This was the area in which I felt most confident—far more so even than in the foot-racing events. I did not feel even slightly presumptuous when I told myself that no one among my classmates could come close to me in anything having to do with horses and horsemanship.
At the start of the first race—a point-to-point affair in which each contestant had to ride three miles, collecting three flags along the way and bringing them back to the starting point within the time it took for a sand glass to drain twice—all of us were drenched in a brief but spectacular cloudburst. This was quickly forgotten by everyone but me, because it would cost me the race. I was riding a big bay gelding that I had ridden often before that afternoon, and we were first through the gate leading from the stable yards and along the short, wide lane that led into the open country beyond the town. I gave the bay his head and let him stretch his muscles while I enjoyed the rush of the wind through my hair and the feeling of his enormous body flexing and uncoiling beneath me.
I leaped down from his back at the first pickup point and snatched up one of the red flags that lay there, and I had remounted and was kicking him forward again when the closest of my rivals, Balbus once again, came thundering down toward us.
The run to the second pickup point, with the yellow flags, was uneventful despite a couple of obligatory jumps, one of them a downhill leap over a log at the edge of a deep pool of water. I was confident I was outstripping the field easily until I discovered—unpleasantly and most surprisingly—that Balbus was hard on my heels, far closer than he had been at the red flag pickup. I looked closely at his mount this time as we passed each other—Balbus leaping down to snatch up his flag as I kicked my heels into my mount’s ribs. He was riding a huge gray, and it was sweating visibly, but not inordinately so. I crouched lower on the bay’s back and drummed my heels against his sides, coaxing him to higher speed on our way to pick up the last, green flag, but I was distracted now, wondering how Balbus could have gained so much ground on me so quickly.
It did not occur to me, then or later, that he might have cheated, for that was simply not a possibility. There were no rules to contravene in this race, other than the rule stating that each rider must pick up all three flags before heading for home and the finish line. There were degrees of difficulty in routing, and each rider had the option of deciding whether or not to deviate from the standard course, which wound through valleys between hills, for it was possible, theoretically, to shorten distances dramatically by riding up and over any hill crest, rather than going around it. But we were all familiar with the dangers that lay in wait there; the slopes were steep and treacherous with loose stones and boulders, and in some places they were simply unscalable. Besides, the normal risks of attempting to go up and over were increased and emphasized by the fact of the race and the consequent need, if the attempt were made, to get up one side and down the other quickly with no failed attempts, no hesitation, and no loss of time.
On the last dash for home I decided to leave the flat valley bottom and cut off some distance by riding higher, taking a straighter route along the gently sloping shoulder of the hillside that stretched above me on the right. But just as my mount breasted the last angled line of hillside that lay between me and the finishing line, I suddenly saw Balbus coming down at me from above, on my right. He, too, had chosen to climb, but had gone even higher than I had, gambling that he would be able to cut my lead and beat me on the downhill dash into the last turn. I saw him just in time and kneed my mount to the left, sending him downhill, not steeply but sufficiently to stay ahead of Balbus. My horse, a surefooted animal that I had ridden many times, lost his footing somehow on the slick, rain-wet shale of the hillside and went sprawling, hurling me over his head like a living boulder. Neither my horse nor I was seriously injured, but we were nonetheless effectively out of the race. By the time I had collected myself and clambered back up onto the bay’s back after checking him for injuries, five riders had galloped past us and we were unable to catch any of them thereafter.
I arrived back in the stable yards glowering blackly and biting down on my self-disgust, but I could not even have the satisfaction of being angry at Balbus. He had done nothing wrong, apart from inducing me to make an error of judgment and then going on to win the race.
Less than an hour later, my earlier disappointment forgotten, I was in the middle of what we called the battle, the most chaotic but also the most enjoyable part of the competition. It was a remnant of the truly ancient gladiatorial contests in which, as the climax of a set of games, there would be a general fight in which it was every man for himself and the last man left standing could win his freedom. Our version of the event was nowhere near so bloodthirsty, but it was our tradition that the last man standing would be declared the day’s victor, which meant that even an underdog who had fared badly in the individual contests of strength and skill had a theoretical chance to emerge victorious over all others. There were almost as many umpires on our battlefield as there were combatants, too, their object being to identify and remove participants who were clearly beaten before they could suffer any real physical damage. The combatants all wore heavily padded protective leather helmets and fought in armor built of boiled and hammered layered leather; solid metal was too cumbersome and heavy for most boys. The weapons were standard shields and wooden practice swords of heavy ash or oaken dowel.
The combat began with every contestant mounted on horseback, and the theory was that the man who remained mounted for the longest time ought to emerge as the easy victor. Theory, however, seldom survives for any length of time against reality and human ingenuity. It had quickly become standard activity in our school battles for those who were first unhorsed to join forces on the ground and unseat everyone who remained on horseback. Then, when the last man had been unhorsed, the battle began on foot and in earnest.
The ground-level battlefield was not a pleasant spot for those who took no joy in passages of arms, because the danger of serious injury was very real. There were always students—usually the younger, smaller boys—who would take part gleefully in the early portion of the battle, milling around in the crush until they were unhorsed and then joining forces to bring down their elders and betters. They would then defect soon thereafter, citing self-declared and self-determined wounds during the confusion of the first few moments of the main fighting. The majority of the larger boys, particularly at the outset of each battle, had high hopes of winning the contest by themselves, and laid about them enthusiastically, slashing at everyone who came within reach. Reality asserted itself quickly, however, as arms and wind began to tire after but a few moments of savage, energy-sapping swings that missed their targets but nonetheless took their toll on the swingers.
In the end, the contest invariably boiled down to a struggle between the same eight or ten boys who had been predicted as final-stage fighters long before the event began, and this occasion proved no exception. By the time the initial frenzy began to dissipate and I had an opportunity to take a wary step back and look quickly about me while I snatched a breath of air, I found I was now sharing the arena with five opponents. Even as I counted them, however, one of them, a classmate called Serdec, took a thrust in the gut that dropped him to his knees. His shield fell away, leaving him open to a crushing blow that might have cracked his skull had it not been struck aside by a vigilant umpire.
Serdec was out, leaving five of us, and even then, as I counted, the number shrank to four as another fighter, Balbus this time, was hit savagely between the shoulders and then again on the back of the helmet as he went to his knees, head down. I didn’t wait to see him fall forward but swung away, my own shield up in anticipation of being attacked simply because I had stopped moving to look, but there was no one near me and I was in no danger. I was alone in that part of the field and I took immediate advantage of the respite, dropping the tip of my wooden sword to earth to rest my arm muscles as I looked about me for the best spot from which to defend myself against whoever would eventually come against me.