by Laura Gill
Pressing cloths to their noses, averting their eyes wherever possible, Anepadu and Ensham started rummaging through the victims’ possessions. Nindani shoved nodules of scented wax into her nostrils, then offered some to Rusa and Naptu. Kleonikos took no precautions at all against the putrefying stench.
“Some of these men were sailors. They bear tattoos of Marineus’s trident.” He prodded an outstretched arm with his spear. Kleonikos hovered over Anepadu and Ensham to make certain they did not abscond with anything. “Hmm, this fellow might have been a Nubian. It’s hard to tell after so many days, when the flesh has bloated.”
Ensham uttered a muffled noise through his woolen mask that sounded to Rusa like a plea to stop making observations. Not that Kleonikos would. The Hellene seemed to take unabashed delight in tormenting those whom he did not respect.
As the laborers dug and the junior scribes catalogued, Rusa retrieved his folding chair from the cart and sat down to wait. Sailors among the dead. If Katsamban fishermen and mariners had deserted the waterfront with their families only to die on a hilltop three miles inland, then Rusa did not hold out much hope for Amanas. His cousin would not have abandoned his ship, even to save his own life.
Naptu chose to assist the other scribes by conveying vessels with their inscribed tallies down the hill for Rusa’s seal. “Over there, look.” He nodded north toward the smaller hill. “Vultures.”
Rusa did not look. When the time came to crest the hill and survey the ruins of Katsamba, then he would see what the scavengers saw. Only by partitioning the desolation, taking each corpse as it came, could he ever reconcile himself to the whole and keep his composure. “I can hear them.”
“I was not expecting to see that.” Naptu referred to the corpses now. “I knew there would be dead, I saw them in Knossos, but not laid out like that.” Rusa had never heard his tutor’s voice quaver as it did now. “What sins have we committed to turn the gods against us with such violence?”
“You did not have to come.”
“I think I did, Dadarusa, for your father’s sake. He would not have let you face this alone,” Naptu observed, quietly and with conviction. “Look at the priestess up there. How does she bear it?”
Nindani’s black robes, blown by the sea breeze, fluttered around her like the wings of some predatory bird as she circled the summit and its grim occupants. The wind carried her chants. Rusa remembered the owl-faced goddess of his dream. “She believes that death is natural and good, and that the corpses we find aren’t so horrible despite the state they’re in, because the people who inhabited those bodies are past their pain. I don’t know about you, Naptu, but I saw nothing up there that was good.”
“Once they are buried, with the right prayers and offerings, that will serve,” Naptu answered.
It took the laborers a day to dig the grave, and another to transport the dead to their resting place. Nindani had brought wine, milk, and votives from the temple to make the offerings, but no provision had been made to ensure all the dead received shrouds. She economized by dividing the linen among whatever children the men found. “They are particularly vulnerable,” she explained. “The whiteness of the linen will help guide the dark goddess to them.”
She would doubtlessly have denied it had he pointed it out to her, but Rusa heard profound sympathy in her voice. For the first time, he wondered if she had children or a husband.
By then, the two scouts had moved on to reconnoiter Katsamba. They returned hours later, white-faced and speechless. It took mulled wine to loosen their tongues, and much persuasion to compel them to describe in any great detail what they had encountered on their mission.
“Horror,” croaked the elder, who could not have been above nineteen. “Death everywhere.”
The younger scout’s hands shook violently enough to slosh hot wine over his hands. “Nothing left standing.”
“Was the town inundated?” Naptu asked. “Has everything been washed away?” His questions went unanswered. The young men were in no state to give coherent descriptions of what they had encountered.
“The stench.” Squeezing his eyes shut, the elder scrunched up his nose. “The dark goddess and her messengers have polluted the place.”
Nindani took exception to that description. “Polluted?” No one acknowledged her objection.
“How many dead did you see?” Anepadu asked.
“Come on!” Larna the overseer boxed the elder one’s ear when he did not reply. He might as well have swatted the air for all the reaction he got. Rolling his eyes, he growled, “Useless.”
