Gorgeo in the flesh was a disappointment. He reminded Gonatas of a hungry dog who follows you with his eyes, just waiting for the chance to tear at your flesh. But it did not take long to detect the man's strength, his bravery and his dedication behind the gaunt frame.
"What is it you fight for?" Gonatas had asked him, perhaps too pointedly, he remembered thinking. He was not asking why Gorgeo fought. He was asking for Gorgeo to give Gonatas a reason to fight.
"For my homeland and for my people," Gorgeo responded.
Another disappointment. These were mere words. "But this is your homeland, all about you. And Epiria, from what I have seen, is full of Epirians, alive and well, most of them going about their own business. Do they ask you to fight for them?"
"I fight for their freedom, Prince. Something you wouldn't understand. I fight so we can live after a manner of our choosing, under our own rulers, and our own king whose blood flows in us. I fight so our people will no longer be pulled from their beds and forced to wear the mustard cloak of your murderous guardsmen, so we don't have to labor in our own fields only to have our fortunes stolen to support the mad king's lavish living--"
"Your own king?" Gonatas interrupted. He could see Gorgeo's passion rising as he spoke. Truth be told, the rebel leader's fervor made him uncomfortable, embarrassed somehow--the result of his own lavish living. What had he ever to be passionate about, but his own luxury? "Your king is long dead."
"Our king is Hurrus."
"Not Demetrius?"
"Demetrius is a madman," Gorgeo spat. "As well as the Queen of Snakes who controls him…They are ruled by demons, and Epiria is a cursed land under their shadow."
"To say that Demetrius is not your king…Some would have you killed for that."
"I fight so my people can speak the truth without fear of dying."
"Oh, dying is only part of it," Gonatas said. He paused to judge Gorgeo's reaction and saw only iron in his eyes. Perhaps that would change when he heard what Gonatas had to tell him next. "You know these men," --he vaguely indicated the camp outside of the tent walls surrounding them-- "these men will take you to this Queen of Snakes, as you call her. It was she who sent us to you. Did you know that? She Saw you, my friend. How else do you think we caught the ghost, Gorgeo? Certainly not by our own wits. It was by her Seeing."
The iron in Gorgeo's eye flashed fear. So he was human, after all.
"You called me 'Prince'. Don't think I did not catch the mockery in your tone. Let me tell you, Gorgeo, your mockery is well-placed, for I am no prince. I am a captive no less than you and no less than your people. Do you think I live after a manner of my own choosing? Do you think I enjoy living at the whim of a madman? When I hear tell that Gorgeo has burnt down a palace, that he has destroyed a bridge, a fire is lit in me." Gorgeo stood there, gaunt and haggard, tall, straight and rock-hard, his hands bound behind his back--and his eyes now awash in confusion. "And I will tell you something else. Pylia speaks your name, but she also speaks another." Curious, Gorgeo narrowed his eyes. "Oh, yes," Gonatas answered, "she speaks of your King Hurrus."
Gorgeo strained against his bonds. "What does she say?"
"It is not what she says, it is what she Sees…She Sees King Hurrus returning to Epiria in his eighteenth year."
Gorgeo beamed. "Gods be praised!" he cried. "The time is now! You may do with me as you will, sir, prince or no. Hurrus is coming!"
What Gonatas did not have the heart to tell him was that Demetrius had sent men to Tygetia to murder him. But what Gonatas did not understand was how a man could be killed if Pylia has Seen him alive, though, he would be the first to admit, neither did he understand the nature of her visions.
"I believe it, just as the witch has Seen it," he told Gorgeo. "But now I have a quandary of my own. I can't turn you over to Pylia, as is my charge. What I have just told you is now in your brain and she would find it there, to my great peril." Gorgeo fixed his eyes on a distant point, the iron glinting in them. He thinks I am to kill him. "It would be easier for me to have you killed while trying to escape. But then your blood would be on my hands, and, in truth, I want you to live. It will mean my life if you are caught again, however, and--an even greater truth--I want me to live. So you must promise that when you leave here, the Irrylians have seen the last of you. Do not let yourself be captured again."
