The Birthgrave (17 page)

Some men came after me to a corner field.

“Clos and I are agreed. We really must watch for you in the arena. You know the custom—bare to the waist. I beg you don't hold the shield too close, sweetheart.”

I turned to Bellan, who was standing a little behind me, supervising the rub a groom was giving the blacks. He, I knew, had little time for these bystanders.

“Bellan,” I said, “would it be an insult to my host Raspar to put my knife between the ribs of these two?”

I saw, from the tail of my eye, they backed off, laughing a little nervously.

“Yes,” Bellan said. He grinned. “Alas.”

“Then I must not do it,” I said. Deliberately, I unlaced my shirt and pulled it back, leaving my breasts bare. The two men exclaimed, one flushed, embarrassed. I stood still a moment, while, flustered, they tried to call up something lecherously witty to say; then, unhurriedly, I laced the shirt again. “Now, gentlemen,” I said, “I have fulfilled my duties to my host. Perhaps next time you come to watch, you would wear less jewelry. It tends to catch the sun and flash in the eyes of the horses. In my eyes, too, when I take aim. I might misfire.”

I could tell they took my meaning. They turned and went off, one muttering, “Damned whoring tribal
bitch.”

Bellan chuckled. It was the first time he had come near to liking me.

“You've a word for yourself, I see,” he said, “but careful. Not good to make an enemy before a race.” The laugh went off his face. His left arm twitched.

* * *

Five days, four days. We were pummeled by the masseurs until our flesh rang. Dieted also—though for me, this had no use—lean foods, and little wine or beer. Even when the day was over, Darak would spend hours with the horses, talking to them, fondling them.

“You and they must be four parts of one whole,” Bellan said. “And you,” he said to me, “you are the black crow on the dead man's shoulder, jealous for what carries you.” I was handling by then the things they called “spiced” arrows—no longer the “plain” ones I had had that first time. You took what you wanted into the arena, it seemed, arrows spiced with anything you fancied. The most used were corded—a tail of thin rope fixed on the flight; shot in between hub and rim, they would tangle the spokes and foul the wheels. The wheels were a popular target. Hollow arrows, filled with small iron balls, would be fired through, snap on the spokes, and spill their dangerous cargo under the hooves of anything coming after. Yet these had their disadvantages—one would meet one's own artillery coming back. There were many other devices, all clever, but the trouble was to make these arrows fly. Now, in addition to allowing for the movement of one's own chariot, and the movement of the other chariot, one must allow for altered weight, cords that might slew the shaft sideways, or tangle on the bosses of the vehicle one rode—a thousand precautions and difficulties, and more.

Three days, two days. Bellan looked slyly at me.

“With one plain arrow,” he said, “and your sharp eye, you might try for the classic shot. Three times only is there a record of it in the Sagare.”

I asked him what it was.

“To slice a man's reins in two. The leather flies wide. The control of his team goes from his grasp. He's finished. Try it.”

Ten times around the turns I tried on one of the practice chariots behind us. But I could not make it happen. The reins flick, move, are never still. I was glad the elegant crowds had gone to the races at last, and were not there to see it.

* * *

One day more before that Day.

It had been almost easy till then to shut out fear. The grueling toil, the drum of advice always pounding in the ears, the cruel masseurs like two giant-people, the tiredness, the thick black swoon of sleep with dreams so deeply buried they were not recalled. But that day before the Day, they were easier with us. We rested late, and not till noon did we go out to the track to try the chariot that would carry us in the Sagare. Black metal, gleaming like the horses, set with red enamel suns and golden vine trails, a queen among chariots, and with the blacks between her scarlet shafts, that perfect unison only an artist of the stadium could have made. Bellan grinned at our praises. The chariot had come from Raspar's own workshops, after Bellan's design. In it, riding, fast, fast, we were one thing in all truth; even I, the sitting crow, was part of it. Bellan let us fly on the track, and did not call us back, allowing us for once the clear pure joy of it. But after that wine, the day turned bitter.

