Running of the Bulls

I set my hand on his arm. The scales on his skin feel hard and tight. I give him the best advice I have. “Go to the bar. Drink some wine. When you start to buzz, switch to brandy. Get good and tight. Stay tight all day. In the morning, you’ll feel too rotten to care about Ett Brashli or anything else.”

“I can’t do that,” he says impatiently. “The bulls run tomorrow morning, and I’m running with them.”

A band starts up—drums and lutes and horns. It is a dreadful noise unless you are used to it. It may be a dreadful noise even if you are used to it. It means they are parading the statue of Thimras through Amblona’s streets. They always do that the day before they run the bulls.

Obert Ohn pushes away from me. He is off to watch the parade. I go into the bar myself. I take some of my own advice—not all of it, but some. Fool that I am, I aim to run with the bulls tomorrow, too.

I am up too damn early one more time the next morning. The bulls run at sunrise—they turn them loose when the sun touches the topmost spire on the temple roof. I hope Obert sleeps through it. Dinner last night was grim. He drank a lot, and said a lot of stupid things. He has it bad, all right.

But there he is, down in the lobby ahead of me. The morning the bulls run, Tonmoya serves rolls and coffee on the house. It is not what I call breakfast, but I come from Dubyook. It is what they eat in the morning in Astilia. In Ecnarf, too, come to that.

Ett and Kime are also down there. Ett seems cheerful, the way she always does. Kime looks as if he wishes he could tuck into a big plate of eggs and hash browns. Dunliners also believe in real breakfasts.

I am pouring down my coffee, trying to wake up, when Obert Ohn goes over to Lady Ett and says, “I want to tell you—”

“Whatever it is, it will wait till after the bulls run,” she breaks in.

“No, it won’t.”

“Yes, it will.” Ett Brashli seldom sounds impatient. When Obert starts whining, though, he can make the statue of Thimras fidget. Whatever he wants to tell Ett, she does not want to hear it.

Even Obert gets the message. “All right,” he says, and then again, “All right. You’ll see soon enough anyway.”

He is saying all this in front of Kime Kelbam, of course. Kime puts up with Lady Ett better than anyone else in the world. Better than I do—I will tell you that. Either he really is not a jealous man or he hides it mighty well. He must know Ett went off for that fling with Obert. But all he says now is “Let’s finish eating and go to the run.”

Near the gathering place stand blue-painted acolytes of Thimras with brushes and buckets. They whitewash the runners from head to foot. I close my eyes to keep the stuff from getting in them. The whitewash shows Thimras we are pure. It also drips on the cobbles from our arms and legs and snouts and tails. The street is all white close by the buckets, and splattered less and less thickly as we move farther away.

We are close to the holding pens near the train station. We will run ahead of the bulls and with the bulls all the way to the arena. You are supposed to feel the god’s might when you run with them. What I feel waiting for the handlers to open the pens is that I am an idiot. I thought the same thing last year, too.

When I came back from the war, I swore up and down I would never put myself in danger on purpose again. Danger finds you whether you look for it or not. Why look for it, then? The question seems better and better as the time gets closer and closer.

I cannot see the temple of Thimras from where I stand. Other buildings are in the way. But a bell rings when sunlight touches the temple. The handlers open the gates then. Out come the bulls. They charge down the lane with the plywood walls toward the arena.

The bell sounds. The note is surprisingly clear and sweet. I cannot hear the gates open. I am not close enough to them for that. But I hear the thunder when the bulls rush out. Everyone in Amblona must hear it, and feel it through the soles of his feet like an earthquake.

A bull weighs five tons or so. I do not know how many of them they turn loose at once, but it must be dozens. No wonder the ground shakes when they begin to run.

They round a corner a quarter of a mile behind us. “Here they come!” someone shouts in Astilian. I have never heard words less needed. Seeing them is our signal to start running, too.

Bulls grazing in a field, even bulls pacing in a pen, seem smaller than bulls on the loose. When they are rushing straight at you, you feel in your belly how big they are. Each one will go thirty feet from his beak to the tip of his tail. That is three times as long as a man is tall. I mean a man standing up straight to reach something high. I do not mean the usual kind of man, with his torso leaning forward and his tail stuck out in back to balance him.