Page 63 of The Boy Bride

Faru was there, standing with his arms folded and looking grim. Barda emerged from the house, shooed out by his mother, chewing on a piece of dried meat.

“Hey, where’d you get that?” Khatu demanded, trying to take the half-eaten jerky out of his hand. “Ma, can you get me some? I’m starved!”

“There will be time to eat and drink after the dancing,” said Padunu peevishly. “Everyone take a stick and line up.”

With Halza’s assistance, the shaman handed out white-painted sticks with tassels on the ends and herded all the rest of the men, and Mikhi, into a line in front of the lord’s house. Vanu took Lill’s hand and brought him to stand in the middle of the line. Barda came to line up next to Lill, still gnawing his jerky. Tirtu was down at the far end of the line, next to Mikhi, who was bouncing excitedly. Gurti came out to stand under the trees with Atari and Susami and the cat. Halza, not yet up to dancing, hobbled over to join them.

“Now then!” Padunu began in his stentorian voice. “There are three dances, and they must all be performed in sequence. I will not take the time to explain their symbolism and significance to you now, as most of you should know it already, but be assured that we do not do these things for our own amusement! These dances are performed to honour the earth and the spirits and our ancestors.

“I will show you the steps—pay attention, Barda and Khatu! I am well aware that you have not performed any wedding dances since you were boys, and I have my doubts as to whether you performed them correctly then. The steps to the first dance are as follows. Ha! Step forward and raise your stick. Ha-YUP! Twirl the tasselled end of the stick—not the plain end. Ho-yo! Step back. Hai! Flip the stick and strike the ground with the plain end—do not hit the ground with the tassel!”

“I thought the dancing was supposed to be fun,” Barda complained around a mouthful of half-chewed meat. “He’s making it worse than sword drills.”

“Be quiet,” Faru growled.

“After this we’re going to do a lowland custom you’ll like much better,” Tirtu put in cheerfully.

“Have you got the steps?” Padunu asked Lill in a tone that suggested he knew Lill hadn’t.

“Yes,” said Lill. “Ha! Ha-yup! Ho-yo! Hai!” He ran crisply through the motions that Padunu had demonstrated, putting them together into a continuous sequence.

Padunu looked taken aback. “Right, yes. You’ve done this before, I see. You should have said so.”

“No. I have never done a dance before. But I have done sword drills.”

Khatu guffawed. Lill glanced at Vanu and saw a broad smile on his face, crinkling the scar on his left cheek. Something about that made Lill feel warm inside.

Padunu demonstrated the steps of the second and third dances: in the second you had to spin and hit your stick against your neighbours’ sticks on either side, and the third involved jumping back and forth and forming up in a circle. Lill found it easy to learn all the steps. In the Order you would be beaten if you didn’t follow directions properly, and this was nothing more than that. Padunu’s voice even sounded a little like some of the masters.

But no one would have beaten him here for failing at the dance steps. Instead there was Vanu watching him with that smile on his lips. What made him smile? Lill did not quite understand.

They began to dance, and it was not like a sword drill. Padunu took his place in line and called out the different steps in a half-singing, half-shouting voice like herdsmen used to call cattle. It echoed off the stone walls around them. The guards outside the fortress must have been able to hear it; what did they make of it? The men’s boots stamped the paving stones, and they twirled and thumped their sticks.

The older men joined in the chant with Padunu, and so Lill did too. In the second dance, he got to bang sticks with Barda on his left, who was usually late or hit at an awkward angle and endangered Lill’s knuckles—and Vanu on his right, who smacked his stick precisely against Lill’s every time on the turn and smiled at him in that way that was kindling warmth in Lill’s belly.

At the end of the third dance, they put their sticks on the ground and jumped and stepped back and forth over them, as the spectators clapped in a rhythm that gradually sped up, and when someone trod on their stick, they were out and went to stand with the women, and the dance started over again. By the end, everyone was standing under the trees clapping except Vanu and Lill. Vanu didn’t even look tired. Lill was; that was one of his weaknesses, a lack of stamina, and it was pronounced after the week of injuries and indolence that he’d had. But he was used to pushing through fatigue to do what was required.

Then Vanu, to Lill’s surprise, just stopped. He didn’t make a mistake or step on his stick, he just flung up his arms and came to a neat halt.

“Vanu forfeits!” Padunu announced. “Lill … is the winner.” He sounded annoyed.

Lill came to a halt too, shaking back his hair, which he was wearing loose, and breathing hard. He realized the dance had just crossed the line from ease to toil, and he was quite ready to stop. What a coincidence that Vanu had chosen that moment.

“What does he win?” Halza inquired.

“Traditionally the winner is rewarded with a—chaste!—kiss from the bride,” said Padunu. “It is said to convey a blessing, especially if given to an unmarried man. Obviously under the circumstances … ” He flung up his hands in lieu of finishing the sentence.

Vanu stepped close to Lill and leaned down to give him a kiss. Lill would not have called it “chaste.” The Gukhártu brothers hooted.

“Burira!” someone—Tirtu, maybe—called out.

“Burira!” roared Barda and Khatu.

“Dance the burira!”

Vanu nodded. He put a hand on Lill’s shoulder and nudged him gently toward the spectators under the trees. Lill moved obediently. Vanu was bending down to pick up the sticks from the ground. He tossed them to Padunu, who caught them awkwardly. Everyone else had begun clapping in a slow, syncopated rhythm.

Vanu stepped back out onto the sunlit pavement, moving in time to the rhythm as if feeling it out. Gurti began to sing, a wordless tune, and Tirtu and then Halza quickly picked it up. Vanu began to dance alone. This was a different kind of dance. He raised his arms, and his feet moved in quick steps over the pavement. He jumped and kicked, high enough to hit an opponent in the head but not the way you would kick in unarmed combat—exuberantly, just for the fun of showing off his skill. He slapped the heel of his boot with either hand and spun around.