The first day of the games dawned sunny and clear. Klane rose early and after a quick breakfast of bread and honey, made his way to the sporting grounds outside town where spectators and competitors were already beginning to gather. He felt very nervous and not a little sceptical, yet somehow in the confusion and anguish at the forge last night he had agreed to help the Order of the Silent Word to escape the Great Burning with their library. It seemed a hopeless plan but all that they had to work with was the possibility of winning in the games, so that Klane could claim the blacksmith and all his family as chattels for his own Rider tribe. 

Unfortunately Klane didn’t have a Rider tribe at the games, but that small problem at least was solved when Ethan declared that should he succeed, the independent Riders of the Thranish tribe would join him and ride back across the Western moors of Ulumol as his escort and the witnesses of his triumph, uniting at last with his own true distant people. 

“Our finest sportsmen have been bloodied and bowed by the damned Pralannians and their cowardly attack,” Ethan spat, “My friends may no longer be able to match them in athletic prowess in these games but we shall not be caught by surprise for a second time. If you win through, you can count on us as your allies and the scum will not find us so easy to best again!” 

“These lands grow dangerous,” he added. “It is time that my people moved on and we would be glad to join our fortunes to your own and find new pastures beyond the Glass Lands if you would lead us to them!” 

They were brave words but Klane was unconvinced, not only of the promises of the leader of the Thranish Riders who had been so soundly thrashed by Muttu and his mates, but also of his own prospects of achieving anything in the games on his own. 

No better idea occurred to him, however, and presenting himself once more under his alias of “Alderon”, Klane declared himself ready to compete. There at the table again were Verindu, the leader of ceremonies and his advisers, Jythra of the Nykwin and Thorawn from the Conclave. 

In that time the people of all the Earth used a simple currency they called “Faces”, issued (even though they did not know it) from the Conclave and preserved from generation to generation because it was cut from some synthetic glass-like mineral of immense durability which no Rider or town person could duplicate. The value of a token was determined by the number of faces the geometry presented, coupled with its colour in an ascending order of red, green and blue. A red torus, having a single face was the lowest value unit, followed by an ancient coin like object with three faces (front, back and rim) then each of the Platonic solids, tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron, worth four, six, eight, twelve and twenty units respectively according to the number of faces they possessed. A red icosahedron was worth the same as a green torus, and values of green tokens proceeded to multiply up in the same fashion until the blue series was reached where the pattern was repeated. In this way a blue icosahedron represented the most valuable token being worth eight thousand times the value of a red torus. 

Most people seldom had need of the rare blue tokens and even the green ones were uncommon. But at Great Burnings the Conclave made available special ceremonial blue tokens of much larger size than the standard currency to be awarded as prizes. These would be used by the Riders to buy their chattels when the townspeople were auctioned. 

“You can enter any event you like and as many as you like,” Verindu said. “Before each competition we will announce the prizes and the terms. Be careful to preserve your strength because you cannot win them all. The games begin with simple running races, from long distance to sprint.”

Klane surveyed the arena carefully as the morning sun rose behind the low hills. A handful of townsfolk already occupied the slopes on the opposite side of a roughly circular plot of levelled ground where the games would soon begin. More of Ironhope’s residents were beginning to arrive at the same time as the Rider competitors and spectators. He caught sight of Clara and her son who gave him a wave, but the blacksmith has not yet joined his family. Gillan was still conferring with Ethan and his men. 

The irregular edges of the competition area were marked at wide intervals by a number of large boulders set into the ground. Long distance circuit races, required the runners to touch each one as they passed. In the central areas of the field, there were various pieces of simply crafted structures designed for the games; a sandpit, some wooden poles lashed together, straw bale targets and towers, netting and ropes. 

On this first day the sports were all about human endeavours. The feats of horsemanship which were the pride of Rider culture would take place on the second and final day.

