And Kyral stood unmoving.
For what the _shegrin_ wagers is his courage and endurance in the face
of torture and an unknown fate. On his side, the stakes are clearly
determined beforehand. But if he loses, his punishment or penalty is at
the whim of the one who has accepted him, and he may be put to whatever
doom the winner determines.
And this is the contest:
The _shegrin_ permits himself to be tortured from sunrise to sunset. If
he endures he wins. It is as simple as that. He can stop the torture at
any moment by a word, but to do so is a concession of defeat.
This is not as dangerous as it might, at first, seem. The other party to
the bet is bound by the ironclad codes of Wolf to inflict no permanent
physical damage (no injury that will not heal with three suncourses).
But from sunrise to sunset, any torment or painful ingenuity which the
half-human mentality of Wolf can devise must be endured.
The man who can outthink the torture of the moment, the man who can hold
in his mind the single thought of his goal--that man can claim the
stakes he has set, as well as other concessions made traditional.
The silence grew in the hall. Dallisa had straightened and was watching
me intently, her lips parted and the tip of a little red tongue visible
between her teeth. The only sound was the tiny crunching as the fat
woman nibbled at nuts and cast their shells into the brazier. Even the
child on the steps had abandoned her game with the crystal dice, and sat
looking up at me with her mouth open. Finally Kyral demanded, "Your
stakes?"
"Tell me all you know of Rakhal Sensar and keep silence about me in
Shainsa."
"By the red shadow," Kyral burst out, "you have courage, Rascar!"
"Say only yes or no!" I retorted.
Rebuked, he fell silent. Dallisa leaned forward and again, for some
unknown reason, I thought of a girl with hair like spun black glass.
Kyral raised his hand. "I say no. I have blood-feud with Rakhal and I
will not sell his death to another. Further, I believe you are Terran
and I will not deal with you. And finally, you have twice saved my life
and I would find small pleasure in torturing you. I say no. Drink again
with me and we part without a quarrel."
Beaten, I turned to go.
"Wait," said Dallisa.
She stood up and came down from the dais, slowly this time, walking with
dignity to the rhythm of her musically clashing chains. "I have a
quarrel with this man."
I started to say that I did not quarrel with women, and stopped myself.
The Terran concept of chivalry has no equivalent on Wolf.
She looked at me with her dark poison-berry eyes, icy and level and
amused, and said, "I will bet _shegri_ with you, unless you fear me,
Rascar."
And I knew suddenly that if I lost, I might better have trusted myself
to Kyral and his whip, or to the wild beast-things of the mountains.