The Blood Star (65 page)

“Enkidu, show him.”

Enkidu carried a leather sack tied to his
belt. He opened it and dumped out the contents. Collatinus’ head
struck the ground with a thump—his eyes were still open, and he
looked as if he felt the insult.

“By the Mouse God’s navel. . .”

“You had half the militia in reserve,” I
said, perhaps a little impatiently, for, until Enkidu picked up his
trophy and returned it to its leather sack, Diocles seemed to have
attention for nothing else. “Has nothing been done?”

“What could be done? The men were anxious to
be home that they might protect their families and property—I could
not hold them. Besides, what are a hundred men to do? We could not
fight Ducerius, not by ourselves. Not without you. What kept
you?”

I told him, in as few words as I could, all
that had happened on the Salito Plain, and at the end of my
narrative he nodded.

“Indeed,” he said, “you have conquered. Yet I
fear now you will need to again. Ducerius expected the brigands to
do his work for him—he laughed at us, calling us dung-rakers. And
now he does not dare to let matters rest as they are, for we are a
challenge to his power. He thinks to goad us into facing his army
straight on. It is an army, Tiglath, not a band of brigands. And he
has two men for every one of ours. He means to crush us
forever.”

“Was my farm attacked?” I asked—I was a man
and selfish, and I had to know.

“Yes.”

“Was anyone killed?”

“I know nothing of it, Tiglath. I only heard
this morning. One man tells another, who tells another—you know how
it is.”

“Yes, I know.”

I thought of Selana. If she was dead. . .

A glance at Enkidu was enough to settle the
matter as far as it concerned us.

“I am going home now,” I said, speaking to
Diocles but conscious that others were listening as well. “But if
Ducerius longs for a war, it seems wisest to give it to him. My six
months as Tyrant are nearly over—the Greeks must decide for
themselves what they want. They know where they will find me.”

I did not accompany the militia into
Naxos—there would be no victory celebration, no cheers for the
conquerors, since, it seemed, we had conquered one enemy only to
raise up another. In any case, I found I had no taste for
glory.

Enkidu and I broke off from the rest and
followed the line of hills south, heading for home.

We were five hours on the trails, and through
every minute I could feel my heart lodged in my throat like a fox
caught in a hollow log. If Selana was dead. . .

What a fool I had been to abandon her thus
unprotected—could I not have seen that Ducerius would single me out
above all others for his revenge? Yet I had to go off like a little
boy with his playmates, intent on nothing but his childish little
game. I would never leave her again, if only. . .

I thought of every way I would kill Ducerius,
how I would strip his life from him the way the skin is peeled from
an apple. Yet I did not care—he had my permission to live forever
if only Selana could be safe and I could fold her in my embrace
once more.

When at last we came within sight of the
farmhouse, I saw that no smoke rose from the hearth vent.

She is dead, I thought. The hearth fire was
her special charge—if it is dead, then so is she.

But she was not. I found her on the porch,
waiting for me, her eyes wide with anxiety, as if she could not be
sure I was real.

And then she was in my arms, sobbing.

“I thought you had been killed,” she
whispered at last, her voice still ragged with tears. “You were so
long—I thought the brigands had won and you had all been
killed.”

“You heard no news of our victory?”

“Nothing—and then, eight days ago, the
soldiers came. . .”

She seemed so small, caught thus in my arms,
as if she were still the child I had found on the wharf at
Naukratis. What terrors had she known while I was gone? What had
happened?

“Was anyone killed?” I took her by the
shoulders, for she seemed suddenly unwilling to look at me.
“Selana, if the hearth fire is dead. . . Was anyone. . ?”

“Yes, one, Master.”

It was Kephalos’ voice. He was standing in
the doorway—I had not even noticed him. He looked gray and haggard,
as if many nights had left him sleepless.

“Who then?”

“Your servant’s servant, Lord. The boy
Ganymedes.”

