by Brian Fuller
The game of White Sticks was born from the mind of idle soldiers who had invented it during lulls between battles using the bleached leg and arm bones of Uyumaak Hunters. Over time, the sport spread through the ranks of the human kingdoms, growing in popularity to the point where the rules solidified and soldiers formed leagues within military legions.
The game involved forming a square—called the Box—out of the long leg bones. At a distance of twenty paces from opposite sides of the Box, one arm bone rested in a cradle formed by two sticks pounded into the ground. Each team of two consisted of a Thrower and Goaler, each holding an Uyumaak arm bone.
The Throwers started inside the Box and on “go” ran toward the opposing team’s cradled bone. The object was to bat the opposing team’s bone as far away from the Box as possible. After batting the opposing team’s bone, the Throwers had to run, circling around to retrieve his team’s bone, directed by the Goaler.
Once retrieved, the Thrower could score points by throwing or placing the bone in the Box first and by getting it all the way inside the Box. The Goaler’s job was to distract the other team by chucking his bone at them. He could also use a precise throw to knock their already placed bone from the Box.
As he helped set the game up, Gen decided that despite the bogus bones, the Showles’s set of pieces outclassed anything they had played with before. The white bones felt smooth and heavy, far superior for throwing in the wind than the lighter, roughly carved pine sticks they normally used. Anyone hit with one of these bones would have a nice bruise to show for it, and the crowd backed away to a safe distance as Gant, Gen, and the Showles brothers finished setting up.
“We’ve played ‘gainst nobles,” Jakes bragged, holding a cloth over his mouth as he came close to Gen and Gant.
“Did you win any of the games?” Gen asked. Jakes paused, taken aback by the unexpected question.
“Of course we did!” he protested with enough heat to reveal the obvious lie.
“Congratulations,” Gen replied sarcastically. “You should have no problem with a couple peasant louts, should you? I mean, it’s hardly fair that we malnourished, dirty peasants should have to face such well-fed, experienced players like yourselves. It bespeaks a horrible inequity that begs attention and redress, and I fully anticipate that if you were Magistrate someday that you would take upon you the manly yoke of righting these injustices.”
Jakes squinted, having gotten lost somewhere around “bespeaks.”
“Don’t listen to ‘im, Jakes,” Howen growled, grabbing his brother by the arm. “He talks too much. Let’s play!”
Gen started as the Thrower, lining up in the Box with Howen. Gen faced Jakes, and on “go” ran forward and knocked the Showles’s bone high in the air and to the left before running back toward Gant, who signaled where theirs had fallen in the grass.
Gen retrieved it quickly, waiting to see if Jakes would throw at him, but when he turned around to face the Box, Jakes was yelling at Howen and telling him he had no idea where the bone had gone. Gen, realizing he had all the time he wanted, walked casually back toward the Box at a leisurely pace, Jakes watching him carefully, bone cocked back and ready to throw.
Gen braced himself for Jakes’s throw, and when it came, he turned and looked at Gant in shock—Jakes really did throw like a girl. The bone barely went ten feet before skidding to a halt in the dirt. Snickering erupted in the crowd. Gen, having the luxury of placing the bone in the Box rather than throwing it in, situated it in the exact center to get two points for being the first to put it in and three for getting it inside the Box without touching any of the sides.
When he looked up, Howen was still bent over rooting in the grass, butt-crack grinning above the rim of his pants. Not wanting to waste an opportunity, Gant reared back and threw his bone as hard as he could, hitting Howen’s ample backside with impressive accuracy. Howen got a bruised tail bone and a face full of dirt and grass.
In the end, Gen helped Howen find the bone. Since Gen had already scored, the rules forced Howen to make his throw from the spot where the bone had fallen. He missed horribly.
The first round robbed the hulking brothers of their bravado, and by the fourth, Gen and Gant succeeded in stripping them of their dignity, self-respect, and whatever maturity they could lay claim to. They whined, threw fits, and hurled poorly supported accusations of cheating, demanding Gen and Gant switch sides of the Box with them twice.
