Deon pulled a water skin from around his neck and used it to wet Hurrus' lips. He drank greedily. Deon pulled the skin away.
"Not so fast," he warned.
"It is the god-king's water," Hurrus said as a simple statement of fact, remembering. He felt sluggish and stupid, still not in complete control of his faculties.
"He won't be needing it where he is," Deon said, grinning. "He sips from Hathor's cup now. A bitter brew, as I understand it."
"Where are we?"
"Almost back on Tygetian soil, Highness. If you turn, you'll see the Horns directly ahead of us."
"You won't mind if I don't…" Hurrus groaned. He laid his arm around Deon's shoulders. "Help me onto my horse. I will ride through the Horns. I won't be transported home like a heap of dried meat."
Deon called for Hurrus' horse and helped him from the wagon and into the saddle. Hurrus felt himself wavering, but Deon held him steady.
"But we are home already," he said when he was sure Hurrus would not fall. "We have been home ever since you killed the god-king. All around us is now Tygetian soil…if only Myletos wills it. He has but to march here and claim it. By gods, Hurrus, you have accomplished what no man has ever dared. Even Xarhux dared not attempt it!"
"The cost is high, I fear," Hurrus said. He winced. The cicadas howled in his ears. He felt Deon's steadying hand on his good shoulder. When he opened his eyes, he saw the Horns, shimmering behind a translucent veil of heat. His army sat in the road ahead, a long column that disappeared over a dusty ridge. Behind him, another column of footmen sat with their scarlet cloaks thrown over their heads to shield them from the sun. A talon of cavalry brought up the rear. Behind them, there was nothing but endless desert. He wondered how far the column extended on the far side of the dusty ridge. He saw the Silver Shields and quickly tried to count them in their rows. He reached 150, when he stopped in despair. He hoped there were more that he could not see.
"But the profit is great, Highness! When we march through the Horns, I would not be surprised to find a Tygetian throng awaiting us. We will tread on rose petals all the way back to Archentethe!"
Rose petals! It was blood that lined their path, not flowers, the blood of his own men. The only throng that awaited him were the ghosts of the slain.
"Hurrus, I am happy to find you ahorse!"
It was Xandros. He had ridden up to them from the front of the column. But for his lips and the creases that clawed the corners of his eyes, his face was ashen with dust. How many times had Hurrus gazed upon that face? Molded from laughter and vigorous living, Hurrus detected no joy in it now. Though smiling, he looked tired and old. He reached into a saddlebag.
"I saved this for you." He produced an ornate crown, a narrow band of gold topped with pointed crests like ocean waves set with opals, rubies and sapphires. The last time Hurrus had seen it was through the farsee stone, a lifetime ago. "Memnon's. I thought you would like to have it."
It felt heavy in his hand. He remembered the god-king's bodyguard hacking a path through their own men so Memnon could escape the rout of his army in his golden chariot. It had sat atop his head then, a witness to the man's unmatched wickedness. With the hand of his good arm, Hurrus turned it and the jewels blazed in the sun. How could a thing of such great beauty be the cause of such great evil? Hurrus became dizzy and lost his balance, but Deon caught him. It was because he could not grasp the reins with his left hand and he gripped the crown in his right.
"How many men do I have left?" Xandros would know and he would not hide it from him, but Xandros did not respond. Hurrus looked back toward the resting horsemen of the rearguard, and then ahead to the dusty ridge, beyond which stood the distant Horns of Hathor. "I can see the tail of the column, and I see my Shields on the road ahead. Xandros, how far does our column extend beyond that ridge?"
"Do not excite yourself, Highness," Deon said, grasping him with both hands. Hurrus shook him away roughly. Xandros' blank look and tight lips angered him. The cicadas whirred.
"Xandros, I command you to tell me! How far--"
"Three thousand," Xandros blurted out all at once. "The Corps of the Eagle Man is but three thousand."
The number struck Hurrus like a fist. He fell forward, his left shoulder slamming into his horse's neck and sending a searing flame down his arm. Deon grabbed him around the waist.
