Two

with a bloody welt across his left temple.
Slade's grip would not let the turncoat fall. The tanker hit him again, still with the forearm and not a fist. Durotige's skull rang like an imploding vacuum-bottle. Slade thrust his opponent away to fall, the body liquid, the head staining the dust.
With a quick motion, Don Slade retrieved the nunchaku which had fallen with their owner. None of the onlookers had moved closer when the fight climaxed. The nearest faces, those of the Dyson men, gaped in amazement. To Slade's hormone-hopping glance, the men were little more than pale blurs on crimson blurs, the status they would retain until they moved toward him themselves.
The tanker gripped the base of a flail in either hand. He twisted the weapon against itself so that the three links of chain were taut. "Well?" said Slade. His voice echoed despite the size of the courtyard. "Who's next?"
Using torsion to do what no human muscles, not even his own, could do in a straight pull, Slade parted the flails and hurled them in opposite directions. One of them clacked above the door of the House.
"Bring that man to me," ordered a cold voice from the silence. Lights pinned Slade, though they were not really necessary in the present dusk.
Slade turned. Time had not robbed Beverly Dyson's voice of its familiarity, nor of the swelling rage that it fed in Slade's belly.
Councilor Dyson and a trio of liverymen had come from the Council Hall. To see the fight from that angle, the quartet had to walk around the truck grounded in the middle of the yard. Two of the retainers now flared handlights at Slade from ten meters away. Sidescatter showed that the third liveryman gripped a case. Not even the most ignorant could imagine the case held an information system and not a gun. Dyson himself was behind the lights and shrouded by their glare. He was a slim figure, as cool as his voice.
Slade's