by E. C. Tubb
"Right, Earl," said Valaban. "I guess this is it. Go out and gut the bastard!"
A sentiment echoed in a roar as Dumarest stepped into the ring.
One he had heard too often before.
The cry of a beast scenting blood, mindless, unthinking, eager only to witness battle and agony. To see the spurt of crimson, the writhing of lacerated flesh, the screams of the maimed and dying, the final convulsions. To know the euphoria of vicarious combat. To bet and gloat if they won and to curse the vanquished if they lost.
A sound as familiar to Zucco as to himself.
Dumarest knew it as the man came forward, naked aside from shorts, his body bearing the sheen of oil. He ignored the crowd as he trod the sand, smiling, eyes narrowed as he summed up the opposition. And Reiza had told the truths-Zucco bore no scars.
The sign of a novice or of a victor who had never known the ice-burn of a razor's edge. One too fast to be touched, too deft, too cunning. An unmarked champion. A thing so rare as to be almost unknown and Dumarest wondered how Zucco had managed it. Bribes, fixes, special blades which oozed red but did not cut could provide a show and safety for those involved. Things common in booths where men offered to fight all comers for cash or put on spectacles for gaping yokels. But the cognoscenti of the arena would never be so easily deluded-and no man could become a champion without their support.
"You fear." Zucco halted, facing Dumarest, the space of yards between them. "I can smell your sweat. Yet the crowd is with you." His smile turned into a sneer. "Let them shout- soon they will have cause to regret their mindless braying. As you will have cause to regret your temerity."
Dumarest made no comment, standing poised on the balls of his feet, ready to move in any direction. Zucco seemed more at ease, relaxed, the knife in his right hand hanging at his side. Ten inches of curved and pointed steel, burnished to a mirror brightness, honed and tempered to cut through bone. An inch longer than Dumarest's own blade but it was one he was accustomed to and this was no time to change.
"Yield," said Zucco. "I give you the chance. Throw down your knife and admit defeat. Better to serve than to die and, if you obey, I'll let you have the woman."
"Does she know that?"
"What she knows or wants is of no importance. Soon I shall be the master. Then-"
He broke off as Dumarest lunged, darting to one side, his blade rising to clash against the one Dumarest thrust toward him. An open attack and an easy feint but the speed at which Zucco acted was illuminating. As was the quick move he made to one side away from a second attack.
"You are impatient, my friend." His smile held no humor. "And clumsy, too-your attack had no grace. A tyro would have done as well. I wonder you managed to survive so long."
"Talk," sneered Dumarest. He stumbled as he moved to one side, as clumsy as Zucco had said. "Is that how you win? Bore your opponents to death?"
"No." Zucco crouched a little, knife held forward like a sword, point slanted upward. "I cut them, my friend. I slash their veins to make them bleed and their tendons so as to leave them crippled. I blind them and watch as they grope in the dark. I nick their jugulars and hamstring them and, at times, I ruin them as men." The point dropped, darted toward Dumarest's groin. "I offered you mercy-now I shall teach you the meaning of pain."
He came with a flash of steel, metal ringing as Dumarest parried, attacked in turn, his own blade swept aside as Zucco diverted the cut to slash in turn.
An exchange which left Dumarest with blood streaming from a gash on his side and the crowd, roaring, on its feet.
"First blood to me." Zucco bared his teeth in a smile. "And a taste of what is to come. Don't delay, my friend. Show your admirers how skilled you are. See? I offer you a target."
He spread his arms to expose his body, still smiling, light catching the blade he held and turning it into a gleaming star. A man radiating a supreme confidence and Dumarest searched for the reason why.
Zucco was quick, lithe, agile, moving with a dancer's grace. Things essential to any good fighter but not enough on their own to account for his victories. His lack of scars. There had to be something more.
"You're cautious, my friend." Zucco lowered his arms. "Too wary to take what was offered. A pity. But why don't you attack?"
A question to match the invitation and Dumarest sensed he was close to the answer. To attack was to precipitate the action, to score if the attack was fast enough and the opponent slow. To force his reaction if neither and so to still retain the advantage. One lost if the party was unexpected and the return unusual. But if both could be predicted?
