Steep Wilusiya (Age of Bronze) (41 page)

The man from Kanaqán quietly rebuked those of his countrymen who remained.  "In the presence of the royal family, you must make a show of mourning.  They are fewer now but not without power.  Make your tears come by thinking of your own losses."

aaa

"Take Paqúr's body to Wóinone," Dapashánda ordered when he was thoroughly sick of lamenting.  "She was his true wife, not that 'Elléniyan sow."

Érinu agreed.  "Wóinone loved him when he was just a young man training to be an archer.  She gave him three fine sons before he divorced her for 'Elléniya.  Wóinone deserves to see the body first."  He helped his parents away from the donkey, delivering them into the hands of his weeping sisters.

Following the princes' orders, Ainyáh led the onager away from the gate with its bloody burden and through streets filled with rubble.  The Kanaqániyan commander accompanied the princes to where the ancient stones of the west wall had not been replaced with finely carved limestone.  To a modest dwelling they went, close to the circuit wall, to a house with cracked plaster whose roof had fallen in on one side during the earthquake.  Érinu entered to tell Wóinone of Paqúr's death.

Dapashánda, standing outside the door, remarked to Ainyáh, "I would hate to be the one to tell her.  She always thought Paqúr would take her back one day."  But he made no move to join his brother and the woman who had once been his sister-in-law.

With a scream, Wóinone rushed from the little house, and shrieked again, more shrilly, when she saw Paqúr's shredded body.  The donkey bearing the dead prince bolted and the corpse slipped to the earth in a crumpled heap.  Wóinone hurried to the body and knelt beside it.  Her hands fluttered about the mangled, missing limbs.  Shuddering, she moved to touch the quiet head, then drew her hand away as if afraid, and repeated the movement again and again, with wails and screams that grew ever louder and more frenzied.  The whites of her eyes showed all around the dark iris.  Her wide-open mouth dripped saliva.  With inhuman cries, she turned her frightful eyes from the corpse to Érinu and back to Paqúr, to Dapashánda and back to Paqúr once more.

Tears returned to Érinu's red-rimmed eyes.  He raised his arms to take hold of the frantic woman.  "Wóinone," he began.  She fell upon him, howling hysterically, her voice now a full-throated cry like that of a wounded beast.  Her fists pummeled the slender priest and he could not hold her.  Both woman and man tumbled to the ground.  Wóinone scooped dirt up by the handful and threw it at her husband's kinsmen.

"Sister-in-law," Érinu pleaded, struggling to his feet as Ainyáh and Dapashánda backed away.

Wóinone hurled herself on Érinu again, kicking, hitting, even biting at the hands that flew up to ward off her blows.  "Dog!" she cried in fury.  "Traitor!  Swine!  Coward!"

Dapashánda moved in, trying to pull her away.  "Stop it!" he shouted, although the mad woman heard nothing.  "It is not his fault."

Wóinone whirled and backed away from the princes, her hair disheveled, her clothing torn.  She breathed harshly, glaring at one and the other prince with hatred, saliva thick on her chin.  "Not his fault?" she roared.  "Not his fault?"  Abruptly she leaped on Dapashánda just as violently, knocking him backward to the ground.  He threw his hands up to keep her from clawing his face.  But she snatched the dagger from his hip and left him untouched.  Standing again, she clutched the hilt with both hands.

"Ainyáh," Dapashánda howled from the ground.  "Help me!"

The Kanaqániyan soldier hesitated for a moment.  Wóinone's eyes rolled back in her head and she shrieked once more.  Before anyone realized what she meant to do, she knelt beside the mutilated corpse and stabbed herself in the heart with the dagger.  Without another sound, Wóinone fell dead on Paqúr's body.

CHAPTER TEN

‘IQO

When Ariyádna heard the news of Paqúr’s death and of Wóinone’s, she shivered, but shed no tears.  With her serving maid, she sang a single, half-hearted lament in her bed chamber.  “Come,” she then said to Kluména, when the song was done.  “Where is the flax?  Where is the wool?  Let us spin.”

None of the royal family came to see her, as she sat with distaff and spindle by Paqúr’s chamber door.  Darkness began to creep over the strangely silent town.  Fires were built up, here and there, as those who still had food began to cook their evening meal.

“They are not coming, wánasha,” Kluména whispered anxiously.  “No one is coming to see us.  What should we do?  Owái, what will they do to us?”

