The Last Day of Segitars Arpadi

A short story of love, pride, tradition, and bloodshed.

A red stallion tore through the darkness across the plain. His hooves pounded against the earth, and with every step he sensed the urgency of his rider: Segitars Kalmanik, prince of the Arpadi. They raced against the dawn. By first hour, the prince would have his bride—or else be dead.

Segitars held a war-spear in one fist, in the other a rope-lead, which compelled another five horses to follow the stallion. Decades in the saddle made even this hasty, hands-free gallop as thoughtless as a walk. He spurred his war-stallion to such speed that the five lesser horses struggled to keep up, even without burdens.

The first rays of morning threw gray into the blackness of the eastern sky. Seg nearly panicked—if he arrived after dawn all would be lost!—but the dim light brought clarity with its alarm.

There: silhouetted on the horizon, at the crest of a rise! A lonely pole, a dozen horse-tails lashed atop it: the demarcation of a blood-boundary, the edge of Clan Torzsh’s territory.

Segitars steered his horses straight at the marker, then slowing, stopping. He halted under the horse-tail banner, and let the horses recover their wind.

He could go no further. Now began the routines of the sacred customs. To go beyond this would be trespass, and by waiting here at blood-boundary—alone and armed—his errand would be clear to his “hosts,” the Torzsh.

From the height of the rise, Seg gazed down on the Torzsh camp. House-wagons and tents, cow herds and sheep flocks, wattle-marked paddocks and weaving lines—all were shadows of darker gray under the fading moon. Some of the sprawling camp, perhaps half, was hidden behind an aspen wood. Such small woods were the closest thing to shelter that these plains offered, at least in this border land between the Torzsh and the Arpadi.

The thought of his own people sent a wave of dread over Segitars. Questions raced in his mind: Will today’s events turn this borderland into a war-path? Will these grasses be soaked in our blood? In theirs?

No! thought the prince, comforting himself. It will not be. If I die today, it is my own doing, and my people would not declare feud over it. The customs of the Skies do not bind them to that. And if I win, custom will give me my prize—my sweet Koyotuil—and the Torzsh cannot make feud over something so rightly won.

Segitars waited, powerless. He pulled out one of his three braids and rewove it; this was no time to look sloppy. 

The Torzsh sentries must have seen him by now, and if they had any honor they’d acknowledge him soon.

They did not keep him waiting.

Two riders came out from the wood—night watchmen. The leader came close enough to see Segitars’s face, then lifted a hand up in cautious welcome. Then the rider turned and galloped back towards the great camp, motioning the newcomer to follow.

Segitars Kalmanik, prince of the Arpadi, was well aware that he was now being watched. He stood up high in the saddle, kept his face steady. He robbed his horses of their rest and thundered them down the hill. Custom had been met—so far—but there were more formalities to come. 

It was the demands of custom that brought a collection of onlookers to the edge of the wagon-camp to greet the foreigner. A few men carried spears to match Seg’s own. A few others were mounted, no doubt with bows near at-hand. Chief among the delegation—as expected—was the clan’s Gokte, their high priestess; her headdress was piled high with glazed hooves, horse-mane and leather harnessing. It marked her out from a distance and made her visible to the gods in the sacred sky.

“You’re known to us, Arpadi,” she called. The Gokte’s raspy voice lilted over the intervening grass as Segitars reigned in his steeds. The priestess’s tone was sharp, as was her gaze. “What brings you, interloper?”

“Interloper?! You know that I am not trespassing,” Segitars called back. He was offended that a Gokte would ignore the laws she was sworn to protect. She cannot deny the holy customs, he told himself, she only wishes I was not calling on them. Aloud, he said: “And you know perfectly well why I have come.”

“Then say it!” the woman snapped.

Segitars took a deep breath, then announced at a near-yell: “I am Segitars Kalmanik, son of the clan Arpad! Before you all, and in the names of They Who Look Down, I challenge your man Heza to combat for the hand of the maiden Koyotuil. Let him come out! Let him face me!”

“You did not arrive at our camp before dawn,” the Gokte objected.

