The Totem-Maker (part forty-one)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Five

The Mustering Grounds

(part forty-one)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the Prince’s underling these word were enough. I heard running feet fade along the parapet, and soon he crossed the field, tapping men on the shoulder. Some game with a ball that was not to touch earth, was shouted into default, victory to the side that left the field smug.

Nervousness seized me.

I saw the ground churned and gouged. I thought of Mumas and his bleached summer tunic. He cared for this in his appearance, that his garments be white, as a man’s who can have his horses saddled by a servant, a man of…

Equal status, you know it, I told myself. Mumas Martas, as good as Cime Decima. Worthy, if not forced by this slave, to this Challenge, of sitting at the Prince’s side, a second Elberin.

Was it possible? Would a handful of mud in the face do less than one mid-chest; a garment sullied enrage Mumas more than any name I could fling, any joke inviting laughter?

For the space of a minute, temptings and loathings flickered. Stol, with his question…could I kill a man with a blow?

Could I play this war-maker’s game with subterfuge enough? No one had brought me my battle toys, so I bent, gathering mud, and rehearsed the pretense of it. I understood Stol’s pride, his wish to have me use my knife and shield, only those. But grip that wooden mass by two sides, heave it up…

After fouling my foe’s person, cheating against the Knights’ rules, filling (I hoped) Mumas’s head with a maddening wasp buzz of indignation…

Could my shield catch him at the ear, as his horse’s hoof had caught Lom?

If I could ask so much of the gods.

“What do you suppose all this delay is?”

Stol was beside me, tone too conversational. My fist of mud had been guessed, as to purpose. But chiefly he was irritated with the Prince, “…tarts up the program with sport, when a life must end today. You know, there’s honor in respecting death.”

He added, with a nod at the rampart, “Not on his side,” and moved to tackle a knight of the Prince wandering our direction, studded face blank but willing.

“Why don’t they begin? Why aren’t they staking out the field and clearing those stragglers?”

The knight laughed. He put his hand on my head, in the way of making playful measurement. He drew his long knife and feinted it at me, said a northern thing to Stol that ended in a shrug.

 

 

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There was a shout, well down the field, the import that the games were over. So we judged by the head-hanging posture of those stumping to the stalls, where little refreshment was left to be purchased.

I said, “What now? The Prince has not ordered the combat off?”

“Your rival does not appear. I say you have won. I don’t know what it is.”

The speaker was the Prince’s man, who had followed us from the Villa Montadta that day. Neither could I have said what it was I’d won. I’d expected to hurl all my strength, all that my muscles, so sore and over-tried, could be driven to; and to beg, in prayer under breath, my god to guide that knife…

While the crowd milled, while I, and Stol, and our comrade of a passing moment stood, none facing the tower, a figure dropped from its crown.

The odd blur of movement drew our eyes.

And we heard, far off, a wet crunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

45

 

 

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The Mustering Grounds

The Totem-Maker (part forty-two)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2018, Stephanie Foster)