RACE OF THE GODS

Kav had not known when he started the race what it would cost him to win—and others to lose.

He represented his conquered people, the Wegians, in the great arena at Hela, the capital of the new Empire. It had only been a year before that the elders of his tribe had surrendered. The Rours had ravaged the countryside to the west of them, killing thousands of the tribes there. The Rours did not distinguish between warriors and civilians, between men and women, between adults and children. They slaughtered mindlessly, using their shining scythes to cut off heads with remarkable strength and precision. They tramped through villages, mountains, plains.

But as soon as the surrender was officially proffered by the elders, the Rours were not a terrible race to be ruled by. They had laws which must be followed. Rours were not above their own laws, though those in a slave nation might never achieve the same status as the natural Rours. Still, the elders of the Wegians thought they might be better off than before. The Wegians were known for their artistic talent, for the perfect lines of the ceramics they fired, for the face paints so brightly colored that Wegian women had been spoken of by poets as far away as Grent, and for the still movements of the body that Wegian children were taught almost from birth, and performed together each night as a tribe, without fail.

Kav had never had an eye for beauty. He was hopeless with face paint, and when he was apprenticed to a lesser art, a man who colored fabrics instead—and was very humble in it—Kav had made a swath of fabric which had the distinction of being the only Wegian fabric ever to return from market unsold. His master had offered it to him (more to get it out of the shop than as a gift, Kav thought) as severance when he broke the apprenticeship agreement and sent Kav home.

Kav had run the whole way, trying to hold back his tears. He had focused instead on the beat of his heart, the hot press of his bare feet on the hard trodden dirt path, the slick burn of the tips of his fingers and the numbness of his toes.

He did not make it home before being stopped by a Rour guard in armor who pulled out a scythe and held it in front of Kav’s path. Kav could have tried to run around it, but he knew that was a foolish, fleeting, proud impulse. He needed a bit of pride, but not at the cost of his life. And where there was one Rour guard, there would be others nearby.

He pulled himself up short, none too soon, and the guard had only to move a hand’s breadth before the scythe’s blade touched Kav’s belly.

“You,” grunted the guard in badly accented Wegian.

“Kav,” said Kav, assuming the guard wanted a name. He was surprised that the guard spoke Wegian at all. Most Rour assumed that the conquered would learn the tongue of the conquerors.

“Run,” said the guard.

“Yes. I was running.”

“Run fast,” said the guard.

Kav shrugged.

The guard made a motion with his hands, back the way Kav had come. “Run,” he said. “Run now.”

Kav ran back the way he had come. He did not know how far to go, but the guard called out when he hit the top of the last hill, and Kav turned and came thundering back. He felt better than ever the second time. Maybe the fear of what the Rour guard would do to him helped his running speed. Or perhaps it was the first run that had done it, giving him confidence in something he would never have tried on his own. He knew that his people would find no pleasure in his running. It would be as unimportant to them as if he had shown that he could pass gas in great volume. But he felt irredeemable in the eyes of his people now. He had decided to please himself.

“Come,” said the Rour guard, his scythe out again.

Kav swallowed hard. This might be his death. A Rour could kill a Wegian without facing punishment.

Kav thought of his parents. And then he realized that he would never have to face their disappointment over losing his apprenticeship. Well, there were worse things than dying, he supposed. So long as he could fight back.

But the Rour guard took him back to the encampment that stood between two villages. There were a dozen Rour there, and one who had lost his hair and looked to be an old man, for all his muscles spoke to the contrary. Among the Wegians, the oldest were the best fed because their knowledge was the most valuable. They rarely had to move about, and took pride in their great girth.

Kav heard the two Rours speaking loudly. He did not know much of their language, but he picked out a few words. “First,” he heard. “Run fast.” And “Hela.”

Kav was made to run many times by the guard’s captain. He ran in the heat of the day, with the Rour guard’s armor on, and after two days of forced fasting. He ran in the rain and in the forest, swerving around trees. But he never ran against any of the Rours themselves.

