That was when Sol came out of his apparent retirement to place his entire tribe of over three hundred men against the fifty-now One hundred-belonging to the victor and challenged for it all. He took the sword and killed the other master in as ruthless and businesslike an attack as Sos had ever seen. Tor made notes on the technique, so as to call them out as pointers for the sword group. Tyl kept his ranking-and if he had ever dreamed of replacing Sol, it was certain that the vision perished utterly that day.
Only once was the tribe seriously balked, and not by another tribe. One day an enormous, spectacularly muscled man came ambling down the trail swinging his club as though it were a singlestick~ Sos was actually one of the largest men in the group, but the stranger was substantially taller and broader through the shoulders than he. This was Bog, whose disposition was pleasant, whose intellect was scant, and whose chiefest joy was pulverising men in the circle. *
Fight7 "Good, good!" he exclaimed, smiling broadly. "One, two, three a'time! Okay!" And he bounded into the circle and awaited all comers. Sos had the impression that the main reason the man had failed to specify more at a time was that he could count no higher.
Tyl, his curiosity provoked, sent in the first club to meet him. Bog launched into battle with no apparent science. He simply swept the club back forth with such ferocity that his opponent was helpless against it. Hit or miss, Bog continued unabated, fairly bashing the other out of the circle before the man could catch his footing.
Victorious, Bog grinned. "More!" he cried.
Tyl looked at the tribe's erstwhile first clubber, a man who had won several times in the circle. He frowned, not quite believing it. He sent in the second club.
The same thing happened. Two men lay stunned on the ground, thoroughly beaten.
Likewise the two ranking swords and a staff, in quick order. "More!" Bog exclaimed happily, but Tyl had had enough. Five top men were shaken and lost, in the course of only ten minutes, and the victor hardly seemed to be tired.
"Tomorrow," he said to the big clubber.
"Okay!" Bog agreed, disappointed, and accepted the hospitality of the tribe for the evening. He polished off two full-sized meals and three willing women before he retired for the night. Male and female alike gaped at his respective appetites, hardly able to credit either department, but these were not subject to refutation. Bog conquered everything one, two or three at a time.
Next day he was as good as ever. Sol was on hand this time to watch while Bog bashed club, sticks and daggers with equal facility, and even flattened the terrible star. When struck, he paid no attention, though some blows were cruel; when cut, he licked the blood like a tiger and laughed. Blocking him was no good; he had such power that no really effective inhibition was practical. "More!" he cried after each debacle, and he never tired.
"We must have that man," Sol said.
"We have no one to take him," Tyl objected. "He has already wiped out nine of our best, and hasn't even felt the competition. I might kill him with the sword-but I couldn't defeat him bloodlessly. We'd have no use for him dead."
"He must be met with the club," Sos said. "That's the only thing with the mass to slow him. A powerfull, agile, durable club."
Tyl stared meaningfully at the three excellent clubbers seated by Bog's side of the circle. All wore large bandages where flesh and bone had succumbed to the giant's attack. "If those were our ranked instruments, we need an unranked warrior," he observed.
"Yes," Sol said. He stood up.
"Wait a minute!" both men cried. "Don't chance it yourself," Sos added. "You have too much to risk."
"The day any man conquers me with any weapon," Sol said seriously, "is the day I go to the mountain." He took up his club and walked to the circle.
"The master!" Bog cried, recognizing him. "Good fight?"
"He didn't even settle terms," Tyl groaned. "This is nothing more than man-to-man."
"Good fight," Sol agreed, and stepped inside.
Sos concurred. In the headlong drive for empire, it seemed a culpable waste to chance Sol in the circle for anything less than a full tribe. Accidents were always possible. But they had already learned that their leader had other things on his mind these days than his empire. Sol proved his manhood by his battle prowess, and he could allow no slightest question there, even in his own mind. He had continued his exercises regularly, keeping his body toned.
