by Diana Tyler
From over my shoulder, a man pours water into my cup. “Eat as much as you can. You’ll need your strength.” The voice belongs to Titus, the Soukinoi general.
“Thank you,” I say, taking a drink. “Strength for what?”
“Titus, it’s supposed to be a surprise!” Alexa whines, brow knitted, bread crumbs bouncing off her lips.
“I think I’ve had my fair share of surprises lately,” I say. Titus’s cheek twitches.
“I think you’ll find that Soukinoi life is a continuous stream of surprises,” he says.
“Don’t ruin it for her! Go on!” orders Alexa, shooing him away like a gnat. Titus takes a breath, retaining his composure against the girl’s insolence, and walks away.
“I took the oath,” I say to Alexa. “See! Why must I be surprised?” I raise my hand, wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, and steady it in front of her eyes as she swallows a fat fig whole. She starts to choke.
“Didn’t your mother teach you to chew your food before you swallowed it?” I joke, enjoying her bout of discomfort.
Alexa coughs until the fig is regurgitated and strikes a fluffy biscuit on her plate.
“And didn’t yours teach you not to ruin appetites by waving your bleeding wounds around during meals?!” she retorts. “I was choking because that disgusted me.” She flicks the tender slice in my hand.
“Whatever you say…princess,” I say with an impertinent bow. “Will your majesty ever forgive my boorish, provincial manners?”
Alexa turns to me and takes my hands in her lap, and squeezes them until I wince.
“Listen well, sister,” she starts. “You know I care nothing for manners, only that my brother’s soldiers have enough with which to show some respect. Just because you said a few words and spilled a few drops of blood doesn’t make anyone here trust you. Our trust has to be earned.”
Alexa throws my hands off her lap as the high-pitched sound of sword blades clanging against each other silences the tavern. We both turn to see Titus standing on the centermost table, sheathing his sword and returning the other to its owner seated below.
“Thank Duna he has given us another day, my brothers and sisters!” he exclaims. The Soukinoi clap and cheer, then begin beating the hilts of their daggers against the tables; here the weapons seem to serve a double function as extra appendages.
“Now let’s get on with it! Everybody out except for all psiloi!” Titus yells above the din of energized warriors.
The men and women here may love to revel, but they are not unaccustomed to submitting to authority; we’ve all lived under the Alphas’ boots for too long – taking orders is in our blood. But as I look around at my fellow Soukinoi, I can sense the boiling in their veins, almost hear their fervent heartbeats becoming more rapid, and it strikes me that this entire desert compound is nothing less than a cauldron of that emotion, growing hotter and hotter and bubbling more and more until the day it overflows with scorching violence, making room for a new kind of blood, a free blood…
I push back my chair from the table and stand to leave. Then, taking my cue from the others around me, I collect what bite-sized morsels are left on my plate and stow them into my pouch. Alexa elbows me in the ribs.
“Not you,” she says. “You’re part of the psiloi!”
Psiloi are skilled skirmishers who fight only with daggers or shorts words. Creating chaos is their specialty. Certain I have no choice what my station is to be here under Diokles’s jurisdiction, I take my seat again without debate.
After the crowd funnels out of the tavern, Titus steps down from the table and stands before the ten of us who remain. He places his helmet on the nearest table and pulls from his belt a tightly rolled papyrus scroll and begins to open it slowly, carefully, as if his fingertips might cause the fragile thing to burst into flames at any moment.
“What is that?” I whisper to Alexa.
“He’s going to tell us what our mission is. I don’t know why he needs one of the old Alpha scrolls to do it, though,” she says, well above a whisper.
The other psiloi, uneager to indulge the general’s desire to read from a rotting manuscript that reeks of pagan lore, begin to murmur.
Titus clears his throat. The murmuring stops.
“Diokles gave express orders that this be read to you before your next mission,” he says.
“This scroll records one of the first Alpha myths to ever tarnish this world with its noxious lies and blasphemy. It is perhaps the last copy in existence. We keep it here not to honor it, but to revile it. To let it remind us of the evil against which we war. To fan the flames of righteous anger within us lest they be extinguished through carelessness and complacency.”
