Suddenly the two frozen figures in the center of the chamber exploded in sound and movement. The swordsman's weapon swung wide, leaving him open to the spearman's thrust. The spearpoint flashed forward. The sword whipped back as fast as it had swung out. Steel point and steel blade crashed against each other with an echoing clang that filled the chamber. The spearpoint dropped down, the sword blade rose up. It flicked out toward the young spearman, but he seemed to twist aside at the last second. He stood as his opponent pulled his sword back and raised it again. Blade wondered why the young man didn't turn back to face his opponent.

Then the spearman's point dropped further, to rest against the floor. His fingers opened and the spear clattered to the floor. A moment later the spearman followed it. As he struck the floor and lay full length on it, blood began to gush from the wound in his side, under his armpit. Blade looked more closely. The gash went in halfway through the chest. Had it gone straight into the heart, with that single split second blow?

As if to answer Blade's question, the spearman gave a final convulsive jerk, gurgled, coughed, and lay still. Blood trickled out of his mouth to join the spreading pool on the tiles.

Blade took a tighter grip on his own spear. That was a quick kill even by Gaikon's deadly standards. It now seemed quite likely that the Hongshu's dabuni were as skilled as they were big.

The Hongshu wore a smug, arrogant grin. Blade risked another look behind him, at Lord Tsekuin and Doifuzan. Then he looked again. Both men had their eyes fixed on the Hongshu. As his grin broadened, they began to have trouble keeping their own faces straight. Blade swung his eyes back across the body on the floor to the triumphant Hongshu. Then the light dawned for him.

Lord Tsekuin had deliberately sacrificed the young spearman, who was after all the least important dabuno of his hand. He had cold-bloodedly sacrificed him to make the Hongshu overconfident, judging by the other man's expression, he had succeeded. And the young spearman had gone to his death with no regard for anything but his lord's orders, although he knew what was coming.

Blade suspected that there were two games being played today. There was the deadly master game of Hu here in the chamber. There was another, larger, deadlier game being played for far higher stakes all over Gaikon, of which this game of Hu might be only a part.

Blade clutched his spear so tightly in both hands that his knuckles stood out white. He managed to give a slight tremble to both his lower lip and his knees, and swallowed rapidly several times. He wanted to give the impression of a man suddenly realizing the deadly stakes of this game, and half-unnerved by his discovery. As he turned away from the two men behind him his eyes briefly met Doifuzan's. The old dabuno's lips flickered apart in a brief smile, one that the Hongshu would never see. Blade turned back to stare across the chamber at the enemy. The Hongshu was rubbing his hands on the knees of his white silk trousers, and the visible half of Lord Geron's face was split by a broad grin.

Good. They looked like men who would be half-blind with triumph and anticipation of an easy victory. Blade relaxed his grip on his spear and waited for Lord Tsekuin to announce his next move. He suspected it would bring him into the play.

He was wrong. Lord Tsekuin apparently decided it would help if he also acted like a man who had lost his self-control because of the death of the spearman. He indulged in a flurry of moves, simple and complex, varying them without any apparent pattern. He didn't pay much attention to the Hongshu's responses, either. Blade hoped Lord Tsekuin wouldn't carry the act too far. If the Hongshu decided to move in for a quick victory while Tsekuin was doing his imitation of a frightened, indecisive man, things could get very nasty very quickly.

The Hongshu didn't. But then he was obviously one of those men who savored watching his enemy sweat in fear before striking. Here he couldn't wait two weeks before striking, as he had done before. But he could wait a few minutes, and then a few minutes more-and then a few minutes beyond that.

The minutes added up until nearly an hour had passed since the spearman's death. The aimless maneuvering went on, neither side pushing their warriors into a fight. Blade threw occasional looks behind him. Had Lord Tsekuin really lost his head and his skill? He began to wonder. But each time he looked, Doifuzan met his eyes with a faint smile or nod.

The maneuvering went on for a few minutes more. But now it had a purpose. One move at a time, Lord Tsekuin was shifting Blade. Soon he would be within a single move of battle with any of the Hongshu's five dabuni.

The ruler of Gaikon was too filled with anticipation of his easy victory to notice what was happening. Blade made his last necessary move. The Hongshu shifted a spearman in a minor move that still left him within range of Blade. Blade deliberately dropped his spear to keep up the act of being nervous and panicky.

Then behind him Blade heard Lord Tsekuin's voice.

«Sha move to square four-seven.» Three quick steps and Blade was facing the Hongshu's second swordsman. To Blade it seemed the room had suddenly become even quieter than before.

In a regular bout, Blade would have started a slow circle around his opponent, forcing him to shift position, testing his footwork, perhaps trying to disorient him. But here the fighters had to stay within their squares. All they could do was freeze into their stances and hold position, weapons aloft and ready, eyes watching for the slightest sign of an attack.

Blade was determined to wait and give his opponent the first blow. It was a gamble, since he couldn't leave the square to avoid his enemy's sword. But it was only a small gamble. Blade knew how fast he was. The other man didn't.

A slight flickering of the swordsman's arm muscles was all the warning Blade had. The sword leaped high, ready to slash down at Blade's skull. Then it leaped sideways and came whistling at Blade's side-or where Blade's side should have been. But Blade recognized the stroke-a clumsy version of Yezjaro's own «flying bird cut.» The defense against it was something built into his reflexes by long hours of practice against the instructor.

Blade sprang back on legs like steel springs. The tip of the sword whistled by, inches from his stomach. The sword swung wide. Blade leaped in again, holding the spear out to his right in a vertical guard. The return cut with the sword crashed into the spear shaft. Again the clash of metal echoed through the chamber. As the sword leaped up again, Blade drove the spear downward. The sharp edge of the spearhead slashed down the second swordsman's left leg from knee to ankle. Flesh gaped open and blood sluiced down on to the floor.

The second swordsman let out a howl of surprise and pain and stared wide-eyed at Blade. He seemed bothered more by his opponent's unexpected skill than by his own wound. But he hadn't lost any courage. His sword whistled down again three times in rapid succession-left, right, right. But his aim was poor and his footwork slowed by the wound. Blade considered using the prongs on the spear to disarm the man the way he had disarmed Captain Jawai. But why bother? There was no need to put on a show here-just a well-done kill.

The sword rose again and seemed to hover edge-on in front of Blade. He raised the spear, holding it horizontally in front of him. The swordsman launched a cut at Blade's ribs. Blade sprang back, shifting to a one-handed grip on the spear. The massive muscles of his right arm snapped the spear horizontally forward, straight into the swordsman's throat. Flesh, blood vessels, windpipe parted as neatly as if Blade had swung a giant razor. Blade jerked the spear back. The swordsman stood for a moment, blood fountaining from his gaping neck, the life going out of his eyes. Then he fell, landing with a splat in the spreading pool of his own blood.