Soldier of the Mist

Page 28

Cerdon whispered, "You must go without me."
"If you wish."
"You must go. I saved you at the first meal. Do you remember?"
"Yes," I told him. "I'll go alone, if that's what you want."
Io covered him with my cloak and tucked it in around him, then filled a cup and held it to his lips.
"Follow the river. You'll see a white stone, and a path. Follow the path. There's a wood we never cut - not even for building timber ... a fire there."
"I understand," I said, and stood up.
"Wait. You must touch her. Touch her, and I'm repaid."
"I will."
Io said, "I'll look after him, master, and hide him if he can walk a little when it gets light. I don't think he wants us to call anyone."
I ran, partly because Cerdon had said to hurry, partly because I feared the snake. There were sentries as he had said, but it was easy to slip between them and scramble down the bank into its shadow. The river - it is called the Eurotas, I believe - was nearly dead of the summer heat; the soft earth at the edge of its water muted my steps. There was an odor of decay.
The white stone had been put beside the path as a marker, or so it seemed to me; the wide valley of the Eurotas is a place of wheat and barley, and not one of stones and sand. The path born beside this stone climbed the bank at once, crossed fields of stubble far from any house, wound among sheep meadows into the eastern hills, and at last reached a wood of stunted trees - a wood filled with ax-bitten stumps.
It would have been so easy to lose the path in the dim moonlight that I wonder now how I did not; yet it had been trodden by many feet not so long ago. In the meadows, sheep must have crossed anl recrossed it, but the marks of their sharp hooves had been blotted everywhere by softer walkers; in the woods my fingers told me of herbs crushed at its edges still damp with their own juices.
Two hills it climbed; the third it seemed rather to split as a man splits firewood with a wedge. When I had passed between those walls of stone, I walked as though in a hall colonnaded with mossy trunks, trees so softly furred that to brush against one was like caressing some vast beast, oaks as broad as boulders and as tall as masts.
A lion stepped from the darkness beneath the trees into a glade filled with moonlight, not half a stade away, and turned its black-maned head to stare at me. An instant later it had vanished in the shadows once more. I waited, fearing I would meet it should I go forward; and as I stood there, straining my ears to catch the least sound, I heard the singing of children.
Something in their song promised I need not fear even a lion in that enchanted place. I did not trust it and waited still; but after a time I went forward again, and soon I saw the red flicker of firelight through the leaves. I had walked quietly before; I sought to walk even more quietly now, so that I could assess the ceremony to which I had come before the other worshipers saw me.
The altar was a flat stone set upon two standing stones, its top only a trifle higher than my waist. The children I had heard were dancing in the space between two fires, stepping slowly and solemnly in the moonlight to the tapping of a pair of stone-headed hammers and the lilting of their own high, clear voices.
Behind them, in the shadows of the trees, men and women murmured like willows stirred by the wind.
Cerdon had called this a shrine of the Great Mother and indicated I must touch her, but I saw no goddess.
The clicking of the hammers was like the beating of my heart. For a long while I listened to it and to the children's song, and watched their dance; the girls wore garlands of flowers, the boys garlands of straw.
The clicking stopped.
The little dancers froze in their circle. The woman who held the hammers rose, and another led her forward. The child nearest the altar - a girl - went with them.
When they reached the altar, the woman and the girl held the woman with the hammers back; she was blind. She touched the altar with her hammers and laid them upon it. With the help of the other woman, she lifted the girl onto the altar. Slowly she chose a hammer and edged around the altar top until she stood at one end, nearest the girl's head.
As she walked, so I walked too - much more swiftly than she, but I had more ground to cover. I circled the clearing until the altar was between me and those who watched, and as she lifted her hammer I shouted a name and dashed forward.
A sighted woman might have stopped to look; then I would have succeeded. The blind priestess did not. The stone hammer fell, splashing the girl's brains upon the stone.
That was when I saw the Great Mother, an old woman half again as tall as I, leaning over her priestess and dabbling her fingers in the blood. A goddess indeed, but aged and crazed, her gown torn and gray with dirt. For all I owed Cerdon, I would not have touched her if I could. I turned to flee instead; something struck my head, and I lay stretched upon the ground.
