by Laura Gill
His assistants handled the dead with more consideration than the cart driver, who unloaded the corpses from his vehicle like so many sacks of wool. Of all the indignities the deceased had to endure today, that was the most avoidable. Rusa had spoken to the driver several times about the need to respect the shades of his human cargo, only to have the misanthrope with his rank breath retort, “If you don’t like it, let’s see you fetch the dead yourself.”
Rusa had endured the man’s abuse long enough to have grown a thick skin. “You’ll continue carting the dead because you like the extra rations, and you’ll do as I say and show respect because you don’t want the families breathing down your neck,” he shot back. Blackmail offended his sensibilities, but the hardships the wrathful gods cast before him challenged his integrity. “Were you not in danger of starvation otherwise, I would have dismissed you months ago.”
The driver hawked a wad of greenish phlegm at his feet, but for the time being took noticeably greater care with his remaining burdens. He would, however, forget Rusa’s injunction the moment he had his fee.
That day yielded eight corpses for the grave, including a seven-year-old girl. Rusa regretted the necessity of having to confiscate the dead from their kinsmen. For a time following his appointment, the situation had returned to a quasi-normal state. The scorching wind’s last remaining victims had died and been interred, while others had healed. Families once more buried their own dead; the ditch diggers found employment with civic works. But then, winter lingered on and on, breeding ill humors, and compelling the Minos to enforce common interments again.
Children were especially difficult to bury. Sometimes the families reacted violently, refusing the release the bodies. Other times they followed the cart to the graveside to hurl objects and insults at the gray-clad Registrar of Deaths and his assistants. Did they think Rusa enjoyed his work?
It was just as well, Rusa reflected, that the girl’s kinsmen had stayed home with their grief. He could do nothing about the driving rain flooding the ditch, but he did order his assistants to lower the child in last, that she should be as dry as possible, and not be crushed by the press of adults accompanying her into the hereafter.
“The gods scythe you sinners with disease and death.” Like a vulture, Sammaro’s indignant screeching preceded him. Rusa’s heart sank a little. Although the priest had been detained for disturbing the peace eight times in as many months, the Minos did not have the authority to prosecute him, and, in the midst of all the upheaval, the temple was currently plagued with schisms and heresies.
Would times have been easier had people not known the extent of the casualties? Perhaps not. There could have been no hiding the figures from the priesthood. Fringe elements warred with the conservatives. High Priestess Kapanni could not reconcile the parties with legitimate claims to succeed the late High Priest Selukkos. Rogue preachers roamed the town and countryside, exacerbating the conflict by urging civil disobedience while claiming to speak with the gods. Of these unauthorized, self-proclaimed prophets, Sammaro had become the most influential.
In town, Sammaro gathered followers by the dozens, mostly from among the most destitute and desperate. When there was a funeral, it attracted him like a gadfly to a pile of manure. Rusa had hoped the weather would keep him away, while realizing he should have known better. Sammaro had come to fixate on him almost as much as he did the funerals themselves.
Now, he emerged from the mist, waving his thin arms. Like the bedraggled young priestess, he had steadily grown more unkempt, even feral. He slept in ditches and sheds, sometimes in caves, and like his followers begged for his food. His present circumstances were a far cry from his favored position as priest to the old Minos.
Thank the gods he had come alone. Sammaro often recruited among the disgruntled families of the dead, and on several occasions had incited graveside riots. Rusa’s assistants closed ranks to ensure the unwelcome priest could not touch the dead, while Rusa himself signaled to the priestess to chant and rattle her sistrum harder. He tried to concentrate on the diptych and stylus in his hands, fully aware that none of his measures would drive Sammaro away.
Sammaro shoved his way past the assistants to reach the grave, where he noticed the child right away. “Miserable mortals, repent your evil! The ravens of death gnaw on your children’s bones!” He thrust aside the priestess shaking her sistrum in his face. “Vile woman, servant of perdition. You and him.” He jabbed a skeletal finger toward Rusa. “The destitute perish and you profit.”
