Two matches of the day's eight were scheduled before Zeb's. The field of play was a square made up of four of the previous day's squares, about twenty feet by twenty, right next to the reviewing stand. The red-clad judges stood upon the stand, and the athletes not involved in the current match, as well as their trainers, stood on the ground immediately before it. The crowd lined the other three sides of the competition square and stood many ranks deep.
The first bout was between a man who looked to Zeb like a potbellied Vikingblond-bearded, blue-eyed, with a cheerful manner but an intensity to the way he watched everythingand a paler but brown-haired man who had the most extraordinary build Zeb had seen yet on the fair world. His muscles were practically sculpted; he could have been a grimworld body builder. Yet his narrow face and long, thin nose were pure fairworld, and his features in general, which looked like they were crafted to laugh and laugh while bloodbaths were taking place before his eyes, were far from appealing.
The two men were made to stand three paces apart in the center of their square while one of the judges spoke to them in Burian. Then the judge lifted his hammer high and took two steps back, and the fight was on.
Both men crouched in wrestler's poses. The noise from the crowd rose and flashes of light erupted from the crowd as front-line photographers began snapping pictures.
The competitors moved toward one another, arms bent, hands open, then came together with a sound of collision like two sides of beef being swung into one another. The muscleman got his arms around the Viking's waist and toppled him, but the Viking's hands settled on his throat and began choking. The referee kept close, his mallet up over his shoulder in case he should need to hit someone.
"By the way," Harris said, "in these regular matches, being hit by that hammer doesn't mean you're disqualified. It just means you're doing something you're not supposed to. They keep hitting until you stop."
"So can you be disqualified?"
"Not at this stage, no. You can just surrender, pass out, or die." Harris offered a cheerless smile.
The muscleman got his hands under his opponent's and broke his grip. He rolled away, surprisingly fast in spite of his lack of breath, but the Viking scrambled after him. The Viking got his hands on the muscleman's right foot and twisted hard, attempting to break his ankle.
The muscleman shouted, a noise made hoarse and raspy by the fact he still hadn't caught his breath, and rolled in the direction of the Viking's twist. As he rolled over onto his back, he kicked, the blow smashing the Viking's nose flat. The crowd roared in appreciation. The Viking rocked back and the muscleman had enough time to get to his feet. Though still red-faced, he seemed much recovered.
They came together again, but as they grabbed, the Viking lowered his head and smashed it into the muscleman's face, knocking the fighter's head back and breaking his nose as well. Now both men had blood streaming from their faces. The Viking followed up, overbearing his opponent and sending him to the ground; the Viking fell atop him, scrambling for a grip, and managed to get his hands on the muscleman's left forearm, twisting it up behind his back.
The muscleman thrashed around with his feet and free arm, trying to maneuver his body to reduce the pressure on his arm, but the Viking held him in place and leaned harder and harder against the arm. He said something into the muscleman's ear.
"Telling him to surrender," Harris said. "You do that by tapping the ground three times."
Zeb offered him a grin that showed more confidence than he felt. "I don't need to know that, man."
The crowd grew more quiet, listening, it seemed, for the muscleman's answer, but the man just strained harder. So did the Viking.
Then the muscleman shook his head and reached out with his free hand, hammering the ground once
His held arm broke at the elbow with a dull noise like a bunch of celery being snapped. The Viking's pressure bent it double so his hand lay atop his upper arm.
The muscleman shrieked, the noise audible even over the gasps and cheers from the crowd. The Viking was up and off him in a second, an expression of contrition on his face; he turned to the referee, hands outstretched as if pleading. The referee, unconcerned, waved his words away. More referees trotted down the step of the reviewing stand, carrying a stretcher.
Zeb felt his stomach lurch. He'd seen gunshot victims and other injuries, but the only ones that seemed to bother him were the ones that made the human body take a shape it was not meant to assume. The muscleman lay there, writhing, unable to keep his body still or keep himself quiet, while the Viking uneasily accepted the cheers of the crowd. The field referee pointed the mallet at him, acknowledging his victory.
"Oleg Stammgalf," Harris said. "He wasn't considered a contender coming into this."
The head referee, distinguished by the gold trim on his red referee's outfit, addressed the field in Burian and the crowd quieted a little.
"What's he saying?" Zeb asked. "Oh, never mind. Why did I pick a trainer who can't speak the language?"