This was only a pretense, and Segitars knew it. He knew the customs. Every child born under the Sky knew the customs. The customs were what made them plainsmen; the laws of the Skies were everything! The Gokte’s objection was nothing but the thin veneer of law. I will make her bow to the sacred ways, thought Segitars, or else force her to forsake them. Here. Now.

He said: “You do not lie, woman, but you mislead! The camp boundary is not what matters. I waited at your horse-tails. I arrived before dawn. My challenge is legal. The Skies witness to this!”

The priestess stared at him as if willing the gods to strike him down. But she had no choice.

“Have you brought price?” she asked. For answer, the challenger hefted the horse-lead.

“Four mares,” he announced in practiced tones, “and a yearling colt. I add to them my own stallion. Together, this is more than double the life-price of any man here.”

“You wager horses and tack against a woman?”

“I bring what the gods of the Skies say I must.” Segitars stared down the Gokte. He knew the crowd at the edge of camp was growing—perhaps his Koyotuil could see him, perhaps the pampered Heza watched too—but he kept his gaze on the old Gokte woman. No doubt, he thought, she is trying to stall even more.

“If you perish, what are we to do with your saddle?”

A ritual question gave way to a ritual answer: “I would have it returned to my mother,” said Segitars.

The Gokte nodded. The liturgy was done. The challenge was announced. But it was not yet accepted.

“Your rival, Heza,” she said, “he is beloved among us. Among us all.”

“I do not doubt it!” Segitars barked. “But let him come, and we will see whom the gods love more.”

“Heza holds Koyotuil’s betrothal already.”

“Does that mean something different to you Torzsh?” Segitars demanded. “Are they already wed? Has he entered her bride-wagon? Is the wagon even made?”

The Gokte’s silence told Segitars the answer.

A man stepped out of the crowd and pointed a finger at the Arpadi prince: “You come here wishing violence!” The man’s spittle flew through his beard and added itself to the morning dew. “Violence you will receive!”

“Are you confused about my purpose, old man?” Seg lifted his spear over his head. “I bring violence, yes, and honor demands I receive it! Or do you dare speak of clan-feud? If so, your own Gokte should have taught you better! I am an Arpad, and I seek challenge. If I die, it ends, with peace. If I win, it ends, with peace. There will only be violence—clan violence—if you refuse me my rightly-won prize. Or,” Segitars now shouted over the assembled heads, “if that coward, Heza, refuses to come forth!”

The Gokte had no recourse to custom. A challenger had come. He had arrived at dawn, and he had brought sufficient price. The priestess averted her gaze and leaned against her staff, defeated.

“Heza!” Segitars shouted. “Where are you? Come and save your people from dishonor before the Skies!”

“Enough of this!” The shout came from the far edge of the crowd, where the wagon-camp met the wood. Heza stepped out from the line of watchers, his arms held wide, chest out. “I will face you, you fiend!”

Now, Segitars noted, the duel could not be stopped. He looked at the priestess, and absorbed her contemptuous leer with vengeful satisfaction. They knew: one man must die—before noon—or both forfeited their lives to the Gokte’s sacred knife. Custom demanded it.

Segitars dismounted, handed his horses to a nervous youth, then began to pace and stretch his sore legs. The night had been long in the saddle, but he felt ready. Awake. Exuberant. Alive.

Heza sent for his own spear, a fighting robe, and fresh boots. He braided his hair to match Segitars’s, a sign of the coming bloodshed.

Seg stamped at the omnipresent grass to learn the feel of the ground. He searched the crowd, hoping to see the one face he knew he would never tire of seeing. Heza began jumping and stretching. Segitars did the same, jogging about, but using his movements mostly to see more of the Torzsh onlookers. Nothing but forgettable face after forgettable face.

Then he saw her. His Koyotuil.

She was the very beauty of the Skies come down to the earth. Her high cheeks, her wide and proud jaw, her hair like shimmering twilight. She was the only woman Segitars had ever cared to look upon, the only one for him.

