those were insurmountable obstacles. Tyl was merely blocking, of course. He had no interest in hurting this beautiful girl; he only meant to convince her that she could not have her way. Vara required considerable convincing. She whirled, she feinted, she sent a barrage of blows against the man. She knew an astonishing variety of tricks?but there was no trick that could overmatch Tyl's reach ami strength and experience. Finally, panting, she yielded far enough to speak. 'Warrior, what is it you want?' 'Neq slew Var in fair combat. Even as I could disarm you now, so could Neq defeat Var. I would not face Neq with the stick myself. Forswear your vengeance.' 'No!' she cried, and launched another flurry of blows at him. 'No!' Neq also cried. 'It was not fair combat. Var withheld his attack, he opened his guard, saying we had no quarrel. Then I slew him.' Tyl retreated, dismayed by the words rather than by the girl's offense. 'This is not like you, Neq.' 'It is too much like me! I have slain innocent men before. I did not understand in time. I thought it was a combat mistake, or a ruse. My sword was there?' 'Desist, girl,' Tyl said, just as though she were his daughter playing a game. And Vara desisted. 'Neq, you place me awkwardly.' 'Let her have her vengeance. It is fair.' 'That I cannot.' 'You admit you slew him unguarded!' Vara blazed at Neq. 'Yes. As I have others.' 'In the name of vengeance!' Tyl cried, as if