Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (20 page)

“Did you think I would beat you because the sword failed?” he asked the boy after a while. “The fault was not yours—”

“Some masters would,” Woodpecker replied. The boy’s mastery of the Akhaean tongue was improving. “The first man bought me, treated his slaves worse than his hounds, and a dog that barked at the wrong time he kicked across hall. When he died and his heirs sold the slaves, I was glad.”

“How many masters have you had?” Velantos straightened with a frown, a little surprised to realize that he had not thought to ask that question before.

“Not sure . . .” the boy said after a pause. “There are times I don’t want to remember. Not now though—” he added quickly. “This is the best place I’ve been.”

“The best? With a surly bear of a master who half the time forgets to feed you, in a city that may be soon attacked by some mysterious enemy?”

Woodpecker shook his head. “I eat when you do, sir, and you work harder than me!”

Velantos noted that the boy had not mentioned the enemy. Well, he would rather not think about them either. Perhaps that was why he drove himself so hard. Enough work would leave him too tired to worry, or even dream. These days he feared dreams, for too many times he had dreamed true.

Clearly the slave’s past was a painful subject, and Velantos forbore to ask him any more questions, but that night he slept lightly, and when he heard a sob from the pallet at the foot of his bed where Woodpecker was sleeping, he found himself wide awake. For a moment he lay where he was, unwilling to embarrass the boy by letting him know he had heard, but as the whimper became a cry he rolled out of bed.

With a sigh Velantos bent over the sleeping form. He told himself that half the palace would be wakened if this turned into a full-blown nightmare, and more to the point, that he himself would get no sleep if it went on—a more acceptable reason than the realization that for some reason he was hurt by Woodpecker’s pain. He gripped the boy’s shoulder and shook him gently.

“Woodpecker—wake up, lad. You’re here, you’re safe. Wake up and look at me!”

The muscles beneath his hand tensed, and the boy surged upright with a cry. “Fire!” The word came out half muffled by Velantos’ hand. “Burning . . . can’t breathe!” The boy shuddered, seeming to relax, and as Velantos began to let go, uncoiled with a blow that left him gasping. But muscles trained at the forge gripped the boy’s long limbs tightly until at last the trembling ceased.

“It’s all right . . . you are safe with me,” he murmured, knowing even as he spoke that he lied.

Life was uncertain. A thousand disasters could overwhelm them even if the Children of Erakles never arrived. And so, he reminded himself, it was for all men everywhere. But in this time and this place, this moment in which he felt the boy’s taut muscles gradually easing beneath his hands, he could protect this—he did not quite know how to define him, for he had surely ceased to think of Woodpecker as a slave some time ago—this fellow human who lay in his arms.

Woodpecker was no longer a child, so why this surge of protective feeling? He sensed only that the Fates had somehow spun their threads together. Whatever the reason, the auburn-haired slave had entered the small circle of those for whom Velantos allowed himself to care.

 

 

 

ON THE HEADLAND ABOVE the harbor, orange flames blazed against the cool evening sky. Klytemnaestra had set the beacon there during the years when the flower of the Danaans, led by her husband Agamemnon the High King, bled at Troia. By the queen’s command, men built the beacons that would declare from peak to peak that the black-hulled ships had at last set sail for home. The Akhaeans had praised her devotion, not knowing that hate fueled those fires.

In the years since that bloody homecoming, the more distant beacons had been abandoned, but as pirates became more active in the Aegean, the posts along the coast had been rebuilt. These days, the men who tended them watched not with hope but in fear.

And now the beacons burned once more. Velantos stood upon the wall that curved outward from the western face of the rock of Tiryns, noting with a detached aesthetic appreciation the vivid contrast of the fire against the deepening blue. Smoke alternately veiled and revealed the first stars. The plain below swarmed with activity as people carrying bundles and pulling creaking wagons bore their possessions toward the citadel. Velantos tried to tell himself those supplies might not be needed. The beacon had signaled only that warships had been seen. It was always possible that a few pirates were hovering offshore, hoping that a fat trader might put out from the harbor. In a day or three the alarm might pass and the worst of their labors would be the confusion of setting all to rights once more.

But the cold lump in Velantos’ gut said otherwise. The green hills and warming weather proclaimed that the season when men might safely put to sea had arrived. The king had hoped they would come south from Korinthos and blunt their teeth first on Mykenae. But there had always been the chance that Aletes would send one of his cousins to tackle Tiryns, and crush Mykenae between Tiryns and Korinthos once they had both in their hands.

“My lord Velantos—” Woodpecker was standing on the stair. “My lord, they need you at the gate. A wagon lost a wheel—I already told them to take your tools down.”

The smith nodded. Thus, it began.

 

 

 

THE MAIDENS OF TIRYNS danced before the king, a sinuous line that twined and straightened as it wove around the great hearth. In the megaron the feasting tables had been cleared away and the commanders of the chariot squadrons lounged on their benches, watching the dance. Faces smoothed by concentration, the girls curved forward, only to arch their backs once more, turning toward each other and then away, supple bodies obeying the sweet call of the flute and the patter of the drum. For this moment, it did not matter that the striped and patched tents of the enemy horde sprawled along the curve of the bay. There was only the next step, the next dip and turn, the discipline of the dance.

Perhaps, thought Velantos, it was so for men in battle as well, when existence contracted to a confusion of snarling faces in which all that mattered was the unthinking rhythm of attack and defense trained into muscle and sinew. At times it was like that for him in the smithy, when he would straighten, suddenly aware of the ache in his arm as he hefted a finished blade, and realize that sunlight from the westward window was slanting across the packed earth floor.

