Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 64: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

64 BRIAN CLEEVE were watching from the windows. The only woman in the street was Fran. We moved into the middle of the ring, each with a blackthorn and the knowledge that only one of us was going to be walking when the fight was over. We could hear each other’s breathing and the small, soft scuffle of our shoes as we shifted our feet. _ He was looking very confident, because as I’ve told you I’m not a big man, and I have a limp. But because of those things I’d needed to learn how to fight with my brain as well as my hands. And also, I was fighting for the one thing I cared about on earth. He was just fighting because he had to. We moved round, slowly at first and then faster, swaying our bodies almost like a ritual, like dancers instead of fighters. But that was to get the feel of the ground and each other. And then suddenly he broke the rhythm, jumping zigzag, once left, once right, and both times forward, his stick swinging in a short, hooking circle towards my head. I shifted my grip, one hand up and one down along the length of my own stick, breaking the force of his blow with it and then jabbing at his face with the point. It broke one of his teeth, and some of the men watching hissed as they saw the blood. The hiss distracted me for a fraction of a second and in that instant he caught me off guard. I saw his stick coming, low and sweeping at my bad knee, and 1 knew that if it hit me I was finished. I was off balance to jump, and I couldn’t parry, the way I was still holding my stick. All I could do was sink down and take the weight of his blow on my hip. It struck like a log falling, and I thought that I was finished after all, that I couldn’t straighten again. My hip felt as if it was broken, and I saw his stick lifting over my head, black and heavy against the blue of the sky. But he lifted too high, waited a shade too long. I think he glanced round the ring for admira- tion. And when the stick came down I was ready. I moved sideways, and it hit the ground beside me almost hard enough to splinter it, and in the same-instant I hit his ankle, once, twice, fast and sure; not looking to anyone for admiration, but only intent on breaking him; _ breaking him as he had broken Fran. He cried out and stumbled, and I hit him on the side of the knee and then the elbow so that he dropped his stick and flung up his hands. I hit him on his yellow, dazzling, sun-bright head, and across the small of his back, and he fell down on the ground, covering his head with his arms, kneeling slowly as if he was going to say his prayers. comiclooks.comn