The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  I could not answer. What could I have said, since most probably he was correct and both of us would be corpses within a day or two? I felt helpless and ashamed. There was nothing I could do except put my arm around him for comfort and wait until his fit of despair should pass off.

  And at last it did. He was calm once more, as if resigned. We rested for two hours and then stood up, took a swallow of water each, resumed our tunics, and started out again on our journey to death.

  It was perhaps an hour later when I noticed an odd shape against the horizon, like a rain cloud hovering just above the ground.

  “Do you see that?” I asked. Kephalos shaded his eyes with his hand and peered in the direction I indicated.

  “What?” he replied, as if annoyed. “What is there to see?”

  “I can’t be sure.”

  I lied, for I did not wish to say what was in my mind. We walked on. We stopped again, and looked again. This time I knew that we both treasured the same hope, yet we did not speak it. Half an hour later we could see it quite clearly.

  It was a clump of palm trees.

  “Dates,” Kephalos whispered, with profound reverence. “If there be dates. . . We have not eaten in two days and more.”

  “A tree cannot grow without water,” I said. My heart seemed to be melting in my breast. “I would settle for that.”

  We did not reach it for nearly two hours, and there were no dates. But there was water.

  “This is fine,” Kephalos sighed, bathing his face in the warm, stagnant pool that fed the trees. “This is luxury. Now if a man could be spared but a single morsel of food. . .”

  But there was no food to be had. There were not even any animal tracks around the muddy banks of the water hole, so we refilled our skins and set out again as soon as the sun was down.

  Several hours later, in the darkest part of the night, we halted again, stretching out on the dusty earth and falling asleep as if in our own beds. There was no wind, and the ground kept the sun’s heat, and we were weary. I have never slept so well as I did during those brief rest stops in the Wilderness of Sin.

  Perhaps an hour before sunrise I was awakened by a most peculiar sound—a sound familiar enough to all save those who have spent their lives in cities, but one I never expected to hear in this desert. I did not even recognize it was first. It was the throaty cooing of birds.

  I lay quiet, listening. I could not believe it. Then, as the gray dawn broke, I saw them—quail, hundreds of them, wandering about on the sand, searching for food.

  I sat up, expecting them to take wing in alarm, but they did not. A few of the closest scurried away, but the rest seemed to ignore me. They had probably been migrating from one watering place to another and exhaustion had forced them down—that was why they did not fly. Like us, they were starving.

  “Kephalos, wake up.” I put an arm across his chest and covered his mouth with my other hand, lest he start awake. “Wake up. Your prayers have been answered.”

  As soon as he had grasped the situation we stripped off our tunics and, after weighting down the sleeves and hems by knotting them around small stones, used them as nets to catch the helpless quail. With every throw we would capture two or three, then wring their necks and try again. Even in this extremity, the birds could hardly summon the strength to run more than a few paces, and it was a simple enough matter to keep them from scattering too widely. Before we were finished we had some fifty of them.

  Kephalos, resourceful man, took pieces of flint and iron from a small leather pouch he carried by a string about his neck. We had merely to skin and gut the birds, gather enough dry brush for a fire, and roast as many as we could eat—together, we managed about thirty. Their flesh was full of oil and very good, but I think we were hungry enough to have eaten discarded sandal leather with relish. When we were sated, we roasted those that were left until the carcasses were quite dry and hard. These we put in a sack made by pulling off one of the sleeves of my tunic and knotting both ends. They would last us for three or four days at least.

  “A wise man could live forever off the bounty of this paradise,” Kephalos said, as we set out again. “There is food and there is water, and one learns the vanity of luxurious pleasure. I fancy I will be much improved, both in body and spirit, for having made this journey—always assuming we do not perish before we find the next oasis.”

  We laughed at this for, with food and water to last even a few days, we imagined ourselves invulnerable to death, as if we had won a victory over this Wilderness of Sin and held it as our private garden, even if, finally, it did conquer us. Thus wonderful is the folly of man.

  Yet we had not the place quite as much to ourselves as we imagined, for it was the very next day that we encountered the golden-haired giant.

  . . . . .

  The morning sun had already risen high when, after climbing over a long line of sharp-edged boulders that crossed the desert like a scar that had been left to heal of itself, we looked down and saw what could only have been described as the site of a small battle. On the plain below us were scattered the bodies of some five men, their swords lying uselessly nearby, and near as many camels. Some of the camels were still alive, and screaming in their death agony, but the men were corpses, split and bleeding, hacked open from shoulder to crotch. They made a messy sight.

  The battle, it appeared, had been fought to something like a draw, for a few hundred paces farther off, still mounted on their camels, rode three more men who wore the dress of the nomads I had seen in Arabia’s Place of Emptiness, pacing nervously back and forth as if uncertain what to do next.

  And in the center of the plain, squatting in the sand to catch his breath, holding in his hands a monstrous double-bladed ax, rested the obvious author of this carnage, the most enormous man I have ever seen.

  “Wait here while I see what this is about,” I said. Kephalos obeyed willingly enough, and I proceeded down the rock-strewn slope to level ground.

