"There was a clear place close at hand, with a ring of black cedars round it, and room inside for stepping to and fro, if life and death required it. I threw off my furs, and so did he; and we stood against one another. "'Hold! Is this what you call fair duel? His sword is three inches longer than mine,' Rakhan shouted, and I saw that it was just, although I had not dreamed of it. I threw away my blade, and took Stepan's,--a common short weapon, stout and broad. "'One thing before I slay thee, Imar,' said Rakhan, with his bright Genoese on guard; and I saw that my sword was as nothing to his. 'Young man it was I who slew thy father; and now, by the same hand, thou shalt die.' "Before the words were finished, he advanced upon me, taking the coward's advantage, as he hoped, of striking me when stricken with that shock. But I just drew back for a moment; and then, when he made sure that he had me, and the point of his weapon flashed into my breast, up flew his steel, like the sparks of a flint, and my short strong blade rushed through his heart. He gave me one glare, and he lay between my feet, with a gurgle of blood spouting out upon the snow. "'Go home to the Devil that made thee,' I said, 'and commit adultery if thou canst, in hell!' "Then Stepan drew the lids upon those toadstool eyes, and gazed at me with terror; for there are times when the God that made us takes us out of His own knowledge with the passions Himself has placed in us. Stepan thought that I would have slain him too, for doing this ministry to the dead; but he did not understand me. I was quiet as a lamb, and would not have resisted if any one had seized that bloody sword and driven it through my own heart too. "'Is there any one among you men,' I asked, coming out into the road before them,--'any milk-brother of Prince Rakhan, who feels a desire to encounter me? I am weary now, and he will have fine chance. Or he can shoot at me, if he likes.' But they smoked their pipes, and hugged their knees together, and glanced at their horses, as if they loved their backs. How different it would have been with my own tribe! "In this stir I was forgetting about Usnik and his message. 'The first half is finished. Now for the second!' I shouted to Stepan from _Ardon's_ back, as I spurred him up the track by which the Ossets had descended. 'This must be the way to the Princess Oria.' For what else could I suppose after meeting Rakhan there?