Above, the greater battle—the shock of hurrying clouds close-ranked against each other, the shriek and whistle of the wind, the down-descending sweat of combat. Below, the lesser battle, with smitten steel for lightning, and hard-won breaths for wind and thunder, and rage as fierce, and monstrous, and unheeding, as any that smote the moor-face raw from yellow east to smouldering, ruddy west.
"I have thee, Wayne!" yelled Nicholas, as he cut down the other's guard and aimed at his left side.
"Nay," answered Wayne, and leaped aside so swiftly that the stroke scarce drew blood.
A keener flash ripped up the belly of the sky as they fell to again, a nearer harshness crackled in the thunder's throat; but naught served to quench the fury of the onset. Like men from the Sky-God's loins they fought, and their faces glowed and dripped.
But Wayne was forcing the battle now, and step by step the Lean Man was falling back for weariness. Harder and harder he pressed on him; there was a moment's pauseless whirr of cut and parry, and it was done. Shameless Wayne, seeing his chance, sprang up on tip-toe and lifted his blade high for the last bone-splittering stroke that is dear to a swordsman's heart as life itself.
And then a strange thing chanced, and a terrible. As his sword was half-way on the upward sweep, Wayne saw, through a blinding lightning-flash, the Lean Man's blade shrink crumpling into a twisted rope of steel and the Lean Man's arm fall like a stone to his side. He checked himself, with a strain that nigh wrenched the muscles of his back in sunder, and lowered his weapon, and cursed like one gone mad because the sky had opened to rob him of his blow.
"Your tale is told, Lean Ratcliffe," he said. "Had the storm so few marks for sport that it must needs rob me in the nick of vengeance?"
The Lean Man tried to move his stricken arm, and his face showed ghostly-grey through the rain sheets while he mowed and mumbled at his impotence. But the old light shone quenchless in his weasel eyes, as he slid his left hand toward his belt, and clutched his dagger, and stumbled forward with the point aimed true for the other's breast. But Wayne had never taken his eyes from him and he warded the stroke in time.
"'Tis an old device of your folk, and one I know," cried the younger man. "Your game is played out, lean thief of Wildwater—God pity me that I lack your own strength to kill a stricken man."
"Curse thee, curse thee!" groaned Nicholas. "Is that not an old Wayne device likewise? Ay, and a mean device, when we would liefer take steel at your hands than quarter. Kill me, thou fool, least it be said I begged quarter of a Wayne."