“Yetch!” he screamed. “Think of the men in black!”
Again I did not answer. The next flurry of action saw his shield failing to deflect a blow. His sword spun up in the air wrenched from his fingers, spinning, glittering end over end to thunk point-first into the sand. It quivered. He panted, staring from the sword to me and back again. I stepped back and bowed and with my own thraxter indicated his.
The crowd howled.
He wrenched the blade from the sand. “You onker! You are meant to let me win!”
“Maybe... It is not supposed to be easy for you, though, is it?”
He possessed a good and varied repertoire of tricks and stratagems and now he settled down to use them in real earnest. Many of the passages I recognized as being developed by hyr-kaidurs of the past, some were the old regulars; h
