by Leo Carew
Roper let out a slow breath. “Yes. That is what he wants.”
Pryce nodded, and cast a cool eye over the dog that would be his opposition. He looked back at Gogmagoc, that strange animosity naked between them. “Tell him I accept,” he said.
It was some way past noon, and that cold evening wind had begun to flow gently down the valley. The air was crisp, the sky spat coarse snow granules, and a crowd of Unhieru had begun to gather either side of the track. They seethed with malevolent energy, apparently kept in check only by Gogmagoc’s implacable aura. If Pryce lost, Roper doubted very much that it was just the sprinter who would pay with his life. He had to beat the hound.
Pryce used a stone to dig himself a pair of starting blocks. When he was ready, Gogmagoc would hurl the bone in his hand, now gnawed milky-white, as far as he could. Whichever seized it first, the Anakim or the hound, would be declared the victor.
Whether he was so adept at hiding his emotions that none now made it past his careless exterior, or whether Pryce simply did not exist beyond the moment he was in, the sprinter showed no signs of anxiety. He finished digging his starting blocks and then went still, wrapping himself in his cloak and standing like a pillar. Roper’s eyes were travelling along the track, taking in the light layer of snow over the rocks, its slight downhill slope, the hollow forty yards away where he thought the bone might come to rest.
Gogmagoc made a clicking noise and the hound skipped towards him, sitting at his feet, and alert to the long bone held low by his side. Pryce watched it too. He dropped the cloak from his shoulders and, refusing to be hurried, plodded to his starting blocks.
The dog was trembling with exuberance, dancing lightly on its feet as it waited for the bone to take flight. Pryce’s energy was a focused ray of sunlight, animating exactly as he directed. Everything was still but his legs, as he kicked them into his footholds. The Unhieru watched in silence, the only sound the rattle of graupel on stone, and the crunch as Pryce dug his foot into the second starting block. He tested his footholds, straining against them briefly before he knelt back to wipe his hands on his tunic. Gogmagoc was watching from beneath his brow ridge, waiting until Pryce was ready. Finally, the sprinter leaned forward into his starting position. There he froze: low and taught.
The Anakim had gathered together, arms over each other’s shoulders, watching their champion.
Gogmagoc drew back his arm.
The bone was catapulted forward, twirling through the air and, infinitely more explosive, Pryce blasted after it. Like a twisted rope, upon which more and more tension has been wrought until finally a strand snaps and unravels in a violent flurry, Pryce burst free, his boots smashing aside rock and snow to create small footholds on which he climbed upright. Each stride was small as he heaped force behind his frame, a slipstream of flying stones and earth spraying out in his wake and his long ponytail lashing behind him. His trajectory wobbled like some unstable celestial body, and then, as though he were no longer being pushed but pulled, his course straightened.
The hound’s athleticism was no match in those early heartbeats. Its claws skittered on the frozen rock, and half of each long stride was hurled away across the stone. Pryce lunged ahead and built his lead by yards, then feet, then inches as the hound began to unfold itself and near his speed. It stretched out across the ground, graceful and willowy. It stretched and pulled, stretched and pulled, and as it collected its own momentum, its claws stopped slipping. Dog and man reached equilibrium, man five yards ahead, just as the bone bounced and clattered, coming to rest some eighty yards from the start line.
The Unhieru had begun to howl: a noise like a mighty wind flooding the valley. For a moment, it looked as though Pryce, veins swollen, legs driving, arms pumping, and teeth bared, might hold his lead. Then the dog began to reel him in. Its shaggy coat strained and relaxed, entire body like a single immense spring, and it took half a yard back with each stride. It was nearly level with Pryce when the sprinter’s trajectory oscillated once more. He stepped, and his path veered across the dog’s, knocking into its shoulder. He upset the beast’s stride, it missed a landing, had to skip to stay upright, and Pryce was three yards clear again. The dog’s ears were near flat along its neck, its eyes wide and greedy as it streaked after him. The sprinter seemed to have found another rung of speed, and the dog was closing less quickly than before.
