by Karen Miller
This is for the god , she told each godpost. This is for Hekat in the god’s eye, for her protection, so she might serve the god.
The godsnake of Et-Raklion smiled at her, twice.
The godmoon and his wife had walked almost to the far horizon. When newsun came she must be at the barracks, away from the road and eyes that had no business seeing her. She picked up her food-sack and kept on walking. The barracks of Et-Raklion’s warriors were some distance ahead, they hid themselves behind a high stone wall. Torches burned along its top, throwing long dancing shadows onto the ground.
At first the Pinnacle Road remained flat, cutting through the warriors’ training fields, but then she left them behind and the road tilted upwards. Her breathing deepened, her legs began to burn. Ignoring the discomfort she kept on walking, she did not take her eyes from the barracks wall.
When she got closer she saw a godpost standing at each end, and set in the middle of its red and black stone blocks two impossibly tall wide wooden gates.
There was no way to enter the barracks city. The gates were closed, the walls without footholds, and no trees grew close for her to climb. Where could she hide? Her searching gaze fell upon a tangled stand of stunted scrubby saplings that looked to form a kind of living, leafy cavern. They grew further up the hillside, a distance from the barracks wall. Close enough that she could see the barracks doings, far enough that those she watched would not notice her watching.
Those trees are the god’s doing. Thank you, god. Your chosen slave gives you thanks.
The stunted saplings resisted her. Their spindly trunks and branches were thorny, they scratched her arms, her face, they tore her clothes and poked sharp points in her ribs and throat. She bit her lip to swallow the pain and kept on pushing. She was Hekat from the savage north, she could not be defeated by trees.
She wasn’t. She found the small clear space at their thorny tangled heart and curled up in it like a lizard, like a snake, resting her head on the lumpy food-sack. The ragged thorn scratches in her flesh smarted, they burned. As her spilled blood lost its wetness she listened to her breathing, harsh and dry like the land she came from. She listened to her heart, beating like a drum inside her ribs. She listened for the god, but could not hear it. The god was not speaking now. The god was busy elsewhere. When she needed it, the god would speak.
She slept.
CHAPTER NINE
When Hekat woke it was three fingers past newsun. She could hear sounds coming from the barracks behind its red and black walls; men shouting, hammers striking metal, striking rock. Horses neighing. Goats bleating. Chickens cackling. The lowing of oxen. Many feet, striking the ground. The barracks city was awake. She smelled smoke, it was laced with the scent of roasting animal flesh. Beneath the smoke were other smells, the stink of many men living together with animals inside closed walls.
She uncoiled herself like a snake and crawled to the edge of the tangled trees. Peering through the spaces between their vicious thorny branches she saw the barracks city gates stood open. Slaves pulling carts went in, came out, leaving and joining the stream of travelers toiling up and down the Pinnacle Road.
A group of warriors, their god braids heavy with solid gold beads, their bodies protected with leather vests blazed bright and bold with the godsnake of Et-Raklion, long spears in one hand, rode their lean striped and spotted horses onto the road, then swung them onto a smaller track that looked to lead around the hillside. The warriors were laughing, there was no scent of danger about them. Perhaps they were just exercising those horses, or exercising themselves.
The smoke from the roast-fires smelled so good. Her belly rumbled, demanding food. She crawled back into her secret space and emptied her food-sack. Five small loaves, five small bricks of cheese. One flask of water. Since leaving the village her body had been spoilt, it had grown used to lots of food and drink. In the village she had survived on less meat in two days than Abajai gave her in one highsun meal. She could make her bread and cheese last many, many meals if she became again, for a little time, that starving she-brat from the village.
She took the cook’s knife and one loaf of bread and sliced it into six pieces. She did the same with a brick of cheese. One piece of bread, one piece of cheese at newsun, one piece of bread, one piece of cheese at lowsun. This food would last her fourteen highsuns, and one newsun. She had flesh on her bones now. It would be enough. Between now and when her food was gone the god would guide her into the barracks. She did not doubt that. She would never doubt the god.
Her supply of water would not last as long as the food. Men died fast without water, she had seen it in the savage north. She would not die like that. She would leave her safe place sometime between lowsun and newsun, she would find water and refill her leather flask. It would be safe to do that, the god would keep her hidden.
