Trullion: Alastor 2262 (17 page)

The teams waited while the orchestra played
Thresildama,
a traditional salute to the competing teams.

The captains appeared with the sheirls; the orchestra played Marvels of Grace and Glory. The Karpoun sheirl was a marvelous creature named Farero, a flashing-eyed blonde girl, radiant with sashei. In accordance with some mystical process, when she stepped upon the pedestal she transcended herself, to become her own archetype. Duissane, likewise, became an intensified version of herself: frail, wistful, indomitably courageous, suffused with gallant derring-do and her own distinctive sashei, as compelling as that of the sublime Farero.

The players drew down their masks; the flashing silver Tanchinaros looked across at the cruel Karpouns.

The Karpouns won the green light and the first offensive deployment. The teams took their positions on the field. The music altered, each instrument performing a dozen modulations to create a final golden chord. Dead silence. The forty thousand spectators held their breath. Green light. The Karpouns struck forward in their celebrated “Tidal Wave,” intending to envelop and smother the Tanchinaros out of hand. Across the moat leapt the forwards; behind came the rovers and, close behind, the guards, ferociously seeking contact.

The Tanchinaros were prepared for the tactic. Instead of falling back, the four guards charged forward and the teams collided like a pair of stampeding herds, and the mele was indecisive. Some minutes later Glinnes won free and gained the pedestal. He looked Farero the Karpoun sheirl full in the face, and seized her ring. She was pale with excitement and disconcerted; never before had an enemy laid hands on her ring.

The gong sounded; Jehan Aud somewhat glumly paid over eight thousand-ozol certificates. The teams took a rest period. Five Tanchinaros had been tanked and five Karpouns; the honors were even. Warhound was jubilant. “They’re a great team, no question! But our guards are unmovable and our forwards are faster! Only in the rovers do they show superiority, and not much there!”

“What will they try next time?” asked Gilweg.

“I suppose more of the same,” said Warhound, “but more methodically. They want to pin our forwards and bring their strength to bear.”

Play resumed. Aud now used his men conservatively, thrusting and probing, hoping to trap and tank a forward. The crafty Warhound, seeing how the land lay, purposely restrained his forces, and finally outwaited Aud. The Karpouns tried a sudden slash down the center; the Tanchinaro forwards slid to the side and let them pass, then jumped the moat. Lucho climbed the pedestal and seized Farero’s ring.

Seven thousand ozols were paid as ransom.

Warhound told the team, “Don’t relax! They’ll be at their most dangerous! And they haven’t won twenty eight games by luck. I expect a Tidal Wave."

Warhound was correct. The Karpouns stormed the Tanchinaro citadel with all their forces. Glinnes was tanked; Sladine and Wilmer Guff were tanked. Glinnes returned up the ladder in time to tank a Karpoun wing only ten feet from the pedestal; then he was tanked a second time, and before he could return to the field the gong sounded. For the first time Duissane had felt a hand at her gold ring. Warhound furiously paid back eight thousand ozols.

Glinnes had never played a more grueling game. The Karpouns seemed tireless; they bounded across the field, vaulting and swinging as if the game had only commenced. He could not know that to the Karpouns the Tanchinaro forwards seemed unpredictable flickers of silver and black, wild as devils, so unnaturally agile that they seemed to run on air, while the Tanchinaro guards loomed over the field like four inexorable Dooms.

Up and down the field moved the battle; step by step the Tanchinaros thrust against the Karpoun pedestal, the forwards wicked and remorseless, driving, bumping, swinging, thrusting. The roar of the crowd faded to the back of consciousness; all reality was compressed into the field, the runs and ways, the waters glinting in the sunlight. A heavy cloud passed briefly over the sun. Almost at this instant Glinnes saw a path open through the orange and green. A trap? With the last energy of his legs he darted forward, around, over and through. Orange and green yelled hoarsely; the Karpoun masks, once so sage and austere, seemed contorted in pain. Glinnes gained the pedestal, seizing the gold ring at Farero’s waist, and now he must pull the ring and lay the blue-eyed maiden bare before forty thousand exalted eyes. The music soared, stately and tragic; Glinnes’ hand twitched and hesitated; he did not dare to shame this golden creature

The dark cloud was not a cloud. Three black hulls settled upon the field, blotting out the light of afternoon. The music stopped short; from the public-address came a poignant cry: Starmenters! Take — ” The voice broke off in a gabble of words, and a new harsh voice spoke: “Keep your seats. Do not move or stir about.”