"You have destroyed the Sarians, Hurrus." Hurrus could hear Xandros speaking from the end of a long dark tunnel. "They did not know their god-king had fallen, and they formed a solid wall against us, but the Silver Shields broke them."
"You should have seen them, Highness!" Deon cried. "By gods, what men!"
"They tried to form up again," Xandros went on, "but this time, instead of raining javelins down on their heads, we threw them the head of their king. When they saw who it was, they flung their weapons aside and ran. Some of them, gripped by madness, fled into the waterless wastes. Others threw themselves at our feet. We took no prisoners."
"Three thousand!" Hurrus sat doubled over on his horse. The pain in his head and shoulder were nothing to the cold hard lump he felt in his gut. If he could cut it out with a knife, he would. "I have brought us to ruin!"
"Highness," Deon said, "let's get you back into the wagon…"
Hurrus could feel him tugging on him. "No!" Ignoring the pain, Hurrus lurched upright, wrenching his body from Deon's grasp. He turned and flung he king's crown at Xandros. It struck him mid-chest, startling his horse. Xandros scarcely blinked. The crown bounced to the ground. "Melt it down! Do what you will with it. I'll not have that thing on my head." He coaxed his horse forward. Deon stood aside for him. "I must go see for myself."
Hurrus could hear Deon calling him back as he rode away, but he would not be shielded from hard truths. He wanted to look over the ridge and see his army for himself.
As he walked his horse along the road, the men who were not too exhausted stood, thumping their chests in salute or calling out his name. He was amazed to see their spirit.
"Eagle Man…" he heard someone gasp in awe. From another: "King Hurrus!"
He acknowledged them by raising his right hand, trying not to let on that it was beyond his power to raise his left. He sat as straight as the pain allowed, but he could feel himself leaning to favor his hurt shoulder. He knew his bandaged head added nothing to his stature. He bobbed stiffly in the saddle, no doubt resembling less a king than a corpse riding among them.
He found the Silver Shields and followed the line of them up to the crest of the ridge. When he looked over, he saw a pathetically short column of soldiers extending down the other side. As with the rearguard, the thin column was dwarfed by the immensity of the desert. It was beyond incredible that this tiny force had not simply disappeared into the desert, never to be heard of again, swallowed by sand. That it had marched into the maw of the wasteland and destroyed an enemy besides defied understanding.
But Hurrus had to know the cost. The cost to himself was plain. Does a descendant of the gods bleed from a gash in his head and wince at the wound of a fat man's javelin? What god would claim such a progeny?
Hurrus turned away from the ridge and rode along the line of his Shields. He knew where to find the men in their marching columns as well as their battle arrays. He looked to the place of the front rank, but the face he looked for was not there. In the middle of the column, he saw the lad who had offered him water, looking less of a boy now. Hurrus realized that he did not know his name. He rode back to the head of the column.
"Where is Aryk?" he asked when he had found an officer.
The officer looked puzzled.
"Aryk," Hurrus repeated with an urgency he did not intend. He looked from face to face. "Of Irrylia. His father fought with Xarhux through the Eastern Lands…The Painted Men…"
The officer's face fell, but he did not look away. "Aryk did not make it, Prince," he said solemnly.
"Did not make it?"
"He fell in our final charge to break the Sarian lin
e--"
"He fell…" Hurrus repeated stupidly. It was not that he did not believe it. Rather, he felt as if he did not understand the words themselves. "He fell…"
"He fought bravely, my lord, as did all of the Shields. I can attest to that. There is not a coward among them. I am proud--"
"Where is his body?" Hurrus asked.
The officer blinked.
"His body!" Hurrus snapped, slapping his right palm down on the officer's shoulder and grabbing a handful of his cloak. "Aryk's body! Where is it? I would take it to Gyriece with me, and bury it in Irrylian soil!"
All the soldiers of the column were watching him now. Even those who had been too exhausted to speak raised their weary heads. The officer laid a hand atop Hurrus' grasping fist. "Prince," he said in a quiet, consoling tone, "we burnt his body on a pyre, along with the rest of our dead. You must know that we could not possibly transport them across the desert…"
Hurrus relaxed his grip. He cast a glance at the men watching him from the side of the road. They looked away when his eyes found them. "Of course you could not," he said with a sigh. He gave the man's shoulder a pat before turning away.
