And that mattered not a whit to Old Nathan now.
The cunning man stepped down into the shallow creek and laid a hand on the shoulder of Spanish King. The black bull was shuddering as his muscles strove to throw off fatigue poisons accumulated in the nearly motionless struggle, and the air reeked with hormones saturating the sweat which foamed across his torso as far back as the last ribs. King’s deep exhalations roiled the surface of the creek in counterpoint with his slobbering gulps of water.
“Ye’ve whipped ‘im, boy,” said Old Nathan earnestly, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. “Hain’t another bull on this earth could’ve done what you did. Now, let’s ussens go off and leave him t’ his business. Hit ain’t no affair of ours if some triflin’ daddy’s boy lays in a stand uv corn here er no.”
“Ain’t finished, old man,” said the bull as he paused in drinking and got his breath enough under control that he could rumble out the words. “You know thet.” The creek curled around his fetlocks, and his black hide steamed with sweat.
“What call do we hev t’ stay here, damn ye?” the cunning man demanded.
The piebald bull pranced out of the stream, his tail lifted so that the center of it curved higher than his rump though the brush of long black hairs still hung down. Mud his hooves had stirred upstream began to drift past Old Nathan’s boots.
“Come away,” the man cried.
“And give him best?” murmured Spanish King. “Don’t reckon so.” He poised himself. “Watch yerself, old man,” he warned, and he launched himself from the creek to charge his rival.
“Blood and dust!” thundered the aurochs as he pounded with his head high toward the black bull.
“King, he’s hook—” cried Old Nathan, but the warning would have been too late even if it could have been heard over the competing bellows of the bulls.
The aurochs ducked so low that he seemed almost to have stumbled, his lower jaw sweeping dust from the clay. Neither the feint nor the piebald bull’s attempt to hook him low took Spanish King by surprise, but his reflexes played him false for all that.
King twisted to block the thrust of a long-horned bull like himself, and the aurochs’ right horn stabbed over King’s guard and deep into his throat.
The black bull grunted in shock, and his legs stiffened as if the blow had been to the cortex of his brain. The aurochs rumbled in triumph and backed a step to give his rival time to die. Beads of arterial blood stained the right horn like rubies in black onyx.
Spanish King strode forward as the piebald bull stepped away. Their horns met and locked again with the sound of lightning striking a tall tree, and the aurochs gave back a further pace with surprise that the struggle had not ended. Blood rolled down King’s black chest, and the stream lifted from the fur around the wound every time his heart beat.
Old Nathan fell to his knees in the dirt beside the trampling bulls, his hands clasped as if for prayer . . . but it was too late to pray, even if he had not forsworn the god, the God, of his father long years before. The blood that trailed from King’s deep chest splashed on the clay like molten metal.
The aurochs kicked out against his black rival. When he kicked again with the other foreleg, Old Nathan realized that the piebald bull was lifting his forequarters from the ground in order to avoid being thrown down by the turning force King was applying through their locked horns.
“No!” the aurochs said. “No, you can’t—” he thundered, and his forehooves lashed out together. They waggled short of Spanish King, though they splashed in the bloodstream as the piebald bull twisted to the right despite himself.
The crack of the aurochs’ spine was as sharp as a pistol shot, but it was far too loud for that.
The piebald bull did not sprawl limp with his tongue thrusting in a vain effort to drive out sounds that his lungs no longer knew to power. Instead he vanished, uncanny only in the moment of his end.