Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER SEVEN

The outriders must have seen them before they entered the Drescein pass, because there was a full escort waiting for them at the other end.

‘You’d better be careful how you handle this,’ Jurrai whispered, as they emerged into the sunlight once more. ‘It’s the first time they’ve seen you as their chief, remember. First impressions count.’

‘It’s all right,’ Temrai replied softly. ‘I know what to do.’

He couldn’t help feeling, even so, that it was all rather silly; after all, the five riders who were waiting for them in advance of the main party were men he’d known for as long as he could remember. There was Basbai, holding the eagle standard and looking desperately solemn; Temrai could remember Basbai Mar chasing him all round the camp with a cattleprod (and catching him, worse luck) on the ill-fated occasion when he and Basbai’s youngest daughter had been about to embark on a little tentative research into the great mystery of adolescence. Ceuscai, now – tall, magnificent Ceuscai, five years older than himself and his champion and defender against the casual brutality of the playground; it wasn’t all that long ago that he’d finally managed to find the courage to presume to speak to Ceuscai as an equal. And what Uncle An thought he was doing in that crazy skins-and-feathers outfit – except that Anakai Mar had been the clan’s high priest for fifty-two years, and was rumoured to play chess once a year with the gods themselves.

He squeezed his heels against his horse’s flanks and left Jurrai to catch him up as best he could. The occasion called for a little pantomime; something he was just going to have to get used to.

When he was within a few yards of the five outriders he pulled his horse round, still at a slow gallop, and rode across the front of their line. As he passed Basbai, he reached out, grabbed the standard from his hand and raised it in the air, somehow managing not to fluff the pass or drop it. The hundred or so riders behind the advance party broke into a cheer – fair enough, it was a pretty piece of horsemanship, particularly since he was badly out of practice. He wheeled, raised the standard again, handed it to Basbai as he passed him, wheeled again and drew up in front of Uncle An, who winked at him out of an otherwise monolithic face.

‘Hail, Temrai Tai-me-Mar,’ Uncle An growled in his business voice. ‘May our Father Temrai live for ever.’ Then, in his normal voice, too soft to be heard by the ranks behind, he added, ‘You’ve put on weight, our Temrai. At least they’ve been feeding you properly.’

‘Don’t make me laugh, Uncle An, or I’ll fall off my horse.’ Temrai raised his right hand in a grand salute, and held it there while the five great and good men of the clan slid off their horses and knelt before him on the hard ground. They’re doing this because they mean it, Temrai realised, and for a moment he felt uncomfortable. But not longer than a moment. What it meant was that they wanted him to get it right, they were trying to help. The least he could do was try too. He took a deep breath and hoped his voice wouldn’t wobble.

‘I am Temrai ker-Sasurai Tai-me-Mar,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Rise, my children.’

Gods, what a performance! He tried to call to mind the way his father usually coped with this sort of thing; but that wasn’t much help, really. After all, his father was the chief, and you tended to assume the chief knew what he was doing…

Then it occurred to him that his father was dead. And that he was the chief now. And, what was worst of all, his father was dead but Temrai couldn’t cry or even refer to it ever again, even to his family or closest friends, because of course the chief lives for ever…

I want to go home, he thought.

I am home.

He started to feel better again once the camp was in sight; then he felt a whole lot worse. What he really wanted to do was jump off his horse, run to the tents, cuddle the dogs, give everyone their presents, run off and see Pegtai and Sorutai and Felten and Codruen quickly, just to say hello before his father got back-

He slowed down and rode along the main avenue between the rows of tents, head up, back straight, the way he’d been taught. People were coming out to see him, but nobody waved or shouted; even the dogs hung back, their tails wagging uncertainly as if they were afraid he’d be angry. He’d never known the camp this quiet before.

This is silly. No, it isn’t. This is how the clan should behave in the presence of its chief.

Had his father… had Sasurai Tai-me-Mar felt this way, he wondered, the first time he rode into his camp as Father of the Clan, protector of his people, nephew of the gods? No, probably not; remember your family history, Temrai, you can’t afford to be careless about this sort of thing any more. Sasurai Tai-me-Mar had already been middle-aged and the established junior partner in the chiefdom when Jaldai Tai-me-Mar was cut down by Maxen’s Pitchfork on the Sela plains. Sasurai would have ridden back at the head of a defeated army, and the people staring from the tent flaps wouldn’t have been looking at him, they’d have been trying to catch sight of their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers among the riders at his back, trying not to scream and sob when they realised they weren’t there… It was probably safe to say that Sasurai had enjoyed this moment even less than he was, and probably made a far better job of it, too.

