The Blood Star (18 page)

The same death would await the second,
smaller party. When they heard the sounds of battle they would
either run their boats ashore, thinking that their strategy had
prospered, or they would flee the way they had come. It did not
matter if they died on the solid land or in the water. In the
morning the crows and the fishes would glut themselves on their
corpses.

That was the plan—an easy victory over men
who would find their surprise turned back upon them. It only had to
work to be perfect. We would know before we were a quarter of an
hour older.

It began, as it always does, with sick fear
lying in the belly like a lump of bronze. We could hear the enemy.
We could hear their voices and the sounds of their feet splashing
in the shallow water. We listened, waiting. We heard the scraping
noise of boat keels being dragged up on the reed-choked bank. We
heard the rasp of metal against metal. They had come, and they
suspected nothing.

“Now,” Sesku whispered, crouched beside me.
And then, in his own tongue, what had to be the same word, shouted
as no less than a challenge—“NOW!”

In answer, the war cry of the Halufids,
repeated from two hundred throats, then, at almost the same
instant, the whisper of two hundred arrows sliding through the
black, empty air. The night seemed to tremble with the sound,
crashing over us in a great wave.

Someone lit a torch. Then another, and
another. The grass was set afire, and in the lurid yellow flames we
could see the enemy, not a hundred paces away. The corpses of their
dead lay on the ground, and we would hear the cries of the wounded.
Those still on their feet seemed paralyzed with astonishment. They
did not awaken from their trance until the second volley.

Not desiring to squander my opportunity, I
had held my hand until then. I chose a mark, a man standing in the
midst of the Sharjan—a good, brave, soldierly sort of man, I
thought, one who seemed little disposed to turn and flee—and my
javelin made a clean arc through the air and caught him full in the
chest. The blow seemed to carry him back with it, and his lifeless
body pitched over onto the ground.

He was not alone in finding death. Some
twenty or thirty more fell with him, and it was only then that the
Sharjan, the hundred and fifty or so who were left alive,
remembered that they had not come to this place to be cut down like
barley. First one, and then another, and then all of them together,
took up their war cry, shaking their weapons at us in defiance, and
charged us straight on.

The collision was like the shock of hammer
against anvil. It was a brave contest there in the flickering light
of the grass fires, but it was short and, for the Sharjan,
hopeless. They were in confusion and disarray. They never recovered
from that first surprise and thus had no plan except what was in
each man’s heart—to do battle and, if need be, to die a brave
death. The Halufid, keeping their lines formed and fighting with
discipline, hacked them to pieces. We suffered few losses. For us
it was what every boy, who has never seen one, dreams that war will
be like—quick, unequal, and glorious.

I received but a single wound, and that a
trivial business. The point of a Sharjan dagger opened the skin
over my shoulder muscle and spilled enough blood to stain my arm
red, but it was no more than a gaudy-looking inconvenience.

Afterwards I was very glad, because the
dagger had been meant for Sesku’s back. We were standing only a few
paces from each other, just as the Sharjan were beginning to break
and run. I had only that minute slain one of the last with the
courage to stand against us, and I glanced over toward Sesku and
saw that another, not caring if he lived or died, had managed to
come in behind him.

His hand was filled and he was ready to
strike—Sesku did not even know he was there. I shouted a warning
and charged the attacker, catching him just under the rib cage with
my sword.

I shall never forget the expression on his
face. He seemed to snarl like an animal, hating me for having
ruined his last chance at revenge. With his dying strength he swung
his dagger toward me, cutting my shoulder open just before the
weapon fell from his lifeless hand. Even as he lay dead, he seemed
to stare at me with hatred.

It was only then, it seemed, that Sesku
became aware of his danger. He turned and looked down at the dead
man, and then up at me. It was the blood on my arm that made him
grasp what had happened.

“I had no idea Khalule weighed so heavily
upon your conscience,” he said.

“It was a point of honor—if I cannot have
your life, then I would prefer you to be immortal. I will concede
the honor of killing you to no one else.”

