The Prize in the Game

by Jo Walton

  Ferdia realized that he had been so engaged in watching Darag that he hadn’t even glanced at the target. “You always hit where you aim,” he said. “I was trying to see how you do the shoulder movement with that turning and bending and still keeping the spear straight.”

  Darag put his hand on Ferdia’s shoulder blade. “Turn from here,” he said. “And just let them go. You put your eye out thinking too hard.”

  A woman laughed close by. Ferdia looked up quickly, and Darag dropped his hand as if Ferdia’s shoulder suddenly burned him. It was Atha, spears in her hand. As she was being treated as a guest while Conary negotiated with her mother for her return, she was allowed arms and acted as if she was on an ordinary visit. Any hostage might try that; Atha succeeded. Ferdia had never met anyone with more pride.

  “One of you thinks too much and the other too little,” she said, grinning. “You do it so easily you don’t know how you’re doing it, Darag. You’ll never make a teacher unless you know in your head as well as your body. It isn’t the shoulders, it’s the legs. Have you been practicing a lot in the chariot, ap Cethern?”

  “Yes, and I’m much better in it,” he admitted.

  “Well, you have to do it more often, so it’s just as well. But it can give you bad habits for throwing from the ground. The chariot moves under you, and you’re trying to compensate for that when you don’t need to.” As she said it, Ferdia realized she was right. He remembered how hard it had been to get used to the chariot at first. She sent her own three spears casually thrumming down, each landing a thumb’s width to the right of Darag’s three.

  “You’re right, ap Gren,” Ferdia said, as soon as she had finished, so he would not be distracting her. “I think that is the problem. Thank you.”

  “I’ll fetch them all back and see if you can do better now you know what it is,” she said, and set off down toward the target without waiting.

  “Well,” Darag said quietly, watching her go. “She may not be as pretty as Elenn, but she has an amazing amount of nerve. And nobody can deny she knows about fighting.”

  Ferdia looked at him in consternation. Darag laughed. “She knows all about fighting and has nerve yes,” Ferdia said as quietly as he could. “But Elenn is notably beautiful, while Atha definitely isn’t. I don’t see how it could come into your mind to compare them like that.”

  “Atha’s much easier to talk to, though,” Darag said. Atha pulled all nine spears out of the peat easily, then turned and started back toward them. “Conary’s talking marriage alliances with her parents. It would be a good thing for Oriel. Elba really doesn’t want Leary to marry Atha, though Leary said he would if he had to. Conal has turned the proposal down flat, unsurprisingly. I said I’d think about it, and I’m starting to think it might be a good idea.”

  Ferdia was completely lost for words. He hadn’t been delighted at Darag’s devotion to Elenn, but it was such a different kind of friendship that he hadn’t really been jealous. It was something he could almost share. But Atha could do everything he could do, do everything he could do better than he could. If Darag married her she would always be there.

  She came back and handed them their spears. Ferdia took his with hands that felt cold. She stood between them. “Now, remember that your feet are on solid ground and let’s see you do it,” she said.

  “It could be you I’m putting one through next season,” he said, forcing a smile.

  “Oh, yes. Or the other way around, which is more likely if you don’t get better at it,” Atha agreed cheerfully. Darag laughed.

  Ferdia stuck his spears in the ground. Solid ground, he reminded himself. Then he turned, paused, turned back and threw. Atha, he thought. Lagin against the Isles, next summer. He made his head shot. He drew the second spear out, aimed, looking at the figure, black against the green turf of the target. Conal, he thought. Fighting for Connat because of Emer. Lagin against Connat, a huge cattle raid, the biggest ever. The spear went straight through the figure’s throat. He took the third spear, not holding his breath, that beginner’s mistake, remembering solid ground, practice ground, Darag and Atha watching. Darag, he thought before he could stop himself, remembering the laughter.

  Then he wanted to catch the spear back, but it was too late. It soared smoothly and made the gut shot just where it needed to. He turned to the congratulations of the others, feeling sick. He knew now why his father had told him never to pretend he was fighting against anything but what was really in front of him. It was too easy for anger to make you think something you never meant to. He spat to take away the omen and bent to touch a fragment of fallen wood from the tree. Darag looked at him curiously, but said nothing.

  When the other two had made their shots, Atha called to Leary and suggested they all go and join the hurley. Ferdia was the first to agree. He didn’t want Darag to know he was hurt, let alone that he’d felt that angry about it. He needed time to think about this, to get it all straight in his mind.

  4

  AMAGIEN’S FEAST

  13

  (CONAL)

  Now Conal, you know your father’s very proud of you,” Finca said.

  Fifteen impossible answers flashed up ready to Conal’s tongue, topmost of them the desire to deny emphatically that he had knowledge of any such thing. Next in priority came the urgent wish to ask his mother why, if that was the case, Amagien had never done anything by word or deed to indicate it. He swallowed all the responses whole and stood mute and choking on unsayable words, his eyes on the worn rushes at his feet. Words were his shield and his defense against the world. He went through his days skimming along on them like a dragonfly over the water, words to bring laughter and keep trouble away. It was only with his parents that their shield crumbled away and left him helpless.

