“I am ready,” she said to Dorn, and stepped into the center of the circle under the overhead track lights. Peripherally, she was aware of Ian Murchison taking a stand with his medical bag, not far away. “Are you?”

“I am,” Dorn said, and stepped into the circle. “For the honor of the Wolves, and to wipe out Grievance, let us see who is fit to command.”

“I already know that,” Anastasia said, allowing herself to drift into his striking range. She hoped to goad him into striking first. If he did, and if she could block or dodge the blow, her counterstrike could be quick, and the Trial would be over before it had well begun.

But this is Dorn, Anastasia thought, going over her opponent’s strengths and weaknesses in her mind even as she let her body with its training and reflexes take over the first stages of the combat. A good fighter, but not too bright. And not ambitious—not on this level of ambition, at least.

Dorn struck at her right flank with a reaping kick. She blocked, and found herself blocking nothing but air. He was back in guard, balanced.

What Dorn is, she thought, is the best hand-to-hand man of all the Star Colonels. Which means he was put up to this Trial by—

Not a kick this time, but spear-hand blows, aimed at her throat. Anastasia leaned back out of range, at the same time kicking up so the reinforced point of her practice shoe grazed one of his elbows.

The impact was not hard enough to hurt him. Instead, he grabbed her ankle with both hands, raised it, and twisted, throwing her down on her back. The landing would have been hard enough to stun had she not been ready for the move. She slapped the ground to absorb energy and rolled back to her feet, with a flurry of knife-hand blows aimed at Dorn’s jaw and ribs.

Dorn blocked them easily, and laughed.

Someone, Anastasia thought, was pulling his leash. Someone had offered him backing in return for—

“Whoever put you up to this is planning to kill you as soon as you’ve killed me,” she said, low enough that only Dorn could hear it. “He did not tell you his entire plan.”

She saw Dorn’s face grow a trifle stonier. That shot had come close to a bull’s-eye. She reached with her left hand, grasping his left wrist, and used the leverage to pivot herself around. But Dorn was fast. He had his right hand on top of her left hand, squeezing it to his arm and pivoting, pulling her around. An elbow strike to her midriff made her gasp. Before he could strike again, she pushed up against him, and dropped her head under his arm, so that he had the choice of letting go or suffering a broken elbow.

He let go, with a kick to the back of her right calf that threatened to cramp the muscle. He was bigger than she was, and stronger. And just as well trained.

“So who was it?” she asked. “Tell me their names and I will go lightly on you.”

Dorn laughed again. “Not likely.”

“Your decision.”

Anastasia grasped the ends of her halter-scarf and jerked loose the knot. Pulling the scarf away from her body, she snapped the square of red fabric along its diagonal to make three feet of silken rope extending from her right hand to her left. She gathered up the loop of silk into her right hand.

The move left her naked to the waist. The sight of a woman’s bare breasts wasn’t likely to distract her opponent—body shyness and prurience were not Clan vices. Lack of imagination and rigid adherence to tradition, on the other hand… Anastasia smiled. Clan Warriors might debate for hours whether or not a discarded article of clothing counted as a weapon for the purpose of an unaugmented fight, but it would never occur to most of them that anyone might test out the idea in practice.

Dorn, at least, appeared to have recovered from whatever surprise he might have felt. He stepped forward, bent, and grasped Anastasia by her haunch bones while her hands were occupied and her feet too close together. She bent forward and attempted a head-strike against his skull—another distraction, and an effective one this time, to keep him from noticing that her hands were busy working a slipknot into one end of the silk.

She dropped the noose around his neck and dived over his shoulder, skidding to the deck. Before he could turn, she planted one foot firmly in the small of his back and pulled on the end of her makeshift rope. Dorn grabbed and clawed at the silk band tightening down against his throat, but to no avail.

The actual time it took for Anastasia’s adversary to lose consciousness was three minutes; it felt to her like three years. At last Dorn stiffened, quit struggling, and fell—first to his knees, then backwards as she maintained a steady pressure on the noose around his neck.

He was down. He was blue. Anastasia did not stop to check whether he was still capable of breathing, nor did she bother to cover her upper body. Instead, she turned to the rest of the Star Colonels where they stood to form the combat circle. She stalked forward and prowled around the inside perimeter of the circle, looking each man in the face before moving on to the next, her teeth bared in a fighting snarl.

“I smell corruption in this,” she said. “I have a Grievance against those who tempt good officers into ill-advised combats that lead to their deaths. Whoever is responsible—step forward and face me now. It is possible, after all, that for the price of a few minutes’ hard work you can gain everything that you wanted, without having to dispose of poor Dorn afterward. Fight me.”

“If that is the way it has to be—”

The speaker was Star Colonel Marks. He stepped forward, and the other Star Colonels closed ranks behind him to mend the gap. Anastasia moved to her left, circling, looking for an opening. Star Colonel Marks was not the best fighter present. He relied on his wits and his tongue to get results. Still, he was a Wolf Clansman, which meant that standing next to anyone else in the galaxy he would be the man to put your money on.

“Since you brought a weapon into this circle,” Marks said, “I claim the right to do the same.” He reached inside his uniform tunic and brought out a knife.

Anastasia heard the sound of muffled exclamations and indrawn breaths from the ring of watchers. Turning a silken halter into a garrote, as she had done, was a titillating dance on the edge of what was permitted. Drawing steel, on the other hand, was a gross offense against custom.

Worse, Anastasia knew that there was no sure defense against someone with a knife. If a man with a knife could get within three meters of his target, not even a slug-pistol made for a foolproof defense. She turned to present her left side, her weaker side, toward the Star Colonel. If she had to take a hit, she decided, she would let her left arm take it. She could afford that much, if it allowed her to make a telling stroke in return.

The stroke would have to be telling. She might not have a second chance.

The Star Colonel tossed his blade from his right hand to his left. “Are you no longer ready to play?” he asked. “Come on, where is the Kerensky courage?”

He claimed before witnesses to doubt her courage—and she half naked, and now bare-handed. She knocked her mental estimation of Marks a notch further down. She’d killed better men than he was—one of them was lying on the deck behind him right now.

Colonel Marks had the blade in his left hand. He pivoted right and swung the blade downward at the same moment, so that it protruded from the little-finger side of his fist, laying it back against his forearm. He reached for Anastasia, taking her left wrist in his right hand, pulling her down and toward him.

She twisted her wrist outward, breaking the grip. At the same moment, she kicked with her left foot, aiming for a kneecap.

Marks whirled away from the kick, slashing with the knife at the same moment. Anastasia blocked down and out with her right forearm. Too late, too slow. The tip of the knife slashed a line of burning pain across her exposed midriff.