Soldier of the Mist

Soldier of the Mist Page 39

Io said bitterly, "By no fault of yours."

I was watching the three. If the leader could be killed, it would take the heart from the others. Often a leader stands between his followers, but in battle the place of honor is the right flank. As I took off my sword belt I muttered, "Maiden, aid me now."

At once the door of Artayctes's audience chamber opened again, and two more men entered, both as naked as the first three. Neither was large, but the first was so handsome and well shaped in every limb that every other man must have seemed deformed in his presence. The other was older, yet strong still, sun-browned and grizzled, with cunning eyes. Neither made any move to help me, each standing motionless beside the door, his arms at his sides. The three who faced me did not so much as look at them.

Artayctes said, "You are three set at one. Kill him and return to your duties."

The Sestians to my right and left stepped forward so that with the third they might enclose me. I knew that was death and edged to the left, so that the man there would have to fight me alone, if only for a moment.

He grappled, and I struck him with my fist below the navel and in the face with the crown of my head.

He reeled and fell backward, his nose gushing blood.

At once the older man flung himself upon him, face to face as lover kisses lover. Until then I had not been certain the rest could not see the two who had come last, but when I saw them I knew. I circled and feinted, sure delay would favor me.

Nor was I wrong. The grizzled man rose, his mouth crimson with blood, and seized one of my opponents from behind. Still the man did not see him, yet his movements were slower.

"I am Odysseus, son of Laertes and King of Ithaka," the grizzled man whispered. "We need more blood, for Peleus's son."

"I doubt it," I told him, for I had seen that the remaining Sestian watched my eyes and not my hands.

When the fight was over, Drakaina smiled - I could see her lips through the thin stuff of the scarf. "My lord Artayctes feels the news I've brought is too important to remain caged here. Furthermore, there isn't food enough in the city for it to resist much longer - the people are boiling the straps from their beds."

Artayctes spoke some angry word, but Drakaina did not look chastened.

"He hoped for relief before this. It hasn't come; so he will go, taking his own people and those from the far lands. He plans to leave the Hellenes here, knowing they'll negotiate a surrender that will spare their houses and their walls. When he's conveyed my news, he'll get an army from the Great King and return to crush the barbarians, if they're bold enough to remain. I've told him you've sold your sword to the Great King, and he's just seen you're a fighter to be reckoned with. He asks if you'll go with him to Susa, where he expects to find the Great King."

I nodded, adding, "Yes, certainly."

Speaking for himself in his harsh accent, Artayctes asked, "Are you not of the Hellenes? You look as they."

"No, my lord."

"Then prove it. Let me hear your native tongue. The Hellenes will learn none but their own."

I did as he said, swearing in the tongue in which I write these words that I owed no allegiance to Thought or any such city. I do not think Artayctes understood me, but he seemed convinced. He took my sword from behind the scarlet cushions on which we sat and handed it to me.

"We will go by night," he said. "The barbarians will be asleep, save for a few sentries. No one must know. The people of this city tell all they learn to Yellow Horse, no matter how often they swear their loyalty. You are to ride beside me and carry this woman with you. See that she is not harmed." By

"Yellow Horse" he meant Xanthippos, but he broke his name as I have broken it here.

When we had left the brightly hung audience chamber, Drakaina said, "Before we go, you must be armed. Wouldn't you like a shield and spear besides your sword? What of a helmet?"

Io told me, "You had round things for your chest and back when I met you, master."

I nodded. "A shield and a helmet, certainly, if there's going to be real fighting. No spear. I'll take a couple of javelins instead."

The armory was in the lowest part of the citadel. I asked for an oblong shield of medium weight, but those they had were hoplons, round and very heavy, or peltas shaped like the moon and very light.

"These honor my goddess," Drakaina said, holding up one of the latter. "It's the kind the javelin men in Thessaly use."

I told her that leather over wicker would stop only arrows and slingstones.

"That's because that's all they have to worry about," she said. "They stay well away from the spears."

I shook my head, knowing that if there is any fighting at all tonight, it will be hot work. I will not be able to run from the spears.