The coals in the great hearth pulsed as if to keep time, deepening the red of the painted pillars, sending the maidens’ shadows leaping in their own dance across the tiled floor. The king watched with face smoothed to attention, but his gaze had gone inward. Since the enemy’s arrival, events had progressed with the deliberate order of a ritual. There was no question of surprise or strategy—the city could not run away. Tomorrow the chariotry of Tiryns would drive out to do battle, and Velantos would find out if Thersander of Korinthos had spoken the truth about the new swords and their power. In a way, he thought grimly, the slaves who survived the destruction of the citadel had the least to fear, though from what Woodpecker had told him, he doubted their new masters would offer them so civilized a captivity. He hoped the boy would find better fortune. He himself did not expect to survive.

He looked up to see that the dance was ending, the maidens’ circle unwinding as they moved toward the door. Tanit was last in the line. She met his eye with a smile and his own spirit surged suddenly in response. What was he about, to respond to their performance with such gloom? The walls of Tiryns were mighty, her people stouthearted, and her warriors strong. Even the gods could not deny fate, but until the folk of Tiryns had done all that men might to defend the citadel, it would be the act of a coward to give in.

 

 

 

THE HEAVENS BLAZED WITH the clear blue of spring, skimmed by the swallows that had gathered to harvest the insects disturbed by all these feet and hooves.
There’s no disaster that does not benefit someone,
Velantos told himself with determined cheer. His fingers tightened on his brother’s helm, testing the strength of the rows of boar’s tusks and the hardened leather and lacing and wool cap beneath, wondering how they would stand up to one of the new swords. Somehow it was not much consolation to realize that no matter who ruled Tiryns the swallows would continue to scour the skies.

“My lord, it is time—”

The voice of Aiaison’s charioteer recalled him to earth, where King Phorkaon’s forces were forming up into three ranks, spread across the plain. The ponies stamped and shook their heads, plumes tossing as their drivers reined them down. Warriors set their spears in the rests and slung their small shields, loosened the arrows in the quivers that hung from the chariot rails, and began to string their layered bows, diffusing their tension with laughter.

Velantos handed up the helm. How beautiful his brother was, with the sunlight gleaming on the polished curves of the bronze neck guard and shoulder plates of his armor, sparking from the bands of metal riveted to the leather corselet and the bronze greaves. His dark hair was bound up in a warrior’s knot. Melandros, his driver, shared his splendor, his armor less elaborate, but equally well kept. Even the turn of his head echoed that of the prince, but then they had been lovers since boyhood. It was some consolation to know that in battle the two would fight with one mind.

As the elder prince settled the helmet, his white teeth flashed in his beard.

“May the gods ride with you,” Velantos said gruffly. Of King Phorkaon’s five legitimate sons, Aiaison, the eldest, had been the kindest to him when he was small. The smith’s gaze checked greaves and arm guards one last time. They were of his own crafting, and he had blessed them every time his hammer hit the bronze.

“The gods, and your good blade—” Aiaison slapped the hilt of the sword that hung at his side. “I am only sorry that we have no more of them.”

Velantos shook his head. “We did not have the metal to make so many, and it made sense to give them to the runners, who are accustomed to fight with swords. My hope is that you will kill all your enemies with your arrows before they have time to test the strength of that shining armor you wear!”

Now was not the time to complain that most of the proud chariot warriors who faced the mass of foot soldiers spreading across the plain had refused to exchange their father’s tapered thrusting swords for the new blades. And why should they believe Velantos, a man who swung a hammer, not a sword, and who had only the word of a chance-met merchant’s son regarding what one of those new swords could do?

“I hope that you have kept one of those blades for yourself!” With one of his unexpected leaps of intuition Aiaison responded to the words his brother did not say.

“The last blade I cast is still in the mold, but you will not fail!” Velantos replied heartily. “Our grandsires brought proud Troia to ruin. Surely their blood runs true.”

“Now we are the ones defending our citadel,” Aiaison replied gravely, “and they are the Ellenes, however barbarous, who seek to conquer.” For a moment the shadow of Erakles fell between them.

Velantos took a deep breath, smelling horse and leather and dust and the male musk of fighting men. A horse’s flank and the hard muscle in the arm of a warrior shone with the same beauty, moving with the grace of a thing whose form was mated to its function, like one of the new swords. The paired curves as an archer flexed his bow and released it again were like the movements of the dancers he had watched the night before, and for a moment he understood them all as part of a single unity. Then the rough chanting of the enemy surged above the stamp of hooves and mutter of conversation around him. They were banging out the rhythm on their round shields with the flats of their swords.

Aiaison brought up one armored arm in salute, but his gaze, and his attention, were already turning toward the enemy. The runner who would go with them hopped onto the chariot, shield bumping his back, gripping the curved rail with one hand. Velantos saluted in turn, knowing his brother would not see him. In their hearts they were already gone.

Athana protect you, brother,
he prayed,
and Arei strengthen your arm!

There came a sharp call from the commander’s horn, and the earth trembled as the chariots began to move. Velantos threaded his way among them toward the citadel. He had played his part in this battle. To wait with the slaves and the women was all he could do now.

MOST OF THE FOLK of the citadel were gathered on the wall already. But not the king. Tangible heart of his kingdom, Phorkaon would be on his throne by the great hearth in the megaron with the queen beside him, waiting to learn the fate of his city and his sons. Velantos wondered if he had left it to sleep in his bed the night before. He could understand. Coming up the stair to the western bastion he had felt a momentary impulse to continue on to the smithy. But that refuge was for a time when all hope was gone. If his brothers could fight this battle, he could bear witness.