Dumarest said, in order to please the man, "Are all challenges fought like this?"
"Not exactly. We stand as you are now but we are armed. Pistols-and the first one down or hit yields the day. We walk at the signal and fire at will." He rubbed at his chin, perturbed, torn with conflicting loyalties. Dumarest was a stranger, Galbrene was not, yet he liked Dephine despite what she had done.
"But all serious challenges are to the death?"
"Yes."
"And if the victor should decide to be merciful?"
"I don't know." Hendaza frowned. "I don't think it has ever happened. But if-"
The blast of a trumpet drowned what he was saying. A second note and the ritual began.
Dumarest stepped forward, seeing the shift of shadow in the far opening, the sudden appearance of a man. Like himself Galbrene was naked aside from abbreviated shorts. His hair was freshly cropped and his beard was little more than a fuzz the shorn hair offering little chance of a hold. Oil shone on his body so that little gleams of reflection accentuated the firm musculature beneath the skin. Ropes and ridges of muscle packed with animal-like power. The body of a man who had dedicated his life to the pursuit of physical perfection.
Dumarest slowed a little, feeling the coolness of sand beneath his feet, the firmness of stone beneath the layer of grit spread to ensure good traction. Galbrene walked a little wide-legged, the result of the bulging muscle padding the inside of his thighs. His arms too were lifted away from his body, thick biceps and massive forearms ending in broad, splayed hands and fingers.
Dumarest could understand Hendaza's shocked incredulity when he had demanded they meet without weapons. "But, Earl, you can't! It would be madness!" The man had wanted him to fight with pistols-but that would have given Galbrene the advantage. He had used guns all his life. A knife would have given Dumarest a better chance, but to demand one weapon was to open the door to an alternative demand. The whole point of the code was that the opponents should be as equal as possible, the only way to ensure that right would triumph.
And so they were to fight almost naked and hand to hand.
"Fool!" snapped Galbrene as they came closer. "Why waste your life on such a harlot? Yield now and I will be merciful."
Dumarest hesitated, appearing to consider the offer, noting the slight bunching of the toes of Galbrene's right foot, the swing of his left arm.
"If it can be made to look good I'm willing," he said. "I didn't expect anything like this. Dephine-"
He broke off as Galbrene charged, stooping, taking the rasp of a bunched fist over his shoulder, twisting and feeling the slamming blow of a foot against his side. His own hand grabbed at the ankle, slipped on the oil, rose with a stiffened edge to hit hard behind the calf. He had tried for the knee but it had been beyond reach. Deliberately he made the blow weak.
They broke and circled, hands lifted, feet sidling on the sand. Again Galbrene rushed in, hands pummeling, a knee jerking upwards, his head lowering in a butt to the face. Dumarest moved to one, side, dodged the knee, took a blow on the upper arm, sent his own clenched fist rising upwards to pulp the tissue of the nose.
"Fast!" Galbrene dashed blood from his lip with a sweep of his hand. "You move like a greased olcept. But how long can you keep it up?"
Longer than if he wasted breath in talk. Dumarest backed, dodged as the other rushed again, wove from the reaching hands and struck twice at a bicep. Blows which could have been delivered to the air for all the damage they seemed to have done.
"Fast but weak!" Galbrene laughed. "And you claim to be a champion? Dephine could have done better. Too bad, my friend, but now you die!"
A quick end to the combat and a greater enhancing of his own prowess. A mistake, one Dumarest had helped him to make. Galbrene, confident of his own physical superiority, had forgotten the danger of guile.
Dumarest dropped as hands reached towards him, spinning to one side, his hand grabbing up a mass of sand, stinging grains which he threw into the other's narrowed eyes. As the cloud of grit wreathed Galbrene's head he rose, hands poised, the edges like blunted axes as they struck at the point where the neck joins the body. Blows which would have broken an ordinary man's neck, ruptured arteries and sensitive tissue. Blows which met solid muscle which did not yield.
Dumarest felt a fist drive into his stomach, another scrape the edge of his jaw. Excited, unthinking, Galbrene pressed forward, eager to pound, to pulp, to destroy. His massive fists were like hammers which beat and beat as if he were a smith working at an anvil. Blood from his broken nose ran unheeded over his face to smear his chest and dapple the sand with carmine stains.
Dumarest ran. He turned and raced over the sand, to halt, to run again as like an engine of destruction Galbrene pounded after him. A race to gain time, a retreat in order to clear his head of the flashing stars the other's fists had created. Movement to wear the other down a little, to rob his blood of needed oxygen.
A small gain, but in the arena small gains could spell the difference between victory and defeat.
"Slow down!" yelled Galbrene. "Stand and fight like a man!"
A demand echoed from the stands where men and women leaned forward, shouting, faces avid, eyes reflecting their hunger. The lust for blood and pain and death, the primeval desire always to be found when the veneer of civilization was torn away and the true nature of the beast was revealed.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
The shouts were like the beat of a drum, a command to Galbrene, one which spurred him on to gain even greater fame than he possessed. The weakness of the culture to which he belonged; a society which insisted that a man always needed to prove himself without end.
"Kill!"
Dumarest halted, turned, ducked as the arms came towards him to rise within their circle, his hands stabbing upward with stiffened fingers, hitting the soft flesh beneath the chin, the windpipe and larynx. As the arms locked around his torso he swept his hands up and back, sent them forward to stab at the eyes. The left missed, the fingers catching the heavy brow to slip upwards to the cropped hair. The right plunged home, turned the eye into a thing of ruptured tissue and oozing fluids, sent blood to gush over the cheek and shoulder as, too late, Galbrene jerked his head to one side.
"Kill!"
Hurt, the man was still dangerous, the more so because of his pain. Dumarest felt the arms tighten and struck again at the neck, the remaining eye. Galbrene, eager to save his sight, leaned back, his arms slackening a little and Dumarest ducked, rammed the top of his head beneath the other's chin, jerked down his elbows and, resting his hands on Galbrene's shoulders, lifted his feet and slammed them hard against the point where the thighs joined the body.
A move which, had it worked, would have torn him from the crushing constriction of the arms.
One which failed.
Galbrene snarled, moved, and Dumarest felt his feet slip from the oiled skin. He settled them again on the other's insteps, his own arms circling the thick torso, fingers interlocking, the muscles of back, shoulders, thighs and loins straining as he fought the pressure which threatened to splinter his ribs and drive the jagged ends into his lungs. The constriction which, unless stopped, would snap his spine like a rotten twig.
"Kill!" The shouting was another thunder to add to the roar in his ears. "Kill!"
Galbrene was strong, but his head was being bent backwards and his back arched as he yielded to the pressure. A loss of leverage which alone was saving Dumarest's life. One which the other could regain by throwing himself down, twisting free his head, using his legs and massive arms to their full advantage.