He laughed, and then pointed to my wound, as
if he had just remembered some trivial detail.

“You will live, I trust?”

“A small thing, of no consequence. I doubt,
in six months’ time, I will even have a pretty scar to show for
it.”

We could stand there, speaking thus, because
the battle was over. The Sharjan had fled to their boats, leaving
only the dead behind them, and already I could see the distant
shimmer of torchlight upon the water and hear the screams of men
who knew they had forfeited their last hope of escape. The Halufid
boatmen had been waiting for them.

But for us the fighting was done. Some of
Sesku’s men were looting the corpses of their enemies, cutting the
throats of any survivors, but the rest simply milled about, still
too excited to stand quietly.

“We have conquered, my people!” the king of
the Halufids shouted, as if the fact had just occurred to him. From
one instant to the next, he seemed beside himself with
exultation.

“The heavens make manifest their favor. They
fortify our hearts with omens; they deliver the enemy into our
hands—“

Sesku’s last words were almost drowned out by
the shouting of the victorious Halufids, who crowded about us,
raising their weapons over their heads in triumph.

Then he touched my arm and held up his hand
to show off the fresh blood of my wound dripping from his fingers.
The Halufids, mad with joy, shouted their approval, although I
think, in that moment, they would have applauded anything.

We walked back to the village together, where
I went in search of Kephalos that he too might rejoice in our
deliverance. I found him asleep aboard a reed raft that had been
dragged up onto the shore, his arms wrapped protectively around his
medicine box.

“You look as if you need the services of a
physician,” he said when he saw my arm. “By the wisdom of Apollo,
what a lot of blood! But it is just as well, for blood is
purifying.”

When he was finished with everything else,
Kephalos stitched my wound closed with a thread drawn from the
entrails of a rabbit. I did not find that part of the operation
very amusing.

“Will you come then and share my hut?” I
asked. “I hate to think of you lying out here in the mud.”

“No, Lord—you gave me good advice before, and
I will follow it. A cautious man lives long enough to enjoy the
memory of his follies.”

“As you will.”

There would be singing and celebration all
night tonight in the mudhif of my Lord Sesku, but I was weary and,
besides, it was not my victory. I would be glad to close my eyes
against the morning. I would sleep like a corpse in the earth.

I was perhaps fifteen paces away when I
thought I saw the blanket covering my doorway move.

Of course. In the excitement I had nearly
forgotten. The god had sent his warning not to Sesku, but to
me.

But perhaps I was merely imagining it all. I
raised my torch to look about me. There was nothing. Then I
happened to glance down and saw a sandal print in the dust.

It was not mine, and it was not Kephalos’,
which I knew almost as well. And the Halufids did not wear sandals,
not even their king. I found myself in the presence of an enemy who
was as much a stranger here as I.

And he was waiting for me inside the hut.

Well, I would not oblige him. I would not
step through that doorway, ducking down as I did so because it was
built too low for me, and let this man hack through my neck like a
housewife cutting her husband’s meal from a block of cheese.

I still carried the sword Sesku had loaned
me, and the torch that had lit me home still burned hotly. I threw
it up on the hut’s roof, which, being nothing but dry reeds, caught
fire in an instant.

Within a quarter of a minute the roof was
blazing and ready to collapse. I would not have long to wait.

Nor did I. With a cry of panic he came
rushing out, clawing aside the blanket over the entrance, no
thought in his mind except escape. He ran straight into my sword,
taking the point just under the navel. I drove it up and at an
angle so that it pierced his heart. The dagger he had been carrying
dropped harmlessly to the ground.

A dead man lying at my feet, so astonished
that it had ended thus. Who was he? I had never seen him before.
His tunic could have been from anywhere, but he did not have the
look of a Chaldean.

He had died clutching at his wound so that
his left arm was under his body. Thus he lay on the ground. I put
my foot on his shoulder and rolled him over.

It was then I saw that the last finger of his
left hand was missing.

VII

“He is a stranger to me.”