No one slept that night, especially not the two young scouts, who sobbed into their bedrolls as they begged their overseer not to force them to return to Katsamba. Not even Kleonikos’s bellowed command to stop their bellyaching had an effect. Then Ensham, his nerves agitated by visions of what lay over the hill, started panicking. Kleonikos cuffed him hard enough to knock him down, and started to kick him where he lay when Rusa abruptly ordered him to stop.
“Give him some wine. Get him drunk.” Rusa gestured to the weeping young men. “Them, also.”
The Hellene exchanged disapproving glances with Larna. “They’ll be useless for tomorrow,” the overseer protested.
“They’re useless now!” several laborers shouted from the darkness.
It took three-quarters of an hour, and a surprising amount of wine, but eventually the three young men were sprawled on their backs snoring. Rusa swallowed an extra draught to fortify himself for tomorrow, though it did not dull his senses as much as he would have preferred. The owl had returned. Its mournful hooting that night left him feeling far more melancholy than usual.
There was a certain reluctance in the way everyone went about their business the following morning. Even the mule balked when his handler tried to lead him on toward Katsamba.
Moving through an inundated vineyard, the party crested the hill and came to a house whose upper stories had collapsed into its rear courtyard. As two older laborers probed the rubble for valuables, they discovered what their cursory first observation had not revealed: people had been on the rooftop at the time of the collapse; the bodies had spilled onto the pavement below. The ruins showed signs of inundation, as the laborers reported seawater flooding the storerooms.
What they found on that hill was a taste of the desolation spread out below. Vultures were thick among the ruins, and the stench of decomposition overpowered everything. Kleonikos groaned as he leaned on his spear. Nindani released a long, low moan. Rusa struggled against a fierce impulse to vomit, to flee, to do anything but step into the wasteland below.
He could do this. If Nindani and Kleonikos could leave that hill and enter that destruction, then he could, too.
He had to.
*~*~*~*
The moment he gained the entryway, Rusa fumbled out of his dirty, smelly clothes, hurled them to the floor, and demanded a hot bath.
Dusani, who had come straightaway upon hearing the commotion, ordered the bewildered servant who had admitted him to fetch a blanket. “Was it truly that terrible, Husband?” she asked.
Rusa raked fingers with dirt-encrusted nails through his greasy hair. He had shed even his loincloth, leaving only his rotting bandages, which he had worn throughout the entire fortnight of his absence. “You don’t know what filth I’ve seen and touched. All death, all pollution.” He had told himself that he would be calm and composed when he returned home and not alarm his family, but the words flooded forth in a burst of emotion. Rusa’s relief at being reunited with his loved ones again warred with the unraveling of his nerves, now that he was free to unwind. “I don’t want to bring it into the house.”
Isiratos, wanting to greet his father, appeared at the periphery of Rusa’s vision. Rusa warned him away with a gesture. “Not now, young man. Later, when I’m clean.”
Getting water heated for a bath took longer than he anticipated, but in order that his nakedness should not be public, he had allowed his wife to persuade h
im to sit beside the ceramic tub and wait for the water to be brought. However much he wanted to hold her, he would not let Dusani touch him except to remove his bandages.
“You didn’t take proper care of yourself at all, did you?” Dusani wore an irritated expression as she bent to remove the large bandage on his back. What came away was a solidified crust of dried honey and dead skin. “At least Payawon heard my prayers. It looks better than it did.”
Rusa found the sensation of cool air moving against his newly exposed skin disconcerting. “Had you been there, you would have kept the bandages on, too. We had no clean water except what we had to drink, and no one else but you does it right. I would have made a mess of it.”
Dusani snorted. “Excuses, excuses.” She had moved on to his legs, undoing each bandage with the tender touch Rusa liked. When he ventured a look, he saw to his pleasant surprise that the mottled, blistered redness of a fortnight ago had faded, leaving a patch of pinkish skin that was white around the edges. Rusa noticed then that the burns on his wife’s hands had healed in the same fashion.
