Roshan gave a short, sharp cry, like a wild beast. The next instant the curious hiss of two meeting blades sliding along each other was the only sound. It is a strange sound, which, to the listeners, the onlookers, seems to say "hush" to the whole world.
"Hush--hush--sh--sh."
Then, short and sharp as that cry of Roshan's, came another sound; the beaten, baffled clash when steel meets steel instead of flesh.
Roshan, with an inward curse, gripped his rapier closer. He had almost been disarmed,--disarmed in that first encounter. Strange that he should have forgotten his foe,--forgotten the deadly insistence of the master's blade, slack as a snake in curves, firm as a vice in grip. Then that almost invisible turn of the wrist which had so nearly done for him. He had forgotten--these, in years of meaner adversaries. He remembered them now, and would not forget again. And he had such things; ay! and more, in reserve for himself.
So had his master; in reserve for both of them, if needful. And the knowledge that it would be needful came to Ninian Bruce at the first touch of his adversary's sword; for there was that in it which told the old hand that the young one was a master's also.
"My pupil has improved," he said quietly, as, abandoning the attack, he parried Roshan's furious onslaught with scarcely a motion of the hand, held level to his heart.
That he could do. But the other must surely come in the end, since he was old, and Roshan young. If in the end, therefore, why not now? The sooner the better.
A minute after the sun was no longer in Pidar Narâyan's eyes. As he had said, they were fighting lengthwise to the ridge; and he drew back, choosing his ground, until under his feet he felt the dead marigolds, the withered basil leaves that lay about the upright stone,--that strange pedestal on which the star-shaped pyx stood as on an altar, glittering in the sun-rays.
He seemed to see it, to feel it, standing there between the world below and those faint, far peaks. And the eyes which had seen so much felt they need see no more.
"Sta' alerta, Signor!" he cried jibingly, flinging himself savagely forward. "And may the Lord have mercy on your soul," he added in a lower tone; as, in an attack which held in it all the wildness, the fire, the passion of his youth, he drove Roshan back a step,--one step down the faint slope on which he had counted.