The Blood Star (67 page)

“Only this, Lord? Only to speak your words?
This is nothing.”

“It is not nothing, Tullus. I need at least
the neutrality of the Sicels, for this war may not end with a
single battle. And you must be very careful—if the king’s soldiers
find you, they will certainly kill you.”

This made him happy. I had made the thing
dangerous for him, and so he was pleased. He nodded his
acceptance.

“Go tonight, under the cover of darkness.
Travel by foot and stay away from the main roads. Do not return
here. I will know whether you have succeeded by how things fare
with Ducerius.”

He was gone as soon as the moon rose, and I
had the pleasure of thinking that there was one at least who would
be alive when the world had been won or lost.

“You have sent him away?” Kephalos asked.
“That is wise. It would not, however, be wise to send me away as
well.”

I had not even heard him approach. I turned
around to find him standing behind me, clutching a rolled-up
blanket in his arms. When he saw he had my attention he knelt down
on the ground and unrolled the blanket. Inside were a leather
corselet and a sword.

“I purchased these in Naxos, the morning of
the same day I went to the temple of Hestia to take fire to relight
the hearth after Ganymedes’ death. I mean to fight with the rest
when we meet the king’s army. I will not run away or shame you in
any way—do not deny me this, Master, for it is a thing I must
do.”

“You have no experience of war, Kephalos. Nor
have you trained.”

“You forget that I was conscripted as a
soldier at Tyre when your father’s armies besieged the city, and I
still remember a few things. Besides, I have for many years served
one whom many call the greatest soldier living. No man will put
himself at risk by standing beside me in battle.”

“I would not have you killed then,” I said.
“You are my oldest friend, Kephalos, and I cannot do without
you.”

“I cannot do without this, Lord. I must do
something to avenge my dear boy’s death. I cannot stand apart.”

His eyes pleaded with me. I knew it was a
wicked thing to do, but I knew just as well that he would never be
whole again if I refused him this chance.

“Very well—but if you let yourself be slain,
Kephalos, I will never forgive you.”

He began to say something, but a sob caught
in his throat so he merely embraced me, gathered up his war gear,
and went back into the tent to find his rest.

Perhaps tonight he will be quiet in his
heart, I thought.

It was long past midnight when I lay down
myself. Selana had been waiting for me, knowing how I would need
her, and even as I lay in her arms, even as sleep closed over my
mind, I thought I could hear Death flapping her black wings.

XXX

Every morning Ducerius sent out an armed
patrol of ten or twelve riders to survey the perimeter of our camp,
this as much as a display of strength, to intimidate the Greeks and
to show that he did not regard himself as being under siege, as for
any tactical reason. And every morning we had let these patrols go
uncontested, for until we were ready to engage the Sicel army
directly I saw no point in wearing away our strength with pointless
skirmishes.

Today, however, was to be another matter.
Today I intended to provoke the king into battle. And, since the
gods always oblige those who court danger, I succeeded better than
I could have hoped.

It was no more than a quarter of an hour past
dawn, while the ground was still covered with mist, that the
Sicels, twelve men in splendid war gear and mounted on twelve
matched black stallions—not common soldiers these, so who could
they be who rode out like the king’s guard on parade?—cantered down
the road from the citadel gate and onto the Plain of Clonios. The
lead horseman, clearly their officer, was a particularly grand
specimen, for his leather corselet sparkled with a hundred little
silver disks and his beard was elaborately curled and glistened
with so much scented oil that a dead man could have smelled it at
fifty paces.

“By the Mouse God’s navel, what a peacock!”
exclaimed Diocles. “It is easy to see that he fancies himself, and
who can blame him?”

“I only hope he is quarrelsome as well as
vain.”

For our problem was to provoke a fight. We
needed an incident to force Ducerius into taking the field,
something that his self-esteem would not allow him to ignore. We
needed to shame him into battle.