Harris grinned. " 'Cause I come cheap."
A fighter Zeb had engaged in the previous day's round, the large man with the walrus mustache, said, "He thanks the athletes for a clean match." His voice bore a heavy Burian accent. His attention was on the fieldwhere the referees had transferred the muscleman to the stretcher and were now carrying him awayrather than on Zeb and Harris.
"That was a clean match?" Zeb asked.
The man nodded. "The referee did not have to punish any foul. No swinging of the hammer. The gods like that. No athlete died. The athletes like that. That is a clean match."
Zeb extended a hand. "Zeb Watson, representing Novimagos."
Walrus Mustache looked at him for the first time, expressionless, and shook his hand. "Geert Tiwasson. Of Weseria."
"Figures," Zeb said. "I expect I'll be fighting you in a later round."
Geert nodded and returned his attention to the field. "I look forward to it."
The second bout was between Colonel Förster, the handsome man Zeb had exchanged words with during the preliminary round, and Corcair Highknocker of Cretanis, a heavyset man with a bald head, a red beard, and red bristly hair on every other part of his body not covered by his athlete's outfit. Highknocker's outfit was not in the red and green of Cretanis, but all of purple; his love of the color, Zeb learned, was one of his well-known affectations.
This match was less spectacular than the previous one: The two competitors came together and wrestled around for a while, then Förster managed to maneuver himself into a superior position and choked Highknocker unconscious. Highknocker was carried from the field on a stretcher; Förster accepted the cheers of the crowd with quiet grace, then returned to the sideline.
"You're up next," Harris said.
Zeb nodded. "Got any advice?" He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, loosening up, feeling the first waves of adrenaline and agitation roll across him.
"Not having seen Kano fight, that's kind of tough. First thing, if he's like the sumo guys of the grim world, he's going to be faster than you expect. Think of him as a modern NFL lineman."
"That's encouraging. Go on." Zeb stared down the sideline at his opponent, who was stretching in a low crouch. Kano seemed to be staring into the distance, paying no attention to anyone around him, though an older Oriental man of similar proportions, wearing a lime-green suit cut to his generous size, was at his side, speaking constantly in his ear.
"He outweighs you by about a hundred and fifty, hundred and seventy pounds, so don't try to push him around. Leverage is something he knows about."
"I'm feeling better all the time. What else?"
Harris's voice took an exasperated tone. "What I'm telling you is that you have to dictate this fight and keep it centered in the things you know how to do and he doesn't. He knows pushing, grabbing, knocking down, pulling you down, a pretty mean slap. Oh, yeah, the sumo guys here do something that ours don'ta sort of stomp maneuver. It can break your leg at the ankle, and if he does it to you when you're down, he can break your arms or legs or cave in your rib cage. So don't let him do that."
"Don't let him kill me. At last I understand." Zeb gave Harris a smile. "Don't worry. I win or I lose. Except that I don't lose."
"Sort of a minimalist philosophy," Harris said, "but I like it."
"Tanuki Kano," called the head referee, "Zeb Watson."
Zeb moved out fast, arms raised to wave at the crowd as though anyone there might be rooting for him. He passed the field referee and turned back to wait for Kano. He wasn't smiling, nor had he yet put on his war-face; the expression he offered the crowd was one of deadly intensity. Some in the crowd responded not with boos, but there was also an increase in the volume of their conversation, and the first flashbulbs began popping.
Once past the official, Zeb turned. Kano was close behind, expressionless, alert. He stopped just short of the official, facing Zeb.
Seeing him face-on for the first time this morning, Zeb was startled. Kano's shorts and shirt were white with red decorations, presumably the colors of Wo, and the decoration occupying most of the chest was a swastika. It wasn't the classic Nazi swastikait was backwards, as if the image had been flipped, and with lines connecting the four ends of the design to the long lines, so the effect was that of a plus sign with triangles at each end. Still, it was recognizably a swastika, and he had to remind himself of Gaby's words of the other nightit had been a decorative symbol from ancient times, long before the Nazis got their hands on it.
He couldn't afford to be distracted by stray thoughts. He returned his attention to Kano's face, to his eyes, and projected a sense of invincibility and indomitable will. Kano returned his gaze with the implacability of a cow . . . or a boulder.
The referee spoke to them in Burian, doubtless the catalogue of rules and punishments, and at one point hefted his long-handled mallet significantly. Then he gestured for the two athletes to step back. When they did, he extended his mallet between them, then raised it, sign that the bout had begun.