Perhaps it took a man withOut a weapon to appreciate just how deeply the scars of the other kind of deprivation went.
Bog launched into his typical windmill attack, and Sol parried and ducked expertly. Bog was far larger, but Sol was faster and cut off the ferocious arcs before they gained full momentum. He ducked under one swing and caught Bog on the side of the head with the short, precise flick Sos had seen him demonstrate before. The club was not clumsy or slow in Sol's hand.
The giant absorbed the blow and didn't seem to notice. He bashed away without hesitation, smiling. Sol had to back away and dodge cleverly to avoid being driven out of the circle, but Bog followed him without letup.
Sol's strategy was plain. He was conserving his strength, letting the other expend his energies uselessly. Whenever there was an opening, he sneaked his own club in to bruise head, shoulder or stomach, weakening the man further. It was a good policy-except that Bog refused to be weakened. "Good!" he grunted when Sol scored-and swung again.
Half an hour passed while the entire tribe massed around the arena, amazed. They all knew Sol's competence; what they couldn't understand was Bog's indefatigable power. The club was a solid weapon, heavier with every swing, and prolonged exercise with it inevitably deadened the arm, yet Bog never slowed or showed strain. Where did he get such stamina?
Sol had had enough of the waiting artifice. He took the offense. Now be laid about him with swings like Bog's, actually forcing the bigger man to take defensive measures.
It was the first time they had seen it; for all they had known until that point, Bog had no defense, since he had never needed it. As it was, he was not good at it, and soon got smashed full force across the side of the neck.
Sos rubbed his own neck with sympathetic pain, seeing the man's hair flop out and spittle fly from his open mouth. The blow should have laid him out for the rest of the day. It didn't. Bog hesitated momentarily, shook his head, then grinned. "Good!" he said-and smote mightily with his own weapon.
Sol was sweating profusely, and now took the defensive stance from necessity. Again he fended Bog off with astute maneuvers, while the giant pressed the attack as vigorously as before. Sol had not yet been whacked upon head or torso; his defense was too skilled for the other to penetrate. But neither could he shake his opponent or wear him down.
After another half hour he tried again, with no better effect. Bog seemed to be impervious to physical damage. After that Sol was satisfied to wait.
"What's the record for club-club?" someone asked.
"Thirty-four minutes," another replied.
The tinier Tor had borrowed from the hostel indicated a hundred and four minutes. "It isn't possible to keep that pace indefinitely," he said.
The shadows lengthened. The contest continued.
Sos, Tyl and Tor huddled with the other advisors. "They're going on until dark!" Tor exclaimed - incredulously. "Sol won't quit, and Bog doesn't know how."
"We have to break this up before they both drop dead," Sos said.
"How?"
That was the crux. They were sure neither participant would quit voluntarily, and the end was not in view Bog's strength seemed boundless, and Sol's determination and skill matched it. Yet the onset of night would multiply the chances for a fatal culmination, that nobody wanted. The battle would have to be stopped.
It was a situation no one had imagined, and they could think of no ethical way to handle it. In the end, they decided to stretch the circle code a bit.
The staff squad took the job. A phalanx of them charged into the circle, walling off the combatants and carrying
them away. "Draw!" Sav yelled. "Tie! Impasse! Even! No decision!"
Bog picked -himself up, confused.
"Supper!" Sos yelled at him. "Sleep! Women!"
That did it. "Okay!" the monster clubber agreed.
Sol thought about it, contemplating the extended shadows. "All right," he said at last.
Bog went over to shake hands. "You pretty good, for little guy," he said graciously. "Next time we start in morning, okay? More day."
"Okay!" Sol agreed, and everyone laughed.
That night Sola rubbed liniment into Sol's arms and legs and back and put him away for a good twelve hours' exhaustion. Bog was satisfied with one oversized meal and one sturdy well-upholstered lass. He disdained medication for his purpling bruises. "Good fight!" he said, contented.
The following day he went his way, leaving behind the warriors he had conquered. "Only for fun!" he explained.
