The apex moved one rod-braced arm to indicate the board. "Yes; to be winning so easily. Do you seek the victory or the challenge?" The apex's skeletal mask moved with each action of the jaw.
"I'd prefer both," Gurgeh admitted. "I have thought of joining in; as a third force, or on one side or the other… but this looks too much like a personal war."
The elderly apex grinned; the head-cage nodded easily. "It is," he said. "You're doing very well as you are. I wouldn't change now, if I were you."
"What about you?" Gurgeh asked. "You seem to be getting the worst of it at the moment."
Yomonul smiled; the face mask flexed even for that small gesture. "I'm having the time of my life. And I still have a few surprises lined up for the youngster, and a few tricks. But I feel a little guilty at letting you through so easily. You'll embarrass us all if you play Nicosar and win."
Gurgeh expressed surprise. "You think I could?"
"No." The apex's gesture was the more emphatic for being contained and amplified in its dark cage. "Nicosar plays at his best when he has to, and at his best he will beat you. So long as he isn't too ambitious. No; he'll beat you, because you'll threaten him, and he will respect that. But — ah…" The star marshal turned as Traff strode across the board, moved a couple of pieces, and then bowed with exaggerated courtesy to Yomonul. The star marshal looked back at Gurgeh. "I see it is my turn. Excuse me." He returned to the fray.
Perhaps one of the tricks Yomonul had mentioned was making Traff think his conversation with Gurgeh had been to enlist the Culture man's aid; for some time afterwards the younger soldier acted as though he was expecting to have to fight on two fronts.
It gave Yomonul an edge. He scraped in ahead of Traff. Gurgeh won the match and the chance to play Nicosar. Hamin tried to talk to him in the corridor outside the game-hall, immediately after his victory, but Gurgeh just smiled and walked past.
Cinderbuds swayed all around them; the light wind made shushing noises in the golden canopy. The court, the game-players and their retinues sat on a high, steeply raked wooden structure itself almost the size of a small castle. Before the stand, in a large clearing in the cinderbud forest, was a long, narrow run; a double fence of stout timbers five metres or more high. This formed the central section of a sort of open corral, shaped like an hourglass and open to the forest at both ends. Nicosar and the higher-placed players sat at the front of the high wooden platform with a good view of the wooden funnel.
At the back of the stand there were awninged areas where food was being prepared. Smells of roasting meat drifted over the stand and out into the forest.
"That'll have them frothing at the mouth," Star Marshal Yomonul said, leaning over to Gurgeh with a whirring of servoes. They were sitting side by side, on the front rank of the platform, a little along from the Emperor. Both held a large projectile rifle, fastened to a supporting tripod in front of them.
"What will?" Gurgeh asked.
"The smell." Yomonul grinned, gesturing behind them to the fires and grills. "Roasted meat. Wind's carrying it their way. It'll drive them crazy."
"Oh, great," muttered Flere-Imsaho from near Gurgeh's feet. It had already tried to persuade Gurgeh not to take part in the hunt.
Gurgeh ignored the machine and nodded. "Of course," he said. He hefted the rifle stock. The ancient weapon was single shot; a sliding bolt had to be operated to reload it. Each gun had slightly different rifling patterns, so that when the bullets were removed from the bodies of the animals, the marks on them would allow a score to be kept and heads and pelts to be allocated.
"You sure you've used one of these before?" Yomonul asked, grinning at him. The apex was in a good mood. In a few tens of days he would be released from the exoskeleton. Meanwhile, the Emperor had allowed the prison regimen to be relaxed; Yomonul could socialise, drink, and eat whatever he liked.
Gurgeh nodded. "I've shot guns," he said. He'd never used a projectile gun, but there had been that day, years ago now, with Yay, in the desert.
"Bet you've never shot anything live before," the drone said.
Yomonul tapped the machine's casing with one carbon-shod foot. "Quiet, thing," he said.
Flere-Imsaho tipped slowly up so that its bevelled brown front pointed up at Gurgeh. ""Thing"?" it said indignantly, in a sort of whispered screech.
Gurgeh winked and put his finger to his lips. He and Yomonul grinned at each other.
The hunt, as it was called, started with a blare of trumpets and the distant howling of the troshae. A line of males appeared from the forest and ran alongside the wooden funnel, beating the timbers with rods. The first troshae appeared, shadows striping along its flanks as it entered the clearing and ran into the wooden funnel. The people around Gurgeh murmured in anticipation.
"A big one," Yomonul said appreciatively as the golden-black striped beast loped six-legged down the run. Clicks all around the platform announced people preparing to fire. Gurgeh lifted the stock of the rifle. Fastened to its tripod, the rifle was easier to handle in the harsh gravity than it would have been otherwise, as well as being limited in its field of fire; something the Emperor's ever watchful guards no doubt found reassuring.
The troshae sprinted down the run, paws blurring on the dusty ground; people fired at it, filling the air with muffled cracking noises and puffs of grey smoke. White wood splinters spun off the run's timbers; puffs of dust burst from the ground. Yomonul sighted and fired; a chorus of shots burst out around Gurgeh. The guns were silenced, but all the same Gurgeh felt his ears close up a little, deadening the racket. He fired. The recoil took him by surprise; his bullet must have gone way over the animal's head.
He looked down into the run. The animal was screaming. It tried to leap up the fence on the far side of the run, but was brought down in a hail of fire. It limped on a little further, dragging three legs and leaving a trail of blood behind it. Gurgeh heard another muffled report by his side, and the carnivore's head jerked suddenly to one side; it collapsed. A great cheer went up. A gate in the run was opened and some males scurried in to drag the body away. Yomonul was on his feet beside Gurgeh, acknowledging the cheers. He sat down again quickly, exoskeleton motors whirring, as the next animal appeared out of the forest and raced between the wooden walls.
After the fourth troshae, several came at once, and in the confusion one scrambled up the timbers of the run and over the top; it started to chase some of the males waiting outside the run. A guard, on the ground at the foot of the stand, brought the animal down with a single laser-shot.
In the mid-morning, when a great pile of the striped bodies had accumulated in the middle of the run and there was a danger some animals would climb out over the bodies of their predecessors, the hunt was stopped while males used hooks and hawsers and a couple of small tractors to clear the warm, blood-spattered debris. Somebody on the far side of the Emperor shot one of the males while they were working. There were some tuts, and a few drunken cheers. The Emperor fined the offender and told them if they did it again they'd find themselves running with the troshae. Everybody laughed.
"You're not firing, Gurgeh," Yomonul said. He reckoned he'd killed another three animals by then. Gurgeh had begun to find the hunt a little pointless, and almost stopped firing. He kept missing, anyway.
"I'm not very good at this," he said.
"Practice!" Yomonul laughed, slapping him on the back. The servo-amplified blow from the elated Star Marshal almost knocked the wind out of Gurgeh.
Yomonul claimed another kill. He gave an excited shout and kicked Flere-Imsaho. "Fetch!" he laughed.
The drone rose slowly and with dignity from the floor. "Jernau Gurgeh," it said. "I'm not putting up with any more of this. I'm going back to the castle. Do you mind?"