The City, or Nuevo Amsterdam; Vinki (or "Lizardfolk" in High Galactic’s lingua franca) District; Sol System; About mid-day; unknown timeline.

The ten foot staff sparked electricity from each end as I spun it in both hands.  My opponent, and obstacle on my quest to find another verser, stood a foot and half taller than my getting on toward six and a half feet tall, and at least a hundred fifty more pounds with much of that armor, and some of that spiked teeth and black talons.  He spun his staff in one hand, with his two opposable thumbs on each hand leading him easily into what some called ‘ice cream scoops’ and others ‘infinity symbols’ with his staff dipping and climbing in a steadily increasing whir.

I have some natural instinct for a quarterstaff, and on occasion I’ve wondered if I would be better off with one than a sword, but then I’ve put hundreds of years of practise into a sword.  And nothing says ’sit down and shut up’ like a sword point to your throat.  A staff might be lethal, but everyone always wants to test you, anyways.  Besides, ten feet is just too long.

So I shifted to using it as a spear.  I held it down near the far end, with my hands spread, and flicked it right and left to get a feel of its heft.  This must have been a signal, because suddenly my Vinki opponent, a giant lizardman, opened his form and slammed my spear head into the irregularly shaped squares of the flattened rocks that covered the square in which we fought.

A cheer in unison came up from the line of nineteen Vinki behind him, and it was closely followed by the rest of the Vinki gathered at the edge of the square.  Oh, yeah, Humans were not much loved in this part of town.  Even if I won, I’d be lucky to get out of here ambulatory.

I slipped my spear to the right since his pin had come from the right, and orbitted it up toward his face even as I leapt in what the Riordhan Tribe of Saltwater Bay had named the Salmon Leap.  I went up, and up, and whipped my spear point down aiming to bash it into his green-tinted, bone-armoured skull.

Instead, he rushed me, and so my spear came down behind him, and he barrelled into me as I came down.  My kick, he caught on his staff, and just absorbed it because he was aiming to do some serious hurting.  He smashed into me, and rushed me over the ground with my feet flailing in the air, and each second that went by, he slammed his staff to the right and then the left in a metronome of pain.  My ribs screamed, and my breath fled my lungs to leave black spots in my vision.

But I’ve fought in hundreds of battles, and so I thrust my improvised spear butt behind me, and it caught with a sudden jolt in the rocks.  And that was my first Reverse Pole Vault.  His forward motion flung me up as I clung to the stave, and  it was just enough to clear him, and drop on three points to the ground.

I rolled wildly to my left even as he rebounded off the wall of the square where the hateful green runes that I could not understand rested.  These runes were done in huge green swathes, and I could feel the hatred behind them.  I really wondered what caused this rage.  It might be unjust.  Often times fury is without decent or logical cause.  Unfortunately, the huge Vinki warrior had struck me as an honorable and brave being.  And that tended to leave Humans messing things up as a cause for the problems.

He raced at me, slapping his stave into the ground as I rolled, and rolled again, and yet again.  And then I slung my only weapon between his feet as he rushed me, and he paid the price for his huge size and speed.  He tripped, and fell with a huge oof more than a body length away.

I yanked his staff out of his hands, and stood back.  Hopefully this would be enough.  First blood to the Human, and honor is satisfied, and everyone can go home and eat some Alien Pumpkin Pie.

He bounced to his feet, and looked toward the staff.  Now ordinarily, I am ruthless, but there does come a time and a place for codes of honor.  If I wanted them to trust me, I was going to have to act honorably.  Which was a bit of a paradox.  I could be myself, and honest, and hard, or I could lie about being honorable by my actions, and be trusted.  I had talked myself into honesty, but by that time, he had my staff back.

He bowed, and I shrugged.

Then he began stalking me.  I retreated.  With his arms extra length and his ability to maneuver the staff with one hand, I was in deep trouble.  Not to mention that he was better at a staff than I was, and a lot stronger.

A sudden reverse, and his staff flung itself at my head.  I ducked, and it scored my shoulder which joined the symphony of pain as a flute to the basswinds of my ribs.  I repaid the favor, and rushed him.  He spun his staff back to recover horizontally, and I let my spear drop to almost the ground.

A sudden flicker of a carnivorous grin, and he dove to pin my not really spear as I hoped. With his blow scything through the air toward my spear, I had to rush the maneuver.  I kicked the middle of the would-be spear, and thus flung it up into his face.

But even as I leaped to close the distance and ram my improv spear into his nose, he bent backwards like a limbo dancer on steroids, and I went clean over his head.  He staggered rightways as I saw it, and turned the pinning blow into a roundhouse swing.

I tried to block it by raising my spear butt.  Unfortunately, he was just stronger and faster than I.  He caught the spear, and my upper arm, and snapped them both like tinder wood.  I was flung to the ground weeping in pain before I realized my reaction.

A bit of psi turned the pain into numbers in my head, and thus my brain cleared to see him standing fifteen feet away.  He nodded to my staff on the ground.  Great. So he was going to honorably kill me.

I started to speak, but hissing and rumbling from the gathered crowd stopped it.  Wonderful.  They had a tradition of once war started, one did not talk about one’s feelings. I bowed in acceptance of this tradition, and got unsteadily to my feet.

