"I wanted you alone. On this night of all nights I wanted you alone.
Beudag fights in my place now, Conan. My manhood needs proving."
Starke strained his eyes in the gloom, measuring the ledge, measuring
the place where the skiff was moored. He didn't want to fight Faolan.
In Faolan's place he would have felt the same. Starke understood
perfectly. He didn't hate Faolan, he didn't want to kill him, and he
was afraid of Rann's power over him when his emotions got control.
You couldn't keep a determined man from killing you and still be
uninvolved emotionally. Starke would be damned if he'd kill anyone to
suit Rann.
He moved, silently, trying to slip past Faolan on the outside and get
into the skiff. Faolan gave no sign of hearing him. Starke did not
breathe. His sandals came down lighter than snowflakes. Faolan did not
swerve. He would pass Starke with a foot to spare. They came abreast.
Faolan's hand shot out and caught in Starke's long black hair. The
blind man laughed softly and closed in.
Starke swung one from the floor. Do it the quickest way and get clear.
But Faolan was fast. He came in so swiftly that Starke's fist jarred
harmlessly along his ribs. He was bigger than Starke, and heavier, and
the darkness didn't bother him.
Starke bared his teeth. Do it quick, brother, and clear out! Or that
green-eyed she-cat.... Faolan's brute bulk weighed him down. Faolan's
arm crushed his neck. Faolan's fist was knocking his guts loose. Starke
got moving.
He'd fought in a lot of places. He'd learned from stokers and tramps,
Martian Low-Canalers, red-eyed Nahali in the running gutters of Lhi.
He didn't use his knife. He used his knees and feet and elbows and his
hands, fist and flat. It was a good fight. Faolan was a good fighter,
but Starke knew more tricks.
One more, Starke thought. One more and he's out. He drew back for it,
and his heel struck Romna, lying on the rock. He staggered, and Faolan
caught him with a clean swinging blow. Starke fell backward against the
cave wall. His head cracked the rock. Light flooded crimson across his
brain and then paled and grew cooler, a wash of clear silver-green like
water. He sank under it....
He was tired, desperately tired. His head ached. He wanted to rest, but
he could feel that he was sitting up, doing something that had to be
done. He opened his eyes.
He sat in the stern of a skiff. The long sweep was laid into its
crutch, held like a tiller bar against his body. The blade of the sweep
trailed astern in the red sea, and where the metal touched there was a
spurt of silver fire and a swirling of brilliant motes. The skiff moved
rapidly through the sullen fog, through a mist of blood in the hot
Venusian night.
Beudag crouched in the bow, facing Starke. She was bound securely with
strips of the white cloth she had worn. Bruises showed dark on her
throat. She was watching Starke with the intent, unwinking, perfectly
expressionless gaze of a tigress.
Starke looked away, down at himself. There was blood on his kilt, a
brown smear of it across his chest. It was not his blood. He drew the
knife slowly out of its sheath. The blade was dull and crusted, still a
little wet.
Starke looked at Beudag. His lips were stiff, swollen. He moistened
them and said hoarsely, "What happened?"
She shook her head, slowly, not speaking. Her eyes did not waver.
A black, cold rage took hold of Starke and shook him. Rann! He rose and
went forward, letting the sweep go where it would. He began to untie
Beudag's wrists.
A shape swam toward them out of the red mist. A longship with two heavy
sweeps bursting fire astern and a slender figurehead shaped like a
woman. A woman with hair and eyes of aquamarine. It came alongside the
skiff.
A rope ladder snaked down. Men lined the low rail. Slender men with
skin that glistened white like powdered snow, and hair the color of
distant shallows.