No, the only blows he knew that he could be sure would put Neif down to stay were all killing blows. Someone with the experience of Malachi Nasuno might have risked using one of them with just the right amount of force to only stun, but Hal was neither strong enough nor skilled enough to risk it.
He felt despair. Neif was coming at him again, a crazy expression around his eyes. Once more Hal faded away before the other's attack, caught him, led him off balance and threw him. Once more, after a second, Neif struggled back to his feet and attacked again. Hal threw him once more; and still, again, Neif climbed back to his feet and came on. Hal threw him.
The man was plainly in superb physical condition from his hard work in the mines; and also he was obviously not going to give up until he was stopped. The internal sickness came again to fill Hal completely. The crowd watching seemed very far away. The world about him was a place of rock and light; dry, dusty, and empty except for the unending necessity to deal with this attacker who would not lie down, would not leave him alone, and who forced him to continue handing out punishment.
Please, make him stay down! … the prayer repeated itself, over and over in Hal, as Neif continued to climb back to his feet and come again. In his mind, long ago, Hal had stopped reacting; in his mind, he was trying to leave himself for Neif to do anything the other man wanted to do to him. But the fear still with him overrode and ignored his mind; and refused to let the other man close.
In his imagination Hal saw the other lying still - too still - on the ground; and inside himself he shuddered away from the image. This could not go on. With a sudden spasm of desperate self-control, Hal succeeded in forcing himself to stand still with his arms down; and Neif finally reached him, grappled with him, and pulled him to the stony floor on which they fought.
But the miner was a man with his strength almost gone. Nothing was truly left in him but the blind will to keep fighting as long as he was alive. Neif's fingers fumbled up Hal's cheeks to gouge at his eyes, but Hal dodged them - and was suddenly filled with hope born of inspiration.
Lying on the ground with the other man on top of him, he slid his hands up to hold the other's shoulders, and under the pretense of trying to push the other away, pressed his thumbs into the carotid arteries on each side of Neif's neck. In the same moment Neif's fingers finally found Hal's eye-sockets.
Desperately Hal bowed his head on his neck so that most of the pressure was taken by his cheekbones. His mind counted slowly as Neif continued to try to sink his fingers into Hal's eye-sockets… one thousand… one thousand one… one thousand two… he pressed his face as close as possible to Neif's dusty hair and continued counting as he held the pressure on the other's arteries.
As he counted one thousand forty-three, Neif's fingers began to relax and at one thousand sixty they fell away entirely; and the miner lay motionless. Hal crawled out from under the other man's body and looked down. Neif continued to lie still.
Hal turned and walked, stumblingly, away from the motionless man toward the wall of bodies between himself and the bunkhouse. He could see Tonina directly ahead of him, her face for some reason in focus where the faces around her were featureless blurs. The surface on which he walked seemed constructed rather of pillows than of the hard rock and packed dust.
A sudden, swelling murmur went through the crowd. They were looking past him. He stopped and turned exhaustedly to look.
Neif was up on one elbow, looking around him. He was obviously conscious again; but, just as Hal had lost orientation after absorbing the other's first blow, so Neif's temporarily blood-starved brain cells were for the moment confused, and he would not be sure just why he was lying where he was.
Hal turned away again and plodded on toward the ring of faces and Tonina. He reached them; and, as he did so, the ring broke up, the miners in it streaming past him to surround Neif, help him to his feet and assist him to his room. Tonina was suddenly before Hal and she caught him strongly around the waist with one arm, as he tripped and almost fell.
"It's all right," she said. "It's all right. It's over now. I'll take you in. Where are you hurt?"
He stared down at her. He was suddenly conscious of the aching of his eyes and jaw, and the bruises and scrapes of the hard rock on which he and Neif had wrestled. But he wanted to tell her that there was nothing really wrong with him, nothing but exhaustion; that outside of that first blow, Neif had done nothing to him. But the sickness in him mounted, and his throat was clenched as tightly shut against it as if a pipe wrench had been tightened upon it. He could only stare at her.
"Lean on me," she said.
She turned and half-led, half-carried him toward the bunkhouse. Her arm around his waist was incredibly strong - stronger by far, a portion of his mind thought bitterly, than his own. He let himself be taken away in silence and brought to his own room, dropped on his bed and undressed. Lying on the bed, he began to shiver violently and uncontrollably.
Tonina wrapped the bedcover tightly around him and turned its controls to heat, but he still shivered. Hastily, she shrugged out of her own outer clothes and slipped in under the blanket with him. She put her hard, strong arms around him and held his trembling body to her, warming it with her own body heat.
Gradually, his shuddering ceased. Warmth was born in him again and flooded out through all his limbs. He lay relaxed. He still breathed deeply and tremblingly for a while longer, but finally even that slowed. Instinctively, his arms closed around Tonina, drawing her even more closely to him, running his hands over her body.
For a moment she tensed and resisted him. Then the tightness went out of her and she let him pull her to him.
Chapter Ten
A month and a half later Sost showed up unexpectedly at the mine with a delivery, pulling into the staging area just as dinner was ending for the teams that ate with John Heikkila's. Hal wandered comfortably out of the door of the dining hall and saw a familiar-looking truck shape before the office building and an even more familiar human shape getting out of it.
Hal started toward the truck, picking up speed as he went. Sost, however, disappeared into the office building carrying a large package before Hal got there, and Hal stood waiting until the older man came out again.
"Hey there," said Sost when he emerged, as casually as if they had parted fifteen minutes before. He rambled down the steps and came up to offer Hal a square, thick hand. "How's the Yow Dee been doing for you?"
"I like it here," said Hal, taking the hand. "Come on over to the canteen and sit down."
"Won't refuse," said Sost.
The canteen was half full of off-shift miners. Hal looked around for Tonina or anyone from his team, but saw none of them.
"Here," said Hal, finding them seats at an empty table with six places. "What would you like? There's only food - drinks and coffee, because of the mine regulations."
"Coffee's fine," said Sost, taking a seat.
Hal got them both coffee - or what was called coffee on Coby - and brought it back to their table in copper mugs with ceramic rims at the top so that lips would not be burned on the hot metal when the cups were filled.
"I didn't know you came way over here," he said to Sost.
"I'm liable to end up anywhere," Sost said, drinking from his own cup. "Like it here, do you?"