Part 19 (1/2)
Mesthles of the Windy Vale Omir Kelsumba
Polydorus the Foul Rahim Sosias
Rudolph Thadbury Thomas the Grabber
Vann the Nomad Wull Narvaez
The priest of the Inner Circle who had come down from the city yesterday had informed Leros and the warriors that they could expect a group of outworlders to appear today. The Tournament was to go on almost as usual, and the utmost courtesy was to be shown the outworlders. If they behave strangely, ignore it. There will probably even be women among them; pay no attention to that, either. Leros was also instructed to call frequent recesses in the fighting for prayer and ceremony.
The warriors had little thought to spare for anything that did not directly concern their own survival in the Tournament, and the arrival of the visitors and their guide when Leros was halfway through reading the lists caused no interruption. Four visitors came, and two of them were women but, Leros noted with some relief, modestly dressed. He had heard some tall tales of outworld ways. He was not pleased to have such onlookers-but perhaps Thorun was, for some obscure and G.o.dly reason. In any event, orders were orders, and Leros had endured harder ones than this.
This day's fighting ring had been stamped out at the head of a gentle slope in an area where the trees were thin. From the ring the outworlders' s.h.i.+p was readily visible a few hundred meters away on its truncated pinnacle of rock. The ma.s.sive ball of bright metal that carried folk out among the stars showed a single open doorway in its otherwise featureless surface. Two more outworlders were sometimes visible, tiny figures sitting or standing on the little lip of rock before the s.h.i.+p.
Athena, standing at ringside beside Schoenberg and waiting somewhat nervously for the action to begin, whispered to him: ”Are you sure this is going to be fighting for keeps?”
”That's what our guide tells us. I expect he knows what's going on.” Schoenberg was watching the preparations with keen interest, not looking at her when he answered, low-voiced.
”But if what he told us is true, each of these men has already been through two duels in this tournament.
And look-there's hardly a mark on any of them.”
”I can see a few bandages,” Schoenberg whispered back. ”But you may have a point.” He considered the matter. ”It could well be this: fighting from an animal's back apparently isn't done here. Therefore men have to move around strictly on their own muscle power, and can't wear a lot of heavy body armor. So a clean hit from any type of weapon is going to leave a serious wound, not just a minor gash or bruise.
Most wounds are serious, and the first man to be disabled by a serious wound is almost certainly the loser. Ergo, winners don't show up for the next round with serious wounds.”
They fell silent then, since Leros was looking in their direction and perhaps was ready to get the action started. Two men with weapons ready were facing each other from opposite sides of the ring. De La Torre and Celeste also became utterly attentive.
Leros cleared his throat. ”Bram the Beardless-Charles the Upright.”
Suomi, standing atop the mesa beside Barbara Hurtado and looking toward the ring from there, was too far away to hear Leros call the names, but through his binoculars he saw two men with raised weapons start toward each other across the fighting ring. He put the binoculars down then and turned away, wondering how in the universe he had managed to get himself involved in this sickening business. For hunting animals one could find or fabricate some reason or excuse, but not for this-and there was Athena, over at ringside, an avid observer.
”Someone should do an anthropological study,” she had explained to him just a little while ago, while getting ready to leave the s.h.i.+p. ”If they're really fighting each other to the death over there.” Their guide-to-be, a tall, white-robed youth, had just been explaining the Tournament to them in some detail.
”You're not an anthropologist.”
”There isn't a professional one here. Still, it's a job that should be done.” She went on getting ready, clipping a small audiovideo recorder to her belt, next to the hologram camera.
”Is Schoenberg here to do an anthropological study too?”
”Ask him. Carl, if you hate Oscar so much and can't stand to look at life in the raw-why did you come along on this trip? Why did you get me to ask Oscar to invite you?”
He drew a deep breath. ”We've been through that.”
”Tell me again. I would really like to know.”
”All right. I came because of you. You are the most desirable woman I have ever known. I mean more than s.e.x. s.e.x included, of course-but I want the part of you that Schoenberg has.”
”He doesn'thaveme, as you put it. I've worked for Oscar five years now, and he has my admiration-”
”Why your admiration?”
”Because he's strong. There's a kind of strength in you too, Carl, a different kind, that I've admired also.
Oscar has my admiration and often my companions.h.i.+p-because I enjoy his company. He and I have had s.e.x together a few times, and that, too, has been enjoyable. But he doesn'thaveme. No one does.
