I had not wanted to strike down Sorem, by whatever means. Having abandoned the scheme, now it did not seem such a very difficult feat to turn aside his challenge and end the nonsense. Nor did I mean to leave Bar-Ibithni to do it.
The way she had secretly come to me-from the Heavenly City, which was a legend for its guards and bolts-must have been dangerous for her. She had not known what to expect of me, either. I might have exacted any price, the sum of her wealth, her jewels, use of her body; I might have killed her even. Since all she had heard of me was rumor, the rumors would have postulated that, too-in some tales I was a savior, and in others a monster. She was brave and she was strong, as only something fine and tempered can be strong. I wondered if her amazement had lasted her, to find me a man and not offal in a gutter.
About a mile from the Pillar Citadel lay a stretch of open land, given over to vineyards and orchards but falling off northward into rough wooded country that ended only at the seawall. An altar place stood up near the wall on a low hill, a briar-grown pile of stones, sacred to some pastoral goddess common to Hessek slaves and poor Masrians alike, who crept here at dawn to strew bread and flowers for her. Beneath this hill lay the Field of the Lion.
I went by backways, and on foot, muffled in a cloak. For company I had Lyo with me and no other. I would have been glad of Long-Eye, his obdurate silence and discretion, his lack of curiosity at my strange deeds.
A ruined palisade, remains of some Hessek Fortress, ran along the outskirts of the fashionable streets, dividing the Palm Quarter from the vineyards at its edge. The sun was just down, the light hollowing with the flushed blueness of
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first dusk, when I passed through the palisade and took the path toward the northern wall.
Swarms of bats went dazzling through the cool sky, and in the black-green stands of cypresses the ubiquitous nightingales of Bar-Ibithni tuned their silver rattles.
Stars came out. The path wound up, then down into the woods, and I began to hear the sighing of the ocean as the ·soft wind blew it inland, serene as the breathing of a girl asleep. I thought, What a night to go murdering on, what a night to slay a man. And from that I came suddenly to notice that my perceptions had been altered by half an hour’s argument with a woman.
Lyo was alert for robbers, and flinched at every sound. A fox barked three or four miles off, and his hand quivered full of knife. I laughed at him, so mellow had I grown. Next instant a man stepped from the shadow of trees. But he was one of Sorem’s jerdiers, who nodded to me and beckoned me to follow.
The Field of the Lion was a rectangle of turf between juniper trees that filled the air with their scent. Northward the ground folded up from the wood into the altar-hill, the shrine at its peak, like an uneven jet doormouth cut in the wide twilight. I wondered how many aristocratic duels she had presided over, that obscure deity of the hill, with the dead poppies around her hem some slave had thrown there.
They had brought four brands in iron shieldings, as yet unlighted, and stuck them in the ground. Sorem stood by one, with a couple of his officers, dressed in the casual wear of the jerds.
It was getting dark in the field, but I glimpsed his face well enough. I saw the look of her there in it, as I had seen his face in hers.
He nodded to me, curtly, polite as my guide had been, and told the nearer man to light the torches.
“Welcome, Vazkor. I hope you agree the arena.”
“Most picturesque,” I said. “But there’s another thing.”
“Well, speak. Let’s settle it.”
The torches started to flare up behind their metal guards, changing the soft colors of the clearing by contrast to thick violets, greens, and leaded black.
“I did you wrong,” I said. “I acknowledge it, and will recompense you as you wish.”
“I wish to find recompense here,” he .said, “with this.” And
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he tapped the sword the lieutenant held for him, still in its scabbard of white leather.
“I won’t fight you, Sorem Hragon-Dat.”
He let out an oath, partway between scorn and amazement. “Are you afraid? The sorcerer afraid? The mage who turns crones into girls?”
“Let us say, I don’t want your life.”
The last torch caught with a gust of sparks and his anger sprang up with it.
“By Masrimas, you’ll fight me, and I’ll feed you steel before you tell me that again.”
I showed him my hands, which were empty. He turned and shouted to his men for another sword. They brought it. He drew it and offered it to me. It was sharp and good. Next, he drew the other, his own, from the white scabbard. This was blue alcum chased with gold about the hilt, but no better edge on it.
“Since you have forgotten your blade,” he said levelly, “choose either of these.”
“You’re too generous,” I said, “but you must accept that I have no use for a weapon.”
He looked like the tiger just before its springs.
He slung his own sword, point down, in the ground at my feet.
“Take it, and be ready.”
“I decline.”
He raised the soldier’s sword, saluted the hilt, and came at me.
I had been tensed for it, yet he moved very fast. He knew his business evidently. Here is a warrior, I thought, with a kind of tribal stupidity. Then I lifted my hand and let the bolt from it. The light blazed out in a thin pale ray and the jerdiers yelled. It caught the darting blade and smashed it from his grasp.
He halted, stock still, about a yard from me.
“Magician’s tricks after all,” he said, very gently.
His eyes widened and went blind. I had barely time to think, What now? Something filled the air, a cold burning. I felt it strike me, and then the ground heaved up and tossed me over on my side.
I lay there for a heartbeat or two, dazedly aware of Lyo crouched near me with his wavering knife inexplicit for my defense, while I dragged the inner strength from myself to purge my brain and straighten my legs.
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I had dismissed the delay, the extra days that had elapsed before Sorem’s formal challenge was given me. Now I realized how the time had been spent. He had threatened me once with his priestly training, and he had been renewing his acquaintance with it. Sorem, this prince of the Hragons, could also wield Power.
I staggered to my feet. He had made no further move to attack me.
“I see how it is,” I said.
“Good,” he answered. “Now we fight. In whatever fashion you prefer, sword, or-that.”
But it had cost him dearly to act the magician. His face was drawn and pale. It had sucked him dry as a gourd already, that one white blow, weaker than any of mine. “Sorem,” I said.
“No more talk,” he said. He ducked lightly aside and took up the sword again. I thought, I am shaming him further every second I refuse him. Surely I can fight him without killing him. Tire. him out, then let him wound me perhaps; what’s one wound more that heals at a wish?
So I, too, reached down, and drew the sword from the ground, the alcum sword that was his own.
I had had swordplay in Eshkorek; you picked up such things there as you might have lessons in an instrument of music. Nor had I been sedentary long enough to have lost the skill. However, for my plan of coddling him, that shortly went from my mind. He fought me as the snake fightsswift, unlocked for, and lethal.
The blades ran together, and the force of his strokes rattled my bones to the arm socket. The red-hot iron of the torchshields lighted up his face and showed me his determination, which I did not need to see. He did not hate me; it was more deliberate than that. Hatred would have been handier to deal with.
Presently he struck me in the side.
Not a killing stroke, but raw. We had been beating up and down, each giving ground to each and then retrieving it. The lick of steel in my flesh made me mad. No man likes to be whipped this way when he is thinking himself cunning.
I shut the wound like a door. If Sorem noted that, I do not know, for I gave him small leisure.