We had eight riders of our own and
thirty-five foot soldiers arranged in one small battle square.
Diocles and I stood next to each other in the second rank, and I
took the outside position so that I could remain in contact with
our cavalry, who, since they would be no match for the enemy
horsemen, were under orders to stay to the rear unless things went
very badly. Thus we could challenge the Sicels, taunting them with
our presence, but we could not force them to engage if they were
not inclined to it, since they only had to ride away. Nothing would
serve if Ducerius was a prudent man, willing to wait, but I did not
have that impression of him.

Every morning the Sicel patrols followed the
same route, around the base of the great stone hill upon which
Ducerius’ citadel was built and across a kind of no-man’s-land
separated from the Greek encampment by a ravine that had held no
water within living memory. At the edge of this ravine they would
stop and peer across at us as if trying to decide which among our
women they would take as their share of the booty after they had
killed all the men—this, needless to say, had a very unsettling
effect, which was doubtless their intention.

We were waiting for them on the far side of
the ravine, and it was from there that we trotted out to try
provoking the Sicel horsemen into a fight. Thus we reversed their
accustomed route so that the wide track of hoofmarks they had
etched into the dust over so many days was partially obliterated by
our sandalprints.

After some two hundred paces we stopped. They
were just beginning to make their wide turn onto the plain and we
would be directly in their way. Now they had either to face us or
to go around.

They began to trot straight for us. I kept
expecting their horses to break into a gallop, but they did not. It
was as if they were merely curious to inspect some harmless,
inanimate object they had found unexpectedly in their path.

“Are they really such fools?” I found myself
asking—a trifle surprised at the sound of my own voice. It had been
a mistake to speak thus, for I could sense a flutter of
apprehension passing through the men. Now I had no choice but to
take the offensive.

“Well—if they are in such a hurry to die, let
them. Archers ready!”

We waited until they were within range, then
I dropped my arm and a throbbing of bowstrings filled the air with
arrows. Two of the enemy riders fell from their horses, dead or
wounded. There was a moment of confusion, and then the rest,
chastened, retreated to a safer distance.

At last the Sicel patrol gathered in a little
knot. From a distance they seemed to be debating among themselves
what they should do next. The two groups stood facing each other.
We seemed to have reached an impasse.

And then—and it was a remarkable piece of
folly, the sort of defiant gesture one might expect from a
child—the Sicel officer drew a little forward of his companions,
drew his sword and flourished it in the air.

“It is well known the Greeks make war like
women, hiding behind each other’s skirts,” he shouted. “There is
more honor to be had in spanking a saucy harlot than in killing the
whole lot of you.”

What was this about? I wondered. Did he
imagine this to be a game?

“Not one among you has scrotum enough to come
out of hiding and fight like a man.”

He laughed, mightily pleased with himself,
and he flourished his sword a few more times above his head. I
doubt he ever imagined that anyone would accept his challenge.

There were ugly mutterings among my Greeks,
but for myself I was highly pleased. I took three javelins from my
quiver and handed the rest to Diocles.

“What ails you, Tiglath?” he whispered
through his teeth, grabbing me by the tunic when he saw what I
intended. “Have you suddenly gone stupid?”

I only smiled. Diocles was always worrying
that I would get myself killed. His face crumpled with something
like grief, and he released me.

I stepped out from the battle square and into
the open, feeling almost naked.

“You had best put that sword away, little
boy, before you cut yourself!” I shouted. “Or perhaps your mother
dulled the edge before she let her baby play with it.”

A few of his soldiers, apparently
understanding a word or two of Greek, laughed, and the officer’s
face darkened with anger. Since he had been fool enough to have
picked this quarrel, he wouldn’t have the sense to back away
now.

I ran seventy-five or eighty paces to the
side, far enough that I was no longer covered by my own men’s
weapons but still close enough to get back if the Sicels charged me
in a body—I did not, however, think they would do that.

“I am waiting, Pretty One.”

He needed no further encouragement. Goading
his stallion first to a trot and then to a canter, he began angling
toward me, cutting this way and that, trying to get in close before
he charged and made himself a target for my dart.