Dumarest weaved, slowly, edging forward, knife a gleaming sliver in his hand. It turned so as to catch and reflect the light, to catch the eye and to narrow the concentration. Tricks Zucco must know but even so his head moved as he followed the blade. Moved then steadied as Dumarest lunged in a feint, drew back, lunged again, the blade in his hand sweeping up and forward in a thrust which would have opened the other's abdomen had it struck home.
A gamble lost and he felt the lack of resistance, following the lunge with a blur of speed as Zucco struck in turn.
Again the crowd roared at the sight of blood.
"Fast," said Zucco. "The fastest I have ever met. Slower and you would be screaming from the pain of a severed kidney."
Instead the blade had struck low to bathe Dumarest's thigh with a carmine flood.
A wound far less serious than it looked but he played up to it, limping, nursing the leg as he faced the other man, who now seemed too reluctant to attack and, suddenly, Dumarest knew the reason why.
"So you've guessed." Zucco edged forward, losing his smile. "Not that it will do you any good. In fact it will add spice to the combat. To know that you are without a defense. That your skill is useless and it is only a matter of time before you are reduced to a whimpering parody of a man. Here, in this arena, you've met your master."
A telepath.
Zucco's special skill which Shakira had mentioned. A man who could read thought and intention and act before they had been turned into movement. A fighter against whom there could be no calculated defense.
Dumarest inched forward, accelerated into a lunge, darted to one side, feinted again, heard the clash of metal and felt the burn of steel. A cut on his upper arm, shallow, harmless, but a demonstration of Zucco's power. Another followed, the point aimed at an eye missing to nick an ear, Zucco following the blow to cut again as Dumarest turned.
"Soon," he promised. "Then the game will be over. I shall cut deep and hard-try to guess where and when."
Thoughts Zucco could read and so direct his attack. A man facing a threat could avoid it in only so many ways but before action there had to be thought and Zucco would know the decision. As he would be able to anticipate the nature of any offensive.
"Come," he urged. "Why delay? The crowd are for you. They want you to win. Don't disappoint them. Even a whining coward would have the guts to try."
Taunts followed by others all of which Dumarest ignored. An old trick aimed at blinding him with rage but he had met it too often for it to have effect.
Why did Zucco want him to attack?
"Come," he said again. "It's time you made up your mind."
Time?
Time!
Dumarest stooped, snatched up a handful of sand, flung it at the other's face as he darted forward. A blinding shower rendered harmless as Zucco moved aside. Moving again as Dumarest followed the grit with a handful of blood. Then he was within reach, his knife a shimmering blur, cutting, slashing, a thin, high ringing filling the air as the blades clashed, parting to strike again in a fury of action.
Action too fast for thought, born of the reactive instinct honed by numberless combats and augmented by Dumarest's natural speed. The speed was too fast for Zucco to follow and he backed across the ring toward the tunnel where Valaban stood, Reiza at his side, Shakira a shadowy figure behind.
"No!" Zucco backed faster, face distorted with terror as
he read the grim, unrelenting purpose in Dumarest's mind. "No!"
Steel clashed as he parried, a thin red line marring the smoothness of his torso, another gaping just below the throat to add its carmine stream to the smears staining the chest and stomach. Blood stained the shorts and laced the oiled flesh.
"No!" Zucco screamed as again he felt the ice-burn of shearing metal. A shallow cut to join the rest but the wound to his self-confidence was far deeper. "Dear, God-no!"
A man facing death, knowing it, feeling the terror he had so often induced in others. His nerve broke as again Dumarest sent his blade to cut a furrow in the oiled skin.
He would be flayed, crippled, maimed, blinded-things Zucco could read in Dumarest's mind. A mind without mercy, cold in its determination, maintaining a single red image as his body moved on an instinctive level, robbing Zucco of his advantage.
Turning he ran toward the mouth of the tunnel, screaming as Dumarest reached him, gripped his hair, turned him to stand, face tilted upward, the point of his knife at the straining throat.