The sunshine of her face appeared through the mist of the crowd, but that face was torn with worry. Koyotuil watched Segitars—the challenger, the champion—with rapt attention.

Seg saw in her expression both concern and hope. Her anxiety was plain as the midday grass. She had not known he was coming, but he had always delighted in surprising her. Three years in a row now, he had given ritual gifts and words of courting to her at midsummer festivals—when all the tribes would gather to worship. And all three summers she would flutter and demur, laughing and delighting with him, too shy to bring him before her father. But a maiden was supposed to demur, and Segitars knew her heart. She was no less beautiful today than she was in those happier moments, but this morning was one of trial and risk rather than laughter and diversion. Koyotuil’s look of worry only served to prove to Segitars how desperately he wanted to see her smile, to see her laugh with him, to see her face brighten whenever he arrived.

Do not worry for me, my love, he thought, hoping that Koyotuil would hear him in her heart. I will not fail you.

Segitars turned his attention back to the task at hand. Heza was in the midst of changing into his war-robe, a rich garment the color of stormclouds. Seg sized him up, viewing the man’s bare chest as he changed. Heza was a few notches taller than Segitars, but Seg knew that he had true advantage of size; his own arms were larger than Heza’s, his legs and chest thicker. It would be his own power and speed, then, fighting against Heza’s greater reach.

Segitars had an idea: if he angered Heza now, the taller man might become reckless, and come in too close. Seg stood and placed the butt of his spear on the ground, other hand on his hips.

“Tonight,” he called to Heza, “your Koyotuil will sleep under my mother’s wagon-roof, and tomorrow they will begin work on her bride-wagon.” Heza looked up, but otherwise did not react to this. “She will be one of us Arpadi by sunrise. She will rejoice with us when we drink to your death.”

“Whatever rights you earn for yourself today,” Heza said with heavy voice, “whatever else you win—her marriage, her bed, her children-to-be—Koyotuil will not rejoice over your victory. She is her own. You will not win her.”

“You say that because you yourself have failed to win her. You sense that she is not yours. She has given me reason to come here today.” Yes, thought Segitars, that got through to him.

“Reason?” Heza demanded. “What reason?”

“It is obvious, fool! She yearns for me, and no other.”

“You misjudge, Arpadi!”

“Do I?” He cannot bear the truth of her love for me, Seg thought. He is so blinded by his own desire.

Heza stilled himself. “The gods will decide,” he said. With this, Heza took his war-spear from an attendant, and so brought their repartee to an end. Time now for the true fight.

The wizened Gokte came out of the crowd again, having regained some of her regal composure, and stood between the combatants.

The two men stood silent, spears at the ready. The priestess lifted her arms and turned her face to the sky. And then she began to shriek. She yelled and yipped, to silence the crowd, to seize the attention of the gods above, to call ancestors in the sky to come and bear witness to the courage of their children. The woman screeched until her old breath gave out.

“This is a holy morning now,” she said next. “Let the gods watch! Conduct yourselves with honor, and they shall give us judgment!”

With the duty of ritual now met, she retreated to the edge of the crowd.

Segitars set his feet, grasped his spear in both hands.

The Gokte lifted her staff over her head, then threw it high up in an arc. It drifted. The staff fell to the grass.

And the duel began. It wouldn’t last long; duels never did. With nothing but two spearheads circling each other, a spear-fight was bound to end in the first moments after someone fully committed to an attack. Segitars hoped that he could lure Heza in, and so counter his longer reach.

Heza ran forward, but as expected stopped at far fighting-distance. The two spearheads were just inside one another’s reach. Seg slapped Heza’s shaft away with his own and jabbed, but there was little in it. Just enough to make Heza flinch.

Both men shifted their feet, each trying to find the optimal distance: Segitars tried to get even a hair or two closer, but the long-armed Heza was trying to stay further back.

Heza jabbed. Segitars stepped back. Another jab—Seg parried.

This was all a dance, to get space, to line up the only strike either man would need.

Heza jabbed again, but again reflex let Segitars turn the strike aside. And with that Segitars noticed a pattern: every one of his enemy’s strikes came as the man’s back heel planted on the ground. Seg waited.