Titus’s eyes look straight into mine, then move from psilos to psilos seated around me, kindling the embers within each one of us.
“Read it, Titus!” shouts Alexa. Her fellow fighters drum the table in unison, their fires raging once again.
Titus shuts his eyes and bows his head.
“Almighty Duna, your name means Power, and we acknowledge that all the might and strength and power we possess flows through your hands to ours. Take these fictitious lines of evil and use them to produce in us an unquenchable thirst to avenge your holy name and restore goodness to our land.”
His eyes open and fall upon the scroll. He begins to read:
“Prometheus, great Titan god, a prophet of guile and grace,
You took pity upon humanity and defied Zeus to his face.
When you brought fire down from heaven, you supplied mankind with power;
The moment history crowned you Hero became your darkest hour.
For Hephaestus chained you to a cliff, and then did Zeus deliver
A ravenous eagle to attend your side, gnawing always at your liver.”
I watch Alexa as her mouth hangs agape, its corners pulled slightly upward into a puckish smile; I’m sure the gruesome image is one she’d love to see up close…
Titus lifts his eyes and begins rolling the scroll back up again.
“I won’t go on,” he says. “There isn’t any need – ”
The psiloi interrupt his words with dissenting groans, craving more of the macabre mythic tale. I find myself joining in, hoping to hear how terribly poor Prometheus was made to suffer…and if he was ever given pardon.
Is the Alpha’s Zeus a god of forgiveness as our Duna is said to be?
“Nor is there any time!” Titus yells.
The grumbling trails off as all eyes watch our leader walk to a shadowy table in the corner and retrieve from it a small clay tablet. He carries it back to us, protectively holding it against his chest so that our curious eyes cannot pick out a single letter.
“I read to you of the grim fate of Prometheus because that is the fate our judge has sentenced for a traitor close to our midst,” explains Titus.
Our silence urges him to go on.
“This man is a priest at an oasis eight miles north of our station here. His beliefs and those of his followers stand in direct opposition to our own.”
The hilts of knives begin to beat thunderously against the tables.
“They want us to lay down our swords and devote our days to prayer. They want us to tame our tongues and speak only of a nebulous peace that never comes. They want us to avert our gaze from injustices and blasphemy and pretend none of it exists...”
The psiloi cannot contain their indignation and begin to hiss and bellow curses. Some stand in their chairs and drive their swords and daggers toward the sky, ready to journey north at this very moment.
“Who is this man?” demands Alexa. “And what is his fate?”
Titus opens his mouth to answer, but hesitates, staring down at his boots. Then slowly, he looks up and turns the tablet toward us, revealing the name of the Soukinoi’s next target:
Ειρηναίος.
“Ireneus is his name,” he says, quickly ridding his lips of the words like rotten food.
The noise dies sud
denly. Every sword and dagger lowers. Even Alexa sits still, and speechless, and I wonder what it is I’m missing.
“Ireneus?” questions a psilos to my left. “He’s a Eusebian, a great – a great student of the Oracles…” His sentence stumbles, then fades into a dead end of confusion.
“Yes. It is the same man,” confirms Titus. “With this mission, Diokles desires to make it known that the Soukinoi will not tolerate heretical leaders, not even those who are among our own people.”
Titus looks at me again. From beneath his tough soldier’s shell, I see the faraway look of sorrow emanating from his copper eyes. Perhaps he cannot be surprised, but he can be moved, even if it is only to pause and consider the cost of war, to let his heart be rent, just for a second, as he realizes how easily, how insidiously, it can turn a people against itself.
His eyes still on mine, Titus discloses the rest of Diokles’s plan:
“Our judge commands that our most recent oath-taker, Iris, unleash the traitor’s punishment: a Gryphon to rip Ireneus limb from limb.”
“Are you surprised?” Alexa whispers.