But despite the twins’ deep bruises and the mocking of the crowd, they demanded one last game to decide everything once and for all and that the score (which had risen to eighteen to six in favor of Gen and Gant) be put at zero. Gen and Gant agreed and met to discuss their strategy.
“Can’t take no glory in this,” Gant grumbled, spitting on the ground. “Never played ‘gainst poorer. Played against nobles! Faugh! Bloody liars.”
“It might not have been a lie, though. ‘Nobles’ is probably the surname of a couple blind, lame boys. Jed and Davy Nobles, maybe?”
“Right,” Gant smiled. “You wanna do anything special?”
“Do we need to do anything special? Perhaps play blindfolded and throw with our off-hands?”
“Done that last round,” Gant said. “The off-hand thing, I mean.”
“Really? I didn’t notice. Well, if we win, they’ll say we cheated and we’ll be on the run from a beating. Since I’ll be the Goaler, I’ll save my throw so I can use it to help us get away, if need be.”
Gen placed the arm bone in the saddles of the two sticks and waited as Gant and Jakes lined up in the Box. On “go” Jakes tripped Gant as he started to run, sending him hard to the ground. Gant grimaced and struggled to his feet holding his left arm, which lay limp at his side. Jakes sprinted toward Gen, batting the stick and turning back. If Jakes could get back to the Box before Gant hit their bone, they would win. Gant stumbled forward and hit the bone in time, but it flew low and landed only a few feet away from a grinning Jakes.
Still nursing his arm, Gant ran slowly to find the bone that Jakes had hit. While Gant struggled, Jakes dashed straight to where the bone Gant had hit lay, glee plastered to his face. Gen knew he had one chance to keep Jakes from scoring. Jakes would have plenty of time to get to the Box and put his team’s bone in before Gant retrieved theirs. Gen had to slow Jakes down. Gen signaled to Gant, indicating where their bone had fallen and then turned and threw his bone at Jakes just as the boy was standing up from picking up his team’s bone from the ground.
As soon as he released the bone, Gen wished he could have pulled it back. Time slowed to a crawl. Gen could pick out each anxious pair of eyes in the crowd as they followed the bone, tumbling end over end, toward its target.
Jakes stood, planted his feet, and turned back toward the Box just as Gen’s heavy wooden bone arrived. The rounded end smashed into Jakes’s mouth with a sickening crunch, sending his teeth flying out of his head in a shower of red and white. Jakes’s head snapped back and he landed flat on his back, dust rising around him from the heavy impact. Everyone winced, and the girls in the crowd gasped, bringing hands to open mouths.
Howen abandoned his post to check on his writhing brother. Gen was glad Jakes was writhing and not dead. A pale Gant jogged slowly to the Box and dropped the bone in. Gen met him there.
“Are you all right, Gant?” Gen asked.
“My arm hurts bad. What happened? What’d you do to Jakes?”
“I’ll explain later. We’d best leave. Let’s get to town and have the Pureman care for that. He might be able to fix it up well enough to escape your master’s notice.”
“Hey!” Howen bellowed as they turned to go. “Get back here!”
“You keep going, Gant,” Gen said. “I’ll take care of this.” Gant nodded doubtfully and started toward town, some of the crowd splitting off to follow him, trying to get a look at his arm. The balance stayed to watch the outcome of Jakes’s felling.
Gen turned and got his first glimpse of Jakes’s new face. Howen had h
elped him up, and they stood side by side, both seething with rage. In his agony, Jakes had smeared blood all over his face, and his lips had already puffed to twice their normal size, a throbbing purple and black. Color drained from Gen’s face.
“My teep! You basppurd!” Jakes yelled, more teeth and blood spraying to the ground. As one, the two brothers lumbered at Gen like angry she-bears. Gen turned and sprinted toward town as the crowd cheered him on.
“Meet me at the Church!” Gen yelled to Gant as he passed him.
Gen didn’t have to run very long before Jakes and Howen gave up, poor conditioning hindering their strong urge to pulverize the bard’s apprentice. Gen kept a quick pace toward town anyway, not wanting to give his pursuers any chance to catch him unawares; he didn’t think he would survive the encounter. The Church was his only sanctuary. Pureman Millershim brooked no fighting anywhere, especially on Church grounds.
