by Джеффри Лорд
At last Blade handed the sword back to Paor and raised a hand in farewell salute. «Until tomorrow, then?»
Paor raised his own hand and pressed his wrist against Blade's in the Kargoi's gesture of honorable friendship. «Until tomorrow.» A moment later he was gone.
Blade sat down cross-legged on the ground, considering what he'd learned and making his plans for tomorrow. The testing seemed simple and straightforward, but there was always a wide range of possible surprises in something like this.
Fortunately, Blade could always draw on an equally wide range of talents plus the ability to think on his feet. The surprises tomorrow would not be all on one side.
Gradually the camp settled down for the night. The sounds of tools and crying children faded, the cook fires died down, the mounted sentries took up their stations. Blade took a last drink of water, wrapped himself in the leather cloak, and lay down in the grass.
The testing began the next morning as soon as the colors of the sunrise faded into daylight. The testing place was on the open plain several miles west of the camp. Only a handful of baudzi and warriors were on hand, and mounted sentries rode about to make sure no one else approached. Fortunately Paor himself was on hand, so Blade knew that his back was as well-guarded as he could expect under the circumstances.
The first test was an easy one, a test of Blade's ability to handle a drend. The riding drends were not exactly docile, but they were too slow in their wits and on their feet to be able to do anything dangerous to an experienced rider. Blade had no trouble starting, stopping, or guiding a drend at a walk and a trot.
Then came the test in archery. The Kargoi bow was about four feet long, built up of layers of drend bone and hide and strung with drend sinews. It could easily send its short, thick arrows two hundred yards. It was not a bow to bring down large animals or armored opponents, but the Kargoi didn't need it for that. They'd never faced armored human enemies and didn't expect to. As for hunting, their method of killing even wild drends was to run up to them on foot, stun them with clubs, then cut their throats. So why a larger bow?
Blade could have given the Kargoi a long lecture on why. He also realized that until he passed all the tests it would be a waste of breath to say anything to the Kargoi about weapons or warfare.
So he kept his mouth shut and picked up his bow and arrows for the testing of his archery. The mark was the skull of a drend, mounted on a pole. Blade shot at it both sitting and standing, from fifty, a hundred, and a hundred and fifty yards. Then he mounted a drend and shot while it was standing still, while it was walking slowly, and while it was moving at full speed. Each time he fired six arrows, and five of the six times he was able to put all six into the target. From the looks on the faces of the baudzi watching him, thus was obviously more than good enough.
Then he decided it was time to put on a show. He turned to Paor and said quietly, «Have them take the skull off the pole. I will shoot again, using the pole alone as my mark.»
Blade shot six arrows at the bare pole. All six of them were sticking out of the pole by the time he'd finished. Then he mounted a drend and rode at a walk past the pole, firing six more arrows as he passed. Five of those six arrows also hit the pole, which began to look like a porcupine.
When Blade dismounted, everyone who'd watched was wide eyed with surprise and admiration. Everyone, that is, except Rehod and the warriors who stood on either side of him. Rehod's eyes were narrowed and about as admiring as the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.
For the test in running, Blade had to run three times around the testing area. Two strong warriors would run after him, and if they caught him, they could prod him in the buttocks with the points of their swords. Paor was asked to be one of the warriors, but refused.
«It is known well enough how much I favor your being accepted among the Kargoi. There are those who might doubt I could give you a true testing, and therefore doubt your fitness.»
The substitute for Paor turned out to be one of Rehod's friends, a long-legged, rangy man who looked like a natural runner. Blade was quite certain he would not be easy for anyone to run down. Three times around the testing area was no more than three miles. Blade had kept pace with a party of Zungan hunters across fifty miles of open veldt.
Blade and his two pursuers started off at an easy pace, hardly more than a brisk jog. The other two ran level with him for a few hundred yards. Then step by step they began to fall back. After another hundred yards Blade looked behind him. The others were now holding their position, and the look on their faces was easy to read. He was not outrunning them at all. They were deliberately dropping back, to lull him into slowing his own pace. Nice try, he thought, but it won't work.