The blacks were sent to rest, and Darak and I lazed in the villa court among the lemon trees in pots, and the clambering vines. We played a dice game with Maggur, but were interrupted by Ellak.

Twelve of Darak's men had gone out into the town, started up a drunken brawl, half-killed a few brothel guards, and were now in the Warden's prisons. Darak's face went white. He stood up, sending the dice crashing, and hit Ellak violently across the face.

“You brainless clod, can't you keep order half a day without me on your back!”

Ellak was used to obeying, but also used to Darak's justice within the bandit creed. He shook himself, and his hand almost involuntarily slid toward his knife. At once Darak was on him, and the first blow knocked Ellak back against the wall. The second blow would have knocked him clear through it had not Maggur got Darak's shoulders. Darak's anger settled in the instant. He shook Maggur off, turned away from both of them, and poured himself wine, his knuckles pale on the stem of the cup.

“Get out,” he said.

They went.

He drained the cup, then slung it clattering across the court. His whole body twitched with tension. Looking at his face, always lean and hard, I saw abruptly how much thinner, how much harder it had become. Yes, he was gypsy and showman, but he would run to the horse, leap and ride. No time to doubt or hesitate. His training had been well enough for his skill and body, but what for his waiting, thinking mind?

“Darak,” I said.

He turned and looked at me, his eyes black and bright, with nothing behind them but the burning tension.

I went in, and he followed me. In the apartments Raspar had granted us, I drew off his clothes and mine, soothed his taut body with my lips and tongue and fingers, roused him, and drew him into me, and when the fire had drained from him, he lay quiet and still against me.

“Bellan would be hard on you,” he murmured.

“Bellan would know,” I said.

Soon he slept, and I held him gently in sleep, but now my mind would not be still.

Death, death. Black death, scarlet death. Death red as the vine of Ankurum. Lying so quiet, I longed to scream aloud. In a half-dream I saw those phantoms of my lost race crowding in to seize me, and Darak's hands, holding me from the lip of the precipice, slipped suddenly from mine and I was gone. Yet it was he that fell. I saw him broken far below. Darak, you are man, human man, wicked but not evil; if I lose you in that place of fire tomorrow I shall slip back into the dark. Let me remember, when you fall, I must take the reins and wind them around my neck so that the running horses snap it. No healing for that wounding, surely.

6

The rest of that day before the Day was hazy; lamplight, a little more wine than usual, the expansive jokes and laughter, the early sleep we were sent to.

It was perhaps an hour before dawn that I woke. I was weeping, and did not quite know why, but it was Darak who had woken me. He was tossing, struggling, crying out in his sleep, and when I touched him his skin was burning hot and running sweat.

“Darak,” I said.

I held him and tried to bring him back gently, but it was no use; I shook him and he would not wake, so I slapped him across the face, once, twice, three times until his eyes came open and he stared at me. At first he did not even see the room or me, only the thing in his mind still; then his eyes cleared.

“Ah, god,” he said. He sat up, then rose, flung open the window shutters, and stared out at the paling darkness. A fresh green smell blew upward from the farm, but the pores of his skin stiffened at the predawn chill.

“What, Darak?” I asked. “What?”

“The chariot and team,” he said. “It and I and they: one thing. Hill country, riding fast, good riding. And then the villages and the lake, that old damned place of childhood. I saw the cloud on the mountain, scarlet. There was a woman up behind me—not you—a woman. ‘The pillars of fire,' she said. And Makkatt split open. Red, red blood. Fire. Fire everywhere, the villages burning, the chariot burning, riding in the fire, and this woman behind me, cold as ice—”

He broke off. It was so still, only the slight rustle of the vine in a breeze, as it clung on the villa walls.

He was afraid, and he had kept it from himself. Now he knew. To know fear might well be death to this man on this Day. The old superstition and belief still rotten in him—oh, no, that woman was not I, yet also it was, for it was the She-One who rode behind him, with her white mask-face and scarlet robe, in the dreamland of terror.

Again the vine stirred and with it a memory, a thought.

I went to him and put my arm about him.

