The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  Tullus worked at his dinner with sullen concentration. I had watched him watching the Greeks at their drill, and I knew what was in his mind. He thought of his murdered father, and he dreamed of fighting in this battle that must come and of taking his vengeance. Such thoughts were dangerous in one so young.

  When the meal was over I summoned him to me.

  “I wish you to do me a service.”

  “Lord, I am yours to command,” he answered, almost resentfully.

  “Yes, but this is not a service that one man may command of another. And, besides, you are not a Greek and nothing obliges you to make our quarrel your own.”

  His eyes brightened at once.

  “You would have me fight?” He drew himself up very straight, but still he was only a boy, hardly reaching my breast. “I will gladly fight, and you will find me no coward.”

  “Any fool can be a soldier,” I said, “but if you do as I ask, and succeed, you will move Ducerius closer to his destruction than any man in the front line of battle.”

  He was disappointed, yet he said nothing, waiting.

  “You know the chief men among the Sicel peasants, those to whom the others will listen. Go to them. Persuade them to withhold their support from Ducerius, or at least to wait and see how things go with him. Carry this message to them: that Tiglath Ashur, Tyrant of Naxos, wishes only that Greek and Sicel might live together in peace, that after Ducerius there will be no king over them, nor will the Greeks oppress them.”

  “Only this, Lord? Only to speak your words? This is nothing.”

  “It is not nothing, Tullus. I need at least the neutrality of the Sicels, for this war may not end with a single battle. And you must be very careful—if the king’s soldiers find you, they will certainly kill you.”

  This made him happy. I had made the thing dangerous for him, and so he was pleased. He nodded his acceptance.

  “Go tonight, under the cover of darkness. Travel by foot and stay away from the main roads. Do not return here. I will know whether you have succeeded by how things fare with Ducerius.”

  He was gone as soon as the moon rose, and I had the pleasure of thinking that there was one at least who would be alive when the world had been won or lost.

  “You have sent him away?” Kephalos asked. “That is wise. It would not, however, be wise to send me away as well.”

  I had not even heard him approach. I turned around to find him standing behind me, clutching a rolled-up blanket in his arms. When he saw he had my attention he knelt down on the ground and unrolled the blanket. Inside were a leather corselet and a sword.

  “I purchased these in Naxos, the morning of the same day I went to the temple of Hestia to take fire to relight the hearth after Ganymedes’ death. I mean to fight with the rest when we meet the king’s army. I will not run away or shame you in any way—do not deny me this, Master, for it is a thing I must do.”

  “You have no experience of war, Kephalos. Nor have you trained.”

  “You forget that I was conscripted as a soldier at Tyre when your father’s armies besieged the city, and I still remember a few things. Besides, I have for many years served one whom many call the greatest soldier living. No man will put himself at risk by standing beside me in battle.”

  “I would not have you killed then,” I said. “You are my oldest friend, Kephalos, and I cannot do without you.”

  “I cannot do without this, Lord. I must do something to avenge my dear boy’s death. I cannot stand apart.”

  His eyes pleaded with me. I knew it was a wicked thing to do, but I knew just as well that he would never be whole again if I refused him this chance.

  “Very well—but if you let yourself be slain, Kephalos, I will never forgive you.”

  He began to say something, but a sob caught in his throat so he merely embraced me, gathered up his war gear, and went back into the tent to find his rest.

  Perhaps tonight he will be quiet in his heart, I thought.

  It was long past midnight when I lay down myself. Selana had been waiting for me, knowing how I would need her, and even as I lay in her arms, even as sleep closed over my mind, I thought I could hear Death flapping her black wings.

  XXX

  Every morning Ducerius sent out an armed patrol of ten or twelve riders to survey the perimeter of our camp, this as much as a display of strength, to intimidate the Greeks and to show that he did not regard himself as being under siege, as for any tactical reason. And every morning we had let these patrols go uncontested, for until we were ready to engage the Sicel army directly I saw no point in wearing away our strength with pointless skirmishes.

  Today, however, was to be another matter. Today I intended to provoke the king into battle. And, since the gods always oblige those who court danger, I succeeded better than I could have hoped.

  It was no more than a quarter of an hour past dawn, while the ground was still covered with mist, that the Sicels, twelve men in splendid war gear and mounted on twelve matched black stallions—not common soldiers these, so who could they be who rode out like the king’s guard on parade?—cantered down the road from the citadel gate and onto the Plain of Clonios. The lead horseman, clearly their officer, was a particularly grand specimen, for his leather corselet sparkled with a hundred little silver disks and his beard was elaborately curled and glistened with so much scented oil that a dead man could have smelled it at fifty paces.

  “By the Mouse God’s navel, what a peacock!” exclaimed Diocles. “It is easy to see that he fancies himself, and who can blame him?”

  “I only hope he is quarrelsome as well as vain.”

  For our problem was to provoke a fight. We needed an incident to force Ducerius into taking the field, something that his self-esteem would not allow him to ignore. We needed to shame him into battle.