I must do this properly. From now on I must do everything properly.

‘The next exercise,’ Loredan said, ‘is one you’re going to hate for the rest of your lives. It hurts, it’s boring, and if you make a mess of it I’m going to make you do it all over again. Ready?’

As his group of disciples glowered at him with combined fear and hatred, Loredan put his heels together at right angles, straightened his back and stretched his sword-arm out in the guard of the Old fence. A minute later (in this context, a long time) he said, ‘You should all have got the idea by now. You do it.’

The result was fairly predictable, so he made them do it again; and again, and again after that, and again… One of these days, he muttered to himself as he patrolled the line of foil-points waiting for the first one to twitch and wobble, I’m going to find out exactly what this torture is supposed to achieve. Must be some reason for it, or why the hell have twenty generations of fencers been made to practise it, three times a day, every day?

This time, Iuven the rich boy was the first to break down. Loredan knocked the kid’s foil first sideways then down with the back of his hand, growled, ‘And again,’ and walked on down the line. As soon as one of them failed, the others would inevitably follow suit. It was only the fear of being the first one to lose it that kept the rest of them going.

When he couldn’t bear to watch any longer he snapped, ‘All right, that’s enough,’ and knocked all six foil-points down in turn. ‘I’d just like to remind you,’ he added, ‘these practice foils you’re using are much shorter and lighter than real swords. And in future, we’re going to do four minutes, not two. Right, now you’re going to learn the backhand retreating parry of the City fence. Start with the front foot on the line, both knees well-bent, like you’re sitting on a chair that isn’t there. Master Teudel, you look just like a constipated spider.’

The female, now; she was no less awkward and cack-handed than the other five, but there was something almost frightening about her determination. It was as if – well, would-be advocates learn fencing with the objective of earning a living without getting killed. This one wanted to learn how to kill. Ten years in the racket, and he’d never come across one like this before. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea.

‘That one,’ he confided to Athli as the class clumped and swished through its newly learnt manoeuvre, ‘is going to be a menace.’

‘Good,’ Athli replied. ‘Best sort of publicity, a successful graduate.’ She was sitting on a folding chair with her nose in a pile of wax tablets; lists of names, as far as he could tell by reading them upside down. ‘You know what these are?’ she added.

‘No idea.’

‘They’re the names of all the students who enrolled this term, with the schools they’ve joined, where known. There’s over thirty who don’t seem to have found places yet. Once I’ve finished this I can go out and start recruiting.’

‘Keen, aren’t you? But I’ve already got a class.’

‘Ah.’ Athli smiled. ‘But what if you were to take two classes at once? Several trainers do it,’ she went on as Loredan’s face contracted into a frown. ‘It’s no big deal. Take now, for example. While they’re practising what you’ve just shown them, you could be teaching another class. We could double our turnover.’

Loredan shook his head. ‘It’s running me ragged just looking after this lot,’ he said. ‘Two classes at the same time’d kill me.’

‘Ah, but you haven’t got into the swing of it yet. Once you’ve had a chance to work out the most efficient way of teaching-’

‘Nice idea, but no thanks. I could cope with one class of twelve, but two lots of six’d be too much. Besides, we’re aiming at a reputation for quality through individual tuition. Means I’ve got to watch ’em all the time if I want to spot their mistakes. Couldn’t do that if I was giving my full attention to another class for half of the time.’ He glanced down at the carefully written tablets and thought of all the wasted effort she’d put into them. ‘You should have checked with me before you started doing all that.’

Athli frowned at him. ‘All right, then,’ she said, ‘what should I be doing? I finished all the stuff you told me to do hours ago.’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ Loredan replied. ‘Oh, no, will you just look at that clown Valier. If he’d only listen occasionally to what he’s told-’

He bustled back to work, while Athli sighed and dropped the stylus she’d been writing with into the satchel at her feet. She had made a point of watching nearly all the other trainers in the Schools and, looked at objectively, Loredan was more or less completely average. True, he shouted less and explained more than some, but between his six charges and all the others doing practically the same thing all through the building there was no appreciable difference.

She let her attention wander. One of the grand schools had its pitch nearby, and the trainer was drilling the advanced class in the use of the Zweyhender. Rather an esoteric skill; the heavy two-handed sword was virtually obsolete, being used only in such outlandish jurisdictions as libel and witchraft – it survived there only because cases were so infrequent that nobody had yet bothered to repeal the laws. In her time in the courts, Athli had never seen it used. She knew Loredan had a Zweyhender put away somewhere, though she hadn’t seen it at his apartment (and something that size would be hard to miss), but she had no idea how it was actually used. She watched.

