“If you have sense, you’ll leave each other be in bed till this is over. A man drives from his head, his hands, his feet, and his loins. As for your woman, if you should chance to get her pregnant now, you’re lost. When do you bleed?” he added to me. “Not on the day of the race, I trust?” I told him I did not know. There seemed as yet to be no timing with me, as with other women. “I’ll get you a draft,” Bellan said. “It’ll dry you till the race is over. Women—” He made a gesture of disgust. “If you were not the genius you are with a bow, I’d never have let you near this thing.”
And so, on the tenth evening, the race six days away, we sat with Raspar, the dinner over. Candles flickered, licking light colors from the silver plates and onyx cups. Outside, crickets sounded in the warm dusk.
“You are what I guessed you to be,” Raspar said to Darak. “You held them through the fire. Mark you, they have been trained to look flame in the eye since they were foaled. I have seen men ride into the Sagare with horses unbroken to fire, and I shall see it again. A fool’s trick. It only ends one way.” He refilled his own and Darak’s cup. “I have entered your name already.”
Darak nodded.
“You ride as Darros of Sigko, not as my man. Best this way. Ankurum knows and marvels at your feat in bringing in your caravan. You’re a famous hero. There will be no mention of me, but I’ll have my men moving through the stadium, ready to explain who owns the three fine blacks. That should do it.” He smiled, his friendly, half-shuttered smile. “You said you would take scarlet as your color. That’s very good. No Ankurum man has dared this race, and scarlet is Ankurum’s device—from the vine. They’ll shout for you for that. I believe the bills are already hammered up. And you’ll win.”
Darak grinned, tense, amused, defiant. Raspar glanced at me.
“I cannot see your lady’s face under her shireen. Does she have any doubts?”
“Bellan is a brilliant man for chariots,” I said, “but can we trust his judgment? Has he no longing to be in Darros’ place?”
“You mean some slip of the tongue, lack of advice, through bitterness?” Raspar smiled again. “I see you understand a little of the human mind. Well, you’ve no need to fear. He will want Darros to take that race for a very fair reason. There is a man—Essandar of Coppain—who is entered for the Sagare. It was his chariot that tipped Bellan’s into the Skora at the stadium there. It was not a Sagare, that one, a simpler race altogether, but still dangerous. The chariot axle gave from the impact, the horse inside left fell. Bellan was flung among the team behind. He hates Essandar, as well he might. I do not know all of it, but I gather it was less luck than a personal thing between them, over some girl.”
It was late when we left the farm.
“From tomorrow on you’ll stay here at night,” Raspar said. “I know you like to keep one eye on your men, and, from what I’ve heard about them in the town, it’s just as well. But give your Ellak charge. No more of this riding back and forth. You’ll need cosseting after the day’s work. I have a masseur coming, one for each of you, male and female. Besides, now that you have the mastery of the track, you’ll be on show a little. Some of the Warden’s ladies are coming to watch the famed and handsome Darros handle the team tomorrow, and they may well stay to eat with me. The rich idlers will want to come and judge your form so they can lay their bets.”
As we rode back along the dark road to the Ring Gate, I said: “I told you. Raspar’s tame dogs to do tricks for his customers and patrons.”
Darak laughed.
It would not trouble him, gypsy, boaster, showman that he was. Let them all come and stare, And they came.
If anything, it was worse than all the fire and pain, that anger which must be restrained. I, with the arrow poised, how dear to my soul it would have been not to loose at the three running targets, but at that crowd of fools by the fence.
The curl-haired women in their litters and carriages, shimmering in their snow-white frocks. I had chosen my dress well indeed, for the agent’s supper. White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled. With their white, they wore clusters of jewels of every color and in every setting, gold, silver, copper, and a metal they call alcum, a kind of dark gray stuff, that shines with an incredible blue light under the sun. The men were much the same, white tight trousers clinging as a second skin, with built-out shoulders and sleeves slashed red, orange, yellow.
The women, and some of the men also, cooed and sighed at Darak; called him over between runs. He had no time for the men, and showed it, yet despite their sulks, they could see he was a likely winner.
They had spent time at the practice track attached to the Sirkunix itself, and apparently no one there came near the standard to which Bellan had got us. With the women, Darak was amenable. They gestured lightly at me with pale ringed hands, and laughed. Darak laughed with them.
Some men came after me to a corner field.
“Clos and I are agreed. We really must watch for you in the arena. You know the custom—bare to the waist. I beg you don’t hold the shield too close, sweetheart.”
I turned to Bellan, who was standing a little behind me, supervising the rub a groom was giving the blacks. He, I knew, had little time for these bystanders.
“Bellan,” I said, “would it be an insult to my host Raspar to put my knife between the ribs of these two?”
I saw, from the tail of my eye, they backed off, laughing a little nervously.
“Yes,” Bellan said. He grinned. “Alas.”
“Then I must not do it,” I said. Deliberately, I unlaced my shirt and pulled it back, leaving my breasts bare. The two men exclaimed, one flushed, embarrassed. I stood still a moment, while, flustered, they tried to call up something lecherously witty to say, then, unhurriedly, I laced the shirt again. “Now, gentlemen,” I said, “I have fulfilled my duties to my host. Perhaps next time you come to watch, you would wear less jewelry. It tends to catch the sun and flash in the eyes of the horses. In my eyes, too, when I take aim. I might misfire.”
I could tell they took my meaning. They turned and went off, one muttering, “Damned whoring tribal bitch.”
Bellan chuckled. It was the first time he had come near to liking me.
“You’ve a word for yourself, I see,” he said, “but careful. Not good to make an enemy before a race.”
The laugh went off his face. His left arm twitched.
Five days, four days. We were pummeled by the masseurs until our flesh rang. Dieted also—though for me, this had no use—lean foods, and little wine or beer. Even when the day was over, Darak would spend hours with the horses, talking to them, fondling them.
“You and they must be four parts of one whole,” Bellan said. “And you,” he said to me, “you are the black crow on the dead man’s shoulder, jealous for what carries you.” I was handling by then the things they called “spiced” arrows—no longer the “plain” ones I had had that first time. You took what you wanted into the arena, it seemed, arrows spiced with anything you fancied. The most used were corded—a tail of thin rope fixed on the flight; shot in between hub and rim, they would tangle the spokes and foul the wheels. The wheels were a popular target. Hollow arrows, filled with small iron balls, would be fired through, snap on the spokes, and spill their dangerous cargo under the hooves of anything coming after. Yet these had their disadvantages—one would meet one’s own artillery coming back.