"It was the Mejadym who saved what little remained. Any Sarians who tried to bring it down were found in such a state that rumors and superstitions grew up around them. It was a vengeful Kunuum stalking those who defiled his temple, it was said. The Sarians, accurately, blamed the Mejadym, but the Mejadym themselves were a shadow. They defended not only Kunuum's temple, but all of Tygetia. The Sarians would find them, one by one, but they could not destroy them."
"In what state would these Sarians be found?" Hurrus asked.
"Torn apart," Jhar said, his medallion catching the light. It seemed to shoot sparks across the tomb. "Chewed up and spit out." He smiled uncomfortably. "Or so it was said."
"The men found on the riverbank near my home were in such a state," Hurrus noted.
"Were they?"
"And these were said to be Mejadym men. Apparently, someone else kills in the same manner…"
"The Mejadym are committed murderers," Jhar offered. "Don't forget that. When Xarhux liberated us… Well, that was when the real killing began. The Mejadym commenced a slaughter such as this land had never seen. Any Sarian they could get their hands on fell prey to them. But it was worse for Tygetians judged to have collaborated with them. Far worse. Xarhux allowed them free rein, for he loved Tygetia as much as the Mejadym did. He funded the rebuilding of the temple. His interest was…intense. After Xarhux left, the Mejadym began wearing the blue, as you see them today. But there are many more Mejadym besides the ones you see. As they were under Xarhux, they are a law unto themselves."
Hurrus had seen Mejadym men throughout Tygetia his entire life. He had always thought of them as a policing force, a stabilizing presence. Yet, the last of them he had seen lay dead in a tunnel beneath his house and slaughtered on the riverbank--all on a night when an attempt had been made on his life, and Nadia's taken.
"So you believe they might be hostile to the rule of Gyriecians? Myletos surely tolerates them, if he does not exactly embrace them."
"Forgive my saying so, but Myletos has no choice. No one rules the Mejadym, not even Myletos. He found them here when he arrived. They will remain after he leaves."
"Are they hostile to Gyriecians, though? That is my question. If I am not safe in my own bed because of them…" Hurrus clenched his teeth, feeling his anger swell in him. "Then I have some work to do."
"The Mejadym are hostile to any force that stands in opposition to Tygetia, my lord. Myletos' rule has been benign. In addition, he is Xarhux's man. I see no reason for the Mejadym to be hostile…"
"And yet I find them in a tunnel below my house, and now Nadia is dead. And not just dead, Jhar. Her eyes were torn from her head. Do you understand me? I will tell you honestly, it troubles me deeply. If being a Son of Kunuum means that you chew your enemies up and spit them out, then I am, as your faceless man believed, truly a Son of Kunuum."
"It is more than that," Jhar said. "Do not think that Kunuum is all blood and killing. The Mejadym is blood and killing. Do not confuse them. Kunuum is blind justice, Prince, one of the pillars of civilization…"
"You said Xarhux was 'Bathed in Blood'." Hurrus leaned forward on the marble slab again. "Tell me what that means. Tell me now!"
Jhar reached to his throat and anxiously rubbed his medallion. "It is the culmination of the long rigorous training every acolyte endures," he said. "In ancient days, the acolyte would become accepted into the priesthood by being bathed in the blood of the slaughtered bull, symbolizing the wisdom of Kunuum. He would stand under a grate and the blood would flow over him. Today, the temple is in ruins and the way is blocked."
"Xarhux undertook this rigorous training?"
"Xarhux," Jhar began in an even and forceful tone, "had conquered the world, Prince. There are shortcuts afforded such men."
"How was it done, then? Did he stand under the bull?"
"Now, we sprinkle the acolyte's head with a few drops of blood. It is…it is impure…it is false. I hate to say it, but…damn it all, it is false!" Jhar closed his eyes tightly and shook his head, a man forced to confront some hidden shame.
"I wish to be Bathed in Blood," Hurrus declared after a moment. "Just as Xarhux was, so shall I be."
Jhar shook his head hopelessly. "I tell you, it is merely symbolic now, Prince. It is the sprinkling of a few drops of blood. It is meaningless."
"Xarhux's 'intense interest', as you say, was in some 'meaningless' ritual? I do not believe it. I do not believe you."
