As he did this be hissed loudly in my ear that we should fake a tussle. Wonderingly, I slipped out of his grasp, caught his bald bullet-head in the crook of my arm, and pretended to be strangling him violently.
“What in the world is all this about, Ergon?” I whispered.
“You are good friends with your team leader, the champion Zantor, are you not?” he inquired in a hoarse mutter. I nodded. He continued: “Well, that pretty boy, Panchan, is boasting how he’s going to mop up the arena with his corpse this afternoon. Maybe you can get word to your leader to be wary of trickery―something about a wine cup, I don’t know what.”
“I will certainly do as you suggest,” I replied. “But what is Zantor to you that you wish to save him?”
He shrugged. “He is nothing to me. But by all reports he is a gentleman and a man of honor. I despise Panchan, that gilded boy-lover, and hate to see him down the better man by vile cunning. Now throw me clear when I give the word―first, let me stoop to get my ax―now!”
I whirled him about and released him, making it look as if he had broken free by main force. He staggered away and vanished in the mass of struggling men, and no one, I am convinced, was the wiser. I looked about, craning my head over the embattled throng, searching for Zantor. And found him―face to face with Panchan, in the moment of challenge!
Bugles blew, ringing above the tumult, calling the throng’s attention to the duel of champions. Panchan, his glorious golden body stripped naked save for scarlet loin-silk and narrow-strapped sandals, postured gracefully to the admiring crowd, held up his hand and proposed to drink a toast with Zantor to the victor in their contest. It was a noble gesture and the crowd applauded wildly. The leader of the tharians had brought a flask of wine and twin gold goblets, and while Zantor stood waiting with impassive mien, leaning upon his spear, the other deftly filled both goblets and proffered one of them to the leader of the spearmen with a smirk.
And suddenly I understood the import of the words Ergon had brought to me=`something about a wine cup.” And terror smote me. For I knew beyond any doubt that there would be a potent drug in the wine cup from which Zantor would drink. A drug that would not take effect until the combat had been underway for some few minutes. A drug that would weaken or befuddle him, making him easy prey for the mace of Panchan, or for the slim, gold-hilted rapier that was his pride.
Desperately, I forced my way through the grunting, cursing press of embattled warriors, using elbows and knees to squeeze through to the place where Panchan and Zantor stood facing each other, cup in hand. As I fought my way through the mass of men they were just lifting their cups in a toast to each other.
There was no time for words or explanations. Lunging forward, I dashed the gold cup from Zantor’s hand. And as astounded silence fell over the arena. I stood there panting, sweating under the linen headdress that covered my yellow hair from view. Zantor regarded me with a puzzled expression. But Panchan was livid with rage, his wet mouth working, eyes glaring wildly, as enraged as if it had been from his hand that I had rudely dashed the goblet.
In the next instant he raised his mace and sprang at me with a lithe, tigerish bound. Perhaps he wished to silence me as soon as possible, before I could accuse him before the arena of treacherously attempting to drug or poison his opponent.
At any rate, I found myself fighting for my life―against the most feared champion among all the gladiators of Zanadar!
Book V
AGAINST ALL ODDS
Chapter 13
DARJAN―UNMASKED!
Defending myself as best I could, I backed away from Panchan’s furious assault. Over his shoulder I saw Zantor looking on, his face blank with amazement at this turn of events. The battle around us stilled; the stands were a silent wall of frozen faces and staring eyes. But I was far too busy just keeping myself alive to think of anything else.
The mace of the gladiators is a heavy, cumbersome weapon which requires considerable strength of wrist to wield with any particular agility. In the hands of Panchan, though, the steel ax seemed light as a feather. It whistled shrilly, slicing the air, as he wove it in a deadly figure-eight in the air between us. It was not long before my clumsy efforts to ward off his singing blows came to grief: the glittering edge bit deep in the hard black wood, chewing off splinters. And a moment later my spear shaft broke. Panchan had chopped it in two with a deft, backhand stroke―leaving me with a shaft of broken wood a little shorter than a broom handle to defend myself against the greatest warrior who ever fought in the arena of Zanadar.
In the stands above us, the throng sucked in its breath in gloating anticipation of the kill. The mighty Panchan had only been playing with me, and now he would close in for a quick kill―by some telepathy I could read this in their staring faces and hungry eyes. And, in truth, few men had ever stood up before Panchan the Golden as long; I cannot explain why had he had not already struck me down, unless it was that the rage that blazed in him blinded him and threw him off his timing somehow. Indeed, he was shaking with fury, and his eyes were quite mad with the rage that surges up in the pampered when they are unexpectedly deprived of a favorite toy. His working, loose-lipped mouth was smeared with spittle, and be was snarling and spitting like an infuriated cat. It would almost have been funny, if it had not been a matter of life and death.
Indeed, death was very near to me now―only seconds away. Another moment and he would catch the broken stub of my spear in the hook atop the bead of his mace and rip it from my grasp with a practiced twist of those iron wrists. Then it would fly up, that ax, and come whistling down to slake its scarlet thirst in my body.
There was nothing else to do―so I did the one thing Panchan could not have expected. I have often found, in moments of extreme danger, that the way out lies in doing something at total random―the last move anyone would anticipate. It has saved me from death before, this trick, and it saved me now.
Panchan advanced upon me, eyes flaming with greedy triumph, cutting the air between us with his singing blade. The only sensible and logical thing to do was to retreat cautiously, buying time, delaying the inevitable blow. Instead, 1 sprang forward and thrust the sharp, splintered tip o f my broken spear straight in his face.
I had timed it beautifully, waiting until the whirling ax had whistled past me, before darting in to thrust the splintered stub of my spear in Panchan’s startled face.
Taken completely off guard, he winced back, turning his sullen, pretty face away from the stabbing splinters. For a moment he lurched off guard―and in that moment I brought the butt of my spear around and cracked him across the forearm with a stinging blow. He screeched, loosening numb, tingling fingers, and the heavy mace went cartwheeling from his nerveless grasp to thud against the arena sands a dozen feet away.
I jabbed the broken end of my spear at him again, and this time a splinter caught and tore his girlishly smooth cheek, dragging a line of leaking scarlet down it to the angle of his jaw just beneath the ear. Panchan―bloodied!―by an ill-trained spear-slave, armed with a stick? The gasp of astonishment that burst from a thousand lips was clearly audible even above the thunder of my heart pounding like a frightened bird against the cage of my ribs.
His sulky face streaming with gore, distorted into a bloody, tigerish mask of rage, he sprang lithely backwards and whipped his gold-hilted rapier from its scabbard. The point sang toward me, dancing through the air, daylight flashing from its razory edge.