Hekat ate her piece of bread and her piece of cheese, and stored the rest safely in her food-sack. She sipped some water from her leather flask and carefully replaced its stopper. Then she crawled back to the edge of her secret space, to watch the gates into the barracks city.
By now, Retoth would know she was gone from Abajai’s villa. Abajai would know, and stupid Yagji. Would they look for her? She didn’t know. But if they did they would never find her. They would never look here, on Raklion’s Pinnacle. She was dead to them. They were dead to her. Abajai, who had called her precious, he was dead to her forever.
He’d called her precious, he’d called her beautiful. She was beautiful. The mirror had shown her that. It was the only time Abajai hadn’t lied. She was beautiful in her face, she was beautiful in her body. There was nothing she could do about her body . . . but her face?
Frowning, Hekat thought of her treacherous face. Its beauty had sold her to Abajai. In time that beauty would have given him gold, when he in turn sold her to someone else. She did not want a beautiful face. Not if that meant she was precious to Abajai, and Yagji, to all the men who sold beautiful girls for gold. In the barracks city, among the warriors, her beautiful face would be a curse. No warrior would let her stay there, a she-brat with a beautiful face. Some man would claim her, he would sell her for gold. To be safe in the barracks she must not be beautiful. To get into the barracks at all, she must not be beautiful.
She took her scorpion amulet from around her neck and held it on her palm.
Help me, god. Show me how to take away my beautiful face. Tell me how to get into the barracks.
The village godspeaker said no mortal could talk direct with the god. Only a godspeaker could hear it, only a godspeaker knew its will. Once she had believed him. Now she thought he spoke a lie, as all men spoke lies to ignorant she-brats. She heard the god. She knew its will. It had blinded its godspeaker to her in the street. She had offered herself to it, and it had accepted.
Quietly she sat with her legs crossed and her spine straight, the carved black scorpion crouching on her skin.
Tell me . . . tell me . . . tell me . . .
From the depths of her waiting mind, the god plucked free a memory. She remembered the beautiful slave-boy Vortka, gone with the godspeaker of Et-Nogolor. “ I was sold because the god took my father and gave my mother to another man. He had his own sons. He did not want my mother’s son .”
This was a story that could serve her now. She wasn’t born a slave, the man had sold her and made her a slave but he was free and she was born free too, in Mijak’s savage north. She could twist that slave-boy Vortka’s story. Make it a story about her instead. The warriors would believe it.
But Vortka’s story could not make her ugly.
She opened her eyes and looked at the scorpion amulet on her palm. The sleeve of her tunic was pushed up her arm, she saw the scratches the thorns had made as she forced her way into this secret space. She touched her face, felt the dried blood and scratches on her cheeks, across her nose, on her brow. Scratches were not beautiful. Scratches, if they were deep enough, could leave a scar. She had seen it, on the man’s so
ns who cut and scratched themselves as they snake-danced on the edge of The Anvil.
Hekat looked at the cook’s sharp knife.
It hurt so much she nearly cursed the god. The cook’s knife sliced her cleanly, it sliced her flesh like it was fresh ripe peach. She cut her cheeks, her chin, her forehead, her nose. She cut her beauty till none of it was left. Her blood flowed like a river, it washed away that beauty, it washed away the gold Abajai saw in her face.
When she was cut enough, when even without a mirror to look in she knew she was ugly, she sat in painful silence until the weeping blood dried. Then she curled up in her secret space, the scorpion amulet in her fist, and went to sleep. A fever rose in her, sleep became a torment, she tossed and shivered, she dreamed the god’s voice.
You are Hekat, precious and beautiful. You are the god’s slave, you live for its purpose. The god is in you, you are in the god’s eye.
A long time passed before she woke. When once more she opened her eyes, the world was in darkness, the godmoon and his wife boldly walked the sky. Her belly was hollow, her cut face puffed and swollen. It hurt when she touched it, dried blood flaking from her skin. The cuts in her face were cobbling together, lumps and ridges and soft wet wounds.
She had no idea how many highsuns she had slept through.