Instead of slowing his pace, Blade began to increase it. He did this so carefully that the gap between him and the men behind him nearly doubled before they realized what was happening. Blade saw the face of Rehod's friend harden. Then his long legs seemed to blur as he dashed forward after Blade.
Blade was plunging forward before the other man covered half a dozen steps. Blade's legs flew, devouring the ground in great leaping strides. His long arms pumped up and down like pistons, pushing air into the lungs in his massive chest. He raced along, working steadily up to the pace that had once taken him a mile in three seconds less than four minutes.
In moments of stress like this Blade had the ability to almost sense what lay behind him without seeing it. He knew that both men were making a desperate effort to close, that both had their swords reaching out for him, and that neither was anywhere near him. He ran on, still faster.
They finished the first lap with Blade still well out in front. Now Blade was able to look back. The sun glinted on the polished steel of the swords and also on the sweat pouring down the men's bodies. Rehod's friend looked as if he could run all day, but the second man's movements were becoming clumsy and his eyes stared blindly ahead.
Halfway through the second lap, the second man began to drop back. His face was twisted in frustration and pain, and he flailed away at the air with his sword as if he was hacking into the flesh of a hated enemy. Rehod's friend flashed a brief loop of contempt at his weaker comrade, then returned to his grim pursuit of Blade. His face was now set into a mask like the temple image of some particularly bad-tempered god. Blade suspected that if the man caught him he would do far more with that sword than merely prick Blade's buttocks. It would be an «accident;«of course.
The two men finished the second lap and charged into the third. The man behind still looked as if he could run all day, in spite of the sweat pouring down him. Blade felt exactly the same way. The spectators had been shouting, in excitement or in support of one side or the other. Now they stopped, watching the runners' duel in silence.
Halfway through the final lap Rehod's friend made his great effort. He raced after Blade at a pace good for breaking records in the hundred-yard dash, but no good for a long-distance run. Blade still knew he had no choice but to speed up. Otherwise the man would almost certainly catch him, and he'd run too far and too well to let himself be caught now.
Blade's own feet seemed to barely touch the ground as he poured all his strength into a pace to match the other man's. Once more his extra sense told him where his opponent might be. The man was gaining, but only a step at a time, and there was still a large gap between the two men. Would that gap last longer than the other's strength?
Blade ran now with total concentration, nothing on his mind but taking each step a little faster than the one before, making each breath a little deeper than the one before. His concentration was so complete that the man behind him could probably have caught up and stabbed deeply without Blade's feeling it at all.
Then suddenly Blade's sensation of someone behind him began to fade. He didn't look back until the sensation was completely gone. Then he saw his pursuer staggering like a drunk as he ran, stumbling and weaving from side to side. The gap between the two men was widening at every step.
Blade didn't slow down until he was near the end of the third lap. As they reached the end of it Rehod's friend fell to the ground and lay there, writhing feebly and gasping like a dying fish. Blade ran on, completing half of a fourth lap at a run, then finishing it at a jog. As he came in from the fourth lap, everyone except Rehod and his friends was cheering.
Blade drank some water and took a short rest before the test in wrestling. «In fact,» said Paor, «if you do not take the rest, I will knock you down and sit on you until you are strong enough to be fit for the testing. Show some of the wisdom you showed facing me and my comrades, and the day will be yours.»
Blade really needed no such urging. The four-mile run in the hot sun on an empty stomach had taken a good deal out of him. He was happy to sit for a few minutes, drinking water, breathing deeply, and working the kinks and knots out of his muscles. Then he rose to be tested in wrestling.
Neither of Blade's opponents in the wrestling test was a friend of Rehod, so Blade did not worry about painful or fatal «accidents.» He was able to relax and do his best.