Gen jogged into town, greeting the few people still around in the late afternoon. Tell’s town center held but one distinction. Some generations back, one of the more thoughtful Magistrates somehow secured funds from the Baron to pave the small square with imported cobblestones. Even after a heavy rain, the square remained pleasant, bearing only the mud tracked onto it from boots and wagon wheels. Four buildings surrounded the square, the Showles’s sprawling home, the Church, the Morewold’s store, and a run-down inn, the Honey Fly.
Like his master, Gen was well-liked by the townspeople for his good manners and happy disposition. As he opened the oak doors of the whitewashed Church, Pureman Millershim stopped his sweeping and smiled.
“Well met, Gen,” he greeted. “How did your game go? I can tell by your face that something is amiss. What is it?”
Gen took a couple of minutes to catch his breath. Pureman Millershim regarded him patiently. The Pureman was tall and bald, and he possessed penetrating blue eyes that could drag the truth from the most recalcitrant liar and yet be comforting in turn. Gen decided that all holy men should have eyes of blue and a strong chin—something about the combination invited reverence and respect.
“Gant hurt his arm.”
“Oh no! Not again,” Millershim said, frowning. “Is it bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll prepare the. . .”
“There’s more.”
“More?” Millershim asked, eyebrows rising.
“Yes,” Gen admitted, looking at the floor. “Jakes’s mouth is, um, in a sad state of disrepair.”
“And I can see by your sheepish look that you are guilty of the infliction?”
“Not on purpose!” Gen burst out hastily, realizing that Pureman Millershim might think he had punched the lad. “One of the bones I threw at him had the misfortune of catching him in the teeth.”
“So the bone had the misfortune, then?”
“No, sir. I meant to say. . .”
“Did he lose any teeth?”
“A fair number, yes.”
“Fair number?”
“More than three. Less than ten. I think.”
“I don’t suppose they bothered to gather them? I can fix some of the damage if I have them.”
“I didn’t see that they did. They were too busy charging at me to worry much about the teeth.”
“I see. I will prepare for an injured arm and a broken mouth, then. It would be best if you were not here when Jakes comes. His father will no doubt need several moments to cool down.”
It would probably take more than several years. The Showles family hated Gen for the town’s good opinion of him and for his good breeding. The Showles placed orphans in with the lowest of social refuse, considering them “double-bastards” for all practical purposes.
It irked the Magistrate that people said Gen could pass for a Lord while passing his own children off as even educated would be like telling someone a chicken was a peacock. The Magistrate and Lady Showles never connected the fact that they indulged their children in everything with their children’s poor behavior, and they—and consequently the whole town—suffered for it.
“I suppose I’ll go home, if you’ll tell Gant to stop by and. . .”
“Oh no, Gen,” the Pureman said as he rifled around in a closet. “I mean for you to go and find what you can of Jakes’s teeth.”
“What?!”
“You heard me. Now off with you! You owe Jakes that much, and it might go some way toward mollifying our good Magistrate’s unavoidable explosion of temper when he hears about this.”
Gen swallowed his pride and left through the rear of the building, taking the long way back to the clearing to avoid Jakes and Howen and any of the crowd that might still be returning from the game. By the time he arrived at the blood-flecked grass, the sun had dipped behind the line of trees, casting the spot into shadow.
Gen strained his eyes and worked until only the moons Myn and Duam were left to cast their light. Trys, the third moon, was an eclipsed hole in the sky as it had been for hundreds of years. The shards of their broken world sailed through the night sky, edges reflecting the fire of the setting sun as they moved and spun behind a misty veil of thin clouds.
Gen opened his hand to see the fruits of his labor. All his scrabbling in the grass produced five teeth and the pieces of a couple of others before the darkness prevented further search. He started for town, stomach clenched in dread. He walked at a meandering pace, hoping against hope the Showles would have come and gone by the time he arrived, but as he entered the Chapel, his heart sank. There on the back row sat the entire Showles family, Magistrate Bernard, his wife, Sarina, and their sons. They stood as he entered, faces angry.
