“Point!”
Max looked ruefully back at the crowd, and winced as they groaned.
Hippogryph was at him before he could finish getting up, and scythed his standing leg out from beneath him. “Arrgh!” Max screamed, and slammed into the ice again.
This time he stayed there for a minute, and glared up. Two points. Two points down, just like that. How embarrassing. Well. He was back up to his knees, and Hippogryph circled him.
He wobbled. Favored the left leg, and circled Hippogryph limping. Hippogryph grabbed one of his hands, whipped Max around until Max countergrabbed and stopped himself dead on the ice. The two men were frozen. Then Max inhaled powerfully, reached down between Hippogryph’s legs, and hoisted him completely off his feet and into the air, all two hundred and thirty pounds of him.
Then slammed him into the ice.
“Point!”
Hippogryph lay stunned, eyes unfocused, and started to get up. He thought better of it and stayed down. The two mermaids floated up to throw kisses at him through the ice.
Hippogryph stood up. They circled each other, Hippogryph more cautious now. He had learned something that he didn’t enjoy. Max slid a step forward, tried to steady himself, balanced on one foot And Hippogryph, unable to resist the opportunity, lunged in with a pushing hand.
Max spun, and banged bodies with him. He grabbed and threw, somersaulting in midair And landed back first, on top of Hippogryph. He felt the impact, heard the wind driven completely out of his opponent’s lungs.
Max carefully picked himself up. He had never touched the ice.
The snowman looked at him with an expression which could only have been incredulity. “Ah… point!”
Hippogryph stood. His face darkened poisonously, then cleared. He shook his head with regret. “Nice move,” he said. “We could have used you in Mexico City.”
Max laughed and extended a hand. Hippogryph snatched at it. Max calmly pulled his back, and watched Hippogryph’s feet dance on the ice as he fought desperately to regain balance.
Max leaned forward and pushed Hippogryph’s left shoulder with his forefinger. The smaller man’s feet flew out from underneath him, and he thundered into the ice.
The applause was even louder.
Max bent and untied the belt from his thigh, and turned back toward Eviane. Her mouth hung open slightly, and she stared at him, those beautiful green eyes as wide as saucers.
“My lady,” he said, holding the belt out. “I won this for you, and for you alone. It is to your pleasure, and in your name have I battled.”
He handed it to her, and she was still staring up at him, dazed. “And?”
“And…” She was standing very close to him. Very. “And I claim my reward,” he said, and bent to kiss her. Her lips brushed his. Her eyes, so clear and bright, clouded. With no warning at all, she turned and ran.
The others laughed as she disappeared. But Max had seen something in that moment, a glimpse of a different person. He wasn’t sure who or what it was he had seen, but it was nothing to laugh at or about.
Leaving the others behind, he ran out after her.
Max stood in a gentle snowfall, peering through the white for the woman who had fled the recent battleground.
“Eviane!” He called her name, heard his voice echoed by the low whine of the wind, reflected from far mountains. There were more mountains visible now, dotting what had earlier seemed an endless plain.
They were just barely visible in the drifting snow, despite the crispness of the air and the comparative clarity.
“Ow!” A lightly packed snowball hit him in the side of the head, causing more surprise than dismay. He whipped around.
She smiled at him, then ran. Prototypical woman-reaction, and he loved it.
The storm swallowed them both.
She ran, not quite fast enough to stay ahead of him. At the end of those short, sturdy legs, her feet kicked up brief blizzards of Dream Park snow, tossed them back at him. The sound of her giggle was intoxicating.
She winded, he didn’t. Max caught her by the wrist and she laughed, grabbed his wrist, and turned her back into him, clumsily trying to throw him over her shoulder. Failing, she broke away again, finally plopping down into the snow beneath a small overhang on the outer wall of the ice cave.
He sat next to her. The ridge overlooked a frozen sea. It didn’t stretch out indefinitely, though. Fog clouded it up at the far end, an endlessly breaking wave of fog that rolled and hovered and seemed to want to stay just exactly where it was.
Eviane was breathing hard. One thing about being Mr. Mountain: for all of his bulk, he was actually in decent condition.
“I didn’t know you were such a fighter,” Eviane said.
“Yeah, well, neither did I.”
She smiled shyly.
“Does that make a big difference?” he asked hesitantly.
“Always,” she said. She stared at that bank of fog as if it concealed answers to every important question. “Oh, girls say that they want strong sensitive men. When we can’t find both, we settle for strong.”
Some part of him resented that. “Evolution in action?”
She nodded. “Sure. Deep down inside, we all know that something like this could happen. That the civilization we’d spent so much time and money building up could all come toppling down. And if it did, what would get us through is strength.”
“Not just physical strength, though.” He was trying to get into her mind-set.
He expected this to be more entertaining than easy. She was too deep into the Game. He believed she was nice-crazy, harmless crazy. Maybe just lost in the fantasy a little more than most. Somehow the fight with Hippogryph had changed him in her eyes. Her admiration turned him on. Hell, he’d always wanted to be someone’s knight in shining armor.
Out on the horizon, distant winds shaped the fog, picked it up, and curled it like a gray, storm-tossed ocean. Eviane shuddered, and leaned almost imperceptibly closer.
“I’m afraid.” Her whisper was so soft it could almost have been a trick of the wind.
“Are you?”
He felt, rather than saw, her answering nod. “I don’t know what we’re going to face tomorrow. I know it’s important. I know that everyone is counting on me.” She paused, fumbling for correct phrasing. “Michelle is counting on me.”
“Michelle?”
No answer, just: “I’m afraid.”
Crazier than he’d realized? Yet it felt good to have her lean against him, and even better to slip his arm around her shoulder. At first he thought she would let it remain there, but she stood. “I think we should be heading back,” she said, as if there was something, spoken or unspoken, that had ruined the moment for both of them.
Max got to his feet. It was not love, but lack of love, that caused madness… and Max could not have told where he got that notion. In his mind other notions were equally powerful. Love cannot be forced. And We’re all in this to find help.
“I think I know what you mean, about being afraid,” he said. “I always get the jitters just before I go out to fight, even though it’s only scripted.”
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“You haven’t figured it out?”
“Figured what out?” They had begun walking slowly back to the ice cave. The ground had a snow-cone feel to it, crunching under every step.
“I’m Mr. Mountain. For the past four years I’ve been a professional wrestler.”
“Is that good?”
Bless you, child. “I don’t know. It’s honest farce, I guess. I guess there are maybe seven people who still believe it’s real. Even the grannies are in on the joke. We honestly work hard, and do the best show that we can. I guess it’s as good as I let it be.”
“So you make a living fake-fighting?”
“Yup. Three or four nights a week. It was fun at first, but lately
… ”
She stopped, leaning against the outer, crystalline wall of the cave. He could hear the others inside, hooting and calling to each other as they played games. “And now you’re tired of playing a role? Tired of playing that game?”