The Swordsmen were coming out on to the sand. The attention of the eastern tiers refocused itself.
There were eighteen pairs of fighters, eighteen Saardsins matched with eighteen contenders, slave-Sword or free, from the rest of Vis. They were strategically spaced around the stadium, to give every part of the terraces the view of an individual battle, at least in its commencement. As habitually, the Swordsmen of whom the most was expected were ranged along the portion of arena below the Guardian’s seat and the boxes of the rich and royal.
Here, then, the Lydian, with either side, at a distance of some fifteen feet, two Zakor-born champions, the Ylan, who had only recently earned for himself recognition by the name of birthplace, and the older man famous with axe and mallet, nicknamed the Iron Ox.
The crowd yelled and waved its arms. Flowers fell for the beauty of dangerous men as for the danger of beauteous beasts.
Armored at loins, right forearm and calves, heads helmed and eyes shuttered behind the sealed visors, already in the drug-dream heat, Zastis, the glare of the sand, the love-partnership each man with the man before him, Daigoth’s Marriage of the Sword—not one looked upward to the tiers, or into the boxes.
Chacor had been aggrieved. The lot had not cast him with the Lydian. He was paired, on the north side of the stadium, with an Alisaarian-born Sword. Nevertheless, everything was not lost. Overwhelm the Alisaarian, and Chacor might choose his next “Marriage” from any Saardsin also rendered partnerless by success. So it would go on, until every man had been fought out and a majority of one side only, the Swords of Saardsinmey, or her foreign challengers, were on their feet. Grueling, this bout, as only Alisaar could devise. But when the Lydian fought, the city, without exception, won. He had never left this place other than on his feet, sometimes bloody, but always unbeaten.
Since his mastery of the chariot race, more than usual was anticipated from him today, and the betting had been fraught if biased.
The wise gamblers of the city had seen Rehger’s kind before. Like the orchid, they broke quickly to bloom, and burned in brightest magnificence a handful of years. Then the gods, sensible men must not rival them too long, cut the plant to the ground.
The horns brayed, and the Alisaarian’s steel came like a flash of water, to slice Chacor’s arm to the bone. But Chacor was away. He grinned, and slammed back with a rough crazy stroke, never completed, instead switched sideways as the Alisaarian moved, disdainfully to block it. Chacor’s blade, like all the rest burnished to blind, tickled the Ahsaarian’s ribs into a thread of blood.
Above, the north tiers, having noted the impudent Corhlan was returned, gave him a how! of wrath and glee. He was valued as lucky, and had been bet upon.
The Alisaar, put out to be bleeding, struck back with his own feint, which Chacor dismissed, catching the actual blow squarely on the oblong stadium shield.
Then, abruptly tilting the shield, pushed his opponent’s sword wide, an equally unpredicted deed the Alisaar did not care for; he was forced to hurry in his own shield as Chacor, excited now, drove for his guts.
“Tool,” remarked the Alisaarian.
“Accursed-of-Corrah,” replied Chacor.
It was a mistake to converse while fighting, but one commonly made by free men used to backland duels.
“What?” encouraged the Alisaarian.
As Chacor gladly repeated what he had said, with a jewel or two added, the Alisaarian set his sword glancing, left, right, left—smashing upward as he did so with the shield. In three seconds Chacor found himself nipped in the right shoulder, left forearm bruised from the impact of the brass shield rim. Such injuries, far from fatal, could nevertheless tell. While anything that bled shortened a fighter’s time on the sand.
A rolling gasp went over the north tiers, ending in unholy roaring. A man had gone down to the left, not a Saardsin. (Lost in the universal shouting and clamor, the fate of the Lydian’s partner at the eastern end.) Chacor, angry at his error, smarting, wished now he had not ridden with those girls last night. He could see, from a curious glow in the Alisaar’s mask-framed eyes, that unspent sex might also have its worth.
Then the Alisaar aimed a stroke that almost took Chacor’s arm from his body.
Springing backward, propelled by the instincts of panic-speed, Chacor’s feet slid in wetness. (The Saardsin leftward had finished his man, blood ran in a river.) Chacor fell, had fallen. Bloody sand burned his shoulders, and the Alisaar loomed over him, laughing, ready. Yes, there were frequent kills at Zastis. Chacor had learned that, from the Alisaar’s eyes. Above, the crowd were moaning and swaying, crying out, caught in Zastian sex-death-blood-lust.
As the Alisaarian’s sword came plunging down, Chacor brought up his shield with all his strength behind it. Death-desire met life-wish. The shield’s metal buckled and the wooden frame under the owar-hide gave way. As the point of the sword tore through, Chacor rolled aside from it. The Alisaarian, cheated of murder, only the wrecked shield on his sword, unbalanced, hung forward in the air. The Corhl came to his feet, slipping, grasping, deadly silent now, and slammed into the leaning man. As the Alisaarian went down, Chacor, who in all his itinerant brawls had never killed, fell again, astride him, and forced his sword half its length through flesh, muscle and pounding heart.
The Saardsin died with one orgasmic shudder, giving no audible sound.
Not so, the terraces. Curses and women’s scarves descended on Chacor as he rose up wildly, driven mad, shieldless—grabbing the Alisaarian’s shield—looking east.
Then, past the couples of fighting men, the length of the stadium north to east, the Corhlan ran, brandishing the red sword, yelling the. name of the one he wanted.
The Lydian had not killed. The two challengers he had disposed of he had removed by temporarily crippling them. They lay bleeding and semi-conscious against the terrace barrier, awaiting perforce the bout’s end to be carried to a surgeon. Killing was another matter. He did not want it. This might disappoint the crowd, but the fireworks of his swordsmanship so far held them cheering him. Though, too, they urged him to use his genius more cruelly. There had been times in the stadium, not always at Zastis, when Rehger also had come to want a man’s death. Such occasions were not predictable. When the prompting took him, he obeyed. He killed. That was all. He never made a record of numbers, nor kept count, even, as some did, of names, countries, dating his life: That morning I did for the Istrian; that race when I broke the mix’s neck.
On his left, the Ylan had wounded once, and killed twice. Rehger had not witnessed it, but heard, on the edges of awareness, the sea-sound of the crowd shot up in great waves.
The Iron Ox, to the right, had himself been hurt. He fought on, dispatched adversaries, but inexorably slowing. If he had his wits, he would presently sham a swoon. The crowd liked him; he could afford to skive, and win them back another day.
As the Lydian shed the third man—(unseaming the skin from knee to pectoral, a gaudy wound that, ending just under the nipple, induced fainting swiftly in a tired and unprofessional duelist), someone shouted his name. Not from the stands, which was perpetual, from the arena.
Rehger turned, and found the boy from Corhl before him, sword anointed tip to grip, face insane with the fighter’s lust.
From the look he had taken a life, for the first time. Like loss of any virginity, it was significant, that first. He was bleeding himself, a scratch on the right shoulder, not yet impeding him. The Corhlan was untrained, and craving, as they said, to touch the sun.
Fortune had spoiled him, in the race.
Fortune was trustless.
The boy was maybe three or four years Rehger’s junior, in other ways younger still. Not done growing yet, he lacked the Lydian’s height, but then few men were as tall, and since his twentieth year, he had met none taller.