The early races were ones of endurance and distance and they were not suited to Klane’s natural abilities. It was quickness of thought and of limb and agility of mind and body in which he excelled. So at first, husbanding his energies, Klane just mingled with the spectators and bided his time. He found that the story of the fight between the Southern Pralannians and the Thranish Riders was on everyone’s lips and an evil atmosphere of uneasiness, resentment and even fear affected Riders and townsfolk alike. 

The sprint races were announced in the hour before noon. There would be two heats and a final between the winner of each. It was a thinner field than expected and Klane found himself competing directly against two of the Southern Pralannians in the first race, but they were not natural sprinters and he won through easily. In the final he faced a Rider of the Nykwin, a swift and leathery runner who eyed him sternly at the start and shook his hand with a firm grip. But Klane was at the peak of his fitness, lean, athletic and very, very fast. He took the race in style and claimed his first victory token.

His next success came in a long jump competition. Klane was looking for events where speed might help him. He guessed that his sprinting ability in the run up would be an advantage but he’d never practised before and he watched the others carefully. There must have been a great deal of luck involved along with observation and natural physical skill but he’d picked the right challenge. Demonstrating an intuitive ability, Klane achieved a win by the narrowest of margins in a final outstanding jump. His reward came in the twelve faces of a dodecahedron to add to the twenty faces from his earlier win.

Towards the end of the afternoon there were some trials with weapons. The Season Of Innocence could be dangerous as much as we might imagine it to be an age of bucolic simplicity today. Across the whole Earth, the great mixing of alien and native species, known as the Gene Sea, had brought much that was wondrous, strange and sometimes terrifying to roam the wild lands of the quiet planet. There was the occasional aerial threat of the alegoyle, the silent death brought by the forest mystish and the hot teeth of the black spider wolves, to name but three of the more common hazards and much else besides that was rare, unique and deadly. So Riders carried weapons to protect themselves and their tribe and that was well understood. Until the sacking of Kalonia, however, no Rider had ever taken up weapons against another, let alone against an Enclave. Klane’s last major success of the day came in a spear throwing contest where he was able to achieve the longest distance and it won him another dodecahedron. By that time he’d decided to enter anything he felt fit enough for, just to give it a try, and although he won no more, he collected a couple of tetrahedrons and a disk for achieving minor placings in a scramble climb, a kind of bowling contest and a hurdling race.

In the evening, bathed and changed, Klane visited the blacksmith’s family at the forge before retiring to his lodgings. They took stock of the days events, and he set out his trophies on the kitchen table where they sparkled in the lamp light. Some arcane property of the hard crystal they were made of seemed to phosphoresce in the yellow glow and the trophies gave back more light than they received. 

“You’ve done exceptionally well,” Clara said, congratulating Klane. “Yours was the most successful individual performance today. There’s an additional bonus prize for the athlete who wins the most over the two days if you are able to retain first place tomorrow!” 

“Even so,” Klane said, “I cannot hope to amass as many faces as the other tribes are winning.” 

“But they will be spreading their spending out over the entire population of Ironhope when it comes to the auctions,” Gillan pointed out. “All you need to do is to keep all your tokens back and bid everything for my family and the forge. The books will be stowed with my equipment and the library will escape with us, under the cover of my trade tools.” 

Ethan was not so sanguine though, and cautioned them in troubled tones. “Yet we all know the Southern Pralannians have come here to win the forge for themselves, to gain more control of weapon making and to arm themselves in ever more dangerous ways. Muttu and his friends will also hold back plenty of tokens to bid for what they see as the main prize. They have done well in the endurance events and in archery. These winnings may not be enough.” 

“But what else can we do?” Zandra asked. 

“I have an idea,” the Rider replied, “but I had best not say more until I have found out if it is possible. For tomorrow, our friend must continue his good work and see how much more can be won. It is to be contests with horses tomorrow, the true pride of the Riders which we value more than anything.” 

He turned to Klane. “I hope your steed is a good one!”