The Birthgrave (19 page)

A trumpet sounded. The arena grooms ran out and stood waiting, one at the head, one at the rear of each chariot. The charioteers stripped their boots and cloaks and slung them down to the grooms; the archers did likewise. It was very quiet, but as I stripped my cloak a sound went up indeed—exclamations, some laughter, yells, and calls. Apparently not all Ankurum knew the scarlet chariot carried a female archer. The other archers along the line stared at me, one or two in open distaste. Essandar, sixth along and beside us, threw back his head and laughed ostentatiously.

I took my bow and slipped my shield onto my right arm, and a man's voice sailed clear down to me from the crowd.

“That's it—you guard those beauties well, girlie!”

This caused a riot of mirth. I turned to where the voice had come from and gave him the salute we had already accorded the Warden. They roared and clapped for that.

And then again the trumpet, and again the stillness. Great, great stillness.

The Warden rose, holding up the golden rod.

A moment—so hushed I heard a bird shrill high in the sky over the stadium.

Death? Now, death? Or what? Or
what?

The golden light blistered in the air. Poised.

Then fell.

8

The String is a deceiver as it lifts between its pulleys—you feel you must wait for it, but there is no need. The moment it cleared a certain height, the three blacks, trained to it, dropped down their heads and started off, Darak and I bowed low behind them. This is such an obvious trick it is surprising not all the charioteers had learned it. Essandar knew, Barl the Andumite, number four the black Sogothan, and seven the Renshan green. So the five of us leaped ahead, and the unstoppable wheel had begun to turn. There is no time then to fear, for yourself, or another.

Wide white thunder underfoot, the terraces an abstract of color rushing by on either side.

I felt the first arrow before I heard it. The Sogothan archer on my right—pretty boy, a young lynx. Neck and neck, the blacks as yet not at full stretch. It was for our bodywork, to loosen the plates. I got it on my shield before it struck. The boy's face seemed startled at my quickness, a pale blur now, pulling behind.

Ahead, the gates were rushing near, those four open mouths. Essandar had drawn to the left, across the Renshan, in a spurt of speed, crowding to get the first gate, the best place because it was nearest the Skora. The Renshan, pulling hard away to avoid collision, reared toward us, his team plunging and out of control. Darak, swerving in his turn to avoid them, took us fast as a whiplash across the Andumite's path. Dust clouded. I could not see back. I tossed an arrow off my shield, and in my turn fired blind along the Straight behind us and struck nothing. No time for more. The gate. Our swerve had cost us a lead—gray Lascallum was on our backs to the left, the Renshan, recovered, thrusting behind, while the Andumite had swung sideways and was headed toward the second gate. Essandar, beyond the chaos, could pick his gate with ease.

Damn them. The Lascallumite, the Renshan, and now the Sogothan were all trying for the third gate, as we were. The Lascallum bays were in front beside us, the other two a fraction behind. The gray archer was poised to take the turn, his bow slack. I drew a corded arrow from the pouch in our chariot's side, leaned over and down to them, and fired into their wheels. Light! The whirling scarlet serpent caught.

“Hold! Hold!” I heard Valdur scream, dragging on the bays' wide mouths. The wheel was fouled, tangled, and abruptly stopped, the other wheel, spinning furiously, dragged the chariot sideways. Spokes snapped. In a kind of slow motion, the chariot keeled, spun leftward, and pitched over. The Sogothan and the Renshan running behind, split to either side to avoid them, misjudging the gates, and pulled back to avoid collision. My back to Darak, my shield in front of me, I felt us take that terrible turn, free, between the oaken thews of the third opening, Barl of Andum a fraction ahead through the second, Essandar already beyond the first.

Three birds, free of earth to fly among water. Blue Cop-pain, yellow Andum, scarlet Sigko. Barl's team were running at full, very fast, close to Essandar now, but the grays were skittish, one could tell it. The blacks were going fast, but not yet at their limit. Darak was letting them out, bit by bit.

Through the gate behind rushed the Renshan and the Sogothan, and after them purple Neron—and last—white Solls. Lascallum was gone. I had heard the groan of the terraces, and now boys had pulled down the eighth marker with its gray-flighted arrows, and taken it away. Only seven now.

