As the torch bearers approached from both sides, the light increased until Blade could make them out. They were human, right enough, as he understood human-men, women and children-all staring at him, pointing and whispering among themselves. The women were bare-breasted, the children naked, and the men wore baggy trousers of a material resembling denim. The men were hirsute of chest, arms and back-everywhere but on their heads. They were all bald.
None spoke to Blade. No one raised his voice. They whispered and kept their distance. Beyond the first fringe, some twenty feet from him, Blade saw several of the bald men in conference, whispering and gesturing among themselves. It was time to take the first step.
Richard Blade could be quite a ham when he chose to be, when it suited his purpose and might save his life. Now he twirled the sledge hammer over his head. It made a humming sound and the torchlight was reflected from the burnished metal.
«I come as a friend,» said Blade, «or as an enemy. The choice is yours.» The words came loud and firm, from deep in his chest. It was his parade ground voice and another trick to establish authority.
As he spoke a silence fell over the assembly. The whispers stopped. The staring went on. Children clung to their mothers but none whimpered.
Blade smiled at them. He let the hammer swing idly back and forth at his side. He feigned impatience. «I know you have tongues. I heard you speak among yourselves. Why are you silent now? Which is it to be-friend or enemy?»
There was a renewed buzz of whispering among the women. The men were silent. Several of the women pointed at Blade's genitals, nodding and whispering. One laughed.
At last a man pushed his way through the throng. He came to within a dozen feet of Blade and halted. He carried a long bar of iron or steel, pointed at one end and hooked at the other. Blade instantly judged it to be the natural weapon of these people: some five feet long, an inch thick, hooked and pointed, it would be lethal. And it could move those enormous sewer lids.
Blade swung his hammer in menace. «Keep your distance, my friend. Until it is decided if you are my friend.»
«I am Sart,» said the man. His voice was baritone and matter of fact. He did not smile, nor did he frown. He leaned on his iron bar, his bald pate shining in the torches and stared at Blade-not at Blade's face but at his genitals, just as the women had done. The big man from Home Dimension began to wonder what the hell went on. Were they all sex maniacs?
The man who called himself Sart pointed at Blade's penis. «That, stranger. Does it function? Can you make children?»
Blade did not let his face betray his astonishment. How could this sewer creature, this man of Dimension X, possibly know of Blade's sexual troubles back in Home Dimension? It was fantastic and incredible, an impossible coincidence.
Blade said, «It works. And I can have children. What is it to you?»
A strange prelude to combat, this.
Sart smiled for the first time, more with his eyes than with his brown-stained teeth. He lifted his heavy iron bar and twirled it like a baton. «It is not so much to me, stranger. It might be a great deal to you-the difference whether you live or die. We Gnomen need children. If you can make them, and you can prove this, then we will permit you to live and become a slave. If you cannot make children we will kill you. It is as simple as that.»
Blade had been watching the throng about him. Several men, all armed with the feral iron bars, were inching toward him, so spaced as to make a circle and come at him from all sides.
He raised his hammer and shook it at Sart. «Tell your friends to keep back or we will never finish this talk.»
Sart raised a hand and the men halted. Sart was again leaning on his bar. «Your final answer, stranger?»
Blade had already made his decision. No submission. No slavery. The matter would have to be decided here and now. He fixed a glittering eye on Sart. «The answer is still yes, I can have children like any normal man. As to becoming a slave-the answer is no. That will never happen. I will never submit and you will have to kill me… after I kill a great many of you. Does that suit your purpose, Sart?»
Something changed in the man's eyes. They were well set apart, intelligent, and of a deep brown such as is found in dogs and some apes. Blade waited patiently. Sart was thinking. Sart was in a dilemma; Blade couldn't imagine what it could be.
Blade watched the crowd. He saw one of the men giving instructions to a young girl, saw her glance once at Blade, then disappear into the tunnel. Somehow he knew, instinctively and without really knowing, that the girl was the one he had surprised in the niche, the one who had scratched him. He brushed a crumb of dried blood from his check.
«I have sent for instructions,» said the man called Sart. «I am only a third chief of this section, and as much as I would like to kill you, I dare not. Not without orders from Jantor or Sybelline. If you can have children and I kill you without orders, I would be banished to the five-mile pits. I would not like that. So we will just have to wait and see.»
This did not suit Blade. He decided to provoke a fight, keep the impetus with him, present the real leaders, when and if they appeared, with a fait accompli. There was a time to talk and a time to strike. The talk could come later, when he had established himself as someone to reckon with.
He began to taunt Sart. «What makes you so sure you can kill me?»
Sart did not answer for a moment. Then he stepped back and called to a man in the crowd. The man flung one of the sharpened iron bars. Sart caught it deftly. He put his own bar aside and held the new bar in front of him at arms' length. Slowly he began to exert pressure on the bar. His facial expression did not change as the muscles in his arms, chest and forearms rippled and bunched. He bent the bar into a horseshoe and flung it at Blade's feet.
«I can do the same to you,» said Sart. He was not even breathing hard.
Blade was impressed and careful not to show it. He swiftly picked up the bar, tested it a moment, and then began to straighten it. It took every ounce of his strength. Sweat popped out on his face and he could hear his muscles cracking. When he had bent the bar into a semblance of its original form he flung it back at Sart.
The Gnoman nodded in reluctant approval. «You are strong. I admit it. It would be a pleasure and an honor to kill you. But I dare not, not without orders. More than anything else I dread the five-mile pits.»
«I will solve your problem,» said Blade. He picked up a handful of the sand and flung it in the man's face.
«I provoke you,» he cried. «All your people can bear witness. Defend yourself, Sart. You're a coward and a braggart and if you do not fight I will kill you anyway.»
This thing must be done before the leaders and reinforcements arrived.
Sart snatched up his iron bar and held it before him in a defensive position. He called out. «You all heard him. It is the stranger who forces this fight, not I.»
Some of the women hissed. Two of the men leaped out to stand at Sart's side. They menaced Blade, who was slowly advancing, with their bars. Blade smiled. «I had thought to fight only you, Sart, but if you are coward enough to fight three to one, then that's all right with me.»
All the better, Blade thought. If he could beat down three of them, he would be in an even stronger position.
Sart spoke to the men flanking him. «Do not kill him unless you must. You, Hobbidance, from the left. And you, Obidikut, from the right.»
So it was to be three to one. Blade whirled the sledge hammer over his head and sprang at Sart, giving the men on either side of him a chance to move in if they chose. They moved, but they were slow and they were trying not to kill him. Blade feinted a blow with the sledge and, when Sart raised his bar to defend, halted the blow in midair. He thrust, sword-like, over the bar and caught Sart squarely on the jaw with the sixteen-pound head. Sart went down.