Her body felt trembly, she ate a piece of bread and a piece of cheese, even though eating hurt her face. She drank all the water in her leather flask, then took it with her as she fought her way out to the open hillside. Alone beneath the night sky she crept her way around the barracks wall and counted five closed narrow doors that might give her entrance. She found a water trough for the warriors’ horses along the track leading away from the barracks. She drank from it, then filled her leather flask to the top.
No-one saw her. No-one heard her. The world thought she was dead, a spirit walking, and looked straight through her to the stars.
When all her bread and cheese was eaten, and the cuts in her face were healed and dry, she crawled out of the thorny trees’ protection for the last time and walked in the newsun light to the barracks wall. Her skin was dirty, her body stank, her tunic and pantaloons were filthy, ripped and stained to stiffness with old dried blood. She looked like a she-brat who’d been running forever. She knew she was anything but beautiful .
It was exactly how she wanted to look. She thought even Abajai would not know her now. Yagji would walk past her in the street, his fat face wrinkled, moaning his complaints.
The barracks’ large gates weren’t yet open, they didn’t open till two fingers past newsun. But the other doors in the barracks walls opened earlier than that, she had seen it in the days she’d sat and waited. She walked around the wall till she found the first open door and looked through it into the barracks city.
She saw pens of goats and sheep, she saw crates of chickens, she saw slaughtered calves hanging on hooks and tubs of gizzards, overflowing. A row of tents, plain brown, not striped and pretty like Abajai’s Trader tent, marched up and down, she could see nothing past them. The ground was bare in places, beaten hard and flat by many feet. Coarse grey-green grass grew in patches. The air was thick with animal smells, with blood stink, with shouted voices from beyond the row of tents. The goats and sheep bleated, the chickens cackled, from somewhere else came the lowing of cattle, the bawling of calves. Scrawny dogs quarreled and hunted for scraps to eat.
A young boy stood beside the caged chickens. His godbraids were stubby and he wore no silver godbells. One braid was scarlet, so he was a slave. He wore nothing but a loincloth and a chipped dog-tooth amulet round his neck. He held a cleaver in one hand and a chicken in the other, he was trying to lay the chicken on a chopping block and cut off its head. The chicken was squawking and flapping its wings, the boy was afraid of it. He struck it with a clumsy blow and cut off a finger instead of its head. The chicken cackled and ran away.
A huge man came out of a tent to see what all the shrieking was for. He saw the boy with his blood-spurting finger and smacked him hard across his ear.
“Idiot fool!” the big man shouted. “Can’t even cut off a chicken’s head? What use are you when I’m shorthanded already?”
The boy was clutching his bleeding stump, he wasted a river of water down his face. Hekat stepped from outside to inside, she crossed the threshold into the barracks. She picked up the cleaver the fool slave-boy had dropped, she snatched a chicken from the nearest crate and cut off its head with a single blow.
The boy stopped crying and the big man stared. “Who are you, you ugly brat?” he demanded. “What do you do here, killing my chicken?”
She held out the chicken’s twitching corpse. “You wanted a chicken killed. I killed one for you. I am Hekat of Et-Nogolor.”
The big man laughed as he took the dead twitching chicken. “Are you now, brat? What happened to your face? Looks like a hunting cat wanted you for dinner.”
She had to look a long way up to his eyes. He was the biggest man she had ever seen. “My father married a woman who hated me for my beauty. My father died soon after. The woman who hated me cut off my godbraids, she cut up my face, she said she would sell me and see me die a wretched slave. I ran away from that woman. I ran away to Et-Raklion, Mijak’s city of cities. I can read, and I can write, and I can kill chickens with a single blow. I will serve the city Et-Raklion. I will serve Raklion, its glorious warlord. I will serve you, if you will let me. If I can stay here, in these barracks.”
The big man looked down at her. Blood dripped from the chicken’s neck, puddling by his feet. “Ran away from a miserable bitch, did you?” he said. He had a meaty face, his lips were thick, his nose was flat and his teeth were crooked. He wore seven amulets in his ears. “What’s to say you won’t run away from this place, too? Et-Raklion can he a miserable bitch and I was born and bred here, Hekat of Et-Nogolor.”