“Only a dream,” I said. “Dreams mean nothing. I should know that. Today they will be offering in the temples of the gods of Ankurum, those seven that ride with us. To gods of light, gods of battle, gods of archers, gods of horses. But we are riding for Ankurum, not Sigko, wearing the color of the vine. The goddess knows it.” He did not look at me. I said, “I am going to the temple of the vine-goddess to offer, and beg her protection for the honor of her red.”

“Go if you want,” he said. But he was leaning toward my thought. Superstition, which had harmed him, might heal its own wound.

“Come with me,” I said.

* * *

There had been no bad weather for the Games. This was a last warm smiling time that came before the rains. But this day was best of all. The dawn was straining green and rose over the rocky hills and the farmlands, a hundred shades of pink on the mountain sides. Birds sang furiously, ripe apples had fallen on the road over orchard walls. The ground was drenched in dew. We wore plain dark clothes; my hair was free and hanging down my back. We did not yet have the splendor of the arena on us.

The temple was very quiet, shadows around it. We went between the lacquered pillars into the gloom beyond.

And there was such a sense of peace there, not like the village temple this, with its close and spicy smell. There was only oldness here, and quietness, and calm. A long dark aisle, three square stone columns on each side, holding the roof up, and at the end a little marble stand, veined red, where the image stood, in front, an altar draped with a green and scarlet cloth. Strange, should the altar not be bare so the blood of sacrifice could be easily cleaned away? And there should be a drain in the floor to catch it. The narrow door behind the altar opened, and a priest came out. I did not think he saw us, for he carried an iron bowl to the altar, set it there, filled it with oil and lit the flame.

Without turning he said, “Be welcome. May I help you?”

“Yes,” I said, half-whispering in the silence, “we have come to offer to the goddess.”

He turned and beckoned us forward. He had an old man's face, but composed, kind, and oddly knowing. He it was, I thought, who had steeped this place in its feelings of peace.

“The goddess,” he said, smiling, “does not ask offerings.”

I was amazed. I had seen the temples of Ankurum, with their oxen, sheep, goats, and doves held captive in the sacred pens, ready to be brought for sacrifice, and fill the temple treasury even while they appeased the god.

“What then—?” I began.

“Look in her face and ask her what you want,” the priest said, “as you would ask a kind mother. If she can, she will grant what you ask.”

Darak said coldly, “Your goddess is too gentle for us. We want her help in the Sirkunix because we wear her red.”

The priest's smile did not change; his eyes darkened a little, that was all.

“If you pray for the death of another, she will not listen, it is true,” he said, “but if you pray for your safety, that would be a different matter.”

I nodded. The priest turned and gazed up at the image. Darak's eyes followed his, and mine also. She was like a little doll, white-robed, black-haired, the red vine around her brow. A little doll, and yet . . .

O gentle one,
I whispered in my mind,
I am cursed and should not speak to you, but be good to me for my heart is open. If one of us must die, let it be me and not this man
—
not so much for his sake, as for mine. If you exist, then you know me and my trouble. Take pity on us both and save him; make him brave, as he is, give him the victory he wants, and if death, let it be quick and clean. For both.

My eyes seemed to be on fire. I lowered them, and at that moment the priest spoke.

“She hears,” he said.

Curious, it seemed he knew it for a fact. Then abruptly he reached up and plucked two red leaves from the goddess' chaplet, and I saw for the first time it was real, not a painted thing.

He turned and took my hand, and put the leaves into it.

“One for each,” he said.

My fingers closed around them, cool and crisp on my palm. The priest nodded and went away again behind his narrow door.

I looked at Darak's face, and I saw all the darkness had gone out of it. So it had worked, then. Superstition against superstition; and yet I felt it too, the joy and release.

We went out and the day was warmer still. I put one vine leaf in his hand. He said nothing, but, as we walked back toward the farm, I knew he was eager, thinking of the chariot, the team, the roaring crowd, the rushing Straight, the glory, and the prize. I did not know what would come of it, but he was Darak again. And this, to him, was the Day of Victory.