The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  But there he is, down in the lobby ahead of me. The morning the bulls run, Tonmoya serves rolls and coffee on the house. It is not what I call breakfast, but I come from Dubyook. It is what they eat in the morning in Astilia. In Ecnarf, too, come to that.

  Ett and Kime are also down there. Ett seems cheerful, the way she always does. Kime looks as if he wishes he could tuck into a big plate of eggs and hash browns. Dunliners also believe in real breakfasts.

  I am pouring down my coffee, trying to wake up, when Obert Ohn goes over to Lady Ett and says, “I want to tell you—”

  “Whatever it is, it will wait till after the bulls run,” she breaks in.

  “No, it won’t.”

  “Yes, it will.” Ett Brashli seldom sounds impatient. When Obert starts whining, though, he can make the statue of Thimras fidget. Whatever he wants to tell Ett, she does not want to hear it.

  Even Obert gets the message. “All right,” he says, and then again, “All right. You’ll see soon enough anyway.”

  He is saying all this in front of Kime Kelbam, of course. Kime puts up with Lady Ett better than anyone else in the world. Better than I do—I will tell you that. Either he really is not a jealous man or he hides it mighty well. He must know Ett went off for that fling with Obert. But all he says now is “Let’s finish eating and go to the run.”

  Near the gathering place stand blue-painted acolytes of Thimras with brushes and buckets. They whitewash the runners from head to foot. I close my eyes to keep the stuff from getting in them. The whitewash shows Thimras we are pure. It also drips on the cobbles from our arms and legs and snouts and tails. The street is all white close by the buckets, and splattered less and less thickly as we move farther away.

  We are close to the holding pens near the train station. We will run ahead of the bulls and with the bulls all the way to the arena. You are supposed to feel the god’s might when you run with them. What I feel waiting for the handlers to open the pens is that I am an idiot. I thought the same thing last year, too.

  When I came back from the war, I swore up and down I would never put myself in danger on purpose again. Danger finds you whether you look for it or not. Why look for it, then? The question seems better and better as the time gets closer and closer.

  I cannot see the temple of Thimras from where I stand. Other buildings are in the way. But a bell rings when sunlight touches the temple. The handlers open the gates then. Out come the bulls. They charge down the lane with the plywood walls toward the arena.

  The bell sounds. The note is surprisingly clear and sweet. I cannot hear the gates open. I am not close enough to them for that. But I hear the thunder when the bulls rush out. Everyone in Amblona must hear it, and feel it through the soles of his feet like an earthquake.

  A bull weighs five tons or so. I do not know how many of them they turn loose at once, but it must be dozens. No wonder the ground shakes when they begin to run.

  They round a corner a quarter of a mile behind us. “Here they come!” someone shouts in Astilian. I have never heard words less needed. Seeing them is our signal to start running, too.

  Bulls grazing in a field, even bulls pacing in a pen, seem smaller than bulls on the loose. When they are rushing straight at you, you feel in your belly how big they are. Each one will go thirty feet from his beak to the tip of his tail. That is three times as long as a man is tall. I mean a man standing up straight to reach something high. I do not mean the usual kind of man, with his torso leaning forward and his tail stuck out in back to balance him.

  I run with everybody else. The bulls gain. I hear them gaining over the noise of the running whitewashed people. Even with our head start, we will not outdistance them. Bulls always run faster than you think they can. And outrunning them is not the point of the ritual anyhow.

  Lady Ett and Kime and Obert and I stick close together. We pull ahead of some people. Others pull ahead of us. Some bulls also run faster than others. They are not shoulder to shoulder and frill to frill when they start catching up with us. The street has room for bulls and people both. Not a lot of room, but room. That is the point of the ritual, or part of it.

  “Thimras!” a woman behind me yells. She is running alongside a bull. She reaches out and slaps its flank with a whitewashed hand. That sound can be nothing else. I am sure of it through all the din. What you do while you run next to a beast that may kill you is also part of the point of the ritual.

  The first bulls pound past my friends and me. If one of us gets in the way, or if a bull lowers its great head and hooks with a horn … I try not to think about that. The bulls’ smell is half-musky, half-grassy. Smell it once up close and you never forget it. Nothing else comes close.

  I reach over to touch a bull on the side. I do not slap it the way the woman did, but I touch it. Just in front of me, Ett Brashli does slap it. She lets out a whoop a moment later. Like me, Kime only touches the bull. Obert Ohn keeps running beside me. His face is set and harsh.

  Up ahead, a runner suddenly turns and springs up onto a bull’s snout. He grabs one of the horns above its eyes with each hand. The bull does not like that any better than I would. It tosses its head. The runner is waiting for that, though. He flips up and over the bull’s frill and lands on its back. Then he pulls a feather from its crest, slides to the ground, and starts running again.

  Lady Ett whoops once more. I almost whoop myself. That took nerve and skill. It reminds me of the ancient frescoes they have found on the island of Erket. And, for a man who follows Thimras, what could be grander than to pluck a bullfeather in the running at Amblona?

