Lycus spat. «I have heard all this before, Blade. It is the propaganda your spies whisper among our troops, and that your beggars cry from the beaches and hill tops, but you waste your time. It will not avail you. Hectoris will not fight you.»

Blade, with a sureness he was far from feeling, spoke again. «I think he will. No man can command who will not face the same dangers he — asks his troops to face. He would be a fool to try and I do not think your leader is a fool. In the end he will have to face me-I march to the beaches now and I will cry out for all to hear that Hectoris is a coward and no than at all unless he faces me. I will offer him such a bargain in combat that he cannot afford to refuse it, for if he does he will lose q credit with his army and his officers will be plotting agamst him before a week has passed.»

Lycus half drew his sword. His laugh seemed forced and for once he did not look Blade in the eye. «You will not,» said he. «For you will never reach the beaches. I am sent for that purpose-in the event that you are an unreasonable man and will not take terms. As I begin to see you will not.19

Blade ignored the half-drawn sword and leaned toward the officer. The seed must be planted, whether it burgeon or not.

«Let us suppose,» said Blade, «that Hectoris did meet me in fair fight and I killed him. I have no ambitions here in Patmos, nor in Thyrne nor in Samosta. You will soon see the last of me. Now, in such case, who would come to the throne and the power of Hectoris?»

The eyes of Lycus shifted away. «There would be a council of high officers. A new leader would be chosen. There are many who would aspire-«

He broke off and scowled at Blade. «It is said that you are a demon and I believe it Well-spoken. But you will have no treason out of me. Enough of this twaddle-will you disband your men and come with me in peace?»

Blade shook his head. «You know the answer to that, Lycus. I will go to Hectoris in my own way and on my own terms.»

The man pulled his horse about and scowled back over his shoulder. «We will see as to that. I will send a part of you to Hectoris, though the mouth will not be so glib when he sees it. Make ready, Blade, for I attack.»

Blade sent the black galloping back into the square. He gave orders to disperse his stingers and grouped his mounted officers around him. Cheers went up from the ranks of the Guard as they saw there was going to be a fight.

The Samostan trumpets began to ring clear in the dank misty air. The sky was fast curdling into black porridge and the wind was rising. This must be short and sharp, Blade told himself. He must make the beaches before the storm struck in full fury or all his planning was for nothing.

The cavalry of Lycus wheeled and trooped by left and right flank and came into a line of charge. Blade was surprised. He did not deem the man a fool, and yet a frontal attack in these circumstances was a fool's trick. Either Lycus was angered and had lost his judgment, or he was so arrogant that he trusted his horsemen to break the square by sheer fury and weight of numbers.

Blade gave orders that unleashed his slingers and bowmen, the latter firing over the two ranks in front of them.

«Aim' at the horses,» Blade commanded. «The horses first. When they are afoot we can handle them easily enough.»

He called his mounted officers to form around him. «We are the reserve,» he told them with a wry smile. «All of it. If they break the square we must be quick to plug the hole and beat them back.» He glanced at Edyrn. «If they break through in another place you will take half the men and see to it.».

Edyrn nodded understanding. There was time for no more. The first wave of cavalry smashed into the square with a shock and din that drowned even a man's thoughts.

Each of the pikemen in the first rank, at Blade's orders, had dug a slanting hole in the earth and couched his pike in it. The pikes, twelve feet long and cruelly pointed, thrust outward in a savage picket. Into this came the galloping cavalry of Lycus.

Blade, standing high in his stirrups for a better view, watched the carnage with bitter satisfaction. The slingers and bowmen wrought havoc on the charge and now concentrated on the Samostans who had been dismounted. The war horses, fierce and obedient, ran their bellies onto the pikes and were gutted or went down with broken legs. More came on behind, only to pile up on those dying before them. The charge had broken.

Blade sought for the blue plumes of Lycus in the melee and found him only just in time. The Samostan officer, his mount dying on a pike, leaped agilely to earth and called a group of other dismounted soldiers about him. With his sword he beckoned a solid contingent of his horsemen into a mass attack on a small segment of the square. They came on in a last effort, some twenty horse against two files of pikemen and javelin throwers and bowmen. Ten went down in the effort. Ten broke through, hewing a narrow lane through the square, and Lycus led his impromptu infantry in behind them. These Samostans were all tough and well-disciplined veterans and they knew what to do. They wheeled and faced right and left, fencing off a corridor through the square. A sub-officer on the field began to organize what cavalry was left, and those wandering afoot, and direct them into the channel. Blade watched all this with calm.

The Guard.was now hampered by their numbers and the close quarters. Blade called a halt to sling and bow fire, lest they slay each other, and sent Edym galloping to close the gap on the outer side of the square and contain the Samostan forces beyond it. He spurred to meet Lycus who, with some thirty men behind him, was determinedly hacking his way into the square and certain death. A death that Blade, at the moment, had no intention of giving him.

As Lycus and his little band broke through the square the mounted officers around Blade watched him and waited for his command to ride the Samostans down and slash their to bits. Blade gave no such order. He waited.

After a moment he held up a hand and bellowed a command that all the Guard cease to fight. Bewildered, the sweating and bloody men did so. And stared at Blade.

Lycus also, his sword dripping, his harness battered and slashed and his plumes clipped by a javelin, rested and stared at Blade in amazement

«What now, man? You have had the best of it. I was wrong and did not think your Guard to fight so well. Why do you hold off? I have lost and am dishonored and have nothing left but death. So have on with it. I will never surrender.»

Blade noted that the square had closed, healing the wound, and the remaining Samostans were in full retreat. Edyrn came back and Blade gave him new orders. «These men are prisoners until I say otherwise. No 'man is to fire or attack them. See that all understand this.»

Blade dismounted and walked toward Lycus, where that officer stood with the group of soldiers who had followed him into the square. Blade held up a hand for parley. Lycus, bleeding from a long cut on his cheek, showed his teeth in contempt.

«You want to talk, Blade, when you have us in such a trapl I was wrong-you are no demon. You are an idiot. The first rule of war-«

Blade held up a hand for silence. He ignored Lycus and spoke to the Samostan soldiers clustered around him.

«I am.. Richard Blade. Most of you have heard of my challenge to your leader, Hectoris, but for those who have not I will repeat it now. Listen carefully, and remember, for I intend to free you, with your honor and your weapons, and send you back to Hectoris that you may remind him of these words. Here is my challenge:

«I will light Hectoris on the beach. Man to man, in single combat. I will use shield and sword, nothing more. As for Hectoris, he may be horsed and use any weapons he likes-sword, lance, mace, bow and arrow, I care not. I give him these great odds because I deem him no true warrior and know I can defeat him.»