Equebus explained with pleasure, staring down his hooked nose at Blade. Kreed, behind the Captain, nodded from time to time and dry-washed his hands.
"Since you are obviously a man and a warrior," said Equebus with a sneer, "and no slave, you will not want to take unfair advantage of a blind man. You will fight this Tarsu in a dark room. You will be as blind as he, then, and it will be a fair fight."
Blade scratched his beard - it itched a little - and glowered at the Captain. "Weapons?"
Equebus leered down at Blade's big hands. He pointed. "Those alone for you. Tarsu will have a sword - he is much the smaller man. You object to this?"
, "He cannot object," Kreed cackled. "The Queen has ordered it. She is smitten with Blade, I think, but she will not weaken in this. He must earn the right to replace Tarsu."
Equebus regarded the big prisoner. The Captain tugged at his beard, now combed and pomaded into a point. There was, Blade sensed, something ambivalent about Equebus today. He was both pleased and displeased. At times he smiled like a wolf, at other times his hatchet face darkened as he looked at Blade.
He said: "You have done better than I expected, Blade. Oh, you have lost Zeena, who is sent to punishment, but it may be that you have gained the mother instead."
Blade taunted him a bit. "You have also lost Zeena, Captain. If she is in a prison galley, she is as far from you as she is from me. At least I have known her. You never will!"
The goad did not work. Equebus glanced at Kreed. Both laughed. Equebus said, "You are right, Blade. Much good it will do you. There is much in Sarma that you do not understand - and never will. Now enough of talk. You go to fight. Allow me to wish you the worst of fortune."
The Captain bowed to Blade with a mocking leer, then snapped an order to the guards. Blade was dragged from the cell and escorted to the center of the vast stadium. Rows of empty whitestone seats towered on every hand. It would, he calculated rapidly, seat a hundred thousand or more.
The floor of the vast square arena was strewn thickly with sand. In the very center was a heavy trap door with an iron ring set into it. Blade watched as slaves, under direction of the guards, tugged the trap door away to disclose a black hole with steps leading down. Equebus, sword in hand now, gestured with it at the stair. "Down you go, Blade. Just as you are. Tarsu is waiting."
Blade hesitated. "My eyes will take time to adjust to the darkness. Tarsu, being blind, has no such problem. You spoke of fairness - "
The Captain made an impatient gesture. "That has been thought of. The Queen is very concerned that it be a fair fight - " his lip curled in a secret smile, "and fair it shall be. Chephron here will see to it. Goodbye, Blade."
Equebus smiled pure venom. Kreed, lingering in the background, chuckled and wrung his hands in glee. Blade spat into the sand at the Captain's feet.
The slave named Chephron was a hideous hunchback clad only in a long leather kirtle. He wore an iron collar and his pocked face was badly malformed. He was bald and his legs were twisted and spindly and covered with open sores. Blade looked at him with distaste. The man had executioner, torturer, written all over him. Most obscene of all was the voice, a high shrill bleat.
He touched Blade's arm. The filthy crooked fingers were cold as death on the big man's smooth warm flesh.
"Come, master," said Chephron. "I will see to everything. I will instruct you, master, never fear. But come. Hurry. Tarsu already awaits you."
Blade followed the grotesque form down the stair. Down and down as the murk grew deeper. Somewhere below them a torch gleamed yellow. Still they kept going down.
The guttering torch revealed a small narrow room. Three walls of stone, the fourth of wood. Chephron, smirking and bowing, muttering all the time, rapped on the wooden wall. "Tarsu? You are ready?"
A voice came back deep and gruff. "I am ready."
"Your hand is on the wall so you will know when it is lifted?"
"It is. Have done with chatter and begin. My sword is thirsty."
The executioner turned to Blade, grimacing horribly. He pointed to the wooden wall, then to the single torch in the ring bolt. "You understand, my master? Simple - quite sun-pie. I will take the only torch with me. When I am out and the trap door is closed you will be in darkness." His bleating laugh was shrill and high. "As dark as Tor's bowels! Not a single ray comes down."
Blade nodded at the wooden wall. "That rises, then?"
"Ah, yes, master. It rises. On the far side there is another room such as this. You will be alone with Tarsu, master. In the dark. As Tarsu has always been in the dark. Heh-heh - I do not envy you, master, and I do not think I will see you again."
There came an impatient rapping from the far side of the wooden wall.
Chephron extended fingers to Blade in a twiddling motion. "It is the custom, master, to give something."
Blade's skin was crawling. This creature was like a slimy thing that had lived in darkness forever.
"I have nothing," Blade said harshly. "But this!" He moved the executioner toward the stairs with a sound kick. "Get out!"
Chephron rubbed his behind and drooled. Slaver ran from the corners of his toothless mouth. "I thank you, master. It will be a great pleasure to drag your body away."
"Out!"
Chephron scuttled up the steep stairs with the torch. He vanished around a bend and Blade was in near total darkness. He waited and listened. He ran to the end of the room and threw himself flat, belly down, on the floor. He rested his fingertips lightly against the wooden wall. From far overhead came a sullen clang of stone on stone as the heavy trap door was dropped into place.
Blade was in darkness. The wall began to rise.
Chapter Thirteen
The wooden wall slid away from Blade's touch, upward into darkness. There was a faint click. Then silence absolute. Pit dark. Stygian. Blade held his breath.
Silence. Blade caught an odor, a whiff of human sweat. Near. Very near. Too near!
SWISH - the sword cut the air just over Blade's head. Tarsu had been at the same end of the room, touching the wall, directly opposite Blade.
Blade rolled frantically to his left. Sparks flew as the sword beat on the stone floor. Could the man smell him, Blade?
He got on his hands and knees and scuttled, for all the world like one of the giant crabs, to the rear wall of the room. There he went to his belly again. He took a deep breath and held it until his ears popped. He made a mental picture of the room. The stairs were behind him and about ten feet distant. They were narrow and there was no room to swing a sword. If he could entice Tarsu to fight him on the stairs -
Later he would try that. For now, if he could only come to grips with his enemy before the sword could inflict a mortal wound - if he could get the sword, or make Tarsu lose it.
Something rattled on the stone floor just in front of Blade. He lay unmoving. breathing softly through his mouth. An old trick. Tarsu had tossed a pebble, a fragment of the wall. Blade smiled grimly. His opponent would have to do better than that.
There was the smell again. This time of sweat mingled with something else. Grease? Oil of some sort -
Blade moved just in time. The sword glanced off the wall just over him and sparks showed like tiny golden stars in a miniature eternity, a macrocosm of space. Tarsu grunted, a foiled animal sound, and Blade launched himself in air, feet first, at an unseen point three feet behind the sparks.
His bare feet rammed into solid flesh. The man went down, the sword chiming "wildly on stone, with Blade half on him, half off. Now!