Hansen didn’t know anything about the culture of Northworld—but he knew organizations and pecking orders. He’d failed at the start with this lot because they didn’t respect him. He wasn’t going to fail again because of a lack of arrogance.
After all, it wasn’t as though arrogance didn’t come naturally to him.
The three warriors had their armor on, now. The suits were painted in patterns of black and silver; red, silver, and blue; and lime green with a phoenix emblazoned in gold on the plastron. All three men were big, and their armor was of obviously high quality.
As opposed to what Hansen was wearing: a piece of junk which had once been striped orange and blue, but which now was marked more by rust than by paint.
The shaggy line of mammoths continued slog onward, but horsemen as well as most of the slaves began to collect at the bottom of the swale. It was the only place for a kilometer in any direction where there was enough flat, clear space to serve for a dueling ground.
Hansen walked on, matching his pace to that of the baggage train. The mammoths moved deceptively fast, covering two meters with each slow stride. Their droppings steamed in the mud, offering Hansen’s lungs a tang of crushed hay.
Golsingh’s army waited for Hansen. Most of the riders had dismounted, though the king and Taddeusz still sat on their ponies, looking over the heads of the three warriors in brilliant armor.
“That’s Villiers’ suit,” somebody announced. “He’s stolen Villiers’ suit off his body.”
“Cut,” said Hansen. An arc spurted at an angle from his right hand. His fingers adjusted its length to quiver just above the muddy ground. He continued to walk forward against his suit’s greater resistance.
“Villiers never did anything right,” another voice guffawed. “Not even die.”
“Lord Golsingh,” Hansen shouted twenty meters from the armored warriors, “I challenge whatever champion you choose for a place in your service.”
Taddeusz turned to Golsingh. “This is a slave,” the warchief said.
“He’s dressed as a warrior,” Golsingh responded, quirking a smile at Hansen. “And of course he boasts like a warrior.” The king had short, curling hair and a down-turned moustache. “I think he deserves to die like one.”
Taddeusz shrugged. “Zieborn,” he said. “Kill him.”
The warrior wearing a phoenix stepped forward. A long arc sprang from his right gauntlet and swung toward Hansen in a curve.
Hansen stopped dead. He squeezed his right index and middle fingers together so that the arc at their tip shrank to a coating like St. Elmo’s Fire, the greatest flux density of which his suit was capable. He felt a tingle in his right arm as he blocked the attack, but it was Zieborn’s arc which failed momentarily with a pop.
The bigger, better-armed warrior boomed a curse. He stepped forward with his arc-weapon ablaze again, shortened to the length of his forearm.
“Off!” Hansen ordered his own AI and lunged toward his opponent with all his suit’s power concentrated on movement.
Zieborn must have expected Hansen to back-pedal—or flee, subliminally thinking of the armor as the poor excuse for a warrior who’d worn the suit most recently and died in it. Golsingh’s champion swiped horizontally.
Hansen was already within his opponent’s guard. He grabbed Zieborn’s right wrist with his left hand, shouted “Cut!” to his AI, and carved upward in a shower of sparks from belly to throat.
The painted phoenix sputtered away from the armor in a gout of ash and gold leaf. The underlying metal pitted but did not burn.
Zieborn’s electronic armor was proof to the worst punishment Hansen’s arc could deliver; and the other man’s arm was forcing his weapon toward Hansen’s face.
“Off!” cried Hansen and shifted his suit’s full strength into his grip on Zieborn’s right wrist.
Hansen had survived because he was very quick and—when he had to be—very strong. He was very possibly stronger than the king’s champion now, just as he’d out-thought the man and jumped into a clinch before the other could respond.
And it didn’t matter, because the crucial factor was the amount of power available to the armor—not to the human muscles within the suit.