Glinnes nontheless took Farero’s arm, jerked her from the pedestal, down the ladder to the tank under the field. “What are you doing? she gasped, pulling back in horror. “I’m trying to save your life,” said Glinnes. “The starmenters would never leave you behind, and you’d never see your home again.” The girl’s voice quavered. “Are we safe under here?”

“I wouldn’t think so. We’ll leave by the outlet sump. Hurry — it’s at the far end.” They splashed through the water at best speed, under the ways, past the center moat. And now down the other ladder came Duissane, her face pinched and white with fear. Glinnes called to her, “Come alone we’ll leave by the sump; perhaps they’ll neglect to guard it.”

At the corner of the tank the water flowed out and down a flume into a narrow little waterway. Glinnes slid down the flume and jumped to a ledge of ill-smelling black mud. Next came Duissane, clutching the white gown about herself. Glinnes pulled her over to the mud-bank; she lost her footing and sat back into the muck. Glinnes could not restrain a grin. “You did that on purpose!” she cried in a throbbing voice.

“I did not!”

“You did!”

“Whatever you say.”

Farero came down the flume; Glinnes caught her and pulled her over to the ledge. Duissane struggled to her feet. The three looked dubiously along the channel, which meandered out of sight under arching hushberries and pipwillows. The water seemed dark and deep; a faint scent of merling hung in the air. The prospect of swimming or even wading was unthinkable. Moored across the way was a crude little j canoe, evidently the property of a couple of boys who had gained illicit entry to the field through the sump. Glinnes clambered over the flume to the canoe, which was half full of water and wallowed precariously under his weight. He bailed out a few gallons of water, then dared delay no longer. He pushed the boat across the water. Duissane stepped in, then Farero, and the water rose almost to the gunwales. Glinnes handed the bailing bucket to Duissane, who went scowling to work. Glinnes paddled cautiously out into the waterway. Behind them, from the stadium, came the rasp of the announcement system: “Those folk in Pavilions A ,B, C, and D will file to the south exits. Not all will be taken; we have an exact list of those we want. Be brisk and make no trouble; we’ll kill anyone who hinders us.”

Unreal! thought Glinnes. An outrageous avalanche of events: excitement, color, passion, music, and victory now fear and flight, with two sheirls. One hated him. The other, Farero, examined him from the side of her magnificent sea-blue eyes. Now she took the bucket from Duissane, who sulkily scraped the mud from her gown. What a contrast, thought Glinnes: Farero was rueful but resigned — indeed, she probably preferred flight through the sump to nudity on the pedestal; Duissane obviously resented every instant of discomfort and seemed to hold Glinnes personally responsible.

The waterway curved. A hundred yards ahead gleamed Welgen Sound, with South Ocean beyond. Glinnes paddled more confidently; they had escaped the starmenters. A massive raid! And no doubt long planned for a time when all the wealthy folk of the prefecture came together. There would be captives taken for ransom, and girls taken for solace. The captives would return crestfallen and impoverished; the girls would never be seen again. The stadium vaults would yield at least a hundred thousand ozols and the treasures of the two teams would supply another thirty thousand, and even the Welgen banks might be plundered.

The waterway widened and meandered away from the shore across a wide mud flat pimpled with gas craters. To the east ran Welgen Spit, on the other side of which lay the harbor; to the west the shore extended into the late afternoon haze. Under the open sky Glinnes felt exposed — unreasonably so, he told himself; the starmenters could not now afford the time to pursue them, even should they deign to note the wallowing canoe. Farero had never ceased to bail. Water entered through several leaks, and Glinnes wondered how long the boat would stay afloat. The shuddering black slime of the mudflats was uninviting. Glinnes made for the nearest of the wooded islets which rose from the sound, a hummock of land fifty yards across.

The boat rocked upon an ocean swell and shipped water. Farero bailed as fast as possible, Duissane scooped with her hands, and they reached the islet just as the canoe sank under them. With enormous relief Glinnes pulled the canoe up the little apron of beach. Even as he stepped ashore, the three starmenter ships rose into view. They slanted up into the southern sky and were gone, with all their precious cargo.

Farero heaved a sigh. “Except for you,” she told Glinnes, “I’d be aboard one of those ships.”

“I would also be up there, except for myself,” snapped Duissane. Aha, thought Glinnes, here is a source for her annoyance: she feels neglected.