  At least he had managed to catch his mother alone. It was not easy. Most of the time she was in the king’s hall or down in the stables, surrounded by people. What little time she was in their house Amagien was almost always there too. He could not even begin to think of facing his father about this directly. He had only caught her now because she had come over from the hall to fetch something.

  He took a breath and looked at Finca, disconcerted to find that he had to look down and not up at her. He had noticed that he had been growing all summer. It had made him clumsy. He hadn’t quite taken it in that he had overtopped his mother. Finca regarded him with visibly fraying patience. “This isn’t what I want,” he managed to repeat, pushing away the real arguments, the ones he knew she could never hear.

  “The feast isn’t just to honor you, it’s to honor all the folk of Edar who fought the attackers. You can’t refuse it without insulting them,” Finca said. Her tone was deliberately reasonable, as if to say that nobody could disagree. It was a tone she used on Conary and Amagien all the time.

  Conal winced and looked away from her, his eyes sliding over the familiar curved walls and chests stacked against them. He could deal best with Finca when she saw him as ally, not obstacle. “I know. That’s why I didn’t refuse at once,” he said, keeping his tone reasonable. “But the more my father talks about it the more he makes it seem that it is to honor me, and—”

  “What’s wrong with you? Most champions would be glad of an honor feast to their victory,” Finca interrupted. He looked back at her. She seemed more impatient than ever.

  “Most such feasts would be given by the king, and Conary has honored me for it already,” Conal said, not letting himself react, pulling the words together quickly and lightly. She was listening, at least. “The problem is, mother, that it’s really not very subtle. It’s too much, making too much of it in a way the others don’t like.” He stopped, seeing the idea take root. He could never get anywhere with Amagien. Sometimes he could with Finca, and then Finca could get through to his father.

  “You won a great victory,” she said more slowly. “You won it almost single-handedly. That cannot be remembered too much.”

  Now he bit back the urge to remind her
that he could not have done it without Emer, or without the folk of Edar. It would only distract her from the scent he wanted her to take. “If it were Conary giving the feast here, maybe,” he said, stroking the dark fuzz that was beginning to grow on his chin, which only Emer called a beard. “But my own father doing it at Edar, and building onto the hall to do it? That could look like ambition rather than boasting.”

  Finca hesitated, and for a moment, he thought he had her. Then she shook her head swiftly. “At last I understand the direction you are wandering with all this reluctance and I don’t have to think you’ve taken leave of your senses. But you’re worrying too much. Nobody will think it is ambition. That is a line which is very clear to me, much clearer than it is to you. You think they will see that because there is some ambition in there. You do want to be king, after all, and this is a step toward that. But nobody else will notice. Conary will be there, he will honor you, and it is there that you won your name. Nobody will see it as ambition on your part when we feast the whole farm of Edar and all the king’s champions.”

  Finca stopped and looked at him keenly. “You need to stop being so shy. That’s half of why Conary doesn’t notice you as he ought. You think you are putting yourself forward too much when, in fact, you are too retiring. If Amagien had written a praise song about his own son, that might have been seen as ambitious, maybe. It was fortunate that ap Dair was here to do it, and he did a very workmanlike job. A little too much about Oriel and Connat working together, perhaps, but it is a song that will begin to make your fame known.” Conal felt his cheeks heating at the thought of that song, and perhaps his mother noticed, because she laughed. “Let me worry about such things for now,” she said.

  “I am not a child,” Conal said, and then immediately regretted it as his mother’s face froze.

  “Then don’t act like one,” she said, and turned on her heel and left the house without whatever it was she had come in for. Conal stood still for a moment staring after her, his hands clenched.

  It took him some time to find Emer. Discovering that she was not among those on the field playing hurley made him muddy and sweaty, but cheered him up a little—he got to outrun Atha and to cause Darag and Ferdia to run hard into each other.

  When he ran out of places to look in the dun, he went down to the stables. As he walked down the hill, he was struck by the beauty of the trees and hedgerows spread out below him, gold and red and brown in the afternoon sunlight that was so gold as to seem almost green. This was the light in which he pictured Manan’s underwater halls. Although the afternoon was still warm, it was an autumnal light. It made him think of the short days to come. He could not decide whether he would be sorry to be done with this summer. Some of it had been so good, and the rest so painful.

  The stable yard was full of people. Uthidir the chariot maker and his assistant were arguing with one of the leather workers who made harness. Meithin was trying to calm them down. Ap Felim, the kennel mistress, was trying to quiet a bunch of puppies who kept leaping up and barking. In the corner, Casmal was arguing with ap Carbad about training schedules. It was turmoil, and Conal could not see Emer anywhere. He edged around the buildings and saw Nid and Leary off at the far end of the rough paddock turning circles in a chariot. Then he saw Emer quite close, walking a pair of horses around her on a long rein, getting them used to the feeling of being yoked together before adding the weight of a chariot to the mix.

