Ryell moved to argue, but Arien cut him off and ended the grumbling of the crowd. “Silence!” he commanded. “Is there no limit to your rancor? Were it not for the Rangers of Avalon, your corpse and mine would be numbered among the dead. Surely we owe them the respect to trust in their request without question.”
Having no rebuttal, Ryell shook his head and walked away. The crowd, too, settled back into uneasy appeasement, and both Arien and Andovar breathed easier.
“I should like to speak to the prisoners,” Andovar said.
Most of the Calvans stood up as the ranger approached, and some even saluted. Andovar’s eyes, though, met with those of one who neither stood nor saluted. In the distance, Billy and Del saw him, too.
“Mitchell!” Del cried.
“And that’s Reinheiser behind him,” Billy added.
The captain and the ranger stared each other down.
“I warned ye,” Andovar growled.
Mitchell spat up at him.
“Lord Arien,” Andovar called, “for meself, I am begging a favor of ye. Will ye grant it?”
“If I may,” Arien replied cautiously.
“A sword for this man,” Andovar asked. “I’ve a debt for settling.”
Mitchell squared himself before the ranger. “A weapon of your world, not mine, he said with a growl. “You made the challenge, so I choose the weapons.”
Without hesitation, Andovar handed his own sword to an elf beside him.
“Fists,” Mitchell said wickedly. “And nothing else. I want to kill you with my bare hands.”
“Suren ye’ll die slower,” Andovar replied with the same even tones. “But suren ye’ll be just as dead.”
“Wait!” Del called, rushing over to them.
“Ye look better than when I left ye yesterday,” the ranger greeted him, but Del, in no frame of mind for courtesies, waved that thought away.
“It’s my fight, Andovar,” he said as he and the captain locked in unblinking stares. “It’s been my fight for a long, long time.”
Andovar surveyed the two men. He feared for his friend, believing Mitchell to be the stronger, but realized that he had no right to take this battle away from Del. Reluctantly, he stepped aside.
Del knew what he had to do. “Violence is not the answer,” he reminded himself softly, and took a deep breath to steady his nerves.
He felt that he had himself settled then, but he wasn’t prepared for the viciousness of Mitchell’s initial attack. The captain charged like an angry bull, knocking Del backward, and began his onslaught, raining blow after blow on his stunned opponent.
Unnoticed in the background, Martin Reinheiser held a single blade of grass in his hand, softly stroking it and whispering unfamiliar words.
Del somehow managed to stagger away from Mitchell and regroup. Dazed, the sickly sweet taste of blood rich in his mouth, he had almost gone down under the brutal beating. “I’m not going to fight you, Mitchell,” he said. “I won’t lower myself.”
Mitchell didn’t understand Del’s motives, but he roared in again. And Del had to wonder if he was proving any point, or simply showing himself to be a fool.
Then, slipping in from somewhere in his subconscious, came the words of Belexus, advice the great warrior had given him several weeks before. “The greatest advantage of a true warrior is not strength or quickness, but courage,” Belexus had told him.
Del gritted away the pain and stood tall against the punishment. He was right; this had to work!
Reinheiser marveled at how easily the transformation spell had been completed. In disbelief of his own handiwork, he gingerly fingered the razor edges of the small knife he now held in his hand.
Mitchell’s hands found Del’s throat. Grinning with murderous glee, the captain drove Del to his knees. But Andovar, having seen enough, rushed over and grabbed Mitchell, pulling him free of Del. Then, with strength that horrified the helpless captain, the ranger tossed him back, sending him sprawling into the Calvan prisoners.
The elves stood silent, confused and shocked, as if Del had held a mirror up before them, showing them their dark reflection.
Reinheiser moved over to Mitchell and roughly pulled him to his feet. “Kill DelGiudice,” he instructed as he slipped Mitchell the dagger. “On your life, kill him.”
Mitchell shuddered at the sudden coldness in the physicist’s eyes and stumbled back out from the crowd.
Andovar stepped defensively to block the captain, but Del regained his footing and pushed the ranger aside. Andovar looked at him in disbelief.
“I must,” Del told him. “They have to learn.”
“You are indeed brave, Jeffrey DelGiudice,” Andovar said, and he clasped Del’s shoulder and stepped aside.
“It’s over,” Del told Mitchell.
Mitchell shook his head and lashed out, the tip of the concealed dagger sticking out from between his fingers. Del deflected the blow aside, then felt a burning pain. Amazed, he looked down at the bleeding gash in his hand.
Mitchell smiled wickedly and struck out again, but Del, realizing the danger, was quick to dodge back from the blow.
He recited Belexus’ advice again to keep from panic as he backed from the stalking captain.
“You’re running out of room,” Mitchell taunted as they neared the ledge overlooking Blackemara.
Even as he spoke, Del’s heels slipped out over that ledge. He hoped his death would make his point.
Mitchell bared the dagger now, caring for nothing but his lust for Del’s blood. He raised his arm to strike.
But an arrow found his wrist.
Stunned, both he and Del looked to the side where Ryell stood, grim-faced, bow in hand.
The knife dropped and Mitchell slumped, grasping his wrist in agony.
Instinctively, Del retrieved the blade and straddled Mitchell’s chest, putting its point to the captain’s throat. Caught up in the frenzied celebration that suddenly erupted all around him, he almost struck. A wave of nausea swept over him when he realized what he was about to do and when he looked at the elves crowding in close and shouting in wild glee for Mitchell’s death.
“Stop it!” Del screamed at them as he jumped away. He flung the dagger over the cliff, far into the night, and charged through the confused crowd, wanting only to get away from the infectious madness.
Billy and Sylvia ran over to calm him, but they had no answer for Del when he looked them squarely in the eye and said, “Are you so sure the right side won?” Then he darted across the field and through the silver archway, seeking out the sanctuary of the mountain trails.
With the attention of the elves diverted, Reinheiser calmly strolled over to Mitchell. “Do not worry,” he said. “Our escape is at hand.” He pointed over the ledge.
Still clutching his wounded wrist, Mitchell peered into the gloom, trying to understand what Reinheiser was talking about.
He felt an icy cold, incredibly strong hand pushing on his back, and then he was falling.
Some of the elves noticed the movements as Mitchell went over. Reinheiser answered their dumbfounded stares with a shrug of his shoulders, then merely laughed and leaped off the cliff.
Andovar rushed over, but the two men had disappeared into the dark night. “It is good they are dead,” the ranger said. “Suren they’d’ve bringed harm t’our Aielle.”
The calm that followed ignited Ryell. He ran to the brighter area beside the pyre. “Let us not forget our great victory!” he shouted, fearing that the crowd’s confusion would steal his momentum. “This is a night of celebration!” Welcoming emotions that buried the disturbing accusations Del had raised, most of the elves responded with renewed and heightened enthusiasm.
A helpless shake of his head was the only apology Arien could offer to Andovar.
Reinheiser wasn’t dead.
He cast a simple spell as he fell, manipulating the air currents to slow his descent and cushion his landing. He stepped down gently into Blackemara just a few feet from the crumpled and twisted body of Captain Mitchell.