Stung, but still focused on the task, he hooked his right leg over his horse's neck, kicked his left foot clear of stirrup, and jumped down, throwing reins toward one of the boys. There were clusters of them lining the shop walls, and merchants and customers spilled out of doorways. The street was a canyon of staring faces. "Then we shall stop talking," he said, "and fight."
Unlike the stupid kid in Haziz, Khashi knew the difference between dance and fight. He stripped off burnous, sandals, and harness, wearing only the customary soft suede dhoti underneath, and set them aside. He did not pause to draw a circle, or to invite me to draw it, because there would be none. Lithely graceful, he strode forward, sword in hand.
I heard the simultaneous intake of breath from the impromptu audience as I stepped off the stud. I did not strip out of harness, burnous, or sandals. I simply unsheathed without excess dramatics and walked to meet my challenger in the middle of the street, six paces away.
He smiled, assessing his opponent. The infamous Sandtiger, but also an older, aging man who was too foolish to rid himself of such things as would impede his movements. I had given the advantage to the younger challenger.
Which is why he laughed incredulously as I halted within his reach.
I did nothing more than wait. After a moment's hesitation– perhaps unconsciously expecting the traditional command to dance that wouldn't come—Khashi flicked up his sword and obliged with the first move.
I obliged by countering the blow, and another, and a third, and a fourth, turning his blade away. I offered no offense, only defense. I conserved strength, while Khashi spent his.
Though we did not stand within a circle and thus were not required to remain within a fixed area, lest we lose by stepping outside the boundary, we'd both spent too many years honoring the codes and rituals. There was no dramatic leaping and running and rolling. It was a swordfighter's version of toe-to-toe battle, lacking elegance, ritual, the precision of expertise despite our training. We simply stood our ground, aware of the mental circle despite the lack of a physical one, and fought.
It was, as always, noisy. Steel slammed into steel, scraped, tore away, screamed, shrieked, chimed. Breath ran harshly through rigid throats and issued hissing from our mouths. Grunts and gasps of effort overrode the murmuring of the spectators, the low verbal thrum of excitement.
I countered yet another blow, threw the blade back at him with main strength. I felt a twinge in my right hand, and another in my left wrist. The hilt shifted slightly in my hands.
All of the things Del and I had discussed had indeed become factors: The loss of a finger on each hand did affect my grip, and that, in turn, affected wrists, forearms, elbows, clear up into the shoulders and back. I had worked ceaselessly since leaving Skandi to compensate for the loss of those fingers by retraining my body, but only a real fight would prove if I'd succeeded. Now that I was in one, I realized my body wanted to revert to postures, grips, and responses I'd learned more than twenty years before. The new mind had not yet taught the old body to surrender.
I could not afford a lengthy battle, because I could not win it. I needed to make it short.
I raised the blade high overhead, gripped in my right hand, wrist cocked so the point tipped down toward my left shoulder.
Khashi saw the opening I gave him, the opportunity to win. He did not believe it. But he lunged, unable to pass up the target I'd made of my torso. The audience drew in a single startled breath.
I brought the sword down diagonally in a hard, slashing cross-body blow, rolling the edge with a twist of my wrist even as I adjusted my elbow. The inelegant but powerful maneuver swept Khashi's blade down and aside. Another flick of the wrist, the punch through flesh and muscle, and I slid steel into his belly. A quick scooping twist carved the intestines out of abdominal cavity, and then I pulled the blade free of flesh and viscera.
Khashi dropped his sword. His hands went to his belly. His mouth hung open. Then his knees folded out from under him. He knelt there in the street clutching ropy guts, weaving in shock as his gaping mouth emitted a keening wail of shock and terror.
I did him the honor of kicking his blade away, though he had no strength to pick it up, and turned my back on him. I intended to go directly to the stud. But three paces away stood the stupid kid from Haziz. His sword was unsheathed, gripped in one hand.
Blood ran from mine. I watched his startled eyes as they followed the motion along the steel, red, wet runnels sliding from hilt to tip, dripping onto hardpacked dirt.
He looked at me then. Saw me, saw something in my face, my eyes. His own face was pale. But he swallowed hard and managed to speak. "There was no honor in that."
I'd expected a second challenge, not accusation. After a moment I found my own voice. "This wasn't about honor."
His brown eyes were stunned in a tanned face formed of planes and angles gone suddenly sharp as blades. "But you need not kill a man to win. Not in the circle."
"This isn't about the circle," I said. "Not about rites, rituals, honor codes, or oaths sworn to such. It's just about dying."
"But—you're a sword-dancer."
I shook my head. "Not anymore. Now I'm only a target."
"You're the Sandtiger!"
"That, yes," I agreed. "But I swore elaii-ali-ma ."
Color was creeping back into his face. The honey-brown eyes were steady, if no less shocked. "I don't know what that is."
A jerk of my head indicated Khashi's sprawled body, limp as soiled laundry. "Ask him."
I walked past him then, because I knew he wouldn't challenge me. Not now. Likely not ever again.
But others would.
Before mounting I wiped my blade clean of blood on my burnous, sheathed it, and took the rein back from Del. Then swung up into the saddle. "Let's go."
The mask of her face remained, giving away nothing to any who looked. But her eyes were all compassion.
I heard the chanting of my name as we headed out of Julah.
Not far out of the city, after a brief but silent ride, I abruptly turned off the road. I rode to the top of a low rise crowned with cactus and twisted trees, dismounted, let the reins go, and managed to make it several paces down the other side, sliding in shale and slate, before I bent and gave up everything in my belly in one giant heaving spasm.
I remained bent over, coughing and spitting when the residual retching stopped, and heard the chink of hoof on stone. It might be the stud. But in case it was Del, I thrust out a splayed hand that told her to stay away.
I didn't need an audience. I'd had one already, in Julah.
Finally I straightened, scraping at my mouth with the sleeve of my burnous. When I turned to hike back up to the stud, I found Del holding his reins. Silent no longer.
"Are you cut?" she asked.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Have you looked?"
Sighing, I inspected my arms, then ran my hands down the front of burnous and harness, checking for complaints of the flesh, though I was fairly certain Khashi had not broken my guard. I was spattered with blood, but none of it appeared to be mine. And nothing hurt beyond the edges of my palms where the fingers were missing.
"I'm fine." I climbed to the stud, took the reins from her, then pulled one of the botas free and filled my mouth with water. I rinsed, spat, scrubbed again at my mouth, then released a noisy breath from the environs of my toes. "Butchery," I muttered hoarsely, throat burned by bile.
"It was necessary."
"I've killed men, beheaded men, cut men into collops before. Borjuni. Bandits. Thieves. It never bothered me; it was survival, no more. But this—" I shook my head.
"It was necessary," she repeated. "How better to warn other sword-dancers you will not be easy prey?"
That was precisely why I had done it, knowing the tale would be told. Embellished into legend. But the aftermath was far more difficult to deal with than I had anticipated.