The news, Colsceg announced, was good. They'd been up on the roof (what, already? It was only just daylight, for pity's sake) and they'd been right, the damage was far less severe than it looked; two days' work, three at the outside, and the place would be habitable. Egil would be out of action for a while, but everyone else was back on their feet; a few bandages here and there and some pretty odd-looking beards and eyebrows, but nothing to worry about. Certainly not enough to justify cancelling the games 'Games?' Poldarn echoed.
Colsceg pulled one of those oh-for-crying-out-loud faces Poldarn had come to know so well. 'Games,' Colsceg repeated. 'Sports. Trials of strength and skill, to celebrate the wedding. It's a poor heart that never rejoices,' he added, as if reciting a particularly solemn passage from scripture.
'Oh, good,' Poldarn said, grateful that his thoughts on the subject were strictly private. 'When's that, then?'
After having known Poldarn for several weeks, it was surprising that Colsceg could still be so shocked at the man's ignorance. 'Well, now, of course. That's what we're here for. We've brought all the gear, and they're putting up the ring.' He paused, asking Providence under his breath to give him strength. 'So you're not ready, then.'
Poldarn shrugged. 'I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I don't know if I'm any good at sports. Maybe I should sit out and just watch and give the prizes or something.'
'No, that's completely wrong,' Colsceg snapped, then reined in his temper with an effort. 'It's you against all comers, that's the whole point. It's traditional,' he added, as if capping off an argument with a direct quote from the statute-book. 'When you say you're no good at sports-'
'Actually,' Poldarn interrupted, mostly out of devilment, 'I didn't say that. I said I don't know. Could be I'm brilliant at them. I guess we'll have to wait and see.'
One thing Colsceg was gaining from his alliance with the Haldersness mob was a vastly increased ability to stay patient. 'Fine,' he said. 'Well, when you're ready.'
'No time like the present,' Poldarn said. 'Lead on.'
They'd already marked out the ring with ground chalk mixed with water; now they were sharpening stakes and hammering them in with a post-rammer. They'd cut the rails already and laid them by, handy to be nailed on to the stakes to complete the circle. 'We thought we'd start with javelin-throwing,' Colsceg said, 'it's fairly gentle, good one to warm up on. Then the weightlifting, axe-throwing, heavy running-'
'Heavy running? What's that?'
'You run five times round the ring carrying a half-hundredweight sack of coal. Light running's the same, but without the sack. We thought we'd do the light running after the log-chopping.'
I've got to do all this, Poldarn thought, me against all comers. Bloody hell. 'Good idea,' he said. 'Is that it, or is there more?'
'Well, yes,' Colsceg said. 'After the light running, we'll have the wrestling, quarterstaff, shying at marks and singlestick, and finally the home game to round off with. If that's all right with you,' Colsceg added.
'Oh, fine,' Poldarn replied; and as he said it he was thinking, If I say I've done my ankle after the third event, which probably won't be too far from the truth, they'll have to let me off the rest and I'll have shown willing, which is the main thing, surely. 'Actually, now you mention it, I guess I'm quite looking forward to this.'
Nothing to indicate which of his questions and statements had been the most offensive, but Colsceg sighed and walked away. Somehow, Boarci contrived to materialise out of thin air just behind his shoulder. 'How's you, then?' he muttered.
'What?' Poldarn turned round. 'Oh, I'm fine.'
Boarci was grinning like an elderly sheepdog. 'Sleep well?'
'Yes,' Poldarn replied accurately. 'I wish someone had told me about all this, I could've made up an excuse to get out of it.'
'Selfish bugger, aren't you?' Boarci replied. 'It's the best part of a wedding, this: making the bridegroom look really useless in front of his new bride. They're all looking forward to it.'
'You included, by the sound of it.'
'Too right. I'm really looking forward to the quarterstaff. They told you about that?'
Poldarn shook his head, which was hurting even more than before.
'It's a good laugh, the quarterstaff. They put up these two trestles with a thin plank between them, and you stand at one end, the other guy's at the other end, and you've both got big ash poles to hit each other with. Actually, there's a lot of skill involved, takes years to learn. Anyway, the object is to knock the other man off the plank, and there's a big pile of rocks underneath for him to land on. Hurts like shit. I'm bloody good with the staff, say so myself as shouldn't.'
'I see,' Poldarn said. 'So what happens if I lose? Presumably whoever wins stays up.'
Boarci laughed. 'Don't you wish. No, it's like he said, you against all comers. You get knocked down, you just pick yourself up and get back on, ready for the next challenger. If there's time, we get to go round again. Didn't it ever occur to you why I'm still a bachelor?'
There were seven entries besides Poldarn for the javelin-throwing. Six of them out-threw him by a rather offensive margin; he rather hoped that the seventh, Eyvind, had deliberately thrown short as a gesture of solidarity, but being realistic he reckoned it probably had more to do with the thick wads of bandages on both Eyvind's hands. Whatever the reason, he contrived to ace Eyvind's throw by a whole two inches. All nine other competitors beat him at weight-lifting, which turned out to be a very short event, concluding as soon as he gave up (on the third weight). The best that could be said for his performance in the axe-throwing was that he didn't kill anybody. Asburn won the heavy running; Poldarn did manage to complete the course, though only by turning round and dragging the sack backwards for the last fifty yards. By any standards it was a pretty hopeless showing; but the worse he did, the more good-natured, even affectionate grew the laughter and shouted commentary from the two households; for some reason (no doubt entirely logical, if you were in on the basic premises) the more hopeless and pathetic he made himself look, the more they seemed to like him. Actually, he could explain that: you tended to distrust, fear and dislike the stranger, the man you didn't know, couldn't properly assess. Once he demonstrated a complete lack of physical prowess, there was much less reason for fear and animosity. Accordingly, Poldarn postponed his feigned injury for a while and carried on.
The next event was wood-chopping; each of the ten competitors was presented with a log and given an axe, and the first to cut all the way through was the winner. Most likely Poldarn wouldn't even have tried to win, if the log put in front of him hadn't been quite obviously thicker than anybody else's. But that struck him as unnecessarily unfair; and when the referee (Colsceg) yelled 'Go!', he found that he was taking out his negative feelings on the log. Furthermore, after the first few cuts he realised that he was good at this; instead of trying to hit, he was putting all his effort into the swing, bringing the axe up as high as he could get it and then letting it drop, guiding it into the slot with a light but firm hand, making sure he cut at the most effective angle in the most effective place, never taking his eye off the mark-it felt right, the way forge-welding the axe head for Boarci had, and the upshot of it was that he won by a clear margin, much to the surprise and disgust of the other eight competitors. Everyone else cheered, in a slightly stunned way, and Poldarn found himself revelling in the pleasures of victory to an extent he wouldn't have thought possible. In fact, he realised, he couldn't have done better if he'd planned it out carefully beforehand. Losing the first five events had got rid of the mystery and the menace; winning the sixth against all the apparent odds was exactly the right thing to do. They still liked him, but now he wasn't quite the abject failure any more, there was at least one thing he was pretty good at. All in all, he decided that he approved of this wedding-games tradition. It definitely had its uses.