No one will.”
”When you come of yourself as a free gift, then someone will.”
”No one.”
Bram and Charles were sparring cautiously in the day's first duel, neither of them having yet decided on an all-out rush. Though they were of a height Charles the Upright was much leaner, his back so straight that the reason for his name was obvious. He wore a loose jacket of fine leather and had a darkly handsome face.
Athena thought he showed incredible poise, waiting with his long, sharp-looking sword lifted in one hand, aimed at his opponent. Surely, she thought, this was not life-and-death after all. No matter how seriously they took it, it must be some play, some game, with a symbolic loser stepping aside . . . and yet all the time she was telling herself this she knew better.
”Come,” Charles was murmuring, sounding like a man urging on some animal. ”Come. Now.Now.”
And beardless Bram, all youth and freakish strength, came on, first one step, then two, then in an awesome rush, his sword first raised then slas.h.i.+ng down. The sharp blades rang together, the two men grunted. Incoherent cries of excitement went up around the watching circle. Charles, fending off blow after blow, was giving way now. He seemed to lose his footing momentarily in a slip, then lashed out with a counterstroke that brought a hoa.r.s.e noise of appreciation from the warriors who stood watching with knowledgeable eyes. Bram avoided the blow and was unhurt but his rus.h.i.+ng attack had been brought to a standstill. Athena for the first time began to realize that fine skill must reign here on the same throne with brutality.
Bram stood quietly for a moment, frowning as if at the unexpected resistance of some inanimate object.
Then suddenly he charged again, more violently if possible than before. The long swords blurred and sang together, sprang apart, blurred and sang again. Athena began now to see and understand the timing and strategy of the strokes. She was forgetting herself, her eyes and mind opening more fully for perception. Then all at once, somehow-for all her concentration she had not seen how-Charles's sword was no longer in his hand. Instead it sprouted between Bram's ribs, the hilt firmly affixed before Bram's breastbone, half a meter of blade protruding gory and grotesque from his broad back.
Bram shook his head, one, two, three times, in what seemed utter disbelief. Athena saw it all with great clarity and it all seemed very slow. Bram was still waving his own sword, but now he seemed unable to locate his newly disarmed opponent, standing in plain sight in front of him. Suddenly, awkwardly, Bram sat, dropped his weapon and raised a hand to his face, brus.h.i.+ng at it as if struck by the thought that now his beard would never grow. The hand fell limp and Bram slumped farther, his head tilting forward on his chest. The pose looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he bore it without complaint. Only when a gray-clad slave limped forward to drag the body to one side did Athena fully understand that the man-the boy-had died before her eyes.
Charles the Upright extracted his sword with a strong pull and held it out to another slave for cleaning-while yet another spilled sand over the place where Bram had spilled his life. In the background someone was digging. The world had changed in the s.p.a.ce of a few moments, or rather Athena had been changed. Never again would she be the same.
”Col Renba-Farley of Eikosk.”
The man who started forward at the name of Col Renba was big, brown, and s.h.a.ggy. He stood near the center of the arena whirling a mace, a spike-studded ball on the end of a short chain, and waited for Farley to come after him.
Oscar was saying something to her, but there was no time to listen or think, no time for anything but watching. No time for Oscar, even.
Farley of Eikosk, fair and freckled, tall and well made if not exactly handsome, came treading catlike in fine leather boots. His other garments were simple, but of rich st.u.r.dy cloth. He squinted in the sun that shone on the fine polished steel of his sword and knife. Holding a weapon in either hand, he feinted an advance to within striking range of the mace, and nodded as if with satisfaction when he saw how rapidly the spiked weight on its taut chain arched out at him and back again.
Now Farley began to circle, moving around Col Renba first one way and then the other. The mace came out after him, faster than before, faster than had seemed possible to Athena, and she cried out, unaware that she did so. Again she cried out, in relief this time, when she saw that the spikes had missed Farley's fine, fair skin.
Momentarily both men were still, and then again there came a rapid pa.s.sage of arms, too fast for Athena to judge. She thought the flurry was over, when suddenly the tip of one of the mace's spikes touched Farley on the hand, and his dagger flew lightly but awkwardly away. In almost the same moment Farley's long sword bit back, and now Col Renba backed away, keeping the mace twirling with his right hand, his left arm curled up as if trying to protect itself from further damage while its sleeve rapidly drenched red.