The Blood Star (54 page)

Yet it had occurred to me too to wonder why
just lately Kephalos had decided to make up his quarrel with
Selana, a thing of so many years’ standing that it had taken on
almost the character of a tradition. I gave no credit to Ganymedes’
suspicions, but I did wonder. I knew of old that the worthy
physician could never rest content unless he had underway some new
scheme or other with which to exercise his guile. I only wondered
what he might be hatching now.

“I do not know how I will ever be able to
cook so much for so many,” Selana cried as she climbed down from
the wagon she and Kephalos had brought back from Naxos. “It will
all fall to me, and I have not even a proper oven in which to bake
bread!”

Indeed, I could hardly fault such anguish,
for the wagon looked as if the axletree might break under the
weight of so many jars of oil and wine, so many baskets of grain,
dried fish, onions, apples and pomegranates. Since the twenty sheep
Kephalos had purchased could hardly have been expected to fit, he
had been constrained to hire a boy to drive them along behind.

“Twenty sheep?” I asked, hardly able to
credit my eyes. “Twenty sheep for five days? It is enough to feed
an army on campaign, let alone some few score farmers.”

Kephalos dropped a couple of copper coins
into the boy’s hand and waved him off, all the while glancing
nervously about as the sheep began slowly to disperse around
us.

“I got them at an excellent price, Master;
however, it was a condition of the sale that I take the entire
flock. Surely even after the house is built we will have enough
remaining to begin breeding them for their wool, which we can weave
into cloth. Why, the wool from these alone is worth the ten drachma
I paid for them. Ten drachma—think of it!”

“We have neither loom nor spinning wheel.
What good is wool to us now?”

“My Lord is clever enough with his hands to
make these things. One must think of the future.”

“The first thing in my future is building a
stockade to hold them,” I said, resigned by then, for I could see
that Kephalos was in the grip of an enthusiasm. “Otherwise, they
will be trampling down our vegetables before nightfall.”

By then Enkidu and I had managed to put
together a serviceable enough corral by filling in a split-rail
fence with brush. After we had finished, Kephalos came out to
inspect our work.

“It will do very well,” he said. “Those
animals which must be slaughtered to feed our impending guests can
be sheared first, and when the wool has had the grease boiled out
of it we can roll it up in bales until you have devised the
spinning wheel. How long do you think that will take you?”

“Kephalos, I know nothing of spinning
wheels.”

He raised his hand and waggled it from side
to side like a battle flag in the wind, dismissing this as a
difficulty.

“I will explain precisely what is needed;
have no anxiety on that account. And after you have built a loom I
will teach Selana how to weave on it. She is an excellent girl and,
just by the way, has attracted much favorable notice in Naxos. ‘The
Athenian’s lovely young concubine’—that is how she is known.
Perhaps, if I whisper it around that you have grown weary of her,
some young farmer will present himself willing to take her, perhaps
even without a dowry.”

“How can I have grown weary of her when I
have never visited her sleeping mat?” I asked, taken by surprise by
the irrelevance of my own question. “Besides, she has said many
times that she will not allow herself to be married off to a
farmer.”

“Yes, but the blood heats quickly at her age.
And something must be decided soon. She is almost fifteen.”

“Yes. . . Something must be done.”

Kephalos showed me a queer smile and changed
the subject.

“I heard much talk that the Sicels are having
a desperate time of it,” he said. “It is said that many have been
driven to drowning their girl babies in the sea because they are
without means of feeding them.”

I shrugged my shoulders in disbelief.

“The earth here is rich,” I said, “and the
rain falls equally on Greek and Sicel alike. How can they be
starving while we live in comfort?”

“We do not feel quite so heavily the weight
of King Ducerius’ hand.” Kephalos smiled again, but this time his
expression was easier to read. “He will not even permit his own
people bronze for their plowshares for fear they might reforge the
blades into weapons. So they must use wood, which breaks at the
touch of the first stone. The Greeks understand the art of working
iron, which secret the king cannot take from us because we carry it
about in our heads. A Greek spends one afternoon plowing the field
a Sicel would labor over for five days. Thus they starve. They
murder their children because they cannot feed them, or try to hide
grain from the tax gatherers and risk death if they are caught, or
turn to brigandage and prey on their neighbors.”

