The Rose upon the Rood of Time (Dark Spiral Book 1)

by Segoy Sands

  “I’m a true seeker,” Bu said, flipping backwards from his upside down position on the bed to land on his feet, throwing shadow punches in Hog’s face. “And found the virgin truth in half the unwed lasses in Ochre. The other half were kind enough to show me the adulterated truth, and ’twas well worth the sore bones. But we can’t all be lady’s men.”

  “Or lady men,” Hog scoffed.

  Bu ignored him. “Same rules, Dill, in the ring as in the bed. Keep moving, keep them guessing, keep your guard up, throw feints, don’t get fancy, and don’t be obvious. It’s a mental game. They’ll be scared of your size, so they’ll try to get you with speed. Well, you know all this. Remember that time you flattened Hog?”

  “Oh, yeah, and the time I knocked him cold, in like what, ten seconds?” Hog farted loudly as he did warm-up squats.

  “One thing never hurts. Say a prayer to Essger,” Bu added, securing his skylla belt. “In the ring, you can feel the links of chance rearranging themselves all around you. Time slows down. It cnuchen does. What you experience, and what people see, those are totally different things. Demigods are watching, for sure. They love rings, arenas, contests. Essger, above all. He’s got his eye on the klaast, and when time slows down, sure enough you’ll sense him. Queer feeling. He’ll rearrange the chain of time as the mood strikes him.”

  It was a short walk back to the roundhouse. In the dark it looked compact and contracted, like a great dark ominous toad, though a hundred men could crowd inside, half of them smoking. It was made of heavy cedar slabs, no windows, with a tarred door, which was shut. Everyone who entered had to knock and be admitted by the Eye, an old timer who could turn you away without reason. The Eye had to turn away at least one man each match, but if by chance he turned away four, someone would die in the fight. Essger watched through the Eye.

  “You,” the Eye looked at Hog. “You don’t go in.”

  “You,” the Eye looked at Bu. “You don’t go in.”

  Hog went pale, and Bu shivered like he’d walked over his own grave. No one spoke back to the Eye. No one asked the reason. They stopped dead at the door.

  The Eye looked at Dillan, “You go in.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bu mumbled. “Tell us about it later.”

  Hog gave Dillan an encouraging look.

  “Go in, or don’t,” the Eye said.

  He stepped inside hastily, without his friends. Suddenly, he felt alone. He expected to see two clearly segregated groups of Aegle and Darad fighters, congregating, strategizing. Instead, he saw a smoky premises with a circle-pit smaller than he’d remembered, with higher walls. Most would be watching from a slight elevation, in the second tier. It looked sinister.

  Men were milling about, many of them smoking, some of them drinking. Some younger fellows, the lyme-haired or soon to be lyme-haired sort he expected to be fighting, were in evidence, but they looked bored and shiftless. Plenty of the men in the crowd couldn’t be mannerbund. They weren’t in any kind of shape. Most were pate-headed, pot-bellied, and dressed in the nearest thing to work clothes. He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He knew about the betting and the liquor. That was the excuse his father always gave for trying not to take him to matches. Anyway, he knew the mannerbund didn’t run on alms. And if they paid no Guild tax for the spirits they sold, well, maybe the Eye had served more than the will of Essger.

  As he walked the spiral ramp that rose three tiers above the pit, he found he could actually pick out small knots of bunders. Some were younger, some a bit older, probably in different classes. They didn’t seem to mingle. And, some were clearly in Darad green rather than Aegle blue. If he totally screwed this up with Aegle tonight, he wondered, could he go join Darad? Probably. But they’d remember, wouldn’t they?

  He saw Maccha Walder standing with what could only be the other Maccha, huge as himself, downing tall dark beers. Walder was twitching his finger at him, calling him over. He seemed animated, even convivial. He probably wanted to know where Hog and Bu were, to have a few more belly laughs. Could he have tipped off the Eye?

  “Well,” Walder said, “I was just telling Merton here about you, the Redwolf’s pup, no less! We’re going to see what you’re made of t’night, eh lad? Test your mettle. Or did ya already do that last night, eh lad?” He offered him a frothy stoup. “Have another to man up?”