But Ariyádna remained on the plaster bench by the door, spinning in silence.  The women heard footsteps in the corridor, steps that passed the chamber door without pausing.  Again, Kluména spoke to her mistress, frightened to the verge of tears.  “Please understand me, please call my name, my lady.  Owái, what is to become of us now?  They are not coming to see you!”

“Wait here for me, little daughter,” the ‘Elléniyan wanásha said, patting Kluména’s knee with an absent-minded smile.  “I will not be long, ‘Ermiyóna.  Be good and I will have Kluména tell you a story at bedtime.”  She walked softly through the dark halls of the palace, her head down, her eyes on the floor.  Serving maids stared at her with scorn and cursed or spat as she passed.  Oblivious to the women and their insults, Ariyádna continued alone to the mégaron, where the royal family was gathered for Paqúr’s funeral feast.  Dishes of rough crockery lay on wooden tables, there, devoid of linen.  On the plates, lay crusts of dry flat bread, and shapeless lumps of boiled lentils.  At this poor feast, the disheveled and unwashed princes and princesses sat in painful silence.  None noticed when the captive queen quietly padded into the throne room on bare feet.

Just inside the entrance, Ariyádna announced in a clear voice, “I want to go home now.”

Dapashánda and his parents rose abruptly to their feet, enraged.  “Traitor!” cried the young prince.

“How could you?” queen Eqépa screamed.  “You witch!”  Did we not welcome you into the palace?  Have we not always treated you as a daughter?”  White-faced with fury, the aging queen’s eyes threw unseen daggers at the ‘Elléniyan woman.

Ariyádna shivered and blinked.  She looked around the room, from face to face, as if she had never seen them before.  “I have a l-little girl,” she stammered, quietly, staring at the floor then.  “I, I want to hold little ‘Ermiyóna in my arms once more before I die.”

The king rose from his throne and came toward her with ponderous steps.  Angrily, he struck her in the face.  She fell back, her trembling hands at the welt rising on her cheek.  Tears fell from her eyes, but she stood erect and said again, more loudly this time, “I want to go home now.”

Alakshándu struck her again.

She stumbled backward and collapsed on the floor, wailing repeatedly, “I want to go home!  I want to go home!”

Dapashánda took the king’s arm to keep him from hitting her again.  “Give her to me, Father,” the young prince begged.  “Give ‘Elléniya to me.”  His voice was so cold and sharp that Ariyádna looked up, gasping with fear.

The king’s eyes met his son’s.  With a cruel grin creasing his lips, he replied, “She is yours.”

Ariyádna screamed, “No, no!” and tried to run.  Dapashánda caught her by the arm and flung her up against the wall.  With his good hand, he struck her again and again, until she slid to her knees, blood dripping from her nose and lips, her eyes swelling shut.  Dapashánda turned and told her family, “Eat without me.  I will have something in my chambers later.”

“Teach her what it means to be a captive!” Eqépa called after him as he left the great room, bitter tears spilling over the dried blood on her cheeks.  “The ungrateful bitch!”

Érinu came toward the doorway.  “Wait,” he suggested, “we should discuss this...”

But the king took his younger son by the arm.  “She is Dapashánda’s now.  What he does with her is his business, not yours.  Sit down, boy.”

The young priest frowned.  “But what she has been saying makes sense...”

“Sit down, I say!” Alakshándu cried.  “I am still king here, not you, worthless jackal pup!  You will do as I say, or I will have thrown over the walls to the Ak’áyans!”

Shocked, Érinu returned to his chair and small table as Ariyádna’s screams grew faint down the palace corridors.  Without speaking further, the king, his queen, and their surviving son and daughters ate their meager meal and drank their sour wine.  Only when the serving women came to take away the empty dishes did Érinu again break the silence.

“Father, I will always obey you, as long as you live,” he said, forcing his voice to remain measured and quiet.  “Surely you know that.  But Tróya is in great danger.  Why do insist on keeping ‘Elléniya at this late date, and risk utter destruction, when giving her back now could save us all?”

The princess Kashánda, silent until then, nodded.  “Listen to him, Father.”

Alakshándu leaped to his feet and threw his half-empty cup at his daughter.  “Shut your mouth, you disloyal cow!  I will not hear any more of this.  Honor your brothers’ memory!  This ‘Elléniya is our property until force of arms takes her from us.  That is what Paqúr wanted.  That is what Qántili and Lupákki died for.”

“But, I thought you were negotiating a truce, and a marriage for me?” Kashánda asked timidly, cringing at her father’s fury.