Jhar spread his hands, smiling sadly. Beneath his quiet, studious bearing, Hurrus sensed a strong man, but distant and sly. His was a character shaped by hard and dangerous times. The High Priest and ancient Tygetia were, in Hurrus' mind, as inextricably bound as the incomprehensible picture-words and the dreadful sounds that slipped from a priest's tongue reading them. He knew he could never understand either of them fully.
"I hold nothing back, Prince Hurrus," Jhar said. "If I could make you Xarhux, I would. Come now. Perhaps this is not the time for these matters. Perhaps it is not prudent to be speaking of so much blood over the body of your dear loved one, in the sight of the gods."
Hurrus laughed. "No one's blood ran hotter than Nadia's, Jhar. She was no wilting flower, believe me, to blanch at the prospect of spilling blood." He laid a hand on either side of her wrapped head, holding it between his palms like a magic crystal. "She brought me out of Epiria when evil men would have killed her for the chance to dash my brains out against a wall. Just as the Mejadym and your Kunuumi priesthood preserved Tygetia through times of darkness, Nadia preserved Epiria in me through years of exile. I will return, Jhar," Hurrus vowed, looking up from Nadia's corpse. "You believe her spirit shies from blood? Well, she has seen nothing yet, for I shall show her blood, the blood of all who have wronged us. She will find no peace here, no peace among your stars." He gestured dismissively toward the ceiling, festooned with the myriad souls unleashed from Kunuum's fist. "She will find her peace under Gyriecian skies, cradled in the arms of Gyriecian gods."
"Surely, you are not suggesting removing her body from this tomb?"
Hurrus knew it was a transgression of some sort. Tygetian mumbo-jumbo, Nadia would have called it. "This is your world, Jhar. Not hers. This one will not be staying long."
With that, Hurrus turned and started up the steps out of the tomb. Jhar pulled the torch from the wall and followed, leaving Nadia in darkness.
Outside, King Myletos, Queen Berenice, Garon and Antona waited. Standing at their side was Xandros and all the armed men of Hurrus' companion body. The guards Hurrus had placed at the entrance to Nadia's tomb stood silent and stiff as the prince passed them. Zarcen's wings had spread across the sky; it was full daylight now.
Myletos' beautiful Gyriecian wife, Berenice, approached Hurrus and laid a consoling hand on his shoulder. "She is a star above now," she said.
Hurrus did not pause under her hand. "Not in this sky, she isn't." From the outside, Nadia's tomb was much the same as inside, writ large. A thirty-foot-high Zarcen decorated the eastern face of the pyramid, Kunuum the west. A golden cap glittered at the peak. Hurrus walked a few steps toward his men, and then turned back. "In Epiria," he began, noting the sympathy in the eyes that gazed upon him change to looks of incredulousness and a little fear, "I will build her a tomb to rival the greatest kings of all Gyriece. I will erect it next to the monuments I build for my father, Arrhus, and his wife, Eunice, my mother. The people will call the work of my hands a marvel and will travel from all over the Middle Sea to gaze upon it. Xandros," he turned to his trusted second, "call out the men of my Eagle Corps. Today we will begin to find out who returns with me to Epiria."
*
"Oh, Jorem…" Kerraunus cooed into the Mejadym leader's ear. The man did not stir. The wiry hairs that sprouted from Jorem's ear brushed Kerraunus' lips. He grimaced and jerked his head back, close to retching. He was a foul, hairy beast, this one.
"Jorem…" he tried again, a soothing sing-song. That one got it. Jorem's eyes snapped open and he gave a star
t.
"Oh, no, don't move," Kerraunus said quickly. "The blade you feel at your throat is sharp as a razor. One move will slice you to the bone."
Kerraunus smiled when Jorem strained to see Kerraunus' face with his eyes only, the whites dazzling in the darkness. It gave him a terrified, animalistic look that Kerraunus found pleasing. With the blade kissing the apple of his throat, Jorem kept his head very still. A quick learner, Kerraunus thought. An obedient man, when motivated.
"You were sleeping the dreamless sleep of the innocent," Kerraunus said softly, "which seems peculiar to me, for a man of such ill-intent. I find it hard to believe that you are so free of conscience that your dreams do not torment you. And yet, here you lie, sleeping like a babe."
"What do you want from me, Kerraunus?" Jorem asked. Wheels turned in his eyes now. Men were so transparent.