  At first this giant’s gaze never left the ground in front of him. He seemed not to notice as I approached, as if too weary to care, or too lost in his own musings. His bare arms, for the coat he wore had no sleeves, were as thick as another man’s legs and streaked with blood from wounds there had been no time to see to. Then, when I was still some distance from him, his eyes snapped up and he rose to his feet. He raised the ax, held like a wand, and scowled his defiance. I thought my last moment might be upon me.

  As I am taller than most in the Land of Ashur, by so much was this one taller than I. But his great size was not merely a matter of height, for his chest and shoulders, even his neck, were thick with heavy muscles that showed quite clearly beneath the skin. Never, it seemed to me, had there been a mortal man with such huge hands. He might have made three men, and had the strength of ten.

  His hair grew long and was swept back and, like his beard, was precisely the color of wheat, so that it resembled the mane of a lion. His eyes, shining narrowly in his strong, tanned face, were blue, and with them he watched me, not moving, silent.

  This wild giant was such an arresting sight it was several seconds before I realized that, stretched out on the ground behind him, was the corpse of another man, clearly not one of his nomad antagonists. The dead man’s arms were folded over his breast, as if for burial, and he was dressed in a rich tunic of blues, reds and yellows, made after the Tyrian fashion. He might have been a wealthy merchant, although I do not think he came from Tyre—he too had wheat-colored hair, although resembling his companion in nothing else, and the men of Tyre are dark.

  The names and conditions of these two men, and how they had come to be in this place, were a mystery, and a mystery they have remained to this hour.

  My intrusion, for some reason, seemed to embolden the men on their camels. While I was still some distance from the giant and his dead companion, one of the nomads broke away from his comrades and began to ride toward me, first at a walking pace, as if to test my reaction, and then, as I stopped and wait
ed to see what he would do, gradually faster.

  When he drew his long, curved sword he made his intentions plain enough. I was the easier victim, a man on foot, armed with nothing but what might have looked to him like a walking stick—my sword, hardly a cubit long, could count for nothing—so he would try his luck with me. It was so pathetic a mistake that I could almost have pitied him.

  I allowed him to come well within range, then dropped back with my right foot, raised my javelin, and let fly. It arched and fell, like a bird of prey, and caught him full in the belly so that he slid from his camel with his hands still tangled in the reins. He took little enough time pouring his blood out onto the thirsty ground, and then he was dead.

  I ran over and pulled my javelin from his guts. Had I been a bit quicker in my wits I might have caught the camel, which would have been worth something, but it bolted and ran before I could come near.

  That was all the dead man’s friends needed to see. They turned and rode away, leaving the field to me and the silent colossus who had watched it all with cold, measuring eyes. I approached him now, feeling no more confident of my reception.

  When we were some fifteen or twenty paces apart, I stopped—it was as close as I cared to venture. I pointed to the corpse of the man behind him.

  “Was this your master?” I asked, first in Arabic and then in Aramaic, and at last in Akkadian. In no case did my question elicit any response.

  Barring Sumerian, which in any case would hardly have served, I knew only one other tongue, so I asked once more, this time in Greek: “Was this your master?”

  To my intense astonishment, the narrow blue eyes flickered in recognition, and he put his left hand on his chest and bowed.

  “Then you are from the western lands,” I said, merely stating the obvious.

  The giant once more silently indicated his assent.

  “What has brought you so far from your home?”

  My question was answered by a gesture toward the dead man—this, it seemed, was judged sufficient.

  “Can’t you speak, or do you not choose to?”

  But I might have saved myself the trouble of inquiring. He merely continued to look at me, as if I were no more a living thing than the very stones.

  “Then we shall leave you now. I bid you good fortune.”

  I gestured to Kephalos, who made a wide circle around us, and we continued on our way. I tried to dismiss this strange adventure from my mind. A few hours later, Kephalos touched my arm.

  “Look, Lord—see what he has done!”

  I turned around, and back in the distance were visible the smoke and flames of a great fire.

  “The giant savage seems to be burning the corpse of his master,” he went on. “He must have spent all this time collecting the dry brush to do it.”

  We watched for a while, and I confess I found the sight inexplicably moving.

  It was Kephalos who suggested the probable origins of so strange a being. That night, while we halted to rest for a few hours, I told him everything that had happened.

  “And you say you spoke to him in Greek, Lord?”

  “Yes, in Greek. I tried all the other languages at my command, and Greek was the only one which would serve.”

  “Oh—well then.” Kephalos leaned forward, planting his hands upon his thighs as if to consider the matter. “It follows he must be a Macedonian.”

  “What race, then, are these Macedonians?” I asked. “Do they have a land to call home, or are they wanderers like the Scythians?”

  “No, they have a land, Master. It is to the north of the main Greek peninsula. Good farming country in the mountains, I am told, but an inhospitable climate with bad winters—that, you know, will mark the character of a people.”

  Kephalos’ eyes wandered about in the moonlit darkness, as if wondering who might be listening.

  “They are a primitive nation, the Macedonians,” he went on. “I would hazard the guess that this one was a fairly typical specimen, although certainly on a larger scale. The people there tend to hardiness.