Before I could rise, a hundred slaves were upon me. Some had such sticks as could be picked up in the wood; some only their fists and feet. One shouted to the rest to stand aside and raised a billhook.
They released me, then turned and fled as though it were they who were to die. I caught the ankle of the slave with the billhook with one foot and kicked his knee with the other, and he fell.
As I scrambled up, Rope Makers were emerging from the trees, their line as straight as on the drill field, their long spears leveled. I snatched up the billhook and killed the slave who would have killed me, finding it a better weapon than I would have supposed.
It was then I understood that the others did not see the goddess: a man took the priestess by the arm and led her away, assisted by the sighted woman; and for a moment he stood within the Great Mother, as a fire within its own smoke. "I drink no blood that has wet iron," she said.
I tried to explain that I had not killed the man with the billhook for her, then Drakaina embraced me.
"Thank Auge! I thought they'd killed you."
"How did you get here?" I asked. "Were you watching before?"
She shook her lovely head, making the gems in her ears glitter in the moonlight. "I came with the Rope Makers. Or rather, I brought them. I could find this place - and you, Latro - though they could not."
The Rope Makers reached us as she spoke. Save for the dead man and the dead girl on the altar, the worshipers were gone. So was their terrible goddess, though I could hear her old, cracked voice calling to her people among the oaks.
Chapter 31 Mother Ge's Words
The prophecy of the goddess still echoes in my ears. I must write it here, though if it is read by the Silent One, by Pasicrates, he will surely try to kill me.
He was not at the shrine of the Great Mother, but because I thought the leader of the Rope Makers (who had gathered to stare at the altar and the dead girl) might be Pasicrates, I asked his name.
"Eutaktos," he told me. "Have you forgotten our march from Thought?"
Drakaina said, "Of course he's forgotten, noble Eutaktos - you know how he is. But what about you?
Don't you remember me?"
Eutaktos said politely, "I know who you are, my lady, and I see what a service you have done for Rope tonight."
"What of Eurykles of Miletos, who marched with you? Where is he now?"
"Wherever the regent has sent him," Eutaktos said. "Do you think I meddle in such things?" He turned to his men. "Why're you standing there, you clods? Pull her off and tear down that altar."
I asked whether he would bury the child.
He shook his head. "Let the gods bury their own dead - they make us take care of ours. But Latro" - his harsh voice softened a trifle - "don't try to handle something like this by yourself again. Get help." As he spoke, eight shieldmen lifted one side of the altar, and it fell with a crash. There were about thirty shieldmen altogether, one enomotia, I suppose.
As we stepped beneath the trees, someone threw a stone. That was how it began. Stones and heavy sticks flew all the way to the split hill. A shieldman was struck on the foot, though he could still limp along; soon another's leg was broken. Two shieldmen tied their red cloaks to the shafts of their spears and carried him.
In the split the stones were much larger, and they struck much harder because they were thrown by men on the hilltops. Those who had thrown from behind the trees were mostly women and boys, I think.
Without armor Drakaina and I hung back, but the shieldmen held their big hoplons over their heads and advanced. The cries from the hilltops and the clang of the stones on the bronze hoplons were like the din of a hundred smiths, all shouting as they hammered a hundred anvils; they deafened and bewildered us all, or at least all of us save Drakaina.
She took my arm and drew me away to the thick shadows we had just left. I said, "They'll kill us here."
"They'll certainly kill us there. Don't you see the Rope Makers aren't getting through?"
Nor were they. The rearmost shieldmen had stopped and were backing away from the stones.
"They've probably blocked the path in some way. Or if four or five slaves with weapons were stationed where it widens out, one or two Rope Makers would have to fight them all. In their phalanx they may be the best soldiers in the world, but I doubt they're much better than other men alone."
The rest soon followed those we had seen retreating. Nearly every man was helping a wounded comrade with his spear arm while he tried to fend off the stones with his shield. Eutaktos bellowed,
"Back to the fires! It won't be long till daylight."
