Lady Ett and Kime and Obert and I stick close together. We pull ahead of some people. Others pull ahead of us. Some bulls also run faster than others. They are not shoulder to shoulder and frill to frill when they start catching up with us. The street has room for bulls and people both. Not a lot of room, but room. That is the point of the ritual, or part of it.
“Thimras!” a woman behind me yells. She is running alongside a bull. She reaches out and slaps its flank with a whitewashed hand. That sound can be nothing else. I am sure of it through all the din. What you do while you run next to a beast that may kill you is also part of the point of the ritual.
The first bulls pound past my friends and me. If one of us gets in the way, or if a bull lowers its great head and hooks with a horn . . . I try not to think about that. The bulls’ smell is half-musky, half-grassy. Smell it once up close and you never forget it. Nothing else comes close.
I reach over to touch a bull on the side. I do not slap it the way the woman did, but I touch it. Just in front of me, Ett Brashli does slap it. She lets out a whoop a moment later. Like me, Kime only touches the bull. Obert Ohn keeps running beside me. His face is set and harsh.
Up ahead, a runner suddenly turns and springs up onto a bull’s snout. He grabs one of the horns above its eyes with each hand. The bull does not like that any better than I would. It tosses its head. The runner is waiting for that, though. He flips up and over the bull’s frill and lands on its back. Then he pulls a feather from its crest, slides to the ground, and starts running again.
Lady Ett whoops once more. I almost whoop myself. That took nerve and skill. It reminds me of the ancient frescoes they have found on the island of Erket. And, for a man who follows Thimras, what could be grander than to pluck a bullfeather in the running at Amblona?
I turn my head to say as much to Obert. But I cannot, because he has sprinted out ahead of us. I did not know he had such strength in his legs. While I was thinking my thoughts about the bull-vaulter, he must have been thinking his.
When he is far enough out in front, he turns on a bull the way the other man did. I can read his mind, poor sap. If he makes his vault, he will impress Ett. She will see what a brave fellow he is. Then she will drop Kime Kelbam and take up with him some more.
“No, Obert! No!” I shout. Like so many smart-seeming schemes, this one has not a prayer of coming off. Lady Ett does not work that way. I ought to know.
Besides, the vaulter will have practiced hundreds or thousands of times with a nice, tame steer. He is not just showing off for a woman he wants. He knows what he is doing.
I have no idea when Obert Ohn was last near a bull. I do not know whether he was ever near a bull before. He tries to jump up onto this beast’s snout, the way the vaulter did. One hand gets a grip. The other slips. Instead of jumping up, Obert slips to the cobbles.
“Ett!” he wails in despair, the instant before the bull’s left front foot comes down on him. I can hear him break. I hope it all ends fast for him. In case it does not, the bull’s left hind foot smashes him, too.
Ett Brashli shrieks, once. But all we can do is keep running. Hardly a year goes by in Amblona when people do not get trampled or gored.
We run past what is left of Obert Ohn. Most of him is only a red smear on the street. Some of the rest still twitches a little. People are harder to kill all at once than you would think. That is sometimes a good thing. About as often, though, getting it over with comes as a release.
A man presses himself against the plywood barrier. Both hands clutch at his lower leg. In spite of that, blood pours down over the whitewash on his scales and puddles under his feet. He is gored. I wonder how he got away before a bull stepped on him.
“Horrible!” Ett says. “This is horrible!” If you hear her voice but you cannot make out her words, you will guess she has called it thrilling.
Another bull thuds past us. I can reach out to touch it, too, but I do not. Once is enough. Once was once too often for Obert Ohn. So many people who try so hard to do something bold, something wonderful, wind up squashed on the cobblestones. Doing something like that is harder than it looks. Otherwise, everyone would be bold and wonderful all the damn time.
Just running along is plenty bold, as far as I am concerned. I want to get to the arena. I want to get off the course. I want a brandy, and then another brandy, and then another brandy after that. Then I want to start drinking.
I feel as if I have been running forever. In fact, I have been running for about twenty minutes. I am not in the shape I should be. I am not nearly in the shape Obert was. But I am in better shape than he is now, or ever will be.
A last turn. The arena looms ahead. It is a great limestone bowl of a building. It looks as if it has been sitting right there for hundreds of years. It looks that way because it has. People on the other side of the ocean cannot hope to understand what a place like that means. Nothing in Dubyook has earned the right to look so old.
At the arena, there are people-sized gaps in the barrier. It is not plywood there. It is stone. Lady Ett ducks through a gap. Kime follows. I am right behind them. The gaps are too small for bulls. They pound on to the pens where they will wait to fight.
“Move away!” a blue-painted acolyte calls to us in Astilian. “Move away so others can get through.”
Ett and Kime do not speak the language. Panting, I herd them down the alley. “Well,” I say, “now you’ve run with the bulls in Amblona. How do you like it?”
Ett’s look says she thought I was cold-blooded, but not so cold-blooded as that. Kime says, “It’s a good thing to have done once.” I nod. It is a better answer than I expected.
People keep squeezing through the gaps. On the other side of the barrier, handlers with long goads persuade the bulls to go where they want them to. I understand how the bulls feel. My conscience pricks at me like the point on the end of one of those goads.
“I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” I say.
“Why not? You can get drunk there,” Ett says. She knows me too well. She knows that is what I want to do most.
“They’ll stuff what’s left of Obert in a sack and bring him back there,” I answer. “And then they’ll ask me what to do next.”
“Quite,” Kime says. “That’s what you get for being his countryman. This far from Dubyook, you might as well have hatched from the same clutch. The Astilians will think you did.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say.
And that is how things work out. “I am very sorry, sir, but we know nothing of how you deal with death in Dubyook,” Tonmoya says. Yes, he is apologetic as hell, but that does me no good. He is telling me I am stuck with it, as if I cannot see as much for myself.
“He’s here. He died because he wanted to join your ritual. Give him the kind of funeral you’d give one of your own. He’d like that,” I say. Whether or not Obert would like it, I neither know nor care. All I know is, he is not going to argue with me.
Tonmoya bows. Astilians are a formal folk. “As you say, sir. But how shall we pay for the rites?”
“Let’s see what he’s got in his room. That will cover some of it.”
“Do you have the right to take it?”
“The right? Of course not,” I say frankly. “But nobody here will complain if I do, which is all that counts. If we’re still short, I’ll kick in some myself. It’s the least I can do.” It is also the most I can do. I go on, “Maybe Lady Ett and Kime can add a little, too.”