He took a breath and tried again, this time seriously attempting to move the bar. It lifted several inches before he set it back. He had the measure of the weight. Titters changed to laughter.
He reset his feet and hands, went into rapid in-and-out breathing to prepare for a burst of power, shut down his lungs, and pulled with his arms and drove with his legs. When the bar was chest high, he rotated his arms and dropped under the bar, holding its position while he straightened up, arms fully extended. After a second, he let it drop, then caught it before it hit the blocks. He set it down quietly.
Shouts erupted from all sides, and a blow to Mark’s back took his breath away.
“That’ll show ’em,” said a laughing Erlon Lorwell. A second pat on the back was more restrained than the first. “Now stand aside for a real man.”
The Lorwell brother added another disc to each end of the bar.
Maybe it’s best I don’t know exactly how much this weighs, thought Mark, for a moment regretting he’d stepped forward. Then he reconsidered. He knew he was stronger than on Earth. Now was his chance to find out how much stronger.
Erlon lifted the new weight, as did brother Fenon, who scowled at Mark. The third man made a half-hearted attempt and backed off the weight, shaking his head. Mark repeated his previous routine and lifted successfully, though from his remembered experience he could tell there wouldn’t be many more rounds before he reached his limit.
On the next round, Fenon was out of rhythm and couldn’t get the weight extended above his head. With a disgusted shout, he dropped the bar heavily on the blocks, surprising Mark that the wood didn’t shatter.
Mark hadn’t glanced at Maghen in the last round but now tried to sneak a look. Pondering eyes stared back.
Suddenly, the urge hit Mark to fail at the next lift and fade into the crowd. After most of an Anyar year working to stay unobtrusive, he was on public display. If he won whatever booby prize the winner got, his real name would spread. And he didn’t fool himself. He wanted to impress a woman he’d never spoken to, who wasn’t all that objectively attractive, and who looked like she might be a fairly good weightlifter herself.
She smiled again.
Oh, what the hell, he thought.
“Ser Lorwell,” said Mark, addressing his last competitor. “Would you allow me to go first this time?”
Erlon smiled. “Going to try and drive me off, are you? Go ahead.”
Mark decided to go all in on a final lift. He put two more discs on each end. Gasps, murmuring, and shouts roiled through the crowd, which had now grown by another hundred or more people. Erlon’s smile dimmed, but the eyes remained friendly.
What’s the worst that can happen? thought Mark. If I can’t do it, I’ll bet Erlon can’t either, so we’ll probably take off a disc.
Mark assumed his stance. He hadn’t tested the weight on the last round but did now. It didn’t budge. He tried again and got it barely off the ground before dropping it. The crowd’s reaction varied from cheers to disappointment.
He heard a woman’s voice behind him. “Try again.”
He turned to meet Maghen’s look. She didn’t say anything, but he thought she nodded ever so slightly.
I don’t believe this, thought Mark. I’m acting like a male bird putting on a display for the opposite sex. I haven’t tried so blatantly to impress a female since I was a sophomore in high school.
That time it had been Juliet Jablonski, willowy with blue eyes and yellow-blonde hair. She was considered out of reach for a mere sophomore. Yet he had lettered on the football team and won the county’s heavyweight wrestling championship. Buoyed by self-confidence, he’d walked right up to her in a hallway and asked her to go to the homecoming dance with him. Her shriek of laughter rang through half the building. She called out to a cluster of other senior girls what a dipshit had just said to her. He’d slunk off, and for weeks he was convinced everyone in school was ridiculing him.
Mark grabbed the memory and turned to face Maghen Lorwell, who looked nothing like Juliet Jablonski. It was a trick a coach had taught him—get his blood pulsing and adrenaline flowing by mentally constructing an enemy to face or a critical need to succeed.
He took his position and pumped up and down with his legs, as he drew in and expelled three large breaths. He ended each with a grunt and imagined himself exploding when nerve impulses went to every relevant muscle. The trick was to be quick and assume success. There could be no hesitation or doubt—it was all the way or nothing.