The instructor started off by showing his class how the sword was held. He produced one; it was over six feet long from point to pommel, nearly a quarter of its length being the handle. The quillons of the crossguard were each almost a foot long, and in front of them, about six inches up the blade, was another smaller guard comprised of two wing-like projections from the blade itself. Athli watched as the instructor took a silk handkerchief and wrapped it round the blade between the two handguards; he gripped this with his right hand and positioned his left halfway down the handle proper. Then he demonstrated the basic moves.

Athli, who had imagined great haymaking sweeps and cuts, was disappointed to discover that in practice the Zweyhender was used more as a long-bladed poleaxe or halberd than as a sword. Employed in this way, with its nicely calculated weight and balance, it could be used for fast, accurate lunges, wicked little prods and intricate parries, all executed with a minimum of movement. Far from being a heroic weapon, she realised, such as a dragonslayer or mighty man of valour might wield, it was the tool of the man who plays the percentages, providing a solid and foolproof defence as first priority while allowing its user to go on the offensive quickly and with an acceptable minimum of risk when it was reasonably prudent to do so. At least with the slim, sharp law-sword there was a degree of grace and style, a residual trace of flamboyance in the ebb and flow of the fight. The Zweyhendermen trundled forward into a minimum-exposure scenario and negotiated rather than fought, tracing a series of formal measures which made it hard to lose and equally hard to win. It was sensible; it was businesslike and extremely practical. It was no fun. She couldn’t imagine why it wasn’t in wider use.

Four or five students sparred against the instructor for varying lengths of time – one surviving a whole two minutes, others being checkmated within a few passages. It was fairly easy stuff to follow; a flurry of neat little prods and pecks, the advantage established, the loser being forced to huddle behind his impregnable guard and tacitly conceding the exchange. The ease with which a complete novice could hold off the trainer explained why the weapon was no longer used; where the fight had to be to the death, each case could go on all day without a result, and the no-hoper could keep the moral victor four feet away from him even though he had no chance at all of winning. That wouldn’t serve the interests of justice, which demanded a short contest and an outright winner, unambiguously identifiable as being the one left standing.

The sixth student was taking a little longer. He was a short, stocky youth, not particularly well-dressed and patently out of breath after the first thirty seconds. Athli didn’t know the techniques and so couldn’t say for certain, but she had a fair idea that he was staying in the game by virtue of some recklessly imaginative improvisation, which was beginning to get on the teacher’s nerves. The class seemed to think he was being extremely clever; they weren’t cheering him on, of course. Cheering during a real fight counted as contempt of court, for which offenders got a week in the cells underneath the courtroom. It was obvious, though, where their sympathies lay, and as the trainer’s movements became stiffer and his blows struck with more force, Athli could see his fear of losing face and respect if this farce went on much longer.

The trainer upped his game, moving faster, throwing in some tricks he hadn’t included in his demonstration. The student’s reply made an enthralling spectacle – the boy was a natural, no doubt about that – but he was simply making things harder for himself; and besides, the whole thing was pointless, not to mention counterproductive, since the reason he was there was not to defeat his trainer in a duel but to learn orthodox swordmanship. Athli began to feel annoyed; he’d proved his point, it was time to concede gracefully and accept the applause of his peers.

But he didn’t. He fenced on, and Athli saw a gently pushed cut to go home, drawing a red line across the thick part of the boy’s forearm. The rest of the class gasped and muttered and the trainer took a step back, assuming that that would be an end of it. It wasn’t; the boy shifted his right hand back onto the main handle and swirled the massive blade round his head, aiming a blow at the trainer which would have split his skull like a pine log if it had connected. As it was, the trainer sidestepped and blocked, taking the blow awkwardly just above the lower handguard. The force of the strike pushed him back and his right foot slithered six inches or so before he regained a solid footing, during which time the boy had swung again – a devastating blow delivered from bent knees and an arched back, cutting from the side rather than downwards with the blade addressing his opponent at neck level. The trainer rocked back on tiptoe, just making enough height to get the forte of his blade in the way of the stroke before it sliced him in two. As it was, he lost his balance completely and staggered; and in that moment of real danger, instinct must have taken control of his mind, because he counterattacked with a full-blooded low thrust into the gap between the boy’s arms and sword blade, direct and uninterrupted passage to the heart-