The assistants attempted to ignore his ravings and return to their work of shoveling a layer of earth over the corpses, until, wresting a spade from one, Sammaro dashed under the awning, knocked the diptych from Rusa’s hand, and swung at him. “They perish, and you profit!”
Air whooshed past Rusa’s head as he instinctively ducked to avoid the assault. Remaining in a crouching position, he rushed his attacker, slamming into Sammaro’s torso, knocking the breath out of him. They fell grappling onto the muddy ground, Rusa atop Sammaro. Rusa landed a blow against Sammaro’s jaw, while Sammaro’s long fingernails clawed his arms, and scraped the side of his neck. Their struggle became a blur of shouted curses, scratches, and punches. Rusa saw nothing but a wasteland of hideous burns and the yawning cavern of the priest’s mouth with its broken and missing teeth. Sammaro’s breath reeked like the grave. To fight him was to wrestle with the demon that had possessed his feverish brain. Rusa was past caring whether he ended Sammaro’s life, slew a consecrated priest, because the man—the creature—that had chastised, insulted, and provoked him was no longer a man.
Arms suddenly grabbed his, and then his assistants were dragging him and Sammaro apart. Rusa found himself under the awning once more, laboring for breath, and shaking all over. Someone was asking him whether he was all right; he did not know how to respond.
“May worms gnaw your soul!”
Two assistants and the burly cart driver were hauling Sammaro to the edge of the meadow, where they unceremoniously dumped him on the ground. Regaining his feet, he frothed and cursed and gesticulated, but did not attempt to rush back into the fray.
“May madness take you, Dadarusa! May the shades devour your entrails!”
It took all Rusa’s willpower to resist the urge to shout back, because he knew any response would encourage further exhortations, yet nevertheless his anger boiled. How dare Sammaro continue to live and sow discord while innocent children like the young girl in the grave perished!
Sammaro shook his fist once more, then vanished into the mist from whence he had emerged. Rusa remained wary for several more moments, trying to collect his composure as well as his breath. An assistant righted his stool. Another fetched his diptych and stylus from the ground. The wax was smeared with mud, and in places the names of the dead had been rubbed away. He would have to begin again, inscribing everything properly before he could submit the tally.
“Sing again,” he told the priestess of Hekate, who stood peering past his elbow to see what was amiss. He showed her the mussed tablet. “Cleanse this place of his ravings and violence.”
Finishing their work, Rusa and his assistants hastened back to the office, where he instructed them to mull some wine while he inscribed fair copies of the tallies. Iput, the priestess, washed the cosmetics from her face as she waited for him to complete and seal the temple’s copy of the day’s tallies.
“He scratched you.” She gestured to her own neck, by way of indicating the wound. “Better let me dab that with hot wine.”
In the furor, Rusa had not noticed that he was injured, much less that Sammaro had drawn blood. Now that he knew they were there, the scratches started to burn. “I had better report the incident to the Minos.”
Iput dipped a corner of the washcloth she had used on herself into the mulling wine. “And I will tell Head Priestess Poulxeria, so she may file the incident with High Priestess Kapanni. Do you wish to press charges?”
At that moment, Rusa would have liked
to plunge a knife into the troublesome priest. “Will it do any good?”
“Hmm, perhaps.” But she did not sound optimistic, and Rusa preferred not to risk antagonizing Sammaro further. So he thanked Iput for her concern, submitted to her ministrations, and sent her on her way.
As for himself, his assistants insisted on escorting him home, where Dusani exclaimed over his wounds and sodden state. Rusa had cautioned his men to downplay the incident, but they were no match for his determined wife. She subjected them to a thorough interrogation, while the servants hustled Rusa toward the bathroom, where he shed his damp clothes and wrapped himself in a warm towel.
Dusani barged into the chamber just as the women were emptying the last jars of steaming water into the bathtub. “This will not be tolerated!”
Rusa sighed heavily. “I’ve already reported the incident to the Labyrinth, and I will complain to the Minos tomorrow.”
She braced her hands on her hips, a sure sign that she was not going to relent. “That’s not soon enough. He could have killed you!”
