Paul Thompson - Nemesis

"For the duration of the contest, I will defend the emissary, so that no unfair advantage will be gained by threatening her," he said. So saying, he offered her a scrap of homespun bandanna. She regarded Greven's gift blankly until he tore the cloth in two and indicated she should use it to bind the wounds on her hands.

The doors of the convocation hall were opened, and the rearmost spectators were pushed out of the room by the Corps of

Sergeants. An open oval space was cleared of carpet, flags, and bystanders. Crovax's sergeants withdrew in a body to the right wall. The fence of flowstone spikes was dissolved, and those unlucky people slain by Crovax's initial fury were quickly removed.

Steel swords and shields of identical size and length were taken from two palace guards and provided to the combatants. Volrath pulled on a pair of scale-mail gauntlets. Seeing this, Crovax did the same. He dropped the gold-edged mantle from his shoulders. Neither man wore any other armor.

Volrath walked off a pace or two and started stretching and flexing his artfully carved muscles. Crovax called for wine and drank a goblet dry watching his opponent preen before the crowd.

Crovax dropped his goblet. "Time is short. Let's begin."

"I agree. What are the rules?" said Volrath.

Belbe folded her bandaged hands in her lap. "There's only one rule-win."

Crovax promptly lashed out with a wide sideways cut. Volrath threw himself back and brought up his shield. Sparks flew as the blade met the polished buckler. Crovax bored in, slashing and thrusting and using his shield to slam against Volrath's.

Volrath grew visibly taller even as Belbe watched. He moved so fast most people in the hall couldn't see his true motion, but Belbe's enhanced eyes followed every move. Volrath's arm elongated as he thrust it forward. The tip slid off the top of Crovax's shield and kept going. An ordinary fighter would have run out of arm by then, but Volrath's reach was preternatural. Crovax realized his danger and turned away just as the leading edge of Volrath's thrust clipped his left ear. He called on the floor to trip Volrath, but the flowstone waves broke over the former evincar's ankles like water and didn't impede him. In turn Volrath summoned another barrage of flowstone balls. Crovax was expecting them. Instead of liquefying them like his opponent, he batted them away with forceful commands. The skull-sized projectiles mowed down five onlookers.

Volrath retracted his arm to more normal proportions and advanced. He feigned an overhand attack, but again with amazing swiftness switched the line of his cut to an underhand thrust. Crovax blocked with his shield and struck out with his booted right foot. The hobnails connected with Volrath's leg below the knee.

"You're fast," Crovax said, grinning. "But you don't have a true killer's instinct."

"I've killed more people in one year as evincar than you have in your entire life, barbarian," Volrath retorted. "What you call 'killer instinct' is merely a lust for death. I am above such feelings."

They traded four hard cuts that left both their blades deeply nicked. For the first time, Belbe felt Volrath was concerned. He hadn't expected Crovax to last this long.

Emboldened, Crovax lowered his head and shouted sharply. He jabbed at his opponent's legs and stomach. Volrath gave ground grudgingly, backing up two steps, advancing one with a counter-thrust, then backing up two more.

Behind Crovax the floor humped up in a series of rounded semicircles. Crovax apparently didn't notice. Greven nodded approvingly.

Crovax's sword tip bounced off Volrath's shield. The latter executed a blinding pirouette, his blade coming edgeon at the side of Crovax's neck. He ducked, and his heel caught on the nearest hump. With an expression of utter surprise, Crovax fell. Volrath let out a triumphant laugh and leaped. He landed astride the fallen Crovax. Up went the bright sword Crovax vanished in a flare of white light. Volrath's blade went three inches into the floor. The flowstone softened, allowing him to recover, and his partisans in the crowd shouted warnings. He turned his head and saw Crovax materialize four feet in the air, directly behind him. There was no time to parry or dodge. Instead, Volrath shrank. He contracted his body by a fifth. Crovax's sword raked down Volrath's back, laying open his skin. Glistening oil spattered across the front of Crovax's white tunic.

Shrinking saved Volrath's life, but he had a painful wound from his left shoulder blade to his right hip. His dropped his hands to the floor and staggered forward on them. Grinning widely, Crovax tried trampling his foe into the floor. Flowstone splashed and flew as the men fought for control. Volrath rolled on his back. Crovax tried to overrun him and got a foot planted on his chest. The finely proportioned muscles in Volrath's leg uncoiled, hurling Crovax into the air. His feet didn't touch the ground for five yards, then he slammed into the tightly packed crowd.

He was up in a flash, hacking and slashing at anyone within reach of his blade. Courtiers and soldiers alike climbed over each other to get out of his way, but he slew at least ten before it became inconvenient to chase the others. Belbe knew this wasn't just pointless homicide; Crovax derived new strength from the death of others. He was refreshing himself in the midst of a duel by slaughtering innocent onlookers.

His back wet with glistening oil, Volrath went to the foot of the throne. Belbe could smell the crisp, electric odor of the fluid. Volrath's broad shoulders heaved. He looked to Greven il-Vec, standing with sword drawn at Belbe's side.

"How am I doing?" he asked wryly.

Ertai crawled all the way from the furnace mouth to the flow-hot lifts in the outer environs of the palace. Except for occasional patrols, he saw no one. Guards marched past him without stopping, the men idly watching his painful progress.

He reached the lifts and fell heavily into the closest one. It had been far too long since his last infusion. Without the dark energy to suppress them, his old injuries were slowly emerging again. The laboratory was a long way away. Despite his wounds old and new, his first thought was to find Belbe. Her life hung in the balance-he was certain Crovax would kill her once he'd been proclaimed evincar.

"Convocation hall," he said to the lift. The fleshstone flaps closed, and the flowbot sank through the floor.

The lift jerked to a stop. When the flaps lowered, he saw the antechamber was jammed with people. Everyone was craning their heads toward the open doors of the hall. Distantly he heard the sounds of combat, punctuated by shouts. Ertai grasped the leathery hide of the lift and dragged himself to his feet. If this was to be his last act, he wanted to enter standing and not on his knees.

He wormed his way through the mass of gawkers. Some shrank from his fearful, swollen visage and let him pass. Others regarded him with pity and stepped aside. When Ertai reached the inner edge of the crowd, the closely packed ranks of guards and courtiers parted to reveal a wan and worried Belbe, seated on the throne and guarded by the imposing Greven il-Vec. She was talking to another tall muscular fellow with an improbably handsome face-Volrath. Ertai recognized him from the statues around the Stronghold. He had an awful wound across his back. The flesh exposed was gray, not red. Ertai raised a hand in greeting.

Heedless of the danger, Belbe pushed past the tall, wounded swordsman and met the young sorcerer at the edge of the crowd. "Have I missed much?" he whispered. She lowered him to the floor. "You shouldn't have come. It isn't safe here."

"Where is one safe on Rath?"

Distracted, Volrath didn't see pinchers form out of the flow-stone steps behind him. One pierced his right calf. He immediately banished them and, enraged, raised a wall of flowstone six feet high and one inch thick. He shouted so loudly the floor trembled, and the wall broke into a dense cloud of small pellets. Volrath flung his hands wide, and the mass of pellets hurled themselves at Crovax.