Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

planted his feet directly over the middle of three arches. He was dressed like a hero from Greek or Roman mythology, masked and armed with a short sword, the bright steel raised as Schilling neared, the blade turned till it dazzled.

  And then he was gone. There was no clap of displaced air. Schilling scratched his nose and crossed.

  Another time, maybe.

  Meandering through the bleary afternoon he held an imaginary conversation in his head. The conversation was between himself and Franky Heidelberg, the pair of them sitting on the edge of her bed.

  Franky, ‘There’s clean sheets. Zonda does the ironing.’

  Schilling, ‘Zonda? You’re kidding...’

  ‘No; really.’ She brushed back her hair. ‘Underneath it all she’s the domestic type. Just don’t tell her I said so. She cut me...look.’

  ‘Huh?’ He was confused.

  ‘In the Weekender canteen,’ she explained. ‘We were messing about. Zon wanted to spike the meatballs.’

  ‘And did she?’

  Franky screwed her mouth into a crimson knot. She didn’t answer.

  Loyal, Schilling thought.

  ‘Sometimes we sit up all night arguing. Friends do that.’ It embarrassed her to imply that he was alone, friendless, that she need to clarify. ‘Have you decided yet what to do about Ruby?’ she added quickly.

  Schilling frowned. Obviously he wished to forget. ‘I can’t turn him in,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ It was a stupid question. He answered it anyway.

  ‘It’d be pointless. He’d kill me.’

  ‘I’m sorry...’ Her eyes closed with her mouth, frightened of saying the wrong thing again.

  He put his arm round her waist.

  ‘Hubert?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes what?’ she quizzed, folding her hands in her lap.

  Defensive? ‘Just “yes”,’ he replied.

  She wriggled as if ice was melting down her spine.

  ‘It’s the way you said it, that’s all. Like you didn’t care. Like you’d agreed in advance to whatever it was I was going to ask.’

  Maybe I had, he thought. ‘And?’ He tongued her ear.

  Her shoulders closed, squeezing her breasts.

  So much for advice.

  ‘Hubert?’

  The woman he loved...

  ii

  The man with the sword crept in an attitude of pretended stealth about the labyrinthine alleys of a great sandstone city, a helm of bronze stained with verdigris, a weapon of indented steel in one knuckled fist.

  Schilling tore a door-post from its gritty foundation and bore it across his shoulder like a club.

  The sun was hot and high, the shadows dissolved, the air transfused with an orange heat reflected off endless compacted walls, baked and windowless. This was the beggars’ quarter, its residents hidden behind sackcloth and timber, not daring to share their gaze with the warriors passing without.

  Schilling trailed Ekland, not knowing, although perhaps understanding, where he led.

  The sweet smell of excrement met a barrier of perfumes, smoke from exotic hardwoods mixing with crushed flower heads and spread unguents in that section of the city occupied by merchants and prostitutes. Here veiled eyes regarded them, spies whispered of them, women rolled many-sided dice in beaten copper bowls and men measured swatches of cloth from chin to wrist. Noise echoed down narrow streets, messages and insults, grunts and warnings, rumours quickly overtaking one another as the two proceeded apace, the distance between them constant, the shufflings of people and animals increasingly evident as they moved rapidly toward the rich centre. Ladies, dimpled and bangled, dispatched servants to place bets, dark-eyed in their sedan-chairs. Gentlemen deep in their cups paused to argue the merits of sword and club. Clowns entertained and hawkers shouted the names of their goods. Children rushed like mice underfoot.

  Schilling had tunnel vision. He travelled a conduit, the shapes to either side phantoms sporned by the flickering light, the corridor thronged with amorphous visions, a kaleidoscopic melange reality tried unsuccessfully to tune in.

  Towers rose, ornamented with colourful pennants, streamers trailing from spires. A crush of unruly horses stirred panic about a cobbled square where a fountain promised coolness. The city’s wealthy sat on upholstered benches in the shade of the water’s glassy fronds. A fine spray dampened the air. Ekland stopped at the far end of the square and waited for the ex-trooper to push through the throng before passing beneath an archway. Beyond lay a trampled arena, roughly circular, with stone-cut terracing on three sides.

  There was a roar of expectant voices, a vicious clamour to greet the gladiators as they took their positions on this sand-packed stage.

  The two men stood ten metres apart.