But close it did. Running further apart now so that Pryce could not swerve into it, the hound laboured closer, straining every muscle and ligament to draw level. The two figures were a shaking bundle of galloping momentum and the dog stretched half a length ahead. The slipstream behind Pryce seemed to intensify, his movements become more violent, and the dog could pull away no more. The bone was fifteen, ten, five yards distant. Pryce had begun to lean forward, the hound to slow, opening its jaws wide, and Pryce dived.
He had lost not a fragment of his speed as he crashed into the ground, arm outstretched towards the bone. The dog had slowed and bent its head, and both disappeared in a burst of grit and snow. The dog’s flank reappeared, tumbling over, Pryce rolling after it, and then both vanished into the filthy cloud once more. There was another heartbeat as the watchers leaned towards the scene, eyes wide, and then Pryce burst above the cloud, hurling something white and flashing up above his head.
The Anakim bellowed in triumph, raising clenched fists into the air and embracing as the bone came tumbling back to earth, where it was seized by the dog. The Unhieru fell silent, some making small gestures of frustration and beginning to turn away. Pryce, outline pale through the snow, wore a smile as rabid as Gogmagoc’s as he held his arms up to the sky and declaimed at the top of his voice: “I cannot lose! The Almighty loves me! I cannot lose!”
Tekoa was swearing over and over again, grinning and shaking his fist in Pryce’s direction. Aledas wore a small smile, the first Roper had seen from him, and nodded slowly at the celebrating sprinter. Only Vigtyr seemed unmoved. He was staring at Pryce, a look on his face that was so unexpected that Roper found it hard to place. Envy, perhaps?
Pryce began to make his way back towards them along the racetrack, holding one end of the bone and using it to tug the hound along with him. Roper advanced to greet him. Pryce dropped the bone, and they embraced. “Well done, my brother,” said Roper.
“That is a fast beast,” said Pryce. His face was covered in grime and the left side was one broad, bleeding scrape from his final dive for the bone. Tekoa embraced Pryce next, and Aledas wrung the sprinter’s hand and thumped his back. Roper heard giant footfalls and turned to see Gogmagoc a little way behind their group, standing with one of his wives, his face still indecipherable.
Roper advanced to meet him. “Now, Lord King,” he said, graciously, “we are allies.”
“No,” said Gogmagoc.
Roper froze. “No, what?”
“No,” Gogmagoc repeated flatly. “He cheated. He hit my dog. He would have lost.” By Gogmagoc’s side, his wife was making a soft rumbling noise, which Roper interpreted as laughter. She was about the same height as Aledas, the shortest of their party, but her breadth was of a different scale. Her body was a vast squat drum, and the root of each limb was as thick as Roper’s waist. She leered at the Anakim, who by now had realised what Gogmagoc was saying and turned towards him, the smiles falling from every face.
“He broke no rules you spoke of,” Roper replied firmly. “And a man against a dog is not a fair race anyway. We have satisfied every requirement you spoke of.”
“No,” said Gogmagoc simply. “I am not satisfied.” He waved an indifferent hand.
The Anakim were dismissed.
Roper continued to stare at Gogmagoc, but was shocked to hear small noises of relief uttered behind him. A hand touched his elbow, and he turned to see Tekoa standing next to him. “We should go, lord,” said Tekoa quietly, in Anakim. “We’ve done all we can, and now can leave with our lives. Frankly that is more than seemed likely. It’s time to go. These people will not be our allie
s.”
They began to back away, all except Pryce, who was looking at Roper.
The Black Lord had not moved. He turned back to Gogmagoc, meeting those brass eyes. A cluster of other Unhieru had begun to gather around their king and queen, gazing at the Anakim.
“No,” said Roper, in Saxon.
A silence came over the valley like the silent rearing of a wave forced to the surface, high and smooth above the sea. Roper’s jaw was set, his feet rooted to the earth and his eyes narrowed. He felt Pryce come to stand next to him. “No,” he said again. “We’re not going anywhere.” Quietly, the rest of his group came to stand with him.
