The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  But the Sicel nobleman only shook his head. His face was almost as ashen as his beard.

  “My ancestors have served his since the days when gods walked the earth with men,” he said. “What you ask is a monstrous thing. A monstrous thing.”

  “I will wait until tomorrow, Lord. And then I will know whether this war will have ended or only just begun. If it ends, then all save one may feel safe of their lives. If it does not, the gods will not visit our heads with the blame for the slaughter that must surely follow.”

  He did not reply—I do not think he had the bowels for it. He merely mounted his horse again and rode away. I waited until he had disappeared inside the citadel gates before turning my own steps back to camp.

  . . . . .

  Upon my return to camp I said nothing about what terms I had offered the Sicel nobleman—I merely told them that by the next day I would lay before them my plans for ending the war against Ducerius. It was only to Kephalos that I confided the truth.

  “I would feel safer gambling with another man’s dice than playing this game of yours, Lord.” He shook his head. “You risk much on a slender hope—we all risk much. What will we do if the Sicels defy you?”

  “I have not the shadow of an idea, my friend. Yet I know not what other course I could follow.”

  “Then we can only wait to see if your sedu has at last deserted you.”

  “Yes, we can only wait.”

  That night I did not sleep until the blackest part of the night, just before sunrise, and it seemed I had hardly closed my eyes before Selana, who had been out gathering wood for the breakfast fire, pulled me by the beard to awaken me.

  “My Lord—hasten!”

  Even as I scrambled to my feet I could hear the murmur of many voices and the dull sound of footfalls against the hard-packed earth. I was only one of many who assembled by the camp’s edge to look up and see in the gray light of dawn that the gates of the citadel had been thrown open.

  “What can it mean?” How many times did I hear that question: “What can it mean?”

  We saw soon enough. A single gray horse—did I know it, or was my mind playing tricks?—trotted out onto the road and began making its hesitant way down to the plain. It had nothing to direct it save its own will, for it bore no rider, only a burden.

  Even at such a distance we could make out that that which was tied across its back was a corpse.

  “Callias, ride up and catch its bridle—bring it down here that we may see.”

  He returned in a few minutes, leading the horse, shouting as he rode.

  “By the gods, it is Ducerius!”

  The horse was skittish and its flank was stained with blood. I walked up carefully on its left side and took hold of the dead man’s hair to have a look at his face. It was Ducerius right enough, and they had cut his throat.

  “What can it mean, Tiglath?”

  I turned to my neighbors, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from my heart. I even smiled.

  “It means that the Sicels have decided to make peace.”

  XXXI

  Ducerius’s army, it appeared, had simply no more bowels for a fight. When we marched in to take possession of their citadel, they lingered about in aimless little groups, too cowed even to look us in the face, like men who stood condemned.

  I inquired after the nobleman with whom I had negotiated their surrender and was told that he had died by his own hand in remorse over concurring in his king’s death. I was shown his body—his fingers were stained with blood and were still clutched around the hilt of the dagger that had searched his breast. The Sicels asked permission to bury Ducerius and, at last, his son in the royal vault, and I allowed this on condition that the nobleman, whose name I never learned, might be buried with them. So it was done.

  There was some feeling that these defeated soldiers, guilty of so much evil in the land, should have their ears notched and live out the rest of their lives as slaves. Yet I had given my word that they would be spared, and slavery is as bitter as death, so I would not consent. I did, however, put certain conditions upon their liberty, and these were: first, that they must tear down Ducerius’ citadel so that no stone rested upon another and no king would ever think to reign from there again; and, second, that after their release if any man among them was ever found bearing weapons, he should be put to death.

  In the four days after the battle, when anything was still possible, perhaps the greatest danger had been that the Sicel peasants might rally to the defense of their king and we would find ourselves, the besiegers, besieged. This had not happened. Tullus had done his work well, and the Sicels had stood outside their lord’s quarrel with the Greeks; but after the surrender their headmen came to me, asking what was to become of them now.

  “No, you will not have Greeks for masters,” I told them. “We are all simple farmers and the land is fertile enough to feed us all. Let us live together as neighbors, each people keeping to its own laws. You have the word of Tiglath Ashur, Tyrant of Naxos, that every man’s rights will be respected.”

  Ten days later the Greek assembly met and voted to abide by my promise. I then resigned my authority as Tyrant.

  “Let us have Tiglath as our king,” someone shouted—a cry that was taken up by many voices. “Let Tiglath make of us a great nation that all may fear us and we may live in this land with safety.”

  I rose to speak, holding up my hand for silence.

  “Our safety lies not in the strength of one but of many,” I said. “You won this victory for yourselves, and my share in it is no greater than any other’s. I would not be another Ducerius, and you will not purchase greatness at the price of advancing Tiglath Ashur’s pride. Besides, it is not our way to set one man above another except by the consent of all. As I am a Greek, I disdain to be a king.”

