The Salariki were getting excited.  This was superb entertainment, an engagement such as they had never hoped to see—­alien against alien.  The rising murmur of their voices was like the growl of a hunting beast.

Groft smiled and the pleasure that expression displayed was neither Terran—­nor human.  But then the clan leader was not either, Dane reminded himself.

“Four of these warriors are clan-bound,” he said.  “But the others may produce a champion—­”

Dane looked along the line of his comrades—­Ali, Rip, Weeks and himself had just been ruled out.  That left Jellico, Van Rycke, Karl Kosti, the giant jetman whose strength they had to rely upon before, Stotz the Engineer, Medic Tau and Steen Wilcox.  If it were strength alone he would have chosen Kosti, but the big man was not too quick a thinker—­

Jellico got to his feet, the embodiment of a star lane fighting man.  In the flickering light the scar on his cheek seemed to ripple.  “Who’s your champion?” he asked Kallee.

The Eysie Cargo-master was grinning.  He was confident he had pushed them into a position from which they could not extricate themselves.

“You accept challenge?” he countered.

Jellico merely repeated his question and Kallee beckoned forward one of his men.

The Eysie who stepped up was no match for Kosti.  He was a slender, almost wand-slim young man, whose pleased smirk said that he, too, was about to put something over on the notorious Free Traders.  Jellico studied him for a couple of long seconds during which the hum of Salariki voices was the threatening buzz of a disturbed wasps’ nest.  There was no way out of this—­to refuse conflict was to lose all they had won with the clansmen.  And they did not doubt that Kallee had, in some way, triggered the scales against them.

Jellico made the best of it.  “We accept challenge,” his voice was level.  “We, being guesting in Groft’s holding, will fight after the manner of the Salariki who are proven warriors—­” He paused as roars of pleased acknowledgment arose around the board.

“Therefore let us follow the custom of warriors and take up the net and the knife—­”

Was there a shade of dismay on Kallee’s face?

“And the time?” Groft leaned forward to ask—­but his satisfaction at such a fine ending for his feast was apparent.  This would be talked over by every Sargolian for many storm seasons to come!

Jellico glanced up at the sky.  “Say an hour after dawn, chieftain.  With your leave, we shall confer concerning a champion.”

“My council room is yours,” Groft signed for a liege man to guide them.

Chapter VII

BARRING ACCIDENT

The morning winds rustled through the grass forest and, closer to hand, it pulled at the cloaks of the Salariki.  Clan nobles sat on stools, lesser folk squatted on the trampled stubble of the cleared ground outside the stockade.  In their many colored splendor the drab tunics of the Terrans were a blot of darkness at either end of the makeshift arena which had been marked out for them.