I have no response for her, only a vacant stare produced by the lukewarm emptiness floating in my veins - neither hot nor cold, neither impassioned nor antagonistic. I feel only stagnant ambivalence, the sense of being swept into the action of a dream, the battles of which I’ve been content to experience vicariously through unconscious specter’s eyes, but must now don armor for, and find out it is no dream at all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GRYPHON
Apsilos named Lycus is assigned to lead our mission. We follow him in somber silence up the Serpent’s Path which winds laboriously from the desert floor to the imposing peak of Ēlektōr’s summit four-hundred meters above. I was told by Alexa that the plateau itself is the Soukinoi fortress. The temple, she said, “is retribution for the Alphas. They defiled the Temple in Eirene with their unclean sacrifices; we will create catacombs of theirs, filled with the bones of their Guardians.”
My blood races as I think of Acheron, whose bones I will soon bury there.
An hour into the ascent, I hear the shrill, ear-splitting sound of an eagle calling from the heights above. We all press our fingers against our ears, but the cacophonous song of the Gryphon still slips through.
“Hear that, Iris?” yells Alexa. “She beckons you!”
“Why doesn’t your brother have the apostate priest tied to a stake right here? That wretched sound is torture enough!” I yell back, my head feeling as though it could explode if the piping notes continue much longer. The other psiloi laugh until a cascade of wind comes rushing down the mountain.
Lycus trudges on, holding his cloak before him as a shield. I feel coarse grains of sand begin to hit my face and pull my cloak up as well, sacrificing my ears to the Gryphon’s unbearable keening.
At last, we reach a massive wall made of unwrought limestone boulders. In its center is the threshold to the fortress, a stone portal measuring at least ten feet wide and ten feet high. Above the lentil stretches a long slab supporting a triangular relief of two stone gryphons that face each other with unfurled wings and frightful wide-open beaks. Two watchtowers stand across from one another on either side of the gate; a pair of sentry eyes looks down on us from each one.
The sentry closest to the gate signals to some unseen guard below, and moments later the giant double door opens. Lycus nods at the guard above and in we go, closer to the thing emitting those accursed shrieks. But as we enter the gates, the Gryphon goes silent, perhaps placated by the discovery that the ten psiloi it spied half an hour before are not trespassers, but unannounced guests.
The plateau is a small city unto itself, replete with storehouses, pigeon coops, barracks, an armory, and cisterns filled with rainwater. Around us, hundreds of Soukinoi men and women go about their duties like diligent bees buzzing about a hive. A group of women gathers water and returns it to their living quarters between the walls surrounding the fortress. Teenaged boys covered in coal dust carry mud bricks and hammers into a nearby smithy, while younger brown-skinned boys sit atop wooden crates chiseling arrowheads in the sun.
Just half a mile from the gates lies an immense palace that is situated strategically on the westernmost edge, overlooking the desert like an impenetrable cloud bank hovering high on Mount Olympus. Staring up at the palace’s courtyard walls, I notice the rounded iron dome of a colossal structure perfectly resembling a birdcage.
Cages that big do not exist, I think.
Then I see a gigantic, piercing yellow eye press itself firmly against the bars to get a better look at its visitors, and suddenly I am thankful for whoever forged that gargantuan cage.
We enter the courtyard and regard the ancient winged creature, one of the few still soaring the skies of Petros, and doing the bidding of both Python and the Alphas’ most powerful men. But now, I see, even a few bold Eusebians have managed to conscribe one for their own clandestine purposes.
The Gryphon must be no shorter than twelve feet. Its two rear feet are like a lion’s, tawny, broad, and heavy-looking, while its forefeet are that of an eagle’s, vivid orange and tipped with black, razor-sharp talons. The animal sits motionless upon a wooden platform that stretches the length of the cage; all that moves is its tufted, leonine tail hanging below the platform, swinging languidly from side to side in a smooth, hypnotic rhythm.
Lycus and another of the psiloi, the strongest of the bunch, step forward and stand to the right of the cage’s enormous log which serves as a latch across the door frame.
Please don’t open that.
“Great Gryphon, I am Lycus, captain in the Soukinoi army of Diokles!” Lycus announces, bowing his head in obeisance to the formidable bird.
