The Blood Star (17 page)

“No, I do not know what it means, but it was
not the wine.”

His eyes narrowed for an instant, almost as
if he expected that I might be concealing something from him, and
then he shook this perplexity from him with a shrug of his
shoulders. It was all the same to him if the Lady Hjadkir and I
shared secrets, he seemed to imply.

“Really, Kephalos, I cannot guess what is
intended. I know no one who is missing his fourth finger. There was
nothing else? Only the maimed hand?”

“Nothing, Lord. Except that the lady seemed
no more pleased with her vision than if she had seen the face of
death itself.”

“Then it is a mystery. I can only pray the
god sees fit to enlighten me before it is too late.”

“Pray well then, for the gods are capricious
creatures.”

He got up to leave, rubbing the dust from his
knees, no more satisfied with me than before, it appeared.

“Kephalos. . .”

“Yes, Lord?”

“Where do you sleep in the Lady Hjadkir’s
hut?”

“In her arms generally—what makes you ask
such a question?”

“Offer some excuse why you must leave her
alone tonight, and make your bed somewhere away from the royal
compound. Sleep in the mudhif, among the travelers who shelter
there. The safety of a guest is respected by everyone among the
Chaldeans. You will be better off there for one night.”

“I will take something to give myself the
wind,” he said, grinning. “You will scarcely credit it, but the old
hag has a sensitive nose.”

He left me then and I sat in my hut alone,
studying the handprint in the dust.

In the evening, when the sun smoldered on the
horizon like a live coal, I went down to the river to wash the
sweat from my body. I felt rimy with salt, and it burned in my eyes
and in every crevice of my face. I would take a swim and then I
would feel better. The enigma of the old woman’s dream remained
intact.

The village was beginning to come awake
again. I heard the laughter of children and there was the smell of
smoke in the air as women kindled their cooking fires. I had been
among the Halufids for nearly two months now, and no one paid the
slightest attention to me as I walked behind the line of huts to
the eastern and less populated side of the island, whither I went
because there would be more shade and the water would be colder—I
wanted to submerge myself up to the chin in the dark canal and
float quietly while I felt my legs turn numb. It would not happen
that way, not in the midst of summer, but it was a happy idea.

As I approached the bank I met a group of
young boys who must have had the same thought, for their hair was
still wet and shining as they raised their arms to me and shouted
“Shala!” “Shala!”
I said, returning their greeting—it was
the one indispensable word among the Chaldeans, for it meant
“peace.”

The canal was almost as dark and cold as I
had hoped, and after I had bathed I climbed out onto the bank to
let the lowering sun dry me, listening to the reeds creak in the
faint evening wind, trying to think of nothing. Yet even the
pleasant heat of the sun seemed an illusion, for as soon as I had
shivered myself warm again the old dread turned the heart in my
breast to ice. I had the sense of inhabiting a world of
appearances, where nothing was itself but merely the symbol of
something else, yet of what? Once more, it appeared, Ashur, lord of
earth and sky, god of my fathers, was amusing himself at his
servant’s expense, setting riddles for me to solve if I hoped to
live. A hand with one finger missing—what could it mean?

And then, of course, as if out of pity for my
stupidity, the god made clear his purposes.

It was the thing of an instant. All at once a
shadow raced soundlessly over the face of the water. I glanced up
and saw a great bird rising out of the lowering sun, red as blood.
Its wings were set and it glided easily through the dead air. An
eagle, I thought, but at that distance, there was no way to
know.

It was several seconds before I
remembered.

In the wilderness, dreaming or awake, I had
seen myself as a great serpent crawling through the white salt
waste. And above me had been five eagles, swooping low for the
kill. They had torn my flesh.

And each had had a talon missing from its
left claw.

I wondered how I could have missed anything
so obvious, yet all becomes clear when the god wills it. And until
then shrouded in impenetrable mystery. Soon one of these five
eagles would dive down on me from some place of concealment—this
was the warning contained in the Lady Hjadkir’s dream.