The water was a silver roar. Already the fume spat in our faces. The blacks lowered their heads in disgusted pride. We were a target now indeed, vulnerable; judging the water, with four behind us who did not need to think of it quite yet, only of us. A rain of arrows came flashing down from the Sogothan and the Renshan. Some struck the plates, and one loosened and dropped off, leaving the metal struts of the chariot bare. Already we were going between the water, on that second curving turn. It was a clean ride, perfectly judged. And now. The Renshan was first to follow—some distance behind. I fired high, very high, for it must go far. The arrow with its scarlet tail flew fast, and plummeted directly before the racing grays as they took the turn. Startled, unstable as I had assessed them, they flung up, prancing. The back wheels slid to the right, and they were all under the torrent of the third falling pillar. The horses neighed, floundered, and swung backward, forward, and then right around to threaten the Sogothan coming up behind. The black chariot swerved, and the black archer fired some shaft among the wheels that finished the green. I saw it jump and go over, the boy on the back scramble clear and race toward the safety of the Skora, across the track of the Neronian and Sollish teams.

But we were free again now, a chariot length behind Andum, both of us some way now behind Essandar. The boy archer in the back of the blue lounged, haughty, not bothering to aim at us. You could hear them from the terraces now, the frenzied shout, “Coppain! Coppain!” And under this the cry for Andum. There was another cry too, lower, less distinct—not for Sigko, but for a name: “Darros! Scarlet Darros!”

There was no bunching on this Straight; we took the gaping black nostrils of the Pillars of Air courteously, and swung around that first lap toward the fire.

Watch the Neronian. The speed was building there as it was with us, from slow, powerful engines. Already gaining on the Sogothan, who in turn gained on us. Acrid smoke was curdling around us. Difficult to see clearly. The horses coughed. Around the brink of the turn, and the three blazing torches flared at us. You may train a horse how you will, he will never like fire. Barl's grays tossed and teetered even in their speed, and the chariot dropped back a pace. Ahead, Essandar's bays were slowing slightly too. Yet the blacks gained. I heard Darak singing love words to them over the gush and crackle of the flames. Frightened droppings slid from the nervous grays in front. Barl glanced over his shoulder swiftly. He saw how it would be. We would have him cheek to jowl, the Sogothan, the Neronian too, perhaps, in a huddle beside us. In a frantic decision his long lash curled out over the grays, drawing blood. Startled out of terror, they leaped forward, to join Essandar in an impossible burst of speed. Through the blazing net of sparks the blue and yellow tore, emerging neck and neck. Barl had snatched his speed. He could not keep it.

Into the black smoke. In the cover of it, inches from the pillars, the Sogothan came beside us. The archer, grinning, fired at Darak, breaking one of the few laws of the Sagare. I deflected the arrow, took a second in my left arm. This was the boy with the pearls. First flames licked at us. He was clinging now to the rattling chariot. Stench of tar, of smoldering horse-hair. I ignored the shaft buried in me. I drew three plain arrows and dipped their flights in the leaping tongues. Not scarlet flights now but yellow. The Sogothan had veered away to take the other side beyond the middle pillar. They emerged first, ahead of us, and I aimed all three burning shafts after them. Luck. One fell short. The other two struck home in the axle—that wooden axle which caught so beautifully. Now it was blazing. Under the Sogothan's bare feet the metal floor plates snapped open and flames licked through. Along the shafts it went, caught reins and harness. So quick; now they too wore the scarlet of the vine. I did not look at them again, but broke the arrow shaft, leaving only the head in my arm. Not so bad. I put it from my mind.

We were around the turn, nearing the Warden's gallery. The first lap was over.

I looked up at the Skora. Three markers were gone now, gray, green, and black; and of the blue, yellow, purple, white, and scarlet flights one lap gone also.

We had set the pattern for the race, we five. Bellan had said this would be so. Essandar the leader, Barl on his neck, not for long, but with a skillful archer who kept Essandar's disdainful youth at a distance. Darak third, the unpredictable third of any race—the one who may leap on to win, or drop back to nothing. Just behind us, Neron, gaining on us, and then Solls, who seemed to have no race at all left, and to be running just for the exercise. In this formation, then, we took the second and third laps. They are the dead laps of the race, and often the fourth, too. It is the first, the fifth, and the sixth generally which are the kingpins of the game.