Gorgeo nodded solemnly. He vanished that night.
When the war in Lacecia began, Gonatas became bolder still. He began entertaining night riders, giving them routes, timing and compositions of supply trains out of Myssene. Now, he really did have blood on his hands--and something else in his ear, tales of the Huntress. Surviving teamsters brought back stories not of the ghost, Gorgeo, but of a beautiful archer who darted out of woods and around rocky ridges to rain destruction on the hapless Irrylians. Many said she was no less than Veronysia herself and her appearance on earth was taken as an ill omen.
It was no ill omen to Gonatas. He took it as a gift from the gods. When he finally met her, he saw that she was beautiful. He could not take his eyes off her and later he wondered if he might have been confusing his passion for the cause with his passion for the girl.
They had met at one of the Epirian houses occupied by Clautias. Clautias himself came as a shock to Gonatas. The great leader, the man who had finally given direction to the Epirian resistance was a frail old crow pushing eighty summers.
"I stole Hurrus out of Epiria, bore him to sea in my own arms with packs of Demetrius' Bearded Men snapping at my heels," he told Gonatas at one of their many meetings since. "I was to tutor the boy in the disciplines of mathematics, astronomy, engineering, philosophy…I was to make a king of him, a king worthy of his father, the great Arrhus. I daresay, he would not even know me now. Perhaps Nadia has kept my memory alive in him." Clautias shrugged his bony shoulders. Gonatas found his mind as sharp as his body was frail, his eyes bright and fiery under his shaggy, white brow. "In the end, it was left to others to make a king of him. It is left to me to prepare a place for his return."
"Myletos is a wise man," Gonatas had assured him, noting that he was also a steadfast enemy of Demetrius.
Clautias raised a crooked finger. "Yes, but not all in Tygetia are enemies of Demetrius. There are influences in that land…" He left his thought unfinished, merely shaking his head and taking Gonatas aside. "I would not tell of this widely, but while I know the blood of the man, I do not know the man."
"You speak of Hurrus?"
"My faith is in the blood alone," Clautias had said, glowering from one eye, the other vanishing under his bristling brow.
Gonatas would leave such speculations to the old man, for at the moment he found he had less opinion of Hurrus than of Coronea. He recalled it fitting that his first exchange with her had been an argument. She was as prickly as she was beautiful.
"I am no prince," he found himself saying. She had put him on the defensive almost at once. He told her of his mother and of his desire to stop the spread of Demetrius' madness. "If I could draw Demetrius' blood from my veins, I would."
"You know nothing of blood," she had assured him. He found her naivete charming and infuriating at the same time.
"Danger lurks not only in the killing fields, my lady," Gonatas had countered. "Perhaps it is no easy task to loose your arrows at Demetrius' half-hearted conscripts, but you should not underestimate the danger to those who must work their treasons under the very noses of the king and his witch."
"Half-hearted?" Coronea sniffed, though Gonatas saw clearly through her charade. In her eyes swam a budding respect. If he was not mistaken, he might have seen something else swimming there, too. "There is nothing half-hearted about those who pursue us."
Gonatas took her hand and held it in both of his, suddenly overcome by her beauty. "Oh, sweet Coronea! There is nothing half about the tenderness that fills my heart. I feel it is near to bursting."
The Huntress whisked her hand away, as if in revulsion. But this charade was as transpare
nt as her last. Her hand could not hide the blushing cheek nor the hint of a pleased smile that played upon her lips. Gonatas wanted to leap with happiness. He had found his cause. Drawn into open rebellion by hatred and fear, it was love that would keep him at it.
And it was all of those that spurred him on now.
Gonatas and his five companions bounced along the uneven river road, not daring to slow their pace. As they raced Shadow Riders to Clautias' door, it was the blinding sun that mocked them as it descended ever lower over the western road, easily outpacing them. Hatred, fear and love propelled Gonatas towards the mountains of Prathia, it was true, but fear was, admittedly, the strongest of the three. Demetrius will send more than Shadow Riders to my door, Gonatas thought. He would scour the land, Shadow Riders and Bearded Men alike, side by side. The witch would guide them, and Gonatas would have no rest, hunted till the end of his days.