Someone screamed. The boy’s sword dropped from his fingers and crashed noisily to the floor, and a moment later his whole dead weight fell on the trainer’s blade, pulling the handle out of his hands, the hilt of the sword, projecting out of his ribcage, cracking sharply on the flagstones. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The trainer stood like a statue (what’s the matter, haven’t you ever killed anyone before? And you call yourself a professional) while the class slowly backed away and people in the rest of the hall turned round to stare. Loredan, suddenly looking round, got a slap from a foil-point across his cheek but didn’t seem to notice. Someone shouted; people began to run. One of the trainer’s pupils grabbed him by the arm, but he didn’t move. Several voices now were yelling for help, or a doctor, or some other external but ineffectual agency to come and intervene. They were crouching round the dead boy now, gingerly poking at him, trying to find a pulse where there was never one to begin with. Athli could feel her knees weakening, a tightness in her stomach that suggested she was about to be sick.

‘Gentlemen.’ It was Loredan speaking, his tone mildly annoyed, as if he was about to rebuke a child for talking in class. ‘If you find this sort of thing disturbs you, might I suggest you’re training for the wrong profession? Nothing to do with us. Now then, where were we?’

Because Temrai had been away at the time, the clan had postponed Sasurai’s funeral games. The winners would have felt cheated if they didn’t receive the prizes from the hand of their new chief, and the prizegiving was traditionally the occasion for the new chief to make a formal address, setting out his aims and objectives for the first few years of his reign.

They’d used the time to make more than usually elaborate preparations; marking out the course for the horse race with stone cairns, putting up wooden goalposts for the polo match, digging proper butts for the archery and so forth, and the main contenders had had the luxury of several clear days’ match practice. The compressed-felt archery targets were already well-pocked, with a few tell-tale holes and splinters in their wooden frames demonstrating how badly needed the practice had been. There had even been time to catch a live eagle for the popinjay shoot, instead of the stuffed dummy that usually had to suffice. Best of all, the stewards had cajoled the clan into digging a long, low bank to serve as a grandstand, which meant that for once people who weren’t in the front row would stand some sort of chance of seeing something more entertaining than the neck of the man in front.

For Temrai there was a proper wooden throne, with carpet for him to walk on and a table to one side to display the prizes on. Traditionally, of course, the prizes consisted of special treasures from the dead chief’s personal possessions, and Temrai had to make an effort not to glance wistfully at various select components of what he’d hoped would be his inheritance, laid out splendidly as tokens of his semi-divine munificence. There, for instance, were Sasurai’s golden spurs, his personal drinking horn, a pair of his finest and most richly embroidered slippers and a quiver of first-class flight arrows with purple fletchings to identify them as the chief’s own.

Damn, said Temrai to himself. Oh, well, never mind.

It was, to all intents and purposes, obligatory for him to enter at least one event, and the height of bad form for him to win – a graceful fourth place was the ideal, enough to demonstrate prowess but well clear of the prizes – so he’d announced he’d take part in the close -range archery match and the popinjay shoot; he was a good enough archer to be able to throw the short-range match if need be without being too obvious about it, and if he shot near the bottom of the order in the popinjay event, someone else would be bound to have skewered the eagle before his turn, therefore relieving him of the obligation of taking part. As befitted the prestige of the discipline, the archery came at the end, which allowed Temrai to sit back and watch the riding events in comfort.

The horse races – five, ten and fifteen circuits of the course with and without hurdles – went smoothly and with a bare minimum of cheating. There were no surprises in the results. Tobolai Mar and his six sons shared all the prizes in four of the six races and were well-represented in the others, with Remtai Mar and Piridai winning the short and medium hurdles by a clear margin.

The polo matches were the usual joyful mess. Bestren cheated blatantly throughout the women’s game, but there would have been a riot if he’d sent her off before the young men had had a good long look at her in her riding costume, and since she stopped short of actually killing anybody, there was no harm done. In the event her team lost by seven goals to ten, so everyone was happy; especially Temrai, who was thus spared the embarrassment of having to give her the prize. She’d been after him in a painfully obvious way since she’d been old enough to choose a husband, and for all that she was unquestionably decorative, the most he’d ever been able to feel for her was a sort of fascinated loathing. It was far more agreeable to be able to hand over the golden belt and brooch to Sargen-pel-Tazrai, a sensible girl with a pleasing sense of humour, whose engagement to Limdai’s eldest son had apparently evaporated while Temrai had been away. He managed to keep his congratulatory smile from turning into a leer, and had held onto the belt just a fraction of a second longer than necessary when handing it over. All in all, it tended to improve his opinion of polo matches.