Drakaina screamed. I turned in time to see the flash of the knife. Then she was gone. The woman who had attacked her shrieked and fell.
Another woman and a boy rushed at me in the darkness, and I cut them down with the billhook, though I am not proud of it. When they were dead, I examined them; that was when I saw I had killed someone's wife and a boy of twelve or so, she armed with a kitchen knife, he with a sickle [Latin falx. -
G.W.]. Seeing the sickle, I wished for my sword, though the billhook was no mean weapon. The woman who had attacked Drakaina was writhing in agony, but of Drakaina herself there was no sign.
I rejoined the Rope Makers, helping carry a wounded man. There were more stones as we fought our way to the clearing. I was struck twice, but I did not fall, nor were any of my bones broken. When we had marched to the split in the hill, the Rope Makers had stayed in file, and often they had seemed not to notice the missiles hurled at us. Now several rushed into the trees again and again. Twice they killed slaves, but one of the Rope Makers did not return.
The fires had burned low, so while some of us treated our wounded, the rest (of whom I was one) gathered such wood as we could find and piled it on the flames. When I heard the voice of the goddess in the oak wood again, I told Eutaktos the slaves would attack us soon.
He looked up from the dying Rope Maker he had been attending to ask what made me think so.
Before I could reply, a lion roared from the trees, and a wolf howled. As though they too were lions and wolves, a hundred answered them. Every man had a stone, and each ran close before he threw, then dashed back into the shadows. We picked up such stones as we could find and flung them back, but most were lost in the dark.
They charged our circle at last. I fought with my back to one of the supports that had held the altar, though it was not high enough to give much protection. A Rope Maker fell beside me, then another, and after that I no longer heard Eutaktos shouting encouragement. I fought on alone, ringed by slaves with clubs and hachets. All this took less time than it has taken to write of it.
The cracked voice of the old goddess called, " Wait!" and though I do not think the slaves knew they heard it, they obeyed it nonetheless.
Long strides carried her to the fires; the spilling of so much blood must have restored her vigor, if not her youth. The lion and the wolf frisked around her like dogs, and though the slaves of the Rope Makers could not see her, they saw them and drew away in terror. When she stood before me I was a child once more, confronted by the crone from the cave on the hill.
"It is you," she said, "come again to visit Mother Ge. Europa carried your message, and my daughter has told me what she promised you. Do you recall Europa? Or my daughter Kore?"
If I had ever known them, they were lost in the mist, lost forever as though they had never been.
"No. No, you do not." Huge though she was, her voice seemed faint when she spoke to me; I could scarcely hear her above the snarling of the beasts and the cries of the slaves. "Why don't you threaten me with that hedge bill?" she asked. "You threatened Kore. Do you still fear my lion?"
I shook my head as she spoke, for as she spoke, what I had known of Kore and Europa came flooding back to me. "If I were to kill you, Mother, who would heal me?"
"By the wolf that gave your fathers suck, you are learning wisdom."
The slaves were staring at me as though I were mad. They had lowered their weapons, and as Mother Ge spoke I dropped mine, went to her, and touched her arm.
The slaves shouted aloud when I laid my hand on her, but quickly they fell silent again. When they came forward, many eyes streamed with tears - the eyes of men as well as those of women and of children. They would have touched her too, I think, if they could; but the lion and the wolf rushed at them, menacing them as the shepherd's dogs menace the sheep.
"Goddess!" one of the slaves shouted. "Hear our plea!"
"I have heard your plea many times," Mother Ge told him, and now her voice was like the singing of a bird in the sun, in lands that are drowned forever.
"Five hundred years the men of Rope have enslaved us."
"And five hundred more. Yet you are seven when they are one. Why should I aid you?"
At that, they led the blind priestess forward. She cried, "We are your worshipers! Who will feed your altars if we lose our faith?"
"I have millions more in other lands," Mother Ge told her. "And some for whom I am not yet bent and old." She paused, sucking her gums. "But I would have another sacrifice tonight. Give it to me willingly, and I will do all I can to free you. The victim need not die. Will you give it?"