“Are the girls doing as well?” he asked. Isiratos’s burns had been under his clothes, where his father could not see, but from their brief interaction in the entryway, the boy had seemed all right.
“Yes,” she answered softly. “About your father, he...” She hesitated, and tried again. “He passed away the night after you left.”
Having expected the news, Rusa had resolved not to make a scene. He swallowed painfully. “Was it peaceful?” Nindani’s words about dying and death immediately leapt to mind, where he banished them. He did not need a priestess of Hekate or anyone else to philosophize about his personal loss.
“Yes.” Dusani fell silent as a pair of servants entered with jars to fill the tub with steaming water. Once they left, she continued, “Balinaru was there, and Dida.” But her downcast gaze and the reluctance with which she spoke told Rusa that she was holding something back.
“What is it?” he pressed.
Dusani sighed. “There was some trouble with the burial. Balinaru sent some of his masons to open the tomb for the rites, but then they suddenly returned with an official who lectured us about some bureaucratic nonsense, new regulations about burials. He said if we wanted a private funeral we had to submit a formal petition to the Minos. Outrageous!” Agitated, she flung up her hands. “Can you imagine, the Minos interfering in our family business?”
Rusa recognized the same bureaucratic runaround he had encountered when trying to reclaim his father’s belongings. “Has he not been buried?” Or worse, had Yikashata been interred in a mass grave, exactly as Rusa had sworn would not happen? “Did you have to petition the Minos?”
“No,” Dusani answered firmly, and not without a touch of self-satisfaction. “Balinaru and Father couldn’t do anything, and we were getting desperate. Would you believe it was Didanam who resolved everything? Or maybe you will, once you hear what he did.” She dunked a washcloth into the hot water to scrub his shoulders with while they waited for the servants to fill the tub.
“He called on his contacts in the temple and got them to agree to help him by night. Rusa, you’re all tense. Everything is all right now. You can relax.” Except that it was not. Grievous enough that his father had died during his absence, but to hear that the secular authorities had interfered where ritual law prohibited their obstruction made Rusa’s stomach churn with anger.
“What did Dida do?” he demanded to know. Whatever it was, he was sure his unconventional younger brother had done something thoroughly unorthodox and probably ritually offensive.
“He carried your father’s body away in the darkness and buried him secretly in the tomb.” Rusa started to turn around, to order her to send for his brother immediately, but Dusani was quick to reassure him. “It’s all right.” She kissed his cheek. “Everything was done according to ritual. A priestess of Hekate was there to chant the prayers and offer the correct sacrifices, and Didanam and Balinaru poured the libations. And in the morning when the authorities returned to demand we release the body for common burial, we all pretended ignorance. They had no evidence of wrongdoing, they certainly weren’t about to reopen the tomb and disturb the dead to make their case, and so here we are.” She smiled. “Nothing happened, except your father got a proper burial. The gods are watching over him. Now relax, love, and let me scrub you. Father will bring out his best wine tonight so you can offer a libation.”
Once the servants had finished emptying their water jars into the tub, Rusa sat down in the steaming bath and let his wife continue washing him. The water grew cloudy as Dusani scrubbed from him a fortnight’s accumulated filth. Even though the heat stung his healing burns, the discomfort was not unbearable. Rather, it was his internal pain that plagued him. Of all the dead he had had to count and bury, the gods had deprived him of a son’s natural right to bid his father a proper farewell.
Rusa splashed water onto his face to try to forestall the tears, to no avail. Great sobs wracked his body as he wept. Dusani made no comment, but draped a comforting arm around his shoulders and shushed him softly as she did when soothing the children. He felt her lips touch his wet scalp.
Finally, she murmured, “Hush, there, Rusa. There’s no reproach. Yikashata died peacefully. He knew you couldn’t be there.” Her hands described tender circles across his shoulders. “You’re home now. Lie down and get some rest. Eat something. I’ll send for Balinaru. He’s asked about you.”
