Exile's Challenge by Angus Wells

them. He calculated there must be some several hundred, perhaps even a thousand or more. If that herd charged, the riders would surely be swept under their weight like debris beneath a surging sea.
    â€œYou fight bulls in the Levan, don’t you?” Flysse asked.
    â€œYes.” Arcole nodded. “But not creatures like that. The bulls of the Levan …” He shrugged, kindling memories from a life that now seemed so distant it grew hazy as the horizon. “… They’re smaller, and with wider horns. They’re fast, but their shoulders are not so huge. I’d not much want to fight one of these—I think it would be impossible to get the sword past those shoulders. Surely, I’d not want to try.”
    â€œ
You
fought bulls?” Flysse was surprised.
    â€œHave I not told you?” It was his turn to express surprise: surely he had told her everything about his life there. Certainly he had confessed his affairs and his duels, his gambling. They had agreed there should be no secrets between them, and since that night she had found him copying Wyme’s maps in secret—a betrayal of her trust—he had hidden nothing.Likely, he had only forgotten this: it was a small part of his past, unimportant for its foundation in the vanity he had learned to lose in her company.
    Flysse said, “No; tell me.”
    Arcole looked at the watchful animals—had Rannach said
buffalo
?—and then at Flysse. “Three times,” he said, and grinned. “The first was to see if I could.”
    â€œAnd could you?” she asked.
    He could not tell whether she approved or not; her face was unreadable. He said, “Yes. I’m alive, no? I was frightened.” He felt his grin fading. “God, but my legs were shaking and my mouth was dry. But I put the sword in and slew the beast.” He remembered, then, the cheers of the crowd, and added, proudly, “I was granted the ears.” Then, humbler when her expression did not change, “But it was only a small affair, in a private arena. And the bull was only a three-year-old, not the mature bulls the professionals fight.”
    â€œWhy?” Flysse asked.
    Her voice was empty of intonation. Arcole had thought she’d be impressed—the bull might have been immature, but still it could have killed him—but neither her tone or her face suggested that. He shrugged and said, “A friend—Antonym de Chevres—bred the bulls for the ring, and wagered me five hundred golden guineas I’d not fight one.”
    Still Flysse’s expression did not change. “And the other times?”
    â€œThose,” he said, “were for wagers resulting from that first—Antonym bet me a thousand in gold I’d not do it again, facing a full-grown bull. But I did.” He chuckled, remembering. “I hired a fighter called Manolito to train me, and we split the money. Antonym was amazed.”
    Flysse said, “You might have been killed.”
    â€œYes.” Arcole shrugged. “But a wager’s a wager, no? And it was the bull that died.”
    He thought that surely that must impress her. God, but the bull had been massive, and even did they not fight bulls in Evander, still they knew of the Levanite tradition—how could she not be impressed? But her face remained impassive, even less expressive than the heat-hazed blankness of the mountains behind them.
    â€œAnd the third time?”
    â€œThat was a bull called Escovar. No one wanted to face him because he’d horned two fighters; one died, and the other never fought again.” Surely she must be impressed with
this
. Even had she not heard of that battle, it must impress her. “Colign Murrie wagered five thousand, and I won.”
    â€œWon?” she said.
    â€œYes.” He frowned. “I killed the bull: I won.”
    â€œYou put your sword into the bull and killed it,” she said.
    Arcole said,