"Talk," snarled Dumarest. "Talk!"
Before he sent the blade upward, the point slicing through skin and fat and tissue. Driving up through the lower jaw, through the tongue, up into the palate, the sinus cavities, the brain itself.
A slow and lingering way to end.
"No," said Zucco. "Don't." He was helpless, his own knife lying where he had thrown it on the sand, already, in imagination, feeling the slow thrust of the threatening blade. "No," he said again. "It's not what you think. I-"
He broke off, rearing, eyes wide, the sudden convulsion racking his body causing his spine to arch in a bow, which snapped forward to send his head down, driving his throat hard against the needle point of Dumarest's knife.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Reiza said, "You murdered him! Murdered him-you bastard!" She faced Dumarest in the tunnel, radiating her fury. An emotion which distorted her face and made it ugly. "He was unarmed, helpless, at your mercy. Begging, even, I saw his face. And you killed him. Butchered him!"
"No," said Valaban. "He committed suicide. Shoved his own throat against the blade."
"Liar!"
"If you say so." Valaban shrugged. "What does it matter? The right man died."
"You filth! Jac was murdered!"
"Yes," said Dumarest. "He was. But not by me." He held out his clenched left hand, turning it, opening it to show the dart resting on his palm. A sliver of wood tufted at one end the point dark with blood. "This did it. I took it from his body."
Outside there was noise as the crowd, the entertainment over, moved back to work. Already Zucco's body had been removed, attendants raking the sand and hiding the soil of combat. But in the tunnel it was quiet, a silence broken only by the restless padding of the feline Valaban had treated. Recovered now from the gas and sensing the tension.
Dumarest allowed that tension to grow as he stood, saying nothing, the dart on his palm. Reiza had backed away to stand beside Valaban. Dim gleams from the shadows revealed where Shakira stood, watching. Aside from them the area was deserted.
Then Valaban gave a curt laugh. "So someone put a dart in him. I'd say, Earl, you had a friend in the crowd."
"A handy thing to have. But why did he wait so long?"
"Who knows? Maybe Zucco was moving too fast. Or you were figured to win. Or-hell, pick your own reason."
"I have." Dumarest tossed the dart into the air and watched as it fell to the floor. "Zucco wasn't hit earlier because he was too difficult a target. Whoever fired that dart had to wait until he came close. Almost here to the tunnel, in fact."
"But that's crazy! You had him at your mercy-why should anyone want to hit him then? You didn't need any help."
Moving forward Shakira said, "What you're saying, Earl, is that someone here fired that dart."
"Yes."
"Who?" Reiza was loud in her demand. "Who killed Jac? What kind of filth would murder a helpless man?"
"You, perhaps."
"Me?"
"A woman scorned," said Dumarest. "You turned against me because you thought I'd been with Melome. Maybe you heard what Jac told me in the ring or maybe he'd told you earlier. To him you were nothing. You could have realized that and remembered what happened to Hayter and why. Or perhaps you were promised more than he could offer."
"I'm no harlot!"
"You helped him. You took me to Krystyna for the reading after he'd told her what to say. Things he'd learned in the sump when he amused himself with that wand." Dumarest's voice thickened with anger at the memory. "He acted too bold for him to be wholly what he seemed. Knew too much for a man in his position. In the ring, after I discovered the truth about him, things fell into place. But something didn't fit. There was no need for Krystyna to die."
"She was old," said Reiza. "It was a natural death."
"She was poisoned." Dumarest was blunt. "Someone gave her a snack with an added content. A generous gesture from someone she had reason to trust. A mistake, as was killing Zucco."
Valaban said, "No mistake, Earl. He was killed in order to save your life."
"No. He was killed to shut his mouth."
"That's ridiculous!"
"Zucco could have killed me at the first engage," said Dumarest. "He knew I was going to attack and how. He could have struck home but instead he merely parried. A good fighter, even an expert one, would never have taken such a chance. The job is to kill fast and have done with it. To do otherwise is to invite disaster."
"Are you saying Jac wasn't a good fighter?" Reiza snapped the question. "He was a champion."
