The bear, with her great black trunk of a body, and long sober nose, was the bull; and the bull, gazing at a buzzing fly a foot in front of its face, with the almost gleaming ring through its nose, was the boar; and the boar, with its listless expression and its small eyes, suddenly, amidst a great flourishing of fur was the lion; and the lion, naturally enough, with its broad blonde nose and tufted beard, who looked from side to side so often, he appeared to be in a constant act of contradiction, was the bear.
Each one of them was every one of the others. All of them were each other, and all of them were facing one other in a pit, some three metres in depth and about five in diameter. This was the worst part; standing here, sizing up the competition, noses taking in the old, leathery smell of blood; the close, dense odour of sweat; the knowledge that hundreds of demises had been met right here, in this way. Yet, the whistle hadn't blown. The men with their angular yellow teeth, small pallid eyes, and tufts of bushy hair hadn't finished exchanging money, so the animals continued to glare at one another.
"Alright fellas, one legendary warrior walks out of here with the money. That's what they said. One," said Lion, "It's gonna be me."
"Yeah, yeah. You is telling a well funny one. Except you ain’t no legend, pussycat," said Bull, "I's going to jacket my horns in a shining gold so they all knows I's not the one that lets the wisecrack go without a good smack of the hoof."
"Oh, sweetie. Do you really think you're the one that walks out of here alive?" said Boar, "Haven't you seen the odds?"
Bull goggled at her.
"You're on thirty-three to one, my friend," said Bear, spotting a chink in her opponent's ego.
"What! They do putted me down like a also-runs!" snorted Bull, eyes bulging beneath his cracked and broken horns.
Bull had had a long career, which had taken him across the towns and cities of this great country, tied up in a cart but, in his imagination, he was Minotaur, escaped from his labyrinth, marching from coliseum to stadium, mashing one opponent to a pulp after another. Occasionally, he awoke covered in sweat with silhouettes thrashing in his mind; humans and spears; cages and fury and panic. In one of these antagonistic figments, the flames which blazed at all hours in his eyes were doused by the cool shadow of a tiger; sadness pouring from its eyes as it put its weary paw on his neck.
Somehow, the cowardly fire of his gaze had fled inwards, got trapped in his chest, and was now screaming to be let out again. Fortunately, all he had to do was shake his head from side to side and the thoughts went away. Thirty-three to one; that was a lie. He was the best. He always would be. Minotaur was invincible! Nevertheless, he decided not to speak of his immortality, lest the chill tiger return for him.
Lion looked at Bull with pity. His brain was so rattled, he couldn't even think of a comeback for that cheap trick. The truth was none of them had seen the odds, and the shrill voices of the humans were hard to understand. Lion ground the stones beneath his feet, impatiently. He was the youngest here and had only begun to build his reputation. Of course, he could have done so much more by now if humans hadn't dragged their feet and bungled his fights; made him fight old, weak opponents, elderly, with greying muzzles, who leant heavily on one or two legs when they walked. It had been cubs' play to flip them over and scoop out their viscera, easy wins, but those fights barely turned anyone's heads. How was he supposed to get known as the ultimate pit fighter when they put him up against geriatrics? Probably eight or nine years old, some of them.
This fight, on the other hand; this was real. If he could open up the throats of these three legends to the heavy, sweaty air of the pit, his name would go down on chalk boards and slates from the mountains to the harbour where his new life had begun, as a mercenary and the piercing light of terror in the hearts of those who descended to the pit. One way, the easiest way, for a young professional to make it was to take down former champions as they slowed down and their unchecked wounds caught up with them. This tipped cow was certainly in that category but what about the others? He studied the bear. Eyes half closed, and jaws clamped shut, she was hard to read, but her body language signalled a danger that was palpable.
In fact, Bear had dozed off to sleep, not having slept with her eyes fully closed since the time she'd awoken with an iron ring around her neck, and never felt the winds of her alpine home again. She yawned and registered that she was hungry. As a veteran four-way pit fighter, she viewed the forthcoming fight as a fairly well-scripted event. In most cases, the animals would pair off. Only a fool would take on more than one seasoned brawler at once. So, she would take the weakest opponent (clearly the bull) but draw it out, let the stronger two fighters wear each other down and, at an appropriate moment, go in and clear up the wreckage. If she couldn't isolate the bull, she'd take the lion, who was young and strong, but nervous, overkeen, bound to make a mistake. She'd put money on it if she had any.
Funny that; after a lifetime helping the soft hairless race exchange their shiny metal fragments, she'd never owned anything more than her own mind and the meal in front of her. Just what would she do with a couple of sacks of human gold? Just what would she do? Images of a few thousand green acres to call her own drifted through her mind softly, accompanied by the growled words of bears whose faces towered over her, whose names had been torn and scattered across the thousand nameless places she had been; the thousand nameless places she had been...
