Authors: Piers Anthony
Then the opening came, and Neq's sword struck true.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tyl returned at dusk, with a companion. "Neq! Neq! Look what I found in the village!"
Neq looked up from the caim he had been fashioning. As the two approached he saw that the stranger was a woman. "I'm so glad to find you!" she exclaimed.
Neq stared. It was a crazy woman! She wore the typical skirt and blouse despite the cold, and her long dark hair was bound the crazy way. And she was lovely.
"Miss Smith," he murmured, reminded achingly of his love though there was little actual, physical similarity between the two women. This one was neat to the point of precision, as Miss Smith had been; she was beautiful in that fragile manner; and she was incongruous in the wilderness. That was the connection. Intelligent, literate, innocent. His heart felt as though a dagger had nudged it.
"This is one of the two we traced," Tyl said. "She was reconnoitering in the village, the same as I, and when we met--"
"She traveled with a nomad?" Neq asked, still bemused by the parallel to his own experience of six years before. "A crazy?"
"I am Vara," she said. "I travel with my husband. He should be around here somewhere--"
Neq still had not come out of his fog. "Var? The Stick?"
"Yes! Did you meet him? From what Tyl says, we have a common mission--"
Then Neq came to total and ugly awareness. He touched the fresh burial mound with one foot. "I--met him."
Tyl looked at him and at the cairn, comprehending. He went for his sword, but stopped. He turned away.
Vara went to the caim and carefully removed a section of the stone lining. She excavated the fresh earth and sand with her slender fingers while Neq watched. Finally she uncovered a foot, with its blunted, hooflike toes. She touched it, feeling its coldness.
By this time it was dark, and night closed in completely as she contemplated that deformed, dead foot. Then she covered it gently, filled in the hole, and replaced the stones.
"My two fathers are dead," she said wistfully. "Now my husband. What am I to do?"
"We met. We fought."
"I served Sol," Tyl said from his section of the night, still facing away. There was an anguished quality to his voice that Neq had not heard before. "I served the Weaponless. Var the Stick was my friend. I would have barred you from the circle with him, had I been certain of what I suspected. When I saw Vara, I was certain. But you met Var too soon."
"I did not know he was your friend," Neq said, hating this. "I knew him only as a slayer of men by treachery, and of a child at Helicon."
"You misjudged him," Tyl said in the same quiet tone Vara had used. "He was bold in combat but gentle in person. And he had an invaluable talent."
"Var slew only of necessity," Vara said. "And not always then."
Neq was feeling worse, though it had been an honest combat He had struck too hastily, as he had so often before. His sword outreached his intellect. He could have disengaged, waited for Tyl's return.'Now he had to defend his action. "What need had he to slay the child of Sol?"
Vara turned to him in the dark. "I am the child of Sol."
Neq's stomach heaved with the pang of unwarranted killing, knowing what was coming. "He killed Soli at Mt.
Muse, when she was eight years old. All accounts agree on that."
"All but one," she said. "The true one. He claimed to have killed me, so that the nomads would win, and my two fathers could be together again. But then I couldn't get back to tell Sol the truth, and the Weaponless was seeking Var for vengeance--"
"Vengeance!" Abominable concept!
"So we had to flee. We went to China, and I took his bracelet when I came of age. Soli exists no more."
Now Neq recognized her face, though it was no longer visible in the night. The classic beauty of Sola! The crazy dress and his own dawning guilt had blinded him to her identity.
"The boy Var traveled with, going north--" Neq murmured. "A girl with her hair hidden."
"Yes. So no one would know I wasn't dead. I can't do that now."
She certainly couldn't! The child of eight had become a woman of fifteen. "And Sol pursued you too, not knowing... he must have met the Weaponless on the way!"
"They learned in China. And gave their lives carrying radioactive stones into the enemy stronghold, so that we could escape. Var always felt that it was his fault they died, but it was mine. I knew they would do it."
Var had blamed himself... and so had let Neq's accusation stand. Now Var's assumed guilt was Neq's.
"It was a mistake," Tyl said after a long pause. "Var told everyone he had killed the mountain champion. Helicon itself was fired and gutted to avenge thai murder--it does not matter by whom. Neq did not know. Only _I_ knew Var would not have slain a child. And I know the kind of terms Sola makes. She was kind to Var, but her price was surely the life of her daughter."