  “He did not strike me as a congenial companion, so I am just as pleased we have seen the last of him.”

  But Kephalos was mistaken. The next day, even as we searched for a place to hide from the noontime sun, we crossed a ridge and, looking back, saw that a lone rider was following us. I did not have to guess who it might be.

  That night we took turns keeping watch—I half expected him to come down on us in the darkness, and the memory of that ax did not make me anxious for such a visit. But he did not come. The next day, an hour or so past noon, we again caught a glimpse of him, less than a beru behind us. I decided we had played this game long enough.

  “We will stop here, and we shall await his pleasure. Whatever he wants of us, let us find it out sooner rather than later.”

  Within an hour, he came into sight. I took my javelin and stuck the copper point into the ground.

  “If he comes in peace, all is well,” I said. “But if he feels himself somehow offended, then he will learn that, big as he is, he too can die.”

  At last the great golden giant was close enough that we could hear the sound his camel’s padded hooves made against the dusty ground. He dismounted, tied the reins around the head of his mighty ax, and left his camel tethered thus while he came on foot.

  We stood facing one another. His face showed nothing and he did not speak. Then, suddenly, he knelt before me, and I understood.

  “You would follow us, then?”

  He shook his head. Finally he pressed the fingertips of his right hand against my breast, and his eyes held their own question.

  “You would follow me, then?”

  I had my answer, without a word spoken.

  “Then so be it,” I said, gesturing for him to rise. “Have you a name? By what do men call you?”

  He shook his head once more.

  He is like the great beast man in the legend, I thought. “The locks of his hair sprouted like grain, and all who saw him were numb with fear, for he was mighty.” He is like the companion of great Gilgamesh.

  “Yes—Enkidu,” I said out loud. “You must be called something, and that is as fine a name as any.”

  And if ever destiny showed itself in a name, it did in that one, for, while I was no hero of legend, Enkidu, whose voice no man ever heard, followed me through many adventures in many strange lands and was my friend and my preserver to the very hour of his death.

  . . . . .

  We were many more days in the Wilderness of Sin, time enough to form some more definite impression of this strange colossus who now answered readily enough to a name from legend. It became apparent that he was no less quick in his wits than other men, for all that he could not or would not utter a syllable. Yet there was no denying that he was set apart, not only by his silence and his great size and strength, but by an almost feral apprehension—not the slightest sound nor the most distant object escaped him. If there was a spring of fresh water about, he would find it. If the dead earth held anything that might sustain life, he knew where to look for it. Once when we were close to starving he discovered a riverbed, dry perhaps for years, and cut a hole in the stone-hard mud. From this he pulled a nest of snakes that fed us for two days. I will always believe that without him we should soon have perished in that terrible waste.

  He was, so far as I was ever able to determine, a being empty of carnal passions, tenacious of life yet utterly without fear of death. The fixed and ruling principle of his character seemed to be loyalty, and that as absolute as the god’s own purposes. I never knew the tie by which he was bound to the man whose corpse we found him defending that day in the Wilderness of Sin, nor do I know why he then chose to transfer his ceaseless vigilance to me—perhaps it was nothing more than that I was the first to happen by and to show myself not an enemy—but after that it never wavered.

  And best of all, Enkidu had put us in possession of a camel.

  “It is a pretty creature, is it not?�
�� Kephalos asked, grinning. “I will keep my vow, and you will never hear me speaking ill of this or any of its race. My Lord, I think now we may flourish.”

  And flourish we did, for a camel places a comfortable distance between a man and his own death, and that was the only conception of prosperity the desert allows a man to hold. When our own water ran out, we could force a stick down the beast’s throat and make it disgorge that which it kept stored in its belly—rank and nasty stuff, but still drinkable even after five or six days. We had recourse to this extremity before we finally escaped from the Wilderness of Sin.

  Beyond the main plateau there were first ravines, vast, deep and empty, some of which obliged us to follow their course for many hours before we discovered a crossing, and then there were mountain ranges, one before the other, like waves upon a troubled sea. These were many times so sheer that we had to look for passes, and more than once we found ourselves confronted with a blank wall of stone, or a chasm the bottom of which was hidden in darkness, or some other obstacle that forced us to retrace our steps and search again. We were ten more days, resting infrequently, eating and drinking little, and traveling as much as possible by night, before we saw another sign of human presence.

  And then, suddenly, there it was, no more than one long day’s march ahead of us: a tiny settlement of stone buildings beside an oasis. Even at such a distance, we could just make out the shapes of men walking about in that calm, random way that implies carelessness of danger. They appeared to us very little less than gods.

  Really, it was only then that our many days of suffering seemed to weigh on us, and I remember wondering if my legs could possibly be made to carry me all the way to this distant paradise. My strength seemed to drain away at the mere sight of it.

  That final day was the hardest. Yet at the end we were rewarded with fresh water and the sound of a strange human voice—and a sight of the most extreme human misery. We had arrived at a copper mine, manned by slaves and run by a small contingent of Egyptian soldiers, a group of whom watched us silently as we stopped beside the oasis’ water hole.