Pacing, turning, circling… the men were both on the balls of their feet, ready to leap.

Heza’s back heel touched the ground—Segitars dove in, diverted Heza’s spear-point preemptively, and committed to his own strike.

Heza back-pedaled.

Segitars was screaming.

The spear-point landed in Heza’s neck. Red bloomed in the gray morning.

The man’s eyes went white with shock. His empty hands came up to grab the spear, but there was no strength left in those fingers. He was already falling, half-sprawled on the ground as he clung to life. With a yell, Segitars buried the spearhead deeper. Heza fell back, his spirit gone before his body began to slump.

And in that instant, as the dead man’s head was hurtling onto its pillow of earth, as the sacred sun was just shedding its unfiltered light onto the bloodshed of honor, the demands of custom were over. One man had died. One man had killed.

That moment—that heartbeat between death-stroke and fall, when the victor’s defiant shout still hung in the air—was, for Segitars, the last instant of peace.

Because just as Heza’s head hit the ground, the wailing began.

It was a wretched sound. It rose from the depths of grief, came up through twisted tongue, and pierced the ear. It was the unthinking wail that only unimaginable pain could yank from a heart, a sound forged only by love, brought forth only by loss.

Segitars watched—all strength and desire and confidence melting out of his body—as Koyotuil pushed through the crowd, tear-stricken and wailing, and threw herself onto the body of her betrothed.

He whispered: “No.”

Her wail assaulted his ears. He had heard this sound before. He had watched as his mother laid his little brother’s body on the pyre; the boy had been so young, and Segitars never forgot the sound. He had heard it when returning from war, as those at camp counted the returning riders and noted the missing.

It was not the wail of death. It was that of those left in death’s wake. Segitars had heard this cry from mothers and fathers, wives and sisters. And now, from Koyotuil. All else faded.

He saw her look back at him—eyes swollen to slits, Heza’s blood intermingled with tears and clumping in her hair. She buried her face in Heza’s chest, her back convulsing with sobs. Her muffled cries still pounded Segitars like a torrent on the open plain.

“No,” he whispered again.

“You’ve done what you came to do, Arpadi.” The Gokte was suddenly beside him, her eyes burning from her leathery face. “Have some respect. Let us part with our Heza before you make your demands on the girl.”

“No,” he said, still staring ahead, “this isn’t what I wanted.”

“This is what you demanded of the gods.”

“This is not what I wanted.”

It was crowded now. People were all around, some joining Koyotuil in her grief, some bringing the funeral linens. Others cursed Segitars, but these were all at the edge of his awareness. Someone placed the lead of his six horses into his limp palm, his spear having slipped to the ground some time ago.

“Here!” he held out the lead to the priestess, “take my horses! The life price, take it! I make no demands.”

“That cannot be done,” the woman’s words cut into him. “You cannot undo this.”

“Please, take it!” Segitars begged. “Take it all. I will leave. I should not have come.”

“And you shouldn’t stay either!” a hard-faced man was shouting into Segitars’s face. “You’re not taking her!”

Something about the man’s eyes caught Seg’s attention. A resemblance: Koyotuil’s father. Segitars tried to speak but other men were jostling him:

“Leave, Arpad!” “We renounce you, and your people!”  “Leave before we draw your blood for Heza’s!”

The duel had ended, and therefore so had Segitars’s protection from reprisal. The girl’s father grabbed Seg’s robe and pulled the man close, saying to him: “We refuse the promise. You won’t have her.”

Segitars pushed the man away, and cast a glance at the Gokte for help. “That would lead to feud,” Seg said. The words came from him automatically. He didn’t consider them.

“That would be for your elders to decide,” she said gravely.

Something prodded at Segitars’s belly: a spear-point, jabbed just enough to send a blink of panic into the man.

“Leave.” the Gokte commanded.

Segitars scrambled for his horses’ lead, hopped onto his stallion, and spurred them away.