I waited. I had played this game before.

As I had thought he would, he crouched down
by his stallion’s neck as he urged him to a gallop, letting his
sword swing back to front so that it would catch me like a hook. I
suppose he imagined I would wait there patiently until he killed
me.

A spring to one side saved my life. I
scrambled to my feet, and as the Sicel officer, realizing that I
had evaded him, started to bridle in his horse, I set myself for a
throw.

An old soldier would have kept his horse to a
run until he was well clear. He would not have straightened up to
look back at me. But this one, clearly, had fought all his battles
on the training field—it simply hadn’t occurred to him that the
initiative was not entirely his own.

I let myself uncoil like a snake. The javelin
left my hand, arching through the air, and then fell. Its point
went straight through the Sicel officer’s bowels.

He slid from his horse’s back as if his legs
had gone dead, but he was still alive when I walked up on him,
clutching with both hands the javelin that was sticking out just
below his belt, as if he might have been trying to keep it from
moving. As I stood over him he looked up at me with glistening,
pain-filled eyes, his face bathed in sweat. His lips formed some
word that he no longer had breath to speak, and then, suddenly, he
was a corpse.

Their horses nervously stamping the dusty
earth, the Sicels watched and argued among themselves in excited
words which, at that distance, faded away to nothing. There was no
predicting what they would do now—they hardly seemed to know
themselves—but it was not a moment to be left exposed on open
ground. I gave a signal and in an instant our own horsemen
surrounded me, and Diocles led the foot soldiers over until we all
stood about staring at the body of my vanquished adversary.

“In the name of the deathless gods, Tiglath,
do you have any idea who this is you have killed?” It was the
Boeotian Cretheos who spoke.

“Enlighten me.”

“By the Mouse God’s navel, he’s right,
Tiglath!”

Diocles pushed his way forward and peered
down into the dead man’s face.

“I saw him not a year ago, when Ducerius came
down to Naxos harbor to welcome some Italian ambassador—this is
Volesus, the king’s son, his sole heir!”

“You mean, he was. Hah!”

I shook my head, but little inclined to laugh
at Cretheos’ wit, as I remembered the burning of the chaste tree
and marveled at the god’s cunning.

“That means the line of succession is
broken,” I said, almost to myself. “Already Ducerius has begun to
pay for his impiety.

We carried Volesus’ body back to camp with
us, and the sun was still two hours from its zenith when an
emissary came down from the citadel bearing a flowering tree branch
in token of truce. I met him outside my tent, with the black
stallion, my rightful prize, tethered only a few paces away. I knew
what the man sought, and I had already considered what answer I
would make.

“The king my master wishes to know what
ransom you will accept for the corpse of his son,” he said. He was
an elderly chamberlain dressed in the black tunic of a mourner, and
he regarded me with doglike eyes as if he expected a kick.

“You may tell your master that I will take no
ransom, that he will not have his son’s corpse back, not if he
offered me the whole of Sicily for it. Tell him that I regard
Volesus as having sought this death, for no one but a man sick of
his life would have hazarded it against Tiglath Ashur, the son and
grandson of kings who would have put a ring through Ducerius’ nose
and fed him on scraps from the tables of their slaves. Tell him
further that Greeks do not offend the eyes of the immortal gods
with a suicide’s funeral rites, and thus Volesus’ corpse will be
burned at night and his ashes will be scattered over the sea.”

The old man was so horrified at this that for
a long moment he altogether seemed to lose his power of speech.
Finally he reached up and dragged his hands over his beard, giving
the impression he needed to be reassured it was still there.

“That which you contemplate is an offense
against all decency,” he said at last. “The Sicels do not burn
their dead, and for a thousand years their kings have been buried
in the royal crypt. Would you deny the Lord King his right to pour
out offerings of wine and honey over the body of his only son? Is
not your vengeance satisfied that my master will now be the last of
his line?”