Part 25 (2/2)

His thrusts seemed almost frantic, but they had lost none of their power His canoe was no longer settling Had he soed to bail it out when Valeria's eyes were elsewhere? Or had it been only her wishful fancy that it was low in the water?

It was no fancy that his steering was growing still more erratic

Valeria stared at the Ichiribu warrior In a ht hi back at her The malice in that stare chilled her blood and seemed to turn the sweat upon her into ice If he had any voice in her fate, she would be begging for death long before death took her

Her sweat-di a course that was gradually taking him across her bow Before they reached the next mark, she would have to either back water or strike hie did not blunt Valeria's wits She had to surprise her opponent

Aondo was as strong as an ox, but not ht She wondered who had counseled him to this treachery, doubted she would learn, but knew one thing: the man was not in Aondo's canoe

Valeria subtly altered the force and angle of her strokes so that her canoe began to drift quite as subtly to starboard She felt a surge of strength as she saw Aondo actually slow his pace, and she knew that her deception orking He thought she was exhausting her strength and would have no reply to his scheme

As they approached the fourth th apart Aondo was halfway across Valeria's bo, paddling only hard enough to keep the distance A fewacross her path like a log

But it was Valeria whoit seeround, but only by a few paces- then her paddle churned the water, and she shot under Aondo's stern

Aondo screa that Valeria doubted was praise and stabbed wildly at the lake with his paddle It struck the water on the wrong side, and he had completed his stroke before he realized this

His canoe swerved sharply, until it had almost reversed its course

Valeria was clear by then, past Aondo and into open water She did not care if he spent the rest of the day spinning around in circles, or jumped overboard to be eaten by the lionfish and crocodiles She only cared that the fourthher to port, and noas tith freely She would not allow herself even a th

Her paddle seemed to dive now, then leap over the canoe to dive on the other side Each thrust seeurgled at the stern, sprayin a hand-breadth of water in the bottom of the craft

She would not allow herself athe race everything that was in her Aondo could no longer make any difference The world shrank ever more swiftly to the endless rhyth past, the fifth ht-

Aondo was there again, to port now He seeth for Valeria's coer mattered Her world was noelseas each stroke carried her toward thethat he was closer? Valeria would not waste a single moment to even look It would make no difference None at all

She would dip the paddle, lift it, twist-and it had begun to seehs-

”Hoaaaaa, Valeria!”

There was only one voice in the world like that Valeria did not know if Conan was hailing her victory or urging her to greater efforts She had not thought she had any th in her, but the Ci

She raced along in a cloud of spray, her paddle flying from side to side and up and down, almost too fast for her eye to follow She was only muscle and sinew, bone and breath, with no human senses left in her

”Valeria!”

She heard Conan's voice again, but this time it was almost instantly lost in the din of other voices They were shouting her name from the shore, from the lake, even, it seeh the din ”You won!”

Valeria wanted to join the shouting Instead, she found that her 's croak came out She bent forward, cautiously because she feared that her eyes would pop from her head and roll about on the canoe's bottom