After the horseback events came the foot races. These had never been popular with the spectators, and were really only there to provide an interval between the riding and the archery. It was during the buzz of revived interest that followed the last foot race that Temrai stood up and made his surprise announcement. It turned out to be a felicitous piece of timing.

There would be, he announced, one additional event; not a new event, because there were references to it in some of the clan’s oldest songs, but one which hadn’t been staged in living memory. A team event, he went on, because team games serve to foster a spirit of co-operation and mutual support – and so on, until he got bored listening to himself. Then he announced the log race.

It wasn’t a complete surpise, of course; he’d chosen the team captains the day before, and the crews who’d found and cut the logs were obviously in on the secret as well. Nevertheless there was a gratifying air of excitement as the two enormous tree trunks were unloaded from the long wagon and dragged into the middle of the lists by two teams of horses. There was certainly no shortage of young men wanting to take part; fortunately he’d anticipated that and the two captains were properly briefed on who to select out of the crowd of eager volunteers.

The object of the race, he explained, was to carry the log from the start to the finish without dropping it or allowing the other team to get there first. The prize would be a Perimadeian gold piece for each man and a red and purple hat for the team captain. As soon as the teams were in position he stood up, raised his cap in the air and let if fall.

It soon became evident that the competitors’ skill fell rather short of their enthusiasm. They weaved in and out like drunks, trod on each other’s heels and ended up running more sideways than straight, ultimately colliding with rather than crossing the rope. As far as Temrai was concerned, this was no bad thing. It demonstrated the need for practice as far as this particular skill was concerned, something he could stress when he made his closing speech. In the event, it was such a close-run thing that the decision had to be made by the referees he’d wisely positioned on the finishing line. Quite properly, Ceuscai’s team won in the end, which was just as well since it was his measurements Temrai had given to the feltcutters for the prize hat.

In common with most of the clan he allowed his attention to wander slightly during the athletic events; instead, he permitted himself the luxury of observing his people. It wasn’t something he’d ever done before, understandably enough. He was, after all, one of them, and had been all his life. Now, however, he felt an undefinable but definitely perceptible barrier between them and himself; partly because he was now the chief, but mostly because he’d been to the city and seen something different – something, he was forced to admit, that was in many ways better, or at least more advanced. After the stone and brick houses, the paved streets, the abundant water instantly available in every square, the tents of the clan seemed primitive, and he was no longer able to be content with primitive surroundings. The clan couldn’t be blamed for not having invented for itself the wonderful things they took for granted in the city; there’s nothing wrong or wicked about not being as clever as someone who’s cleverer than yourself, because some people are cleverer than others just as some are taller. But to know that better things were possible and not to want to have them; now surely that was stupid, possibly even wicked-

(Zandai Mar clearing the high jump by the thickness of a hair; too old to take part, but prestige demanded it. Ostren tripping over a loose divot and falling nose-first into the water jump. Only four men competing in the arrow-throwing, and none of them managing to get the arrow in the circle…)

– Unless, of course, the price demanded for these wonderful things was more than they were worth; there, he suspected, was the answer he was looking for. It wasn’t a new idea. Quite the opposite – it had been the complaint of generations of self-justifying travellers returning from the city. He considered it.

The Perimadeians have gained all manner of wonders, but they have lost the best part of themselves; so said the travellers, smugly sipping mead and milk beside the fire under the bright, cold stars. They have become hard and selfish, despising lesser races and thinking themselves justified in plundering them in order to maintain their own reprehensible taste for unnatural luxury.

Yes, Temrai thought, well. Travellers tell many other stories, including encounters with enormous flying lizards and creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of animals, and some of us believe them and some don’t. I have seen the people of the city and they’re not very different from us, once you cut through the bark and the sapwood to the core. There were some differences, it’s true; they accepted strangers, even strangers from nations that were traditionally their direst enemies, without suspicion or hostility. If they said anything, it was more likely to be an interested enquiry about the truth of some wild rumour they’d heard (is it true you people all have seven wives? Is it true that where you come from men and women do, well, you know what, in the saddle and at the gallop? Do you really make your enemies’ skulls into drinking cups and cut off the scalps of men you kill in battle? And what’s it really like…?)