  Conal stood for a moment in the shadow of the kennels watching her. She was completely absorbed in her work. As always, his eyes went to her scar, and then quickly away. It was an honorable wound, yet it made him feel as if he had been given something precious to guard and had broken it. She was not crippled, or even really hurt, but she could so easily have died if Atha’s knife had found her throat instead. Whenever he saw it, it made him know what a mad risk he had taken with her, with them all. There had been no time to think about it until afterwards, when there had been time to think about almost nothing else. The scar made him apprehensive in a way he had not been in the battle. He had said nothing to her about that. He already knew how she felt about being taken care of. That she would go into battle beside him was just something else he would have to endure, quietly, every time, until she died, or he did. He would smile and fight beside her, and keep what he felt in his heart buried. In some ways it hurt most that there was already something he could not say to her. There had been such a little time when he felt he could tell her everything.

  He walked out onto the muddy field toward her, noticing how she had grown into her legs over the summer. She looked like a charioteer now, not like a colt. She seemed absurdly pleased to see him, but did not stop. He waited, well out of the way, and watched her working. The outside horse was an older mare, pale brown, with the scattering of white face hairs that marked her stamina. She was slightly tubby with easy living. The other was a leggy two-year old gelding, mostly white but with patches so dusky as to be almost black. He was just getting the feel of being yoked to another horse and not sure he liked it. He kept throwing up his nose, and Emer kept holding him back to the pace of the steady mare on the outside. After a few even circuits she drew them to a halt so Conal could come closer and embrace her.

  “I think Patches is finally getting it,” she said, smiling up at him. “Did you see him stop then?”

  “I managed to speak to my mother,” he said quietly.

  Emer turned her face up to him, all at once serious. “Did she hear you?”

  “Not a word of it. I would rather have my hair torn out by sparrows, but we will have to go, and endure whatever humiliation my father heaps on me.”

  Emer sighed. “Oh, well. One evening, some speeches, a feast, how bad can it get? You’re worrying about it too much. It’ll soon be over. And afterwards Atha will be gone.”

  “I keep having dreams about it,” he admitted.

  Emer started the horses moving again. “What kind of dreams?” she asked after a moment, when they were moving evenly. “You know what Inis said about the three kinds of dreams.”

  “I think they’re the silly mixed up worry kind of dreams,” Conal said. “But they don’t quite feel like that. They feel ominous.”

  “Did you tell your mother that?” Emer asked.

  Conal shook his head, looking out over the horses’ heads at the hill and the dun behind them. “She wouldn’t have heard that at all.”

  “How about talking to Inis, then?”

  “Inis’s remedies are often worse than the problem.” Conal sighed. He could, he supposed. But Inis had been very close to madness all this summer and he didn’t want to make him worse. It seemed that talking about this would be likely to push him off balance. What could he do anyway against Amagien’s determination? “I think you’re right and we’re going to have to go through with it.”

  “Did you ask your mother about the other thing?” Emer asked.

  “I just didn’t have the chance. There’s no point asking when she’s angry. There’s time yet. We couldn’t possibly get married for another year at the earliest.”

  “I’ll have to go back to Connat at the Feast of the Mother next year,” she said, not looking at him, her hands busy with the reins. “You think your parents are difficult but you don’t know what my mother’s like for making arrangements people don’t want. We should get something sorted out before that.”

  “I don’t want to be away from you either. Maybe you could speak to my parents and I could speak to—” Conal began.

  “Look out!” Leary screamed, much too close. Conal could hear the horses and chariot tearing down toward them out of control. Emer dropped her reins and leaped to the side. He followed her, diving to the ground and rolling, coming up just in time to see what happened. The chariot careened past them, almost through where they had been standing. The iron wheels looked huge and much too near. He could picture one of them rolling over Emer’s head, crushing it, almost as vividly as if it had really happened. His heart was pound
ing so hard it felt as if it would beat its way out of his chest. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.

  Emer’s horses, spooked, ran in different directions. Leary seemed to be driving—or attempting to drive—the chariot, though it was clearly out of control. There was no sign of Nid anywhere. He was pulling the horses to the left, to get as far from Conal and Emer as he could, or maybe in the hope of making a circle around the field and drawing the team to a halt when they were exhausted. But when the gelding bolted in one direction and the mare in the other, she went straight into the side of the hurtling chariot. Conal felt frozen in place. He could see what was about to happen. He held his breath. Emer clutched his arm. Neither of them could do anything to prevent it. Horse and chariot met with a great crash, and the chariot collapsed in a shattering of timber. The mare screamed. Leary’s bolting horses were pulled to their knees.

  “Oh no,” Emer said under her breath. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

  “Come on,” Conal said. Starting to move was hard, but once they had begun they ran and reached the fallen chariot in a few moments. People were coming running from the stable yard; they must have heard the crash even over all the tumult. Conal took in the scene with one rapid glance. Leary was half lying over the rail, his eyes closed. His left side was bloody and bruised. Nid was slumped on the floor of the chariot with blood on her temple, but she seemed otherwise unhurt. The mare was still alive, but breathing heavily with blood and foam around her mouth.

  “Help me get them out, then look to the horses,” he said to Emer. He went to the other side of the fallen chariot and began to pull Leary out. He was breathing, and Conal felt his own breath come easier for it. They had quarreled a lot in the past year, but before that, Leary had been his friend.