  We had eight riders of our own and thirty-five foot soldiers arranged in one small battle square. Diocles and I stood next to each other in the second rank, and I took the outside position so that I could remain in contact with our cavalry, who, since they would be no match for the enemy horsemen, were under orders to stay to the rear unless things went very badly. Thus we could challenge the Sicels, taunting them with our presence, but we could not force them to engage if they were not inclined to it, since they only had to ride away. Nothing would serve if Ducerius was a prudent man, willing to wait, but I did not have that impression of him.

  Every morning the Sicel patrols followed the same route, around the base of the great stone hill upon which Ducerius’ citadel was built and across a kind of no-man’s-land separated from the Greek encampment by a ravine that had held no water within living memory. At the edge of this ravine they would stop and peer across at us as if trying to decide which among our women they would take as their share of the booty after they had killed all the men—this, needless to say, had a very unsettling effect, which was doubtless their intention.

  We were waiting for them on the far side of the ravine, and it was from there that we trotted out to try provoking the Sicel horsemen into a fight. Thus we reversed their accustomed route so that the wide track of hoofmarks they had etched into the dust over so many days was partially obliterated by our sandalprints.

  After some two hundred paces we stopped. They were just beginning to make their wide turn onto the plain and we would be directly in their way. Now they had either to face us or to go around.

  They began to trot straight for us. I kept expecting their horses to break into a gallop, but they did not. It was as if they were merely curious to inspect some harmless, inanimate object they had found unexpectedly in their path.

  “Are they really such fools?” I found myself asking—a trifle surprised at the sound of my own voice. It had been a mistake to speak thus, for I could sense a flutter of apprehension passing through the men. Now I had no choice but to take the offensive.

  “Well—if they are in such a hurry to die, let them. Archers ready!”

  We waited until they wer
e within range, then I dropped my arm and a throbbing of bowstrings filled the air with arrows. Two of the enemy riders fell from their horses, dead or wounded. There was a moment of confusion, and then the rest, chastened, retreated to a safer distance.

  At last the Sicel patrol gathered in a little knot. From a distance they seemed to be debating among themselves what they should do next. The two groups stood facing each other. We seemed to have reached an impasse.

  And then—and it was a remarkable piece of folly, the sort of defiant gesture one might expect from a child—the Sicel officer drew a little forward of his companions, drew his sword and flourished it in the air.

  “It is well known the Greeks make war like women, hiding behind each other’s skirts,” he shouted. “There is more honor to be had in spanking a saucy harlot than in killing the whole lot of you.”

  What was this about? I wondered. Did he imagine this to be a game?

  “Not one among you has scrotum enough to come out of hiding and fight like a man.”

  He laughed, mightily pleased with himself, and he flourished his sword a few more times above his head. I doubt he ever imagined that anyone would accept his challenge.

  There were ugly mutterings among my Greeks, but for myself I was highly pleased. I took three javelins from my quiver and handed the rest to Diocles.

  “What ails you, Tiglath?” he whispered through his teeth, grabbing me by the tunic when he saw what I intended. “Have you suddenly gone stupid?”

  I only smiled. Diocles was always worrying that I would get myself killed. His face crumpled with something like grief, and he released me.

  I stepped out from the battle square and into the open, feeling almost naked.

  “You had best put that sword away, little boy, before you cut yourself!” I shouted. “Or perhaps your mother dulled the edge before she let her baby play with it.”

  A few of his soldiers, apparently understanding a word or two of Greek, laughed, and the officer’s face darkened with anger. Since he had been fool enough to have picked this quarrel, he wouldn’t have the sense to back away now.

  I ran seventy-five or eighty paces to the side, far enough that I was no longer covered by my own men’s weapons but still close enough to get back if the Sicels charged me in a body—I did not, however, think they would do that.

  “I am waiting, Pretty One.”

  He needed no further encouragement. Goading his stallion first to a trot and then to a canter, he began angling toward me, cutting this way and that, trying to get in close before he charged and made himself a target for my dart.

  I waited. I had played this game before.

  As I had thought he would, he crouched down by his stallion’s neck as he urged him to a gallop, letting his sword swing back to front so that it would catch me like a hook. I suppose he imagined I would wait there patiently until he killed me.

  A spring to one side saved my life. I scrambled to my feet, and as the Sicel officer, realizing that I had evaded him, started to bridle in his horse, I set myself for a throw.

  An old soldier would have kept his horse to a run until he was well clear. He would not have straightened up to look back at me. But this one, clearly, had fought all his battles on the training field—it simply hadn’t occurred to him that the initiative was not entirely his own.

  I let myself uncoil like a snake. The javelin left my hand, arching through the air, and then fell. Its point went straight through the Sicel officer’s bowels.

  He slid from his horse’s back as if his legs had gone dead, but he was still alive when I walked up on him, clutching with both hands the javelin that was sticking out just below his belt, as if he might have been trying to keep it from moving. As I stood over him he looked up at me with glistening, pain-filled eyes, his face bathed in sweat. His lips formed some word that he no longer had breath to speak, and then, suddenly, he was a corpse.