The bar came off the blocks. His ears picked up metal groaning, though his brain ignored the information. He exploded upward, then dropped into a squat under the bar, arms stiff supporting the weight, every muscle quivering. Legs and torso raised him to a standing position. Only when fully erect was he aware of the rest of the world. He stared at Maghen’s face and a thumb’s up—a gesture he hadn’t seen before on Anyar.
His body wanted to release the bar and jump out of the way, but he unlocked his elbows, slowed the fall until the weight hung at his knees, then gently set it on the blocks. He knew his form had been atrocious, but no muscle or tendon felt torn—which he counted as the best result.
Cheers erupted.
Erlon raced to embrace him, then shouted, “I concede! No point breaking my back!”
Mark became engulfed by the cheering crowd. A seeming endless stream of people wanted to offer congratulations, shake his hand, slap him on the back, and ask questions about his name and origin. Several times he caught glimpses of a grinning Tylmar collecting coin from losers—most of them with scowls. Tylmar mouthed the words “five to one” when he caught Mark looking at him.
No wonder some people are pissed, thought Mark. They probably assumed five-to-one odds were good with a known champion against the stranger.
The crowd began dispersing as the Lorwell family’s bulk squeezed other people out of the way.
“Father, this is Mark Kaldwel,” said Maghen. “Like I told you, he also works for Keeslyn Toodman.
“Ser Kaldwal, these are my parents and my sister, Lori.” She smiled. “You already know my brothers.”
“Hmmph,” uttered the family patriarch, only to be elbowed sharply by his short wife.
“Get over yourself, Hurmon Lorwell. And at your age, you should be over acting like a disappointed child.”
“Woman never stops nagging me,” said Hurmon. “Even worse, Tura’s often right.” He held out a hand. “Congratulations, Kaldwel, but expect my sons to be back next year to give you a run for it.”
“I may not contest them if that’s the case. I think I almost broke half a dozen parts of me.”
All the family members laughed or smiled, except Fenon.
“Don’t mind my brother,” said Erlon, “he’s no more surly today than any other day.”
Fenon stomped off.
“Been working for Toodman long, Kaldwel?” asked Hurmon.
“A few months. I’m from northern Frangel but wanted to live in more open country than up there. My family owned a small ranch they sold. I tried other work but decided to come this direction to find work.”
Mark intended to head off too many questions and had settled on saying just enough to satisfy people’s initial curiosity.
“Maghen has never mentioned you.” said Hurmon, “So, glad we got the chance to meet.” He looked down at his wife. “Time for you to get your preserves ready for the judging?”
“You and Erlon can help me,” she said. “We’ll leave Maghen with Ser Kaldwel.”
When they left Mark and Maghen behind, she chuckled. “Mother is always looking for ways to push me to talk with any man who might be a husband candidate.”
“And that’s me?”
“Well, you’re a man, and you have a job, are strong and acceptable looking, and don’t drool. For mother, that puts you high on her list. The one thing she didn’t get to do was find out if you’re married. I’d guess not, since you’ve been working for Toodman long enough without sign
s of a family.”
Mark laughed. “You can tell her the answer is no. I was married once but not anymore.”
“Why once and not now?”
Mark felt momentarily discomfited. He knew the Frangelese were more direct than most people on Earth, but he wasn’t comfortable revealing details of his life. Still . . . she’d asked, and for some reason he relaxed.
“Simply a mistake, partly on my part. I didn’t look closely enough at who she really was. Plus, she became unhappy once she decided I wasn’t going to provide the quality of life she expected. We dissolved the marriage, so we could both go about our lives the way each of us wanted.”
Mark figured his being cast onto an alien planet God knows how far from Earth should count as ending the marriage. For Jocelyn, he had to have been reported dead, so no problem there.
Suddenly, Elron reappeared. “Fenon is over at the fighting pit. I think he’s going to take out his frustration on anyone foolish enough to challenge him.”