Roper was furious. They had come here for an alliance, not to be intimidated by this frustrating power imbalance. With so many Unhieru, and so far from any kind of help, Roper had no way to enforce his own will. He had to abide by Gogmagoc’s whims, and the giant king was playing a different game to the Anakim. He had no interest in the alliance that Roper proposed. He merely wanted to be entertained. It was time to make Gogmagoc take them seriously. “Another challenge,” said Roper, spikily. “Your choice, Lord King. But we’re staying here.”
Roper felt his companions stiffen at his confrontational tone, and a tinge of that red flush suffused Gogmagoc’s ashen face. But his wife was still smiling poisonously. “Yes,” she said, almost cackling with malice. “Another challenge will be entertaining.”
“I agree,” said Roper. “What is your name, lady?”
“Gighath,” she replied. “I do not need yours, little river-man. Come,” she said, clutching Gogmagoc’s arm. “Another.”
“And if we win,” said Roper, “you will join us.”
Gogmagoc’s flush was fading a little. He seemed to be deliberating. Then he gave a jerk of his head, and a slight caress of Gighath’s head. “Tomorrow, then,” he said. The sun had disappeared below the rim of the valley and the wind was picking up. “You will have one more chance.” Gogmagoc turned away from them and stalked back to the bramble hedges.
“Come, then,” said Roper. This meant a night in the Unhieru encampment, but at least they still had a chance.
“Should we not sleep well away from the Unhieru?” Tekoa suggested.
“Oh no,” said Roper. “It is Gogmagoc who keeps them relatively ordered. We should stay close to him.”
They turned into the wind and followed the Unhieru up the valley. It was dark and the air swirled with snow when Aledas held up a sudden hand, gesturing up at the lip of the valley. Visible against the faint lightness of the sky behind was a bulky silhouette. Roper could at first hear nothing over the gale. Then, a forlorn call was emitted to the mountains. It faded down the valley, leaving silence but for the flooding wind. Then, very faintly, another voice replied from the dark beyond the valley.
“Saying goodnight,” said Roper.
9
A Flush of Red
It was a long night in the Unhieru camp. Roper’s company retired to one edge and attempted to sleep, but were kept awake by the monstrous shadows cavorting before the fire and flickering over the valley sides. Skins of what smelt like fermented milk were produced, the Unhieru drinking until the men started wrestling. Gifts were awarded to the winners; mostly Suthern-made tools, but occasionally sacks of earth with a seedling growing from the top. These appeared precious, and were placed carefully out of the way. The women sat by the sides, attending each other’s hair with combs made from notched ribs and talking in a constant rumble.
Sometime after midnight, the remaining Anakim horses were led into the circle, and dispatched far less cleanly than their predecessors. They were still alive as the maned giants began wrenching at their legs. The horse, near-raw, was eaten with nets of sour crab apples, fetched from the low stone storehouses that lined the valley.
Roper took the midnight watch and observed that there seemed to be two tiers of Unhieru men. Those who wrestled were huge, with arresting eyes of honeyed gold and massive shaggy manes. But there was another tier who did not engage in the fighting at all. They were smaller, leaner, brown-eyed, and their manes were barely larger than the women. While the maned men wrestled, the others sat around edgily, eyes flicking over the contest and some creeping closer to the piles of gifts accrued by each champion. When the fighters were at the height of their engagement, these others raided their stashes, then subtly retreated. The stolen gifts were then used to curry favour among the women. This led to the most shocking moment of the evening: more so even than the live butchery of the horses.
Roper sat on watch, his companions attempting to sleep behind him, and he trying to discern the rules of a wrestling bout. As far as he could tell, it was only contact with the eyes and groin that were considered unacceptable. Choking seemed positively encouraged. Beyond the contest, one of the smaller males approached a champion’s stash and attempted to remove one of the seedlings. He had hold of it and was beginning a retreat, when a hand suddenly seized his ankle. The owner had caught him in the act and dragged him, now screaming ferociously, back towards his pile. The maned Unhieru’s face had changed colour and for the first time Roper could read an expression there. It flushed a deep, furious red across its cheeks, down its neck and in a maroon flash across its chest, shocking compared with the pale skin of its torso. It was the same flush that had tinged Gogmagoc on occasion.