Rusa was not sure he wanted to see his older brother so soon. The prospect of facing Balinaru, who had been at their father’s deathbed and burial, seemed to him a reproach. “I should have been there.” He wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand. “Everywhere. Every place we looked. Nothing but death and destruction—and, oh, gods, the stench! You can’t imagine.”
Nor did Dusani press him on the subject. “Hush now, love. Put it out of your mind. You’re home.”
Rusa submitted to her ministrations, letting her dry and anoint him, and dress him in clean clothes. His father-in-law awaited him by the main hearth, where the servants had set out bread and wine, yet no fruit or cheese as was customary. “The high priestess has made an announcement advising people to conserve their stores,” Kikkeros explained. “They’re already anticipating shortages in the temple storehouses this winter.”
His brother-in-law Yishana came downstairs to greet him and participate in the thanksgiving libation welcoming him home. “May your days of desolation be behind you, Dadarusa,” he said solemnly, “and may Mother Rhaya smile upon your future enterprises.” Kikkeros and Dusani reiterated the prayer as they splashed the hearthstones.
“May Mother Rhaya watch over my loved ones, and keep them safe,” Rusa answered. “May the goddess in her dark aspect as Hekate guide and protect the spirit of my father, Yikashata. He was the best of men.”
The prayer was echoed, the libation poured, and the ritual concluded. Rusa had no appetite, but forced himself to eat something. Dusani brought out the children. Khasos had grown during the fortnight, and had nothing but giggling good cheer for his father. Rusa wondered whether he retained any memories at all of that terrible morning. The girls were subdued, clutching their fabric dolls. Their injuries were healing, yet as he hugged each daughter, Rusa had to push aside the images of dead children that flashed through his mind. Could they sense what he was thinking, or feeling? “Have you been attending your lessons while I’ve been gone?”
Isiratos took it upon himself to answer for his sisters. “Yes, Father. Aretas is a hard teacher.”
“Harder than Naptu?” Rusa asked amiably. Naptu was down in the servant quarters, where Kikkeros’s steward had found him a cot.
Isiratos looked noncommittal. Rusa nodded his approval, and then offered his eldest child bread and wine.
Exhausted from his trip and burnt-out with grief, he lingered by the hearth just long enough to participate in the household-wide supplication to the gods, which had become a regular ritua
l. Then he retired with the sunset. For the first time in many weeks, he slept dreamlessly and long into the next morning.
He might have lingered in bed into the afternoon, had Dusani not wakened him with bread and wine, and the news that Balinaru was downstairs waiting for him. “Several scribes have also been here to submit their tallies to you.”
Then he recalled the scribes the Minos had sent throughout the land to gather information. More figures to add to the tally of dead he had taken in Katsamba. “I will look through those later,” he answered morosely.
Rusa found Balinaru seated alone beside the great hearth. Balinaru wore his work clothes, and as always his face and arms were smudged with quarry dust. He was not a demonstrative man, but when he saw his younger brother enter he rose, crossed the space separating them and hugged Rusa, who tried to conceal a wince. “Thank the Mother you’re safe.”
“Did you think I was in danger?” The embrace left Rusa winded. Master Mason Balinaru could have smothered a man with his powerful arms.
“Your wife said you were badly hurt by the burning wind. Is it under your clothes?” Balinaru did not bother disguising his curiosity. “Worse, we heard that you’d been sent to Katsamba with Naptu on an errand for the Minos, something having to do with counting the dead?”
Rusa shook his head. “I prefer not to discuss it.” Upon closer inspection, he noticed healing burns along his brother’s hands and arms. He had yet to meet anyone who had not suffered some kind of hurt from the catastrophe. “You’re all right?”
Balinaru took his seat by the hearth. “Only with the mercy of the Mother of the Mountains did I avoid the worst. I was in the storage shed with Ripanna choosing blocks to fulfill an order when the cloud struck. Lady Potnia favored us with her protection that day. Many of the men outside...” He did not finish the thought. “Praise her that my sons were sluggish that morning and dragging their feet. Zuha, well...” He heaved an expressive sigh, mentioning the name of his eldest son. “Velchanos took his hearing with that blast. He can work, but it’s hard.”