Maghen turned to Mark. “Let’s go watch. Fenon is one of the better fighters, though he didn’t do it last harvest festival because he had a broken arm.”
Watching the grumpy brother do anything rated extremely low on Mark’s list, but somehow not parting with Maghen was on the list—for reasons he didn’t question—so he followed her. If he’d known what was coming, he’d have declined.
They arrived in time to see Fenon pick a man up and throw him into the onlookers.
“Hah! That’s the best that’s come to the festival this year? Anybody else?”
A woman standing in front of Mark cackled. “That’s probably the only one,” said the woman loudly to Fenon. “I doubt anyone else wants to try.”
Unfortunately, when Fenon looked at the woman, the second thing he saw was Mark.
“What about you, Kaldwel? Got the stomach to face a man and not some lumps of iron?”
“Ignore him,” said Elron. “He’s in a foul mood.”
Mark knew Elron was right. Maghen agreed, as was evident by her frown at her brother’s words. Fenon noticed Mark’s decision to decline the invitation.
“What? Belatrek’s curse come over you?”
Although Mark had no idea what or who “Belatrek” was, that ignorance was not shared with most of the people within hearing—as judged by gasps, followed by silence and hundreds of eyes that turned on him.
Well, shit! I think I’ve just been insulted.
The next few seconds seemed to last minutes, as Mark’s mind evaluated what he wanted to do with what he should do. Tylmar laid a hand on Mark’s arm and shook his pale face when Mark looked at him. In comparison, Maghen’s face turned red, and she snarled at her brother. The Lorwell mother said something to her ill-mannered son, and the father’s glare at his son foretold a coming parental reprimand.
Mark laughed—a deep, belly-resounding noise that froze and silenced the crowd. It wasn’t a laugh of humor, but one of astonishment someone might express when faced with an unavoidable yet ridiculous situation. After being cast onto a beach naked to start a new life, his months of adjusting, the disaster of his grandiose plans, and the destrex hunt, now some idiot was giving him a double dare along the lines of “My daddy can whip your daddy” or “What—are you afraid?”
Mark was pissed. Not so much at Fenon. How could he be mad at a genetic asshole? The little that Mark had witnessed of the other Lorwells showed him that they had temperaments different from Fenon’s. However, Mark’s past frustrations became personified by Fenon Lorwell.
“Okay, jerk. You want to dance? Let’s dance.”
He stepped forward and tore off his shirt, hearing fabric rip in the process.
He tossed aside his boots and strode forward to within six feet of Fenon. The man-child frowned, his belligerence tempered with uncertainty at Mark’s response. Although the challenger’s answer had been in English, the undertones of menace were obvious to the rest of the Lorwells They now frowned at Mark while most other spectators cheered him on.
Hurmon Lorwell stepped between the two men, grabbing a wrist of each and holding their arms high.
“You both know the rules. No biting, gouging, or blows to the groin. Match is over when one man either gives up or is unable to continue.”
Hurmon backed away quickly, leaving the two men facing each other wearing only pants. Fenon lunged at Mark as soon as his father moved. Mark stepped back a half pace, ducked, slid an arm under Fenon’s spread right arm, and twisted into a hip throw.
Fenon landed on his back with a thud. Mark could have finished him right then while on the ground and stunned. Instead, he turned his back and stepped away, as if in disdain.
A roar from behind him warned Mark that Fenon was back on his feet and charging, undeterred. Mark whirled. This time, instead of stepping back, with a shout he delivered a stiff-armed blow with his palm to Fenon’s chest at heart level. Only at the last second did Mark relax his arm to prevent a full-force impact.
Fenon stopped as if he’d hit a wall. His mouth opened, and he gasped for breath. His face turned red.
Again, Mark could have ended the match. Instead, he stepped back but this time in alarm.
From ages eight to fourteen, he had sporadically taken lessons in karate. He hadn’t been a graceful child, and his father had thought martial arts would help his coordination. What he lacked in agility was compensated for by aggression—so much so that the sensei, at no extra charge, gave him private lessons to learn control. And learn he had, though the number and degree of his bruises led his father to visit the dojo. Whatever was said between Dad Caldwell and the sensei stayed with them, but the lessons continued until the sensei allowed Mark back into group sessions.
