“You wffl kill them. I will not let you have them.”
“Will you divide, she’pan, or will you challenge?”
There were tears in Sochil’s eyes, that ran down and dampened her veil. She looked on Niun fearfully, and on Melein again. “He is very young. You are both very young, and in strange company. The gods know that you do not know what you are doing. How can I divide my children? She’pan, they are terrified of you.”
“Answer.”
Sochil’s head went back. Her glistening eyes nictitated and shed their tears, and she turned her back and stalked off.
Her people stood silent. They might have done something, Duncan thought, might have shown her support. But Melein would claim them; they would remain Sochil’s only if Sochil would return challenge.
Sochil stopped in her retreat, among the ranks of her Kel, turned suddenly. “A’ani!” she cried. It was challenge.
Melein turned to Niun, and carefully he shed the belt of the zahen’ein, handed the modern weapons to Duncan; then with a bow to Melein, he turned and walked forward.
Likewise did Merai s’Elil.
Duncan stood still, the belt a weight in his hands. Melein laid her hand on his sleeve. “Kel Duncan: you understand… you must not interfere.”
And she veiled herself and walked away through the enemy kel’ein, and likewise did Sochil, in her wake. The wall of kel’ein reformed behind them.
There was silence, save for the whistling of the wind.
In the center of the circle and Niun and Merai took up their positions, facing one another at fencers’ distance and a half. Each gathered a handful of sand and cast it on the wind.
Then the av’ein-kel, the great-swords, whispered from sheaths.
A pass, in which they exchanged position; the blades flashed, rang lightly against each other, rested. A second pass: and. kel Merai stopped, and seemed simply to forget where he was; and fell. The blade had not seemed to touch him.
But darkness spread over the sand beneath him.
Niun bent and gathered dust on his fingers, and smeared it across his brow… began, as if there were nothing else in the world, as if there were no watching ring of strangers, to cleanse his blade with a second handful of sand.
Then he straightened, sheathed the av-kel, stood still.
For a time there was only the flutter of robes in the wind. Then came a wail from the People beyond the ranks of the Kel.
Duncan stood still, lost; he saw, he heard, he watched the shifting of ranks: Niun also left him. He was forgotten in the confusion.
Men bore away the dead kel’anth, quietly, toward the desert. Soon enough came kel’ein bearing a bundle wrapped in white, and that shook Duncan’s confidence: Sochil, he thought, hoping that he was right. How she had died, by whose hand, he had no means to tell. Many kel’ein attended that corpse away. Others spread black tents and made.a camp.
And the wan sun sank, and the wind grew cold; Duncan stood, in twilight, at the camp’s edge, and watched the return of the burial parties… sank down to sit finally, for his legs grew numb and he had no more strength to stand in the cold and the wind.
There was a breathing near him: soft-footed, the dusei, when they chose to be. He felt them, and they came and nosed at him, identifying him. One ventured away; he called it back, Niun’s dus. It came and settled uneasily with him. He was glad of their presence, less lonely with them, less afraid.
And after full dark he saw a tall shadow come out of the camp, and saw the gleam of moonlight on bronze-hilted weapons and on the zaidhe visor, and knew Niun even at great distance.
He rose. Niun beckoned, and he came, the dusei padding behind him.
There was no explanation, nothing. The dusei caught Niun’s mood, that was still tense. They walked, they and the beasts, into the midst of the strange camp, into the largest of the tents.
Black-robes filled it, heads and bodies alike swathed in kel-cloth, veiled and expressionless; at one side was a small cluster of the eldest gold-robes, unveiled, and one ancient blue-robe, that sudden surmise told Duncan would be the kath’anth, senior of the Kath.