The Kargoi's style of wrestling turned out to be highly formal, almost ritualistic. There were only a few standard moves. When Blade learned those, he had no more problems. In fact, he had to take care not to win so easily that he would humiliate the two warriors facing him. He flattened both opponents in less than ten minutes apiece, then drank some more water and got ready for the test of swordsmanship.
This would be the last test, and possibly the most important. Certainly it would be the most dangerous. The weapons lent themselves to «accidents» if anybody wanted to arrange one.
Somebody probably would. Blade's first opponent in the test of swords was Rehod, and open anger showed in the warrior's face every time he looked at the Englishman.
Chapter 8
For the testing of Blade's swordsmanship, everyone crowded closer. Blade had made quite an impression in the previous tests. Now everyone was openly curious to see what would happen when he came up against Rehod. Even the mounted sentries were riding as slowly and as closely as they dared.
Blade had taken the other tests wearing only a loinguard and sandals. For the test of swordsmanship he pulled on boots, kilt, belt, and leather wrist braces, as well as the two swords. None of the clothing would restrict his movements in the least-or protect him from Rehod's swords if the padding came off.
Blade stepped out into the middle of the circle and waited for Rehod. The baudz came trotting out, head lowered like a bull about to charge. The man looked rather like a bull, too. He was half a head shorter than Blade but a good deal wider. His arms were nearly as thick as Blade's legs and his legs looked like the trunks of young trees, while his hands made even his longsword look like a child's toy. Rehod moved well, though, so Blade knew he would be facing a man fast enough to put all his bull-like strength to effective use.
The two swordsmen moved toward each other. Blade held his longsword in his right hand, raised to slash down, and his shortsword in the left, ready to either guard or thrust home. Rehod, who was left-handed, did exactly the opposite.
As usual when he wanted to size up an opponent, Blade let Rehod make the first attack. Another minute of circling, then Rehod flew at Blade like something propelled by an explosion. He seemed to be all attack, no defense. His longsword whistled down toward Blade's head while his shortsword thrust at Blade's stomach.
Blade easily blocked both attacks. His longsword rose to meet Rehod's with a ringing thud, while his shortsword locked hard against Rehod's. Blade tried to twist his own sword free and turn the block into a thrust at the other's groin, but Rehod was too strong for that. The swords scraped free of each other and the two fighters each moved back a step. Blade realized that Rehod had attacked with only part of his own strength and speed, also, testing his opponent. The next attack might be harder to meet.
Blade decided not to leave that much initiative in the hands of someone as dangerous as Rehod. Even with blunted swords those head-cuts of his might still scramble the brains inside Blade's skull so they could never be unscrambled by the medical skills of the Kargoi. Blade was never entirely at ease about the possibility of brain damage which could make it impossible for the computer to reach him and draw him home. He decided to let Rehod have two more attacks, then move in himself.
The pattern of the second attack was the same as the first, but as Blade expected it came in faster and hit harder. The impact of meeting it made Blade's arms tingle as if he'd touched a live wire.
This time Blade didn't take a backward step after Rehod's attack. He held his ground, then went straight into his own attack. Rehod was too strong and fast to be given that third attack. It was time to see what the baudz could do on the defensive.
Blade's attack came in low, the shortsword leading. Rehod blocked the shortsword with his own and struck down at Blade's arm with his longsword. If the blow had landed it would have snapped Blade's arm like a rotten twig. Blade snatched his arm back just in time. As he did his longsword whirled up and over, to smash its tip into Rehod's shoulder.
Shouts exploded from the watchers, wordless cries and hisses of indrawn breath, yells of «First struck!» Rehod seemed not to notice the pain of the blow, but he did notice the shouts. His face set into an even uglier mask than before, something Blade wouldn't have believed possible. Then he launched himself into the attack again, at the exact moment Blade did the same.