"Men die in war," said the officer.
More than men die in war, Hurrus thought. "Prepare to march," he said in as commanding a tone as he could muster. "We can still make the Horns before nightfall."
Behind him, he could hear the officer shouting his orders and the rustling of the men climbing to their feet. Within moments, the entire column was in motion again, marching towards the Horns and Tygetia and home.
Hurrus rode with Deon and Xandros at the head of the army. After three hours, he could feel the ground rising towards the pass between the two landmark hills; and after two more, the sun had dipped behind the northern prominence and they rode the rest of the way comfortably in the shadow of the twin peaks.
Hurrus noticed that as the men entered the shade, they began to smile. They had been watching the Horns for mile after weary mile and had no doubt begun to view them as home itself, as comfort and safety, an end to their ordeal. Hurrus felt his own spirits buoyed under their shadow. Water lay beyond the Horns and when the three men surmounted the crest of the road they saw a brown landscape dotted with spiky shrubs and even pockets of dense green growth and trees. The soldiers' thoughts had already moved beyond water as the leading files belted out choice stanzas of Tygetian drinking songs amid howls of laughter. The victorious army was coming home.
But Hurrus noticed something else that awaited them on the dusty plain apart from the promise of water and cultivated fields and warm baths. It looked to him like a promise of more blood and anguish. It looked to him like an army.
He turned to the twenty of his companion body. "Call a halt," he said. He could not keep a tremor of alarm out of his voice and he spoke in a rising crescendo. "Silence the men."
One of the officers rode down the backside of the rise and the men's voices fell silent. With a crack of black wings, a roost of birds took flight from the crags above them. Hurrus did not want the men to march over the crest and see what he thought he saw. Do not let it be, he prayed vaguely to no one. His hand was shaking when he bent down to reach into his saddlebag. He felt the whirring in his head again. He closed his eyes and in the darkness, the world pitched and lurched. Xandros caught him before he fell.
"The stone," Hurrus said, as Xandros righted him in his saddle. The wind blew a veil of dust across the plain. "I must have my stone."
A moment later, Xandros handed him the farsee stone. Hurrus held it in his right hand, shifting it back and forth before his eye until the object of his observation came into sharp focus. He saw a spearman with a shield, and another beside him, and then another, and then a dozen more. He moved the stone to the right and saw block after block of spearmen, eight deep, filling the plain. He did not need the stone to see the masses of horsemen guarding their flanks.
He handed the crystal to Deon. "There is your Tygetian throng, Deon," Hurrus snapped. Blood rushed to his face. The cicadas whirred in his ears. "You look and tell me if they're throwing rose petals. You look and tell me what you see!"
"I don't need the stone to see," Xandros said, a murderous lilt to his voice. "That is the Corps of the Snake Man."
Deon looked them over. "They oppose us?" His voice was disbelieving.
"They stand astride the road in battle array. It is no homecoming," Xandros said.
Kerraunus' troops. Hurrus could see it now, the white headscarves, the gold-trimmed white cloaks and leather cuirasses, the bronze-faced shields each painted with the image of the rearing cobra. They stood like a mirage on the dusty plain, a phantom line of white surf, offering not an illusion of succor but death. Given equal numbers, Hurrus would not have feared them, but--
"How many men, Deon?" Hurrus asked.
Deon surveyed the field, making quick calculations. "Perhaps ten thousand," he said in a dead tone.
"Xandros?"
"We cannot hope to oppose them, my lord," Xandros said. "Those are ten thousand fresh men down there. Even if the numbers did not daunt us, we cannot ask these men to fight again."
A sharp pain traced a line of fire across Hurrus' scalp. He grasped his bandaged head and his fingers came away moist with blood. His wound had opened again.
"We will proceed onto the plain--"
"You cannot be serious--" Xandros interjected.
Hurrus whirled and grasped a fistful of Xandros' tunic. "I will ride at the head of my army, Xandros, as is my right. We will march in the full sight of the enemy like men - straight into the maw of the snake, if we have to." He released him with a parting shove.
