Donald Hamilton: The Ambushers

I grinned scornfully. "You scare me! You and that scar. If it wasn't a beer bottle, it's where you dove through a plate glass window because you were frightened by an American bomb five blocks away."

He hesitated. He knew he was being suckered; he knew he'd be a damn fool to risk everything he'd worked for on the outcome of a crazy duel. And still, there was the matter of a Prussian aristocrat's honor. I'd questioned his courage, I'd cast doubts on the 'honorable origins of the betraying scar he'd retained through the years of flight and hiding where a sensible man would long since have had it removed by plastic surgery. There was that, and there was the waiting attitude of the men.

The sergeant with the machine pistol spoke quickly behind me: "Jefe no! Let me shoot him now!"

For answer, von Sachs grabbed his machete by the hilt and pulled it clear. There wasn't any polite on-guard stuff. He just came for me. Suddenly he was all over me, and he was good. It was all I could do to parry the flashing blade coming at me from all sides.

His men surged aside as I retreated. There were murmurs of approval and gasps of disappointment. It was a weapon they all knew, but they'd probably never seen it used by men who'd trained with foils and sabers. At that, von Sachs had the advantage. He'd learned his stuff with a real weapon. Padded and masked, he'd swung a blade weighing several pounds, sometimes dull for practice, but sometimes, as his face attested, honed and deadly.

I'd done my work with the modern fencing saber, a whippy toy not much heavier than a foil, employing a dainty technique that has little to do with blood and death. As a matter of fact, if you hit hard enough to sting your opponent through his thin canvas jacket, you're scolded for being Unsportsmanlike. On the other hand, I did know quite a bit about knives, and I'd done some work with the Japanese fighting stick, a closely related weapon.

He kept coming in, but not as fast as before, and I managed to break up his attack at last and come back at him with a straight-armed lunge that seemed to take him by surprise. He even looked a little disapproving as he beat the point aside and retaliated with a slashing cut to the head, which I parried. I knew I'd learned something, but there wasn't time to analyze it.

I'd weathered the first rush. He'd lost some of his steam, and it was time to think of strategy. It wasn't up to me to skewer him, anyway. I was just the decoy. I started angling my retreat towards the creek bed, well within rifle range of Sheila's position on the north rim.

We were sweating now. The scar was a livid streak on von Sachs' flushed face. I saw Catherine behind him, still held between her guards. That wasn't good, but maybe they'd release her when the shooting started. I didn't look at the canyon wall behind me. Sheila would be there. She'd have been there since the first hint of dawn. I could sense the loaded rifle up there, waiting. I could feel the crosshairs tracking von Sachs as he moved closer, advancing as I retreated.

It made me feel kind of cheap. The man was sincerely trying to kill me in fair fight, and I was just setting him • up for a bullet. Well, it's not a chivalrous age, nor is mine an honorable profession. I wasn't about to risk turning loose a wild man with an army and a nuclear missile because of some boyish notions of fair play. – I had it pretty well figured out now. I had to immobilize him for a moment, to make him a stationary target; and I had to get myself completely out of the way so that the chance of my lunging into the bullet wouldn't make Sheila nervous and hasty. I let von Sachs drive me back towards a spot where the almost dry creek bed 'had a six-foot bank undercut by past floods. I gave ground slowly until I felt the bank start to give; then I let out a despairing cry and jumped back and down, falling in soft sand. That got me out of the line of fire. Six feet above me, von Sachs came to a halt, panting.

He stood there, catching his breath, a beautiful target. I knew a certain regret as I waited for the shot. Good swordsmen are hard to find these days. The regret faded as the shot didn't come.

It was hard to keep from turning my head to look back and up at the rim. Something was wrong up there, terribly wrong, but there wasn't much chance of my seeing the answer from below. I got up slowly, while men crowded to the creek bank on either side of von Sachs, and still the Nazi stood there, machete in hand, and still nothing happened.

It became obvious that nothing was going to happen, presumably because something had already happened to the rifle on the rim or to the small girl behind it.

Catherine's guards had dragged her up to the edge of the wash. Her face told me nothing, but I remembered that she'd wanted von Sachs alive. She'd also said, One day you will pay for Max. I do not forgive you.

She was a clever girl. She must have made a deal with somebody; she must have figured out a different solution to her problem, one that gave her revenge as well as success.

What it was didn't really matter. Whatever she'd done, or had done, to Sheila, there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment. I could do something about von Sachs, however. She was welcome to him after I got through with him.

"Come on down, grandpa," I called, shaking my machete. "What are you waiting for, the boys to bring a ladder?"

He didn't like the implied sneer at his age. He jumped. going to one knee in the sand. I gave 'him a break, I let him get to his feet. Then I moved in to kill him.

I ALMOST GOT HIM with my first real lunge, and I saw again that little start of surprise and disapproval as he escaped the point with a wild parry that left him open for a cut to the shoulder or face that I passed up. I didn't want to chop him to bits, I just wanted to finish him; and I had the answer now.

It was very simple. He'd never used the point or had it used against him. They fight for the scars and the honor over there; and there's no honor in a scar that starts at the front of the chest and comes out behind. They fight for blood only, not for death. The edge is sharp but the point is blunt. The idea that a man with a cutting weapon in his hand might use it for sticking, too, was not part of his experience. It had probably been outlawed by the rules he'd fought under, to keep them from losing too many students.

I was afraid I'd tipped him off, and I contented myself with slashing and chopping for a while, carrying the fight to him. The sand made it tough for both of us, but his legs were older than mine. He fought cunningly and defensively, however, giving ground upstream past the cottonwoods and the missile, sparing himself for another major effort. Then it came, and he drove me back with a flashing attack, turned, and ran for the bank, shelving 'here.

He held that rise for a minute or two. I couldn't drive him off it, but I could work my way upstream to where there was no longer any bank to amount to anything. There were no shots from above. There was no sign of life at the top of the cliff. I should have left her in Tucson, I thought. She'd be safe now.

Von Sachs almost took my head off with a savage cut. The parry jarred the machete in my hand. It was no time for regrets. We were in the cottonwoods, fighting at the base of the Rudovic III, slugging it out with ancient tools and techniques in the shadow of the weapon of the future.

He was tiring. I had him now, and I looked towards Catherine so she'd know I was making her a present of him. If I'd had any doubts of her treachery-.-Whatever the details might be-the fact that she was standing alone, unguarded, but making no effort to run for the truck as we'd arranged, would have convicted her. Her guards had forgotten all about her, seeing their jefe driven back. The men watching were all silent now. There would be a kind of sigh when a weapon failed to reach the mark, that was all.