She was two steps from the edge, one. Then she spun about without seeming to look, knocked one of his sticks up, ducked under it, scooted past him, and caught his wrist with a backhand swing that completely surprised him.
Var watched incredulously as one of his sticks flew from his numbed hand, to rattle down the mountainside. The maneuver had been so swiftly and neatly executed that he had not bad the chance to defend against it. Now, half disarmed, he was virtually lost. One stick could not prevail against two.
His inexperience in the circle had after all cost him the match. Hul would not have been caught so simply, and certainly not Tyl. Yet who would have expected such skill from a mere child?
Var waited for the attack that had to come. He was doomed, but he would not give up. Perhaps a lunge would catch her unaware in turn, or maybe he could throw them both off the mesa, making the battle a tie in mutual death. She looked at him a moment. Then, casually, she tossed one of her own sticks after his over the brink.
Dumbfounded, Var saw it clatter out of play. She could have tapped him on the skull in that moment without opposition, but she kept her distance.. "You"
"So you owe me one," she said. "Fair fight." And she came at him with the single stick.
Var had to fight, but he was-shaken. She had disarmed herself to make the match even again. When she could have had easy victory. He had never imagined such a thing in the circle.
There was no doubt that she meant business, however. She pressed him hard with her half weapon, and scored repeatedly on his unarmed side. It was a strange, off balance contest, requiring unusual contortions and reflexes to compensate for the missing stick, and the finesse of the dual weapons was largely gone.
Thus, clumsily, they fought. And Var, because the reduction of finesse brought her skill closer to his own level without correspondingly upgrading her strength, gradually gained the initiative. But he pursued it with restraint, for he did not need a second such lesson as the one that had cost him one stick. The child was most dangerous when she seemed most beleaguered. And he still wasn't certain what her sacrifice of her own stick meant. Surely she could not have been so confident of victory that she disarmed herself for the joy of enhanced competition! And surely she could not desire to lose....
Var had not survived his childhood in the badlands without being alert to the dangers of the unknown. Not all unknowns were physical.
She was tiring, and he slacked off some more, supercautious. The height of the sun showed they had been at it for some three hours, and now the afternoon was passing.
But how would it end, with their life-and-death battle reduced to mere sparring. Only one of them could descend the mountainside. Only one team could prevail. Delay could not change that harsh reality.
If the contest did not end soon, the victor would not have enough time remaining before dusk to make a safe descent. Mt. Muse was challenging at any time, and seemed impossible in the dark.
It did not end soon. The battle had become a mockery, for neither person was really trying to win. Not immediately, anyway. Both were holding back, conserving strength, waiting for some more crucial move by the other that did not come. Stick still beat against stick; but the force was perfunctory, the motions routine.
Dusk did come. The girl stepped back, dropping her weapon. "We shouldn't fight at night," she said.
Var lowered his own weapon, agreeing, but alert for betrayal.
She walked to the edge, leaving her stick behind. "Don't look," she said. She squatted.
Var realized that she had to urinate. But if he turned his back she could run up behind him and push. Still, if he could not trust her during this period of truce, he had had no business agreeing to it. And there had been that matter of the extra stick. Her codes were different than his, but they seemed consistent.
He faced outward and relieved his own bladder into the gloom below.
Their toilets done, the two returned to the center of the plateau. Darkness filled the landscape like a great ocean, but their island remained clear. And lonely.
"I'm hungry," she said.
So was he. But there was nothing to eat. All concerned had assumed that the battle would be of short duration, so no provision for a prolonged stay had been made.
Perhaps this had been intentionaclass="underline" if the champions did not fight with sufficient vigor, thirst and hunger would prompt them.
"You don't talk much, do you," she said.
"I don't talk well," Var explained. The mangled syllables conveyed the message more clearly than the language did.
Oddly, she smiled, a flash of white in shadow. "My father doesn't talk at all. He got hurt in the throat, years ago. Before I can remember. But I understand him well enough."
Var just nodded.
"Why don't you take that side, and I'll take this side, and we'll sleep," she said, gesturing. "Tomorrow we'll finish this."
He agreed. He took his stick and stuffed it across the center of the plateau, making a line that divided the area in halves. He lay down in his territory.
The girl sat up for a while, looking very small. "What is your name?"
"Var."
"Growr?
"Var."
"I don't see any bad scar on your throat. Why can't you talk?"
Var tried to figure out a simple way to answer that, but failed.
"What's it like, outside?" she asked.
He realized that he did not need to reply sensibly to her questions. She was more interested in talking than in listening.
"It's cold," she said.
Var hadn't thought about it, but she was right. A hard chill was settling on the mesa, and they were both naked and without sleeping bags. He could endure it, of course; he had slept exposed many times in youth. But she was smaller then be, and thinner, and her skin was soft.
In fact, the cold would be more than an inconvenience to her. She could die from exposure. Already her hunched hairless torso was shaking so violently he felt the tremors in the ground.
Var sat up. "That favour I owe you, for the stick" he called.
Her head turned toward him. He could see the motion, but nothing else in the fading light. "I don't understand."
"For the stick my return favor." He tried to enunciate clearly.
"Stick," she said. "Favor." She was beginning to pick up his clumsy words, but not his meaning. Her teeth chattered as she spoke.
"The warmth of my body, tonight."
"Warm? Night?" She remained perplexed.
Var got up abruptly and crossed over to her. He lay down on his side, took hold of her, and pulled her to him. "Sleep warm," he said as clearly as he could.
For a moment her body was tense, and her hands flew to his neck in a gesture he recognized from demonstrations the Nameless One had made. She knew weaponless combat! Then she relaxed.
"Oh you mean to share warmth! Oh, thank you, Val"
And she turned about, curled up, and lay with her shivering back nestled against his front, his arms and legs falling about her. His chin, sprouting its sparse beard, came to nestle in her fluffy hair. His forearm settled on her folded thigh, his hand clasped her knee to gain the purchase necessary to keep them close together.
Var remembered the first time he had held a woman, not so many months before. But of course this was not the same. Sola had been buxom and hot, while this child was bony and cold. And the relationship was entirely different.
Yet he found this chaste camaraderie against the cold to be as meaningful as that prior sexual connection. To stand even on the favors that was part of the circle code, as he understood it, and there was no shame in it.
Yet in the morning they would do battle again.
"Who are you?" he asked now. For once the words came out succinctly.