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It looked like something was happening now, though, which distracted me from my weird, brooding thoughts about Dalk’s future romantic prospects. The men were spreading out a bit, and Gahn Thaleo had separated himself from the group, now facing the stands where we all sat watching and waiting.
“Welcome to the vaklok,” he said. He seemed to make no real effort to speak loudly, but his quietly thunderous voice carried in the dawn-steeped air. “The vaklok is a Deep Sky tradition wherein the unmated males of our tribe may participate in feats of strength and skill. We are honoured to not only have our mated tribe members and their children here to watch, but also the new women.”
Kind of rich how he’s talking about being honoured by the presence of the new women, plural, when he’s only looking at Nasrin...
“The first round of the vaklok will be an archery competition.”
Ah, shit.
Our home team sure wasn’t going to do well in the first round, that was for damn sure. Not a single one of them had ever touched a bow before, unless they’d done some secret training in Gahn Errok’s territory that I didn’t know about. The announcement didn’t seem to faze any of our Sea Sand boys, though, which made me think they’d already been told what the first event would be. While he didn’t look surprised, Dalk did look especially pissed-off, and I empathized with that. I couldn’t help but wonder if archery was always the first round of events in the vaklok, or if Gahn Thaleo had put it first on purpose to give his men the upper hand. Not that actually winning any rounds in these games would mean anything, but it would make his men look better than ours.
That bothered me. Clutching my frowny Dalk poster, I vowed to cheer for our Sea Sand boys as much as I could.
“The second round,” Gahn Thaleo continued, “will be a braxilk-riding race.”
Double shit.
Guess I’m gonna be cheering really, really loud.
“The third round, after we break for a ceremonial morning meal, will be hand-to-hand combat.”
Was it just me, or did Dalk perk up a bit there? He seemed to be standing a little straighter, his frown more determined than angry now.
At least in a regular, feet-on-the-ground sort of competition, the Sea Sand guys should be evenly matched against their opponents.
“Warrek,” Gahn Thaleo called, “you may set up the targets for the first round of events.”
Gahn Thaleo’s right-hand-man Warrek got to work hanging five snare-drum-looking circles on a high ledge of stone clear across this part of the valley. The circles with their taut surfaces of stretched hide had dark splotches in the centre, much like a human target. But unlike the red and white targets I was used to thinking about on Earth, these ones had no outer rings. Just the small circle in the centre. Which, I supposed, meant it only counted if you hit dead-on. No half points for hitting somewhere else on the target.
As Warrek got that sorted out, and the competitors took their positions a solid twenty metres away from the targets, Gahn Thaleo turned back towards the stands.
And then he sat down. Right next to Nasrin.
“I thought all unmated males participated in the vaklok,” Nasrin said. Her tone was very smooth and even mildly curious, and not betraying any other sort of emotion. If she was annoyed by Gahn Thaleo’s choice of seat, she didn’t show it at all.
“Not the Gahn,” he clarified, his voice a low rumble. “It is already established that the Gahn should be the strongest, that he excels physically over the men in his tribe. It is unnecessary to compete, even if unmated, just to prove what is already known.”
It was almost weird how there was absolutely no ego in what he said. He wasn’t bragging about being the strongest in his tribe, it was like he was just stating a simple fact. I actually thought it showed a little bit of humility to not compete if he already knew he’d blow through all the events and leave his fellow tribesmen in the dust.
I also couldn’t help but wonder if Gahn Errok’s tribe held vakloks. If they did, I’d bet Gahn Errok competed, just to remind everybody how baller he was, at least in his own mind. I was suddenly reminded of him up high on the cliffs back at the settlement, doing his weighted Olympic squats to try to show Stephanie what a catch he was. Poor sod was so, so misguided with all that macho crap. Guess he figured it out, though, because the two of them were so damn sweet in love it almost made my teeth hurt.
Nasrin nodded, not saying anything else. I couldn’t be sure from this angle, especially with Zaria and Tilly between us on the bench, but it kind of looked like Gahn Thaleo was staring stonily down at the poster in Nasrin’s hands. She had the poster with Zoren’s face on it, and something told me Gahn Thaleo really didn’t like that. And something else told me that it wasn’t just because she was supporting someone outside of his tribe, either. I had a feeling he wouldn’t like to see her cheering on even one of his own men.
Man. That dude seemed like he was in real fucking deep. He obviously hadn’t been called by the Vrika to be mated with Nasrin or else he would have already tried to use that to his advantage by now. There was no way he’d allow his mate to sleep in Gahn Errok’s mountain, same way Gahn Errok hadn’t allowed such a thing with Stephanie. But, despite the almost complete lack of emotions this Deep Sky Gahn showed on his scarred face, I and anyone else with two working eyes in their head could see he was down bad for our pretty, green-eyed friend.
Though I was maybe a little too nosy about the whole Nasrin/Thaleo seating situation over there, I really couldn’t see much else now that Zaria and Tilly were sitting leaning towards the arena excitedly. I turned my eyes forwards once more to see the first set of five men stepping up with their bows, ready to fire their arrows across the valley.
The first five men to shoot were Deep Sky men. Three of them hit dead-on in the centre of the targets, the other to just a hair outside the centre mark. Once those five were finished shooting, Warrek took down the targets and stretched new hide over the frames, as they’d been blown out by the previous arrows. Once they were fixed-up, he repositioned them in the same places as before, up on the stony ledge.
The next group of five consisted of four Deep Sky men and Zoren. All four Deep Sky men hit the centre of the target this time. Zoren was the slowest to unloose his arrow, and Nasrin called out a cheer to him, waving her poster like a flag in the air. He didn’t look over, totally absorbed in what he was doing, his pink sight stars pulled in so tight with focus they almost looked like human pupils, if pupils could be pink.
Zoren actually did pretty well, all things considered. His arrow didn’t really come close to hitting his target, but it did sail nice and high and fast, whizzing through the air in what seemed to be a decent arc to my untrained eye. Warrek only had to fix up four targets that time, since Zoren’s hadn’t been damaged, and then it was on to the next group. This group was once again four Deep Sky males, including Warrek, and the fifth was Oxriel.
“Woo! Go Ox!” I called, cupping one of my hands around my mouth. Tilly raised her poster over her head. Oxriel glanced over at us, offering us a grateful yet self-effacing sort of grin, as if to say, well, here goes nothing.
Dalk glanced at us, too. Well, no. Not really. He didn’t glance. He glared.
And he didn’t glare at us. Just me.
