Samples from books that we have published under the Eartherean Press imprint.
This is another in a series from the first book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Former King.
© 1981 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. The license is included as an appendix to this work.
Sinew and Bone
THE TWO COMBATANTS STOOD at opposite corners of the square, being prepared by their attendants.
The long tables had been pulled back, and the sand swept clean. Where the tables had been were now the people of the tribe, squatting on their haunches, legs tucked under buttocks, elbows rubbing elbows. The wealthy men – the greater of the hunters, warriors, and a few fishermen – sat in the first rings, sipping ale, making comments on the fighters’ physiques and making bets. Behind them were the rest of the men, weaker or older – those whose limbs had withered with the passing years like grass stalks under Her summer stare. The women sat yet further back, rising now and again to tend to the children or the passing of the ale-kegs. In the farthest background were the children, naked brown babes and scrawny boys with dirt on their hardened limbs. They were back among the huts surrounding the square, and some, too small to see over the heads of their elders, clambered up onto the thatched roofs to get a clear view. A rough square was empty in the center of the sandy clearing. At one side of the square the coal-mounds of the cook-fires gave off dense heat and a dull light, reflecting off the naked bodies of the two combatants.
Many attendants had the chief: friends and old comrades, and men who knew a winner. They rubbed the chief’s massive, wooden-hard limbs with fat and oils, and joked with him in low tones. Gundoen chuckled occasionally at their sallies, offering one or two of his own. His gloom had vanished as soon as the stranger had agreed to the wrestling. Alli smiled to see her lord himself again; but Hertha-Toll looked at the stranger with worry on her face.
Ara-Karn had for attendants only the faithful Kuln-Holn, who had never assisted at such a thing before and could only glance at the chief now and again with a look of profound unease, and Garin, who had said he did not like to see any man go into battle without a friend. These two stripped Ara-Karn of his tunic, his rings, and his sandals, and bound his long square mane in a cord fillet, so that it would not fall into his eyes.
‘It is too long,’ said Kul-Dro, Garin’s father. He lay propped against a keg, breathing with difficulty. He could eat and drink and walk about now, but still his chest was covered with blue bruises where the chief had broken his ribs. ‘Gundoen will pull your hair, stranger, so beware. Men’s necks have been broken when the chief has snapped back their heads with his hands in their hair.’
He looked across at the chief, as if he might wish that he were doing battle again. Then he looked back at Ara-Karn. Garin and Kuln-Holn were rubbing the grease over his limbs now. ‘The grease will make it harder for him to gain a handhold,’ he grunted. ‘It will prevent your skin from being torn, and also hold in your sweat. There are good herbs in the pot. Fight well, stranger, and save your life. Gundoen will get no honor from this. Does he think you are a mere foreign barge-robber now? You are the Hero of the Hunt; and if you live and are whole, you will gain much esteem.’ The warrior looked at him as if Kul-Dro might have wanted Ara-Karn even to gain the victory; but that he knew was too much to hope.
He counseled the stranger of Gundoen’s ways in battle: his favorite tricks, and what to be wary of. Ara-Karn listened, his dark eyes glimmering green. He held his head eagerly, as if his melancholy too had been dispelled at the prospect of this battle.
When all the preparations had been made, they spat on their palms and slapped Ara-Karn on the back for luck. Then the stranger stepped forward into the square.
Gundoen awaited him there.
The chief’s body shone in the sunlight on one side and glowed redly from the coal-light on the other. It seemed more massive now than ever, as if he were not a man but some bull bandar. His great muscles swelled, and his chest was like a huge boulder made smooth by the waves. He strutted on his short gnarled legs, which bowed outward about the knees. The long horned toes gripped the sand powerfully.
They came up to each other wordlessly.
Gundoen grinned, drunkenly and maliciously, the glow of triumph already in his eyes. Ara-Karn eyed the chief carefully, solemnly. Their eyes met, locked, flashed. The stranger was the taller by more than a head, but tallness was no edge in wrestling. And his arms seemed almost womanly compared to the chief’s.
The drummers beat the hollowed carved logs, once, twice, thrice.
They gripped hands in the customary fashion, Ara-Karn as the challenged gripping with his left hand Gundoen’s right. Their fingers strained and interlocked, each striving to crush the bones of the other, to give more pain than he got. Their other hands remained free: these were the weapon-hands.
The drummers beat the hollowed carved logs, once, twice, thrice. Once more they beat – and the wrestlers began to move.
They circled each other, locked hands straining. Now the chief seemed not so drunk as before. His movements were swift, sure, dangerous. He sought to crush the bones of Ara-Karn’s hand in his grip; his left forearm swelled and hardened. The long lines of veins and tendons burst forth. More than one opponent of the chief in the past had grown faint under this mighty pressure.
Ara-Karn chuckled softly, sweat beading on his greased forehead.