Sometimes the other guards would stand around to watch him, and a few even cheered him on. But not one of them challenged him. Kav wished they had. He would have liked to leave knowing that his parents would be told stories about him besting the Rours at something that mattered at least to them, if not to the Wegians.

The captain himself took Kav in tow. They rode on his horse when Kav was not being forced to run alongside the horse. They camped simply on the roadside, when it was still far from Hela. Then later, at inns that brought heavy fare that Kav was not allowed to consume, though he nearly fainted from the smell of fresh roasted boar and a jellied conserve dripped on top.

Each day, Kav found himself overwhelmed again with the sights of more and more people, the stretch of buildings and the smell of animals. He dreamed of running with other Rours, but when he woke, the captain roused him and sent him out along the streets of another city, where the Rour citizens gathered to stare at him and throw ripe fruit to his feet. (At least, he thought that was what they were doing. It was difficult to tell if they meant to hit him or not.)

At last, he reached Hela itself. There were two great statues, twenty times life size, at the gates of the city. The gate was the finish line and the two were so close to each other that it was only when Kav had stepped into the shadow of the gate that he could see which of the two had won the race. Both were heavily muscled and nude, displaying their perfection to history itself. The first looked back at the second slightly as his toe crossed the line and the expression on the face of the one behind him was all that was painful.

Kav recognized the look, It was the same that had been on his own face when his fabric was returned to him and his apprenticeship was broken. Yes, he had known it was coming. Yes, there had been missteps leading up to it that he had thought were as excruciating as any human could endure. And yet, there had been more.

That was what was on the face of the man who was losing the race. He had given his all. He had exhausted himself. And it was not enough.

Kav thought that his father would have liked to be with him at that moment, if only to see the art in the statues that made them seem so realistic, despite their overwhelming size. There was something both ordinary and heroic about them both. Kav found himself bowing his head as he went past them, and looked up to see that the Rour captain was doing the same.

His father would know what it was the artist had done to give the feeling that these men were still in motion, that they should not be touched, or the end of the race might be changed. Kav felt warm next to them, as if they were dripping sweat on him, and yet neither man was strictly handsome. The winning man had a broken nose and his hands seemed unusually large. The other man had a scar down one cheek and was going bald on top.

What Kav did not see the first time he crossed the gate into Hela, but saw the second time, was the scythe that hung beyond the gate itself. It was sized to fit one of the men, but neither of them were looking at it, and the scythe was not inside the city itself. Kav had no idea, and in fact did not think that his father would, either, how the scythe was balanced. It looked to be made of white marble, as were the two male statues, but it hung in the air as if held by the hand of an invisible god. Nor did it cast a shadow.

The Rour did not speak of magic or of supernatural power in the open way that the Wegians did. They did not demand that those who surrendered to them worship the way that the conquerors did. Which was just as well, since it was all Kav could do to find even one disaffected Rour guard to tell him anything about the beliefs of the Empire.

There were two gods, according to the guard. Both male, both men of sports. And the only tale the Rours seemed to have was of the two gods competing against each other in one race or another. But who won changed from one month to the next.

The guard did not tell Kav about the priests who were dedicated by their parents to serve in the temples of one god or the other, and what happened to them on the months their god won—or did not. That was something that Kav learned when he converted himself and saw the blood dried on the floors of the temple, and the scythes that were affixed above each altar.

The morning after Kav arrived in Hela he was introduced to the arena, and to his competitors. There were nine of them. One was a man with skin so red that Kav thought it must have been painted onto him by some uninspired relative who could find no one else willing for his experiment. But no, he was assured by the Rour captain that the man and all of his country were born the same color. Their hair was white, as were their eyes, but in all other ways, the man seemed to be nothing unusual. He ran as any man did, and his other parts were the same pink that Kav’s were.

The arena had a track in the center, the dirt so hard packed that it felt like stone to Kav’s feet. It was different that morning than it was the day of the race. In the morning, it felt cool and it was quiet as no other place in the city of Hela was. There were not even birds overhead, or insects buzzing that Kav could hear. The work of the gods?

