Chapter 25

Okay, today was the day that I was to meet that woman in combat. Dammit, I wasn’t looking forward to it, mostly because I had never fought a woman to the death before now. What was I going to feel when I won and chopped off her head? There certainly was no point in wondering what I would feel like if I lost!

I was concerned about fighting this woman who had been such a terror on her home world. Her reputation from the encounters that had reached public attention was that she relied a lot on “dirty tricks!” This contest was supposed to be one which showed off the personal physical and mental attributes of the fighters. Of course, my Demon Bane with its magical lightning bolts may well have been pushing that condition pretty hard, the lightning bolts did not work until after I had made some sort of physical contact with my opponent.

Okay, I could go along with that if my opponent stuck to that interpretation of the rule, but I was sure that she was going to try to stretch the rules to allow something like fire balls or flasks of poison, or even bolts of lightning being cast on me. I could have gone for a full protection suit I guess, but I did not want to stretch the rules that far. After all, the real purpose of these duels was to amuse the Devil and keep him away from devilment on the surface of a planet. If I started stretching the rules, I was afraid that the Devil would become bored with me and go back to his previous amusements that had caused so much trouble on Isbardia and other worlds.

With that as my justification, I went directly to the most powerful being in the multiverse when it came to magic; namely, the Devil Himself. “Sir, I think that we are headed for trouble with the bout with the female. I am afraid that she will try some trick outside of what we are supposed to be demonstrating, so I would like your help in blocking that type of attack.”

“Very well, Jim. I will admit that I had not thought of that. What do you have in mind?”

“It seems to me that an appropriate counter measure would be for you to cast a spell on my buckler so that anything like a fire ball, a lightning stroke, or a flask of poison be stopped in mid path and reflected back toward toward the one doing the casting. Will you do that for me? That will do nothing to change the way I normally fight and certainly will not give me an unfair advantage during the duel.”

“Yes, I see what you mean, Jim, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Yes, I will do what you propose. I think that I will make it a permanent adjunct to your buckler. That way, you will always have the protection and never have to concern yourself about that situation again.”

“Thank you, Sir. That will do nicely. Now all I have to worry about is being killed by a conventional mundane weapon.” He laughed at that comment. I told Jean what the Devil had agreed to do, and she visibly relaxed. She may have a bit too much confidence in my fighting ability.

The Devil transported us and my opponent to the arena, and we got ready to fight. My opponent’s weapons consisted of a shaft about three feel long and having blades at each end. She also had a fighting knife at her belt. The blades on the ends of the wooden staff had an odd color, and I was willing to bet that the color shift was caused by a poison of some sort. Well, that was as much within the rules as was the lightning spell on my Demon Bane. I was glad that that I had made a permanent switch away from leather gloves to metal sheathed gauntlets.

Otherwise, her weapon was bound to leave minor scratches on my hands, and that would certainly transfer the poison to my blood stream. I relaxed with that observation because I figured that the major spell that the Devil had cast on me to make me live forever would be enough to fight that level of poisoning. On the other hand, a stab wound that had a deep penetration of my skin was bound to be fatal anyway.

We were ready at each end of the oval arena, and the starting bell sounded. I already held my Demon Bane in my right hand and my kubaton in my left. My buckler was attached to my left forearm in its usual position. I ran to the center of the arena and had to wait as my opponent walked slowly toward me. Uh-oh, that looked to me like the beginning of a psychological attack.

She was holding her staff with both hands as if she planned to use it as a kind of shield. That was okay as far as I was concerned because my Demon Bane club had enough mass to knock it out of my way should I make that kind of attack. Was she trying to tempt me into doing that? Dammit, I was about to over think everything she did instead of letting my fighting instinct carry me through this combat. That could be a big mistake on my part.

I opened the combat with a thrust of my Demon Bane at her chest about even with where her heart would be. She reacted immediately by knocking my blade to one side with her staff. Of course, I had counted on something like that from a fighter as experienced as she was, so I was ready with my kubaton and drove it as hard as I could into her gut.

Wow, there was a clank of metal on metal. She must be wearing armor much like I was, but under her tabard. From the sound, I figured that she must be wearing some sort of plate armor, so I was going to have to aim for some place away from her torso if I were going for a penetrating stab wound. That was going to complicate matters!

