These words seemed to push the warrior beyond simply standing and goggling at Blade. His jaw closed with a snap and his hands dropped to his sword hilts and closed around them. «You are not of Melnon?»

«What is Melnon?» asked Blade.

The warrior looked as though Blade had just asked, «What is the sun?» or, «What is rain?»

«Melnon is the world,» he said sharply. «Are you of the world or are you not?»

«I have come to the world that is Melnon, from England. I have come in peace.»

«You say that you come from the Beyond?» The warrior gestured with one hand, outward beyond the circle of towers.

«If all outside the towers of Melnon is the Beyond, then yes, I do come from the Beyond.» Blade wasn't sure whether being from the «Beyond» would get him treated as a monster or as a god. So he was careful to qualify his statements.

Apparently such subtleties were useless, with this warrior at least. «You cannot be from the Beyond. For it is not of the world, and there are no people except in the world. You are of the Low People of one of the other towers. Or perhaps» — the warrior hesitated as if he were about to use obscene language-«one of the other towers has foresworn the War Wisdom of Melnon. They are sending men among the Waste Land at the foot of the Tower of the Serpent, to catch and kill the First on the Ground.» Kir-Noz drew both swords and flourished them so that they whistled in the air. «The tower that forgot the War Wisdom of Melnon will pay in time. But you shall pay at once!» Without any further words the man sprang toward Blade.

Blade was not caught by surprise. The moment the swords flashed clear, he had stepped back two paces and dropped into a fighting stance. While Kir-Noz was hurling his threat, Blade was surveying the ground around his own feet, looking for any handy-sized loose stones. There didn't seem to be any. So as Kir-Noz charged him, Blade's leg muscles knotted, and he sailed five feet to the right in a single leap. Kir-Noz was moving too fast to stop. He charged straight through the spot where Blade had been standing. His swords carved the empty air with a fury that would have been frightening if it hadn't been so useless. He pulled himself to a stop, turned, and saw Blade standing off to one side.

Kir-Noz charged again. Blade leaped aside again. Kir-Noz kept on going again. By the time they had gone through the sequence a third time, Blade was beginning to wonder what kind of warrior he was dealing with. He wasn't sure whether Kir-Noz was feeble-minded, half-blind, or simply so badly trained that he had never learned to keep an eye on his opponent. Blade's opinion of the competence of the warriors in this Dimension took a sharp downturn.

Kir-Noz's ineptness would be helpful to Blade. He definitely did not want to kill the warrior. But if Kir-Noz had been at all competent, it would have been difficult for an unarmed man to get inside those two sharp and fast-moving swords. As it was, Blade had plenty of time to consider various tricks. In the meantime, he kept leaping aside from Kir-Noz's bull-like rushes. Many years of unarmed combat training had polished his reflexes and left his leg muscles like steel springs, so he had no worries about being able to go on avoiding Kir-Noz. But he didn't want to simply go on avoiding the warrior, any more than he wanted to kill him.

Little by little, Blade led Kir-Noz through the grass, over the rocks, away from the base of the Tower of the Serpent. He wanted the other men on the balcony high above to see what happened to their picked warrior. When Kir-Noz charged for the ninth time they were a good one hundred yards out from the base, in a small field littered with numerous clods of earth and grass. As Blade sprang aside he dropped into a crouch. His hands darted down and snatched up two clods of dirt. He leaped to his feet again and watched as Kir-Noz pulled himself to a stop once more, then he stood and faced the warrior.

«Ho, Kir-Noz,» he shouted. «Here I am, wise warrior of the Tower of the Serpent. Why am I so hard to find?»

The taunt stunned Kir-Noz into an explosion of rage. «When I have killed you, Blade, I will have Queen Mir-Kasa send a message to your home tower. They have done a great wrongness against the War Wisdom of Melnon, to send to watch us a man who carries no swords but only leaps about and waves his arms like a little child of the Low People playing in the dirt!»

«Oh, to be sure,» said Blade sarcastically. «My masters no doubt understand nothing of the War Wisdom of Melnon. And when you have killed me you can say anything you want to them. But first you have to kill me. Come on, Kir-Noz! Show me what a warrior of the Tower of the Serpent is good for, besides waving his swords about as though he were chasing flies away from a garbage heap.»

That last taunt drove Kir-Noz beyond the limits of speech. He screamed wordlessly, like a wild animal on the hunt, then dashed at Blade. As Kir-Noz charged, Blade's arms snapped up, and the two clods of earth he had been carrying sailed through the air at Kir-Noz's face.

They never reached their target, though. Kir-Noz's eyes flicked toward them as they came at him. Then, between one breath and the next, both his swords whistled up and struck with blinding speed in two crisscrossing slashes. The two clods disintegrated into a spray of dust and chopped bits of grass.

Kir-Noz's speed with his swords had been far faster than Blade had expected. But Blade's own training was better and his reflexes just as lightning-swift. Before the dust from the clods had started hitting the ground, Blade was lunging at Kir-Noz. Pivoting on his left leg, he shot his right leg out at a speed that even Kir-Noz could not match or guard against. Blade's leg outreached the warrior's sword. His foot crashed into Kir-Noz's stomach as the swords arced down. The warrior folded up like a pocketknife and reeled backward several steps, but he held on to his weapons. Blade closed, chopped Kir-Noz across the left wrist to break his grip on the short sword, and snatched it up as it fell.

The sight of one of his swords in Blade's hands seemed to revive Kir-Noz, oddly enough. His breath came more normally, and he straightened up and stared at Blade. Blade returned the stare, with considerable respect. Kir-Noz's training might have its limitations, but he was certainly fast, and he could certainly take punishment.

«Ho, Kir-Noz,» Blade said. «Will it violate the War Wisdom of Melnon if I come against you with this sword against the one I have left to you?»

Kir-Noz looked dubious. «It were better for me to consult the Council of Wisdom,» he said slowly. «They-«

«Are not here,» Blade interrupted him quietly. «Come, Kir-Noz. You call yourself a warrior of the First Rank. Surely that should make you fit and able to decide how to kill an enemy.» His voice took on a mocking tone again. «What are the warriors of the First Rank in the Tower of the Serpent? Little children tugging at their mothers' skirts? Perhaps even little children of the Low People?»

Kir-Noz screamed like a maniac, and launched himself at Blade. If he hadn't still been slowed by Blade's kick, Blade might have died in that next instant. As it was, Kir-Noz's long sword whistled down past his ear only inches away. It took a frantic parry with the short sword to keep the return stroke away from his groin. Blade decided to open the distance again.

But now that he had Blade at close quarters, Kir-Noz was the last man in Melnon to let him get clear. He came in again, his sword flashing in a dazzling series of strokes that took all of Blade's strength and skill to parry. Blade found his breath beginning to come more quickly, and his legs protested. As the sun rose higher, sweat began to pour down off him, stinging his eyes and making his hand so slick he began to find it hard to keep a grip on his sword.