The captain motioned for Kav to run around the track a few times to warm up. Kav was beginning to learn a little of the Rourian language, but he had not yet tried to produce it with his own tongue. Among his people, children were not heard until they spoke cleanly, without making mistakes. It was considered rude to notice the mistakes of others, and language was an art on its own. Kav was no longer in his own world, but this part of it clung to him, no matter what he thought of it in his mind. He could not make his mouth speak words he was not sure of.

Kav ran and slowly found that the other nine were running with him. Some seemed very reluctant, as if they were afraid that this was a market for slaves to be sold in, and the best runners would bring the highest price. These ran like wild partridge, their movements startled and spastic, but quick and strong.

Others seemed to think that being asked to show themselves before a race was demeaning to them. These ran with their heads held high, looking neither to the left nor to the right. They had a certain grace that Kav did not deny. He thought even his father might have been impressed with them. Kav envied them that, a bit.

His own stride was in between the two. He ran with power, pushing off and gliding as far as he could, but feeling as though his right side dominated his left. By the end of a few laps, he had a cramp all along his right side, from his shoulder down to his calf. It made his hopping style more pronounced, but he did not notice that it made him slower. He knew pain. It was an old friend of his. He had learned to embrace pain when he had no one else to embrace, those long nights of his apprenticeship when the other apprentices wanted nothing to do with the one the master hated. He had known pain even before then, living with his father’s laughter and song, but never haring it for himself. His father could not bear to allow his unconscious art to dwell with his son. It would not have been appreciated.

For two hands worth of days, the practicing went on. Kav caught the eye of one of those who looked down rarely and smiled. There was a faint smile in return. The two of them did not speak the same language, so they could not speak, but twice, the other man had made a signal and he and Kav had surged ahead, and then entirely out of the arena, like the two statues from the gate. Once Kav won. Once the other man, with only one ear, took his place.

“Turo,” he said, when he looked back at Kav.

It was most likely his name, but Kav was never sure, even afterwards. Perhaps it meant “win,” or something else.

The man with the red skin was one of the frightened fowl. Kav noticed while he was running with his mouth open that he had no tongue. He started a race well, but finished badly. Kav liked him for no accountable reason. He had a temper. Kav could see it in the way his eyes flashed.

But he also had whimsy. And more than a touch of self-conscious humility. Kav saw this when a man fell in front of him and the red skinned man, rather than falling over him, leaped into the air and stretched his foreleg out so far that he touched it with the tips of his fingers. It was no graceful move, though the man might have learned it from watching others dance. It made Kav wonder if the red skinned man, like himself, had grown up in a place where he had no talent to make him valuable, and had come at last to see that there was something in himself that others admired—even if it was only a group of nine others of conquered kingdoms.

While Kav and the others ran, the Rour captains who had charge of them all sat talking and drinking. Kav saw coins change hands more than once based on the running of the others. Kav’s own Rour captain never bet on him. He drank, but did not become more talkative. Only once did he become violent, but Kav had no idea what the other captain said that resulted in the battle between them. It was not the only one Kav saw, but it was the only one that looked serious, and did not end the next day with smiles and teasing and sly shoving.

It made Kav curious about his captain, however. When they went back to the inn that evening, he watched as the captain ate. It was as if he thought it were a duty of his. He did not see the food nor bother to taste it. He cut it into pieces with a knife and chewed it before swallowing.

Since the only time the captain spoke directly to him was in the form of a lesson, Kav had no sense of his family, his history, his hopes and aspirations. Where had he served the Rour Empire? What had he lost? What had he gained?

>“Table,” he said.

“Table,” said Kav.

“Stew,” he said. “Eat. Drink. Run. Win. Pay. Cheat. Work. Woman. Fuck.”

But Kav never saw the captain’s eyes linger on a woman’s face or on her breasts or hips. He watched carefully to see if the captain noticed other men, perhaps even the runners. Kav had known some men like this in his own village. It was not good for the tribe for men to choose a life without children, and so no man remained unmarried after a certain age, who had a competence with an art. But what did not interfere with the tribe’s growth was nothing to be ashamed of.

Kav’s own father, he suspected, spent an inordinate amount of time with the man who carved wood. The man did not come into his home, but Kav knew him. His father explained the relationship by saying they were boyhood friends, but their eyes betrayed them.