"Oh, I can hear the bile there, Jorem. I'm starting to believe perhaps you don't like me." Jorem's eyes darted to the opposite side of his bed. Kerraunus followed his gaze and saw the Mejadym weapons, a sheathed short sword hanging by a strap on the wall, a fighting staff propped up next to it. "Don't get any ideas. Your house is mine tonight. Outside that door behind me, you'll find my men. Snake men. Down in your yard, more snake men. In that little guardhouse at your gate… Well, you get the idea…"
"What have you done with my people?" Jorem asked.
"You have no people, Jorem. Your people are mine. You would do well to remember that."
"The Mejadym serve at your pleasure, Great One," Jorem said.
"You should don a mask and intone that line on the stage, you old Satyr," Kerraunus said with an unintended smile. He had half a mind to call the whole affair off. A man who could lie that boldly deserved a long life.
"But you know it is true…"
"It is true that you belong in the theater, Jorem. I hear tell you staged a comedy in Alaun the other night, a real side-splitter as I hear it…"
"Someone interfered--"
"I understand one of your men was found…How was that now? Oh, yes, it was told me that one of your men was found garrotted with his own yellowwood staff. Oh, that's precious! That is precious. I offered the Prathian a job, and--by the fangs of Cretis!--I wish he had accepted. When I heard that, I thought 'Well done, young man! Well done!' My own snake men, regrettably, don't exhibit anywhere near that kind of imagination. They are all so…so…I don't know. Unimaginative, I guess is the word."
"There were forces in Alaun working against us, Kerraunus, attempting to stop us--"
"That was me, you lackwit fool! Did you think I would stand by while you lay Hurrus' murder at my feet?" Jorem's eyes darted toward his weapons again. Kerraunus let him feel cold steel to encourage him to mind his manners. "You wanted the bodies of Prathian assassins to show Myletos, didn't you? For who but I would hire them?"
Jorem shook his head, his eyes wide. "That is not how it was…"
"Certainly not you and your pure-as-sand-blasted-bone Mejadym. And I was supposed to unleash my Corps of the Snake Man to save my own skin? Perhaps that is closer to the truth of it?"
"To make you king!" Jorem said. "Tygetia for Tygetians!"
Kerraunus sniffed a laugh. "Save your slogans for your fanatical recruits. Do you think Myletos is a fool? He may be a peaceable man, but he is no weakling… Without your meddling, Hurrus would already be dead. Do you think anyone can kill him now? He will be surrounded by an army…" Kerraunus' hand began to shake. Jorem, flat on his back, strained to peer down his cheeks at the unsteady blade. "Damn you! With Hurrus gone, I could have talked Garon into giving me his inheritance…" He suddenly pulled Jorem to his feet. "I need to show you who is in charge here."
In his Mejadym garb and his heavy black beard, Jorem had always appeared a big, bearish man, but Kerraunus saw now that he was all lean rippling muscle head to foot. His chest and flat stomach were covered with an inch-thick layer of wiry black hair and his beard seemed to meld seamlessly into it. Kerraunus had seen him fight and knew the man was a terror with staff and sword, blindingly quick and bearishly powerful. For just an instant, Kerraunus feared he had made a mistake entering the man's room alone. But he held no staff now and had a sharp knife, not in his hand, but pointed at his back. He had to know Kerraunus would use it, as surely he would.
Kerraunus pushed him through the door of his open balcony, through wispy drapes that fluttered in the night breeze. When he touched him, Kerraunus felt under his fingers a mass of welts. He saw that Jorem's back was a tangled mesh of raised flesh, left by some long-ago lash. He filed that away for future use. No matter how old, he knew a lashing that terrible left marks in the mind as well as in the flesh.
"There are your people," Kerraunus said.
Down in the yard below them stood seven of Jorem's household guard, all dressed in the blue and yellow of the Mejadym. Each man stood under the sword of a white-cloaked snake-man, with over a dozen more held in reserve, commanded by Kerraunus' man, Samos. With a fist-thump to his chest, he saluted his lord when Kerraunus appeared at the balustrade.
"You have brought us the pig himself, Great One," Samos declared.
"I have brought you the Lord of the Swine," Kerraunus said to the chuckles of his men. "He will now stand in judgment of his people. Seven men, Jorem. You will choose…" Kerraunus considered, "three that will die."