“He’s not going to break into the house between now and tomorrow morning.” Rusa stepped gingerly into the hot water. All he wanted to do now was get clean and warm, and collect himself; his plans did not include an argument with his spouse. “Would you stop fretting?” Dusani continued glaring at him from what he considered her angry mother stance, when he was not a child to be berated. “I left him in a much sorrier state than he left me.”
She dismissed the women from the chamber. “I want you to ask for a bodyguard. Kleonikos.”
Rusa reached for the sea sponge. “Kleonikos has been posted elsewhere. And besides, my men can protect me.”
“Because they did such a splendid job of letting that man almost bash your head in?” Dusani strode forward, snatched the sponge from his hands, and knelt down to bathe Rusa herself. “Are you going to force me to complain to the Minos for you? Because—the gods witness this—I will.”
“Thank you, Mother,” he grumbled. The bathwater was clouding from the mud she sluiced from his hair. “I told you I would lodge a complaint tomorrow morning. As for a bodyguard, there’s no point in hiring a Hellene mercenary unless you want him to kill Sammaro.”
Dusani harrumphed, “And I see no problem with that.” Rusa winced as she started scrubbing his shoulders, much more vigorously than necessary. “He’s only allowed to make trouble because the conflict between the temple factions shields him from prosecution. Meanwhile, who protects you?”
Rusa grasped her wrist. “Certainly not you, by the way you’re scouring my skin.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“He’s one man, Dusani. I can protect myself.”
“He’s a madman who apparently believes you’re an all-devouring demon.” Relinquishing the sponge, she rose and fetched a footstool. “Suppose he incites his followers against you? I don’t mean encouraging the families of the dead to pelt you with rocks and insults.” Her voice cracked under the stress of her fear. “I mean real violence, Rusa. Bloodshed.”
Rusa squeezed out the sponge. He had hoped to avoid this discussion. “I will file a complaint with the Minos tomorrow,” he said wearily. “Truly, that’s all I can do.”
Dusani relented enough to help him finish bathing. Once he was toweled dry and clothed, she hustled Rusa upstairs to their chamber to light the bedside brazier and tuck him under the fleeces, whether he would or no. “You should keep an extra set of clothes at the office,” she suggested. “I will offer a prayer to Payawon to prevent you from catching your death of cold.”
Although he did not feel like sleeping, Rusa nevertheless obeyed his wife. “Pressing charges against Sammaro might provoke him into doing greater violence. If I believed the temple or the Minos could do anything...”
Dusani abruptly stopped fiddling with the brazier and went over to her dressing table. She returned with a dagger in a red leather sheath. “The next time he attacks you, you finish him.”
Her vehemence stunned him. Eight months ago, he would have recoiled in horror, ordered her to return the dagger to its drawer and to speak no more of killing a consecrated priest.
Much had changed in eight months.
He took the knife.
*~*~*~*
“That island you call Kalliste is utterly destroyed.” The Anatolian sea captain pantomimed an explosion, to the astonishment of his audience. “Where its sacred mountain ascended to the heavens, the gods have cast it down into the deeps. We sought familiar landmarks, but nothing remained of the towns and groves and fields, only a burnt, smoking wasteland and bits of ruin floating upon the water. Specters haunted the air. We heard their cries upon the acrid-smelling wind, as if from deep under the earth, or from the fathomless depths. And then the thunderous rumbling of the angry goddess who dwells there, she whom they now call Terasia, sent us a further warning.”
“Terasia?” the Minos murmured. Others within earshot echoed his query. Was this Terasia a new immortal, or an old one whom the priests had slighted by neglecting to make offerings?
“The One From Terasos,” the captain explained. “So the Kallisteans call the raging goddess who destroyed their island. A veritable land of the dead, where mortal men must not venture ashore. When we saw the ruins, we unshipped our oars and sailed against the wind despite the late hour of the day, to set as much distance between ourselves and the goddess. There were not even seabirds, nor fish in the lagoon, only rock and choking ash. I swear by mighty Teshub, the very air shimmered with waves of heat. Had we tried to walk upon the shore, we surely would have burst into flame!”
“Even so?” a priest inquired.
