Shadowplay

"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 gi

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 gri

"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.

FACE and upper hotly shiny witlh blood, Daikonas Vo at last pulled him¬self out from under Yaridoras, rolling the giant aside so that the long shard of stone floor tile sticking in the yellow-bearded man's eye rose into view like a sacred object being lifted above a parade of believers. The audience of White Hounds gasped and cursed in shock, then a roar of anger rose from them and several of them moved toward the exhausted, bloody Vo with murderous intent.

"Stop!" cried Pinimmon Vash. When they realized it was the autarch's chief minister who had commanded them, the White Hounds halted and fell into surly, murmuring attention. "Do not harm that man."

"But he killed Yaridoras!" growled Marukh. "The autarch's law was that no weapons could be used!"

"The autarch said that no weapons could be brought into the arena, Kil-iarch. This man did not bring a weapon, he made one. Clean him up and bring him to the Mandrake Court."

"The Hounds will be angry. Yaridoras was popular…"

"Ask them to consider whether keeping their heads will be compensa¬tion enough. Otherwise, I'm sure their autarch will be happy make other arrangements."

Vash shook his robe free of wrinkles and passed from the room.

The Golden One was reclining on the ceremonial stone bed in the Chamber of the New Sun, naked except for a short kilt decorated with jade tiles. On each side of him a kneeling priest bound the cuts in-the autarch's arms, delicate wounds made only moments earlier by sacred golden shell-knives. The small quantity of royal blood, enough to fill two tiny golden bowls which at the moment were on a tray held by the high priest Pan-hyssir, would be poured into the Sublime Canal just after sunset to assure the sun's return from its long winter journey apart from its bride the earth.

Sulepis turned lazily as the soldier Daikonas Vo was led in, cradling his elbow as if it were a sleeping child. The man of Perikal had been wiped clean of blood, but his face and neck were still crisscrossed with raw, scraped flesh.

"I am told you killed a valuable member of my White Hounds," the autarch said, stretching his arms to test the fit of the bandages. Already tiny blooms of red could be seen through the linen.