“I will enjoy your dissection, Epri,” Manlius called out.
And Epri whipped a shot with his tickler in the direction of the voice.
Mentally, Ravn deducted a point from both men’s score. There had been no wagering permitted on this pasdarm, since it had not been joined for sport; but she had made her own bets with herself. Manlius should not have wasted breath taunting his opponent. And Epri’s hasty shot showed him nervous and on edge. The likelihood that Manlius would be anywhere in the vicinity of his voice was small to the point of vanishing.
And to a man wearing the proper night filters, as Manlius certainly was, the small spark of the tickler’s discharge marked Epri’s location as surely as Manlius’s voice had not.
Clever. She notched Manlius up half a point. Dawshoo’s brother did not fire at the spot thus revealed, because it was improbable that Epri had remained in it. But he worked his way closer to where he thought Epri had gone. The best way to track a quarry was to follow his mind, to go to where he would be and not to where he had been.
The combat proceeded as delicately as a ballet, and like a ballet it remained on point. Both Shadows floated silently from cover to cover, seeking always that advantageous position above and behind the opponent. Manlius stalked Epri, moving closer each time to his opponent’s shifting location. Epri evaded, probing with exploratory fire, circling the perimeter of the kill space. The opening gambits, as always, probed for the other’s position and sought out his strategy; but the spectators waited expectantly for the endgame, when Manlius’s greater strength would prevail—and made quiet side bets whether Epri would pot him before that could happen.
Epri threw an I-ball on a high arc and its spinning cameras sent an image of the kill space to him, stabilized and integrated by his suit’s processors. It must have caught Manlius’s location, because Epri hurled a multibomb in that direction. Its explosion jarred, even through the ear filters everyone wore. Secondary munitions seared the five places Manlius might have leapt to—but Manlius had run to a sixth.
“He ought to try the Spider,” said a magpie who perched nearby and wore the two crows of Phoythaw Bhatvik. “Let the slut come to him.”
Ravn made no reply. When Shadow stalked Shadow, setting up a sniper’s nest was suicide. Your opponent would more likely locate your nest before crossing its lines of fire.
Early on, Manlius had strewn “crispies” in one of the intersections. This eventually paid off when Epri passed through the intersection and stepped on them. Passive munitions were forbidden by the chapters, but Manlius had set crispies only for the distinctive crunching sound they made when stepped upon. He had naturally logged the location into one of his hand-bombs and let fly when he heard the signal. But Epri, at the first crunch had fled down an aisle picked at random and leaped to one side, and atop one of the machines.
Ravn deducted points from both: Epri for being so incautious as to tread upon such an obvious alarm; Manlius for placing it at an intersection. Had he placed the crispies in the middle of an aisle, Epri would have had fewer escape routes and he could have more easily bracketed them. Of course, in a pasdarm à outrance, one could win on points and still lie dead at the end.
A splinter of shrapnel had found Epri’s calf as he pulled himself up and over the machine. The assembly roared, “Blood!” Though the blood was minor and once the shrapnel had been pulled out, the shenmat closed up the wound. Ravn deducted further points because at the roar, Manlius had paused to preen, and so lost the initiative.
The second time Epri tried the trick with the I-ball, Manlius shot it from the air on the fly, earning an appreciative murmur from even Epri’s partisans. Then Manlius rolled his own I-balls down the aisles of the factory floor, one after the other, grasping the layout of the kill space from a more pedestrian angle. They were harder to pot on the roll, but also less panoramic in their harvested images. Epri deduced from the several paths of the balls the intersection from which they had been rolled; but before he could home in on it, Manlius had gone.
And so it continued, as patiently as a chess match. Now and then, the combatants caught sight of one another and guns would snap and knives or whistle-trees would fly. More often, indirect fire sought out grid squares where the opponent might lurk. Once, a cry from the sidelines indicated that a spectator had been slow to move from the line of fire. Manlius grinned at the sound, and at first Ravn wondered at his misplaced glee.
But then she saw what Manlius had noticed. The shifting spectators, illuminated as they were, gave him a vector by which to locate his foe! For those directly in the line of fire would drift off to either side, leaving a space devoid of lights. If he drew a line between himself and that bull’s-eye in the gallery, he would find Epri somewhere along it.
Manlius closed the distance on cat’s feet before Epri should notice the similar gap in Manlius’s six and realize its significance. He reached an old gutted machine and swung to its top as if weightless, plucking a throwing star from his belt. The crowd sucked in its breath and Epri, crouching below Manlius, heard the intake and, though not understanding its precise significance, pulled a dazer from its scabbard and peered around the corner of the next machine.
But this was a personal grudge and feelings ran high. Manlius paused a moment to savor his victory and in that savor lost the sauce.
A voice cried out, “Epri! Your seven!”
Manlius let fly—and Epri rolled aside, loosing behind him a hasty dazer bolt. The star skittered along the composite flooring, clattering into the darkness. Sparks danced along the seams of the machine on which Manlius had lately poised.
“Who called out?” demanded Dawshoo in the darkness. “A violation!”
Manlius had launched himself after Epri, unwilling to surrender his advantage at close quarter combat; but Epri avoided his grip and completed a double roll. His dazer came up and Manlius kicked it loose from his grasp. Epri backed away swiftly, scrabbling at his belt for another weapon, but Manlius whirled a back-camel kick into the side of Epri’s head.
The loyalist dropped, stunned, and Manlius seized a rusted steel bar from the machine beside him and brought it down sharply to impale his enemy to the floor.
And Epri wasn’t there.
The steel bar struck the floor with a clang, and Manlius released it and spun defensively, expecting a riposte. But there was no sign of his opponent. The spectators began to murmur from their perches.
Ravn scanned the kill space, but Epri was simply … gone. “I saw him,” said a Shadow on her right. “And then I didn’t.” Ravn’s goggles picked out a taiji on her brassard. Ekadrina’s section.
Casting her mind back, it seemed to Ravn that, at the very instant when Manlius was poised to impale Epri, the world had hesitated, as if time had been spliced and a moment snipped out. But in that lost and extra moment, Ravn remembered a ghost of movement, like the swirl of a cloak in the darkness. And then Epri had been gone.
A confusion of voices roiled the old mill. She heard Dee Karnatika declare that Epri had forfeit. Dawshoo claimed victory for Manlius. Beside her on the rafter, Ekadrina’s courier stroked the butt of her teaser. Perturbed, Ravn backed away into the recesses of the roof struts. This was not right. Something—she knew not what—was seriously awry. A prudent man he might be, and more prone to settle disputes with clever stratagems or distant assassinations, but Epri was no such coward as to desert the field.