"Because mine are."
"Sometimes."
"Usually."
"Occasionally."
"Frequently."
"You are a mere child," I explained with pronounced precision, "when it comes to judging opportunities and alternatives."
"I am?"
"You are."
"Why is that?"
"You're twenty-two, bascha-"
"Twenty-three."
"-and for most of those twenty-three years you never had to think even once about how best to win a sword-dance, or beat off a Punja beast, survive simooms, droughts, assassins-"
"Kill a man?"
"-kill a man, and so forth." I shrugged. "Whereas I, on the other hand, have pretty much done everything in this world there is to do."
"But that's not because you're better, Tiger."
"No?"
"It's because you're old."
Even as I turned to face her, to explain in eloquent terms that being older was not necessarily old, a body came flying out of the nearest winehouse door. It collided with me, carried me into the track, flattened me there. With effort I heaved the sprawled body off me and sat up, spitting grit from my mouth even as I became aware that most of my clothes were now soaked. Even my face was damp; I wiped it off, grimacing, then caught a good whiff of the offending substance.
"Horse piss?" Del inquired, noting my expression.
No. Molah. I got up from the puddle, grabbed hold of the body that had knocked me into it, preceded to introduce his face to the puddle.
Of course, he wasn't conscious, so he didn't notice.
"Oh, hello," Del said brightly. "We were looking for you."
I turned then, straightened, saw him standing there in the doorway, looking big, young, strong, insufferably arrogant, and only the tiniest bit wrinkled.
"Ah," I said. "About time. Come along home, Herakleio, like a good little boy."
The good little boy displayed an impressive array of teeth. "Make me," he invited.
"Uh-oh," Del murmured, and moved.
"Feeble," I retorted.
Herakleio raised eyebrows. "Yes. You are."
"Oh, my." Del again.
"No," I said. "Your attempt at banter. And unoriginal to boot."
"Unoriginal?"
"It's my line."
"Well? Are you even going to try?"
"I never try, Herakleio."
"No?"
"I only do. "
He laughed. "Then let's see you do it."
So I waded into the middle of him.
Oh, yes: big, young, strong. But completely unversed in the ultimate truth of a street fight.
Survival. No matter the means.
He expected to punch. He did punch. One or two blows even landed-I think-but after that it was all me swarming him, using the tricks I knew. I caught him in the doorway, trapped him, lifted him, upended him over a shoulder using all the leverage I had, and dumped him on top of the body in the puddle.
The body meanwhile was attempting to get up and wasn't completely prepared for the addition of two hundred pounds-plus. Both of them went sprawling.
"Well," Del commented as, fight over, I nursed a strained thumb.
Herakleio was not unconscious, though I wasn't sure the same could be said of the body beneath him. He was, however, now somewhat more wrinkled-and furious.
"Shall we go?" I asked. "The molah-man awaits."
He stopped swearing. The sound issuing from his mouth went from growl to roar. He lunged to his feet and hurled himself at me. All two hundred pounds-plus of him.
I expected to collide with the wall even as he smashed into me. But either Herakleio was a smarter fighter than I'd given him credit for, or he was lucky. Whatever the answer, I missed the wall entirely, which would have provided some measure of support, and flew backward into the deep-set doorway.
The door was open. Thus unimpeded, Herakleio carried me on through and into the winehouse. Somewhere along the line we made close acquaintanceship with a table, which collapsed beneath our combined weights, and landed on beaten earth hard as stone.
From there it devolved into mass confusion, as cantina battles usually do. I was no longer concerned with making Herakleio accompany us back to Akritara and the metri, but with keeping breath in my lungs, teeth in my mouth, eyes in their sockets, brains in my skull, and dinner in my belly.
Out in the street it had been just me and Herakleio. Inside the winehouse it was me and Herakleio-and all of Herakleio's friends.
Like I said, smarter than I'd given him credit for.
From inside a fight, it's difficult to describe it. I can sing songs of ritualized sword-dances-or would, if I had the taste for such things and could carry a tune-but explaining the physical responsibilities and responses of a body in the midst of a winehouse altercation is impossible. The best you can do is say it hurt. Which it did.
I was vaguely aware of the usual sorts of bodily insults-fists bashing, fingers gouging, feet kicking, knees thrusting, teeth biting, heads banging-and the additional less circumspect tactics, such as tables being upended, and chairs, stools, and winejars being pitched in my direction. Some of them made contact. Some of them did not.
The same could be said of my tactics, come to think of it.
From time to time Herakleio and I actually got near one another, though usually something interfered, be it a bench, bottle, or body. By now I was not the sole target: a good cantina fight requires multiple participants, or it's downright boring. I doubt many of the men even realized I was Herakleio's target. They just started swinging. Whoever was closest got hit. Some of them went down. Others of them did not and returned the favor.
At some point, however, a pocket of Herakleio's friends did put together a united front, and I realized it was only a matter of time before I lost the fight. I'm big, quick, strong, well-versed in street tactics, but I am only one man. And here in Skandi pretty much everyone is my size and weight, give or take a couple of inches and ten or twenty pounds.
It was about this time, I was given to understand later, that Del decided to end it. Or rescue me, whichever method worked. All I saw, in between hostilities, was a pale smear of woman-shaped linen coming in through the doorway-head, shoulders, and breasts shrouded with fair hair.
My subconscious registered that it must be Del, but the forefront of my brain, occupied with survival, remarked with some amazement that walking into the midst of a winehouse fight was a pretty stupid move for a woman.
Then, of course, that woman, after observing the activities, took up a guttering lamp from an incised window beside the door, selected her target, blew out the dancing flame, and smashed said lamp over said target's head.
The target snarled something in response, no doubt thinking it was yet another tactic undertaken by an enemy. But he did glance back, smearing hair out of his face, and stopped what he was doing to stare in astonishment.
Del picked up a second lamp, its flame strong and bright, and simply held it out at the end of her arm.
The target, soaked in lamp oil, lunged away from her with a shriek. The move took the legs out from under another man, who fell over and atop him.
Now two men were soaked with lamp oil. And two men were less than enamored of the idea of seeing the woman toss a lighted lamp into the middle of the wine-house.
Fights don't end at once. But when enough men-those who are still among the conscious-realize everyone else has frozen into utter stillness lest even a breath cause the woman with the flame to lose control, fights die a natural death.
As this one did.
Being intimately acquainted with Del's control, I sat up. It required me to kick a shattered bench out of the way and jerk a miraculously unbroken winecup from under my butt, but I managed. And sat there, knees bent, arms draped over them. Watching the woman.
"Herakleio," she said in her cool Northern voice.
Curious, I looked around. I had no idea where Herakleio might be. The body closest to me, groaning piteously into the floor, was not his.