Kano advanced, hands at shoulder level, with the relentlessness of a bowling ball set into motion.
Zeb waited until he was almost within grabbing distance. He held his left, guard, hand in place as a lure. Kano grabbed at it. Zeb pivoted, drawing his guard hand back, slapping Kano's hands out of line with his right, and launched a snapkick, slamming his foot into Kano's left knee.
The kick should have at least unbalanced the big man, but his left leg remained resolutely planted and apparently undamaged. Kano's cheek twitched, whether with momentary pain or amusement Zeb couldn't tell. With a deft move, Kano disengaged his right hand from Zeb's, caught Zeb's wrist and yanked; he got his left hand on Zeb's shoulder, preparatory to straightening Zeb's arm to apply leverage or break it at the elbow.
Before Kano could finish the maneuver, Zeb dropped to his knees, under Kano's reaching hand. Using Kano's own grip on him for additional stability, he twisted, slamming his left palm into Kano's right knee from the side, a breaking technique.
The joint held, but Kano hissed and stumbled. Zeb took advantage of his momentary lack of balance. He twisted the wrist Kano held, breaking his grip but not breaking contact, and got his own hand locked on Kano's wrist. As he did so, he stood and twisted, getting a grip with his free hand on Kano's upper arm, locking his arm at the elbow. He drove with all his strength against this new lever and Kano fell, his face slamming into the grass.
Kano's legs thrashed around, kicking Zeb's out from under him. Zeb's back hit the ground, not too painfully, but in his peripheral vision he saw Kano already rolling over to grab at him. Zeb managed an awkward backwards somersault, getting his body out of the way of Kano's onrushing mass, and rolled up to his feet; though off-balance, he managed another snapkick, and this one caught Kano in the side of the face, rocking his head.
Zeb backed away. It went against his grain not to press an advantage, but he needed a moment to think. Kano was faster than he looked, as Harris had said, and at least as impervious to pain as Zeb was.
He became aware, momentarily, of the crowd noise. It had increased. There were still boos. Some in the crowd were shouting "Kano, Kano, Kano." Others, a smaller group, were shouting "Svart, Svart, Svart." Zeb suppressed a feeling of irritation.
Kano got to his feet, though Zeb was gratified to see that he was favoring his right leg. The blow to the knee had hurt him more than he had initially let on. That made his knee a vulnerable point. Kano advanced again, expressionless.
Zeb continued backing and allowed an expression of uncertainty to cross his face. Kano picked up speed. Zeb kept his attention on Kano's injured leg and, as the big man came almost within grabbing range, droppeda controlled drop to his back, arms splayed for better stabilityand drew up his own leg, chambering it. Kano adjusted, diving at him, but as his right leg planted for his final step, Zeb kicked with all his force at the joint. He felt the blow connect.
Then Kano landed on him. All the breath left Zeb's body. It felt as though his lungs left, too. But he forced himself to shoveKano's armpit was directly above his face and Zeb got his hand in it, using it for purchase, and heaved. Kano rolled a little from the effort, not trying to hold on to him. Zeb wriggled free and felt a moment of elation. If Kano had not been hurt, he would have pinned Zeb.
Zeb got to his feet, trying, unsuccessfully, to suck in a breath. Kano was still lying there, curling around his leg, and Zeb could see that the leg was wrongbent partly backwards as though the joint were reversed and slightly flexed.
Zeb managed to drag in a breath. It was not deep and not without pain, but it gave him the strength to move. He dropped to his knees beside Kano's legs and grabbed the foot of the injured leg, but didn't twist it. "Save yourself some pain, man."
Kano opened his eyes. His face was covered in sweat and finally was showing emotion, the pain of his injury too great for him to conceal, but he mastered himself, his features smoothing until only by the tightness of his features and pain in his eyes could his distress be discerned. He stared at Zeb a long moment, allowed himself an expression of dissatisfaction, and reached out to slap the ground three times.
Zeb stood. The crowd noise came to him again. A portion of the audience was cheering, "SvartSvartSvart" and "Novimagos! Novimagos!" He raised a hand, working the crowd a little, then shook the referee's hand when the man offered it to him.
Moments later, he sat on the sidelines with Harris. Harris worked on his back, massaging where it was stiffening from his impacts with the ground. "Pretty good, Zeb."
