Page 19 of Something Human

“I know, that’s what makes it a challenge. All right, this is my last shot—this one had better go in.”

It did, though it was a bad throw that should have missed. Rus laughed. And the whole thing was really about making Rus laugh, so that was all right.

It was the second morning of their friendship. Rus was lying in the sun outside the back door of the temple of Soukos, on the fur rug and Adares’s cloak, propped up on one elbow to watch Adares, who had improvised a game of bowls for himself with a bronze cauldron as a target and a number of round bronze censers as balls.

The censers made a satisfying clang when they went into the cauldron, but because they had small loops on either side for hanging, they had a tendency not to go where they were aimed, even across the smooth pavement of the courtyard. Sometimes the two halves would come unfastened as they rolled, and the ball would fall apart before it reached the target. Still, when Adares had thrown the last of them and went to gather them up, most of the censers were inside the cauldron.

That morning when they had awoken, they had been nestled together again, but Rus had been turned away from Adares, toward the wall, curled slightly in on himself.

“You’re a good shot,” Rus admitted, as Adares dumped the armload of censers next to him and sat down to repair the ones that had fallen apart. “Not as good as me, but … ”

“Talk is cheap—but I’m not going to let you overtax your leg proving yourself a liar.”

Rus snorted. “But you are a good shot. Do you hunt?”

“Not if I can help it. I grew up hunting rabbits and wild geese with a bow on my family’s country estate with my cousins, and that was fun. But the hunting around here—boar, and deer, and worse—it’s too rich for my blood. I am always getting invited out by these hot-blooded Getti lords who make a whole day’s business of it, sunrise to sunset, charging about in the rain half the time—and one has to accept, at least now and then, to be polite.”

Rus chuckled. “At least they haven’t asked you to play fingin with them—I think that is what they call their ball game. Or have they? I don’t think they would let a foreigner join—they take it very seriously.”

Adares picked up one of the censers and bowled it across the pavement towards the cauldron. It went in with a resounding clang.

“No, they haven’t asked me to join. I’ve been a spectator, and it looked … I mean, I like ball games, at least the kind we play in Pheme. But I honestly couldn’t tell what was going on with that game. And whatever it was, it went on and on. I’d have preferred listening to one of their epics—which is saying something. The Luth don’t play that, do they?”

“We have a version of it. Hargan. It’s rougher than the Getti version—and it takes longer to play.”

Adares gave him a sceptical look. “I’m not sure how that’s possible. There are only so many hours in the day. Do you play?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you’ll have to explain the rules to me some time. I’ll try to stay awake.” Adares bowled another censer and missed this time.

Later, he climbed to the gallery of the temple of Anaxe again, to check the progress of the siege. The Luth siege-carts had been moved around the walls to the far side, to attack the main gate, but the rest of their camp looked quiet, as if they were resting between assaults or while refining their strategy, or just taking their time.

Inside the temple complex, the food situation was close to becoming desperate. Adares made another, thorough search of the outbuildings, by daylight now, and managed to break into a door that had previously resisted him, but there was no food on the other side of it. He and Rus had stayed up most of the previous night, telling each other stories, and Rus had got hungry at one point, so Adares had fetched more biscuits for him; and then Rus had been reluctant to eat if Adares was not going to eat too, and since he had not, in perfect honesty, been able claim he was not hungry, he had eaten a biscuit himself. Now there were only four broken pieces of biscuit left, and a half a dozen figs to go with them. And the sun was high in the sky, and Adares was feeling hollow with hunger.

He mentioned none of this to Rus when he returned to the storeroom, where Rus was lying down again. He did not bring the whole jar of biscuits over to the bed, to avoid letting Rus see that it was almost empty. It was amazing, when he stopped to think about it, how protective he felt of this young man, who could no doubt take care of himself very well under normal circumstances.

“I have been thinking, Adares,” Rus said, looking down over the side of the bed at Adares, who was sitting on the floor to eat. “These walls to the harbour that are not finished—you said that they were started a few months ago. So it must have been Phyleros, this archon who is too young, who gave the order to build them.”

“Yes.”

“That is not so bad.”

“No! No, but it’s not spectacularly clever—anyone could have thought of it.”

“Ah. Anyone.”

“Yes, I know. That’s easy to say.”

“It is,” said Rus, but he let the subject drop.

In the afternoon, when Rus had slept again for a while, he was restless and began asking questions about Phemian temples. Adares had discovered that morning that it was possible for him to carry Rus a short distance, without any harm coming to either of them. They relocated, for a change of scene, to the small, dim sanctuary of the temple of Soukos.

Rus, for all he had declared temples to be less sensible than sacred hills, seemed impressed with the place. He was also extremely respectful, and would not sit with his back to the altar or speak above an undertone. He made a joke of worrying that Adares was going to behave impiously; but there was something in it, besides teasing. Adares did not swear much, but by now he was pretty sure that Rus did not swear at all, even in his native language. He had been restrainedly scandalized by Adares’s use of the censers that morning, though he had got over it eventually.

“Is it true,” Rus asked, looking up at the frieze of painted carving around the top of the sanctuary walls, “that your people believe you can make the spirits of the dead speak by offering them a big dish of blood?”

“Well … no. I wouldn’t say it’s something people believe, as such. It is said to have worked for some ancient heroes—it’s in a couple of famous poems, as I’m sure you know. But it’s not something actual, sensible people would really try. Philosophers would say that sort of thing was made up by the poets—or, if it does represent something real, it was so badly garbled by the poets that it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the truth any more. Philosophers are often rather hard on the poets.” After a moment, he asked, “Is it true that your people put important questions to the judgement of the gods by making a man fight against a bull?”