“Now you’ll see what a real man can do,” growled Beor.
The contrast between the two men was striking: Alain lean and smooth, Beor with his broad chest densely matted with curly hair. Alain always seemed to have a smile on his face, the look of a person who no longer has anything to worry about, while Beor suffered from a nagging, irritable discontent. But, in truth, Beor had mellowed over the winter. He didn’t argue nearly as much as he had once done. Maybe it was just that it had been a mild winter during which the village hadn’t suffered hunger or anything worse than the usual stink of being closed up in their homes for months on end. Maybe they were all just more at peace, despite the everpresent menace of the Cursed Ones, now that Alain lived among them.
“I said I will take on all men, not all bears,” said Alain to general laughter.
Beor lifted his hands in imitation of a lumbering bear and, with a mock roar, charged Alain. A child yelped with excitement. Alain sidestepped him, but not fast enough. Beor got hold of a shoulder, they grappled, then Beor twisted Alain back and with brute strength lifted him up and tossed him backward into the current. The big man threw out his arms and let out a scream of triumph that echoed off the tumulus. Adica laughed helplessly along with the rest of the village.
Alain came up thrashing, drenched through.
“Peace!” he cried. “You win.”
He extended a hand. When Beor took it, to help him up, Alain yanked so hard that Beor tumbled forward into the freezing water beside him. By this time the two black dogs had begun barking, and as the two men heaved themselves spluttering and laughing up out of the water, the dogs splashed into the shallows and, in their excitement, knocked them both over again.
“My stomach hurts,” moaned Weiwara, tears leaking from her eyes as she laughed.
“The village will smell a lot better now,” cried Beor’s sister, Etora, from the crowd. “Whew! Look how the river has changed color downstream.”
Adica found Alain’s wool cloak lying on the rocks. After he waded out of the water, she draped it over his shoulders. A winter spent mostly indoors and the immediate effects of the freezing water had made him pale, dimpled with goose bumps.
“Cold,” he proclaimed cheerfully as she fastened the cloak at his left shoulder with a bronze pin. He kissed her cheek.
His lips were as cold as death.