"Thanks." Zeb watched as two new competitors took the field, both of them tall, fair-haired men. "I thought German for `black' was `schwarz,' not `svart.' "
"It is. `Svart' isn't Burian. It's from the Scandinavian languages and it's used all over western Europe to mean `dusky.' They were basically saying, `Go, dusky.' "
"They could at least have used my name."
"Yeah. Well, I was chanting your name, but the rest of the crowd shouted me down. Maybe tomorrow they'll know who you are."
"Count on it."
"Or you could change your name to `Svart.' First and last names. `Svart Svart.' That way they'd always get it right."
Zeb ignored him.
"Anyway," Harris said, "we need to watch the rest of the All-Out matches, get some idea of what we can expect from your likely opponents, and then head over to the Sword venue."
"Sword?" Zeb shook his head. "No, I'm going to work with Noriko before her first match."
"You'll have time to do that. But first we go to watch the Sword competition for a while. This morning, I did a little makeup magic. We're going to debut our Teleri Obeldon there."
"Ah."
The Sword competition was scheduled for a new gymnasium on the Sonneheim Games grounds. When Zeb, Harris, Gaby, and Noriko arrived, the stands were already almost filled. The sidelines were theoretically restricted to athletes and other participants, which would have excluded Gaby, but no one challenged her when she stayed with the others; things here seemed relatively informal.
Zeb craned his neck to look back up into the stands. "Place is packed," he said. "There are more waiting to get in. There's a film crew here, for God's sake. Just amazing."
"Why is that amazing?" Noriko asked.
"It's a grimworld thing," Harris said. "Where we're from, sword competition is called fencing, and it just doesn't get a lot of respect or news coverage, even in the Olympic Games, which is our biggest competition."
"What does, then?" she asked.
Zeb and Harris looked at one another.
"Well, track and field," Zeb said.
"Women's gymnastics," Harris said. "Which is actually teen and preteen girls' gymnastics, come to think about it."
"And anything where our country is favored to win the gold," Gaby said. "Regardless of whether the public has any interest in the sport the rest of the time."
Harris nodded. "Nicely, cynically put, honey. Hey, there's Ruadan."
On the opposite side of the gymnasium, beyond the numberless lanes marked off by tape on the wooden floor, Ruadan was indeed standing. He wore the same swordsman's outfit the other competitors woreneck to toe leathers in a light color, his being a pale yellow. He held an object that looked like a domino mask made of metal; the eye slits were narrow. He was only recognizable by his size, unusually large for competitors in this sport, and his bright red hair.
"Looks like the Sword part of the Officer competition is today," Zeb said. "Hey. Is that a Sonnenkrieger officer he's talking to?"
It was. Ruadan's partner in conversation was dressed in the sharp black uniform of Weseria's elite shock troops. The distance was too great for Zeb to make out the man's rank.
Harris offered up a grimace. "One more thing to check into. I'll add it to the list. Ah, there we go. Doc and Swana. Ish is a few rows behind them."
Zeb followed Harris's gaze. He didn't spot Doc until he found Ixyail, who was decked out once more in her safari-style outfit. Three rows below her, Doc, his complexion now ruddy, his hair black and short, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, was in a stylish green suit. Beside him, Teleri sat stiffly, watching the action on the gymnasium floor.
It was Swana, of course, but at this distance she was a perfect match for Teleri. Swana's hair had been cut to Teleri's style, its color adjusted to Teleri's; Swana wore glasses and green clothes nearly identical to those Teleri had worn at the museum. "Harris, you did a great job on her."
"Didn't I? Aren't I just magnificent?"
"In spite of your usual incompetence, I mean." Out of the corner of his eye, Zeb saw Harris grin at the jibe.
There was a pop from a loudspeaker, sudden enough to make many people in the crowd jump, and an announcer began speaking in Burian. He went on at length. Crowd noise rose, obscuring it, as the audience, obviously well-acquainted with the facts about the day's events, spoke more loudly to be heard over the announcer's voice.
After a pause, a new voice came over the system and began speaking in Cretanis. From what Zeb could gather over the crowd noise, this had to be a translation of the last announcer's words; this man welcomed visitors to early-round events in the Sword competition and the entirety of the Sword portion of the Officer competition. One blooding of a sword arm meant the competitor had to switch to his off hand or yield; two bloodings of torso, neck or head meant defeat.