“Know, Master, that I bear the youth Tullus
no ill will over this, for all that happened was not his fault,
since the threads of all our lives are caught up in the same web,
and my poor boy was never pleasing to the Lady Nemesis. You will do
me the justice, however, to remember that even when the woman
Tanaquil came with her two sons I said things would end badly.”

We sat together on the porch, sharing a third
jar of wine—there are times when nothing else will serve. It was
almost dark, but no one had thought of food. Kephalos had grown
quite drunk, and in this I had kept him company, which was no more
than a friend’s office.

“The poets who sing of love as the gods’
curse upon a man have hit upon a great and mysterious truth,” he
continued, his eyes damp with more than just surfeit of wine, for
his grief was profound. “And the most cursed sort of love is that
which lavishes itself upon an unworthy object—for know, Lord, that
I was never blind to the depravity of Ganymedes’ nature. I loved
him with clear eyes, which is a torment fools are spared.”

“How did he die?”

“Worthily, if you can credit such a thing. I
suppose I ought even to be grateful to Tullus, for in the manner of
his death my poor boy showed himself not entirely wicked. Do you
suppose, Lord, that it is possible, in one final act of perfect
nobility, to redeem a lifetime of selfishness?”

“I have no doubt of it. A man needs but a
single occasion to show his true character.”

“Or, at least, the possibility of what he
might have been?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am somewhat consoled. I mixed silver
coins with the ashes in his funeral urn, that he might want for
nothing on his journey to the Dark Realms. Promise me, Lord, that
when I am dead you will bury me beside him.”

And then he wept, long and bitterly. I put my
arm over his shoulders to comfort him, even as one might a child,
for the passion of his sorrow was like a child’s, untempered and
consuming.

It was only slowly, like the painful
unwrapping of a wound, that I heard the full story.

“That was not a night for sleeping within
four walls, Lord, for the air was as thick as millet gruel and it
was so hot that only the black sky overhead showed that the sun had
ever set. All of us had taken our sleeping mats outside that we
might live in hope of some faint breeze from the sea. Thus it was
we heard the king’s soldiers approaching, the neighing of their
horses and the sound of many hooves against the hard-packed earth.
There would have been time for everyone to escape into the covering
darkness.

“I had thought to hide myself in the vine
arbor, and Ganymedes and I were retreating in that direction even
as the soldiers entered our farmyard. I had seen Tullus and his
brother running into the barn, which struck me as a foolish choice
since the king’s men, meaning to do mischief in your absence, would
surely burn it. I confess I never guessed he. . .

“Then I heard Tullus’s voice—he had come back
out of the barn carrying a mattock, of all things, and he was
shouting the most fearful curses: ‘Your mothers mated with donkeys,
you gelded bastards,’ he yelled, ‘I will kill you, all of you,
murderers of my father.’ There was more, although I hardly remember
all of it. The boy was beside himself with rage.

“The soldiers, still on their horses, only
laughed. Perhaps they would not even have harmed him, but who can
ever know now? Yet the danger seemed real enough.

“It all happened without any warning—I do not
believe there was anything I could have done to stop it. All at
once Ganymedes began to wail in a high-pitched voice I had never
heard before. I turned around to see what had possessed him, and he
broke from me and began running back toward the farmyard. I shouted
after him, but he paid no heed. He had already gone too far to be
called back, for the soldiers had seen him.

“I suppose they must have imagined themselves
attacked from two directions, if one can rightly speak of being
‘attacked’ by a pair of boys, one of whom is perfectly defenseless
while the other wields nothing but a turnip digger. Yet men under
such circumstances will panic at the slightest thing.

“By the time Ganymedes had reached Tullus to
throw his arms about him—that seemed to be his only intention, to
shield him with his own body—one of the horsemen was almost on top
of them, bearing down at a gallop. He trampled over them both. I
could see their bodies rolling under the horse’s hooves.

“If there had been time or space even to
frame the idea, I would have imagined them both dead, but my mind
was filled with that horror which overtakes one at such moments.
There was nothing else, only the shock that seemed to fill me with
emptiness.

