“No, Jak. He will take it amiss if you interfere.”
“Had I my powers,” sighed Quienyin, and took a sip of his drink.
Sishi was gasping and her hands were pressed fiercely to her breast, her face shining in the firelight. Now Bevon was beginning to yell, the first cries of pain that had passed his lips. The sword rose and fell with wet soggy sounds. Bevon rolled this way and that, a huddled quivering mass, defenseless.
“No, Jak!” Pompino pulled me.
I shook him off and walked across to this gallant Prince Mefto the Kazzur.
“Jak! He will slaughter you!”
The prince paused in the beating to look across Bevon’s prostrate and groaning form. His golden eyebrows drew down menacingly. His upper right hand dropped to the second sword hilt.
“Well, rast?”
I said, “Prince. You chastise this man unjustly-”
I got no further. Soft words were not the currency of Mefto the Kazzur. He simply said, “Yetch, you presume to your death!”
He leaped Bevon and charged full at me, two swords whistling. Both were thraxters. I drew my thraxter and parried the first blows. I gave ground, circling, already realizing I was in for a fight. To be forced to kill this fellow would lead to most unpleasant consequences, for he was a prince and I a hired paktun.
It seemed to me in the first few moments of the fight that I dare not slay him and must therefore seek to stretch him out senseless. He would have to be tackled as I tackle a Djang, with the added complication of his tail- hand. He was rather like a Djang with his four arms and a Kataki with his tail rolled into one. I have fought Djangs and Katakis, and one Djang can dispose of — well, of a lot of Katakis. This unpleasant cramph was a Kildoi.
Nine inches of daggered steel whipped up in his tail-hand and twinkled between his legs at me. With a skip and jump I got out of the way. I did not slash the tail off. As we fought I fancied I had not sliced his tail off because that was the beginning of more trouble, that he had to be knocked out. As we fought I realized that he had not let me slice his tail off.
He was a marvel.
We fought. The blades flashed and rang with that sliding screech. Oh, yes, he had three blades against my one; but that was not it, not it at all. I knew and he knew, after a space. He drew back. He was smiling. He looked pleased.
“Whoever you are, paktun, I have never met a better swordsman. But I think you must number your days now.”
The best swordsman in the world, Sishi had called him.
I didn’t know if he was that. But I did know that I had, at last, met my match.
Chapter Twelve
Every swordsman must be aware that one day he may meet his match and so enter his last fight. One reads so often of our intrepid hero who is so vastly superior as a swordsman, fighting other wights, and toying with them, cutting them up, with the outcome never in doubt. As you know I had always entered each fight with the knowledge that this could be the time I met my master. Oh, yes, I have cut up opponents, as I have related. One reads of the way in which the hero goes about his task. But now, here under the fatly glowing stars of Kregen, with the Moons rising and the crimson firelight playing upon the halted caravan, I was in nowise being gently admonished and taught a lesson, rather I was being sadistically tortured before the end.
With a convulsive snatch I managed to get my dagger out and into play. That made two blades against three. But this Kildoi was a master bladesman. The swords wove their deceptive patterns of steel. He knew every trick I essayed. He showed me three or four I’d never come across and only by desperate efforts I managed to escape, and even then I believe he let me, for the fun of it. Once a swordsman sees a trick he knows it — as I have said — otherwise he is dead.
I learned.
But I knew that he knew more than I did. And, all the time, his two left arms poised prettily and the hands hung gracefully. If he wished, he could bring two more blades into the fight. Well, to take some ludicrous credit, after a space he hauled out a short sword with his upper left hand, and pressed me. I knew now I was fighting for my life and any thought of merely hitting him over the head was long flown. I rallied and fought back, and the swords clashed and clanged, and then, and I saw the fact as proof of something and as a final death warrant, his lower left fist pulled out a long dagger. So now he had five weapons against my two, and some of the smile was gone from his handsome face with the golden beard blowing.
Could Korero, I wondered, fight like this?
I’d have to see when I got back to Vallia.
And then… The truth was I wasn’t going to get back to Vallia… Not after Prince Mefto the Kazzur had finished with me.
As some fighting men do, he talked as he battled.
“You are good, paktun, very good. I would love to talk to you about your victories, your instructors. But I am a prince and I do not tolerate your kind of conduct.”
He cut me about the left shoulder and I swirled away and then used a risky attack to land a hit on his left shoulder. I saw the blood there, a smear in the light. We both wore light tunics, having doffed our armor. His face went mean.
“You think, you rast, you can better me? Me, Mefto the Kazzur, who fought his way to a princedom over the bodies of his foes? Fool!”
Well, yes, I was a fool, right enough.
I hit him again, a glancing blow across his face and severed a chunk of his beard. Those two hits were the only ones I scored.
He pinked me again and I slid two of his blades and a third and fourth chunked a gouge out of my right side.
He was beginning to enjoy himself.
He didn’t like the cut on his face. I hoped it left an ugly scar, the rast. Swordsmen have their little foibles. He had me in his toils, right enough. But as we fought and I tried the old trick of dismembering him piecemeal, being unable to finish him with a body thrust, I began to pick up hints as to his favored techniques. The trouble was, it was not just that he had five blades, or that his technique was well-nigh perfect, but that he was just supremely good. He was not quite as fast as me; had he been I’d have been stretched lifeless by now.
So I began to work out a last desperate gamble that would break all the rules and would make or break. Truth to tell, I had little real hope. The moment I began the passage I fancied he would detect instantly the attack and know the correct counter. But desperate situations demand desperate remedies. I was bleeding profusely now; but all the cuts were shallow and I knew he but toyed with me. He was chattering away as we fought.
“I joy in this contest, paktun! By the Blade of Kurin! You are indeed a master bladesman.”
Maybe — but I was like to be a dead bladesman, master or not…
With a sudden and ferocious passade he began an attack aimed at slicing off my left ear — I think. I defended desperately, and gave ground, and faintly I heard screams and guessed Sishi and Pompino were riveted by this spectacle.
Time for the last great gamble… I positioned myself and a long arrow abruptly sprouted from Mefto’s right shoulder, between those cunningly swiveled double joints.
He screamed.
He fell back, screeching, and he dropped all his weapons.
Another arrow hissed past my head and went thwunk into the painted wood of Scatulo’s carriage. Without a thought I dropped flat and dived under the coach.
Well — yes.