"Wait a second," Zeb said. "Blooding? They're fighting with sharp blades?"
Noriko nodded. "Of course. You can often tell a swordsman. By the scars. Little ones, the width of a finger, means he fights with rapier. Broader ones means he fights with saber. Ruadan doesn't have any on his face, which says a lot for his ability to protect his upper body."
"Or to afford healing devisement to get rid of scars completely," Harris said.
"Great," Zeb said. "Harris, you said All-Out was the worst of the sports."
Harris shrugged. "More people die in All-Out. With Sword, there's a code of behavior, an assumption that all competitors are noble of spirit if not of birth. There's nothing like that with All-Out, where the competitors are supposed to be, well, more earthy."
"Earthy. What do you mean, like trailer trash?"
" `Of the people,' Zeb." Harris grinned. "You know, like Hercules. A great hero, but also a common guy. Everybody likes him."
Zeb shook his head and returned his attention to Doc and Swana. "So Ish is supposed to be guarding them?"
"No, she's not supposed to interact with them in any way." Harris began scanning the crowd in Doc's vicinity. "She's just hovering because, well, it's Doc. No, Rudi is their guard. There he is. Two rows up from Doc and three to the left."
Zeb spotted him easily enough, though he didn't initially recognize him. Rudi was in a rumpled burnt orange suit; his features were aged, his hair gray, and he wore a thick beard and mustache the same color. He actually resembled Albin more than he resembled himself. "I bet he hates that outfit."
"Oh, he does. He likes to be stylish, at least in what Neckerdam gangsters call style. If we don't give him someone to shoot soon, he's probably going to kill me instead."
Soon enough, the Sword bouts got under way. They were, Zeb found, far more structured than All-Out. The crowd was allowed to cheer as the athletes were brought out to the lanes, but not once the fighting began. Four bouts ran at any given time, but the athletes who'd completed their bouts did not leave the field until the last of the four bouts was settled. Only then did all eight athletes receive the farewell cheers of the crowd.
Bouts didn't generally last long, either. Once the referee set the athletes into motion, action was generally not halted until a winner was declared, as the swordsmen themselves would step back to allow their opponents to switch their blades to their unhurt arms. And it generally did not take long for one swordsman in each pairing to pick up two injuries to his torso.
Women also fought, Zeb saw, though they did seem to have their own division and fought only against one another.
But he took in all these facts with only a portion of his attention; mostly, he was focussed on Doc and Swana in the stands, or, rather, on the people in the stands and aisles around them.
Not that any activity seemed to center around them. Zeb saw people pass in front of Doc and Swana at various times, moving to and from their assigned seating, and noticed one or two men attempt to strike up conversations with her. But she just smiledZeb saw that her expression looked a bit nervous, and wondered whether that was deliberate or accidental on her partand shook her head to disengage from conversation. Doc glowered at such times, and the young men in question were comparatively quick to move about their business.
"Look, Casnar's up next," Gaby said.
Zeb turned his attention to the gymnasium floor. Prince Casnar, in the standard swordsman's suit but with a design, an eagle atop a mound of stones, on his back, was indeed taking up position at one end of a lane. A similarly-clad opponent, this one wearing an armband with three limbless trees in gold against a red background, faced him.
The two swordsmen saluted, holding their blades point upright before their faces and then extending them toward the sky, then dropped into fighting poses. Both men were right-handed, and their postures were right-side forward, right elbows tucked in close, left arms extended behind them for balance.
The opponent moved forward in a series of cautious half steps and offered an exploratory thrust, angling in high over the bell that protected Casnar's hand and arcing down to stab at his forearm, so fluid that Zeb was sure he saw the blade bend during its motion, but Casnar flicked his hand up, his blade and his bell collaborating to sweep the incoming blade out of line; his bell rang from the impact as he thrust, and suddenly his opponent was backing away, acknowledging by pointing, the small spot of redness now welling through his protective leathers. Casnar smiled.
"That's a surprise," Harris said.
"What, that Casnar acts like a party boy but knows how to stab people?"
"No. What Ruadan's doing."
Zeb turned his attention that way. Ruadan was still standing beside his Sonnenkrieger acquaintance, and was now pointing up into the stands. He kept glancing at the officer and speaking to him, as if asking questions, then looking back at the stands. Zeb followed Ruadan's gaze.