"I will do no such thing," Jorem said.
"Three or one," Kerraunus said, lifting Jorem's chin with the point of his blade.
Jorem jerked his head away. "I will choose only two," he said fiercely. "You and me!" He leapt out of the reach of the razor sharp blade and squared on his captor, fire in his eye.
Kerraunus had seen this coming. He uttered a sharp cry and six of his men burst through the door of the bed chamber and surrounded the Mejadym leader. Defying Kerraunus was worse than mere suicide; it was pointless folly.
"Now choose!" Kerraunus snapped. "Three men die. I leave four alive--not to please you, but only to show that I am just."
"You call this justice?" Jorem spat at his feet. "I call it cold-blooded murder."
"And who would know better than you?"
Jorem stood to his full height, straight and tall. "Then I choose one," he said. "I choose me in place of the others."
Kerraunus turned to the men below. "Kill them all," he called. "The lord fails to choose. Now all must die."
"No!" Jorem cried.
"It is too late." Kerraunus nodded to his men.
Nefer was the first to draw his blade. It left a red trail across the Mejadym man's throat. Such a simple, effortless act. The next was Ramsut, the plunderer, followed by Imher, the strong. With each death, Jorem's face became a study in stone. Three more followed. The last man broke free of Ramma's grasp and took to his heels across the dark field. The snake-men moved to stop him.
"Leave him!" Kerraunus cried. "He shall live to tell the others, so all the Mejadym will know what happens when they meddle in my affairs. Just as their lord now understands."
"You truly are a snake," Jorem said. Was that a slight quiver in his lips?
"We will kill that last one later," Kerraunus replied. "Whenever it proves convenient for us."
"You would do better to kill all now, for I vow that you will have to kill us all later."
"That is a worry for another time," Kerraunus said. "Tonight, I have left you…" he began counting with the point of his blade, "one… two… three… four… five… Six dead Mejadym. We will leave them for you to clean up. You will probably want to bury them according to some secret Mejadym-y ceremony…or whatever it is you do. Hmm, I wonder what sprouts where Mejadym are planted?"
"Certainly a fruit you will find bitter, Snake Man."
"No doubt," said Kerraunus.
Chapter 14
Hurrus held the farsee stone at arm's length. He drew it towards his eye until the leaping porpoise came into focus. It might have been ten feet before him. With a start, he pulled the stone away and once again beheld the plain
as it was, a teeming field of seven thousand training soldiers, no man distinguishable from the next. The porpoise had vanished.
Tentatively, he gazed through the stone again and was amazed. He handed it to Xandros.
"Ah!" the big man cried, when he found his focus. "I see Deon's leaping porpoise as if it was next to me." He looked without the aid of the stone and saw only the teeming mass. With the stone, the painted image of the porpoise stood out in exquisite detail on Deon's shield. The shield was strapped to his back as he walked his horse across the face of a demi-talon of foot soldiers standing at attention.
"It is a marvel," Xandros said, handing the stone back to Hurrus.
"I want more of these," said Hurrus, looking through the stone again. This time he gazed beyond the training plain. He could see the silver thread of the river in the distance. He was even able to make out individual fronds of the trees lining its banks. Men were drawing water into an irrigation canal with a bucket suspended under a tripod. "I would give these to my scouts and to all of my commanders. With these, I would be invincible."
"Perhaps the stones would give us an advantage," Xandros said. "But it is men that make us invincible." Hurrus saw him wince as he added, "And we will need a passel more good ones for that."
Hurrus followed his gaze down to Deon's foot soldiers. They were arrayed in a block of sixteen files of sixteen ranks, nearly 300 men in all. As he watched, the front ranks lowered their pikes and the men began marching forward. They had gone no more than a few steps when Deon called a halt, the phalanx in total disarray.
"That is one of the groups of new recruits," Xandros told him.
"They look like soldiers at least," Hurrus said, noting their new uniforms, the bronze breastplates and crimson-crested brass helmets, scarlet cloaks, large round shields and twelve-foot-long spears. The money for the new equipment and the new recruits had come from Myletos who would deny Antona nothing. This was as much her army as Hurrus'. New men joined it daily, along with cavalry mounts and wagonloads of weapons and armor. Just as quickly, Hurrus rid it of the most unsavory elements until his Corps of the Eagle Man was alarmingly heavy with green soldiers.
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