Love and Shkulaktoss - Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Ullegh strode forward, grinning like a madman, and Garauk panicked and backpedalled, then desperately jabbed forward with the spear. Casually, Ullegh grabbed the shaft just below the head and pulled forward, jerking Garauk into his reach even as he wrenched Jagged Tooth from his grasp. With his other hand, Ullegh caught Garauk by the throat and lifted him into the air, so that he soon dangled from his outstretched arm, naked, unarmed, and kicking and struggling futilely like a small child. Katernin watched in horror as Garauk's eyes bulged and his struggles began to fade, and then Ullegh looked over and caught her eyes.

"Gird your pussy, princess," Ullegh said, laughter still rumbling low in his belly as he strangled Garauk with one hand. "My other spear is an even mightier weapon!"

"Stop!" Katernin shouted. "I challenge ye, Ullegh, if that is your name! I challenge ye, for the life of my love Garauk!"

"Darling, no!" Queen Alya shrieked in terror.

Ullegh abruptly dropped Garauk, and he landed on his ass on the ground. "You, Princess of the White Mountain Clan," UIlegh said slowly, "challenge me, Ullegh Zagroth of the Shattered Blade, to combat?"

"No," Katernin said. "To a different contest." But her mind raced trying to think of what that contest might be, what she could possibly do to defeat Ullegh, and it came up empty.

Ullegh spat. "Bah!" he shouted. "What foolish contest could dwarves possibly dream up to try to cheat us?" He looked at the other two warriors. "I change my mind. This tires my brain. Shall we just kill them all and bring their heads back to High Chief Magrul? I have the first rhyme of an epic ballad of apology already forming in my mind. It's called 'The Song of Sorry That I Killed Your Faggard Son While Slaying These Dwarves' and I will sing it to Magrul when we return. And you, my friends, will sing pleasing harmonies alongside me." He grinned at Ripper and Egrash.

"Shkulaktoss!" Garauk croaked from the ground. "Challenge him to a game of shkulaktoss!"

Katernin didn't know what that word even meant, but she knew that she had to trust Garauk for any hope of survival. "Very well!" Katernin said, "I challenge ye a game of shkulaktoss!" Then, on an impulse, she added, "And there need be no war between our people. Instead, I raise the stakes! Let the winner of the game of shkulaktoss decide the future of the White Mountain Clan and the Shattered Blade tribe alike!"

"My daughter-" King Grennaur sputtered.

"Father, ye must trust me," Katernin said. She looked back to Ullegh. "I, Princess of the White Mountain Clan, make this challenge!"

Garauk pulled himself to his feet. "And I, son of the High Chief of the Shattered Blade, accept it!" he declared.

"And I, Ullegh of the Shattered Blade, object!" Ullegh said. "If this contest decides the future of the whole Shattered Blade tribe, of the whole White Mountain Clan, then all must play, if it is to be considered just." He glared at Garauk. "We are your tribe, son of High Chief Magrul, but we are not your slaves. All must play, if their futures are to be bound by oath to this game."

Katernin looked uneasily at Garauk, who took a deep breath and then swallowed and nodded. "It is true," he said in a raspy voice, one hand massaging his recently-strangled throat. "All must play."

Queen Alya put her hand on Katernin's bare shoulder. "My daughter," she gasped. "What have ye done?"

"If fortune favors me, mother," Katernin said softly, "I may have just averted a war." She looked at Garauk and raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Er, my love... just what is shkulaktoss, anyway?"

After further deliberation, it was decided that the grand shkulaktoss tournament would take place in ten days' time, at a neutral ground where tents and a shkulaktoss field were set up. Dwarves and orcs alike each appointed three judges from the elderly within their number to oversee the fairness of the contest. The dwarves, though they were said to be highly skeptical, seemed to rally around Katernin's decision on faith when her parents stood behind her, while at the other side, High Chief Magrul was incredulous that the dwarves had put such stakes on the line in a game invented and played by orcs.

"We will bend them to our will," Magrul promised with a snarl. "After our victory, this King Grennaur will bow and kiss my feet, or he will disobey and dishonor his whole clan just before our warriors cut the dwarves down where they stand." He even took his own shkulak, long unused since he was a young man, and practiced at throwing it in the fields.

From his nightly conversations with Katernin, Garauk had great misgivings about the contest at hand. As many of them took up the practice of the game, the dwarves soon discovered that they were not built to throw the shkulak; they were too short, their arms not long enough to get full extension, their sense of depth perception stunted by their habit of living in confined tunnels. In desperation, Garauk himself picked up the shkulak and practiced it nightly, discovering to his surprise that he had greater natural agility and aim than he recalled the last time he took up the game. He had only suggested it in the heat of the moment because it was a non-lethal contest that Ullegh would be willing to undertake against Katernin, meaning that she would not die. He never intended for things to go this far!

Katernin herself was focused on practice by day, with little time to spend at Garauk's side, and by night she measured the shkulak field, drew diagrams with angles, and measured again from different positions. When throwing straight, her aim was solid, among the upper tier of those dwarves who showed some measure of ability for the game, but she could not consistently hit the distant targets that the flashier orc throwers prided themselves on reaching, and her scores tended to be at or below the level of Garauk's own. Nevertheless, she continued her studies well into the night, and practiced her throws at new and unusual angles during the day.

Nobody was as utterly gripped by anticipation for this game as Ullegh. Each day, he threw the shkulak over a thousand times, his aim never better, his arm never stronger. At night he ranted to an audience of admiring warriors, speaking of a future where all orcs had their own dwarven slaves to lick their feet clean and furnish them with finely-made weapons and armor, and any defiance would open the floodgates of a river of blood. He would win the contest, he assured them all, and force the dwarves into bondage by the oath they swore at the outset of the game. If any one dwarf broke the oath, he promised, three would die for the transgression.

Continued in Chapter 7