  Their horses nervously stamping the dusty earth, the Sicels watched and argued among themselves in excited words which, at that distance, faded away to nothing. There was no predicting what they would do now—they hardly seemed to know themselves—but it was not a moment to be left exposed on open ground. I gave a signal and in an instant our own horsemen surrounded me, and Diocles led the foot soldiers over until we all stood about staring at the body of my vanquished adversary.

  “In the name of the deathless gods, Tiglath, do you have any idea who this is you have killed?” It was the Boeotian Cretheos who spoke.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “By the Mouse God’s navel, he’s right, Tiglath!”

  Diocles pushed his way forward and peered down into the dead man’s face.

  “I saw him not a year ago, when Ducerius came down to Naxos harbor to welcome some Italian ambassador—this is Volesus, the king’s son, his sole heir!”

  “You mean, he was. Hah!”

  I shook my head, but little inclined to laugh at Cretheos’ wit, as I remembered the burning of the chaste tree and marveled at the god’s cunning.

  “That means the line of succession is broken,” I said, almost to myself. “Already Ducerius has begun to pay for his impiety.

  . . . . .

  We carried Volesus’ body back to camp with us, and the sun was still two hours from its zenith when an emissary came down from the citadel bearing a flowering tree branch in token of truce. I met him outside my tent, with the black stallion, my rightful prize, tethered only a few paces away. I knew what the man sought, and I had already considered what answer I would make.

  “The king my master wishes to know what ransom you will accept for the corpse of his son,” he said. He was an elderly chamberlain dressed in the black tunic of a mourner, and he regarded me with doglike eyes as if he expected a kick.

  “You may tell your master that I will take no ransom, that he will not have his son’s corpse back, not if he offered me the whole of Sicily for it. Tell him that I regard Volesus as having sought this death, for no one but a man sick of his life would have hazarded it against Tiglath Ashur, the son and grandson of kings who would have put a ring through Ducerius’ nose and fed him on scraps from the tables of their slaves. Tell him further that Greeks do not offend the eyes of the immortal gods with a suicide’s funeral rites, and thus Volesus’ corpse will be burned at night and his ashes will be scattered over the sea.”

  The old man was so horrified at this that for a long moment he altogether seemed to lose his power of speech. Finally he reached up and dragged his hands over his beard, giving the impression he needed to be reassured it was still there.

  “That which you contemplate is an offense against all decency,” he said at last. “The Sicels do not burn their dead, and for a thousand years their kings have been buried in the royal crypt. Would you deny the Lord King his right to pour out offerings of wine and honey over the body of his only son? Is not your vengeance satisfied that my master will now be the last of his line?”

  “My vengeance is satisfied, but that of the gods is like the dry sand that will drink tears forever and know no end.”

  “Then at least might I be allowed to see the prince’s corpse, that his father may know the manner of his death?”

  “Of course.”

  I had already ordered the funeral pyre built, at a spot not far from a gully that was being used as the camp’s refuse pit—a fact which was not lost on the king’s emissary. The dead prince, stripped down to his loincloth, lay on a bed of logs, ready to receive the torch. His belly was still bathed in blood, and the wound under his rib cage was large enough that a man might have slipped three fingers into it.

  “An hour after sunset,” I said, “I will light the fire with my own hand. Then Ducerius will never know if the dust the sightless wind blows in his face might not have mixed in it the ashes of his own son.”

  “Is there no way then my master can reclaim the Lord Volesus’ corpse?”

  The old man’s voice was full of tears—the gods knew what wrath he faced when he
returned—and I pitied him. Yet one to whom the lives of many have been entrusted must learn a certain shamelessness.

  “There is one.”

  We could still see the walls of Ducerius’ citadel from where we stood, and as I glanced up at them I found myself wondering if the king might not even now be watching us from his battlements. I found the idea strangely distasteful.

  It was almost with relief that I turned back to his emissary.

  “As I have said, I will stay my torch through this day. The Lord Ducerius has that long to win back his son’s corpse by the might of his hand.”

  As I watched the old man ride back to report to his master all that I had said, I thought, It is decided. He cannot refuse now, or he will be shamed forever. Before the sun sets, the deathless gods will have chosen between us.

  . . . . .

  It was three hours before sunset as we ranged for battle across the empty plain. Every man knew what we risked on this one throw of the lots. Save for the wind, whispering through the dry grass like the voice of prophecy, there was hardly a sound.

  The horses seemed aware that something was about to happen. They snorted tensely and changed their footing, making the chariot rock back and forth, back and forth, so that I had to hold them in check with the reins. We all waited, men and animals alike.

  And then, at last, the great gate to the citadel opened out and columns of men began to file through and down the road to the plain. Very quickly we could see that this was not a patrol in force but an army. Ducerius had taken the bait.

  They came down in rows of four abreast, and the first had almost reached the plain before we saw the end. At the very least four hundred men, about fifty of them mounted and the rest on foot. In his determination to crush us, the king held nothing back.

  There is little enough that one can tell from the mere appearance of soldiers, and a commander watching his enemy must always beware of seeing only what he most wishes or fears to see. I saw an army of seasoned men, confident, even arrogant, expecting to make quick work of us and to be back in their barracks for supper. This might be good or bad, depending on how the Greeks stood the first shock of battle.