Zeb might have been wrong, but Ruadan looked as though he were pointing in the general vicinity of Doc and Swana. "This gets better and better," he said.
The crowd made a slight appreciative noise, indicating that one of the four matches below had ended. Zeb saw Casnar's opponent, now decorated by two bloody spots on his chest, walking forward, holding his sword by the blade so that the hilt and bell were extended forward. Casnar, at ease, tapped the hilt with his hand, and then the two men shook hands and stood together, watching the other bouts.
Not long after, Ruadan took leave of the officer he'd been speaking to in order to fight his first match. Unlike Casnar, who used rapier, Ruadan was announced as a sabreur. His first opponent was a swordsman of the kingdom of Loria, and the two fought in a style that was all edgeswords swung fast, directly at face and body and arm, blocked by the opponent's blade.
It looked to Zeb's inexperienced eye like the sort of swashbuckling he'd often seen in old movies on TV. The difference was that those actors had always moved at a pace that seemed sedate, while these swordsmen's attacks and defenses were fast, often mere streaks and blurs to the unaided eye. Nor did these athletes seem to be swinging at empty air or waiting for their opponent to be in the exact place needed to keep them perfectly safe.
Ruadan was blooded first, a slash that grazed his eye mask with a shriek of metal on metal and left a thin red line on his browa line that swiftly broadened and poured blood across Ruadan's cheek.
The referee quickly halted the bout. An assistant put a towel across Ruadan's shoulders and chest while another pinched the edges of the injury together and applied quick stitches without anaesthetic. Zeb saw Ruadan wince once, but the man offered no other reaction.
"By the rules of the sport," Noriko said, "they are not concerned with his blood loss. But if too much blood gets on his clothes, it becomes hard to register other injuries."
"Oh." Zeb shook his head. "In Sword of Wo, you do compete with wooden swords, right?"
"Yes." She offered a slight smile. "There, you can only break bones."
"Good. I'm relieved."
The referee blotted the wound, nodded to indicate that the bleeding was sufficiently slowed, and returned to his starting point at the center of the lane. The assistant whisked the bloody towel away and Ruadan took his starting pose. A moment later, the fight was on again. The other three bouts on the floor had ended while the stitches were being applied, so Ruadan's was the only one still going.
On the swordsmen's next approach, the two managed to lock blades near the hilts. As they disengaged, Ruadan brought his blade up and away in a draw-cut, slicing through two layers of leather, his opponent's glove cuff and sleeve. The opponent backed away, glanced at the cut, then pointed at it to acknowledge it as an injury. He transferred his saber to his left hand and action resumed. Now, though, he was at a decided disadvantage, and during the next two passes Ruadan was able to draw blood both times, once in a slash that took his opponent on the shoulder, once in another draw-cut disengagement that brought his blade along his opponent's rib cage.
The crowd applauded and the four lanes' worth of competitors quit the floor.
Ruadan returned to the sidelines. A man in baggy pants and top in Novimagos blue and gold was there to await him and tend his injuries, but the Sonnenkrieger officer was gone.
"Where's that son of a krieger?" Zeb asked.
"He left," Gaby said.
Zeb looked around. "Where's Harris?"
"Following that son of a krieger."
"Great." Zeb looked at Noriko. "I hate to miss what Harris is up to, but it's probably time to get you set up for your first round."
She nodded, her face giving nothing away, but reluctance obvious in the stiffness of her motion.
The arrangements for the Sword of Wo event were much like that of the Sword competition, except that the event was set up in a large exercise room in a school building several blocks from the coliseum grounds. The crowd, seated in low-backed wooden chairs doubtless scrounged from other rooms in the school, was much smaller than that of the other event. Zeb counted maybe fifty of them. All appeared to be Burian lights and darks, many of them well-dressed and sophisticated of manner, quite a few of them elderly. Zeb got the impression from looking at them that he was seeing a group gathered for a university lecture, and realized that most probably weren't sports fansthey were students and academicians curious about the culture and people of Wo.
Which suggestedZeb took a closer look around, and was not surprised to see Colonel Förster in the audience. The man was in street clothes, but as radiantly blond as ever. Though he was seated in the most tightly-packed section of the audience, he was alone, not exchanging words with other spectators. Looking around, he spotted Zeb looking at him, but his gaze slid off Zeb as though he hadn't seen him.
