Valentine's Exile (32 page)

Valentine judged the Dispatcher to be about six three. Ahn-Kha's size. Could there be another Golden One wandering the Cumberland Plateau?

“I saw a man challenge a Grog when I was eight,” a well-muscled, shirtless man said, presumably the contestant, as everyone else had jackets or knits against the cool of the morning—warming fast as the sun rose.

“I remember that one,” the Dispatcher said. “Fontrain died from his injuries. There's bad blood for this one. According to their Dispatcher, Tikka killed a man when she got taken into custody. Could be they're looking for pay-back.

“We're going to forfeit,” he continued. “It's a hell of a ransom, but I'm not risking Tuck's head over a challenge.”

“Might be a bluff,” the shirtless man, presumably Tuck, said. “They're trying to get you to fold up by showing you a big, mean Grog. I'll go out there. It's my skull.”

“And end up like Fontrain?” the Dispatcher said. “No.”

“That means a feud,” a craggy-faced woman sitting cross-legged next to Valentine said to everyone and no one. “Oh Lord, lord.”

Valentine stood up. “Sir, I'll take a whack at this Grog.” Hundreds of heads turned in his direction. The Dispatcher straightened.

“You ever even held a legworm crook, son?”

“I've played grounders with Grogs,” Valentine said, which wasn't quite true. He'd whacked a ball around with a cross between a hockey stick and a cricket bat a few times as Ahn-Kha taught him the fundamentals of the Grog game, and ended up bruised at all compass points.

Consternation broke out in the crowd; much of it sounded approving. “What do we have to lose?” “Leastways if he gets his head bashed in, it's no feud.”

“Can we trust you, um, David?” the Dispatcher asked.

“I don't see how you can lose. You're ready to forfeit. Worst thing that could happen is that you pay the ransom anyway and get your riders back.”

“Let David do it,” the woman next to him called. “Let him take that Goliath.”

The crowd liked the sound of that.

“Okay, boy, strip down and grab your crook.”

“I've got one request, Dispatcher.”

McDonald R. Dalian's eyes narrowed. “What's that?”

“Can I borrow a pair of underwear? Mine aren't fit for public display.”

The crowd laughed.

Valentine stood behind a blanket held up by Ahn-Kha as he stripped.

Zak held out a white pair of shorts. “They look a little odd but they're the best thing for riding. They're military issue up in Indiana for their bike troops. Everything stays tucked up real tight.”

“Thank you.”

As he tried on the shorts Ahn-Kha spoke. “My David, let me try my luck at this.”

“I'm from Minnesota, old horse. Born with a hockey stick in my hand.”

“Then you will be careful out there.”

“Since when am I anything but?”

“In what year were you born?” Ahn-Kha asked, ears askew.

“Be careful. If it is a Grey One, when they are on all fours and running they cannot turn their heads, or hear very well behind. He will not see you if you come at him from the side.”

Neither would a freight train,
Valentine thought.
Doesn't mean I can bodycheck it off its course
.

“Understood,” Valentine said.

Price paced back and forth as Bee pulled up and chewed on dandelion roots. Valentine wondered where Duvalier had gone. But then a sporting event, even one as deadly serious as this, probably wasn't of interest to her.

The shorts were snug-fitting, running from his waist to mid thigh. The padded white pouch at the groin made him feel like one of the come-hither boys that strutted on the streets of New Orleans.

“Oh, that's cute,” Price said.

“Better than the ones with three weeks of trail.”

Ahn-Kha dropped the blanket and walked with Valentine, Price, and Bee to the center of the line of spectators. Valentine walked barefoot, testing the field's soil. Some murmured about the burns on his lower back and legs. The Dispatcher stood at the center of the line with the twelve-foot legworm crook, looking like a warrior out of some medieval tapestry.

“I can still order it called off,” the Dispatcher said, the words just loud enough to travel to Valentine.

“I can't resist a challenge,” Valentine said.

“Well, you look fit enough, 'cept for the limp. Hope you can run.”