Along the rings bets were placed and called. Words of encouragement, shouts and jests crossed the sandy square. Kuln-Holn looked away from the combatants, where Ara-Karn seemed so ill-matched to face the chief. But the sight of the crowd, rendered half-mad by glory, ale, and blood-lust, only sickened him the more. He looked about for Hertha-Toll, to see how the wise woman was; but the chief’s wife had already gone up into the darkness of the great hall. He began drawing images in the sand before him, trying not to hear that all the odds favored the chief by heavy margins. He drew designs that were like the patterns of hearth-ash, smoke, or dusky clouds. The sight of them filled him with terror; hastily he rubbed them clear.
And in the center of it all, the naked wrestlers danced.
Already the sweat was pouring forth from their shoulders. The sunlight and coal-light shone on it, and the men seemed like living statues poured from liquid metals. They darted toward one another and pulled back. The weapon-hands snaked forth, seeking a hold or striking off an attempted one. Their feet performed complex steps, sometimes on the point of tripping, sometimes firmly anchored in the sand.
Now suddenly Gundoen had got the hold he had been seeking. He reached forth with his weapon-hand and gripped Ara-Karn’s leg just above the knee. He pulled, he heaved. By sheer bull-like strength, he lifted Ara-Karn’s body.
The crowd gasped.
Ara-Karn did not resist this move, which was the chief’s favorite. Instead he gave instantly with the pressure, pushing his body against Gundoen’s and pulling sharply with his shield-hand. Their hips struck together, and the chief, instead of falling with his full weight upon the stranger, spun past him, and, turning in midair, flipped onto the ground on his back. He landed with the sound of a tree falling on a stone, and the stranger fell on top of him.
It was such a move as none of the tribesmen had seen before, performed with superb skill. They roared their approval. ‘Ara-Karn!’ some cried: but the most roared out the shout of the chief in anger and encouragement, and that they might not lose their bets: ‘Gundoen! Gundoen! Gundoen!’ And these cries easily swallowed the few for the stranger.
The two men grappled and rolled in the sand, dangerously close to the mounds of embers. Arms, legs, hands, and heads whirled; the dust rose in dank clouds about them, clinging to their sweating, greased bodies.
Gundoen was getting the better of it now: his greater bulk and more compact limbs were overcoming the stranger. Yet he looked up moment to moment at the mounds of the dying cook-fires. They were coming very near to them; the heat made the grease on their bodies melt and run, and made their hair wet with sweat.
Ara-Karn turned suddenly toward the fires. They rolled desperately into the coals for a moment, bodies black against red heat. Gundoen screamed in pain and leaped out of the coals, rolling on the sand. Ara-Karn leaped after him, chuckling horribly.
The combatants rose to their feet and faced each other once more. Their bodies were piebald: here painted yellow where the dust had caked, there a crimson or purple where the coals had left their patchwork of burns. The madness was in the chief’s eyes, a battle-madness broken only by death – his enemy’s or his own. Ara-Karn smiled calmly and spat the dirt from his mouth. They paused thus, panting, their bodies wracked by heaving sighs of near exhaustion. Then they came at each other again, and the earth shook at the meeting of their bodies.
The rule that they must clasp each other’s shield-hands was gone, vanished with the first fall; now there were no rules. Scratching, gouging, biting were frowned upon – but not forbidden. It was a hard land of hard people who had no sympathy save for survivors. He who lived won; the loser usually died. The crowd roared, coughed, and gulped their ale.
They hurled each other about the square. From one end to the other they grappled, made stances, threw each other to the earth. Their hands gripped and clawed at the most tender parts, scraping the red weals of the burns, clawing at the underbuttocks. They spat and snarled like beasts of the wood, the stranger no less than the chief. Time and again the chief seemed on the point of victory, but each time Ara-Karn eluded him by some strange unheard-of move.
Then, with screams from the people and a frantic rushing of bodies to either side, the wrestlers burst from the square.
They did not cease battling at this. Their limbs flailed and twisted regardless. They had no thought of a good show, or of combat rules, or of the safety of any spectators. Their only thought was maiming, crushing, bone-bending death – each other’s death. They pushed and rolled and fell through the strong hunters, the men, the graybeards, the women. The naked brown babes squealed with delight as they grappled past them. They fought down from the level of the square onto the steep village lane, leading down through the log huts, down unto the bay.
The people scrambled to their feet and followed, clustering in eddying mobs around the rolling, writhing bodies. The shouts were deafening, incoherent, and now there were as many screams of ‘Ara-Karn!’ as of ‘Gundoen!’
Down the street they rolled. Here was not the smoothly swept sand; their bodies were hurled against flat stones, sharp rocks, and the wooden ramparts of the huts. Massive bruises of bluish purple formed next to the red open burn-weals, on their backs, their arms, their thighs. Flesh was torn like rotten rags, dirt was clotted with human blood, sweat, and spittle.