The two men came at each other with no defenses at all, but by some miracle neither of them got a single blow home. They even held onto their swords, although the head-on meeting jarred both of them. Then the fight dissolved into a continuous savage swirl of attack and counterattack, block, and thrust. Even the watchers around the circle could barely keep track of who was trying to do what to whom. As for the two fighters, each man's world had narrowed down to himself and his opponent, the weapons that whistled through the air, and the circle they were trampling down in the grass.
Blade had to pay less and less attention to his style as the fight went on. Rehod was too likely to take advantage of even the slightest mistake to land a blow that would be crippling or fatal even with a padded sword. Perhaps the watchers would judge that Blade had proven himself and stop the fight before either he or Rehod really gained the advantage? That was possible, but nothing to count on. Rehod was the type of man to claim that he'd been winning, unless he could no longer stand or lift a sword at the end of the fight. Letting the fight go on until one man collapsed would make the decision of the baudzi much simpler.
Besides, Blade suspected that he and Rehod were putting on the kind of show the Kargoi seldom saw. The fight was too good a piece of entertainment to be stopped before one of them lay flat on the ground.
So nothing and nobody except the two men themselves would end the fight. With that clear in his mind, Blade settled down to make sure that it was Rehod who ended up flat on the ground, not Richard Blade.
The swords whirled in the air and clattered against each other. The circle of trampled grass grew wider and wider as two large pairs of booted feet pounded back and forth in a deadly dance. Sweat dripped down both men, leaving trails in the dust on their skins and dark stains on their leather garments, forcing them both to grip their swords tighter and tighter. Both sensed that the first man to lose a weapon would almost certainly be the first man down and out.
Against an opponent other than Rehod, Blade would not have been quite so concerned about that. The watchers would not end the fight before there was a definite winner, true. But certainly by now they would also be willing to admit that Blade was worthy to be a warrior of the Kargoi, even if he lost.
Against Rehod, though, losing the fight would mean losing life or limb. That was becoming more certain with each moment. Rage and hatred were growing in the man and blazing more and more savagely from his sweating face and wide-staring eyes. Blade knew that if he faltered even for a few seconds Rehod would use those seconds to kill or cripple. The watchers could not hope to
prevent it or perhaps even notice it until the damage was done.
So Blade pressed his attacks harder and faster. He knew now that Rehod had an edge in sheer physical strength, but he had about the same edge in speed. If he could use that speed to drive home a few blows that would start cutting away Rehod's strength ….
Blade's swords darted and flew like striking snakes, as fast as human muscles could move them. At the same time they moved with deadly accuracy to their targets. Blow by blow, Blade began dealing out punishment.
Another blow to Rehod's shoulder. One to the right side of his chest, another to the left side of his belly. Two in quick succession to his right thigh, which left a spectacular welt and drew a hiss of pain. Blade followed up the blows to the thigh by working down the same leg with three more attacks. The last one went squarely home to the knee. After that Rehod was unmistakably favoring his right leg.
His legs might be taking punishment, but Rehod's arms were still as strong and quick as ever. Blade couldn't risk moving his attacks lower than the knee. He'd be leaving himself too open to an attack that would be just as dangerous as ever.
So he went back to work on Rehod's ribs and shoulders. Twice he broke the skin so that blood began to trickle and mix with the sweat on Rehod's torso. Most of the time he hit hard enough to leave welts. Some of his earlier hits were already turning a spectacular dark blue.
The hitting was not all on one side. From time to time Rehod got through Blade's defenses and left welts and blood trickles of his own. This didn't happen often, though. Blade was hitting four or five times for every time he was hit. At this rate even Rehod would soon have to yield; even his bull frame could take only so much punishment before his bull strength started to fade. Then the fight could be over very quickly.
Blade was vaguely aware that the noise from the circle of watchers got steadily louder as he hammered more and more blows through Rehod's defenses and left more and more blood and bruises on the man. He could hear it only faintly, as his own breath roared louder and louder in his ears, building up a wall of sound that seemed to shut out the rest of the world.