Now he was dead; a thing Dumarest didn't mention. Instead he said, "Zucco was playing with me. As a sadist he couldn't help himself. He wanted to see me sweat, hear me beg. That's why, when he was cut, he didn't cut too deep. He wanted to savor every moment while keeping to his contract. From his point of view it was a good one. I was to be crippled but not killed."
"Why?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Dumarest met her eyes. "I would be helpless, drugged, neatly wrapped and stored for later collection. Zucco would have his fun, his revenge, you and control of the circus. A pity it didn't work out that way. From your point, that is, you would have made a fine pair."
"The best!" She drew in her breath, chest heaving. "He was right-I was always his woman!"
Dumarest shrugged.
"It's the truth!" Her voice rose with the need to emphasize the statement. Behind her, in its cage, the great cat ceased its pacing and halted, glaring with baleful eyes. "You were an incident, a momentary madness, just as he said. A novelty which quickly palled. You and that freak! Jac would never have looked at her. He was my kind of man."
"Then why did you help to kill him?"
"I didn't!"
"You helped the one who did. Who gave you that snack to take to Krystyna?"
"It was harmless! Val-" She broke off and turned to glare at the old man. "You!"
"Shut up, Reiza!"
"You gave it to me. Her favorite, you said. Bastard! You killed her!"
"As he killed Zucco," said Dumarest. "With a dart. One like that he fired at your cat. Remember?"
She screamed in a sudden convulsion of rage, rearing, seeming to arch her back, spitting like one of the cats she knew so well. A reactive gesture as was the extension of her hands, the fingers curved into claws. The polish on her long, sharp nails gleamed like metal.
"Back!" Valaban circled, eyes wary, his left hand slipping beneath his tunic. "Get away from me, you bitch!"
"You killed Jac! Murdered him! For that I'll have your eyes!"
She exploded into action as a feline would attack, springing forward, hands outstretched, the rake of her nails furrowing the old man's cheek. He jerked free his hand as he gained distance, leveled the flat gun, fired as again she went for his eyes. The blast caught her in the chest. The second turned her face into a bloody jelly.
"Freeze!" The gun swung toward Dumarest, to Shakira, back to Dumarest agai
n. "You saw what happened. She attacked me. I had no choice but to shoot."
"You still have no choice." Dumarest inched forward, the knife in his right hand lifting, circling so as to make Valaban turn toward him, his back to the cage holding the watchful cat. "But if you kill me the Cyclan will make you pay."
"So you know. Well, it makes it easier." Valaban lifted his right hand, the small tube it contained aimed at Dumarest's torso. "I won't have to kill you. The dart this contains will knock you cold for twelve hours. When you wake Tron will have you and I'll be rich."
"The circus," said Dumarest. "All of it. The help and backing of the Cyclan. Rejuvenation, maybe, the chance of a new life. What else did they promise?"
"Enough." The tube moved a little. "Don't try it. I know your speed. Drop that knife. Now!" Valaban relaxed a little as the blade hit the floor. "Good. You show sense. Not like that stupid cow." He glanced to where Reiza lay huddled. "She didn't have to die but maybe it's better she did. A clean start."
"Clean," said Dumarest and looked at the woman. His voice changed as he said, "But she isn't dead. She-"
He moved as Valaban turned his head, hurling himself forward, one hand hitting the floor, coming up with the knife he had dropped, throwing it in an overarm movement.
A bad throw; the blade spun, glittering, without true direction or force. A harmless distraction but Valaban responded to the threat of edge and point. He backed, slammed into the cage- and turned as sickle claws lashed through the bars in a blur of fur and fury.
Razor talons which caught his face just below the hairline, ripping down to strip the flesh from the bones, to leave a carmined skull in which rolled agonized eyes and the grinning parody of a smile.
Shakira lifted his glass and, looking at the wine it contained, said thoughtfully, "Who would have guessed the old man had so much blood?" Then, to Dumarest, he added, "I read that in a book once. Or something like it. It was a long time ago now and I wonder why I should remember it. But it seems apt."