conceal my growing feebleness.
This Kildoi was a
With a sudden and shattering series of blows, with a wild smashing onslaught, Mefto came for me and I saw that this time he meant to finish me. I defended. I ducked and weaved and dangled the sorry scrap of shield before him and I flailed his blade away. Somehow I resisted and held my position in the blue square and he drew back, baffled. But my weakness was now on me. I was near the end. So, positioning myself, I tried to remember who I was, that I was plain Dray Prescot. He was talking again, not quite so jovially, clearly annoyed that he had not finished me in that passage.
“I said you were a fighter, apim. You have a little skill. I have joyed in our contest; but now-”
And then I spoke. For the first time.
I said: “I, too, have enjoyed this little swordplay. You have tried and you have failed. I have sounded you out.” My voice was thick and my throat felt as though it was filled with all the sand of the arena.
“But, now, Mefto the Kleesh, it is my turn.”
And, instantly, I swept through the dazzlement of the attack I had long pondered, and thrust. I’d have had him. I would have. But I was weak, too weak. The blows I had taken had punished me, and the blood that leached away took with it my strength.
He just managed to drag his shield across. His Kildoi face, handsome, handsome, with its golden beard and clear-cut features, drew down in shock. He knew he had been caught. He reacted with a primitive violence.
He dashed in on me and his shield collided with my own scraps of wood and twisted bronze. His bulk forced me on and over. I was down. Down on one knee, the dangling shield remnants held aloft in my left fist. For a space, a single heartbeat, I put my right hand and the sword flat on the sand, supporting myself, getting my wind, seeing the world revolving in black stars and icy comets. He towered over me. He laughed. His thraxter slashed down. Somehow the remnants of my shield slid into the sword’s path, and he lifted to strike again, and I forced up my right arm and gripped my sword and took the blows, refusing to go down.
“Die, you rast!” he screamed. “Die!”
The attempt to rise and stand on my own two feet was too much for me. I was on one knee, the shield held up and the sword feebly pointing, and I gasped and wheezed and fought to clear the black demons in my head and see through the leaping whorls of light and shadow encompassing me. His passion controlled him now, and he struck and struck as though hewing wood. He had had a scare and he could not understand the emotions that corroded within him like poisons — so I guessed, seeing that never had he met his master. But, for all that, I was nearly done for. The pathetic bits of shield still held together and kept out his thraxter; but that was all.
So I tried to stand up. I made a last convulsive effort.
He saw that. He saw the way I lurched and recovered and struggled my foot under me and so started to rise.
“Rast! Yetch! Die!”
Toppling, swaying, I struggled with a despairing savagery to stand up. And I knew I could not. Mefto saw the way I moved, saw my body begin to rise, and it was clear he imagined I was about to stand up. Zair knows what kind of demon he thought I must be, after the way he had chopped me, and the blood, and the punishment, and the state I was in. He thought I was going to stand up. That golden face contorted into a look of bestial unbelieving fury. He took three slow steps back, right to the very edge of the blue square, and then with a howl he launched himself at me.
And, then, Prince Mefto the Kazzur made his mistake.
The blows from his thraxter smashed down viciously on the chunk of shield I held aloft, twisted so that a remnant of bronze framing held against the blows. Mefto was a Kildoi. A Kildoi has been blessed by the gods with a tail hand. Mefto in his blind fury reached out with his tail hand and seized the rim of this infuriating frustrating chunk of shield, ready to tear it away and so leave me open for the last blow. That hard brown hand gripped onto the bronze before my eyes. I saw the nails, trimmed and polished, the thin bristle of golden hair, the whiteness of constricting violence between the knuckles. The hand gripped and pulled. The shield moved.
With a final lurch I lifted halfway up, reached out with the sword, cut off that tail hand. Prince Mefto the Kazzur screamed.
His golden body convulsed away, and he shrieked, a high howling screech of agony and fury, of humiliation and despair.
Somehow, do not ask me, for I cannot say, I was crouched over his body as he twitched and convulsed on the blue blood-spattered sand. He held the gory stump of his tail in all his four hands, and he screamed and slobbered and cried.
I said, “Mefto the Kleesh. I have cut Kataki tails off before this, and those yetches did not cry like you do.”
All that effort of speaking, of boasting, when I was bleeding to death, exhausted me, such is the stupidity of pride. There was little time. I lifted the thraxter, and it trembled. Mefto was wrapped up in his own horror and was not aware, not aware at all that the steel point hovered above his throat. He was a master swordsman, he could hand out the punishment with a laugh; but he could not endure punishment, He was the best swordsman I had so far encountered; he was not the greatest by a very long way.
I raised the sword a last inch, grasping the hilt in both blood-stained hands. I took a ragged breath. I started to bring the sword down, to plunge it through Mefto’s throat and on to bury the point deeply in the blue sand — and hands grasped my shoulders and the thraxter was taken away as a nurse takes away a baby’s bottle and I was placed flat on the sand and there was noise and confusion and a needleman with his acupuncture needles and miles and miles of yellow bandages.
“Why-?” I tried to say.
Yasuri bent over me.
“Mefto’s people resigned the game to save his life.”
“Then,” I gasped out, “Then I have failed!”
A stupid game, and its rules, had saved the rast to bring horror to the Dawn Lands and to Vallia, when a straight and simple fight outside the rules of Kazz-Jikaida — why had I listened to brave Konec and Dav? I should have — I should have — but the words went away and there was blackness like the blackness of Notor Zan. I awoke to see Yasuri looking down on me with the strangest of expressions on her face.
I felt light-headed and empty and very very thirsty. She told a slave girl to fill a goblet with water, and this I drank straight down. Someone with a reedy voice said: “No more for now. He is weak but will mend with care.”
“I shall care for him,” said the lady Yasuri, and I could see no lines on her face at all. A shadow moved at her side and the lady Jikaidasta stood there in what must be a private room in Yasuri’s suite at her hotel, The Star of Laybrites. Ling-li’s pale face glowed in the reflected radiance and her blue eyes were very bright upon me.
“I must leave Jikaida City now. I did not aid you in the fight — Jak.” She paused on the name. Then:
“The Nine Masked Guardians maintain San Orien, who is a Wizard of Loh of great repute, to warn them of any sorcery practiced in the games. You fought your own fight — and won.”
I could not shake my head, for it would probably have fallen off; but I wondered if it was possible for me to agree with her, that she might be right. Had I won? The crucial factor was, it didn’t matter if I had won that fight or not.
Then there was a deeper rumble of voices, and shadows, and presently Kov Konec and Vad Dav Olmes stood by the bed. They were smiling with great broad smiles of triumph, for Prince Mefto the Kazzur had left Jikaida City, his stump tail bandaged, left it the very day after the fight, which was a sennight ago, and because there was no evidence against the people from Mandua they had been freed, and with an apology, too.
The words croaked from my throat. “And the rast from Hamal?”
“He remains. He plays in the Mediary Games, for there are always games of Jikaida going on in Jikaida City.”
He smiled down on me, and Dav, with a finger to his nose, said, “Yes, the Mediary Games begin, and the lady Yasuri is the Champion, reigning Champion.”
“And now the people of the Dawn Lands will take their own destiny into their hands.” Konec’s fist rested on his sword hilt. “The alliance between Hamal and Shanodrin never took place. I think, I hope, I pray, Prince Mefto is
