Bellan gave a small approving grunt.
Darak went in at the gate and around to the horses. He fondled them a little, talking to them, then, apparently satisfied, he mounted the chariot. He unwound the plaited reins from the prow-boss, shook them out, flicked them, and the horses started forward. They were badly matched for a team, and moved unevenly; the chariot bumped, but Darak had their measure in that second. The right outsider he let alone, the left insider he pulled back hard, and the center horse he slapped lightly with the rein, making him start ahead. The chariot moved, slow at first, little more than a walk. I saw him shift, getting the balance of the car, his bare feet testing with their own senses. The unevenness flowed from the three chestnuts as they felt the guide of the reins, compelling or restraining. They settled, joined, and he began to give them their head. Halfway up the track the reins moved slack and tautened, and abruptly they were galloping. I saw Darak had indeed known chariots, though where or when I did not understand. They seemed one thing now, one flying thing, a unison of movement. Dust clouded up, acrid gold in the sunlight. I glanced around. Ellak was grinning, Raspar stroking his chin, smiling slightly. Bellan, at the stake fence, was leaning forward. His eyes glittered, at the same moment almost unfocused. He was breathing fast, nostrils flared, Ms feet restless, the ruined left arm twitching. He, too, rode the chariot.
They took the turn, light and sweeping, a bright blur behind the rock platform, which represented the Skora of the
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Sirkunix. The second turn, and through the dust billows, the straining copper power held back. The chariot slowed and stopped. Darak looked at us.
“Good horses, Raspar, but ill matched.”
“I know it. You’ve earned better.”
The chestnuts, angry at this abrupt terminus of their flight, started forward again. Darak pulled them hard, and the groom ran in to release them and lead them away.
Darak came out of the enclosure, his brown body slightly whitened by the dust.
“Well, Bellan?” Raspar asked.
“Yes,” Bellan said. He turned to Darak. “A man for chariots has a look to him, like the lion in the desert-well-hidden, but easy to spot when it moves. Have you never raced before?”
“Not in a stadium. There was a track at”-Darak hesitated, not wanting to name any place he had visited in the past-“at a town I stayed in. I had time on my hands.”
“Yes,” Bellan said, “a god’s gift is on you and you play with it. You are a charioteer, but rusty. Like a good wheel, you will need much oiling before you are ready. But still, a good wheel. Now I will let you try my blacks, and see if they like you.”
They had brought them already. They were amazing in the sun, unreal, three animals carved from a single jet, highly polished to a silver gleam, with rubies set in their nostrils. They stood quite still, but there was nothing quiet in them. They were waiting, tensed and dangerous.
“Introduce our friend to them, Bellan,” Raspar said.
“With your pardon, I’d rather he introduced himself.”
Darak shrugged. He went forward, steady but not slow. A ripple ran through them. All three heads tossed almost simultaneously. Darak laughed softly. He was seduced already. He did not slip around to right or left, but walked on toward the middle of the three. The horse lip drew back, and the other two snarled also. Front hooves lifted a little way, unsure. Darak’s hand slid, firm and caressing, across the satin muzzle. Stroking, he drew the dark head down, whispering. It was sensual, almost sexual, strangely beautiful. The horse nudged his shoulder. The other two on either side extended their faces to receive his attention.
Bellan chuckled.
“Very good, very good, my Darros.”
“One brain in three bodies,” Darak said. “Is that how they take the track?”
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“Try them. They will go with you now. Twice only mind. We shall need them again, and they must not be tired. Besides, we have much to discuss together.”
The groom put them between the shafts, arranged their harness. Darak was in the chariot, impatient to begin. The blacks quivered, vibrant. The groom ran out and shut the gate. The reins flickered and drew straight.
The first time had been flight, but this was fire. Black fire leaping through oil. The horses stretched forward straining to catch the very shadows they had cast behind them on the previous lap. Darak stretched forward also. Too fast now to see clearly, only the curve, the impetus, orgasmic, unstoppable, making the world a frozen thing, transfixed around this core of speed. I felt I must run with them, to be still was blasphemy.