The man could not ignore the awful wailing, nor could he deny himself from looking again at its source. He saw—through the crowd that was huddled around Heza’s body—a moment’s glimpse of Koyotuil, still bent over the corpse of her betrothed, clawing at the earth with her fingers.

Segitars let the horse lead slip from his grasp. The five horses chose rest over another long journey, and they lingered at the Torzsh camp. These mares, he thought, this colt. I thought them a bride-gift, but let them instead be the blood-price for the man. I did not want this. He kicked his stallion on.

It was a long journey home, over hard ground and unforgiving Skies.

Even after two hours of riding, he could not calm down. “Perhaps they will not feud,” he said aloud to himself, trying to calm his worries. “They will accept the price. My family will not be angry. There will be peace.” But his fear did not relent.

The sound of Koyotuil’s cries still echoed in Segitars’ ears as his spent horses plodded pitifully into the Arpadi wagon-camp.

It was afternoon, and his clan saw him coming. Segitars was still dismounting when the summons came: “The elders wish to see you,” said his older brother, face dark.

Seg handed him the reigns. Then he forced feeling back into his legs as he stumbled through camp, whispers following him, to the lawn before the great-wagon of his grandmother.

Once there, Segitars Kalmanik, prince the clan Arpad, stood before the collected elders of his people, standing under the sky in a half-circle around him. Familiar faces all. Clan-king Ungars, Segitars’s grandfather, led them, with his concubine beside him: the Gokte Recha. Scattered around were Segitars’s uncles, and the other subchieftans of the Arpadi people. Behind them all, watchers and onlookers, men and women and children come to watch whatever drama would unfold.

“Where is my father?” Segitars asked.

“He is removed from these proceedings,” said Recha from beneath her horse-hoof headdress.

So that is it, then, thought Segitars. My closest blood is banned, and it is not the king but the Gokte who addresses me. This is a trial. I am on trial.

“Before this goes any father,” interrupted Ungars, “we must first know what the boy did or didn’t do.”

“You call him boy?” Recha reproached her beloved king. “He nears a quarter-century. This is not youthful indiscretion.”

“Tell us what happened, son of my son,” Ungars said wearily to Segitars.

So Segitars told them what he had done.

“The Gokte sanctified the duel?” asked the king, “and you killed this Heza?”

“She did. And I did.”

“And yet you return without your bride. Did they refuse her?” the old man’s question came with closed eyes and through tight lips, resignation deadening any indignation.

“I did not press her,” Segitars sighed. “She was grieved, she… I offered them blood price for the man.”

“Did they refuse her?” this from the Gokte.

“Yes.” This sent a murmur through the collected horse-lords.

“Grandfather,” said Segitars, trying to avoid the eyes of the Gokte, “this was not my intention.”

But the woman responded: “Custom and law demand we give ourselves over to blood-feud.”

“I did not want a war.”

“The Torzsh don’t know that. Nor do they care.” The priestess’s words might well have been prophecy, for she had hardly finished speaking them when a messenger came and hurried before the clan-king. He held out three arrows, each painted red from tip to fletch.

“From the clan Torzsh,” the messenger held up one. Then holding up the others: “And from their allies in clans Ludj and Kengyel. Three riders, together, shot them over the blood-boundary and shouted challenge as we watched.”

The declaration of blood-feud.

“It seems,” said Ungars, dismissing the messenger, “that the Torzsh have not waited to find out our decision.”

“Then we’ll fight,” said Segitars above the rising murmurs around him. “We are the proud Arpadi! We made the saddle and stirrup, and we rule these plains. We can fight.”

“Quiet,” Ungars’s word stilled the crowd. “It has been a long time since we gave the other clans the saddle. And it has been long since we truly ruled. We are perhaps stronger than the Torzsh—and I say only perhaps—but certainly not three tribes together. And the other clans will not support us in this. Our people would die.”

“But we must fight!” said Segitars. “My brothers made oaths to me. They—”

“Oaths?! What oaths?” the Gokte was fuming.

Segitars looked away. “To support me in my pursuit of the woman.”

“And did they know what you planned? A spear-trial?”