  “Not beforehand, I think,” Dillan apologized.

  The other Maccha, Merton, laughed. “Won’t make a bit of difference.” Was his tone disparaging or avuncular? “Come, let me see your eyes, lad.” Heavy-jawed, with a salt and pepper beard and deep crowsfeet around piercing black eyes, Merton studied him and reached a verdict, “Ah, well, it’s his mother more than his father, Walder.”

  “I thought so too, but he’s got some of Rufus’s size.”

  “You know her?” Dillan asked.

  “We do, that,” Merton nodded. “We knew her in the Sei Sí, when she was on Ogden’s farm with Serle. And here you are, the second of her boys to come to the bund. Takes nerve. But where’s Cole now?”

  “In the Cora,” Dillan said.

  “In the Cora,” Merton echoed. “And your father off with Dagda. You going to do the same?” he asked bluntly.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, cautiously.

  “But they’ll pull you in, once we get you trained.”

  “They will,” Walder nodded.

  “People blame your mother,” Merton said, looking him deliberately in the eye. “You know that?”

  “I don’t,” he answered, truthfully.

  “Well, you weren’t there,” Merton allowed. “Your father practically started the Sei Sí, telling us the Lady was with us, helping us through that shy, witless girl Serle brought home. We all guessed she must have been at Naarwa, but he was blinded.”

  “She wasn’t in the Spiral,” Dillan corrected him.

  Merton didn’t seem to hear. “And maybe she didn’t know what she was doing,” he went on. “Maybe she had no control. But the fact remains that ever since then the Dunlans have been good at pulling trusting folk into danger, with no proper plan. Is there a word for that?” he turned to Walder. “What do you call it?”

  “Disaster,” Walder said.

  “Personally, I was more frightened of Serle at first,” Merton went on. “Wench had a tongue like a cat o’ nine tails. But later we all learned the sort of training your mother had.” He stepped closer and set a large hand on Dillan’s shoulder so that he could feel his breath. “We’ll have none of that here.”

  He looked from Merton to Walder, confused.

  Walder quaffed his beer, then commented, “She promised more than she delivered.”

  “She tried to deliver. I’ll give her that,” Merton watched Dillan’s face and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  He wasn’t sure what Merton was suggesting, but he suddenly felt offended and humiliated.

  “Looks a bit Rufus now, eh?” he said.

  “Jealous man, Rufus,” Walder agreed.

  They studied him some more, as if gauging the effects of their work.

  “Let him be,” Walder said.

  Merton’s eyes were stony. “Everyone’s gotta learn sometime.”

  Dillan heard the bitter words pouring from his mouth before he knew he was thinking them, “I’m not Cole. I don’t want to be like him. I already know my parents made mistakes.”

  “Well,” Walder nodded, “ours did too, lad. Ours did too. Bring it to the ring.”

  They turned their attention to goings on down below, over the rail. The first bout was about to begin, between two tall youths from Aegle and Darad. Dillan didn’t recognize either of them, but they weren’t much older than he was. Distraught and unbalanced, he decided to get a closer look. The two Macchas were baiting him. He told himself they were drunk, but there’d been deliberate intent. What did they want? Shouldering down the ramp, heedless of who he jostled, he headed for the arcade, the first tier with the best view of the match feet below. The Aegle Maor
, Hamlet, held up a thin plate of copper, on which the emblems of the mannerbund were carved, striking it three times with a hooked stick. It rang out with a weirdly resonant metallic cry, almost human, like wind through glass tubes.

  The two greenhorns looked evenly matched, but Dillan challenged himself to see more clearly. He needed to be able to pinpoint exactly who was going to win, and why, before a single move was made. The signs were undoubtedly there in those two fighters slowly circling toward each other. He needed to be able to read them. It looked like Walder and Merton had pitted them against each other by design, the two were so alike. But the one in green had the edge, whatever Bu and Hog would say about Darad. There was confidence in his movements, not arrogance or bravado. He was comfortable in his body.