“Enough! Stop, you Sigkoan dog!” Bellan roared out.
The chariot flared, simmered, slackened. The horses trotted back around the turn to us.
“Did I not say two times, no more?”
Darak grinned.
“They and I forgot.”
“They and you must learn to remember.” But Bellan too was smiling.
Darak bowed, left the chariot, and, taking the light rugs the groom had brought, slipped them over each horse himself. They nuzzled him.
Ellak seemed surprised. He had not heard his leader take smilingly the orders and insults of any man before. Perhaps he had been expecting a fight; he looked bewildered, but his attention was distracted by a pretty girl coming out with cooled wine for us.
“There is much you will need to learn,” Bellan said, “and the black ones also. We must work on that. You know a little of the Sagare. By the gracious foresight of my master, you will know more of it very soon.” He nodded at the track. “Earth, air, fire, and water. A race of joy and fear and hate. But before that. Your archer.” He glanced at Maggur, at Ellak, who had drawn off a little with the wine girl. “These men will be too heavy. The team do not need to love the archer as they do the driver, but they must be able to suffer him.”
Raspar said, “Darros has suggested his lady rides with him.”
Bellan looked astonished.
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“A woman? Graceful in bed perhaps, but in a chariot as clumsy as an ox.”
“I am Darros’ archer,” I said.
Bellan looked at me, intense and interested for the first time.
“You? I thought you a tribal boy. I see you’re not. I beg your pardon.”
“Only women of the tribes wear the shireen,” I said.
“Indeed?” Bellan was not concerned at this mistake. “Do you shoot?”
“I am Darros’ archer.”
He assessed me fairly now.
“Small. Good weight for it.” He half turned and shouted for the groom who ran up at once. “Arrange the target. And get a bow and plain arrows.”
I thought I was to be tried on firm ground, but this was not the case.
The horses were uncovered, Darak was in the chariot and I up behind him. Bellan limped after us.
“What do you think now, my three songs of night?” Bellan asked the team. He rubbed his face against their faces and they responded at once. Then he moved to the chariot’s back. “Take off the boots. You must feel the life under you, the life of the chariot. Your feet must be like hands and heartbeat to hold you steady. I’ll get you sandals; your soles will be too soft for this as yet.”
“My feet are hard,” I said. I stripped the boots. The day was warming and the metal layers of the floor were hot from the sun. I felt giddy with tension, the air around me fragile as cracked blue glass. They handed up to me the bow and longflighted arrows-I had not known what they meant when they called them “plain.” I would learn later.
The groom came up and fixed a metal bar against the open chariot back, about level with my waist, then locked it into place.
Two men on ponies rode onto the track behind the chariot, facing me. Between them they carried, swinging on a cord, a large oval wooden target, marked with patches of dark blue, yellow, and red.
“When the chariot is at full stretch,” Bellan said, “aim for the colors of the target. Blue is best, being hardest to see, red fair, and the bright yellow passable.”
Bellan moved out of the enclosure. The gate shut.
A jolt. I took it. A second jolt and I was flung against the metal bar, almost winded. Damn Darak. I heard him laugh.
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“Courage, Imma.”
My feet balanced on the moving thudding floor, apart, over the backs of the wheels. I braced my body, taut against the metal, and waited. We were going fast now. The dusty ground whirled past, fizzing with speed. Behind, in front of me, the ponies galloped, the target swinging. I drew up the bow, steadied, aimed, fired. The arrow went wide. Hair blew forward around my face from speed. I would have to plait it or club it, like the warriors of a krarl. Again I aimed and fired. The arrow nicked the board and flopped in the dust. The chariot was still incredibly gaining. Another jolt that almost pitched me forward over the bar. I reeled back against the metal side, blinked my eyes clear of dust, took aim, and shot. The arrow lifted, came down, and caught red. I straightened, then relaxed my knees a little. I had more of the feel of the jouncing floor now. I leaned out over the bar and took three blues, one after the other. “Darak,” I said, “three blues, one red.” He did not hear me.