Well, whatever they were expecting, he'd give them a surprise they'd remember. He stepped forward again, made a clumsy swing with his own sword, and got his shield up barely in time to block his opponent's weapon. A half-second slower and he'd have lost an arm. The uproar from the crowd was even louder.
Blade followed the same pattern three more times, and listened to the crowd between each exchange. He'd guessed just about right. They thought he was a hopeless amateur, a beginner who'd never live to become experienced. They were waiting for his opponent to get through playing with him, hammer down his guard, and send him out on a litter.
They're going to have to wait a while before they see me on a litter, thought Blade. He let four more blows come dangerously close. The last two jarred him so violently he wasn't sure all his bones were still in one piece. It was time to stop playing, before the other man's luck turned.
Suddenly the frightened amateur desperately defending himself became a smoothly-moving fighting machine. Blade closed in, took a swordcut on top of his shield, thrust the shield's spike at his opponent's face, and at the same time brought his sword around. It crashed into the peasant's helmet with a clang like a great bell, knocking the helmet askew on his head. The man staggered, but strength and stubbornness kept him on his feet. Blade shifted his grip as the man's guard dropped, smashed him across the left elbow with the flat of the sword, and finally hacked the spike off his shield. The man still tried to raise his sword, but Blade parried it, then let his own edge slip down to open a gash in the back of the man's sword hand.
«Yield?» he asked.
«Yield,» the man gasped. He'd barely worked up a sweat, but his wits seemed fuddled. Perhaps it was the blow on the head, perhaps it was simply the astounding transformation of Blade.
Blade's opponent wasn't the only man surprised at his transformation. The crowd gaped at Blade's attack in stunned silence. Then as his opponent threw down his weapons, it seemed everyone started cheering at once. Blade looked back and saw scarves and bunches of flowers waving. He even heard the «Hooa-hooa-hooa!» cry that real experts in the crowd used to hail particularly impressive pieces of work in the arena. His career in the Games seemed to be off to a good start.
Kuka came up to the two fighters and asked Blade's opponent if he wanted a litter. The man shook his head, then raised his wounded hand in salute to Blade and walked off toward the fence. The Captain looked Blade over from head to foot, as though he was counting the pores of Blade's skin. He seemed about to speak, then shook his head slightly and signalled Blade to follow his opponent to the sidelines.
Back in his place by the fence, Blade drank the water and ate the fruit the litter-bearers handed him, then let them sponge him off with scented oil. He was aware that other fighters beside the Captain were looking oddly at him. Two or three muttered to each other behind their hands as they looked at him. Blade ignored them, preferring to watch the more skilled fighters now at work.
The morning round of fights came to an end. A boat put off the mainland and delivered food for the men on the Island of Death-chunks of fried fish, porridge, vegetable stew, fruit, and beer. The guards in the boat were under the command of Ho-Marn. Again he waved, this time without speaking, and Blade waved back.
In the amphitheater those who had servants ate lunch under embroidered silk canopies. The vendors made the rounds for the less well-off. A dozen drummers gave an impromptu concert in the rear of the amphitheater, pounding away until Blade would have cheerfully gone back to them and slit every one of their drum-heads with his sword. At last the horns sounded again, the gongs boomed, Kuka and the Crier stood up, and the fighting was on again.
Blade fought once, about mid-afternoon, in one of two four-man teams matched against each other. He hadn't intended to try putting on a show this time, but he wound up having no choice. One of the four men on his team was a boy at that dangerous point where a fighter thought he knew practically everything and actually knew very little. He tried an impossibly complicated spear pass and wound up with one leg a bloody ruin. That left Blade facing two opponents, both of them considerably more skilled than his first man.
For ten minutes Blade wove a curtain of steel in front of him, taking a couple of minor nicks and giving a few more. He lost all awareness of how the rest of the fight was going, and whether his teammates were alive or dead. He was only aware of the sweat pouring down him, the stinging of his cuts, the flash of his opponents' weapons, and the growing roar of the crowd behind him.
Eventually something else crept into Blade's mind-a growing anger at both his opponents and at the crowd behind him, apparently ready to go on cheering him all day if he would go on sweating, bleeding, and giving them a good show. The anger grew, and as it did so did Blade's strength and speed.
Suddenly one of his opponents was reeling back, cheek and temple gaping open, half-blind with pain, surprise, and the flowing of blood. The other man didn't stop or slow down for a moment, but alone he was no match for Blade. In three passes Blade wounded him three times, lightly in the thigh and shoulder and more seriously in the right arm. Blade didn't need to ask him to yield.
As the roar of the crowd died away, Blade realized that he was the only one of the eight men still on his feet. He pulled off his armband and was applying it as a tourniquet to his opponent's wounded arm when Kuka came up. This time he looked everywhere but at Blade, and his face was so carefully under control that Blade was nearly ready to ask him what was on his mind. This was against the rules of the Games, but Blade usually preferred to be a rule-breaker rather than a corpse.
Instead the Captain dismissed Blade in silence. He drank more water, ate more fruit, had his wounds bound up, and watched the last few scheduled fights. The afternoon wore on, and the air grew heavy with heat, the smell of blood, and the cries of the wounded. At last the scheduled matches came to an end, the three dead men were pulled to one side, and the Crier announced the Challenge Hour.
The Challenge Hour was just what its name implied-a time when any fighter who wanted to challenge another could do so. Most of these bouts were either grudge fights or between expert fighters who wanted to deliberately test each other or show off their skills for the crowd.
Blade was surprised when his name was the first one called out, as the object of a challenge by one Vosgu of Hosh. He'd heard of the man-a thin, dark veteran, so fast that in a fight he seemed to be in three places at once, and with a temper as quick as his steel. He particularly liked to challenge promising beginners and wound them badly enough to take away some of their reputation. Perhaps Vosgu's challenge shouldn't have been such a surprise after all.
They were going to use spear and short sword, without shields. That was going to make things risky, given Vosgu's speed, but not impossible. Blade knew he was about as fast as any fighting man he'd ever met, and he had a good three inches on Vosgu in height and reach.
The two men stepped toward each other, and cheers rose. Blade heard some shouting of «Vosgu!» but he heard even more shouting of «Blade!» Vosgu also heard this, and his dark face turned still darker. As he approached Blade, he already looked ready to kill.
The fighters closed, feinting with their spears, swords held low for a thrust at legs or belly. Slowly they circled each other, eyes never leaving the other man, moving from his eyes to his weapons to his feet and back again. They went on circling until they'd worn a distinct ring in the blood-caked sand. The crowd behind them was silent now, sensing what Blade already knew. This fight might go on for quite a while before the first exchange of blows, but then it would be over very quickly.