Boar glanced sideways at the slumbering bear, and then at the fidgeting lion and the tortured-looking bull. Then, he craned his neck up and out of the pit. The humans were still screeching at one another. Once, Boar had relished the song of battle. His tusks had lacerated and punctured; his fangs had wrenched and torn; his fur, naturally the colour of a gloomy day, had been stained a rich red. He had been a champion. He imagined the tower of skulls and bones he would have accumulated had even those meagre spoils been granted him. He imagined it teetering, it's dozens of jaws chattering in a high wind, threatening to precipitate a hard, beige-coloured rain. However, it would be a temple vacated by its high priest, for Boar no longer cared for fights. He fought for one reason alone; no-one had yet struck the killing blow against him. He had seen better fighters than he sent on their grueling journey to the next world; he had dispatched some of them, personally. There was no pattern to it. Victory was already determined by the dust before you placed your hoof upon it, or it wasn't.
Recently, Boar had another concern. He was sick; dying, he suspected. Blood is meant to stay on the inside, not trickle from your mouth while you sleep. He probably didn't have long, and the thought of dying in a stinking, fetid pit; a mass grave like this, stimulated that palpable hatred that manifested as an oily translucent body, thrashing around inside him. It was this hatred which was killing him. Only fair, he thought, that the same hatred should set him free. He would need to approach his task cautiously, though. Pit fighters could be deeply contrary, brittle-egoed beings; too proud to accept even what was good for them if it was tossed at their hooves with contempt. On the other hand, every animal, no matter how many years they'd been clashing horns for the pleasure of so-called humanity, had a little soft flesh somewhere; a memory or a fantasy or a fear that could be used to push them one way or the other.
Where to start? The dizzy-eyed bull, the sweating self-doubting lion, or the seen-it-all-before bear? Not, the boar reflected, the bull. Even if he could convince the old bovine one hundred percent to rebel, it would not get his miniature movement started with sufficient percussion; that is, if the others respected the grass-chewing crackpot as much as he did. On the other hand, the bear seemed the very manifestation of worldliness; more than the others, he sensed the bear's ego was built small and hard, in the small space permitted it by the world of human men. Convincing her would be one heck of a mountain to climb, and Boar's minutes were few. He set his sights on the lion.
"Lion, oh Lion. I've seen a good many of your fights. You're an excellent fighter,” said Boar, his voice crackling over the ‘x’.
"Mate. You ain't seen nothin', yet."
"One day, just imagine; you could be just like us; legends of the pit."
"Listen, bacon. The sky’s limit. I could be far greater than you lot, like Rhino, or Tiger."
Bull glanced, eyes bulging, as Lion uttered the name of the big cat, then his gaze darted away.
"My goodness; you’re right. They are incredible contenders. I’m sure you can aspire to their great heights."
"Rhino would tear a hole in you a mile wide. Tiger would roll on you and squeeze out your last breath."
Bull made the face of someone swallowing something bitter.
"I've seen them do it. They are gods in the pit. There's just one thing, though." "What's that?" "They are only gods in the pit. Out of the pit; different story."
"What d'you mean?"
"Oh, have you never thought about it? If they're so great, worth so much, why do they feed them on chicken bones?"
"Chicken bones!?" roared the lion.
"That's right, dear. Right at the very top of the pile, after staring death in its salivating jaws and surviving, you can swagger proudly back to your cell and enjoy," Boar paused before uttering the punchline, "a big heap of human garbage, straight from the sack."
"They're feeding the megastars of the pit on trash!? On moldering bloody bones!? They should be walking back to a fresh goat, still baaing and licking its paws!"
"I agree with you, friend, but that's humans for you. It sure gets your blood up, don't it?"
"It boils it. It really boils it."
I did it, thought Boar. I've opened this cat's eyes, got him dreaming of insurgency. Just then, he felt the bear's eyes on him like flashlights, no longer half-closed.
"Boys, boys, boys; exactly what do you mean by all this? What is hating the humans going to do for us? These are the guys who've fed me and you since we were cubs and piglets. Where's your gratitude?" Bear expectorated the last word into the pit.
Lion looked between them. Even Bull seemed to be aware of the contretemps. Boar's strong pose, right hooves forwards as though midstride, chin up, eyes blazing, seemed to sag beneath the weight of Bear's rhetoric. Boar found himself falling back half a step, as though the pit had somehow tilted in his direction. He consulted the bone ridden dust of the floor, and sneered.
"Don't you see, dear Bear? We're stronger than them! If we could get out of this latrine, there's not one of them could stand and face us. All we need is some of that shiny clink and we could go our separate ways, choose whatever future we want!"
Bear rolled her head to one side as she considered, the yellow tips of her fangs emerging to rest in the soft flesh of her lips, which were squashed together, creating the distinct impression of displeasure.