“No.” He looked back at her. “But the laws of our people still hold. They are bound to me, as I am to you all. By custom—”

“You fool!” Recha’s anger now boiled over completely. “The Skies gave us the laws so there would be peace! Spear-trials are there to give satisfaction without war between the tribes. What you did today, you did the opposite! You draw us into war! The Ludj have long envied us, and now they will use this to burn our wagons and drive us from the plain.”

“No, no!” Segitars stammered against the onslaught. “I left! I didn’t demand anything. The Skies will not forsake us.”

“Enough!” Ungars again had to silence the scene. “Tell me, Recha, my dove: do the oaths hold? Must we go to clan-feud?”

The priestess looked long and hard at Segitars in front of her. “Do you wish to go to feud, my king?” she asked Ungars.

“No.” he said.

“The oaths were rightly taken, and this one,” she pointed to Segitars, “would lawfully call his brothers into the feud. He has a right to demand war from us, since the Torzsh refused him and have shot the red arrow.

“But,” she went on, and stood tall as she glared down her nose at Segitars. “No man is bound—by oath or blood or the bonds of kinship—to a samyuzot.”

No! thought Segitars. Not exile! Not banishment!

“You know my cousin is a Gokte among the Torzsh,” Recha said. “She can help me sway them. If we name him samyuzot, they may accept this, and retract the feud. We can live on.”

“Then it shall be so,” the clan-king did not hesitate. He and his Gokte walked forward to Segitars.

“No,” he whispered.

“We must,” said his grandfather.

“Custom demands it,” said Recha, “and we are nothing without the laws of the Skies.”

“Please,” Segitars whispered.

Ungars spoke up: “One I named you Segitars Kalmanik Ungarsik, son of the Clan Arpadi. Now I name you samyuzot.”

The Gokte repeated his words: “We name him samyuzot.”

Segitars’s legs buckled, and without deciding he fell to his knees before his Gokte. His eyes began to cloud from exhaustion. They focused in on a tuft of grass near the chief’s left foot. He watched the grass blades tremble in the breeze. He was only vaguely aware of his surroundings: someone came close to him, a woman began a shrieking funeral-chant.

In moments, the man named Segitars would be dead, and in his place would be the desolate soul bound to a homeless body. He would be a husk, an empty vessel of a man, banished from beneath the Skies and beyond the sight of the gods. To never eat while present on the plains. To never wear the hair of his people. To never cover his bare head under the Skies. If he broke these, custom demanded his immediate death at the hands of any who saw him.

So he would wander thus in the highlands, toiling all his days, marked irrevocably for a death cut off from the Skies. He could delay that death only if he let himself linger in exile.

Pain scored across his forehead.

He tore his unseeing eyes from the spot of grass. There had been a shing-ing sound, a moment ago: shears, snipping at his braids. Segitars saw his hair accumulating at his knees. He felt blood dripping down his brow.

The Gokte’s knife cut again across his scalp. Shaving, scraping, scouring. Segitars clamped his eyes and forced moaning breath through his teeth. It would be over soon.

Any life worth living, he thought pitifully to himself, will be over soon.

The funeral chant ended, the last hairs scraped away from his scalp. There were no goodbyes, only a rushed ushering towards the edge of the wagon camp. His eyes stung from the drops of blood which had flowed into them. He had spent all night in the saddle, fought a duel at dawn, then rode back through the whole day; finally, exhaustion took its toll, and Segitars floated in a haze of fatigue and disbelief.

There was one great mercy: they gave him a horse. His own horse, Segitars noted as he clambered up onto the beast’s back, but no saddle or stirrup; no luxuries for a samyuzot, for a forsaken son.

And so: Segitars, former son of Kalman, samyuzot of clan Arpadi, kicked his beleaguered red stallion away from their home. At best, it would be a three-day ride to the highlands—to the edge of the plains where he could eat beyond the sight of the sacred Skies, where he could live without calling down the wrath of the gods.

There was nothing else to do. He was an exile—bald and bloodied, visible like a night-fire to They Who Look Down—to wander until death took him in obscurity.

* * *

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