Another difference: in the city there was a whole neighbourhood occupied by doctors, whose business it was to try and keep alive people the clansmen wouldn’t bother with, because even if they got well they’d be too old or frail to be any use. The clan looked after its people, sure enough, but only up to the point where doing so was in the clan’s interest. In the city, keeping people alive was an end in itself. It went further than that, too. Here, apart from one or two people who had skills the rest didn’t, everyone did the same work and owned more or less the same amount of property, and no-one thought any more about it. In the city, it was different. More than that he couldn’t really say, because it was complicated; but since the poorest people there seemed to have more than most of us here in the plains, where was the harm in it? A man could stay where he was in the city’s infinitely complex hierarchy, or he could work hard and maybe raise himself three or four degrees in the perpetual order. Temrai couldn’t make up his mind about that, but at least he could recognise that there was a difference.

And now here he was, back again, looking at his people. The first thing that struck him was how many there were of them. It was nobody’s business to know exactly how many, and he certainly didn’t. At the start of a major war, it was the custom for the fighting men to file past the chief’s tent, each man putting an arrow in a basket as he passed. The baskets were then loaded onto packhorses, and used as a reserve supply for the main war-party. The last time this was done, some twelve or thirteen years ago, there had been over a hundred horses in the arrow train, but it was too long ago for him to remember how many baskets each horse carried, or the average number of arrows in each basket.

There were other ways in which he could work out the numbers, more or less – how long it took the clan to ford a particular river, how long the line of march was over a known stretch of straight road, how many hides went to the tanners each month (which would tell him how many steers were slaughtered, and thus how many mouths had to be fed), but he had to admit that he wasn’t interested enough to bother, and besides, it wasn’t his legitimate concern. Numbering his people would feel too much like counting his herds. It would imply that he owned them, which of course he didn’t. He’d heard it said that once upon a time in the city, men owned other men in the same way they owned livestock and tools, but he didn’t believe it, any more than he believed in the two-headed lions or the talking trees that were also supposed to have existed long ago when the world was young.

And now he found himself actually looking at his people, as if he was a man from the city come to spy on the clans. He saw men between five feet four and five feet nine inches tall, women a head or half a head shorter, who wore wool and felt and leather, ate dried meat, cheese, millet when there was any to be had, apples and olives in season provided they timed the itinerary right; people who lived in tents of felt and hide, smeared lard on their skins in the depth of winter to keep out the wind and the wet, wasted nothing, owned no more than a wagon and two packhorses could carry.

Here were people who had found a use for every part of a horse or a steer: milk, meat and blood for food; tallow for light, cooking and waterproofing; hide for clothing, tents, harness, hats and armour; hair for felt, rope and bowstrings; bones and teeth for buttons, needles, bow cores and nocks, buckles, tool handles, chesspieces, jewellery, flutes and glue; sinews for bow-backings; and dung for fuel for the fire. They were people who had no leisure and who never hurried, who had little and wanted nothing more, who wrote no books but knew the names of their ancestors for a hundred generations, who had no machines but knew about silver solder and could read the colours in the steel. Looking at them for the first time, he recognised how strange they were, how different.

This is what we are. The people who live in the plains. A hundred and one things to make with a dead cow.

Someone nudged his arm; it was time to present the prizes for the running about and jumping over things. Having done that (and wondered, in passing, how come he’d allowed Sasurai’s second-best saddle and a brand-new pair of hawking gloves to be given away to men whose only remarkable talent was their ability to launch themselves over a frame of sticks on the end of a long pole), he picked up his bow and quiver and walked down into the arena for the archery.

At least, he thanked the gods, nobody’d tried to make him give away Sasurai’s bow. By rights it ought to have gone to Forever with him, and Temrai honoured in grateful silence the kind friends who’d managed to overlook it at the time. He had bows of his own, expertly made by himself and others, but this was the bow he’d learnt to shoot with. He knew this bow, and it knew him. If there was a better bow in the world, he didn’t want to know.

As he stepped inside it to fit the string, it was like coming home. A new string since he’d seen it last, but a good string nonetheless; the long sinew from a horse’s leg served from top to bottom in silk and properly waxed, with neat bone beads around the nocking point and an ivory kisser. Having braced the bow, he fitted the tab to the fingers of his right hand and buckled the guard round his left forearm, adjusted the height of his quiver, checked the fletchings of his arrows, fidgeted, tried to think of something else. Now that he was standing with his left foot beside the line, with an invisible tunnel between himself and his mark, he realised it was going to be hard work trying not to win. About the only thing going for him was the fact that the whole clan was watching him. That ought to be enough to put anybody off their aim.