"Good, good."
They watched him disappear down the trail, singing tunelessly and flipping his club end-over-end in the air.
CHAPTER TEN
"My year is up," Sos said.
"I would have you stay," Sol replied slowly. "You have given good service."
"You have five-hundred men and an elite corp of advisors. You don't need me."
Sol looked up and Sos was shocked to see tears in his eyes. "I do need you," he said. "I have no other friend."
Sos did not know what to say.
Sola joined them, hugely pregnant. Soon she would travel to a crazy hospital for delivery. "Perhaps you have a son," Sos said.
"When you find what you need, come back," Sol told him, accepting the inevitable.
"I will." That was all they could say to each other.
He left the camp that afternoon, travelling east. Day by day the landscape became more familiar as he approached the region of his childhood. He skirted the marked badlands near the coast, wondering what mighty cities had stood where the silent death radiated now, and whether there would ever be such massive assemblages of people again. The books claimed that nothing green had grown in the centers of these encampments, that concrete and asphalt covered the ground between buildings and made the landscape as flat as the surface of a lake, that machines like those the crazies used today had been everywhere, doing everything. Yet all had vanished in the Blast. Why? There were many unanswered questions.
A month of hiking brought him to the school he had attended before beginning his travels as a warrior. Only a year and a half had elapsed, but already it had become a entirely different facet of his existence, one now unfamiliar to him and strange to see again. Still, he knew his way around.
He entered the arched front doorway and walked down the familiar, foreign hall to the door at the end marked "Principal." A girl he did not remember sat at the desk. He decided she was a recent graduate, pretty, but very young. "I'd like to see Mr. Jones," he said, pronouncing the obscure name carefully.
"And who is calling?" She stared at Stupid, perched a ever upon his shoulder.
"Sos," he said, then realized that the name would mea nothing here. "A former student. He knows me."
She spoke softly into an intercom and listened for th reply. "Doctor Jones will see you now," she said, an smiled at him as though he were not a ragged-bearded dirt-encrusted pagan with a mottled bird on his shoulder.
He returned the gesture, appreciating her attention though he knew it was professional, and went on through the inner door.
The principal rose immediately and came around the desk to greet him. "Yes of course I remember you! Clas of '107, and you stayed to practice with the-the sword wasn't it? What do you call yourself now?"
"Sos." He knew Jones knew it already, and was simply offering him the chance to explain the change. He didn take it immediately, and the principal, experienced in such matters, came to his rescue again.
"Sos. Beautiful thing, that three-letter convention. Wish I knew how it originated. Well, sit down, Sos, and tell me everything. Where did you acquire your pet? That's genuine mock-sparrow, if I haven't lost my eye for bad lands fauna." A very gentle fatherly inflection came mt his voice. "You have been poking into dangerous regions warrior. Are you back to stay?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. I-I don't know wher my loyalties lie, now." How rapidly he resumed the mood of adolescence, in this man's presence.
"Can't make up your mind whether you're sane or crazies eh?" Jones said, and laughed in his harmless way. "I know it's a hard decision. Sometimes I still wish I could chuck it all and take up one of those glamorous weapons and- you didn't kill anybody, I hope?"
"No. Not directly, anyway," he said, thinking of the recalcitrant dagger Nar and Tyl's execution of him. "I only fought a few times, and always for little things. The last time was for my name."
"Ah, I see. No more than that?"
"And perhaps for a woman, too."
"Yes. Life isn't always so simple in the simple world, is it? If you care to amplify-"
Sos recounted the entire experience he had had, the emotional barriers overcome at last, while Jones listened sympathetically. "I see," the principal said at the end. "You do have a problem." He cogitated for a moment- "thought" seemed too simple a word to apply to him- then touched the intercOm. "Miss Smith, will you check the file on one 'Sol,' please? S-O-L. Probably last year, no, two years ago, west coast. Thank you."
"Did be go to school?" Sos had never thought of this.