Duissane jumped ashore. “And what will we do out here?”

“Somebody will be along sooner or later. In the meantime, we wait.”

“I don’t care to wait,” said Duissane. “Once the boat is bailed out we can row back to shore. Must we sit shivering on this miserable little spot of land?”

“What else do you suggest? The boat leaks and the water swarms with merling. Still, I might be able to mend the leaks.”

Duissane went to sit on a chunk of driftwood. Whelm ships streaked in from the west, circled the area, and one dropped down into Welgen. “Too late, much too late,” said Glinnes. He bailed the canoe dry and wadded moss into such cracks as he could find. Farero came to watch him. She said, “You were kind to me.”

Glinnes looked up at her.

“When you might have pulled the ring, you hesitated. You didn’t want to shame me.”

Glinnes nodded and went back to work on the boat.

“This may be why your sheirl is angry.”

Glinnes looked sideways toward Duissane, who sat scowling across the water. “She is seldom in a good humor.”

Farero said thoughtfully, “To be sheirl is a very strange experience; one feels the most extraordinary impulses … Today I lost, but the starmenters saved me. Perhaps she feels cheated.”

“She’s lucky to be here, and not aboard one of the ships."

“I think that she is in love with you and jealous of me.”

Glinnes looked up in astonishment. “In love with me?” He returned another covert glance toward Duissane. “You must be wrong. She hates me. I’ve ample evidence of this.”

“It may well be. I am no expert in these affairs.”

Glinnes rose from his work, studied the canoe with gloomy dissatisfaction. “I don’t trust that moss especially with the avness wind coming from the land.”

“Now that we’re dry it’s not unpleasant. Though my people must be worried, and I’m hungry.”

“We can find shore food,” said Glinnes. “Well have a fine supper except that we lack fire. Still a plantain tree grows yonder.” Glinnes climbed the tree and tossed fruit down to Farero. When they returned to the beach, Duissane and the canoe were gone. She was already fifty yards distant, paddling for that waterway by which they had left the stadium. Glinnes gave a bark of sardonic laughter. “She is so in love with me and so jealous of you that she leaves us marooned together.”

Farero, flushing pink, said, “It is not impossible.”

For a period they watched the canoe. The offshore breeze gave Duissane difficulty. She stopped paddling and bailed for a moment or two; the moss evidently had failed to stanch the leaks. When again she began to paddle she rocked the canoe, and while clutching at the gunwale, lost the paddle. The offshore breeze blew her back, past the isle where Glinnes and Farero stood watching. Duissane ignored them.

Glinnes and Farero climbed upon the central hummock and watched the receding canoe, wondering whether Duissane might be swept out to sea. She drifted among the islets and the canoe was lost to sight.

The two returned to the beach. Glinnes said, “If we had a fire we could be quite comfortable, at least for a day or so... I don’t care for raw sea-stuff.”

“Nor I,” said Farero.

Glinnes found a pair of dry sticks and attempted to rub up a fire, without success. He threw the sticks away in disgust The nights are warm, but a fire is pleasant.”

Farero looked here, there, everywhere but directly at Glinnes. “Do you think that we’ll be here so long?”

“We can’t leave till a boat comes past. It might be an hour, it might be a week.”

Farero spoke in something of a stammer. “And will you want to make love to me?”

Glinnes studied her for a moment, and reaching out, touched her golden hair. “You are beautiful beyond words. I would take joy in becoming your first lover.”

Faero looked away. “we are alone... My team today was defeated, and I won’t be shierl again. Still — ” She stopped speaking, then pointed and said in a soft flat voice, “Yonder passes a boat.”

Glinnes hesitated. Farero made no urgent movements. Glinnes said reluctantly, “We must do something about silly Duissane and the canoe.” He went to the water’s edge and shouted. The boat, a power skiff driven by a lone fisherman, altered course, and presently Glinnes and Faero were aboard. The fisherman had come from the open sea and had noticed no drifting canoe; quite possibly Duissane had gone ashore on one of the islets.

The fisherman took his boat around the end of the spit and into Welgen dock. Gaero and Glinnes rode in a cab to the stadium. The driver had much to say regarding the starmenter raid “ — never an exploit to match it! They took the three hundred richest folk of the region and at least a hundred maidens, poor things, who’ll never be put up for ransom. The Whelm came too late. The starmenters knew precisely who to take and who to ignore. And they timed their operation to the second and were gone. They’ll earn fortunes in ransom!”