  I turn my head to say as much to Obert. But I cannot, because he has sprinted out ahead of us. I did not know he had such strength in his legs. While I was thinking my thoughts about the bull-vaulter, he must have been thinking his.

  When he is far enough out in front, he turns on a bull the way the other man did. I can read his mind, poor sap. If he makes his vault, he will impress Ett. She will see what a brave fellow he is. Then she will drop Kime Kelbam and take up with him some more.

  “No, Obert! No!” I shout. Like so many smart-seeming schemes, this one has not a prayer of coming off. Lady Ett does not work that way. I ought to know.

  Besides, the vaulter will have practiced hundreds or thousands of times with a nice, tame steer. He is not just showing off for a woman he wants. He knows what he is doing.

  I have no idea when Obert Ohn was last near a bull. I do not know whether he was ever near a bull before. He tries to jump up onto this beast’s snout, the way the vaulter did. One hand gets a grip. The other slips. Instead of jumping up, Obert slips to the cobbles.

  “Ett!” he wails in despair, the instant before the bull’s left front foot comes down on him. I can hear him break. I hope it all ends fast for him. In case it does not, the bull’s left hind foot smashes him, too.

  Ett Brashli shrieks, once. But all we can do is keep running. Hardly a year goes by in Amblona when people do not get trampled or gored.

  We run past what is left of Obert Ohn. Most of him is only a red smear on the street. Some of the rest still twitches a little. People are harder to kill all at once than you would think. That is sometimes a good thing. About as often, though, getting it over with comes as a release.

  A man presses himself against the plywood barrier. Both hands clutch at his lower leg. In spite of that, blood pours down over the whitewash on his scales and puddles under his feet. He is gored. I wonder how he got away before a bull stepped on him.

  “Horrible!” Ett says. “This is horrible!” If you hear her voice but you cannot make out her words, you will guess she has called it thrilling.

  Another bull thuds past us. I can reach out to touch it, too, but I do not. Once is enough. Once was once too often for Obert Ohn. So many people who try so hard to do something bold, something wonderful, wind up squashed on the cobblestones. Doing something like that is harder than it looks. Otherwise, everyone would be bold and wonderful all the damn time.


  Just running along is plenty bold, as far as I am concerned. I want to get to the arena. I want to get off the course. I want a brandy, and then another brandy, and then another brandy after that. Then I want to start drinking.

  I feel as if I have been running forever. In fact, I have been running for about twenty minutes. I am not in the shape I should be. I am not nearly in the shape Obert was. But I am in better shape than he is now, or ever will be.

  A last turn. The arena looms ahead. It is a great limestone bowl of a building. It looks as if it has been sitting right there for hundreds of years. It looks that way because it has. People on the other side of the ocean cannot hope to understand what a place like that means. Nothing in Dubyook has earned the right to look so old.

  At the arena, there are people-sized gaps in the barrier. It is not plywood there. It is stone. Lady Ett ducks through a gap. Kime follows. I am right behind them. The gaps are too small for bulls. They pound on to the pens where they will wait to fight.

  “Move away!” a blue-painted acolyte calls to us in Astilian. “Move away so others can get through.”

  Ett and Kime do not speak the language. Panting, I herd them down the alley. “Well,” I say, “now you’ve run with the bulls in Amblona. How do you like it?”

  Ett’s look says she thought I was cold-blooded, but not so cold-blooded as that. Kime says, “It’s a good thing to have done once.” I nod. It is a better answer than I expected.

  People keep squeezing through the gaps. On the other side of the barrier, handlers with long goads persuade the bulls to go where they want them to. I understand how the bulls feel. My conscience pricks at me like the point on the end of one of those goads.

  “I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” I say.

  “Why not? You can get drunk there,” Ett says. She knows me too well. She knows that is what I want to do most.

  “They’ll stuff what’s left of Obert in a sack and bring him back there,” I answer. “And then they’ll ask me what to do next.”

  “Quite,” Kime says. “That’s what you get for being his countryman. This far from Dubyook, you might as well have hatched from the same clutch. The Astilians will think you did.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say.

  * * *

  And that is how things work out. “I am very sorry, sir, but we know nothing of how you deal with death in Dubyook,” Tonmoya says. Yes, he is apologetic as hell, but that does me no good. He is telling me I am stuck with it, as if I cannot see as much for myself.

  “He’s here. He died because he wanted to join your ritual. Give him the kind of funeral you’d give one of your own. He’d like that,” I say. Whether or not Obert would like it, I neither know nor care. All I know is, he is not going to argue with me.

  Tonmoya bows. Astilians are a formal folk. “As you say, sir. But how shall we pay for the rites?”

  “Let’s see what he’s got in his room. That will cover some of it.”

  “Do you have the right to take it?”

  “The right? Of course not,” I say frankly. “But nobody here will complain if I do, which is all that counts. If we’re still short, I’ll kick in some myself. It’s the least I can do.” It is also the most I can do. I go on, “Maybe Lady Ett and Kime can add a little, too.”

