The wooden wall slid away from Blade's touch, upward into darkness. There was a faint click. Then silence absolute. Pit dark. Stygian. Blade held his breath.

Silence. Blade caught an odor, a whiff of human sweat. Near. Very near. Too near!

SWISH - the sword cut the air just over Blade's head. Tarsu had been at the same end of the room, touching the wall, directly opposite Blade.

Blade rolled frantically to his left. Sparks flew as the sword beat on the stone floor. Could the man smell him, Blade?

He got on his hands and knees and scuttled, for all the world like one of the giant crabs, to the rear wall of the room. There he went to his belly again. He took a deep breath and held it until his ears popped. He made a mental picture of the room. The stairs were behind him and about ten feet distant. They were narrow and there was no room to swing a sword. If he could entice Tarsu to fight him on the stairs -

Later he would try that. For now, if he could only come to grips with his enemy before the sword could inflict a mortal wound - if he could get the sword, or make Tarsu lose it.

Something rattled on the stone floor just in front of Blade. He lay unmoving. breathing softly through his mouth. An old trick. Tarsu had tossed a pebble, a fragment of the wall. Blade smiled grimly. His opponent would have to do better than that.

There was the smell again. This time of sweat mingled with something else. Grease? Oil of some sort -

Blade moved just in time. The sword glanced off the wall just over him and sparks showed like tiny golden stars in a miniature eternity, a macrocosm of space. Tarsu grunted, a foiled animal sound, and Blade launched himself in air, feet first, at an unseen point three feet behind the sparks.

His bare feet rammed into solid flesh. The man went down, the sword chiming "wildly on stone, with Blade half on him, half off. Now!

Both men were mute. Blade tried to use his weight and his great strength. Tarsu, the smaller man but wiry and with lightning reflexes, writhed and fought back with a fury Blade had not expected. The man's body was heavily greased and Blade could not hold him. It took both his hands just to keep the eager sword away from his throat and when he tried to pin Tarsu with his weight the man kept slipping from under.

Tarsu tried to get his teeth into Blade's throat. Blade butted him cruelly in the face and heard the nose crack. Tarsu got his hand into Blade's beard and began pulling it out by the roots. He slammed a knee into Blade's crotch and the big man went sick. He held on to the sword arm, trying to break the wrist, unable to get the right leverage. They rolled over and over across the cold stone floor, nailing and biting and scratching. Blade's face contorted as he put his last strength into breaking the wrist, the arm, anything.

Tarsu saved his arm by letting go of the sword. It fell with a clang, slid and stopped. Blade let go of Tarsu and dove in the direction of the sound. But Tarsu clung to him like a leech, biting and clawing at his flesh, and it was Tarsu who found the sword again. He kicked it far across the room. Blade cursed and seized Tarsu by the beard and smashed a terrible right hand. The blow only partially found its mark. Tarsu went falling backward, away from Blade. Blade groped. Nothing. He fought to control his breathing, to cut off the gasps that could betray him. There was no sound from Tarsu.

A slithering sound. A scraping and brushing sound. Tarsu was feeling about for the sword. Blade, on his hands and knees once again, began to crawl in the direction of the sounds. He would have to play bulldog now - get a grip on the man's throat and hang on, no matter what. Hang on until Tarsu was dead.

"Hah!"

A grunt of triumph from the darkness. A slither of metal on stone. Tarsu had found the sword. Blade stopped and began to inch backward.

He had his breathing under control. Very slowly, inch by patient inch, he began to work his way toward the stone stairs in a corner of the room. He reached the wall, brushed it with his hands, began to feel for loose mortar. If he could tug one of the crude undressed stones free -

Blade was nearly to the stair before he found it. A stone twice the size of his fist and loosely set. Within a few seconds he had tugged it free. A weapon of sorts. But how to use It?

Tarsu heard the trickle of mortar or a tiny scrape of stone on stone, something. And spoke for the first time since he had found the sword. His voice came from the far end of the room.

"So, Blade, you take to the stair! Others have done that before you. They thought I could not use my sword in close quarters. They were wrong. You are wrong, Blade."

Tarsu was moving in, his feet light on the stone, stalking, knowing where Blade must be. Blade retreated up the first step and raised the stone high. Yet he dared not hurl it. He could hear Tarsu stalking, coming at him out of the gloom, but he had no target. If he hurled the stone at random into the darkness he was certain to miss. The chances were a 100 to 1 that he would. Keep the stone.

He could hear Tarsu grunting now. "Unh-unh-uhn-unh - "

A rhythmic sound that puzzled Blade for a moment. Then he understood. Tarsu had gone to the point. No more wild cutting and slashing about. He was thrusting furiously ahead of him as he moved slowly and cautiously. Blade could picture it in his mind's eye.