  After exchanging quick jabs that slid off each other’s oiled forearms and shoulders, the two slags moved in close. These were novice matches. Hand to hand, no weapons. The boundaries of the pit were trench dug, so that it was easy to see when someone stepped out of the circle. There were four ways to lose. Step outside the ring, hit the opponent above the chest, get knocked cold, or be declared unfit to continue by the Maor. The dyed girdles the fighters wore, where skylla blades could be holstered, protected the groin and vital organs, but otherwise they were naked. There was, in fact, a fifth way to lose. Death.

  The one in blue had the rhythm wrong, despite a slight height and strength advantage. The Darad let the Aegle try to grapple him, but smoothly slipped out of it to put him in a hold. The Maor moved in to break it up, but the Darad did it again, then again. In frustration, the Aegle struck him a glancing blow across the head, and that was it. The Maor pronounced the Darad, whose name was Leith, the winner, and called for a challenger. Dillan’s heart began to beat faster, and he almost called out a challenge, when someone nearby beat him to it, a handsome dark-haired fellow who shot him a grin that said, “See you soon enough.” Instead of walking down the ramp, he hopped neatly over the railing, earning an angry bark from Hamlet. But from the second tier came a shout of encouragement, apparently from an older man or two who already had bets on this greenie.

  “Ewen!” One shouted. “For three!”

  Others shouted back what seemed to be either bets or jeers. Black-haired Ewen was smiling at Leith, and already there was a sharp tang of excitement in the air. What had seemed a shiftless crowd when Dillan first entered the roundhouse now seemed a group of intensely astute observers. A man in a long brown coat next to him, reeking of arachuan, muttered, “Nice the Darad had a moment.” Dillan was nervous. If Ewen beat Leith, and the next Darad after, then he’d either have to challenge him fast or wait for the next bhuachtain, whenever and wherever that would be. Unthinkable. To watch and not even get a chance to fight. Already, the Maor was holding up the gong, producing that disquieting keening sound.

  In the moments before they clashed, Dillan scrambled to weigh one against the other. They didn’t give him long, but enough to see that Ewen had more dance in his feet and more stillness in his bearing. A dangerous combination. He closed in immediately, maintaining just the length of his reach, no less, no more, from Leith. Every time Leith shifted the wrong way, at the wrong moment, another blow landed, no big swings. Quick, compact, easy. Leith took them well, moved with them, and threw counter-strikes. The right ones, but they didn’t connect. The men along the railings were watching in tense silence, waiting for a decisive misstep. It came. Leith was not as off balance as he seemed. He had long legs and had been creating an opening for an untelegraphed kick. If he hadn’t kicked the first opponent, clearly he hadn’t wanted anyone to read him. Dillan had seen plenty of kicking in Frye’s ring. He was considered a big guy, and big guys tended to be slow on the kick, so Frye had forced him to fight kick bouts. Every day, in the barn, first thing in the morning after chores, then again in the evening, he did drills.

  But this was notches higher. The kick Leith threw would have propelled him straight out the ring. It didn’t touch Ewen, though, who took the opening to shove Leith clear back against the wall. The bout was over. The Maor called for another challenger, and while Dillan stood there stunned, two or three Darads shouted at once.

  “Phelan,” came Merton’s voice from the upper tier.

  A Maccha did have the right to call a fighter, especially when more than one asked for the bout. Right off, Dillan could see why he chose Phelan. Flattened nose, missing teeth, scars on his arms and torso. Chronicles of a hundred scrapes and brawls. Medium build, but long reach, and legs that looked spring-triggered. If Ewen was young buck pretty, Phelan was wild dog ugly. Not a young kid like Ewen, either. Seen four or five black winters too many to be a greenie. Dillan watch him stroll past, through the press down from the upper tier, on into the pit.

  Again, the Maor held up the gong and elicited its eery squall. The fight had begun before the weird ululations even faded. Phelan did exactly what you shouldn’t do, planted himself there and let Ewen come right in on him. But when he blocked each blow in a flurry of careless ease, the assurance in Ewen’s eyes melted. His attack turned into a hurried defense, against an opponent whose reach was longer and whose style was strange, cycling through unorthodox combinations of punches and kicks at a staggered off-rhythm. One or two blows, a thigh kick and rib jab, had already struck and stung. Forced back, he was already dancing perilously close to the perimeter line. Sensing that, Phelan doubled the speed of his feints and jabs.