“I am surprised they do not rise up and slay
him.”

This made my former slave laugh.

“My Lord, he has four hundred men under
arms—trained soldiers with swords of bronze.”

I could have laughed myself, but I did not.
On this island four hundred men ready to cut throats for him made
Ducerius a Great King. The garrison at Nineveh had as many stable
boys.

“One does not require an army of thousands to
be a despot,” Kephalos announced, as if he had read my thoughts.
“Four hundred will do very nicely if one has only peasants to fight
against, men who have nothing more to defend themselves with than
stones and sharpened sticks.”

It was the very next day that I had my first
taste of that despotism, for we were visited by a squad of the
king’s soldiers.

“Master—come at once!”

Enkidu and I were clearing stones from a new
field when Selana ran to tell us. Her face was flushed, more with
excitement than anything else, I fancied, and my first thought, the
gods help me, was how pretty she looked.

“Soldiers!”

Enkidu frowned and laid down his pickax.

“Then they are Ducerius’ men, and we have no
quarrel with him,” I said, with perhaps more conviction than I
felt, since in my years of exile I too had slowly acquired the
conviction, common to the peoples of every nation, that soldiers
nearly always mean mischief.

“Are they simply passing or have they
business?”

“I know not,” Selana answered, shaking her
head. They had hardly dismounted their horses when Kephalos fetched
a jar of wine for them and sent me after you.”

“How many were there?”

“Three or four—four, I think.”

“Did they see you?”

“No.”

“Then stay away until they are gone. I am
sure they intend no harm, but you have reached an age. . .”

“Yes, Master!”

She blessed me with a radiant, happy smile,
as if it was her proudest boast that at last I had noticed.

“Be gone, brat!”

She ran away like a young deer, leaving
Enkidu and me to wash the sweat from our faces and consider the
situation.

“There is nothing to be done except to see
what they want,” I said, but the grim Macedonian growled deep in
his throat, as if to suggest that it might not all end with a
polite inquiry. We headed back to the camp, abandoning our tools
where they lay.

As we walked, I happened to glance up and
noticed how the wind in the trees made their leaves flash like
silver. It was so beautiful a sight that I felt a twinge of
something almost like pain. It was the first time, perhaps, that I
realized how happy I had been even this short time here in
Sicily.

They were sitting beside the largest of our
tents, enjoying the shade, passing around the wine jar Kephalos had
given them. Their horses were tethered a few feet away. At first I
thought Selana had exaggerated, since there were only three men in
sight and, but for the fact that they carried swords, in their
greasy blue tunics that hardly reached to their knees they looked
little enough like soldiers.

Kephalos was nowhere about, for dealing with
armed men was not his province, but I noticed that he had left my
javelin leaning just inside the tent flap. I reached inside and
took it, wrapping my hand around the tip to conceal its bronze
point.

As I approached, one of the soldiers—the
leader, I could only assume—climbed slowly to his feet, as if
annoyed by this intrusion on his comfort. The same displeasure
registered in his face as he started to say something.

“What do you want?” I demanded first, not
awaiting his convenience, for it is never wise to suffer impudence
patiently. “If you have stopped merely to refresh yourselves and
rest, then you and all peaceful men are welcome. If you have some
other business, however, you had best state it and be done, for we
have our work.”

He glanced at the staff I was carrying—for
such it must have seemed to him, nothing more than a farmer’s
staff—and he did not seem much impressed.

“You are insolent, even for a Greek. Are you
not insolent?”

Grinning with enthusiasm for this witty
thrust, he glanced back at his comrades, who were following the
dialogue with only casual interest. They laughed briefly, since it
was expected of them, and then subsided back into quiet attention
to the demands of Kephalos’ wine jar. Yet it seemed to be enough.
My interrogator turned to me again, still showing his teeth, his
confidence apparently strengthened.

