They were almost in the center of the polished floor area now. There was still a dozen feet between them, but tall and bent over as they were, their wide shoulders hunched forward, the rods held low before them, it seemed as if scarcely one of their own long arm lengths separated the two of them.
Abruptly the rod in Slothiel’s hand spouted the white lightning of its charge. At the same time, he leaned back and to one side in an attempt to outflank Galyan.
Galyan, however, crouched under the white bolt, which crackled where his head had been a moment before, and spun on his heels, still in crouched position, to come up facing Slothiel and with his own rod shooting white fire.
A little faster, and Galyan would have been able to drive the fire of his own rod under the line of fire from Slothiel’s rod. However, the moment of Galyan’s turning was enough time to allow Slothiel to lower the aim of his own weapon, so that the discharge from Galyan’s rod met the discharge from Slothiel’s head on, and the two lines of white fire splashed harmlessly into an aurora of sparks. From that first moment, the lines of fire from the two rods were never disengaged.
Following the first wild gamble by both men (and Jim had practiced at the rods enough with Adok to understand what gambles they had been)—Slothiel’s attack and Galyan’s counter—both of the High-born fought defensively and warily for more than a dozen fairly routine engages. As Jim had discovered with Adok, fighting with the rods was very similar to fencing with sabers, provided they were sabers that changed lengths frequently and unexpectedly. The focal point of the fire put forth by the rods—that point at which the discharge was most destructive—was at the tip of an inner cone of pure white light, and this cone could be extended by the man holding the rod, at will, from a length of six inches to ten feet. This was the point at which the utmost power of the rod was exerted. Directly in counter, the point of the cone of fire in one rod could be blocked only by the point of the cone of fire in another. However, if the cone tip should miss its target and the opposing rod could project its cone tip into the stream of fire behind the other tip, the penetrative cone could be bent aside, so that the attacking cone could go on to strike its target.
It was not just a matter of deflecting the stream of fire from the opponent’s rod, therefore, but of deflecting it with a portion of your own flame, which was stronger than that part of the opponent’s flame it encountered.
Slothiel and Galyan moved about the polished floor, each careful to avoid being backed against one of the green-draperied walls. From the encounters of their weapons came a steady succession of spark showers—exploding suddenly into near-fountains of light when the two cone points were the parts of the flames to make contact. Galyan was smiling grimly, thin-lipped and narrow-nostriled. Slothiel, on the other hand, after his first savage attack, fought with a sort of dreamy grace and a relaxed face, as if this were not a duel to the death but some minor sporting engagement in which he had perhaps backed himself with a small bet.
But Slothiel’s apparent indifference was no true clue to the way in which the duel was progressing. Hardly more than a few weeks ago, it would have looked to Jim more like some smoothly expert dance by two large men with some sort of Roman candles in their hands—a dance intended to demonstrate the rhythm of the man and the beauty of the fireworks rather than anything else. Now he knew better. Moreover, because he knew better, he was able to see that the duel could have only one ending. As graceful and swift as Slothiel was, half a dozen times already Galyan had almost caught him on the disengage from an encounter of the cone tips of their weapons. Sooner or later Slothiel’s luck and skill would not prevent him from being a little bit too slow in deflecting the other man’s fire.
Galyan was, indeed, the quicker of the two. And in this sort of duel, that meant everything.
In fact, as they all watched, the end came. Galyan leaped to his left suddenly, struck high with his flame, dropped down under the line of Slothiel’s countering discharge, and flicked up again inside to slash across Slothiel’s left thigh and left upper arm, which held the rod.
Slothiel went down on the polished floor on his right knee, his left arm dangling. His rod dropped and skidded a little way across the floor.
He laughed up into the face of Galyan.
“You find it funny, do you?” panted Galyan. “I’ll wipe that smile off your face!”
Galyan lifted his rod to bring it down across Slothiel’s features.
“Galyan!” shouted Jim, running forward.
The sound of his voice did not stop Galyan, but the rapid beating of Jim’s shoes upon the polished floor did. Galyan whirled like a cat.
Jim had drawn the rod from his own belt as he ran. He had just time to get it up and send the flame lancing from it, ahead of him, before Galyan’s rod joined its discharge with his in a shower of sparks.
Jim broke the flames of both rods high, disengaged, and stepped back. Galyan laughed.
“Wolfling, Wolfling…” he said, shaking his head. “You never really have learned what High-born means, have you? It seems I’ll have to give you a lesson?”
“Jim!” called Slothiel from the floor behind Galyan. “Don’t do it! You haven’t got a chance! Run!”
“You’re both wrong,” said Jim. Now that he was actually engaged with Galyan, his mind was as cold as ice, and the remote coldness of his voice echoed that iciness within him.
He engaged with Galyan, and they fought through at least a dozen engage-and-disengage actions. Galyan’s eyebrows rose.
“Not bad at all,” he said. “In fact, very good for anyone not a High-born—and unthinkably good for a wild man. I do hate to waste you, Wolfling.”
Jim did not answer. He continued to fight on, warily and conservatively, concerned only with keeping the cone tip of the discharge from Galyan’s weapon always out beyond the cone tip of his own flame and making sure he would not be backed against one of the walls. If he had not had experience fencing with foil, йpйe, and saber back on Earth, he would never have been able to pick up enough of the technique of handling the rods in the few short weeks in which he had trained with Adok. But that experience, combined with his own native ability, was now paying off. Little by little, as the duel went on, he found himself making his moves more surely.
“In fact, why should I waste you?” panted Galyan during one of the engages in which their faces came within a few feet of each other. The white skin of the High-born’s features gleamed with perspiration. “Be sensible, Wolfling, and don’t make me kill you. Slothiel has to die anyway—now. But I had large plans for you, as head of my own, new Starkiens.”
Jim maintained his silence. But he stepped up the pressure of his attack. Off to one side, without warning, he heard the sound of running feet on the bare floor, and Ro’s voice shouting.
“Keep back!”
Jim dared not look up at the moment, but a few seconds later he found himself facing toward the lounge end of the room, and he caught a quick glimpse of Ro, standing beside the fallen Slothiel, holding the rod Slothiel had dropped, and covering Afuan with it. Melness lay sprawled at Adok’s feet, and it looked as if the master servant’s neck had been broken. Only the unmoving figure of the Emperor, standing over the dead Vhotan, was unchanged.
“Who do you think you are?” snarled Galyan suddenly. “When I speak to you, I want an answer, Wolfling!”
Jim countered a high thrust from the taller figure and stepped to the left in a disengage, without a word.
“All right!” said Galyan, showing his teeth in an almost mechanical smile. “I’ve had enough of this! I’ve been playing with you, hoping you’d come to your senses. Now I’m through with that. I’m going to kill you, Wolfling!”