This was quite an open threat. I was not
afraid of treachery. I was not afraid that someone from among the
Halufids would make an attempt against my life. Yet if there was
danger there was no reason to imagine that I would be its sole and
specific target. It seemed unlikely that a lone assassin would make
his solitary way to this village, with no object except to cut my
throat. There would be an attack, and I might die in it, but my
death might be no more than incidental. It was not as if Sesku had
no enemies of his own.

Sesku would have to be told—and in such a way
as to compel belief—or the Halufids might end by being butchered
while they slept. These people had shown me nothing but
hospitality, and I did not want their innocent blood on my
conscience.

As it happened, I found Sesku less difficult
to persuade than I had imagined. He was waiting for me outside the
door of my hut when I returned, carrying a lamp, since it was
already dark, and, without speaking, with only a gesture of his
hand, he bade me enter before him. When we were inside he sat down
on the floor, drawing his legs under him and folding his hands in
his lap. His manner was very formal. I had the impression he wished
to be taken seriously and was not sure this wish would be
gratified.

“My mother dreams of one who has lost a
finger,” he said, in a confidential voice, leaning a little toward
me as if afraid of being overheard. “By itself, the dream means
nothing—or, rather, its warning is too vague to profit us. I know
of no man afflicted in this way. Do you?”

“No one. And you are quite right—by itself,
the dream means nothing.”

He raised one eyebrow at my slight shift of
emphasis. For a moment I could not tell if perhaps he thought I
mocked him.

And then, it seemed, the question was decided
in my favor.

“You are aware of something which might. . ?”
A real urgency came into his face, and he reached across to grasp
me by the wrist. “Speak, Prince. Everyone has heard the stories of
your
sedu
, how you stand under the protection of the gods.
If you know something, by the mercy of your own Holy Ashur, then I
beg you not to keep it hidden from me.”

“My Lord, I too. . . I hardly know how to say
it.” I could only shrug my shoulders, since the whole business
seemed as fantastic to me as, doubtless, it would to him. “I too
have received certain signs. All my life—dreams, omens, things the
truth of which I sometimes saw only after the event. The god’s
voice speaks in whispers. Yet sometimes he makes his purposes
clear. I will not tell you why—accept it, if you will, as no more
than my opinion—but I believe that this village is in some
danger.”

“An attack? When, do you think?” It seemed it
did not occur to him to doubt me.

“Perhaps tonight. The god gives his warning
in good time.”

“Yes, in remarkably good time. But then of
course you could not know—the Sharjan have within these last five
days chosen for themselves a new chief. You may be confident I
believe everything you have told me.” He released my arm and leaned
back, considering the matter. “Then let it be tonight, if that be
the gods’ pleasure. When the winds blow, a wise man pulls his boat
up unto the shore. I will give the necessary orders.”

After he had left I found myself wondering
how he would couch those orders, what reasons he would give for
throwing his village into such a state of alert that tonight men
would sleep with their swords next to them instead of their wives.
How would Sesku explain it to them? All men wish to believe their
commanders are both fearless and full of wisdom, and the truth of
this case might make a doubter of anyone. Who, after all, would
wish to serve a leader who starts at shadows?

Still, the king of the Halufids was a
plausible enough rogue to think of some story that would keep him
from looking foolish if all was for nothing and neither the Sharjan
nor any other enemy thought to bring mischief to this collection of
reed hovels. Someone else would answer for it, but not he.

Yet I did not believe that Sesku or anyone
else need worry about a quiet night. I took down my javelin and
felt the point with the ball of my thumb, wondering how much blood
it would spill before the sun rose tomorrow—wondering if I would be
alive to know.

I went to look for Kephalos and found him not
at the mudhif, as I had expected, but sitting disconsolately down
at the water’s edge, where the villagers left their boats tied up
like cattle in a stall. His head almost between his knees, he was
amusing himself by tracing the Greek alphabet in the dirt.