As his mind was occupied by these thoughts, he suddenly became aware that riders had appeared to either side of him. He realized at once that he did not recognize them. They had come out of nowhere and in an instant Gonatas found his party engulfed by two dozen mounted men. They were armed with all manner of spears, bows, swords, javelins and darts, dangerous, rough-looking men. The leader of them wore a skin cap and foxskin boots. He rode out in front and at his signal the whole squadron wheeled as a flock of birds, sweeping Gonatas' men along with them. They rode across a narrow meadow. At the line of trees, they dismounted.
Gonatas took them for bandits.
"What silver we have is yours, gentlemen," he said. "We ask only that you allow us to be on our way. Silver is nothing to us. Time is life itself."
"Quiet!" the leader said. His men had already led their horses soundlessly into the timber. They seemed to melt into the treeline. "We're not robbing you, Prince. We're saving your miserable life. We must get you off this road at once. Hurry!"
Gonatas obeyed without question. The man's tone was not only urgent, but fearful. Inside the treeline, they laid down among the damp undergrowth. Gonatas did not feel threatened by the men. They had taken the horses deep under the cover of the wood. There they stood motionless, seeming scarcely to breathe. Gonatas and the bandit leader hid among ferns and bushes in the black shadows of the treeline where they had a good view of the road.
The leader raised a silencing hand, while he listened and watched intently. At first there was nothing. Dust devils swept across the road in a gust of wind. Gonatas detected something moving behind them, something low to the ground. Then out of the swirls of dust there gradually came into focus a great slithering snake. Gonatas started and the man laid a strong restraining hand on his shoulder. The snake was white as milk, as big around as a man's thigh and as long as two men laid head to foot. It moved down the middle of the road, its tongue flicking out from between its jaws, tasting the air as it looked in every direction.
Gonatas had never seen anything like it. But for the bandit gang, Gonatas' party would have stumbled upon the thing to who knows what unhappy end. Their horses would have been terrified by such a monster, no less than the men themselves.
"It is not natural," Gonatas muttered, so quietly the sound scarcely escaped his lips. But it only got worse.
As he watched, legs emerged from the snake's belly and instead of slithering forward, the thing began to walk. No sooner had it taken a step than arms sprouted from its sides and what had been the body of a snake had become the body of a walking snake man. Its hands balled into fists, the snake man walked carefully along the road, its tail leaving a crease in the dust behind it.
A shock of terror ran through Gonatas as his mind raced to make sense of what he was seeing: the milk white arms and legs of a man sprouting from an upright snake. It would take a step or two and then stop and look in every direction, its tongue tasting the air.
Then it was gone, obscured by a sudden gust of wind that sent swirls of dust rising across the road. Holding his breath, Gonatas waited, expecting to see the snake man emerge from the veil of dust. Instead, a troop of Irrylian Bearded Men, Demetrius' elite guard, burst out of the concealing screen. Where the snake man had stalked the road in utter silence, the Bearded Men rode past in a fury of thundering hooves. The brightly polished cheek pieces of their helmets, sculpted to resemble bearded men, covered their faces and made them look other than human, a troop of spear-wielding bronze men come to life.
They left nothing but silence and clouds of settling dust to mark their passage.
The leader of the bandits stood, relieved that the danger had passed. Gonatas knew who the men were now, not bandits but Epirian rebels, friends.
"You saved us from that…that thing," Gonatas said, still in a daze of disbelief. "We were but moments from it when you found us."
"Not only that thing, friend, but the Bearded Men as well. Either was death to you. Come now, this road is watched. You can travel it no longer."
"But I must thank you, sir," Gonatas said. "What is your name?"
"My name is unimportant," the man said as he began tramping through the undergrowth. "Whether I know your name or you mine is irrelevant. What matters is what Pylia knows, and she sends Sarlon's demons to See this road."