  Tonmoya looks grave. “I would have to doubt it, sir. The gentleman asked me to lend him a hundred sepetas yesterday morning.”

  “Oh.” I leave it there. Anything more would be too much. Kime Kelbam is broke a lot of the time. When he has cash, he is the most generous fellow you would ever want to see. That is not the smallest reason he is broke so often.

  The hotelkeeper takes a key off a hook. “Let us go see what the poor dead gentleman has.” He invites me along as if I hatched in the same sandbank as Obert. What an awful thought!

  I would rather find another dirty, hairy mammal on my sink than go through a dead man’s things. Thanks to the war, I have done it before. I never thought to do it again in peacetime. Just because you do not think of something does not mean it cannot happen to you.

  Obert Ohn has more cash than I figured. I knew he had some. He never lived like a poor expatriate. But he brought a nice chunk to Astilia—almost enough to pay for his own last rites. I chip in the rest, the way I said I would. “The crematorium will be satisfied,” Tonmoya tells me. Chances are he will also keep a bit for himself. He is a good hotelkeeper, but he is a hotelkeeper all the same.

  And I would much rather find another dirty, hairy mammal on my sink than get grilled by an Astilian captain of police. Captain Sargia questions me and Ett and Kime about Obert and the bull as soon as we have cleaned off our whitewash. “The death of a foreigner requires an official investigation,” he says.

  To make things even better, I have to translate for the two Dunliners. Captain Sargia speaks only Astilian. We talk about what Obert did. We try not to talk about why he did it.

  At last, Captain Sargia closes his notebook. “Death by misadventure,” he declares. “It is quite plain. Put a fool with a bull and soon you have only a bull.” He says that as if it is a proverb. If it is not, it should be. Sighing, he continues, “I am sorry your holiday was spoiled. You may go on with it, though.” He heaves himself out of his chair—he has not missed many meals—and leaves us alone.

  I go on with my holiday in the hotel bar. Now I can drink. Sooner or later, I will have to let Obert Ohn’s kin know what has happened to him. Later will do better than sooner, or so I think as I get outside of some brandy.

  I do not drink alone. Lady Ett and Kime sit next to me. They are also busy getting tight. It is that kind of afternoon. You may think we are holding a wake for Obert. More likely, we are holding a wake for ourselves, and for the parts of us that have died up till now. We have not finished the job, but we are on our way.

  Whatever we are doing, we do it up brown. “I can’t feel the tip of my tail,” Ett says after a while.

  “Piker!” Kime laughs at her. “I can’t feel the tip of my snout.” He turns toward me. “How about it, Baek? What can’t you feel?”

  “Me? I can’t feel anything.”

  He thinks that is funny as the demons. I only wish I did.

  After a while, we go from the bar to the restaurant. It is better to put down some ballast before you start drinking. Just because it is better does not mean you always do it. We will pay come morning. Morning lies on the far side of tonight, though. We care nothing for it now.

  We order something. I do not remember what—too much brandy under the bridge. Whatever you get at Tonmoya’s hotel will be good.

  At a nearby table sit three bullfighters. They are new in town, here for the next part of the festival. I recognize two of them. I saw them in the arena last year. They have been in the trade a long time. The fellow who was gored during the running of the bulls will sport a big scar once he heals. The veterans both sport several scars like that. It is a hazard of their line of work.

  Their friend is much younger. After a bit, I realize he has to be Moremo, the bullfighter the handlers were talking about. He is not an apprentice anymore. He is a killer in his own right. Killer—that is what the Astilian word for bullfighter means.

  Killer or not, he is still a kid. I did not think he would be so young. Everything about coming here for the festival excites him. He is out to make a name for himself. He is also out to have a great time.

  The other two bullfighters watch him. Every so often, when he is not watching them, they smile small, sad smiles at each other. They remember when the world stretched out ahead of them, too, all wide and welcoming.

  I remember those days myself. They were not so very long ago. But once you leave them behind, you never get them back.

  I probably take longer than I should to see I am not the only one at our table noticing Moremo. So is Ett Brashli. And Moremo is noticing Ett. Well, if you are a man, you cannot help noticing Ett. She is older than he is, but not too old. Oh, no. Not too.

>   Sometimes you think you can get the wide, welcoming days back if you keep company with someone who still has them. By the look in her eye, Lady Ett is thinking that now. Not one who thinks such things has ever been right since the world hatched from its egg, but people do it all the time.

  And besides, Moremo is a handsome fellow. You can have a grand time with somebody like that for a little while. Till you need something more than a handsome face, anyhow. By the look in her eye, Ett is thinking about the grand time, not about the till you need something.

  She always does. I should know. Hell, I do know. Nobody knows better. And when it goes sour—and it will go sour—who will help her pick up the broken pieces? I will. I know that, too. It is not as if I have never done it before.

  When they are almost as good as their word about fixing you up almost as good as new, what else can you do?

  Copyright (C) 2013 by Harry Turtledove

  Art copyright (C) 2013 by Greg Ruth

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