None of the Sidhe Foundation members was here. Some were working on other assignments, of course. As for the restNoriko had said she didn't want an audience. Zeb hadn't had enough time to argue with her about that. Support from the audience, even just a portion of the audience, could make a difference to a competitordid she just want to cede that advantage to her opponent? Did she want to lose?
"Noriko-chan!" Prince Hayato approached his cousin, hand outstretched, a smile of satisfaction on his face. He was dressed in the skirtlike pants and cumbersome jacket Zeb associated with kendo, though his outfit was painfully bright, the pants so white they almost glowed, the jacket in a bright red with the variant swastika of Wo reversed on the chest in white. "I am so pleased you have come. I feared you would regret your offer of the other night and choose not to compete."
She took his hand. "No, I am here."
Hayato waited a moment as if expecting her to elaborate. "Well. We have assembled you a full set of equipment. With Tanyu's injury, but the addition of you and a Shangan competitor named Chang Tian-yun, the one the Cretanis press calls Chang O'Shang, we have a field of seven. The referees have decided that I, as ranking noble, will have the bye this round." He gave her a very Western shrug. "Privileges of rank, I suppose. But it means the earliest I might face you is next round."
"Yes," she said.
Hayato again paused to allow her time to continue, but she did not. He turned to Zeb. "Though we could have a full field of eight if you chose to compete."
Zeb shook his head. "I barely know which end of a sword to hold. Thanks for the offer, though. No, I'm here for Noriko."
"Of course." It was impossible to tell from Hayato's tone which statement he was agreeing withZeb's support of Noriko or Zeb's incompetence with a blade. The prince gestured toward dark doors on the wall opposite the audience. "That is the changing room. You are the last to arrive, Noriko, so you will have privacythough I imagine that your boy will ensure it. Your equipment is in the locker furthest left."
Zeb kept his face impassive. In his mind, though, he imagined throwing several hard blows and kicks into Hayato's midsection, just enough to rearrange his internal organs a bit.
"Thank you," Noriko said, but did not move.
Hayato offered her a minimal smile, then turned to walk toward the trio of judges standing in the center of the room.
" `Your boy.' " Zeb shook his head and willed his souring stomach to settle down. "Man, he does know which knife to twist. Would it upset you if I tore his head off and you didn't get to fight him?"
She gave him a little smile. "Remain focussed," she said.
"Like you, huh? That was actually pretty spectacular, Noriko. You fought your first round with him and sent him into retreat. In less than ten words, yet."
She walked with him to the door to the changing room. "I have been thinking about him. He is a master at making people feel bad in conversation. Then they do what he wishes and he relents so they feel better. But all his ploys, I realized, are ripostes. If you do not take the first strike, if you do not respond to his feints, he has nothing to work with."
"Good work. Is his swordplay the same way?"
"Unfortunately, no." She shrugged, suggesting that this was just the way things were, and went into the equipment room.
Zeb pulled the door shut behind her and turned to wait. To keep the world full of her opponents at bay.
The drawing for opponents was performed much as it had been with the All-Out, except that names were handwritten on paper rather than impressed on porcelain chits. Noriko, whose borrowed armor was covered by what looked like a hastily-sewn surcoat in the blue and gold of Novimagos, drew the name of Ikina Toki. "I don't know him," she told Zeb.
They looked over the field of competitors, and there was only one whom Noriko did not recognize, a big Oriental man, unusually heavy among this crowd of lithe sword competitors; he also appeared to be ten or more years older than the next-oldest athlete present. "Hey, I know that guy," Zeb said. "Tanuki Kano's trainer. Terrible taste in suits."
"If he trains Kano, then he will be a former sumo competitor," Noriko said. "Possibly trained in the sword at little more than a hobby level. But much stronger than I."
"And probably faster than he looks."
"You have finally learned that, have you?"
Zeb glanced at her, surprised. She was smiling at him, her expression making it clear that she was teasing.
He grinned back. "Remain focussed."
In the first bout, two members of Hayato's retinue, both in dark armor with white-swastika-on-red armbands, were the competitors. When the Burian judge lifted his badge of officehere, a live-steel saber identical to the ones being used at the Sword competitionthe men came together like cars colliding head-on. They shouted, they locked wooden blades and pushed, they jockeyed for position, they swung and blocked with their blades so fast that Zeb sometimes could not readily follow the motion.