The captain showed no particular light when he looked at other men. He had no interest in either. A woman who had hurt him, Kav thought. There had to be some story there. A Wegian poet would have the whole story twisting and turning, with silver shimmering in the background, a destiny foretold, the gods denied, and tragedy as the result. Was that not the way all good stories were?

As far as Kav could tell, the captain had only one passion, and that was battle. He touched his armor as if touching a woman’s back, lingering, pressing the cold metal to his lips to warm it, wiping it clean and wearing it long after he could have taken it off in his room. The one time he had fought, Kav had seen afterwards the distance of love in his eyes. He had been unfocused, trembling, and hardly able to see his path in the streets.

It was what Kav felt while running, and what his father felt painting faces.

It seemed the perfect passion for a Rour captain. But he had been sent to the Wegians, who had surrendered without a single battle, without a drop of bloodshed. And then he had been forced to return with Kav to Hela’s arena, for a running race. A race that he showed very little interest in. And why should he? After all, Kav thought, there was no death at the end, no mangled bodies, no trophies to be taken from the faces of the enemy, as the Rours were known to do.

“Today. It is today,” said the captain that morning.

Kav saw the trembling in his hands as he reached for his morning stew, filled with meat discarded from the night before. Kav ate porridge with a little fruit on top, and sighed. Perhaps after today, he would be allowed to eat what he wished. If he did well.

How well?

He did not know if he believed himself capable of winning the race. He had seen the other nine men. Three of them could beat him on their best day. On his best day, he could beat them all by a full body length. Was today his best day or theirs?

“Run for life,” said the captain, as he stood and motioned Kav towards the door. “Understand?”

Kav nodded his head. To be sent back home would be the end of all his hope. He would be treated by his family like an invalid or a child born with the trembling disorder that degenerated his mind with time. He would be served hand and foot by his mother, brought all her delicacies as she invented them.

But his judgment would not matter. She would wait for his brother to come home, or his father, to hear what they had to say. And he would be farmed off to live with another kind villager when his parents were gone. His life stretched forward as an endless series of useless days.

If he did not win this race.

If he did, or did well enough that he was invited to stay—that would be life.

“No,” said the captain, pulling Kav up sharply.

Kav could smell his breath, hot and fetid, but he could not turn away.

“Run for death,” he said. “Understand?” His eyes were light, but unfocused, as if he were looking beyond Kav, beyond the inn, beyond the world itself, into eternity.

And that was when Kav began to be afraid.

They walked to the arena and the captain stumbled along, catching Kav’s arms twice to keep from falling. He was a drunk man, though Kav knew from the smell of his breath that he had had no taste of wine or ale.

His breathing grew more rapid when the arena was in sight.

Kav’s stomach clenched and he found his legs had turned soft. His feet flopped about like fish in the water. And Kav desperately wished that he were home again, home to face his failure, his father’s disappointment, his mother’s delicacies. He longed for the face of his master and the other apprentices. All that was familiar, safe, and certain.

He did not want them here, watching him. He wanted to be nothing once more, to have no skill of value to anyone. He could hold thread as his sister stitched or piss into his father’s paints for him. Simple, animal tasks. Living tasks.

The ten men were lined up.

Kav saw the red skinned man to his right, Turo to his left. There was the sound of retching and then the smell of it. And worse.

The captains stood in the front of the audience. Some of them were as afraid as the runners. Kav’s captain was not one of them. He held his fists tightly at his side, as if he wished someone were to strike him then and there.

“Down,” said a loud voice in Rourian. And before Kav could do more than lean forward, the voice spoke again: “Up!”

Kav saw the red skinned man leap forward.

Was it time for the race or had he begun too early? What was the consequence for that?

Kav hesitated until he saw Turo take a first step, as well.

Then he closed his eyes and let his arms pump with his heart. He could feel bodies around him, hot and fast.

He opened his eyes just in time for the turn. The red skinned man was still ahead of him, his thin, jerking legs churning wildly.

Kav did not think of home then. He thought of the statue, and the face of the man who had lost the race. He thought of the toe’s difference between them, and of wanting something for himself.