“The withered old hag has thrown me out,” he
said, without even glancing up to see who it was. “I did not even
have to feign indisposition. She chased me from her hut with no
more ceremony than if I had been a limping cur nosing around after
scraps. And these savages will not even allow me to enter the
mudhif, such is my disgrace. They laugh and make obscene gestures,
and then throw things at me. Imagine, if you can, the indignity of
it.”

“She is probably afraid. She senses that what
is to come has more to do with me than with the Halufids, and you
are my servant. She wishes to keep the danger at a more comfortable
distance.”

“It is not very comfortable for me, I can
tell you. Lord, allow me to sleep in your hut tonight.”

“That is the last place you should wish to
be. Sleep here, among the boats, if you must, but as you value your
life stay away from anywhere men might look for me.”

For a moment his face assumed an expression
of the most appalled horror, which with only the greatest
difficulty he was able to quell. At last he returned to drawing
letters in the dirt.

“You must preserve yourself, Master,” he said
quietly. “You must not leave me here to die alone in this
desert.”

The hours of waiting are the hardest part of
any battle. The enemy has no face. He is the shadow that threatens
to engulf one, the dark specter of death.

The village was held in the center of a web
of waterways and tiny islands, and Sesku had his men out in their
boats for two hours in any direction. As the fly cannot touch a
strand of silk but the spider senses its presence, so no enemy
could enter into the territory of the Halufids without their
knowing it. I could hear their bird cries trembling in the night
air, a call relayed from the gods knew what distance but understood
and answered almost within the drawing of a breath. I stood with
Sesku, my javelin in my hand and a borrowed sword thrust into the
belt of my tunic. There was nothing to do except to wait.

“It must seem strange,” he said, his quiet
voice as startling as a handclap in that silence. “To go into
battle thus, with no soldiers under your orders, with no one to
answer for except yourself. I do not envy you—without the
distractions of command, death seems to stare one straight in the
face.”

“Yet it is not the first time.”

He nodded, and then turned to me and smiled.
Like me, he was thinking of Khalule, where, without even knowing of
one another’s existence, we two had each hoped to be the other’s
end.

At last the low, quavering birdcalls became
more frequent and seemed, in some way impossible to define, to take
on the urgency of men whispering in the dark. Sesku closed his eyes
for a moment, as if to listen even more closely.

“You and my lady mother were right, it
appears,” he said, his eyes coming open with a snap. “They are
coming, perhaps twenty boats of them. They will attack the island
from two directions, side and rear, and before this hour is
finished. There is no doubt they are Sharjan.”

It was almost a relief to hear the words.

“The main party will come from the rear. They
hope to marshal there and reach the village before we even know
they are upon us. Then, when we are fairly engaged, the rest will
land and catch us between them like ducks in a net. This, however,
is precisely the fate which we have prepared for them. They think
to show us no mercy, so they can hardly expect any.”

The idea of slaughtering his enemies gave him
an obvious satisfaction, yet I could not find it in me to blame
him. He was afraid. His life and the lives of his people were
threatened, and pity did not live in his heart.

“Where will you wait for them?” I asked.

He answered by pointing back through the
village to the spot where hardly six hours before I had been
swimming in the cool black water.

“Then I will wait there with you.”

It was a simple enough plan. The Sharjan had
chosen a moonless night, gambling everything on surprise. So did
we. Sesku and some two hundred of his men, myself among them, would
wait, sitting in long lines in the darkness, our weapons resting on
our knees. The enemy would come in from the marshes, slipping
through the Halufid war boats without ever even realizing that they
were there, and once they had drawn their own boats up on the
shore—once there was no turning back for them—we would rise up and
unleash our arrows and javelins, aiming into the blank, unseeing
night, with no targets but their murmuring voices. We would kill
enough that way to sow confusion among them, and confusion is the
mother of defeat. Then we would light our torches and butcher the
rest at our leisure. The few who might survive to escape into the
marshes would find that the trap had closed behind them. In their
panicked flight they would run straight into Sesku’s boatmen,
waiting to spear them like fish.