Piers Anthony - Neq the Sword

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.

Suddenly she turned away and kicked back, her heel striking for Tyl's knee. But again he moved aside in time.

"The Weaponless--your other father?--crippled me with that blow when he was driving for the empire himself. But after my knees healed they became leary, and have not been injured since."

If Vara had not realized she was sparring with the top warrior of the old empire, she surely knew it now. Tyl was no longer young, but nothing short of Neq's sword had hope of moving him out of the circle. Vara was fifteen and female; those were insurmountable obstacles.

Tyl was merely blocking, of course. He had no interest in hurting this beautiful girl; he only meant to convince her that she could not have her way.

Vara required considerable convincing. She whirled, she feinted, she sent a barrage of blows against the man. She knew an astonishing variety of tricks--but there was no trick that could overmatch Tyl's reach ami strength and experience.

Finally, panting, she yielded far enough to speak. "Warrior, what is it you want?"

"Neq slew Var in fair combat. Even as I could disarm you now, so could Neq defeat Var. I would not face Neq with the stick myself. Forswear your vengeance."

"No!" she cried, and launched another flurry of blows at him.

"No!" Neq also cried. "It was not fair combat. Var withheld his attack, he opened his guard, saying we had no quarrel. Then I slew him."

Tyl retreated, dismayed by the words rather than by the girl's offense. 'This is not like you, Neq."

"It is too much like me! I have slain innocent men before. I did not understand in time. I thought it was a combat mistake, or a ruse. My sword was there--"

"Desist, girl," Tyl said, just as though she were his daughter playing a game. And Vara desisted. "Neq, you place me awkwardly."

"Let her have her vengeance. It is fair."

"That I cannot."

"You admit you slew him unguarded!" Vara blazed at Neq.

"Yes. As I have others."

"In the name of vengeance!" Tyl cried, as if proving a point.

"In the name of vengeance." Neq was sick of it.

"In the name of vengeance," Vara repeated, and now the tears showed on her cheeks.

"Yet you could have slain him fairly," Tyl said. "And you thought you were avenging--her."

"I misunderstood. I did not let him explain. I slew him without reason, and I am tired of slaying, and of the sword, and of life." Neq faced Vara. "Come, widow. Strike. I will not lift weapon against you."