Physically the two men appeared perfectly matched and each was fighting for his life, but from the first it was apparent that the Black Odwar was the better swordsman, and Gahan knew that he had another and perhaps a greater advantage over his antagonist.  The latter was fighting for his life only, without the spur of chivalry or loyalty.  The Black Odwar had these to strengthen his arm, and besides these the knowledge of the thing that Gahan had whispered into the ears of his players before the game, and so he fought for what is more than life to the man of honor.

It was a duel that held those who witnessed it in spellbound silence.  The weaving blades gleamed in the brilliant sunlight, ringing to the parries of cut and thrust.  The barbaric harness of the duelists lent splendid color to the savage, martial scene.  The Orange Odwar, forced upon the defensive, was fighting madly for his life.  The Black, with cool and terrible efficiency, was forcing him steadily, step by step, into a corner of the square—­a position from which there could be no escape.  To abandon the square was to lose it to his opponent and win for himself ignoble and immediate death before the jeering populace.  Spurred on by the seeming hopelessness of his plight, the Orange Odwar burst into a sudden fury of offense that forced the Black back a half dozen steps, and then the sword of U-Dor’s piece leaped in and drew first blood, from the shoulder of his merciless opponent.  An ill-smothered cry of encouragement went up from U-Dor’s men; the Orange Odwar, encouraged by his single success, sought to bear down the Black by the rapidity of his attack.  There was a moment in which the swords moved with a rapidity that no man’s eye might follow, and then the Black Odwar made a lightning parry of a vicious thrust, leaned quickly forward into the opening he had effected, and drove his sword through the heart of the Orange Odwar—­to the hilt he drove it through the body of the Orange Odwar.

A shout arose from the stands, for wherever may have been the favor of the spectators, none there was who could say that it had not been a pretty fight, or that the better man had not won.  And from the Black players came a sigh of relief as they relaxed from the tension of the past moments.

I shall not weary you with the details of the game—­only the high features of it are necessary to your understanding of the outcome.  The fourth move after the victory of the Black Odwar found Gahan upon U-Dor’s fourth; an Orange Panthan was on the adjoining square diagonally to his right and the only opposing piece that could engage him other than U-Dor himself.