Over at the edge of the dueling ground Dath Amrits was speaking low enough that she couldn’t make out a word and probably wouldn’t have noticed his moving lips save for her current heightened sensitivity. He faced stolidly forward, ignoring both duelists, gazing levelly out into the lake. The physiker leaned closer to hear what he was saying.
Amrits waved the physiker off and paced to the center of the dueling ground. “Will the opposing parties please step forward?”
They paced toward each other. Gorgantern kept glancing at her pale, fleshy thighs. The air tingled cool against her skin and she felt scandalous. At the very least she’d make for a titillating story. Might as well be remembered as the girl who fought in just a shirt rather than the starving stutterer who botched her oath. Maybe they’d tell it in the men’s smoke-and-liquor dens in Vyenn. She’d never been inside a tap-house but she’d looked through smeared windows. Paintings of underdressed females, even nudes, were popular in those sorts of places, depicting bawdy jokes or old stories. Maybe she’d be decorating a tavern wall, in time. The Vales were mad for paintings, and anyone who could afford it filled their walls with art. She could just picture the painting: the sea in back; the otters; her bare legs; her sweaty, pale opponent. It was right funny up until she was stretched out cold . . .
Why wasn’t she imagining any ending that didn’t involve her dead?
“I have here,” Amrits said, pulling a silver cylinder about the size of his thumb from a pocket in his bracing vest, “a dragon whistle. When it blows, the duel is over.” He tested it softly to let them hear the tone and it gave a tweee! loud enough to make Gorgantern jump. It would be louder than any shout or cry. “Now don’t go claiming you didn’t hear it. When I blow this, they’ll turn around on the far wall of the Serpentine. The instant you hear it, lower your weapons and take three steps back. Not another blow struck.”
Gorgantern looked like a mountain this close. He smiled at her like a cat contemplating a bird with a broken wing.
Galia, behind Gorgantern and marking the edge of the dueling ground, gave Ileth an encouraging nod and did that knuckle-wall gesture toward her. Ileth realized she could die not knowing its significance. She supposed it was meant to steady her. She didn’t feel steady right now.
Amrits backed away from them, raising his voice to say: “Ready your weapons.”
They held up their blades, pointing at each other, the deadly tips one long step apart.
“Steady your feet!” Amrits said, more loudly still.
Gorgantern shifted on his feet so his forward leg held his weight and dragged the other one back behind his body.
Ileth had no idea what to do with her own feet, so she just brought the front heel up near her rear toes, toes pointed out, the way she’d been taught at the commencement of a social dance with a partner. She liked to dance. And it did allow you to shift quickly, forward or back, right or left, or bob.
“Begin!”
Gorgantern lowered his blade so that it pointed to the ground just in front of him to his right. He forced out a bleak smile.
He’s surrendering, she thought wildly, before he brought up his free hand and beckoned her forward. He was offering her a chance to strike. The contempt in the gesture made her angry.
The smile turned into a sneer. It made her angrier still.
“Who’s the dumb one now?” Gorgantern said. “You’re not even holding your sword right.”
That made it easier.
She lunged at him, clumsily. His sword came up in a flash. It must have felt light as a reed at the end of that huge, fleshy arm, she thought, before it rang against her own blade, knocking its point away to her right.
She danced back—literally; her change of feet was that of a dance partner, not a duelist—expecting another strike. She’d mostly worked on parrying with Galia.
Galia had stressed that when parrying, you should take the blow as close to the hilt of your own sword and near to your body as possible; you were stronger there and then your muscles were bunched for a fast and powerful counterstrike. Gorgantern raised his blade again, giving away the coming blow—the Captain had never taught him to keep his blade in between himself and his opponent’s blade—and brought it down with all the power in his huge body. It gave her a chance to try the one attack they’d rehearsed over and over and over and over again until she could hardly cross rug-beaters without using it.
Ileth danced in close, well inside his reach, sword at her side and held back so that the point only projected a few hand widths in front of her. At this point he was a wall of flesh; it would be impossible to miss with her stab—
But her move came just a lightning flash too late.
Though he missed her with the blade as she was inside his reach, his arm still struck her between head and shoulder. Her vision went white. She only knew she’d fallen when she struck the beach on her side. She wondered if she’d been cleaved in twain by the sword blade—
Her sword hand was empty.
Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The whistle blew so loudly Ileth felt like her body had, just for a moment, been magically transformed into sound. She felt like an extension of the whistle.
Now that she could see again, Gorgantern loomed over her big as the Beehive.
Gorgantern ignored the signal. He raised the sword again, this time holding it in both hands with the straight blade pointed directly down at her belly. She shut her eyes as she tried to twist out of the way—
Youdon’tfeelthepainyoudon’tfeelthepainyoudon’tfeelthepain . . .
A footstep thumped by her head and she sensed motion above.
Galia, a fair-haired blur, struck the giant in a flying tackle. She hit him low, she hit him fast, she hit him hard, and he hadn’t braced for it and folded around her as though his massive body would swallow hers. He was off his feet and on his backside with Galia atop him.
His sword had struck after all, plunging into the sand not quite harmlessly, for the point cut Ileth on the buttock as it went down. She felt the cold steel against her muscle, then the warmth of blood.
Gorgantern screamed painfully and Ileth saw her savior with teeth dug into his ear, biting into him and clenching on like a fighting dog. Blood dribbled on her face and Gorgantern’s shirt.
The whistle blew again, even louder. So loud it hurt. She sat up, covering her ears.
Galia rolled off him and came to her feet with an athletic ease, her face smeared with blood, bright-eyed and ready for more. Ileth got up with more difficulty. Her leg muscles had turned to bags of water hardly able to straighten her knees.
“I stood up for you, you pile,” Galia said, getting her hair out of her eyes. The blood on her mouth made her look savage, like a stable cat who’d finished off a rat.
“Worst mistake I ever made,” Gorgantern said, still seated and inspecting the blood at his torn ear. “You betrayed me from the start. Can’t stand that I won?”
Ileth picked up Gorgantern’s dueling sword and stepped over to stand next to Galia. Ileth pointed the sword about a hand’s breadth from his throat. Gorgantern’s eyes widened in fear and he jerked back.
“Ileth!” Galia said. “It’s over!”
The blade wavered a little. Ileth found herself shaking uncontrollably as her nerves started to release in the realization that she was still alive. Gorgantern leaned away from the point as though it were a poisonous snake.
“It’s over,” Gorgantern said. “The whistle blew.”