All his life, he had shared everything.

This was his, and his distance from his family only made it more his.

He closed his eyes and thought of the pain. He went deep into it, letting it flow over his head like a river. He could see the light at the top of it, but he could not fight against it.

He heard Turo’s wheezing breath behind him like a song.

How close was he?

How far under the water could he get?

And then the crowd roared and it was the most wonderful moment of Kav’s life. He was alive as he had never been before. All those in the arena had seen him, acknowledged his being here.

This was what the captain meant, thought Kav.

Then he turned back and saw the red skinned man try to stop himself from reaching the finish. His arms flailed and he pulled his shoulders and head back. His heels dug into the dirt and there was a sound of something breaking. His face was full of horror. Not the face of the man who had lost his race, but the face of a man who was thrown into the path of an oncoming enemy to stop their crush forward. A sacrifice.

Kav saw next the face of Turo. It was nothing like the second statue, either. It was a face of calm. He did not try to stop himself, but lifted his arms up as if he thought they would turn to wings and he would fly away. It was like the look of the captain that morning, the look of absorption and wonder.

Then the sound of the crowd grew louder still, and Kav saw his own captain come forward, with his scythe in his hands. It glittered as the captain’s well-cared for armor did.

“Run for life,” the captain said, nodding to Kav. Then he pointed to Turo. And to the red skinned man. “Run for death,” he said. He offered Kav the scythe.

Kav shook his head. He put his hands behind his back. But the captain would not be denied. He yanked Kav’s right arm forward and put the handle of the scythe in it. Then, when Kav would not move, he marched him from behind, toward Turo, who had already sunk to his knees, his head bowed for the first time since Kav had known him.

“Death,” said the captain.

Kav babbled in his own language. “I can’t. I can’t kill him. And why should I? He ran well. He almost won. Another day, he would have beat me. He would have been in my place.”

“He win. He kill you,” said the captain. “Or he.” He pointed to the red skinned man.

“The others?” Kav waved to the rest of the field. Would he be expected to kill nine men today, when he had never killed one in his life? He was no soldier. He had come to run, but what did he know of the Rours? He did not even know enough to speak in their language.

“They not danger,” said Kav’s captain. “They not dead.”

But Kav still could not imagine his hand working the scythe over the head of the two best runners in the field, the only two who might have been friends.

In the end, the captain did it for him. Oh, it was Kav’s hand first on the handle of the scythe, but it was the captain’s hand on top of his that used the strength to swing the blade. And in a way, Kav was grateful for the help. At least this way, Turo and the red skinned man died quickly.

Kav was spattered with blood, and the captain with him.

But the captain stared at it with a fascination that repulsed Kav.

The deeds were done, but he understood nothing, not even himself. Did he wish he had lost? Did he wish he were dead?

He did not.

It was after, in the cool of the evening, as the light changed in the city and there was a strange red afterglow around the second statue, that the captain took Kav back to the gate and showed him the scythe.

He motioned and acted out and used the rudimentary Rourian that Kav knew to tell the rest of the story. The Rours honored those who were near equals in battle, but they did not make slaves of them, nor accept surrender from these. It was too dangerous to do so. An enemy held so close could not be trusted not to try again, and this time, to win.

A race was only a battle played out in a different way, for all to see. Kav had been bound by the laws of the Rours to kill those who were most likely to challenge him in future races. The others did not matter. They could live.

So it would be for every race that Kav ever ran. He would be obligated to kill the two closest to him at the end of the race. Or to be killed if he did not win.

He could choose never to race again, the captain made clear. Just as clear was the fact that the captain only saw value in Kav’s life if he risked it with each race. And celebrated his life by killing those who were a threat to it.

The gods, too, offered up a life each time they raced. If one was killed, he was returned to life the next day, to race again. With mortals, only those who were not killed at the end of a race proved themselves worthy to live again, when the gods chose who would rise from death.

The captain meant to be one of those, and it was a great honor that he wished Kav to do the same, to live with him forever when the gods had them race, and die.

But the next time, the captain would expect Kav to wield the scythe himself.