Gonatas tramped after him, struggling to keep up. The man did not look back as he walked.
"That thing was from Pylia?" Gonatas asked, stunned.
"She Sees through its eyes. You don't want that thing to look upon you. If we're lucky, it saw nothing."
"But why this road?"
"It is said that a traitor is to be found traveling it." Holding a branch aside, the man stopped and turned. He cocked an eyebrow at Gonatas. "Might that be you, now?"
"Some might call me traitor, yes." It was harder to say than Gonatas would have believed.
"Good," the leader said, turning and letting the leafy branch spring back into place behind him. "Then I have found the right man. Come now. We're going down. Bring your men."
Gonatas gathered up his companions and they followed the man to a trail that wound down the face of the bluff. They left their horses behind with the rest of the gang.
"You won't be needing them where you're going," the leader told them.
"But our mission is urgent," Gonatas said. "We have not a moment to lose."
"The way I'm taking you is faster than that road," the man said with a wink. "Especially considering how being dead might have slowed you down." Tufts of greasy hair spilled out from under his skin cap. His face creased and weather-beaten, Gonatas took the man for an old soldier. Not only did the idea of Gonatas' mortality seem to amuse him, but he looked like he could march up and down river bluffs all day.
The trail was narrow, steep, muddy and covered with rotting leaves. The air was wet and the light that filtered through the leafy canopy was tinged with green. In the gaps between branches, Gonatas could see blue sky in front of him and the river below. He told his companions what he had seen on the road and they became as eager to follow their guide as he was. When the old soldier got too far out in front of them, he stopped and waited for them to catch up. The Irrylians found themselves grasping vines and tree roots as they slid down the slippery trail. The smell of the wide river grew sharp as they neared it. By the time they could hear it lapping hollowly in the undercut banks of its muddy shoreline, they had reached their destination, though they were still fifty feet above the water.
The men stood on a wide shelf of exposed limestone. The dense growth of trees had fallen away and from where they stood, they could see unhindered all the way across the river. Sunlight danced over its sluggish current, sparkling like a multitude of darting silver fish. Their guide led them to a set of rough-hewn steps cut into the rock, leaf-covered and slick. The steps led up through a short tunnel of trees to a second shelf. There, cut into the bluff, was the entrance to a cave, wide enough for all the men to enter abreast.
Inside, they found a chained man and ten rebels, both men and women. The captive was secured to the rock wall by a single m
anacle around one ankle. His hands were free but it was easy to see that he was not going anywhere soon. He sat on the dirt floor with his knees drawn up, his forehead resting on them. He might have been sleeping. Some of the rebels stood around a little wooden table studying a parchment, while others were rolling some barrels and lugging crates to some steps leading out the opposite side of the entrance ledge.
Gonatas' man hailed them and all looked up from their work. The captive looked up too, in bleary eyed indifference at first and then with increasing interest.
"More to chain to your wall, you pigs?" The chained man stood and spat but only managed a thin string of spittle that wound up dangling from his chin. The force of his effort caused his damp hair to obscure his face before he brushed it back out of his eyes. No doubt he saw the Irrylian's mustard cloaks and took them for more of the Epirians' captives. "Don't let them bind you," he warned fiercely. "Your lives are forfeit the moment they put the irons on you. Run now, and die like men! Don't let yourselves be chained to this wall like dogs." He thrust his manacled foot forward in a savage kick, rattling his chain.
One of the Epirians stood and took a step towards the man. "Shut up, you! These men are no murderers. The wall is reserved for the likes o' you and you alone, you cutthroat bastard."
The chained man's expression changed suddenly. He cocked his head and regarded Gonatas and his companions carefully. He glanced at their escort, then down at their unbound hands and sheathed weapons and a light of understanding dawned in his eyes.
"You," he muttered breathlessly, his eyes narrowing and burning like coals. "By the gods, it is Prince Gonatas! The traitor on the road is Gonatas! You son of a whore!" He lunged toward the group. His chain rattled tautly, holding him fast. "Traitorous son of a whore!"
The Blood Gate Page 28