A rat. Not the common rat that lives in city dumps and sometimes gnaws babies, but a giant rat, big enough to block that rat hole but enough smaller than I am to have room to maneuver in attacking me—room I didn't have at all. The best I could do was to wriggle forward with my sword in front of me and try to Keep the point aimed so that I would catch him with it, make mm eat steel—because if he dodged past that point I would have nothing but bare hands and no room to use them. He would be at my face.
I gulped sour vomit and inched forward. His eyes seemed to drop a little as if he were crouching to charge.
But no rush came. The lights got more definite and wider apart, and when I had squeezed a foot or two farther I realized with shaking relief that they were not rat's eyes but something else—anything, I didn't care what.
I continued to inch forward. Not only was the Egg in that direction but I still didn't know what it was and I had best see before telling Star to move up.
The "eyes" were twin pinholes in a tapestry that covered the end of that rat hole. I could see its embroidered texture and I found I could look through one of its imperfections when I got up to it.
There was a large room beyond, the floor a couple of feet lower than where I was. At the far end, fifty feet away, a man was standing by a bench, reading a book. Even as I watched he raised his eyes and glanced my way. He seemed to hesitate.
I didn't. The hole had eased enough so that I managed one foot under and lunged forward, brushing the arras aside with my sword. I stumbled and bounced to my feet, on guard.
He was at least as fast. He had slapped the book down on the bench and drawn sword himself, advanced toward me, while I was popping out of that hole. He stopped, knees bent, wrist straight, left arm back, and point for me, perfect as a fencing master, and looked me over, not yet engaged by three or four feet between our steels.
I did not rush him. There is a go-for-broke tactic, "the target," taught by the best swordmasters, which consists in headlong advance with arm, wrist, and blade in full extension—all attack and no attempt to parry. But it works only by perfect timing when you see your opponent slacken up momentarily. Otherwise it is suicide.
This time it would have been suicide; he was as ready as a tomcat with his back up. So I sized him up while he looked me over. He was a smallish neat man with arms long for his height—I might or might not have reach on him, especially as his rapier was an old style, longer than Lady Vivamus (but slower thereby, unless he had a much stronger wrist) -- and he was dressed more for the Paris of Richelieu than for Karth-Hokesh. No, that's not fair; the great black Tower had no styles, else I would have been as out of style in my fake Robin Hood getup. The Iglis we had killed had worn no clothes.
He was an ugly cocky little man with a merry grin and the biggest nose west of Durante—made me think of my first sergeant's nose, very sensitive he was about being called "Schnozzola." But the resemblance stopped there; my first sergeant never smiled and had mean, piggish eyes; this man's eyes were merry and proud.
"Are you Christian?" he demanded.
"What's it to you?"
"Nothing. Blood's blood, either way. If Christian you be, confess. If pagan, call your false gods. I'll allow you no more than three stanzas. But I'm sentimental, I like to know what I'm killing."
"I'm American."
"Is that a country? Or a disease? And what are you doing in Hoax?"
" ‘Hoax'? Hokesh?"
He shrugged only with his eyes, his point never moved. "Hoax, Hokesh—a matter of geography and accent; this chateau was once in the Carpathians, so ‘Hokesh' it is, if ‘twill make your death merrier. Come now, let us sing."
He advanced so fast and smoothly that he seemed to apport and our blades rang as I parried his attack in sixte and riposted, was countered—remise, reprise, beat-and-attack—the phrase ran so smoothly, so long, and in such variation that a spectator might have thought that we were running through Grand Salute.
But I knew! That first lunge was meant to kill me, and so was his every move throughout the phrase. At the same time he was feeling me out, trying my wrist, looking for weaknesses, whether I was afraid of low line and always returned to high or perhaps was a sucker for a disarm. I never lunged, never had a chance to; every part of the phrase was forced on me, I simply replied, tried to stay alive.
I knew in three seconds that I was up against a better swordsman than myself, with a wrist like steel yet supple as a striking snake. He was the only swordsman I have ever met who used prime and octave—used them, I mean, as readily as sixte and carte. Everyone learns them and my own master made me practice them as much as the other six—but most fencers don't use them; they simply may be forced into them, awkwardly and just before losing a point.
I would lose, not a point, but my life—and I knew, long before the end of that first long phrase, that my life was what I was about to lose, by all odds.
Yet at first clash the idiot began to sing!
"Lunge and counter and thrust,
"Sing me the logic of steel!
"Tell me, sir, how do you feel?
"Riposte and remise if you must
"In logic long known to be just.
"Shall we argue, rebut and refute
"In enthymeme clear as your eye?
"Tell me, sir, why do you sigh?
"Tu es fatigue, sans doute?
"Then sleep while I'm counting the loot."
The above was long enough for at least thirty almost successful attempts on my life, and on the last word he disengaged as smoothly and unexpectedly as he had engaged.
"Come, come, lad!" he said. "Pick it up! Would let me sing alone? Would die as a clown with ladies watching? Sing! -- and say good-bye gracefully, with your last rhyme racing your death rattle." He banged his right boot in a flamenco stomp. "Try! The price is the same either way."
I didn't drop my eyes at the sound of his boot; it's an old gambit, some fencers stomp on every advance, every feint, on the chance that the noise will startle opponent out of timing, or into rocking back, and thus gain a point. I had last fallen for it before I could shave.
But his words gave me an idea. His lunges were short—full extension is fancy play for foils, too dangerous for real work. But I had been retreating, slowly, with the wall behind me. Shortly, when he re-engaged, I would either be a butterfly pinned to that wall, or stumble over something unseen, go arsy-versy, then spiked like wastepaper in the park. I didn't dare leave that wall behind me.
Worst, Star would be coming out of that rat hole behind me any moment now and might be killed as she emerged even if I managed to kill him at the same time. But if I could turn him around—My beloved was a practical woman; no "sportsmanship" would keep her steel stinger out of his back.
But the happy counter-thought was that if I went along with his madness, tried to rhyme and sing, he might play me along, amused to hear what I could do, before he killed me.
But I couldn't afford to stretch it out. Unfelt, he had pinked me in the forearm. Just a bloody scratch that Star could make good as new in minutes—but it would weaken my wrist before long and it disadvantaged me for low line: Blood makes a slippery grip.
"First stanza," I announced, advancing and barely engaging, foible-a-foible. He respected it, not attacking, playing with the end of my blade, tiny counters and leather-touch parries.
That was what I wanted. I started circling right as I began to recite—and he let me:
"Tweedledum and Tweedledee