The staff was broken in two.  One half was three feet long, and the other half was seven feet long.  I took the shorter one, in my off hand, my left hand, and took the Hasso Ready Position, but one-handed.  My feet were spread, with my back right foot forming the top of the "T", and my left foot forming the prow of the ship that aimed at my enemy.  The kendo staff was tilted slightly back in my hands, and sweaty in my grip.  It no longer sparked electricity which would rob my blows of force.

Granted, one could do this stance, and these maneuvers with the left hand, since it provided the primary force, but without the right to guide my strikes….well, I’d be clumsy.

I put aside my fears, and turned my head to look over my left foot and into the eyes of my foe.  He raised his staff in some alien salute, and began to spin up.  I advanced with my left foot leading, and my right following behind so fast as to skim the ground.  At no moment was I off balance, although at no moment was I wholly balanced like a rock either.

He snapped his stave at my back, and I responded with a classic low block to the left.  I took it back toward my shoulder like a baseball player, a tentative one, and then snap-rotated it down with a twist of my wrist, past my left knee to jar into his stave.  I then recovered, and blocked the opposite move to the right which was easier.  By this time I was inside, and I feinted a Shin Choko-Giri, an overhead chop.  He grinned and raised his staff to catch mine, and hold it up there while he beat me in the ribs again.

Instead,  I retreated a step, and slammed a kick into the inside of his left knee.  He turned blue in the face, and staggered.  Wishing, I didn’t have to, I lunged in the Tsuki, and aimed for the middle of his face.  But my left hand betrayed me, and I merely hammered his cheekbone.  He fell, and I felt rather than saw the whipping spin of the stave that spun above him like a helicopter blade and arced toward my knees.  I leapt to clear it, and when I came back down, I did so on the end of my improvised sword.

I used it to shove myself backwards even as the splintered end too more damage, and then it broke clean through as his staff slammed into it.  I bounced back, and back again in flips as he stumbled to his feet, and then rushed me like a freight train.

The seven foot staff felt good in my hand, but not as good as my lamented ’sword’.  And it really felt bad when I rolled to my right wildly across the square just missing his death-dealing swing that scythed in front of my eyes.  He thundered on by, and I got to my feet with my right shoulder now out of joint as well.

This was turning out to be such a wonderful day.  Here under the yellow tent fabric which turned the air the color of spaghetti minus the sauce, I was going to get my teeth shoved down my throat.  If I had kept my sword, I could maybe have beaten him because I was quicker, a lot quicker.  He could do an elephant rush, and batter down everything in his path, but while he was faster in a head-long charge, in every other way, I was faster than him.

And then I knew.

I retreated.  When he lunged at me with his staff, I batted it aside even as I raced backwards on my heels.  At no time did I go in a straight line.  I curved in great arcs, and then suddenly jinked the other way.  And all the while I retreated.

This went on for several more minutes, until finally he stumbled, and went to one knee.  By now, I saw as his armor shook that it was natural bone armor.  He panted, and turned deep green in the face, and black along the edges of his four opposable thumbs.

And he waited.

This was the dangerous moment.

I could I knew outlast him.  If he waited until he had air, I would wait.  And my conditioning was superior to his.  Humans can run down deer, and run horses into the ground.  I’ve personally hunted elk in a Bronze Age world with nothing more than an axe, and the Walking Man told me how he had been chased across Stranning Dessert by men with four horses each.  And in the end, the horses were all dead, and the men had pursued him on foot until he had ambushed them in the night. 

But, I suspected that such a tactic would be regarded as dishonorable.  As Human.  So, I advanced.

My staff was above my head, and I came at him from my left.  When the blow came, I thought I was prepared.  It slammed into my ribs on the left side, and I drove my staff down across his armoured skull with all the force I had in me.

Then spitting out mouthfuls of blood, I collapsed to my knees and to my face on the hard stone.  Things went dark, and I wondered if I had gambled wrong.  If I had, I would wake in a new world.

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Instead, I woke in a room on a long pallet with yellow light filling the window.  A Vinki doctor was removing something metallic and glittering with lights from my skull.

Crouched at the foot of the bed was my foeman.

"Two weeks, Human."

"Thanks." I rasped out as a robot arm rotated over my bed, and squirted water into my parched tongue.  He had answered my most pressing question.

"Why?"

"I had to prove myself to you, fellow verser.  You didn’t trust Humans.  I had to prove myself trustworthy."

He snorted.

"Someone might say that you have a harder head than a Vinki."

"I’m called the Sledgehammer among my people.  I am feared by many."

"I am He That Roars in Silence."  He paused. "And this is ther first world that I’ve seen in my two hundred years that has Humans in it.  Its good to see that not all Humans are treacherous beasts."

"Ah." I said as I absorbed the allegation.  "I will have to investigate. I cannot accept the word of an alien over my own people without study."

"Do you ever accept the word of anyone without study? You are a Judge.  I, I am a Protector of my People."

And with that subtle threat, he bowed, and left me to gather my things, and go find out just what the other versers had been up to in this world that had me nearly killed by mistaken identity.  I was a little annoyed.  Just a little.