The Gryphon’s tail ceases its swinging as two charcoal wings start to twitch and rouse out of their dormancy. The creature cocks her snow-white head toward Lycus, and I watch as a thin, translucent membranous lid slides across each of her eyes; when the lids recede, the bird expels a blaring shriek that reverberates inside my chest and creates goose bumps on my flesh. I lean against the wall as the Gryphon’s wings break away violently from its body, the full span of them cut short by the cage’s rattling bars.
Not to be made a mouse of this hostile half-lion, Lycus lifts his chin and places his hands on a cage bar. The Gryphon tilts her head curiously and jumps down from the platform onto the lowest level to inspect this brave interlocutor. Her hooked yellow beak slowly descends upon Lycus’s hands and presses against them…a subservient kiss…
The eight of us stand in a line along the wall, not talking, not even Alexa. All of our eyes are locked on the awesome animal and the privileged colloquy she appears to be having with our captain. Though the bird doesn’t speak, she seems to register every word Lycus says, responding with an intelligent nod of her head, an excited flutter of her wings, a favorable wave of her tail.
After a few minutes, Lycus motions to the stout psiloi standing nearby and together they lift the log and drag it forcefully away from the door frame.
The Gryphon pounces out of her lair like a lion, then takes to the skies like an eagle, gliding and diving and drifting through the bright blue dome of Petros, relishing her freedom from iron bars. I wonder how she came to serve the Soukinoi, and why she chooses not to fly back to her former territory and leave us, the desert zealots, without our foremost weapon.
Perhaps she enjoys being the weapon, I think.
As the Gryphon makes her descent, I am convinced that my hypothesis is correct. As she lowers her head, arches her wings, and reaches her talons for the sand, she lets out an exhilarated shriek, and I know that I am looking not upon an enslaved animal made to murder against its will, but an amenable assassin who lives to savor the taste of death.
One of the psiloi at the end of our line pulls the sack off his shoulder and carries it toward the Gryphon. The bird, evidently familiar with this particular soukinos, leaps toward him, causing him to jump back in fear.
<
br /> Before his shaky fingers can pull open the bag, the Gryphon’s beak is plunging into it, edaciously removing slimy strings of sepia-colored earthworms and eating them whole. I cringe as I see the scale-covered, white and black body of a viper drop from the writhing cluster of worms. It slithers only a few feet toward the nearest shadow before the Gryphon’s paw thwarts its escape with a hard, merciless stomp. Her beak whips the snake off the ground, swings and shakes it like a child’s plaything, then swallows it down with a satisfied cackle.
“I’m supposed to control this animal?” I whisper to Alexa beside me. She points her finger toward the eastern wing of the palace, and I see Lycus and his helper emerging from it, their arms draped with thick leather straps and a metal, basket-like device filled with holes.
I give Alexa an inquisitive look, but, clearly amused by my show of ignorance, she offers no explanation, only smiles haughtily.
The Gryphon chirps happily as she sees Lycus and the strong psiloi approaching her. She retracts her claws and lowers her head onto the sand as if in surrender to our puny army. The two men begin pulling the metal apparatus onto the Gryphon’s face, and I realize that they are muzzling her. They attach the leather straps to either side of the muzzle and slide the reins over the monster’s neck. Then Lycus turns to me.
“Iris. Today you are the Gryphon’s keeper,” he says. “This is her first mission in a very long time. You should feel honored.”
I don’t move a muscle. I don’t make a sound. Not until Alexa pushes me forward.
“Wha – what am I to do, Lycus?” the words tumble out of me.
“The Gryphon knows what to do. All you must do is pretend you are Athena, goddess of justice,” he smiles. “We will meet you there to take care of the others.”
The psiloi laugh as Lycus bids me come closer. He kneels, interlaces his fingers to form a step for my foot, then helps me onto the Gryphon’s back.
“And hold on tight.”
I take the reins as Lycus yells, “Away!” sending the Gryphon lunging up and into the air and my body backwards, sliding toward the tip of her right wing.