The flushing male knelt on his smaller kin, who was still yowling and thrashing. He could not escape, however, and lay pinned to the floor as his attacker reached a huge hand towards his eye, and began to dig into the socket with long, broken nails. He extracted one eye altogether, his victim beating thunderously and fruitlessly at his attacker’s chest. For the next eye, the flushing male lost the composure to remove it and set about merely flattening it with blows of his palm. The rules that had prevailed during the wrestling were revoked, for no one intervened. Roper observed Gogmagoc looking on, expressionless as ever.
The smaller male would never see again, but still his attacker was not done. Roper did not realise what was about to happen until, with bared teeth, the flushing male lunged for his groin. Abruptly, Roper looked away. A scream, agonised and high-pitched, filled the dark valley, and Roper wished the smaller male would lose consciousness or die, but just stop that panicked yowl. At his back, he found every one of his companions awake, staring in horror at the scene before them. “What happens in this valley, happens,” said Roper, calmly. “Try and sleep.”
The screaming faded away, its last echoes vanishing down the valley. When he looked back, Roper saw the attack had at last been stopped by a cluster of four women, who had risen from their grooming and pushed the enraged male away. His face and chest still bore that crimson flush and he continued trying to reach his prostrate opponent, who if not already dead, soon would be.
These were strange people. Their faces, so eerily beautiful until they smiled, seemed to encapsulate their behaviour. Adoration and savagery were directed at one another with equal intensity, a hair’s breadth separating the two. Madness seemed the default state, with the faculties of reason and restraint barely developed. And yet they clearly had close bonds, as Gogmagoc’s immediate reaction to the threat against his son, and his deference to Gighath’s wishes, had both shown. They barely had facial expressions beyond savage smiles, and the crimson flush Roper had just witnessed. And what was that feeling of terror that Gogmagoc seemed able to induce?
Watching the flushing male tear apart his own kin, Roper became terribly aware that he had kept his companions in this valley. They had had the chance to leave, but he had held them here, to try and barter with this deranged king and his brutal subjects.
Only when the Unhieru finally settled in the small hours of the morning, the fire burning low, and with it the dreadful shadows it cast on the valley walls, was Roper able to sleep. His pounding heart and the restless energy in his legs awoke him a little before the others in the morning. He pushed the feeling away and went to sit with Tekoa, who had assumed his post. The wind had died down
, and they observed the heaving pile of Unhieru flesh together. “Did you spot them giving each other apple trees?” said Tekoa.
“Is that what they were?”
Tekoa nodded. “That is all I have seen here. Apple trees. And apart from meat, that is the only food they have consumed. We should have brought more horses. It seems the only thing we have that they value.”
“True,” said Roper. “Do you have any more ideas? If we lose the final contest?”
“Ideas for what? To stop them eating us, or continue negotiations?”
“Well, I’d be interested in either.”
“I don’t know why I asked,” said Tekoa, waving a hand. “I’ve got nothing.”
“It will come when we need it,” said Roper.
Tekoa did not react for a time. “We may disagree whether it is wise to stay here, lord, but I am glad to be with you in this place. You have a gift under pressure.”
Roper shrugged. “It is Pryce to whom we owe our lives. We would all be dead without his actions in the cave yesterday.” Perhaps the sprinter had already been awake, or maybe he was roused by the sound of his name, but he rose at that moment and came to sit with them.
“Like poor Gilius,” said Tekoa. “He was a superb ranger. Superb.” The three sat in silence for a time. “If we ever escape this land, we’ll have a story or two to recount,” Tekoa said quietly. He turned to look at Pryce and recoiled a little at the misshapen scar tissue on the side of his head. It had once been his right ear, claimed by Uvoren’s servant Gosta. “Your ear is awful, Nephew. Did you sleep?”
Pryce raised a hand to touch the lumpen remains. “I slept,” he said. “But realised too late something had taken a shit right next to my head.”
“Who wouldn’t, given the chance?” said Tekoa.
Pryce ignored this, turning to examine the slumbering Unhieru. His movements always looked purposeful: there was no twitching or fidgeting, but even so he somehow boiled with energy. Roper could sense it, stirring just below the surface of this tempered spring of a man.