Yuen did not pause to answer, but flicked his weapon into the shape of a spear, and drove it toward the chest and heart of Menelaus. Menelaus could out-think the Chimera, but could not match his reaction time. He jerked his body down, so that the tip of the spear entered the fleshy part of his shoulder rather than piercing him through the heart. A galvanic shock threw him flopping to the ground. As he fell, the spear tip brushed past his throat, and would have neatly sliced his jugular, except that this was one of the spots Mickey had inexpertly slathered with anti-burn cream, which had hardened into a thick and stiff integument, which happened to be thick enough not to part under the scalpel-fine stroke of the spearblade.

“Your rock!” screamed Yuen. “The bit of common stone you used, first, to mock our ancient and solemn practice of naming inhabited weapons, so that we will be ennobled to think of honor more long-lasting and more dignified than our own; and, second, that you used to draw down the scorn of Lady Ivinia on us! Her words have burned in my brain every second, waking and dreaming, since that hateful moment! If he can slay the foe with a stone, it were shame indeed should higher men and better armed do less.”

“You still fretting and fussing about a little dressing-down from some officer’s wife who ain’t even your regular chain of command? Plague and damnation, but you are downright petty, ain’t you, Yuen?”

Yuen struck him with the metal whip hard enough to roll him down one and two stairs of the dais, so that now Menelaus came to rest facedown near the powered barding shaped like a metal horse. Menelaus, struggling, his face drawn, heaved himself up to a half-kneeling position, but his arms trembled and his elbows shook.

Yuen sneered, “No, you will have no weapon, rock-bearer, named or unnamed; for this is not a duel, nor even an execution. I do not consider you human. This is to be a slaughter. You cannot defeat me twice. This time, there is no cleverness of dangling rope, no cunning words. You are out of tricks.”

“Smells of hell, Yuen! I got one trick left. And here he comes.”

Out from the curtain of poisonous cloud now strolled Soorm the Hormagaunt, his nostrils pinched shut, licking the cakes of blood off his fur with the longer of his two tongues, and using his other tongue to wipe his mismatched eyeballs free of lachrymal agents, so the black gas did not blind him.

Once inside the clean air, he opened his nostrils and drew in a deep breath.

Rada Lwa, on the throne, raised one of the pistols. Soorm held up a webbed hand and shouted, “Nobilissimus, if you please!”

The voice from the mouth of Rada Lwa said, “I am tickled you recall my old title, Marsyas! You can detect the traffic volume entering and leaving this body, and so you know it is I. Clever.”

Soorm said, “As sole remaining affiliate of the Special Advocacy of the World Concordat, are you not my Advocate now? May I speak? I claim the gentle right!”

The voice of the Machine said, “Since I never formally abdicated any of those positions or titles, it would be small-souled indeed of us now to repudiate the obligations of the title. I grant you leave to address us. Utter your petition.”

“As the Second for the challenged party, I serve notice that he is wounded in the feet and legs, and is unable to proceed. Therefore I take his place in the lists. He had no weapons in his hands: I will continue for him under the same disadvantage.” And so saying, Soorm stepped between Yuen and Menelaus.

Rada Lwa’s hand put down the pistol. “That is also clever. Had Reyes y Pastor not betrayed the Table Round, you would, even now, as his squire, be found worthy of his place. So, proceed! However the scene plays out, as long as Menelaus Montrose is dead at the finale, I am content. Yuen, if you please?”

The telescopic rod struck Soorm in chest, and the spearpoint tore fur and flesh, but bounced off the hardened bone integument hidden like a bulletproof vest beneath a coat; nor did the jolt of electrical force do anything but make the Hormagaunt laugh. Soorm jumped forward, swift as a bear, and whirled and drove at Yuen with his scorpion tail.

Yuen was fleeter of foot than Soorm, a cheetah to a bear. So the young man merely danced aside, and struck Soorm in the anus when he attacked with his tail, drawing blood. Soorm kicked like a mule, and his foot would have broken a wooden beam had it landed, and the spur on his foot would have severed a silk scarf floating in midair had it made contact. But Yuen merely skipped aside, folded his weapon to a short baton, and struck Soorm on his exposed knee. On the backstroke the baton opened into a cutting blade which would have hamstrung that leg, had Soorm’s hamstrings been in their accustomed place. Instead the blade tip scraped bone, drawing more blood but doing no real harm.

Yuen backpedaled, and switched targets. He lashed his whip over Soorm, past the streamlined, sea lion head, and drove the sharpened tip at Menelaus, who was beyond.

Menelaus, as if he had anticipated the location of the incoming blade perfectly, caught it in his hand before it could stab him, but the electric shocks froze his muscles, and the whip end curled twice and thrice around his wrist and forearm, throwing him to the ground hard enough to break bone. His right arm snapped and was useless.

Soorm roared and grabbed at the whip, which spun over and under him out of his grasp like a grotesque mockery of a jump rope, while the far end of the metal whip continued to twist the broken arm bones of Menelaus further and further out of place, meanwhile burning him with shocks.

The midsection of the metal whip writhed, and threw a loop around the head of Soorm, lassoing him at the neck, snapping shut like a garrote. A breathing hole like the vent of a dolphin hidden between the shoulder blades of Soorm now opened, blowing and gasping, and at the same time, his streamlined head pulled itself down between his shoulders like the head of tortoise in an impossible contortion of muscles where there should have been no muscles. Since the planes of his neck were larger than the width of his jaw, and since he had grown boney plates under his fur around his throat like a gorget, the strangling noose simply slipped up along the earless slope of his skull and over the tip of his nose. The electrical jolt Yuen flashed at him Soorm absorbed into his Sach’s organ and electric eel receptors. But when Yuen jerked the body of Menelaus toward him, Soorm was struck from behind in the legs, and both men fell down again, and a loop of the whip entwined their midsections as they rolled and fell. The whip loops tied them together in an ungainly heap.

Yuen laughed without smiling.

The tip of the whip rose up like a hooded cobra, sharpened into a dagger point, and drove in. It struck the hand of Soorm, who had placed his great webbed hand over the chest above the heart of Menelaus to protect it. The snakelike whip head drew back, yanking the bleeding webbed claw of Soorm back with it by means of barbs through the wound, and another loop of whip snared the mighty wrist and held it back. The knifeblade, buzzing, darted back down, now that the target of the heart was free of obstruction …

At that moment came a noise from the suit of powered horse armor, which was behind Yuen.

The long skirts of the armor stirred, and the rump section of the armor folded out, revealing a large empty cavity within, a place of straps and tubes and pads meant to form a cocoon around the body of a steed trained to use cybernetics. Instead there was inside a smaller body. A dark, grinning, sly-eyed blond-haired man with braid-covered overalls, now sadly torn. In his hand was a short, hooked hoof-knife from the saddlebag.

Larz silently and swiftly jumped from behind at Yuen, who slid gracefully to one side, retracting the whip (sending Menelaus and Soorm spinning, but releasing them from the metal coils) and lashing it over his back without looking, to smash the legs of Larz as if with a flail, thus to break them both and to topple him prone; and in a smooth continuation of the same motion, Yuen brought his whip down in its stiffened spear-shape and threw it into Larz, pinning him to the floor panels. The serpentine passed just under his ribs, through lung tissue, intestine, and kidney, and out his back near his spine. Then jolts of electricity made Larz spasm and jerk, which made the hole penetrating his intestines tear even larger.