When the time came for him to shoot, he’d made a fairly good job of talking himself out of what residual ability he had. The line judge gave the command to nock, and his hand shook a little as he fitted the horn notch of the arrow onto the string, cock-feather upmost. On the command ‘Draw’, he lifted the bow, grunted as he pushed with his left arm, drew with his right until he felt the bow yield and the weight shift from his shoulders to his back. As the socket of the arrowhead slid across the bottom joint of his left thumb, his right thumb brushed his chin and the kisser on the string touched his bottom lip, guaranteeing the alignment of arrow, hand and bow.

He fixed his eyes on the mark, eliminating everything else in the world, and for a second and a half was excused thinking about his father’s death, the city of Perimadeia and its defences, the duties and responsibilities of a clan chief and his own unanticipated strangeness among his own kind. There was too much else to think about; the left arm slightly bent, the elbow outwards, the second finger of the right hand more bent than the third to make sure the string lay level in the crease of the top joint of all three fingers holding the string, the impossibility of not thinking about the act of straightening those fingers as he loosed the string – for the perfect loose is simply the transition between the state of holding a string and the state of not holding it; as simple and as impossible as that-

And then the follow-through, and a distant plump as the arrow struck the mark, low and to the right, symptom of a sloppy loose. Ah, well, if it was easy there’d be no point doing it. He nocked his second arrow and drew. For the time it took him to loose a dozen arrows he had the luxury of being Temrai, the competent but mediocre archer, nothing more or less than the sum of his own strength and skill. At the back of his mind he knew that this was a moment to savour while it lasted, for there was no knowing when he would be allowed to be this Temrai again.

He came fifth in the end, and that was the best he could do. In a way it pleased him more than winning. He’d made a reasonable show, and he had the comfort of knowing that there were at least four archers in his army who were better shots than he was. In the circumstances, it would have been downright depressing if he’d won.

He stayed just behind the line while the remaining distances were shot, unwilling to go back to his place of honour until he absolutely had to. If his presence among them was a little unsettling to the other competitors, that was no bad thing. No doubt the two-hundredweight stones from the trebuchets on the land-wall towers would be more unsettling still, and they’d have to cope with them soon enough. The standard of marksmanship was really rather good. He made a mental note to call for the aggregate once the match was over, and wondered if anybody remembered any comparable scores which would help him work out whether the clan’s shooting had improved or declined over the intervening years. A conscientious chief, he reasoned, ought to know such things.

It was time for the popinjay, the grand finale. Precisely why the people of the clan found it so enthralling to see men shooting arrows at a bird tethered by its foot to the top of a fifty-yard-high mast, Temrai had never been quite sure. Perhaps it was because it was faster-paced than the conventional rounds at the marks; one shot from each competitor, and if the first man to shoot hit the target, that was the end of the competition. Maybe the thrill lay in something tangible actually getting hit and falling over – hard to be enthusiastic about hearing the gentle tock of distant arrows dropping into felt, when only the people nearest the marks could see where the shots had landed. It couldn’t be good old-fashioned bloodlust, because usually the popinjay was a leather bag stuffed with straw, dipped in glue and rolled in feathers. His own personal theory was the frisson of danger from all the arrows that didn’t hit the mark and fell erratically back to earth, as often as not landing among the spectators.

This time there was a real bird; a big tawny eagle, tethered by one foot to the masthead and protesting savagely about the indignity of it all. That would account for the more than usual excitement, since every man who’d lost kids and lambs to the mountain eagles could share in the symbolic revenge. For his part, Temrai would just as soon have shot at the bag of straw. He’d spent too many hours with the herd as a boy, vainly trying to keep the loathsome creatures at bay with shouts and stones, to feel sorry for the wretched bird, but this wasn’t pest control so much as a public execution. Besides, the straw version didn’t jiggle about so much.

One shot. He looked down at his quiver until he saw the one particular arrow he’d been looking for. It had been his favourite ever since he was young, even though it was an inch too long for him. He had no idea where it had come from; it bore the chief’s purple fletchings, but it hadn’t been made on the plains. The clan made their arrows from one piece of wood, the same diameter for the whole length of the shaft. This arrow had a cedar mainshaft spliced into a cornelwood footing, and it tapered very slightly from a point eight inches below the head down to the nock. The narrow, unusually heavy head was almost square in section, as opposed to the familiar three-sided profile favoured by the clan smiths. He had a feeling that it was very old, and had originally come via the city from Scona, where the finest bowyers and fletchers in the world made equipment for the finest archers. The fletchings were goose rather than eagle or crow, and in need of replacement fairly soon. He held it up to his eye to make sure it hadn’t warped or split, then had to jump quickly to one side to avoid a descending arrow that had caught the wind at masthead level and come straight back down again.