The captain, a plump man wearing two sets of gold hoops in his ears, raised a hirsute arm. “So I swear.”
The Minos had invited representatives of the Labyrinth and all his officials to hear the Anatolian’s tale of the cataclysm. Rusa as Registrar of Deaths had secured an invitation, and stood crammed against a pillar beside a steward who sweated rancid garlic. At least he had actually made it into the hall early enough to have a view of the proceedings. Only the representatives of the temple, the Minos’s sons, and the captain had seats beside the hearth. Many stood backed against the walls or even outside the doors, where, jostling to hear, they hushed each other with resentful vigor.
“And you say there is no one left alive in the islands east of here?” Pyramesos asked disbelievingly. For the occasion, he had been persuaded to don rich raiment and jewelry befitting his station. Lady Haduena’s staff had scrubbed the chamber clean, and cobbled together enough good wine and delicacies for the guests who mattered. Everyone else was obliged to supply their own refreshments.
Rusa’s stomach grumbled, despite the appetite-killing stench assaulting his nostrils; he had not eaten since that morning, and then only half a round of bread and a piece of goat’s cheese.
Now the captain amended his statement, by which he had initially captured the audience’s attention. “There is no one left who dwelt by the sea. Those towns and villages, those are gone. Washed away. Sometimes in the hills—yes, on the high ground itself well above the beach, that, too, was inundated. But we did meet a scant number of survivors, wretches half-dead from wounds and starvation, who told us what they saw.” Rusa leaned sideways to escape the overbearing reek of his companion’s sweat; the stench was distracting him.
“All this devastation, they said, occurred in a single day and night. Terasia destroyed their nations. Fire rained down like stars from the heavens. The goddess’s breath set the air ablaze. Burning clouds swallowed buildings and people and animals—all reduced to cinders except those few whom the gods loved. Those were spared. Horribly burned, indeed, their skin blackened and bloody under the rags they used as bandages, and peeling away. They were coughing, half-choked from the ash covering their fields, but alive in their desolation to bear witness so gods-fearing men should take heed. Wretched creatures, without their families or friends or any food to sustain them! Men of Kaphto
r, you are most fortunate you did not encounter them.”
Familiar with the seamen’s exaggerations once peddled by Amanas and Lagish, Rusa wondered how much of the Anatolian’s tale was truth, and what had been embellished for entertainment and shock. He could not imagine anything worse than the horrors he had witnessed in Katsamba, yet this captain from the Luwian lands around Wilusa claimed the catastrophe had been ten times more terrible.
And yet, it was not a new tale. Those refugees who, in the early spring, had flooded westward from Mallia, Gournia and even farther east also told of fiery death clouds and devouring waves racing toward them faster than a man could run—no, even quicker than he could blink. And they, too, had related curious incidents where the scorching winds had bypassed them, yet taken everyone else around them.
Whatever the truth, the Minos wanted a permanent record. On his footstool beside Pyramesos’s throne, Ramush was furiously taking dictation.
“Then,” the captain continued, lowering his voice to effect, “the sea receded from the shore, exposing the very bottom. And then it rushed back in, piling ever higher and higher, slamming into buildings, carrying with it great boulders and mighty ships and all those unfortunate souls lying dead and burnt in their homes. It surged inland with a vengeance, swallowing those who sought the high ground, and salting fields and vineyards. You may well ask: how does a captain from Wilusa know these things, when he is not a god of the sky to survey the earth and gauge the wrath of this terrible new goddess destroying everything?” He shook his thick brown finger, forestalling any voices of dissension. “Ah, but I said there were a few survivors left to bear witness, yes?
“Of those who escaped the fiery winds and raging sea, many went down again to find kinsmen and relatives. They were lost, poor souls, because the waves came again and again, until only a handful remained. It has been the same story everywhere. In the islands, on the shores of the Lukka-lands, in Alashiya, and even west in Ahhiyawa, the inundation spread death. We were fortunate, though. The waves that struck Wilusa were smaller, signs from the gods who loved us.” Smiling through his yellow teeth, the captain pressed a hand over his heart.