Tarsu was working rapidly, crouching, exploring with a foot ahead of him, and all the time thrusting into the gloom with the sword. High - low - to one side and then to the other. Thrust - draw back - thrust again. The sword point would bite deep when it struck. Blade's guts chilled for a moment; he did not like the thought of two feet of cold iron through him.

Tarsu stopped grunting. Still Blade could hear the very faint sibilance of the sword as it thrust and poked and darted for his life. He retreated up another step.

Blade put the rock between his knees and clenched it there and spread his arms. He could not quite extend them. Good. His legs were longer than his arms. An old mountain climbing technique might save him now.

A man can climb a narrow mountain chimney, a vertical rift in the rock, by putting his feet against one wall, his back against the other, and worming his way up. It can also be done by spreading the legs wide and, with each hand and foot, pushing upward. It requires timing, great skill and experience, and tremendous strength. Blade had all these. He also had the stone to carry.

He could smell Tarsu again. There was no sound. Not even the whisper of steel. Tarsu was waiting, collecting himself, preparing for the kill. He was sure now that he had Blade trapped in the narrow confines of the stair. And so he had.

Blade, conscious of time running out, held the heavy rock in both hands. He put his back solidly against one rough wall and his bare feet against the other. With his toes he got a purchase in the old eroded stone and began to exert pressure with his legs. He slid his back upward, feeling the stone tear at the skin. He wriggled. He gained a foot, then another foot, and brought his legs up even with his torso. His knees were slightly bent and he was hanging in mid-air over the stairs. Yet not high enough, for that feral sword would come licking any second now, like a flashing serpent's tongue lacking venom but thirsty for blood.

Blade eased up another foot. His big thigh muscles corded and rolled and a cramp began to gnaw at him. Blade ignored it. He turned slightly to his left, to clear his own body, and raised the stone high over his head. Everything now depended on his timing. He hung there, naked but for the leathern kilt, very much aware that his genitals were cruelly exposed to the sword. He scowled in the dark. Grim irony if he should lose his manhood, kill Tarsu, and then go castrated to Pphira.

Queen Pphira even now was waiting in her chamber for the door to open and a man to enter. She had a sense of the dramatic, did the Queen, and she had given orders that she was not to be notified beforehand of the outcome. When her chamber door opened she would know the winner. In that moment Blade knew that he would make her pay for this cruel charade.

No more time. It had leaked away like water on sand. The smell of Tarsu was strong, the oiled body pungent and close below Blade. The sword darted and darted in the narrow space. Tarsu grunted. He was confident now. He thought he was forcing Blade up to the top of the stair. There he would finish him.

Rotten mortar crumbled under his foot. Blade slipped an inch down. The mortar struck the probing Tarsu in the face. He gave an outraged grunt of surprise and twisted the sword upward, in a direction from which he had never expected danger. The steel bit deep into Blade's left leg.

The top of Tarsu's head touched Blade's buttocks. Blade slammed the stone down with all his might, missing the man's head and breaking his shoulder and collar bone. Tarsu groaned. The sword jangled on the stairs. Blade dropped.

His legs were slippery with his own blood as he twined them around the man's neck in a dreadful scissor hold. Together they tumbled down the stair to sprawl into the room. Tarsu, weak with pain and fear, still fought like a desperate animal. He managed to get his teeth into Blade's inner thigh and bite deep and Blade screamed with the pain. He held Tarsu's head firm in the scissors of his legs and exerted terrible pressure. Tarsu began to kick and flail about wildly as he strangled.

Blade got his fingers into the man's hair, trying for a firm hold, but Tarsu was Sarmaian and had but little fuzz. Blade twined both his big hands around the neck and loosed his scissor hold and struggled to his knees. He began to smash the head against the stone floor. Again and again until the sound was pulpy and hollow and blood and brains mingled on his fingers. He tossed the body away and stood up, exploring the wound on his thigh. It was on the outside, halfway between his knee and hip, and he did not think it very serious. Yet it bled freely. He fumbled for the body of Tarsu again, found it and removed the sword belt and wrapped it around his leg just above the wound. He hobbled to the stair and found the sword and thought a moment - he had intended to use the sword as a lever, to hold the tourniquet, but now he decided against it.

He had won. He intended to make an impression, stage an act, to assume a dominance he did not yet have. It was bluff but it might work. Bluff had worked before now and would again. When he, Richard Blade, climbed out of the pit, waving a victorious bloody sword, he meant to create an illusion, to take to himself the leadership and authority that had not, in fact, been promised or offered. It was all a gamble.