"Var did say something," Vara admitted. "He had sworn to kill the man who harmed me. And for a long time he was reticent, though he loved me...."
Neq remembered Sola's comment about Var's sterility. Strange, driven woman!
"Yet I knew it could have happened," Tyl continued. "Mt. Muse is high and steep, and there are rocks to drop. Had you attacked him with stones while he was climbing, he might have had to fight before he knew, and he was deadly in rough terrain. So he might have killed you, and I could not bar Neq from combat until I was sure. It was my mistake; I am to blame for your husband's death--"
"No!" Neq and Vara cried together.
There was silence again, as each person sifted his tangled motives. The conversation was unreal, and not because it emanated from darkness. Neq's emotions were partly in suspension. "Why do you not curse me? Why do you not weep? I killed--"
"You killed because you did not understand," Vara said. "I have some share of guilt for that, for I agreed to play dead. Tonight I make you understand. Tomorrow I kill you. Then will I weep for you both."
She meant it. She was like Miss Smith, who died Neqa. Changed of name, precious beyond all imagination, but loyal to her man. Neqa had tried to kill Yod when Yod made ready to cut off Neq's hands. Would Vara do less?
Yod had killed Neqa by accident. Now Neq had killed Var. The guilt was the same. Vengeance would be the same.
She would not have it, any more than he had. Neq bent his elbow, bringing his sword-arm to his own throat. It was past time for him to die.
"I claim my price," Tyl said, startling Neq as his muscles tensed for the fatal slice.
Of all times! Yet Neq had a debt of honor, and he would have to acquit it. "Name your price."
"Give back what you have taken this day."
Neq delayed answering, trying to discover Tyl's meaning. Obviously he could not restore Var to life.
"What you have to do," Vara said evenly, "do before dawn. When daylight comes I will destroy you in the circle."
"In the circle!" Now Neq could not fathom her meaning either. Women did not do battle. "What is your weapon?"
"The stick."
The morbid situation could not suppress Tyl's interest. "So Sol did train you in combat!"
"My father. Yes. Every day we practiced, inside the mountain. He hoped to take me away from Helicon some day, but Sosa wouldn't let him. And I have practiced since."
Now Tyl's voice was more concerned. "Mere practice can not make a woman into a man. My daughter is older than you, and she has a child of her own now--but this would never have come to pass if she had ever entered man's province. The circle is not for you."
"Nevertheless." Sol's child, all right!
"This man," Tyl continued persuasively, "this man, Neq the Sword, was second only to me in the empire, when the Weaponless departed. Now he has no hands, but he retains his weapon. He is less clever in technique, but more deadly than before because he cannot be disarmed. His sword is swifter than his mind. I think no man can stand against that sword today."
"Nevertheless."
"I can not permit this encounter," Tyl said.
Her voice was cold. "Your permission is irrelevant."
"Var was my friend. He taught me to use the gun. I hurt with his loss, as you do. Yet I say this: do not lift stick against Neq the Sword. We must not make this terrible mistake again."
"Var was more than friend to me," she pointed out caustically.
"Nevertheless."
"You have no right," she said.
Tyl did not answer, and the strange, tense conversation ended.
Neq did not know whether he slept that night, or whether the others did, but slowly the morning came.
Vara had changed. She no longer resembled an ineffective crazy woman. That guise must have been for the benefit of the local villagers, who were rather like crazies themselves in their dress, so that she could pass among them freely. Now she wore a nomad smock, and her hair was loose and long, falling down over her shoulders on either side and curling about the soft mounds of her breasts. She remained stunning by any definition.
She carried sticks--the twin thin clubs that Var had used.
Neq felt another chill. He had buried Var's weapon beside him, according to the normal courtesy of warriors. Neq's sword had cut open the ground and scooped it out, and his pincers had levered the stones into place: the work of several hours. Yet these were Var's sticks, for they carried the recent marks of the sword. Neq could recognize the scars of a weapon as readily as he could a face.
"As you fought my husband," Vara said, "so shall I fight you. As you slew him, so shall I slay you. As you buried him, I'll bury you. With honor. Then will my mourning begin."
