“Stab me in the back, would you?”
The man actually took a staggering step backward, eyes widening. “Is that the way barbarians think and act? We have been told to beware of such crudity of thought but.” He gathered himself. “No, we shall fight face-to-face.”
“Your long sword against my little cleaver?”
Ryan was buying himself some time, watching the Oriental like a hawk, studying him, concentrating his attention on the way he held the sword. It seemed to Ryan that the only possible path of the attack would involve an overarm cutting blow, aimed at his own head and neck.
The problem would be how to get in his own blows, against someone shrouded in armor, virtually from top to toe.
“You do not have a sword?”
Ryan shook his head. “In the house. Shall I just go in and get it?” he asked, intending to shoot the man with the Steyr, from an upper window.
“Trickster! I think not. Come, we have squandered enough precious time in idle talk.”
The fight lasted only a few seconds.
Ryan had guessed right.
The helmeted figure attacked with a strange, fluid, sliding movement, the sword coming over in a hissing arc of death, ready to cut Ryan open from throat to belt buckle.
But Ryan wasn’t there anymore.
He had feinted left, then ducked right, using the back of the panga’s blade to fend off the sword, sparks flying at the clash of steel.
Missing his blow sent the Oriental staggering off-balance, his small booted feet slithering in the muddy grass.
It opened up the right side of his body to Ryan’s wicked reverse cut with the panga, aiming below the skirted armor, the edge hacking into the man’s knee. It cut through the ligaments, slicing the cartilage apart, splintering the delicate bones of the joint.
The swordsman yelped and fell away, tumbling so quickly that Ryan almost had the hilt of the panga, blood-slick, jerked from his fingers.
It was a keystone of combat lore that a first successful shot or blow was useless unless you immediately followed it up and seized the advantage.
Ryan swung straight around again, aiming for the neck, but the fringe of steel links that dangled from the helmet deflected the blow, though there was enough power behind it to send the Oriental rolling on his back, dropping the long, slightly curved sword, grabbing at his ruined knee with both bands.
Ryan was amazed that his opponent wasn’t screaming helplessly in terrible pain. Injuries to any of the major joints of the body-knee, elbow, shoulder-were among the most excruciating of any sort of wound, as Ryan himself knew from bitter personal experience.
But the Oriental mouth was tight-set under the painted visor, a trickle of blood running down his chin.
Ryan stooped and cut at the leather strap that held the helmet in place, slicing it in two, opening a long, shallow gash in the side of the throat. He knocked the heavy helmet away with his hand, revealing long black hair, tied back with a red-and-white scarf.
The narrow eyes looked up at him, showing virtually no emotion, though the man had to have known that he was staring up at his own death. He hissed something in a foreign language that Ryan didn’t recognize.
For a moment Ryan hesitated, intensely curious about the alien-looking outlander, wondering where he could have come from, how he had managed to operate the gateway. If he was, indeed, one of the pair that they’d tracked both inside and outside the redoubt, which raised the question once again of where the second stranger was hiding.
Trader used to say that if you come to talk, then talk. But if you come to chill, then get on with the chilling.
He still hesitated, the panga hefted ready for the final crushing blow.
“To spare me would be to bring me only the deepest dishonor,” the Oriental whispered, struggling to sit up.
One hand had moved from the damaged knee, crabbing toward the short dagger that was sheathed at the silken belt, a knife that had pretty braids of electric silk knotted in tassels at the ivory hilt. The sight of the bright-colored material nagged at a small memory at the back of Ryan’s memory, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was.