Sesku crouched down and grasped the dead
man’s left arm by the wrist to examine the hand. The flames from my
hut still burned bright enough that he had no difficulty
seeing.

“Yet clearly this is the one my mother beheld
in her dream. You can understand now why I tolerate so much from
her—it is a rare gift to read the future. We must find out what he
was doing among the Sharjan.”

“How will you do that?”

“My boatmen captured some ten or twelve who
preferred the hazards of surrender to a quick and honorable death.
In the morning, after they have had a few hours to sit in the dark
wearing a prisoner’s noose, we will put the question to them.”

I saw them that night when I went to the
mudhif to sleep. They were sitting in a little circle facing out,
all bound together at the neck with their hands and feet tied.
Captured men always look just the same—tired, dirty, and hopeless.
Sesku had set a watch, but these hardly seemed worth the trouble of
guarding. They knew well enough what awaited them, for the
Chaldeans are a cruel race, and doubtless they had reason enough to
regret that brief failure of nerve that had prevented them from
forcing a quick end that would forestall all future suffering. Yet
they seemed empty even of the will to save themselves. They seemed
almost dead already.

I was too weary, however, to pity them, and
the memory of the assassin’s dagger was still too vivid in my mind.
Let them die, I thought, in any manner which shall be pleasing to
the Halufids. What should it matter to me? I slept untroubled that
night.

The next morning, when I awoke and came
outside, the boats had already returned. Sesku’s men had been out
catching vipers.

“When the dawn breaks they lie on the reed
banks, warming themselves in the sun. They are sluggish then, and
one can pick them up easily enough with a hooked stick. They make
quite a sight, do they not?”

They did. The boatmen had carried them back
in wicker baskets, which they emptied into a copper urn the size of
a war drum—it could not have held less than a hundred serpents,
colored dull red to muddy brown, tangled together in a grotesque,
ever-changing knot. Sesku thrust his walking stick in among them,
stirring them up. He did not seem satisfied with the results.

“They are still half asleep,” he said. “When
the sun has heated the sides of the urn they will grow more alert.
They need the warmth before they can even move, but too much of it
makes them evil-tempered.”

He withdrew his stick and held it out to me
that I might see where a few of them had left the marks of their
fangs in it.

“My Halufids have selected these with great
care,” he went on. “Their bite is painful, and a man does not die
of it too quickly. Yet none recover. It is not an end anyone would
choose for himself.”

We waited another hour, and the twisting mass
inside the urn grew more and more agitated. Sesku stirred them
again with his walking stick, and this time I could hear the series
of angry snaps, like stones falling to a cobbled floor, as they
struck out at it.

“Now they are ready,” he said, and then
turned to one of his retainers to give an order.

The prisoners had of course been watching
with great attention, their eyes large and grown yellow with
fear—as he waits for death, a man’s faces takes on a peculiar
grayish cast, as if he were already becoming part of the lifeless
earth.

The Halufids selected one among them, took
the noose from his neck, and cut the bit of hemp that bound his
ankles. They had to help him to his feet, for his hands remained
tied behind his back. I think they would have had to help him up in
any case.

He began to scream uncontrollably as soon as
he saw what was about to happen to him.

Two men held him by the arms while another
used a hooked stick to reach into the urn and, one at a time, lift
out some ten of the vipers and drop them into a leather bag a
little larger than a water bucket. Then the two men holding the
prisoner forced him to bend over at the waist and the bag was
slipped over his head, the drawstrings at the top pulled tight and
knotted. Even as this was done he stamped his bare feet on the
ground, seeming to dance in an agony of terror.

When his arms were released he straightened
up at once, and the bag over his head did nothing to silence his
cries. He limped about, hopping from one foot to the other, blind
and helpless, his shoulders hunched as if he entertained some hope
of thus drawing his head out of that mortal darkness. After a time
he went down to his knees, his loincloth by this time soaked with
urine, and at last toppled over onto his face. He lay there, still
twitching in the dust, for several minutes. It was impossible to
say whether he was still alive or not.