Zeb decided that, at least superficially, the sport resembled the few kendo matches he'd seen on the grim world. The competitors fought in two-handed style, swords held before them, hands well spaced across the long hilts to give them maximum leverage. The style was all offenseno attacks ever just missed, they were intercepted by the opponent's blade.
In moments, the first bout was done, the taller of the two men catching the other's blade across his rigid mask. All action stopped instantly and the loser bowed. Then the referee came forward to interpose his sword between them. The two went on guard again.
"How many do they go to?" Zeb asked.
"Two kills," Noriko said.
Moments later, the winner of the first kill struck his opponent again. The crowd offered applause. Zeb and Noriko joined in. The athletes quit the floor.
"Noriko Nomura, Novimagos," the referee said. "Ikina Toki, Wo."
Noriko picked up her mask from the floor at her feet and put it on. She turned her back so Zeb could do the lacings there. Then he handed her the bokken, the wooden sword she'd been assigned. "Go get him, tiger."
She cocked her head. "Tiger?"
"It's an expression where I'm from."
"Ah. Be sure to use the same expression on Ish sometime." She offered him a little bow and took the floor. Ikina was already waiting on the far side of the referee.
Hayato drifted over to stand beside Zeb. "I don't think I've ever seen such a size mismatch in Sword of Wo," he said. "I expect Ikina will slaughter her."
"Because she's a woman?"
Hayato shook his head. "Because of the size. One presumes he can compete at some proficient level, else he'd not be here. His size and strength will be terribly difficult to overcome. In addition, she is, unfortunately, a trifle weak. Of spirit, I mean."
"She'll win."
"Because she's your friend?"
Zeb shook his head. He concentrated his attention on the competitors, who were receiving instructions from the referee. Both nodded and took a step back. The referee extended his saber between them. "Because she's a winner."
"Ah."
The referee raised his blade.
Ikina charged Noriko and snapped a blow at her, the blade of the wooden sword blurring with the speed of the attack. Noriko retreated and took the blow on her own blade, her backward motion robbing the blow of some of its force. Ikina continued his forward progress, shoving to hurl her back, and snapped another blow as their blades came clear. But she was raising her blade as he was drawing his back for the blow, and caught the top of his blade toward her hilt. She levered his bladepoint out of the way and brought her own edge across his mask. The sharp crack of the blow sounded like a small-caliber pistol shot.
Ikina bowed.
"I see what you mean," Hayato said. "She finds a way to win."
Zeb nodded. He estimated that the time from start to kill was about three seconds.
The competitors returned to the center of the floor and the referee set them into motion again. Ikina began with the same tacticthe correct tactic, Zeb estimated, despite the first lossbut on his first blow, his bokken broke across Noriko's. The blade clattered across the floor toward Hayato; the prince put out a foot and trapped it like a soccer player stopping a ball. Action stopped while a referee brought Ikina another blade, then resumed.
This kill was almost a replay of the last. Ikina used his greater mass and strength to his advantage, driving Noriko before him, going in for the kill once he'd put her off balance, but he didn't realize in time that she was never sufficiently off balance for her defenses to lower completely. The second time he shoved her back, she managed to keep her blade in line, and position his out of line; she twisted so that her hilt was over her head, her blade point out ahead of her and under his arm, and she yanked, a draw-cut that would have cut through his armpit to the bone had the blade been real.
He stopped and bowed. She returned the bow, offered one to the judge and another to the prince, then returned to Zeb's side. He began unlacing her mask.
"I expected your skills to have diminished," Hayato said. "And you have lost a little fluidity. Yet I think you are better than before."
She drew the mask off. She was perspiring but smiling. "I hope to have a chance to see you fight before we meet. That you not have the advantage of me."
The next fight was between a member of Hayato's retinue and the man nicknamed Chang O'Shang. Chang was tall for a fairworlder, especially for an oriental fairworlder, almost as tall as Zeb. Only his neck, well-muscled, and his head were bare; his armor was dark and not adorned by any national symbol or colors. His hair was long and braided, though not in the Chinese queue Zeb knew from old photographs and movies.
The man of Wo was quick, possibly as quick as Noriko, but Chang was his equal there and his superior in strength and reach. The swordsman of Wo actually won the first kill, but Chang came back in the second and third bouts with harder, faster attacks that battered his opponent's defenses down and left him vulnerable to shots to head and shoulder.
"No matter who you draw tomorrow," Zeb said, "it's going to be interesting."