"Oh, well done. So all we need to do is hop out of this three metre hole in the ground, deflect the bullets of their stinking little pistols with our bare knuckles, conjure their money box out of its hiding place, split it four ways and walk calmly away, with the pleasant blaze of human fury to warm our tails. Why, in the name of Shiva, didn't I think of that?"
During this tirade, something turned over painfully in Boar. Its hard and shining face now looked downward and its dull, tender obverse side faced upward, reflecting hardly any light. He couldn't return the bear's white hot glare. If he could've crawled away, he would've, but the pit didn't even possess any corners for him to plant the tiny seeds of hope in the vast manure of his dejection.
"No answer, my son? Well, let me hazard a guess. Maybe, it's because this is it. Nobody gets off the slave ship. Once they catch you, you have two options; die sooner or die later. In all this time in the pit, you've been tricking yourself into thinking that not being dead yet means you're special. That you don't owe anybody anything. Well,” she said, aiming a small humourless smile at Boar and hitting her mark dead on, “You're not special. You're alive by the grace of those malodorous, squealing monkeys. You're alive because you please them. You're alive because your gods gave you strong bones and fast wits. So. Let me ask you again; where is your goddamn gratitude?"
As the bear continued to hammer him in his defeat, Boar decided he would die here. He would die tonight. Let the last gong sound for the lucky pig.
"Where be us gratitude? Where be they gratitude?" It took everyone a moment to realise the rasping, broken voice was issuing from the bull. "We is legends; we is gold. We is dragons, making death every night, when they asks us to. And that's just it, if we is the fire-breathing legends, how comes we lives in stinkin' 'oles, or bangin' us heads in a broken wagon what's like ridin' a earthquake in the desert? And if, stay with me, we's worth no more than a greasy stain to sleeps on, how comes we do be screaming terrors of rage immortal? It don't," he gulped, "it don't add up. And even if gratitude do be the shiny token what puts the scale level, does you sees it? Cos I's got bestest vision in this eye,” Bull jerked a hoof toward his left eye, "And I ain’t flippin' seein’ none."
A moment passed in appreciation of the longest speech any of them had heard the bull produce. In this moment, they were four living beings experiencing the world in almost identical ways. The bear was in a hole in the ground with three other fighters. The boar was sizing up the odds for the decision that was growing ever closer. The bull was preparing himself for a literal fight or flight response. The lion was assessing his chances of survival in and out of the pit. They were all the same, and they were all each other. Perhaps the future would spin, laughing, as four silhouettes diminished against each of the four horizons, or perhaps it gazed down upon four animal bodies slumped in a pile, limp, that quality of equilibrium gone from them, while the human who had most thought the unthinkable profited handsomely from their mad choice, and all of the blood and anger was lost in the tightness of his smile.
"Well, I see," growled the bear, "that I'm in a minority of one. Well, I think you've all gone mad with desperation, but one thing I don't do is fight a guy that doesn't want to fight. If the three of you are serious, and I mean seriously planning to do a runner, you have picked, amongst all the times for such a lark, the worst.”
The other three paused, waiting for something to fall.
"But I’m in."
As each of them observed the need for one of the others to put forward the foolproof plan, to produce the rallying cry, they settled into a fragile quietude in which the best plan was that dust kicked up must settle, and the finest speech was the mobile whine of a mosquito. The silence extended and strengthened and interposed the eyes of one serial killer and another and slid down throats and wrapped up tongues. It grabbed hold of hearts, and deflated lungs, and although it meant to breed in their chests an even greater silence that would last forever, it found it had bound them together at the very centre of the pit, and unwittingly made them turn back-to-back-to-back-to-back, looking outwards.
Fighters aren’t meant to look that way because when they do, the whole world changes. The battle mongers are no longer looking up at the fighters looking in at the very heart of battle: the fighters are looking down past the soft flesh of the spectators to the great cold prize outside; a night air so bitterly cold it hardens on the fur, and some hours beyond that night lie a multi-faceted dawn; a fish caught from a lake, a lizard teased from between two rocks, a goat chased into a wood. In any case; freedom.
"What did happens?" asked Bull. As the fighters look around them, they see what has changed. The pit has become a mountain peak. The onlookers are clinging onto the icy trail by their fingernails and the world beneath them is a secret kept by mist.
"It appears," the bear’s voice rumbled between them, "that the odds have tilted in our favour."
"Tonight," said Lion, "we fight to rip freedom from their cold, dead fingers."
"While all they can do," continued boar, "is to clutch on to what they’ve taken; their money, their power."
"Well, I suggests we do gets a-movin’ before them notice what about to go thump on them ‘eads."
"Fighters," said bear, "Ready…"
And the last word was spoken by them all and amplified by the thousand tongues of the wind.
"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrise!"
The bear and the boar and the bull and the lion sprang roaring, shrieking, sliding through the snow, claws raised and teeth exposed to the raw winds. The humans turned and there, on the ice-capped mountain, they froze.
