At the time of the festival of Double Sunset, Laintal Ay made his name in the tribe with a feat that rivalled his and Aoz Roon’s achievement of capturing the Borlienian traders. He was travelling alone in high country to the northeast of Oldorando, over deep snow, when a hole opened under his feet, and he fell in. At the bottom of the drift sat a stungebag, waiting for its next meal.
Stungebags resemble nothing so much as collapsed wooden huts, covered by makeshift thatch. They grew to great lengths, having few enemies but man, feeding rarely, being inordinately slow. All that Laintal Ay saw of this one, curled at the bottom of its trap, was its asymmetrical horned head and gaping mouth, in which the teeth appeared to be made of wooden pegs. As the jaws closed on his leg, he kicked out and rolled to one side.
Fighting against the encompassing snow, he brought up his spear and wedged it far back in the hinges of the stungebag’s mouth. The animal’s rhythmic struggles were slow but powerful. It knocked Laintal Ay down again, but was unable to close its mouth. Jumping away from the probing horns, he flung himself on the back of the beast, clinging to stiff tufts of hair which burst from between octagonal armour plates. He pulled his knife from his belt. Clutching the hair with one hand, he hacked away at the fibrous tendons that held one of the plates in place.
The stungebag screamed with rage. It too was impeded by the snow and could not roll over sufficiently to crush Laintal Ay. He managed to sever the plate from its back. The plate was splintery, and in texture woodlike. He jammed it down the beast’s throat, and then commenced to cut the clumsy head off.
It fell. No blood ran, only a slight whitish ichor. This stungebag had four eyes—there was a lesser breed with two. One pair stared forward in the skull; the other looked backward and was set in hornlike protrusions at the back of the skull. Both pairs rolled over into the snow, still blinking in disbelief.
The decapitated body began to burrow backwards through the snow at its fastest rate. Laintal Ay followed, struggling through chunks of falling snow until it and he emerged into daylight.
Stungebags were proverbially difficult to kill. This one would keep travelling for a long while before falling to pieces.
Laintal Ay let out a whoop of exhilaration. Bringing out his flints, he jumped up on the neck of the creature and set light to the coarse fur, which burnt with a furious sizzling noise. Evil-smelling smoke billowed into the sky. By burning one side or the other, he was able to do a rough job of steering. The creature shunted backwards towards Oldorando.
Horns sounded from high towers. He saw the spray of geysers. The stockade loomed, decorated with skulls painted in bright colours. Women and hunters ran out to greet him.
He waved his fur cap in return. Seated at the hot end of a blazing wooden caterpillar, he rode it backwards in triumph through the lanes of Embruddock.
Everyone laughed. But it was several days before the stink died from rooms along his triumphal route.
The unburnt remains of Laintal Ay’s stungebag were used up during the festival of Double Sunset. Even slaves were involved with this event—one of them was offered as a sacrifice to Wutra.
Double Sunset coincided in Oldorando with New Year’s Day. It was to be Year 21 by the new calendar, and celebrations were in order. Despite everything that nature could do, life was good and had to be secured by sacrifice.
For weeks, Batalix had been overtaking its slower fellow sentry in the sky. In midwinter, they came close, and days and nights were of equal length, with no dimday intervening.
“Why should they move as they do?” Vry asked Shay Tal.
“That’s how they have always moved,” Shay Tal said.
“You don’t answer my question, ma’am,” said Vry.
The prospect of a sacrifice first, with a feast succeeding, lent excitement to the ceremony of the sunsets. Before the ceremonies began, there was dancing round a mighty fire in the square; the music was of tabor and pipe and fluggel—which latter instrument some claimed was invented by Great Yuli himself. Rathel was provided for the dancers after which all, in a glow of sweat beneath their hides, moved beyond the stockades.