  Ekland was masked.

  Schilling rested the post on the ground.

  The arena filled to bursting. The warriors absorbed the desperate faces.

  They melded into a whole, a single greedy mass, hungry and cruel. The sun beat down relentlessly. A trumpet sounded, slicing the babble, and thereafter in silence many thousands of arms were raised, the crowd rippling like a serpent awash with jewels...

  And they clashed, the Orieleans.

  twenty-two - sub

  Set in a clasp of bones, a lush stone aubergine shone dully on the middle finger of Braxis Drum, lord of the meeting rivers, a confluence whose energies were harnessed via granite wheels to reduce limestone to dust, the dust bagged and borne to the surface on the backs of eyeless men.

  In a cage languished Pilot Johnson, face set cement hard, transfixed by that ring.

  Upstairs, the demon had informed her, the lime was burnt and the residue used in the manufacture of bricks.

  Building bricks?

  ‘Life is a labour intensive business,’ he’d said.

  Patiently, Johnson frayed rope.

  Braxis Drum, his huge belly stuffed with children, lounged absently on a circular rock. Overhead sparkled myriad gems. She freed her hands and feet. The cavern was empty but for a handful of attendants, disgustingly slope-shouldered and snoozing like their lord, leaning on crooked spears. Carefully she tested the strength of the bars, teasing apart rooty fibres in an effort to escape. Braxis himself had fished her from the subterranean watercourse, surprised and amused by her gill-less nature. The children he caught here all had fins. He was about to eat her anyway when she thought of a riddle.

  ‘What’s large and green and has warts on its head?’ declared the pilot, dangling by her legs, staring into that gruesome gullet.

  Braxis paused, scowled. Normally his meals did little more than squeal and wriggle and were full of juice. Either this waterbabe was overripe or a message from a fellow god. Deciding on the latter, he turned her the right way up.

  The demon, she saw, had a squint. One eye magnified before her face, examining the pores of her skin. He blew on her and she grimaced.

  Johnson, choking, repeated the question...satisfied by his bemused expression. His curiosity allowed her to live.

  That and a love of backgammon, which he played clumsily, the pilot letting him win. Against a constant reverberation, stone pulverizing stone, she groaned plaintively each time one or more of her pieces became trapped, the demon toad’s pungent breath assailing her, rotten teeth in a rotten skull, the butt of her desperate joke.

  ‘What’s large and green and has warts on its head?’ mused Braxis in his slumber.

  A whirlpool, whispering and seductive, had captured her before her present jailer. Starved of food and light, having had her fill of water, Johnson was gulled into bathing in her summer dress. The roof passed overhead, indistinguishable from the river bottom, speeding her on her way, the first stage of a longer journey...to where? The middle? She paused to think, but only briefly. Swinging free of the cage she tiptoed over to her bloated host, this toad of substantial girth and virulent growths. She hunted for Schilling’s string-pull bag, yet f
ound herself still oddly captivated by the ring, lush and round and compelling. Uncovering the bag she collected the backgammon set and placed that in it before turning to leave the noise-rippled cavern. But couldn’t. She was at a loss to explain why. It wasn’t greed, Johnson reckoned. Then what? The ring held her gaze. A trophy? A token of her contempt? Maybe - and this puzzled her - to steal the bloody ornament from the foul amphibian’s finger was to prove something to herself. Her existence, for if she took the ring Braxis Drum would almost certainly come after her, proving once and for all the pilot’s ability to influence events.

  It slipped off easily, greasy and wet. Johnson stowed it in the bag, and checking around for signs of wakefulness found only signs of indigestion.

  There was a jetty and a boat.

  i

  Franky gazed out the window at the harbour lights, the ships coming in red and green and yellow, those departing for nameless reaches blue globes. Outer Space, the near-flung colony as the sailors called it, was celebrating its anniversary. Not much of the original structure remained, the station having been largely rebuilt over the decades, but they would visit the inner places, tread the damp rusting halls where great metal girders still strained. Franky was apprehensive, yet excited. It was strange to think of her home as artificial, something manmade. She’d dreamed of men in spacesuits erecting the framework, fastening nuts and bolts with fantastic glowing wrenches and clambering like steeplejacks, magic spanners gripped, juggling fixings, slow-motion acrobats...

  ‘Aren’t you eating breakfast?’ her mother quizzed.