Nightside the Long Sun

hallway, he thought that he could feel actual ice crystals in the nap of its cloth covering. He struck the floor with it “Do you know about these?”

Auk stooped to look more closely. “I don’t know. What you got?”

“A truly wonderful bandage for my ankle.” Silk lashed the floor again. “It winds itself around the broken bone almost like a serpent. Doctor Crane lent it to me. You’re supposed to kick it or something until it gets hot.”

“Can I see it for a minute? I can do that better, standing up.”

Silk handed him the wrapping.

“I heard of them, and I saw one once, only I didn’t get to touch it. Thirty cards they wanted for it.” Auk slapped the wall with the wrapping; when he squatted to help Silk replace it, it felt hot enough to smoke.

The stair was as steep and narrow as the house itself, covered with torn carpeting so threadbare as to be actually slick in spots; but helped manfully by Auk and urged forward by curiosity, jaw set and putting as much weight as possible on Blood’s lioness-headed stick, Silk climbed it almost as quickly as he might have with two sound legs.

The door at the top opened upon a single bare room that occupied the entire second story; its floor was covered with worn sailcloth mats, its walls decorated with swords, many of them of shapes that Silk had never seen or never noticed, and long cane foils with basketwork hilts.

“You’re lame!” Xiphias called. “Limping!” He danced toward them, thrusting and parrying.

“I injured my ankle,” Silk told him. “It should be better in a few weeks.”

Xiphias pushed his foil into Silk’s hands. “But you must start now! Begin your lessons this very evening! Do you know how to hold that? You’re left-handed? Good! Very good! I’ll teach you the right, too, eventually. Keep your stick in your right, eh? You may parry, but not thrust or cut with it. Is that understood? May I have a stick too? You agree that’s fair? No objection? Where—Over there!” An astonishing bound carried him to the nearest wall, from which he snatched two more foils and a yellow walking stick so slender that it was scarcely more than a wand; like the foils it was of varnished bamboo.

Silk told him, “I can’t engage you with this bad ankle, sir, and the Chapter frowns upon all such activities—not that I’d be an even match or anything like a match for you. Besides, I have no funds to pay for a lesson.”

“Aha! Auk’s your friend? Your word on his score, Auk? It’s not just to get him killed, is it?”

Auk shook his head.

“He’s my friend, and I’m his.” As soon as Silk spoke, he realized that it was no more than the truth. He added, “Because I am, I won’t let him pay.”

Xiphias’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You won’t fight, you say, with your cloth and gimp leg. But what if you were attacked? You’d have to. Have to … And since Auk’s your friend, he’d fight too, wouldn’t he? Fight for you? You say you don’t want him to pay. Don’t you think he feels the same way?”

He tossed Auk a foil. “Not made of money are you, Auk? A good thief but a poor man, isn’t that what they say about you? Wouldn’t you—wouldn’t you both like to save Auk all that money? Yes! Oh, yes! I know you would.”

Auk unbuckled his hanger and laid it against the wall. “If we beat him, he won’t charge me.”

“That’s right!” Xiphias sprang away. “Will you excuse me, Patera, while I remove my trousers?”

They fell as he spoke; one spindle-thin leg was black synthetic and gleaming steel. At the touch of the old man’s fingers, it too fell away, leaving him swaying on a single, natural, knotted, blue-veined leg. “What do you think of my secret? Five it took!” He hopped toward them, balancing himself precariously with his foil and the yellow walking stick. “Five I found!”

Almost too late, Silk blocked a wide, whistling cut at his head.

“Too many parts? Scarcely enough!” Another swinging slash. “Don’t cringe!”

Auk lunged at the old man. His parry was too swift for the eye to follow; the crack of his foil against Auk’s skull sounded louder than Auk’s shot in the Cock. Auk sprawled on the sailcloth mat.

“Now, Patera! Guard yourself!”

For the space of a brief prayer that seemed half the night, that was all Silk did, frantically fending off cut after cut, forehand, backhand, to the head, to the neck, to the arms, the shoulders, the waist. There was no time to think, no time to do anything but react. Almost in spite of himself, he began to sense a certain pattern, a rhythm that governed the old man’s slashing attack. Despite his ankle, he could move faster, turn faster, than the old man on his one leg.

“Good! Good! After me! Good!”

Xiphias was on the defensive now, parrying the murderous cuts Silk launched at his head and shoulders.

“Use the point! Watch this!” The old man lunged, his slender stick the leg he lacked, the end of his foil between Silk’s legs, then under his left arm. Silk himself thrust desperately. Xiphias’s parry sent his point awry. Silk cut at his head and lunged when he backed away.

“Where’d you study, lad?”

Auk was on his feet once more, grinning and rubbing his head. Feeling that he had been betrayed, Silk thrust and parried, cut, and parried the old man’s cuts. There was no time to speak, no time to think, no time to do anything but fight. He had dropped the lioness-headed stick, but it did not matter—the pain in his ankle was remote, the pain of somebody else far off, of some body that he hardly knew.

“Good! Oh, very nice!”

The clack, clack, clack of the foils was the beating of the Sphigxdrum that called men to war, the rattle of crotala that led the dance, a dance in which every movement had to be as quick as possible.

“I’ll take him, Auk! I’ll teach him! He’s mine!”