“I can run,” Valentine said.

He tried the crook, an all-wood version of the one he'd seen Zak use. Its hooked end had a rounded point.

“Using metal isn't considered sporting,” the Dispatcher said.

Damn, it's awkward. Like a vaulting pole
.

“Any rule on length?” Valentine asked.

“Yes, it can't be over fifteen feet.”

“How about, say, seven?”

“You must be joking. A Grog can already outreach you. You'll just be cutting yourself shorter.”

“I'd rather swing a handy short crook than an awkward long one.”

The crowd broke out in consternation when Ahn-Kha buried his old TMCC utility machete into the haft of the crook where Valentine indicated, and broke it over his knee.

Valentine tried the crook again. Now he could run with it.

Five hundred yards away, in the center of the field, the Grog waited. He looked huge even at this distance.

“Good luck, David,” the Dispatcher said.

“Is anyone taking odds?” Valentine asked.

“You don't want to know,” Price said.

“All you have to do is get the ball back to our line,” the Dispatcher said. Valentine marked the stakes, stretching a hundred yards to either side, with the crowd spread out behind. “How you do it's up to you.”

Valentine looked at Ahn-Kha. The Golden One's ears twitched in anxiety, but one of the great limpid eyes winked.

Valentine raised his arm to the crowd and turned to walk into the center of the field, stretching his arms and legs as he went. The legworm ride yesterday had tasked his muscles in a new way, a trace of stiffness which gave him a good deal more cause to doubt. He wondered how the Bulletproof would feel about a valiant try. . . .

The “referee” wore taped-up glasses and a modest crucifix. He carried a basketball under his arm, and leaned over to speak to the Grog as Valentine approached the halfway point. Valentine noticed a pistol in a holster, with a lanyard running up to the referee's neck.

The Grog rivaled Ahn-Kha in size, almost as tall and a good deal wider of shoulder and longer of arm. Pectoral muscles like Viking roundshields twitched as he shifted his half ton of weight from side to side. The Grog's legworm crook lay before his massive hands as though to establish a line Valentine would never cross.

“You're Tuck?” the referee asked.

“Change of programming,” Valentine said. “I'm David.”

“David, your Wildcat opponent is Vista. Vista, your Bulletproof opponent is David. Don't touch me or you forfeit. Interference by anyone else also results in a forfeit for the interfering side. This mark”—he indicated a pair of flat river stones—“is the center of the field, agreed to by your respective Dispatchers.”

The Grog yawned, displaying a melon-sized gullet guarded by four-inch yellow incisors, capped with steel points, top and bottom. The great, double-thumbed hand picked up the long crook.

The referee held out the basketball. “The object of the contest is to get this ball to your own line. The game begins when the ball hits the ground, and ends when the winner brings it home to his own goal line. I'll fire my pistol in the air to indicate a victory.”

Valentine noted the hook on Vista's crop had been chewed to a sharpened point, and hoped that his intestines wouldn't end up draped over the loop at some point.

“Any questions?” the referee finished, stepping to the two stones in the center.

Neither said anything. Vista glared at Valentine. Valentine stared back. The referee held out the ball between them, and when he lowered it for the bounce-toss the Grog was looking away.

“May the best . . . ummm . . . contestant win.”

The referee tossed the basketball straight up into the air and backpedaled out from between man and Grog, quickly enough that Valentine felt air move.

Valentine heard a faint sound like a distant waterfall and realized it was cheering, cut with a few whistles. He felt not at all encouraged, and took a few steps back out of clobbering range as Vista raised his crook—
No sense getting my head knocked off the second the ball hits
.

The damn thing took forever to fall. Was it filled with helium?

The ball struck. Valentine's brain registered that it took a Wildcat bounce, helped along by a quick swing of Vista's crook that Valentine didn't have the length to intercept.

But Vista went for him instead of the ball. The Grog leaped forward, using one of his long arms as a decathlete might use a pole, and upon landing swung his crook for—

The air occupied by Valentine. If Vista didn't want the ball, Valentine would take it. Valentine sprinted after the ball, now rolling at a very shallow angle toward the Bulletproof on its second bounce.