“Everyone knows the Greeks are insolent,” he
went on. “Are you not an insolent beggar?”

Great is the force of habit. The Sicels are
not a tall race, being on the average about half a head shorter
than the Greeks, yet this one, perfectly sure of himself, faced
both me and my companion, who loomed behind me like a wall of
stone. Was he not a soldier of the king, and did he not know all
about farmers? He was accustomed to overawing his own kind, so why
should we be any different? What could there be to fear from a
couple of unarmed, sweat-stained dirt scratchers?

He looked out at me through close-set brown
eyes that seemed like pieces of broken glass. His hair and beard
were cut very short, and was it perhaps this that made his head
seem just a little too small for his body. He stood with his narrow
shoulders slightly hunched, unimpressive, even slightly ridiculous,
but experience had taught him that the sword he carried, and his
mandate to use it, should frighten Enkidu and myself into meek
submission. Doubtless he imagined himself a terrifying figure.

“What do you want?” I repeated.

He made no reply. Instead, I heard only a
high-pitched bleat from the direction of our new sheepfold, and the
next moment a fourth soldier approached with a ewe slung over his
shoulder, the blood from its freshly cut throat still dribbling
onto the ground.

“Want?” The leader actually stamped his foot
in an excess of good humor, so amusing did he find my question. “To
begin with, a few more jugs of wine, and some bread, and a good
supply of firewood—you didn’t expect us to eat our mutton raw, did
you?”

The soldier who had killed our ewe dropped
the carcass on the ground and wiped his hands on the front of his
tunic.

“Hey, Fibrenus,” he cried—in his villainous
Greek, so I would be sure to understand—“tell him to send over that
woman of his to cook for us. I saw her scampering away!”

They all laughed at this, little
understanding that their comrade had just rendered a peaceful
outcome impossible. Behind me, I could almost hear Enkidu’s teeth
grinding.

“I see. Everything is clear now.” I shrugged,
as if dismissing even the possibility of a misunderstanding. “You
have come to plunder. You come not on your king’s business but your
own, as thieves.”

The one called Fibrenus frowned and looked
angry.

“He is your king too,” he said, “and you are
subject to the tax like everyone else. We are tax gatherers.”

This too was a great jest. I waited patiently
for the laughter to stop. When it did I allowed my hand to slip
down, revealing the bronze point of my javelin.

“No, thieves. And I will not suffer myself to
be robbed. I settled with the king for one measure in ten of the
produce of this land. As yet it has produced nothing, and therefore
I owe nothing. The sheep you have just killed cost me half a
drachma—that is what you owe me for it.”

The threat was plain, even to Fibrenus the
soldier, who seemed finally to realize that, perhaps for the first
time in his life, his bluff had been challenged.

This was not a clever man. Every thought,
every impulse registered in his face: first surprise, then anger,
then the desire for revenge. No fear, not yet—he was not alert
enough to be afraid. He only wanted to re-establish himself by
punishing me. It was all so plain, even before his hand touched his
sword hilt.

The shaft of my javelin caught him squarely
on the cheekbone. His weapon dropped useless to the ground and he
let out a wild cry of pain that was cut short by the second blow,
just at the joint between neck and shoulder, which came close to
crushing his windpipe. After that I had only to kick his legs out
from under him, for he had no fight left.

Only the man who had killed my sheep remained
standing, and as soon as he saw my javelin leveled against his
chest he raised his hands in submission. The other two stayed where
they were, safely on the ground—it required no more than a glance
from Enkidu to keep them there, and they looked as if their
greatest fear was that I might tell him to take the wine jar back.
This battle was finished.

Fibrenus the soldier rolled onto his side and
coughed up a thin spattering of blood. I reached over and picked up
his sword from where it lay beside him, but he was in some private,
pain-washed world of his own and seemed hardly to notice.