"It sure isn't," Krispos said. As he walked slowly back toward Idalkos, he heard someone giggle. His head whipped around. There in her doorway stood Zoranne the daughter of Tzykalas the cobbler, a pretty girl about Krispos' age. His ears felt on fire. If she'd watched his whole ignominious flight—
"Pay the chit no mind," Idalkos said, as if reading his thoughts. "You did what you had to do: I had a sword and you didn't. But suppose you didn't have room to run. Suppose you were in the middle of a whole knot of men when you lost your blade. What would you do then?"
Die, Krispos thought. He wished he could die, so he wouldn't have to remember Zoranne's giggle. But that wasn't the answer Idalkos was looking for. "Wrestle, I suppose," he said after a moment.
"Would you?" Krispos put down the sword. He set himself, leaning forward slightly from the waist, feet wide apart. "Here, I'm an old man. See if you can throw me."
Krispos sprang at him. He'd always done well in the scuffles among boys. He was bigger and stronger than the ones his own age, and quicker, too. If he could pay back Idalkos for some of his embarrassment—
The next thing he knew, his face was in the dirt, the veteran riding his back. He heard Zoranne laugh again and had to fight back tears of fury. "You fight dirty," he snarled.
"You bet I do," Idalkos said cheerfully. "Want to learn how? Maybe you'll toss me right through a dung heap one fine day, impress your girl there."
"She's not my girl," Krispos said as the veteran let him up. Still, the picture was attractive—and so was the idea of throwing Idalkos through a dung heap. "All right, show me what you did."
"A hand on the arm, a push on the back, and then you twist-so—and take the fellow you're fighting down over your leg. Here, I'll run you through it slow, a couple of times."
"I see," Krispos said after a while. By then they were both filthy, from spilling each other in the dirt. "Now how do I block it when someone tries to do it to me?"
Idalkos' scar-seamed face lit up. "You know, lad, I've taught my little trick to half a dozen men here, maybe more. You're the first one with the wit to ask that question. What you do is this... ."
That was the start of it. For the rest of that summer and into fall, until it got too cold to spend much time outside, Krispos learned wrestling from Idalkos in every spare moment he had. Those moments were never enough to suit him, not squeezed as they were into the work of the harvest, care for the village's livestock, and occasional work with weapons other than Krispos' increasingly well-honed body.
"Thing is, you're pretty good, and you'll get better," Idalkos said one chilly day in early autumn. He flexed his wrist, winced, flexed it again. "No, that's not broken after all. But I won't be sorry when the snow comes, no indeed I won't—give me a chance to stay indoors and heal up till spring."
All the veterans talked like that, and all of them were in better shape than any farmer their age—or ten years younger, too. Just when someone started to believe them, they'd do something like what Idalkos had done the first time they wrestled.
So Krispos only snorted. "I suppose that means you'll be too battered to come out with the rest of us on Midwinter's Day," he said, voice full of syrupy regret.
"Think you're smart, don't you?" Idalkos made as if to grab Krispos. He sprang back—one of the things he'd learned was to take nothing for granted. The veteran went on, "The first year I don't celebrate Midwinter's Day, sonny, you go out to my grave and make the sun-sign over it, 'cause that's where I'll be."
Snow started falling six weeks before Midwinter's Day, the day of the winter solstice. Most of the veterans had served in the far west against Makuran. They complained about what a hard winter it was going to be. No one who had spent time in Kubrat paid any attention to them. The farmers went about their business, mending fences, repairing plows and other tools, doing woodwork ... and getting ready for the chief festival of their year.
Midwinter's Day dawned freezing but clear. Low in the south, the sun hurried across the sky. The villagers' prayers went with it, to keep Skotos from snatching it out of the heavens altogether and plunging the world into eternal darkness.
As if to add to the light, bonfires burned in the village square. Krispos ran at one, his hide boots kicking up snow. He leaped over the blaze. "Burn, ill-luck!" he shouted when he was right above it. A moment later, more snow flew as he thudded down.
Evdokia came right behind him. Her wish against bad luck came out more as a scream—this was the first year she was big enough to leap fires. Krispos steadied her when she landed clumsily. She grinned up at him. Her cheeks glowed with cold and excitement.
"Who's that?" she said, peering back through the shimmering air above the flames to see who came next. "Oh, it's Zoranne. Come on, let's get out of her way."
Pushed by his sister, Krispos walked away from the fire. His eyes were not the only ones in the village that followed Zoranne as she flew through the air over it. She landed almost as heavily as Evdokia had. If Evdokia hadn't made him move, he thought, he could have been the one to help Zoranne back up.
"Younger sisters really are a nuisance," he declared loftily.
Evdokia showed him he was right: she scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it against the side of his neck, then ran away while he was still writhing. Bellowing mingled outrage and laughter, he chased her, pausing a couple of times to make a snowball and fling it at her.
One snowball missed Evdokia but caught Varades in the shoulder. "So you want to play that way, do you?" the veteran roared. He threw one back at Krispos. Krispos ducked. The snowball hit someone behind him. Soon everyone was throwing them—at friends, foes, and whoever happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. People's hats and sheepskin coats were so splashed with white that the village began to look as if it had been taken over by snowmen.
Out came several men, Phostis among them, wearing dresses they must have borrowed from a couple of the biggest, heaviest women in the village. They put on a wicked burlesque of what they imagined their wives and daughters did while they were out working in the fields. It consisted of gossiping, pointing fingers while they gossiped, eating, and drinking wine, lots of wine. Krispos' father did a fine turn as a tipsy lady who was talking so furiously she never noticed falling off her stool but lay on the ground, still chattering away.
The male spectators chortled. The women pelted the actors with more snowballs. Krispos ducked back into his house for a cup of wine for himself. He wished it was hot, but no one wanted to stay indoors and tend a pot of mulled wine, not today.
The sun set as he came back to the square. The village's women and girls were having their revenge. Dressed in men's short tunics and doing their best not to shiver, several of them pretended to be hunters bragging about the immense size of their kill—till one of them, fastidiously holding it by the tail, displayed a mouse.
This time, the watching women cheered and most of the men jeered and threw snow. Krispos did neither. One of the female "hunters" was Zoranne. The tunic she wore came down only to mid-thigh; her nipples, stiff from the cold, pressed against its thin fabric. As he looked and looked, he felt a heat grow in him that had nothing to do with the wine he'd drunk.
At last the women skipped away, to thunderous applause. More skits came in quick succession, these mocking the foibles of particular villagers: Tzykalas' efforts to grow hair on his bald head—in the skit, he raised a fine crop of hay—Varades' habit of breaking wind, and more.
Then Krispos watched in dismay as a couple of fanners, plainly intended to be Idalkos and him, practiced wrestling. The embrace in which they ended was more obscene than athletic The villagers whooped and cheered them on.