  Ewen kept backing off, sideways along the perimeter, blocking and evading, but Phelan wouldn’t let him take a step in toward center ring. The men at the railings in their dark smoking clothes grew intensely silent, as the hotheaded lads circled along the ring’s edge. Ewen began to trade blows, recklessly, pressed by the wiry Darad’s incursive reach. Things were moving so fast and the men beside him leaning so far in that Dillan couldn’t quite keep track, though hissing exhalations told him Phelan was landing blows. Suddenly it was over. Ewen was standing outside the ring, in one of the four corners of the square, red welts all over his body. The corner he’d been forced into was marked with a mouse, one of the most mortifying, and such would be his name until he met Phelan in the ring again and bested him. Aegle Mouse.

  Hamlet declared Phelan the winner and asked for another challenger. No one spoke, though Dillan was acutely aware that he was one of the very few greenies in the room who might respond. He was hoping for someone else to speak up, so that he could search for Phelan’s weaknesses, or at least face him tired. Again, Hamlet called, “Challenger.”

  Walder was looking down at him, smiling, from the upper tier. The man had insulted his parents, insinuated sordid things. Dillan wanted to hit someone and he didn’t mind getting badly beaten, either. Anything was better than listening to that sort of talk. As he moved through the press to the pit mouth, he told himself there’d be no shame in losing to this sort of ringer, not after Ewen, in all of his confidence, had been schooled. All he had to do was not make a complete fool of himself. The next bhuachtain would be with a different bund, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the likes of this one again. He had no time to think, though. The sound of the gong was already quivering through his bones, and Phelan was rolling in, aggressive and elusive.

  This wasn’t like Frye’s ring at all. It was the same size, and the rules were the same, but the feeling was different, more bloodthirsty, as if the old gods really were watching. Bu told him things slowed down, but, no, they were moving at a speed he couldn’t have imagined. Maybe he should have prayed to Essger after all, but now all he could do was concentrate on not getting drawn into the squash-nosed Darad’s off-beat. That, too, was harder than he’d have ever anticipated. He couldn’t establish his own rhythm. Though their reaches were even, and he had the advantage in mass, his deficit in experience was suddenly tangible, like a house missing a wall. He felt his body clenching up in expectation of a blow and knew that, just like he’d done with Ewen, Phelan had managed to put him on the defensive. And, just like Ewen, he found himself being
driven back toward the perimeter line. He was going to lose the same way. He brought up his arms to try to cover up from kicks and jabs, inviting his opponent to land blows that hadn’t even been thrown yet. He was making a fool of himself.

  Phelan was smiling, toying with his fear, making subtle feints just to watch him overreact and show everyone how afraid he was of pain. He wanted him to flinch and cringe and then, publicly ashamed, try to do something daring to save face. Dillan wasn’t going to be baited. Focusing single-mindedly on Phelan and the cues of his intent, he hit back when hit, trusting in speed and awareness, not brute strength.

  Twice they had near equal exchanges, but then he fell for a quick feint, and took a strike to the kidney that felt like a dull blade. He tasted blood and, squeezing his eyes shut, saw countless ciphers swarming into a smoky presence. Not just one but hundreds, thousands, of presences, and they were all inside of him, unperturbed, watchful, quick. The alarming pain turned into warm energy. He realized that he was inside the other fighter’s patterns, but it was all an illusion, like cobwebs mistaken for cords. He was making it hard when it was all so easy. He was smoother than his adversary, more confident, more far-thinking and far-seeing.

  The voices from the men above, the faces watching all around the ring, Phelan’s desperate movements as he staggered back and back: it was all numbers, dissipated yet distinct. The buzz of the crowd was the buzz of darkness in the rug shop. There was fear in Phelan’s eyes, panic that drove him in under one of Dillan’s punches to crack him murderously hard in the ribs with an elbow. His ribs should have broken, but the numbers were there, crowding, surging, like a host of ants, neutralizing the impact. He felt again what he’d tried to tell himself he didn’t feel, by the mud pool when Bu and Hog were giving him a mud mask. A blood lust with no human center. It engulfed, devoured, obliterated him.