Past the last of the huts they went battling. At times they broke and stood, and hurled each other’s bodies about; more often they rolled, and grappled, and clawed. There was no intention on the part of either one of them to continue to tumble so, but the path was so steep that they had no choice but to tumble. They might have given pause for a rest and drink of water, and they might have returned to the clean sandy square. But they did not. They would not stop until the thing was done, and one of them lay broken and writhing in the dirt.
The crowd followed them. Sometimes one of them would be caught between the wrestlers and a hut; then he had best look to his life. Enna-Born was caught thus and did not move quickly enough. His head slammed into the side of a hut, and he did not move for two passes. And when he did wake, he was never the same, being addled in the skull. The others, seeing him fall, gave no heed; they followed, screaming, the bodies of the chief and Ara-Karn.
Yet they kept behind the wrestlers thereafter. No one dared run around in front of them, lest he suffer the fate of Enna-Born. So when the bodies rolled through the tall beach grasses, over the crest of the dunes, and disappeared from view, none knew what it might portend. They ran to the crest of the dunes, forming a long line parallel to the shore, just as they had done before, at the time of God’s assault upon queenly Goddess. And they looked down onto the pebble-strewn sand of the beach; and the hoarse cries died in their throats, and there was only the sound of the sea waves lightly lapping as the tradespeople looked down.
The two bodies lay sprawled on the stones, bleeding, begrimed, bruised, battered. Neither moved; neither made a sound. There was not even the movement of breath in either one. They were like corpses lying mangled in the welter of their own drying blood. The folk looked down on them with respectful awe, uncertain whether to cheer or weep or gather up the bodies.
Kuln-Holn came running up behind. He had been following the crowd at a distance, not wishing to see the battle, afraid of what he might behold, but neither able to walk away as Hertha-Toll had done. Now he had heard the silence, and known that it was done. He ran with a quickening pace and forced a place on the crest of the grassy dunes. And he saw his guest, the messenger of the gods, lying like one dead, the arms and legs twisted into unnatural positions. The Pious One fell to his knees. He put his hands over his eyes and wept tears upon his fingers. The tears were hot and bitter, for to Kuln-Holn more than a man had died.
On the pebble-strewn sand, a hand moved. It gripped the sand and relaxed. Then the arm above it moved; and slowly, painfully, a body rose. It rolled to its side, got on its knees, and, at last, stood to its feet. It swayed rather unsteadily in the sea breeze, then shook itself and stood firmly by an act of sheer determination. And the body was that of the stranger, the barge-robber, Ara-Karn.
He gazed upon the faces of the people of the tribe, who looked at him with almost superstitious awe. Not a one of them could have believed that this man might wrestle great-chested Gundoen to death. Now they saw him, bloodied, bruised, the cord fillet torn from his brow and his sweat-and-blood-plastered hair ruffling free in the breeze. The foam had dried about his torn lips, and grime and blood were his only garments. More a beast he looked than a man: a grim specter from some dim, primitive past, unbelievably savage, invested with terrible strength and ruthlessness. And there was not a man there who could have dared to challenge him in any combat whatsoever at that moment. They looked upon him speechless, their eyes wide with fear.
Kuln-Holn looked up through his wet fingers and saw his master, still alive, though horribly so. He wiped the bitter tears from his eyes, and wanted to leap and laugh; but the sight of the eyes of Ara-Karn stopped him.
Below on the sand, the body of Gundoen issued forth a ghastly groan and turned a bit. Ara-Karn regarded it, the vivid green shining in those dark eyes.
Gundoen groaned again through cracked and purple lips. He rolled, feeling the separate agonies of his arms, of his hands, of his back, of his legs, of every part of him. Never before had he been so sorely tried. There was a distant ringing at the back of his skull; some moments passed before he could remember where he was. He wished only to turn upon his side, hold the salt air in his lungs, and painlessly expire.
Instead, he opened his eyes. The light of Goddess was blinding; he blinked against it, but still it filled the sky. Then a dark form intruded, obliterating the light. The shadow of Ara-Karn fell across the chief’s face. Gundoen saw him standing first, steady on his feet, his hand extended.
Painfully, Gundoen groped. The outstretched hand covered the sun; he felt and found it. The hand gripped his – gingerly, for both their hands were bent and sore from each other’s fierce grip. Gundoen felt the hand pull at his arm, and he responded. With the stranger’s help he gained his feet. His skull rang like an anvil, and he felt as if he should retch. And he knew that he would not die, but must live on, beaten by Ara-Karn.
The two stood thus in silence for a space, supporting each other. Then Garin and the other attendants scrambled down to the beach, helping the wracked, grimed men up. Only then did the crowd raise its voice in one tremendous, deafening ululation:
‘Ara Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’
