Blade shot six arrows at the bare pole. All six of them were sticking out of the pole by the time he'd finished. Then he mounted a drend and rode at a walk past the pole, firing six more arrows as he passed. Five of those six arrows also hit the pole, which began to look like a porcupine.
When Blade dismounted, everyone who'd watched was wide eyed with surprise and admiration. Everyone, that is, except Rehod and the warriors who stood on either side of him. Rehod's eyes were narrowed and about as admiring as the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.
For the test in running, Blade had to run three times around the testing area. Two strong warriors would run after him, and if they caught him, they could prod him in the buttocks with the points of their swords. Paor was asked to be one of the warriors, but refused.
«It is known well enough how much I favor your being accepted among the Kargoi. There are those who might doubt I could give you a true testing, and therefore doubt your fitness.»
The substitute for Paor turned out to be one of Rehod's friends, a long-legged, rangy man who looked like a natural runner. Blade was quite certain he would not be easy for anyone to run down. Three times around the testing area was no more than three miles. Blade had kept pace with a party of Zungan hunters across fifty miles of open veldt.
Blade and his two pursuers started off at an easy pace, hardly more than a brisk jog. The other two ran level with him for a few hundred yards. Then step by step they began to fall back. After another hundred yards Blade looked behind him. The others were now holding their position, and the look on their faces was easy to read. He was not outrunning them at all. They were deliberately dropping back, to lull him into slowing his own pace. Nice try, he thought, but it won't work.
Instead of slowing his pace, Blade began to increase it. He did this so carefully that the gap between him and the men behind him nearly doubled before they realized what was happening. Blade saw the face of Rehod's friend harden. Then his long legs seemed to blur as he dashed forward after Blade.
Blade was plunging forward before the other man covered half a dozen steps. Blade's legs flew, devouring the ground in great leaping strides. His long arms pumped up and down like pistons, pushing air into the lungs in his massive chest. He raced along, working steadily up to the pace that had once taken him a mile in three seconds less than four minutes.
In moments of stress like this Blade had the ability to almost sense what lay behind him without seeing it. He knew that both men were making a desperate effort to close, that both had their swords reaching out for him, and that neither was anywhere near him. He ran on, still faster.
They finished the first lap with Blade still well out in front. Now Blade was able to look back. The sun glinted on the polished steel of the swords and also on the sweat pouring down the men's bodies. Rehod's friend looked as if he could run all day, but the second man's movements were becoming clumsy and his eyes stared blindly ahead.
Halfway through the second lap, the second man began to drop back. His face was twisted in frustration and pain, and he flailed away at the air with his sword as if he was hacking into the flesh of a hated enemy. Rehod's friend flashed a brief loop of contempt at his weaker comrade, then returned to his grim pursuit of Blade. His face was now set into a mask like the temple image of some particularly bad-tempered god. Blade suspected that if the man caught him he would do far more with that sword than merely prick Blade's buttocks. It would be an «accident;«of course.
The two men finished the second lap and charged into the third. The man behind still looked as if he could run all day, in spite of the sweat pouring down him. Blade felt exactly the same way. The spectators had been shouting, in excitement or in support of one side or the other. Now they stopped, watching the runners' duel in silence.
Halfway through the final lap Rehod's friend made his great effort. He raced after Blade at a pace good for breaking records in the hundred-yard dash, but no good for a long-distance run. Blade still knew he had no choice but to speed up. Otherwise the man would almost certainly catch him, and he'd run too far and too well to let himself be caught now.
Blade's own feet seemed to barely touch the ground as he poured all his strength into a pace to match the other man's. Once more his extra sense told him where his opponent might be. The man was gaining, but only a step at a time, and there was still a large gap between the two men. Would that gap last longer than the other's strength?
Blade ran now with total concentration, nothing on his mind but taking each step a little faster than the one before, making each breath a little deeper than the one before. His concentration was so complete that the man behind him could probably have caught up and stabbed deeply without Blade's feeling it at all.
Then suddenly Blade's sensation of someone behind him began to fade. He didn't look back until the sensation was completely gone. Then he saw his pursuer staggering like a drunk as he ran, stumbling and weaving from side to side. The gap between the two men was widening at every step.
Blade didn't slow down until he was near the end of the third lap. As they reached the end of it Rehod's friend fell to the ground and lay there, writhing feebly and gasping like a dying fish. Blade ran on, completing half of a fourth lap at a run, then finishing it at a jog. As he came in from the fourth lap, everyone except Rehod and his friends was cheering.
Blade drank some water and took a short rest before the test in wrestling. «In fact,» said Paor, «if you do not take the rest, I will knock you down and sit on you until you are strong enough to be fit for the testing. Show some of the wisdom you showed facing me and my comrades, and the day will be yours.»
Blade really needed no such urging. The four-mile run in the hot sun on an empty stomach had taken a good deal out of him. He was happy to sit for a few minutes, drinking water, breathing deeply, and working the kinks and knots out of his muscles. Then he rose to be tested in wrestling.
Neither of Blade's opponents in the wrestling test was a friend of Rehod, so Blade did not worry about painful or fatal «accidents.» He was able to relax and do his best.
The Kargoi's style of wrestling turned out to be highly formal, almost ritualistic. There were only a few standard moves. When Blade learned those, he had no more problems. In fact, he had to take care not to win so easily that he would humiliate the two warriors facing him. He flattened both opponents in less than ten minutes apiece, then drank some more water and got ready for the test of swordsmanship.
This would be the last test, and possibly the most important. Certainly it would be the most dangerous. The weapons lent themselves to «accidents» if anybody wanted to arrange one.
Somebody probably would. Blade's first opponent in the test of swords was Rehod, and open anger showed in the warrior's face every time he looked at the Englishman.