In the later stages of his private lessons, once Mark learned control, the sensei emphasized what must never be done in karate matches. He left unspoken what might be used under dire, real-world circumstances. Among the forbidden blows was striking to the heart area of the chest, which could lead to momentary paralysis or even death in rare cases.
Mark, in his current mood, had barely stopped himself from delivering a full blow with strength well beyond what he’d had on Earth.
Fenon recovered enough to assume a defensive stance. Mark could easily have brushed it aside. Instead, Mark circled his opponent, pretending to look for openings. His fury abated, he wanted to end the fight with as little attention as possible. But how? He judged that Fenon wouldn’t concede easily. Mark wasn’t mad anymore and wanted to avoid hurting Maghen’s brother, but neither would he throw the match. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t chance it. Fenon was too dangerous and potentially uncontrolled.
Mark closed with Fenon and let himself be pushed backward. They grappled to no effect for almost a minute while Fenon recovered more strength. Finally, Mark believed his opponent appeared to onlookers to be fully aggressive. For the next ten minutes, Mark turned the match more into wrestling than boxing. He choreographed the match as well as he could without making it seem to either the spectators or Fenon that Mark was the puppeteer.
Fortunately, Fenon seemed agreeable to emphasize wrestling that pitted muscle against muscle, rather than blows by fists. Mark knew he only had to be patient. No one who hadn’t wrestled understood the exhaustion that resulted from two opponents putting their best effort against the other. It was effectively maximum isometric exertion. When he felt Fenon’s energy waning, Mark feigned the same, until both men lay on ground, apparently exhausted without a winner.
“That’s all,” called Hurmon Lorwell, moving to stand between the two men. “No winner! It’s a draw!”
The crowd that had grown by hundreds let loose cheers, appreciative of witnessing a match to remember and to retell over meals and beers.
Mark pretended it took an effort to get on his feet. Elron helped his brother up, and people crowded around both men. When Mark looked at Maghen, her expression changed from “wondering” to acknowledgment that they both knew something everyone else was oblivious to.
She knows, thought Mark. He knew people could be smart in different ways. Whatever education Maghen Lorwell had was irrelevant to her ability to assess what she’d seen. Mark didn’t doubt she recognized his subterfuge.
When the spectators had thinned enough, moving on to other events and stalls, Fenon staggered over to Mark and embraced him.
“Maybe you’re an ass and maybe not, but I apologize for saying you were anything to do with Belatrek.”
“Well, I’m not sure if I’m an ass, but I am sure that you’re one,” answered Mark.
Fenon laughed, to the evident relief of the rest of his family.
“It’s true,” said Fenon, “as my family continues to tell me. But never let it be said that I’m not honest. And I’ll never let anything be said about your courage, standing up to me like you did and fighting me to exhaustion.”
You’re definitely an ass, thought Mark, but I’ll take it as a win that I shouldn’t have any more problems with you.
“Here’s what’s left of your shirt,” said Maghen, handing the tattered remnant to Mark.
“Goodness,” said Tura Lorwell. “I’m afraid that shirt is beyond repair. Maghen, take Ser Kaldwel to the stalls that sell shirts. We’ll head back to the judging of home products, which should be starting soon.”
Mark recovered his boots and walked, bare-chested, with her two hundred yards to a lane of clothing stalls.
At the first stall, she rummaged through shirts with rough fabric and surveyed the offerings. “No, I don’t see anything that would fit you, with those shoulders and arms. Let’s try the next one.”
Four stalls later, a brown wool shirt might have been even too large, but it was the best they’d found so far.
“You can keep looking if you’d like. I suspect you’ll have better luck getting shirts made new after the clothier measures you. I noticed your old shirt was high-quality flurox. I doubt you bought that anywhere near Nurburt.”
Passages Page 27
