"Of course," Hijam Stoneheart said now slowly and clearly for the ben¬efit of listening ears, "the Golden One must have his contest if he wills it so. But I am just a soldier and I don't understand such things. Explain to me, Vash. What good is there in having my men fight with each other? Al¬ready several are badly wounded and will need weeks of healing."
Vash took a breath. Nobody was obviously eavesdropping, but that meant nothing. "First of all, the Golden One is much wiser than we are, so perhaps we are not clever enough to understand his reasons-all we can know is that they must be good. Second, I must point out to you that it
isn't your men, the Leopards, who are fighting for the honor of the autarch's special mission, Marukh. It is the White Hounds, and although they are valuable fighters they are only barbarians."
Vash had no more idea than the captain of why Sulepis had demanded a contest of strength among his famous troop of White Hounds, foreign mercenaries whose fathers and grandfathers had come to Xand from the northern continent, but as Vash knew better than almost anyone, sometimes gods-on-earth just did things like that. When the autarch had woken from a prophetic dream one morning in the first weeks of his rule and ordered the destruction of all the wild cranes in the land of Xis, it had been Para¬mount Minister Vash who had called the lower ministers to the Pome¬granate Court to make the autarch's wishes known, and hundreds of thousands of the birds had been killed. When another day the autarch de¬clared that every axhead shark in the city's saltwater canals should be caught and dispatched, the streets of the capital stank with rotting shark flesh for months afterward.
Vash forced his attention back to the combat. The abruptness of the autarch's demand had forced them to improvise this arena here in an un¬used audience chamber in the Tamarind Court, since the autarch's miners and cannoneers were all over the parade field and could not move their equipment on such sudden notice, even at threat of their lives-some of the artillery pieces weighed tons. Two sweaty men were struggling now in the makeshift ring. One was big by any ordinary standard and muscled like a bullock, but his yellow-bearded opponent was a true giant of a man, a head taller, with shoulders wide as the bed of an oxcart. This fair-haired monster clearly had the upper hand and even seemed to be toying with his adversary.
"Why is it taking so long?" Vash complained. "You said Yaridoras was by far the strongest of the White Hounds. Why does he not defeat his oppo¬nent? The autarch is waiting."
"Yaridoras will win." Hijam Stoneheart laughed sharply. "Trust me, he is a fearsome brute. Ah, look." The yellow-bearded one had just raised the other man over his head. The huge man held his opponent there just long enough for everyone to appreciate the glory of the moment, then flung him down onto the stony floor. The loser lay, senseless and bloody, as Yari¬doras raised his arms above his head in triumph. The other White Hounds hooted in appreciation.
"Is that it?" Vash ached from standing and wanted only to lower himself
into a hot bath, to lie tended by bis young boy and girl servants. He wished be bad not been too proud to accept the kiliarch's offer of a chair. "Is it over? Can we finish with this?"
"There is one more challenger," said Marukh,"a fellow named Daikonas Vo. I am told he is the best swordsman of the White Hounds."
"But the autarch ordererd them to prove themselves in bare-handed combat!" Vash shook his head in irritation, surveying the dozens of assem¬bled Perikalese soldiers, perhaps four or five dozen in all. None of them looked big enough to give Yaridoras a contest. "Which one is he?"
For answer, Marukh stood and shouted, "Now the last fighter-step forth, Vo."
The man who rose was so unremarkable that, discounting his Perikalese heritage-the telltale fair hair and skin that marked him as a foreigner-any man of Xis might have passed him on the street without a second look. He was wiry but slightly built; his head barely reached Yaridoras' brawny chest.
"That one?" Vash snorted. "The big yellow-hair will snap his back like a twig.
"Likely." Marukh turned and bellowed, "You two may bring no weapons into the sacred space. So has our master Sulepis, the god-on-earth, the Great Tent, the Golden One, declared. You will fight until one of you can get up no longer. Are you ready?"
"Yes-and thirsty!" bellowed Yaridoras, making his fellow mercenaries laugh. "Let's get this over with so I can have my beer." The thin soldier, Daikonas Vo, only nodded.
"Very well," said the captain. "Begin."
At first, the smaller man put up a surprisingly good defense, moving with serpentine fluidity to stay out of Yaridoras' powerful grasp, once even hooking his foot behind the big man's heel and throwing him backward to the tile floor, which earned a percussive shout of surprised laughter from the other White Hounds, but the giant was up quickly, smiling in a way that suggested he himself was not very amused. After that Yaridoras was more careful, angling in to cut off his opponent's retreat, and Vo began to find it increasingly difficult to stay out of his hands. Vo did not give in easily, and several times he landed swift blows whose power was clearly greater than his size would have suggested, one of them opening a cut above Yaridoras' eye so that blood ran down one side of his face and into his beard. How¬ever inevitable the outcome seemed, the bigger man was clearly not en¬joying the delay, and in the course of trying to get a finishing hold on his
opponent left several long, bleeding weals across the small man's face and arms. The shouts and rowdy suggestions that had filled the room at the be ginning of the bout began to die down, replaced by a murmuring of un¬ease as the match slowly took on the look of something more desperate.
The big man lunged. Vo ducked under the groping arms and put a knee into his opponent's belly, so that Yaridoras' surprised gasp sent red froth fly¬ing, but the big man's knob-knuckled hand lashed out and caught Vo re¬treating, smashing him to the floor with an impact like a slaughterer's hammer. Yaridoras threw himself on top of his opponent before Vo had recovered his wits and for a moment it seemed as though the smaller soldier had been swallowed whole.
It's over now, thought Vash. But he fought a surprisingly good fight. The para¬mount minister was more than a little surprised: he had always thought of the Perikalese foreigners as benefiting mostly from their size and barbaric savagery. It was strange, even disturbing, to see one who could think and plan.
For a moment as they grappled on the floor, Yaridoras caught the smaller man's head between his legs. He began to squeeze, and Daikonas Vo's face darkened to a bruised red before he managed to elbow his opponent in the crotch and wriggle free. He was injured and tired, though, and he did not get far before Yaridoras caught him again, this time with a massive arm around his throat. The giant rolled his body over on top of his opponent, then began trying to sweep away the bracing arms and legs which were all that kept Vo from being pressed belly-first onto the floor. The big man grinned ferociously through the sweat and blood, while Vo showed his own teeth in a grimace as he struggled to get air.
"He'll kill him," Vash said, fascinated.
"No, he'll just choke him until he gives over," said Marukh. "Yaridoras won't kill anyone needlessly, especially another White Hound. He is a vet¬eran of such matches."
Daikonas Vo's purpling face was sinking closer and closer to the floor, his elbows bowing outward as the bigger man's weight overcame him. Then, to Pinimmon Vash's astonishment, Vo deliberately took one hand off the tiles and, just before he was driven to the ground, brought his elbow down so hard against the floor that a noise loud as a musket shot echoed through the room. A moment later the two of them collapsed in a writhing, grunting heap, and for a moment it was hard to make sense of the tangle of limbs. Then the two bodies lay still.