Fortunately, there looked to be a gap of about four inches between the lower edge of her torso armor and the upper edge of her thigh armor. Damn, now there was a clever psychological ploy! The gap was at her crotch, and she was not wearing any covering of any sort over her pussy. What man could resist not spending some time looking at that bare female tunnel of joy? Luckily for me, Jean showed me all of the pussy that I wanted to look at every night, so I was able to concentrate on the fight and not that hairless pussy staring me in the face, as it were.

Now I knew where I was going to try to stick the blade of my Demon Bane for its best effect. A jab in the pussy hole would be the perfect place to sheath my blade, and I was not talking about the one between my legs! A jab in that area followed by the automatic release of the lightning arc onto that moist skin and what it covered should provide the jolt needed for me to end this contest. All I had to do was to work out a way of doing that.

She had pulled back to her defensive stance and appeared not to do much attacking at this stage of the contest. It was as if she wanted to see what I could do with my Demon Bane before committing herself to much of an offense. I recognized that as a good strategy to use when all she wanted to do was to kill her foe, but that was not really what this fight was all about. We were here to amuse the Devil, not to earn a bit of gold by one of us killing the other one, and a sure thing kind of wager would be betting on having the Devil lose his patience quickly at the way she was directing our fight.

Okay, it was up to me to put some fire into this mess of a defensive battle, so I made a short swing at her left knee with the club segment of my Demon Bane. That seemed to catch her a little bit off guard, and my club smacked her smartly on the outside of the armor over her kneecap. Of course, that armor did not extend all of the way around her knee. If it had done so, it would have sorely restricted her movements, and that would be a fatal mistake in this sort of fight.

Anyway, she had obviously felt the force of the blow and staggered a bit as she fell back to escape whatever might by my followup move. That knee was going to hurt a while, so she was going to be favoring it for a few minutes. I hoped to get in a solid lick somewhere else before she could accomplish a full recovery in that knee.

Ha, now I could see a solid strategy for me to follow. If I could hit on the inside of either knee so that she spread her legs a little bit, I had a good chance of snapping my Demon Bane up in such a way that I could put a serious cut on her bare pussy. That could even be a killing blow if I could get a hit onto her skin, but that was going to depend somewhat on just how well my good luck was running on this day.

I was lucky in that I did not have to bend over very far to accomplish this maneuver because she was nearly as tall as me. Had I needed to bend over too much, I would have opened up several places for her to attack me, and I had no intention of doing that if I could help it.

As it was, she did test my reflexes by suddenly shifting her staff and poking me in the chest with one of the points of her staff. That might have been an effective move on her part if she had been able to slide the point on my splint cuirass, but the point got fouled in the folds of my tabard and would not slide. Had the point slid to the side, it might have found an opening into my armpit at the abutting, but not overlapping, juncture of my cuirass and the armor over my upper arm. There was a small piece of metal covering this joint, but it was only held by a couple of straps that might have slipped to the side and let her point through.

However, I had been expecting that maneuver, so I was able to twist out of the way as she followed through with her jab. Okay, that told me that my agility was going to play a role in this fight, so I had better pay attention to what she was doing and where she might favor her attacks.

Both of us had jumped back at the end of that meeting, and we were now going to have to close with each other again. She was using her right arm to direct her staff, so that was the place I chose to concentrate my initial attack. That was where my agility would come into play. I’m not quite sure why she had arranged her armor in the manner it was because there was an intermittent flash of bare wrist as her gauntlet was pulled away from her bracer as she moved certain ways. I wonder if she even knew that it was happening. If she did know about it, it had to be the opening for some sort of trap; if she didn’t know, then it could be a monumental goof on her part. Jean always checked me for that sort of thing before I entered the arena.

During this portion of the fight, I took the opportunity of my one major advantage over her. My Demon Bane had started out as a club, and I took that feature of the weapon to its logical function; namely, I took every chance I got to bang on whatever part of her I could safely reach. That pounding with the club, even if it was against steel plate armor, had to be very tiring for her if she were not used to it, and I was sure that she wasn’t.