"Here, sir," the armorer said. "Try this. It's the smallest hoplon in the whole place."

It is a cubit and a hand across (I have just measured it), and faced with bronze, as I believe they all are; but there is wood and a leather lining behind it; and as he said, it was the lightest.

Io called, "Here's a nice helmet."

"Nice for a Hellene, perhaps," I told her. "But I don't want the men from Parsa to think I'm a Hellene in the dark."

The armorer snapped his fingers. "Wait a moment, sir. I believe I've got just what you need." He returned carrying a helmet shaped like a tall cap. As soon as I tried it on, I knew it might have been made for me.

Io said, "I've heard people talk about the Tall Cap Country, where they wear caps like that. And the bowmen on Hypereides's ships had them, but theirs were foxskin. I didn't know they made helmets the same way. Is it far from here?"

"Across Helle's Sea," the armorer told her, "and a good way by land after that; it would probably take you three or four days. Do you have a boat?"

Io laughed and said, "I'm not going," which I thought singularly ill omened.

I got a cuirass as well - not one of the heavy bronze corselets the shieldmen wear, but one of many layers of linen stitched together. It should give a good deal of protection while weighing not much more than a warm cloak. The javelins were easiest of all, for the armory had any number of good ones.

"The satrap has assigned me a house," Drakaina said when I had collected all the equipment I needed. "I'm going there now to get some sleep before tonight. It wouldn't do for him to see me with circles beneath my eyes." She hesitated. "You would be welcome, but I don't know that it would be wise."

I told her I wanted to go up on the wall and have a look at the country.

"As you wish, then."

The armorer said, "I could show you around, sir. Oschos's my name."

Io told him, "My master has no money."

"But he's been talking with the satrap," Oschos answered, smiling. "So perhaps he will have." To me he said, "Our citadel's built right into the wall, sir, on the east side, so you can start from here and go right around, passing through the guard towers."

I studied the plain and the hills beyond as we walked along the wall. The Hellenes will expect any escape to be made to the south and west, so Artayctes says. A short march that way would bring us to a place from which we might easily cross the strait by boat, evading the blockading ships. He means to try the northeast instead, making overland for the port cities of a sea called the Propontis. Because Oschos was with us, however, I could not give more attention to that direction than to any other; and so I studied them all, and even the harbor, where the ships of Sestos cant their scorched masts through the soiled water.

When we left the wall we passed a marble building guarded by eunuchs, out of which some slaves were carrying chests and baskets. "What's that?" Io asked.

Oschos looked respectful. "The house of our satrap's women." Io remarked that it looked more like a tomb.

"It was one," Oschos told her. "I hear that he uses them whenever he can. He feels a gynaeceum without windows is more secure, and who can doubt it?"

When we were alone here Io commented, "I wouldn't like to be Artayctes when he dies. The gods below aren't going to like his putting his concubines in a tomb."

"Who are the gods below?" I asked her as I hung up my new shield. The truth was that I felt I already knew one at least.

"The gods of the dead," she told me. "There's quite a lot, really. Their king is the Receiver of Many, and their queen is Kore, the Maiden. They have a whole country of their own under the ground, Chthonios, the world of ghosts."

Now I write and Io sleeps. When night comes I will ride with Artayctes and the People from Parsa, perhaps to the world of ghosts, because I have pledged my honor. But I will leave Io here, as she herself prophesied. Perhaps I shall never see her again. A moment ago I brushed her hair from her brown cheek, wondering whether there was ever a face dearer to me than hers; and though I cannot be sure, it seems impossible. How she would laugh at me, if she were to wake and find me weeping for her!

Chapter 43 A Soldier of the Mist

Lost in the night and its shifting vapors am I. Already I have nearly forgotten how this night began.

I lay on a pallet in a cold, dark room with a single high window, a window having narrow steps and a vantage for an archer beneath it. I think I had been asleep; a child, a girl, slept beside me.