But the fourth lap brought a fluke of chance that broke the pattern once and for all. They do not remove the chariot wrecks from the stadium, only the men, or what is left of them. Thus the wrecks become yet further obstacles. Lascallum had fallen at the third gate of the Pillars of Earth, blocking it; there were now only three openings instead of four, and theoretically only two, because the fourth and farthest out gave such a loss of speed that every chariot that could avoided it. Andum and Coppain were still together, nearing the first and second openings when a stray metal plate from the wreck jolted the blue, and Andum swerved across it. At the same instant the yellow archer got a corded flight into Essandar's wheel. Essandar, a master of his team, pulled them back and held them, and the chariot kept upright while the blue archer slashed the foul from the spokes with the tiny knife allowed in the arena. But it was a pause. Andum was through the Skora gate and ahead, and Essandar, starting up again, found we had joined him, Neron at back.

Darak, at this stage, would have given Essandar the first opening, but Essandar stared back at us, and there was a look in his face, not for us but for Bellan. He would shame the broken charioteer further if his trained pupils fell. So he swung back, ignoring the advantageous first opening, and headed straight toward the second, where we, with Neron a fraction after us, were headed. Darak hauled on the reins; the blacks, unused to this roughness and unable to check, leaped upward in the air. The car went with them, up, and then down, crashing hard on the Straight. I thought I had broken my back against the bar, and all the chariot was broken with me, but somehow we were whole, flung to the side by our own impetus, yet upright. Essandar was through the gate, but Neron, striving to avoid both of us, had gone at full reach into the Lascallum wreck. It was a double tangle of metal, the grays kicking feebly in death throes, both charioteer and archer flung out onto the sand, the driver dead, the boy shrilly screaming in agony. As Darak righted us, I fired a shaft into his brain—no more could be done for him.

Through the Skora opening now, and fast, unevenly fast, for our impetus had been smashed. Yet we were one of the few to be stopped still in the Sirkunix, and live. The crowd, which had yelled its fascinated horror at our leap, now roared and bawled for us.

Solls behind us. Ahead—greatly ahead—Essandar, and before him, Barl, running too fast to cling to his lead. Already he was slowing. Through the water, by the pits of air, between the flames—and it was the flames that ended him. His team hated the fire. Each time they passed they hated it the more, and now, his lash merciless over them, they ran mad, careered around, and bolted back the way they had come. I saw Essandar's whip rear out and slash them as they passed him—the crowd saw too, and growled. We were at the Pillars of Air when that fire-crazy team ran at us.

Darak pulled aside, the screaming horses fled past, their eyes rolling, and then the wheel tipped back from under us. We had caught in the pit, would be over in a moment. I leaped forward beside Darak, throwing the little weight I had off the sinking wheel, and in the same instant Darak's lash—for the first and last time—flared on the black satin backs. Again they leaped forward, almost as if in flight. The wheel ground free and we were out. I glimpsed Darak's face in that second—white, but whiter than that white, the teeth grinning. The crowd was howling for us, and behind, the Andumite team had slowed trembling in the middle of the Straight, facing the wrong way, and grooms had run out to hasten them from the track.

Only Essandar now; Solls was not in it. And the blacks had their speed again, that second speed that a charioteer can love out of his team in the white bloody dust. Through the fire, past the still burning wreck of Sogotha, and around, across the String, and our four scarlet arrows taken down, along with Essandar's blue. Two more laps. He was half a length ahead but he would not keep it. The dust, which slows every wheel, would slow his too, and we had time to take him.

We took him—Earth, Water, and Air, and we were near. At the turn, the fire ahead, we were one and one, the blue and the scarlet.

The fires dim near the end of the Sagare as the tar is burned out. But there is a lot of smoke, more than ever, thick and black as a cloak. Under that cloak, as Sogotha would have done, the blue archer tried for us. But eyes water from smoke—his aim was nothing.

And then I heard Essandar—clear, so clear: “Do as the bitch did—dip your arrow, boy, and hit one of the horses.”

The archer laughed. It would be easy. The fire would burn straight down the shaft into the black hide, leaving no trace, only the flames. Had Darak heard? He seemed not to have done.