"Not here, certainly. But we have other training schools, and he sounds as though he's had instruction. Miss Smith will check it out with the computer. There just might be something on the name."
They waited for several minutes, Sos increasingly uncomfortable as he reminded himself that he should have cleaned up before coming here. The crazies had something of a fetish about dirt: they - never went long without removing it. Perhaps it was because they tended to stay within their buildings and machines, where aromas could concentrate.
"The girl," he said, filling time, "Miss Smith-is she a student?"
Jones smiled tolerantly. "No longer. I believe she is actually a year older than you are. We can't be certain because she was picked up running wild near one of the radioactive areas a number of years ago and we never did manage to trace her parentage. She was trained at another unit, but you can be sure there was a change in her, er, etiquette. Underneath, I daresay, there is nomad yet, but she's quite competent."
It was hard to imagine that such,a polished product was forest-born, even though he had been through it himsel "Do you really get all your -people from-"
"From the real world? Very nearly, Sos. I was a sword bearer myself, thirty years ago."
"A sworder? You?"
"I'll assume that your astonishment is complimentar Yes, I fought in the circle. You see-"
"I have it, Dr. Jones,"-the intercom said. "S.O.L.- Woul you like me to read it off?"
"Please."
"Sol - adopted code name for mutilated foundling testes transplant, insulin therapy, comprehensive manual training, discharged from San Francisco orphanage Bi 0' Do you want the details on that, Dr. Jones?"
"No thanks. That will do nicely, Miss Smith." He n turned to Sos. "That may not be entirely clear to you, seems - your friend was an orphan. There was some trouble I remember, about fifteen years ago on the west coast an well, we had to pick up the pieces. Families wiped out children tortured-this type of thing will happen occasionally when you're dealing with primitives. Your Sol was castrated at the age of five and left to bleed to death. well, he was one of the ones we happened to catch in time. A transplant operation took care of the testosterone and insulin shock therapy helped eradicate the traumatic memories, but, well, there's only in much we can do. Evidently he wasn't suited to intellectual stimulation, you were, so he received manual instead. From what you told me, it was exceptionally effective. He seems to have adjusted well."
"Yes." Sos was beginning to understand things about Sol that had baffled him before. Orphaned at a vulner
able age by tribal savagery, he would naturally strive to protect himself most efficiently and to abolish all men and all tribes that might pose a personal threat. Raised in an orphanage he would seek friendship-and not know how to recogse it or what to do with it. And he would want a family his own, that he would protect fanatically. How much more precious a child-to the man who could never father one!
Couple this background with a physical dexterity an endurance amounting to genius, and there was-Sol.
"Why do you do all this?" Sos asked. "I mean, building hostels and stocking them, training children, marking off the badlands, projecting television programs. You get no thanks for it. You know what they call you."
"Those who desire nonproductive danger and glory are welcome to it," Jones said. "Some of us prefer to live safer, more useful lives. It's all a matter of temperament, and that can change with age."
"But you could have it all for yourselves! If-if you did not feed and clothe the warriors, they would perish."
"That's good enough reason to continue service, then, don't you think?"
Sos shook his head. "You aren't answering my question."
"I can't answer it. In time you will answer it for yourself. Then perhaps you will join us. Meanwhile, we're always ready to help in whatever capacity we are able."
"How can you help a man who wants a weapon when he has sworn to carry none, and who loves a woman who is pledged to another man?"
Jones smiled again. "Forgive me, Sos, if these problems appear transistory to me. If you look at it objectively, I think you'll see that there are alternatives."
"Other women, you mean? I know that 'Miss' you put on your receptionist's name means she is looking for a husband, but I just don't find it in me to be reasonable in quite that way. I was willing to give any girl a fair trial by the bracelet, just as I gave any man fair battle in that circle, but somehow all my preferences have been shaped to Sola's image. And she loves me, too."
Battle Circle 1 - Sos the Rope Page 8