The instinct to just go toe-to-toe with Vista and decide the contest in a brawl surged for a moment. But he'd lose. Valentine looked back to see Vista galloping toward the ball, crook clenched at the midpoint in those wide jaws. Grogs running on all fours looked awkward, but they were damn fast—

Valentine cut an intercepting course.

Vista, you messed up
—the Grog's crook had the hook end on Valentine's side. Taking great lungfuls of air, Valentine poured it on. He reached forward with his own hook, Vista's head invisible behind the mountainous shoulders—

—and latched his hook to Vista's. Valentine planted his feet to bring the racing Grog down the way a cowboy would turn a cow's head.

The field smacked Valentine in the face as he landed, yanked off his feet by five times his weight in charging Grog. The crook slipped away like a snake.

By the time he looked up again Vista had retrieved Valentine's crook, and used it to give the ball a whack, sending it farther toward the Wildcat line. Vista left off the contest. Instead of following the ball to a likely victory he advanced on Valentine, long crook in his left hand, held hook out, and Valentine's shorter one looking like a baton in the right. Apparently the Wildcat Dispatcher wanted to teach the Bulletproof a lesson.

Animal triumph shone in Vista's eyes. Valentine tasted blood from a cut lip. The referee ran across the periphery of Valentine's vision, moving for a better angle on events.

Valentine stood up, swiping the dirt from his knees as he watched Vista advance, and ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth.

Vista raised his twin weapons and bellowed, stamping his feet and banging the crooks together.

Valentine raised his middle finger in return.

The Grog knew what that meant. It charged, wild-eyed.

Valentine ran away.

He felt the long crook tug at his hair and ran harder. Vista couldn't sprint with weapons in his hands, so the Grog paused. Valentine used the precious second to achieve some distance, then settled into his old, pounding Wolf run, pretended his aching left leg didn't exist.

Vista gained on him, slowly, but only by sprinting full tilt. And the Grog couldn't breathe as well with two crooks crammed into its bear-trap-like mouth. Valentine slowed a little, listening to the footfalls behind, but didn't dare look back; a trip and a sprawl would be fatal.

Vista slowed. The Grog's eyes no longer blazed, but were clouded by new doubt, and it came to a halt perhaps a hundred yards from the Bulletproof line.

A shout from somewhere in the line:
“Hrut ko-ahhh mreh!”

Valentine glanced back and saw Ahn-Kha, making a sawing motion with one of his mighty arms.

Vista screamed back, words or pure rage, Valentine couldn't tell. Vista dashed off at an angle southward, running an oblique course for the Wildcat line.

Valentine's crook spun past his nose and he side-stepped—and caught it as it bounced in the air. This time he heard the cheers clearly. With fresh energy he tore toward the Wildcat side and the distant ball, hidden by a gentle fold in the earth.

Sorry, Vista. You'll keep your temper next time
.

But the Grog had unguessed-at reserves. It pounded up behind Valentine, sounding like a galloping horse. Valentine risked a glance over his shoulder and saw Vista running in a two-leg, one-arm canter, the long crook raised to catch him—

Vista swung and Valentine blocked. Valentine shielded his back against another blow and hurried on, then got a painful rap on the knuckles that opened his hand, and he lost his crook for the second time.

He could run better without it anyway.

Now for a real burn.

Valentine ran, extending his sprint. Were he still a fresh Wolf of twenty-two with an uninjured leg he would have left Vista gaping behind. As it was he increased the distance, but only just.

The ball would be an awkward thing to carry. Under his arm he wouldn't be able to run with a proper stride; held in each hand he'd be running upright, not a natural human motion. He could kick it, but what if he mistimed an approach and missed? If only he had a satchel . . .

Valentine spotted the ball and changed his angle. Vista slowed behind him, perhaps conserving his wind to intercept Valentine on his sprint back. Even more distance yawned between them.