"Neq will not fight a woman," Tyl said. "I know him, even as I knew Var."
Vara lifted her sticks and stood beside the burial mound. "He may fight or flee as he chooses. Here is the circle-- beside my husband's cairn. The world is the circle. I will be avenged."
The words struck Neq like blows of the sticks. Her sentiments were so similar to his own when Neqa died! He could not have forgiven Yod and his rapist tribe; he had not forgiven them now. The thrust of his vengeance had changed, now applying to the entire outlaw society and its roots in the ashes of Helicon, but vengeance it remained. How could he say to her that a life for a life was not enough?
"Var was my friend," Tyl repeated. "He shamed me before my tribe when he was but a child, a wild boy of the badlands, and I meant to take him to the circle when he became a man. But Sola interceded on his behalf, and when I came to know him--"
Vara gripped her sticks and moved purposely toward Neq. He saw the savage grief in her eyes, the kind he had had, the kind that cast aside all thought of honor and permitted murder by stealth, the kind that was futile. But he had done it; he had killed without cause. He would not lift his sword to perpetrate further evil.
Tyl stepped between them. "Var was my friend," he said once more. "In any other case I would avenge him myself. Yet I forbid this conflict."
Vara did not speak. She whipped one stick at Tyl, a lightning stroke, her eyes not leaving Neq. It was no feeble womanish blow; lovely as she was, she did know the use of her weapon.
Tyl caught it on his forearm. "Now you have struck me," he murmured softly, though a massive welt was forming. Had there been a man's weight behind the blow, or had Tyl been unprepared for it, his arm could have been broken. "Now give me leave to fetch my weapon, for this conflict is mine."
Vara waited stonily. It was obvious she had not wanted to battle Tyl, and did not wish to engage him now. But she had struck him, and he had been unarmed--deliberately, for Tyl always knew where his weapons were. She was committed by the code of the circle.
Tyl fetched his sticks. Neq was relieved; had Tyl taken the sword to her, that death would have been charged to Neq's own conscience. Tyl intended only to interfere.
Yet why was he bothering? First he had balked Neq's own attempt at suicide; now he balked Vara. He was preserving Neq's life--when he should have been satisfied to see it end.
Now Vara threw off her smock and stood naked but for sturdy hiking moccasins, despite the chill of the air: as fine a figure of a woman as Neq had ever seen. She was full-breasted and narrow-waisted, well-muscled for a girl yet quite feminine. Her black hair flowed proudly behind her, almost to her hips.
Full bosomed... Neq was fascinated. Each breast stood round and true, a work Of private beauty, an aspect of passionate symmetry. He had serenaded a breast like that, so long ago....
It was fitting that such a breast now declared vengeance against him.
But Tyl stood between, and if Vara thought to dazzle him with her bodily attributes and so diminish his guard, she had forgotten that he had a daughter older than she.
She fenced with him, impatient at the delay Tyl represented. She wanted only to get at Neq, who had not moved.
The sticks spun and struck, wood meeting metal. Tyl had the advantage of superior Helicon weapons, and his experience was more than Vara's whole life. He parried her blows without effort.
Neq could not bring himself to care particularly about the fight or its outcome. The twin shocks of this final unjustified slaying of Var, and the identity and appearance of Vara, had almost completely unmanned him. Discover what had gone wrong with Helicon? He could not discover what had gone wrong with himself!
Meanwhile, man and woman fought. Vara ducked and whirled about, her hair spinning about her breasts and hips like a light cloak. From that floating coiffure her sticks came up to rap sharply at Tyl's wrist, one side and another. A deft maneuver! Vara was, if anything, a better sticker than her husband had been.
But Tyl flicked his wrist out of the way and engaged in a counter maneuver that sent her stumbling back far less gracefully. "Very nice, little girl! Your father Sol disarmed me with a similar motion and made me part of his empire, before you existed. He taught you well!"
But there was more to the circle than good instruction, obviously. Tyl had never since been defeated by the sticks.
Had Neq been fighting, even with no guilt-related inhibitions, he would have been bemused by those dancing breasts playing peek-a-boo behind that black hair, and completely unable to strike at Vara's lovely lithe body. In fact he was bemused now. Her femininity was as potent in combat as her sticks.