He had drawn the seventh shot, so he didn’t have long to wait. No real danger of winning this particular event; the specialised skill of shooting straight up in the air wasn’t one he’d ever seen any point in mastering, since it wasn’t needed in war except when you were right under the walls of a city, and he’d never mastered the knack of shooting birds on the wing. Plenty of people had, however, and five of the clan’s best birdhunters had drawn places ahead of him.

Somehow, though, they all contrived to miss, with the result that Temrai found himself standing on the line, craning his neck and staring almost straight into the sun, trying to make out the bird’s outline against the painfully bright sky. He drew and took aim in the general direction, relaxed the fingers of his right hand and got ready to let fly.

He was just about to commit to the loose when the sun dipped behind what was virtually the only cloud in the sky, giving him a clear view of the target. He felt the string biting into his fingers through the tab, and his shoulders ached. It was time to get rid of this wretched arrow. He concentrated on the bird and stopped holding the string.

Damn, he thought.

How many times had there been when he’d have given anything to have hit the mark in a popinjay shoot in front of the whole clan? More times than he cared to remember, when he’d spent days driving arrows into a felt boss hung from the side of the wagon, trying to find that last elusive touch of skill that would make the shot go exactly where he wanted it to, instead of somewhere in the general direction. As he watched the arrow strike, the bird fold up, topple and hang like a saddlebag from its tether, he cursed and wondered how such a thing could possibly happen. All he could think of was that the gods had stored up ten years’ worth of his prayers for a straight shot and then maliciously chosen to grant them now just to spite him.

There was an awkward silence as the entire clan tried to work out whether they were meant to applaud, or whether they were free to express their disapproval of so wanton a breach of etiquette. The other competitors picked up their arrows and put their bows back in their cases without a word or a glance in his direction. It would have to be the popinjay, the one event where he couldn’t magnanimously disqualify himself and let the real contestants carry on. And how in the gods’ names was he supposed to go about presenting the prize to himself?

All he could think of to say was, ‘Sorry.’

Still, nothing he could do about it now. He cased his bow and walked back to his seat. Now, of course, he had to make his speech.

He’d prepared it, and he knew it was good. First, a succinct and gracefully worded eulogy for his predecessor. Next, a formal declaration of his intention to lead the clan against the enemy, stating his reasons and motivating his people for the struggle that lay ahead. A few words on the clan’s manifest destiny, a bit of mysticism for those who expected it, and, to conclude, a nicely phrased summary and a memorable saying that folks could tell their grandchildren. He had it all off pat.

Instead, he cleared his throat and said, ‘You don’t want to listen to a lot of speeches, so here’s what we’re going to do. Once we’ve made it through the Nadsin pass, we’re going south out of our way to cut timber. We’re then going to float it down the river – we’ve never tried it before, but I know it’s been done, so we can do it – and once we’re there, we’re going to build siege engines. It’s all right, I’ve learnt how and there’s nothing to it, really. The archery’s pretty good – too good, in some cases – but we’re going to have to practise with the logs if we’re to have a hope in hell of bashing in the city gates, so I’ll want volunteers for a specialist ram detail; names to the wing leaders in the next three days. There’s a lot I haven’t thought out yet, but we’ve got time in hand, and I’ll keep you posted as we go along. That’s about it, really, so I’ll shut up and let you get on with the party. Here’s health. Oh, and if you didn’t want your eagle shot, you shouldn’t have left it there.’

It wasn’t much of a joke; but even as he sat down he knew he’d just given a new proverb to the language. A hundred years from now, men who’d let their unbranded cattle get mixed up with someone else’s herd, or whose neglected wives started to look elsewhere, would have their protests met with a smirk and, ‘Yes, well, if you didn’t want your eagle shot-’ In the meantime, he’d just spoken to his people like a chief, as opposed to a boy wearing his father’s oversized hat. He’d have his volunteers for the ram squads, and his rafts of timber floating down the river; and nobody would mutter behind his back that they reckoned Chief didn’t have a plan at all, because he’d just admitted it and that was fair enough. It was probably going to work, and it was because he’d learnt that if a target’s there to be shot at, you shoot at it and the hell with the rules.

Sasurai hadn’t realised that; Sasurai didn’t storm Perimadeia. I do, and I will.

He was still sitting reflecting on this when they came to load up the throne and the carpets. They didn’t exactly turf him out onto the ground, but they made it clear that they had work to do and he was in the way. He apologised and left them to it.