“And then, when I began to come a little back
to myself, it was as if the god himself—your lonely, unforgiving
god, who watches over you with such jealous eyes. . . I could
almost have believed that Holy Ashur found a voice for everything
that was in me.

“One of the soldiers was carrying a torch and
had been attempting to set the farmhouse ablaze. The roof, it
seemed, refused to catch fire, and at last, in simple frustration,
he threw the torch from him. It landed at the foot of the chaste
tree, which did not wait an instant before it began to burn
furiously.

“I tell you truthfully, Master, had I not
seen the thing for myself I would not have believed what happened
then. I would not have believed it could happen.”

He paused for a moment to take a swallow of
wine and to wipe his mouth. His eyes glistened as the memory of all
he had seen and felt in that terrible moment crowded back into his
mind.

“The burning chaste tree seemed to light up
the world, but only for an instant, as with the sudden flaring of a
spark. There was hardly time to open one’s eyes to the sight before
the night’s stillness was broken by the howling of a sudden,
terrible wind that broke upon us as if it had been kicked down from
the heavens and had struck the earth still rolling.

“It seemed to suck the very breath out of
one’s lungs, and the sound was like the howling of a wolf with a
brass throat, only the wolf that could make such a sound would
sleep in the bowels of Mount Aetna as if it were a fox hole. My
Lord, I have never heard such a sound as that, and the wind that
made it blew out the fire that nested in the chaste tree’s branches
as you or I might blow out an oil lamp.

“Surely it was a sign from the gods—and
surely the soldiers took it for one, for they turned their horses
and fled for their lives. We could hear the pounding of their
hooves as they galloped away, for the instant they were gone the
wind dropped to nothing and the night was once more still.

“When the wonder of it had left me a little,
I remembered my poor boy. I ran to where he lay, but in my heart I
already knew what I would find.

“The horse’s hoof had broken open his skull
as easily as if it had been the rind of a melon. His face was
covered in blood so that his open eyes peered through it as one
might through the slits in a mask. He seemed so surprised by death.
I do not think it was at all what he had expected.

“Yet he had achieved his object, for Tullus
was only a trifle bruised about the chest—in another ten or twelve
days Tullus will not even carry the marks of what happened. As I
have said, I do not begrudge him his life.”

Kephalos at last stumbled off to bed,
clutching the wine jar to his breast as if it were the corpse of
his beloved Ganymedes. I stayed outside on the porch, turning over
in my mind all that he had told me of the events of that fatal
night, until Selana, who had tactfully stayed away all evening,
came to sit by my side.

“He is much affected,” she murmured, glancing
back over her shoulder to the darkened house. “Every night he goes
to bed stiff with wine, and every night he weeps until at last
sleep releases him. One cannot withhold one’s pity.”

“What he said about a great wind putting out
the fire—was that truth?”

“The fire in the chaste tree? Yes, it was
like the gods’ blind rage. And then it was over—why?”

Why indeed? The king’s soldiers, in a
careless moment, had set fire to the chaste tree, beneath which the
sibyl used to speak with the god’s own voice, a spot made sacred by
her presence, and the gods had answered this impiety. I remembered
what Epeios had once said of the Lord of the Sicels:
“There is a
prophecy that his line will rule until one of their number has
despoiled some holy place.”

XXIX

“The king has an army to do his bidding. Not
a band of brigands good for nothing except raiding farmhouses, but
a real army. And not only is his force twice the size of ours, but
many of his soldiers fought in the wars against Quertus, king of
Gela.”

The leaders of the Greek assembly, those
whose voices made themselves heard in debate, looked to me, their
eyes full of questions. My prestige as a commander stood high, for
Collatinus’ head was on a stake before the city gates, but at such
times only a word can fill the mind with doubt.

“We too are now an army,” I said. “Men who
have been blooded on the field of battle are not barking dogs. I
have no misgivings about leading the Naxos militia against
Ducerius, and I do not care if he has three times our numbers. I
believe the gods favor us, and I know that the Greeks can fight. I
think the time has come to bring an end to this petty despot.”