We were around the turn, nearing the Warden’s gallery. The first lap was over.
I looked up at the Skora. Three markers were gone now,
126
gray, green, and black; and of the blue, yellow, purple, white, and scarlet flights one lap gone also.
We had set the pattern for the race, we five. Bellan had said this would be so. Essandar the leader, Barl on his neck, not for long, but with a skillful archer who kept Essandar’s disdainful youth at a distance. Darak third, the unpredictable third of any race-the one who may leap on to win, or drop back to nothing. Just behind us, Neron, gaining on us, and then Soils, who seemed to have no race at all left, and to be running just for the exercise. In this formation, then, we took the second and third laps. They are the dead laps of the race, and often the fourth, too. It is the first, the fifth, and the sixth generally which are the kingpins of the game.
But the fourth lap brought a fluke of chance that broke the pattern once and for all. They do not remove the chariot wrecks from the stadium, only the men, or what is left of them. Thus the wrecks become yet further obstacles. Lascallum had fallen at the third gate of the Pillars of Earth, blocking it; there were now only three openings instead of four, and theoretically only two, because the fourth and farthest out gave such a loss of speed that every chariot that could avoided it. Andum and Coppain were still together, nearing the first and second openings when a stray metal plate from the wreck jolted the blue, and Andum swerved across it. At the same instant the yellow archer got a corded flight into Essandar’s wheel. Essandar, a master of his team, pulled them back and held them, and the chariot kept upright while the blue archer slashed the foul from the spokes with the tiny knife allowed in the arena. But it was a pause. Andum was through the Skora gate and ahead, and Essandar, starting up again, found we had joined him, Neron at back.
Darak, at this stage, would have given Essandar the first opening, but Essandar stared back at us, and there was a look in his face, not for us but for Bellan. He would shame the broken charioteer further if his trained pupils fell. So he swung back, ignoring the advantageous first opening, and headed straight toward the second, where we, with Neron a fraction after us, were headed. Darak hauled on the reins; the blacks, unused to this roughness and unable to check, leaped upward in the air. The car went with them, up, and then down, crashing hard on the Straight. I thought I had broken my back against the bar, and all the chariot was broken with me, but somehow we were whole, flung to the side by our own impetus, yet upright. Essandar was through the gate, but Neron, striving to avoid both of us, had gone at full
127
reach into the Lascallum wreck. It was a double tangle of metal, the grays kicking feebly in death throes, both charioteer and archer flung out onto the sand, the driver dead, the boy shrilly screaming in agony. As Darak righted us, I fired a shaft into his brain-no more could be done for him.
Through the Skora opening now, and fast, unevenly fast, for our impetus had been smashed. Yet we were one of the few to be stopped still in the Sirkunix, and live. The crowd, which had yelled its fascinated horror at our leap, now roared and bawled for us.
Soils behind us. Ahead-greatly ahead-Essandar, and before him, Barl, running too fast to cling to his lead. Already he was slowing. Through the water, by the pits of air, between the flames-and it was the flames that ended him. His team hated the fire. Each time they passed they hated it the more, and now, his lash merciless over them, they ran mad, careered around, and bolted back the way they had come. I saw Essandar’s whip rear out and slash them as they passed him-the crowd saw too, and growled. We were at the Pillars of Air when that fire-crazy team ran at us.
Darak pulled aside, the screaming horses fled past, their eyes rolling, and then the wheel tipped back from under us. We had caught in the pit, would be over in a moment. I leaped forward beside Darak, throwing the little weight I had off the sinking wheel, and in the same instant Darak’s lash for the first and last time-flared on the black satin backs. Again they leaped forward, almost as if in flight. The wheel ground free and we were out. I glimpsed Darak’s face in that second-white, but whiter than that white, the teeth grinning. The crowd was howling for us, and behind, the Andumite team had slowed trembling in the middle of the Straight, facing the wrong way, and grooms had run out to hasten them from the track.
Only Essandar now; Soils was not in it. And the blacks had their speed again, that second speed that a charioteer can love out of his team in the white bloody dust. Through the fire, past the still burning wreck of Sogotha, and around, across the String, and our four scarlet arrows taken down, along with Essandar’s blue. Two more laps. He was half a length ahead but he would not keep it. The dust, which slows every wheel, would slow his too, and we had time to take him.
We took him-Earth, Water, and Air, and we were near. At the turn, the fire ahead, we were one and one, the blue and the scarlet.
128
The fires dim near the end of the Sagare as the tar is burned out. But there is a lot of smoke, more than ever, thick and black as a cloak. Under that cloak, as Sogotha would have done, the blue archer tried for us. But eyes water from smoke-his aim was nothing.
And then I heard Essandar-clear, so clear: “Do as the bitch did-dip your arrow, boy, and hit one of the horses.”
The archer laughed. It would be easy. The fire would bum straight down the shaft into the black hide, leaving no trace, only the flames. Had Darak heard? He seemed not to have done.
So fast now, and so dark. The speed incredible, everything a blur. But I ripped the shield off my arm, half my skin coming with it, and as I saw that bright orange dart go over us, I flung the shield and brought it and the arrow down, harmless, and in their path.
The shield jounced and broke under the horses’ hooves, and slowed them as they avoided the Sogothan wreck. Now, on that fifth lap, we were ahead.
We broke from the smoke first, and the terraces pounded their hands and yelled. I saw the red flags waving-many more than at the start. Around, and near the String, wholly stretched now. But we must not go past that fire with them again.
Bellan, where do you sit? With your master Raspar, who is near the Warden? Give me your hate, Bellan. And I will do it. I must not hit the man, the horses, the archer-that is the law of the Sagare, though who would guess it? But the chariot, and the things of the chariot, are all mine.
Amusing-I noted dimly the Sollish car was so far behind, it was in front of us on the Straight.
I turned, and stared backward, leaning on the bar, the plain-flighted arrow already set.
One hope only. I am more than you. Bellan, watch-! I shot. The arrow ran up, silver against blue, dipped over, fell. I guided it more with the eyes than with the hands which had loosed it.
And it struck.
It struck.
A scream, a roar from the terraces, men and women leaping to their feet, howling their savage joy, for I had it – the classic shot of the Sagare-I had sliced Essandar’s reins in two.
It is possible for a man to save himself when his reins snap, but not easy, and now impossible. He was moving too
129
fast, leaning out across his team. The thrust, which had held him steady, now, pulled him forward. The one rein still wrapped around his fist dragged him up, over the boss, across the backs of his team, a tumbling, blue, shrieking thing, held a moment between the running horses, then down beneath their hooves, and after that, beneath the wheels of his own chariot.
The bays ran a while, then stopped, shivering, until the grooms came for them.
We rode that last sixth lap alone, fast for the joy of it, not because we must, and the crowd sang for us as we ran.
If there are gods of the Sagare, how they must laugh. Darros of Sigko, scarlet for Ankurum, the Victor. And his second, Gillan of Soils-second because there was no other left to ride for it.