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dazed, his reflexes dull and unresponsive. His
brain refused to think clearly.
Backward he was forced, far to his left, until he
was directly below the vulture on the sixth level.
In that moment, as the monkey held him in that
position, the vulture stepped down to the fifth
level.
Glancing up, Ronin began to perceive what was
happening. Ek had not fully explained the rules of
this game, just as he would not divulge the nature
of Ronin's forces. He realized now that the
monkey had deliberately forced him to retreat
toward the left side of the pyramid's face in order
to allow the vulture to descend. He knew now that
he had to battle each opponent while staying away
from each of their corresponding spaces on his
step, else they were permitted to move against
him simultaneously.
Feinting, he spun away from the monkey,
willing his body to work for him, concentrating on
clearing his mind of distractions. As he left the
vulture's space on his level, he was gratified to see
him freeze into immobility on the step just above
him.
DAI-SAN 63
But the monkey was intent on his attack once
more and he pressed forward, forcing Ronin down
a step onto the third level. He attempted a fierce
counterattack, but when even the complexfaes
failed against the monkey, he was certain that he
would not be able to prevail using merely his
sword. Somewhere lay the key. Where are my
forces?
He spun away from the oncoming staff, trying
desperately to think of the answer.
"You understand now the impossibility of
victory, the inevitability of defeat," called Ek from
far above, "for you battle not men but the last gods
of the Majapan!"
His weapon was useless for the moment; he
sheathed it. Sensing victory, the monkey lunged at
him. The staff whistled through the dark, electric
air and Ronin reached out for it. They struggled
for endless moments, linked by the wooden
weapon. The head of the staff was before his face
and abruptly, intuitively, he bent his knees, exerted
force. Muscles rippled along his mighty arms and
tendons stood out like corded rope down the sides
of his neck. He ground his teeth, grunted, finding
renewed strength within himself, transmitting it up
through his legs, muscles jumping with the strain,
into his torso. His body twisted one way and, as
the monkey began to compensate, to turn his body
with the expected force. Ronin let go, reversed the
momentum, whipping his shoulders and arms with
explosive power in the opposite direction.
If one operates only with the conscious, one sees
just what one wants to see. but the brain registers
everything the eye picks up and in Combat Raining
one learns to allow the subconscious to scan the
entirety of the vision field, unraveling the
frequently curious paths of victory by working out
clues not readily available to the conscious.
The staff was his.
When the weapon was in front of his face, he
had been concentrating on strength and balance
with his conscious mind. But his subconscious had
been working on survival and it had picked out
from the myriad images within his vision field, the
carven head of the monkey's weapon. He had been
mistaken when he had thought it an animal. Or
perhaps not. It was a man's head. The
subconscious had worked on the problem and had
found the solution.
He slammed the carved head into the monkey
mask with enormous force. It shattered into a
cloud of choking powder blossoming garishly into
the humid night. Kan's headless body sank to the
cold stone.
64 Eric ~ I`ustbader
"The first move is completed," Ek intoned
mechanically. "Man defeats monkey."
So there is a way, after all, thought Ronin as,
peripherally, he caught a movement from just
above and saw the vulture drop down to the
fourth level. He reached up with the staff and the
vulture, his arm ramrod stiff, cracked it in half.
Ronin threw it from him. The pieces spun in the
air, bouncing off the lowest step and onto the
stone paving before the Sacred Pyramid.
And a different counter to each opponent. But
how am I to know?
The vulture reached the third step.
Ronin had defeated the monkey but in so doing
he had lost a step and now was one level closer to
being driven off the face of the pyramid.
He concentrated on his second foe. The vulture
carried no weapon but his arms were thin,
brownish-yellow, scaled, and, as he lifted them,
Ronin saw that they ended in four-fingered claws
tipped with curved talons. These commenced to
beat the air in front of the vulture as it came at
him.
In a flurry, the talons flashed out and he jerked
aside, hearing the hissing of their close passage.
They came at him again, aiming for his cheek. He
ducked and the other set of talons sank into his
shoulder, ripping at his flesh. He groaned,
staggering. The step became narrow and his boot
went over the edge. He toppled over, taking the
clutching vulture with him onto the second level.
He scrabbled at his belt for his dirk as the claw
sank deeper into the muscles of his shoulder. At
last he pulled it free and the flickering light licked
along its blade as the edge scraped across the
scales of one of the vulture's arms, but the claw
refused to relinqulish its painful hold on him.
Again the talons twisted in his flesh and fire
seared through him. Gasping now, he hacked with
the point of the blade. A shrill call came from
within the vulture mask and he smelled an awful,
sickly sweet stench: mummified remains, Iying
within moldy corridors of the ages; cement and
limestone walls collapsing; rotting vegetation rising
thickly; fetid swamps burbling their liquid call....
Pain; the edge of the second step like a sword
blade on his back as the vulture bore its weight
down upon him. He was on his way down to the
first level!
"Moichi!" someone cried. "Moichi!"
Up his throat.
DAI-SAN 65
And he called out again.
A rustling, a thud of boot soles.
His body tipped precariously while the vulture
bore down even harder.
"Ah!"
A soft breeze behind him.
Talons gouged and he closed his mind against the
pain.
The vulture heaved at his body.
Going over.
No! No!
He never reached the first step. His back fetched
up against solid flesh, immobile, rocklike. He
braced himself against the unexpected bulwark,
feeling the hard thud of the heart against the
ridged muscles of his back. He gained strength,
backstopped. He reached up with both hands,
dropping his useless dirk and, screaming, wrenched
the convulsed claw from his shoulder.
He took a deep breath, his frame shuddering,
and as his blood oxygenated, he felt a surge of
adrenalin and now, lowering one wrist to act as a
fulcrum, he slammed his balled fist into the claw.
Sweat broke out along his forehead, rolled down
his heaving sides, along his tensed legs. The vulture
wailed as, with a splintering of bone and dry sinew,
the wrist snapped. Shards of hollow bone
punctured the rent skin and black blood ran in icy
rivulets from the maimed member.
The vulture mask vibrated as if with hate and
the good claw flailed, the questing talons making a
dark melody as they swept through the air. Then
the vulture leapt at him.
Gray blur blooming. deadly; heavy whiff of
discarded centuries. And, without further thought,
Ronin leapt upward and away.
On the third step, panting, he turned, looked
downward. The broken body of the vulture knelt
against the edifice of Moichi's body as if it had hit
a stone wall instead of
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