A lovely woman came for me, and with her a hard-faced spearman. I must have known that they would come, for I rose at once and put on my cuirass and helmet by the light of the spearman's lamp, thrust this scroll through my belt, and took up my hoplon and javelins. I think I knew where we went and why, but that too is lost in the mist. "We will let Io sleep," I said to the woman. "She'll be safe here."

The woman nodded and smiled, her finger to her lips. Before she died, she said her name was Eurykles.

We hurried down dark and narrow streets reeking of ordure and joined a throng of silent people before the gate. The woman led me to the front, saying, "Artayctes and his guards will be here at any moment. Then we'll go."

I asked her who the rest were, but men on horseback pushed their mounts through the crowd before she could answer. The chief among them, a bearded man on a white horse, spoke in a language I could not understand; and to my amazement another man, who grasped his saddle cloth, spoke after him just as I write these words. This is what they said:

"In the most holy, most sacred name of the Sun! My people, does our situation seem desperate to you? Reflect! Here we have been penned like coneys, with scarcely enough to eat and without even clean water to drink. When next the Sun, the divine promise of Ahura Mazda, mounts his throne, we shall be free, every one of us, and once more in the Empire.

"So it shall be if we act like men. Those who fight must press ever forward as they fight. Those who need not fight must turn back and fight to aid their brothers. Horsemen, do not ride off, leaving your brothers on foot to fight alone. Surely Ash will know of it! And I will know of it too, and what I know I will soon tell the Great King. Rather, ride at the flanks of those who press your brothers on foot, and protect my household."

More was said, but the spearman tapped me on the shoulder and I listened no more. He led two horses, and he handed the reins of a champing gray stallion to me. The woman said, "Can you ride?"

I was not sure. I answered, "When I must."

"You must tonight. Mount, and this man will help me up."

I leaped onto the gray's back and discovered that my knees knew something of horses, whether my mind retained it or not.

Grinning, the spearman clasped the woman about the waist and lifted her until she sat behind me.

Though I have forgotten so much, I still recall the flash of his teeth in the dark and her arm about my waist, and the musky, flowery smell of her that was like a summer meadow, with a serpent among the blossoms.

"At last I know why the People from Parsa put their women in these trousers." Her voice was at my ear, ecstatic with excitement. "For a thousand years they have not known but that they might have to gallop off with them next day." Someone shouted an order, and the gates swung toward us. "Stay with Artayctes," she said. "The best troops will be with him."

As we rode out, the mist from the harbor crept in, meeting us half a stade from the gate. Covered carts rumbled behind our horses. The woman said, "Now the enemy knows. If the wheels weren't making so much noise, you could hear their sentries shouting already."

Indicating the carts, I asked why they were here.

"For Artayctes's women. His wife and her maids will be in the first, his concubines in the others." She hesitated, and I heard how sharply she drew breath. "But where is he? Where are his guards?"

A few dozen foot soldiers with oblong shields followed the carts, and before them marched one who bore an eagle on a staff. My heart nearly burst at the sight of it (as it does now at the thought), though I could not have said why.

There was a shout from a thousand mouths. I swung about in the saddle to see the wide hoplons and long spears of the enemy break through the mist, and above them a black cloud of slingstones, javelins, and arrows. They had waited only until the last foot soldiers were clear of the gate, knowing perhaps that the Hellenes inside would close them against our retreat. Their phalanx was a hedge of spears.

"Go!" the woman cried. "He's tricked us! He must think I'm a spy - he's leaving the city some other way."

Before she had finished, I had loosed the reins and dug my heels into the gray's ribs. It sprang forward like a stag. In an instant, we had passed between the last cart and the soldiers who followed the eagle; but the mist held another phalanx as terrible as the first. I turned the gray aside and lashed it with the reins as I saw a third phalanx wheel to block the road; for there was a narrowing space between it and the second, and in that space only a scattering of archers and slingers.

Fearsome as the close-drawn shieldmen were when they fronted us, they could do nothing as we thundered past their flanks. One of my javelins I cast left, the second right, and though I did not see my foes die, each must have taken its toll. A bearded archer nocked an arrow meant for me, but we were too swift; I felt his bones break beneath the gray's hooves.