Jakes remained sitting, holding a compress against his mouth. Howen strode over and shoved Gen roughly. Gen fell backward against a pew, losing his grip on the teeth as he braced himself for the fall. The teeth clicked on the wooden floor as they bounced about.
“Howen!” Millershim thundered. Gen looked up to find the brute towering over him, probably torn between fifty choices of how to hurt him. The Pureman interposed himself between the two boys, and Gen struggled upright, back bruised.
“For that, Howen,” the Pureman said calmly, “you will need to find your brother’s teeth on the floor.”
“Indeed, he shall not!” Bernard bellowed, ample gut shaking in indignation with the rest of him as he strode forward to lock his beady eyes on Millershim. The Pureman regarded him coolly.
“Gen assaulted my boy! Look at him!”
On cue, Jakes moaned pathetically and lifted the compress from his swollen lips, which, while perhaps a trick of light, throbbed as if ready to burst. “Furthermore, I am going to have him arrested!”
“Come now, sir,” Millershim said, brow creasing. “White Sticks often causes injuries. Don’t forget that Jakes injured Gant in the same round. Will you arrest him?”
“Certainly not, Pureman! Jakes tripping Gant was purely accidental.” Jakes agreed with a muffled “uh-huh.” “Gen’s assault was a deliberate and calculated attack!”
“It was not!” Gen protested.
“Quiet, peasant! Howen, fetch the Warden. Gen will sit in prison until Jakes can eat meat off my table again!”
Howen sneered at Gen before bounding out the door with a celebratory whoop.
“Magistrate,” Millershim objected, “don’t you think that a bit excessive?” Bernard’s face turned the color of his hair, stubby finger starting to rise.
“I will go,” Gen interjected before the Magistrate could spit out more vitriol.
Millershim patted Gen on the back and turned away from the Magistrate. “Let’s see if we can find those teeth,” he said. For the next few minutes, they searched the shadows of the pews. The Showles family muttered amongst themselves, the word outrage breaking above the mumbling at regular intervals. Millershim whispered to him that Gant had merely dislocated his shoulder and would recover quickly. Gen thanked Eldaloth for that favor.
“That’s five,” Millershim said, finding the last.
“We’ll look again tomorrow,” Millershim promised soothingly. “I won’t be able to do anything until the swelling goes down, anyway.”
“We won’t look. Gen will be on his hands and knees tomorrow until he finds every last one!”
Howen banged open the door, Sikes coming behind. Gen winced every time he saw the Warden. Sikes, once a woodsman, had lost an eye and some of his brain when a fellow woodsman had swung at a tree and hit Sikes instead.
From what Gen gathered, Sikes was once a likable sort, but after his injury the man had turned mean. He dressed in black, and a small club hung from his belt. His black hair, perpetually unkempt, shot out at all angles. As a consequence of the injury, he always walked with his head at a tilt. An eye patch covered the hole in his face, the deep furrow of his old wound denting the forehead above it.
“Where is he?” Sikes asked, lifting the club from his belt.
“There,” Bernard signaled authoritatively. “Gen.”
“The bard’s apprentice?”
“The very one! He is to remain in the prison until Jakes can eat meat again. Tomorrow you are to escort him to the field to find the rest of my boy’s teeth.”
“Meat? Teeth? Sir?” Sikes asked, confused. Jakes lifted the compress from his mouth.
“Mikkik’s Breath!” Sikes exclaimed.
“Pray, Sikes, do not use that name in this Chapel!” Millershim admonished. Sikes ignored him.
“The bard walloped ye a good one, eh? Well, assault it is! C’mon boy!” Gen shook his head and walked out the door, Sikes clubbing him on the back on the way out.
“Sikes!” Millershim said, “For the…”
The door closed and Pureman Millershim’s complaint was lost. Gen walked as quickly as he could, hoping to avoid another painful blow. The prison sat a scant fifty yards from the town center. Before the Showleses, Tell never had a prison. As soon as Bernard was elevated to the status of Magistrate by the Baron, he ordered one built. It served as Sikes’s home as well, and Gen would have the only bed in the building, forcing Sikes to sleep on the floor.