Alakshándu shouted, “I would promise that Ak’áyan ox of a wánaks the very moon and stars if I thought it would get him out of my land!  But no son of Diwiyána will ever bed a daughter of mine.  Now get out of my sight!”  With a heavy hand, he struck repeatedly at both his daughter and his son, driving them from the throne room.

Safely behind the doors of Érinu’s chamber, Kashánda wiped her tears on her brother’s dirty sleeve, saying, “Owái, little brother, something terrible is going to happen, I know it!  Father is lost among the maináds.  He is destroying all of Wilúsiya!”

Érinu patted her shoulder, trying to comfort his sister.  “I do not know what to say.  I really thought we were negotiating a truce.  But now, it seems that Father is planning some kind of trick.  Does he not remember that it was a trick that brought about ‘Erakléwe’s revenge, a generation ago?  The worst part about it is that he has been using me, me, his own son!”

Kashánda tried to calm herself, backing away and straightening her dark robes.  But her lips trembled.  “The end is near.  I know it is.  The sacred Qalladiyón is gone from the temple and with it, Tróya’s very soul.  We cannot hold out much longer.”  She began to cry again.  “Owái, my only comfort is that my poor, little boys will not suffer at the hands of Ak’áyan masters.  They died before all these terrors came upon us!”

Érinu was thunderstruck.  “The Qalladiyón is gone!?  How?  When?”

Through her tears, the priestess told him, “It is my duty to place laurel wreaths on the images at the ceremonies, you know.  It was not there, at the festival of the second ascent, yesterday.  I do not know where it could be, or how it could have disappeared.  The goddess herself dropped it from heaven in ancient times.  She must have taken it back, herself, too.  Owái, Érinu, Dáwan Anna has betrayed us!”  She tore at her long, black hair and would not allow her brother to comfort her again.

aaa

Alakshándu called an emergency session of the assembly of elders that night.  Slowly, the gray heads filed into the mégaron of the palace to seal themselves on the cracked benches lining the walls.  Their ranks had been thinned by disease and hunger, and they were subdued, broken in spirit.  No one in that chamber lacked the marks of mourning.  Patches of pale, thinning hair were shorn on every head.  Every cheek was scratched.  Even the crumbling frescoes on the walls seemed dispirited, cracked by the earthquakes earlier and faded by the light of the torches.  It was not with reverence or with respect that they eyed their aging ruler, either.

Antánor, locked in his own chambers and under guard, could not attend.  But Ainyáh came to the assembly and spoke for him.  Without bravado or cheer, the Kanaqániyan announced, “In our negotiations with the Ak’áyans, we have reached an agreement.  An end to the war is in sight.”

This was not what the king wanted to hear, however.  Angrily, he cried, “Why was I not told of this before?!  Who is the king here?  No one can negotiate such an agreement but me!”  Sunken eyes burned under his white eyebrows and the torn flesh of Alakshándu’s cheeks quivered in his fury.

Ainyáh responded with a quiet, even voice, though he spoke through clenched teeth, looking up through his dark eyebrows at the ruler on his raised throne.  “If you did not want this, why did you send us to the Ak’áyan camp?”

All about the cold room, gray-haired men in frayed cloaks murmured in dismay.  “Is the king in the hands of the maináds?  Or is this sheer stubbornness?  How can he refuse to negotiate for peace now, when we have come to this?”

Alarmed at the impatient rumbles, Érinu rose and urged Alakshándu to calm himself.  “Listen to Ainyáh, please, Father.  You can decide whether or not to accept the agreement after he describes it.”

King Alakshándu hunched his shoulders, leaning against the hard back of the throne.  Contemptuously, he looked down at his son-in-law.  “Go on then, Kanaqániyan.  Tell me what you promised these foreign wolves.”

Ainyáh swallowed hard, struggling against his rising anger.  “Princes of Tróya and elders,” he began, trying to make his voice sound melodious, as if he were perfectly calm.  “This war has been cruel to us.  We have all lost kinsmen.  Many have suffered wounds that will never heal.  But, as bad as things have been, they can only get worse with the passage of time.  We lost the last harvest due to drought, and this summer was unusually hot.  The time for sowing the new crop has already passed.  Even if the war were to end immediately, there are so many dead that some families have no sons left to work the land or to watch the herds.  The dead are so many that we cannot give them all proper funerals.  Their spirits are sure to torment us in the future.  Widows and orphans face a harsh life in the best of times.  There are so many now that they are already starving.  I have even heard of widows eating their own children.  That will soon be the fate of every Tróyan unless we can bring grain from the north.  If we are to do that at all, it must be soon.  Winter is nearly upon us, and with it, the month of storms.”