She met his suspicious glare unflinching. “The god sees my heart. My heart is in its eye. It knows Hekat will stay, it knows Hekat will serve.” She shrugged. “Hekat has nowhere else to go.”
The big man looked at the chicken she had killed. He looked at the boy with two thumbs, seven fingers and a bleeding stump. “Get to a barracks healer, idiot, he can dip that in hot pitch.” The slave-boy ran off, still sobbing with his stupid pain. “Hekat of Et-Nogolor,” the big man said, looking at her again. His eyes were narrow, wondering. “Can I trust you?”
“Hekat of Et-Raklion,” she told him. “I do not know Et-Nogolor.”
The big man’s eyes went wide, and then he laughed. “Hekat of Et-Raklion. Kill me all these chickens. Pluck them and gut them and spit them for roasting. Then we will talk about you serving me and the god in Mijak’s city of cities.”
She looked around. There was the tub for chicken heads and gizzards. There was the big sack for all their plucked feathers. There was the spit, threaded already. The chickens sat in their fastened cages, shitting and clucking and waiting to die.
“My name is Nadik. Fetch me when you’re done,” said the big man, and gave her back the chicken she’d killed. As he walked away towards his tent, Hekat lifted her head and looked to the godpost at the distant top of Raklion’s Pinnacle.
You have chosen me , she told the god. You have brought me to your city Et-Raklion. Now you must show me why I am brought . . . and what it is I will do for you here .
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
Raklion, son of Ragilik, beleaguered warlord of Et-Raklion, closed his eyes and released a silent sigh as his high godspeaker’s rage scorched his skin like the god’s wrathful breath.
“Nogolor warlord’s insult must not go on breathing, Raklion,” Nagarak thundered. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter was godpromised to you, not Bajadek. Why do you stand here in your palace, in the sunshine? Why do you not lead your ten thousand warriors to the gates of Et-Nogolor and demand the city’s Daughter as was promised in the god’s eye?”
Raklion swallowed annoyance. Keeping his back turned and his voice calm,
because shouting would only inflame the man further, he said, “If I am the one insulted, Nagarak, am I not the one who decides if the insult breathes, or must be smothered by ten thousand warriors?”
Nagarak stood behind him, in the shadowed doorway to the balcony of his private palace apartments. “You think my godspeaker pride is slighted.” The high godspeaker’s displeasure filled the measured space between them. “You think my tongue is dipped in spite.”
Raklion shrugged. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is still unblooded, her body cannot yet ripen with child. She has not left her father’s palace, she is not taken by Bajadek warlord. I hear rumors, I am told certain things, but no godpromised oaths are broken, Nagarak. I do not know Nogolor intends to give his girl-child to Bajadek. If I treat rumor as fact and ride with my warriors to Et-Nogolor, to take the Daughter before she is blooded, then I am the oathbreaker. I am the one who shatters the treaty with Nogolor. Surely that is Bajadek’s desire, he desires to provoke me into unwise action. He schemes to make of me a dishonorable man. Should I give him satisfaction? I think I should not.”
Nagarak stepped closer. “What you should do, Raklion, is listen to your high godspeaker. While you stand on your honor Bajadek drips poison into Nogolor’s ear. Nogolor listens, he is a weak warlord.”
Raklion glanced over his shoulder. “Weak or not he is a warlord with his own high godspeaker, who talks to him as you talk to me. My past is no secret, Nagarak. Perhaps his high godspeaker says I am not fit for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter.”
“Not fit?” echoed Nagarak. He sounded baffled. “Warlord, are you ailing? I made the sacrifices. I read the omens. Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is meant for you . Here is mischief brewed by a godspeaker of Et-Nogolor who has lost his way in the god’s piercing eye. He listens to the whispers of earthbound men . . . or demons.”
Moving to the edge of his palace balcony, Raklion looked down at the city sprawled about the Pinnacle’s base. His sunsoaked city, Et-Raklion the glorious, his concubine and his curse. Master of every creature who lived here, in truth he was their slave and slave to the savage demands of his god with no name. The great Raklion warlord: born a fruit of the city’s vine, steeped and pulped in his vinegar history.