"You will deploy our three against Kerraunus' ten?" Xandros asked in disgust. "You will ask these men to fight a hopeless battle, after all they've been through?"
"After all they've been through, I do not have to ask them to fight, any more than I have to ask them to die. They will do what they must. Would you have them return to Tygetia in chains, Xandros?"
"I would have them return at all," Xandros said. "I will grant you the dead require no chains to bind them."
From the plain below, they heard the blast of a war horn.
"They have seen us," Deon said. "Look!"
He passed the stone to Hurrus. The line of spearmen parted and a chariot surrounded by a company of horsemen passed through the gap. A white flag of truce fluttered above them.
"It is Kerraunus and his Snake Men," Hurrus said. He adjusted the stone and every detail of Kerraunus' Tygetian face came into focus. He felt as if he were viewing Memnon all over again. Bare-chested and wearing his formal blue war crown over a braided wig, Kerraunus looked every bit the god-king, a Tygetian prince of old. He elevated his chin regally as he guided his chariot, his jaw set firm. Surrounding him was his usual gang of murderous thugs…minus Ramsut the Plunderer.
"He rides out to parlay," Xandros said. "We should hear him."
"Oh, we'll hear him," said Hurrus. "He rides out with his twenty to offer us chains. We will meet him with our three thousand. We will see what chains he has to bind us."
Hurrus turned and called for his helmet. "I will not have Kerraunus see my wound," he said. He fit his helmet over his bandages, hiding them from view, and rode stiffly down the slope onto the plain, holding his left arm tight to his side to lessen the pain of the jostling ride. Xandros, Deon and his twenty companions rode at his side, the column of three thousand following behind.
Kerraunus and his party had stopped halfway to the Horns and sat waiting. Hurrus held up his hand and the tramping of his army ceased. He and his companions rode forward.
"Kerraunus suggested we murder Memnon to avoid a battle," Deon whispered close to Hurrus' ear. "I say we murder Kerraunus and avoid this fight."
"It may be the only way," Xandros said in Hurrus' other ear.
Hurrus made no response. He looked over his brother's party. He knew some of them by name, in particular the little man named Nefer who sat his horse at Kerra
unus' right hand sneering. He was a viler specimen than even Ramsut had been. He also recognized his Gyriecian lackey, Samos. All twenty were well armed with swords and daggers and looked as if they had probably given Kerraunus the same advice Hurrus had just received from his men. Only Kerraunus wore a pleasant mien, but Hurrus knew not even the warmest of smiles could conceal his brother's cold heart. Murder hung in the air between the two groups of men.
"Tales of your exploits have preceded you out of the desert, Brother," Kerraunus said. "It seems you killed a god-king only to become one yourself."
Hurrus gave him a puzzled look.
"Oh, even out here in these gods-forsaken wastes little happens that escapes my gaze. You'll excuse me if I don't bow, King. King of what, though? That is what I wonder."
"Your army stands astride the road leading into Tygetia," Hurrus said. "Do you mean to oppose my march?"
"Your march? Oh, you mean of this little half-starved group that accompanies you?" He craned his neck to see behind Hurrus. "I didn't see it back there. Where are the rest of your men?"
"Stand aside, Kerraunus. I will allow you to remove your army from our path--"
"You will 'allow' me," Kerraunus repeated with a laugh. "You will allow me? Oh, Brother…I do not mean to oppose you. That implies some sort of struggle. No, I mean to destroy you. Unless, of course, you surrender your little army to me."
"Surrender?" Deon sputtered, straining forward. Half a dozen Snake Men reached for their swords. Hurrus laid a restraining hand on Deon's arm.
"I am offering to take your outlaw band back into the fold," Kerraunus said. Deon's outburst seemed to please him. He loved the threat of blood so near at hand. "I'm guessing your men would welcome it, to have peace and comfort after what you have forced them to endure." Kerraunus scrutinized Hurrus' face. "You are bleeding, brother."
Hurrus felt a drop of blood trickling down his forehead. He wiped it away with a finger, leaving a red smear on his brow. "My men will die for me," Hurrus said.
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