  There was much debate, but at last, when my neighbors saw that I would not be moved, they relented and awarded me instead a pension of ten jars of wine and ten baskets of barley, to be paid every year for the remainder of my life. I was also granted the right to sit in the first row of seats at all meetings of the assembly and at religious celebrations. These were small things, but they were meant as honors and I accepted them as such.

  “Do not let them make of you a king,” my father had said, speaking to me in a dream. “I do not care to think of my son as a king among foreigners—such a thing would be undignified.”

  Was it truly his ghost or only some fancy of my own mind? Was there any difference? Nevertheless, I would honor his wish as if he had spoken with his living voice. I was now a man living as other men, happy to have put all thought of greatness from me, but I was still the son of Sennacherib the Mighty, Lord of the Earth’s Four Corners, King of Kings, and I still had the pride of a prince. I had not refused the Throne of Ashur to be a king at the world’s edge. “Such a thing would be undignified.”

  But men listened when I spoke in the assembly. I had only to rise to my feet to command silence and attention, for my victory over Ducerius had earned me respect. I will not claim that I always carried my point, but I was the first among equals, which is as much as even a king can claim if he is a Greek, for there are limits to how much the Greeks, who have never learned the habit of obedience, will honor any man. It is better thus, and I was right to decline a crown. Those who are truly free have no need of kings.

  So I returned to my farm and was a farmer again.

  And in truth the next year of my life was full of happiness. Our harvests were rich, and mine was the satisfaction wealth brings when it is wrested from the earth by one’s own labor. I had the respect of my neighbors, and I had Selana, who gave me that which no woman had ever given me, a love I could enjoy without self-reproach, a love I could acknowledge to the world, conscious that I offended against no man or god.

  Selana, the peasant girl I had bought on the wharf at Naukratis when she was no more than a child, and yet I valued her above any noblewoman with perfumed breasts who had lured me to her be
d with promises of golden pleasure. In her love there were no dark secrets, no hidden place of treachery. All was as it appeared. With her I was more than happy—I was content.

  But if I fancied myself safely beneath the god’s notice I was mistaken, for the Lord Ashur has a long reach. I knew this the evening Epeios stopped by my house on his way back from Naxos to tell me “of a stranger who has come, a man who speaks a tongue no one has ever heard before, who asked through his interpreter if there was one among us who carried the mark of the blood star on his hand.

  “It seemed to me you should know, Tiglath. He does not make an encouraging impression, so no one has thought to betray you to him, but he has clearly come a long way and he knew where to look for you—I think he will find you out here soon enough.”

  He was still mounted on his horse, while I stood on my porch. I had not even offered him a cup of wine yet. I was glad no one else was about to hear him.

  “Did you see him yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he a finger missing?”

  “I do not think so. I am sure not, for that is the sort of thing one notices.”

  He was longing to ask the inevitable questions—Who is he? What business could such a one have with you?—but he did not. So many among the Greeks of Sicily had things in their pasts they preferred to leave undisturbed that it was not considered polite to make such inquiries.

  “Then let him find me,” I said. I even managed a thin smile, as if the matter were something indifferent. “Perhaps I am not the one he looks for—I am not the only man alive who carries a red birthmark upon his hand.”

  I did not expect him to be deceived, but I was past caring what Epeios thought of the matter.

  “Come down from your horse and break the seal on a jar with me. Think no more of this other matter, for it is of no importance.”

  When he was gone I ate my evening meal, listening in silence as Kephalos offered his nightly description of his exploits during the battle on the Plain of Clonios. I listened, glancing about me, all the time thinking to myself, all of this, this life I have made for myself, this happiness which is so a part of every hour that I am hardly conscious of it, it was all no more than a shadow, a thing that vanishes with the sun, of no substance.

  And I remembered the eagle whose shadow had fallen across me after the defeat of Collatinus—an eagle, flying east, staining my palm an even darker red with his blood. The god’s purpose, it seemed, was about to be revealed.

  The next morning, without a word to anyone, I hitched up our cart and drove it into Naxos. There seemed little point in delaying the inevitable.

  It happened to be market day, and even during the last few hours of daylight the square was crowded. Voices, like coins clattering against the paving stones, cut the silence into little pieces, and the air was rich with the smell of life. The wineshops were doing a brisk business and I traded greetings with old friends and comrades in arms and even men whose faces were unknown to me.

  Everyone, it seemed, was ready to take my hand and to offer me a taste from his jar, and more than a few told me again of the barbarian who inquired after one marked with the blood star, confiding it to me in whispers like a secret.

  Yet the man himself appeared not to be there.

  And then, quite suddenly, he was. As I stood beneath the awning of a wineshop I did not see him at first—I only heard the growing silence as men nudged one another and pointed, letting their conversations die away. I turned, and my heart almost froze within my breast.

  He was one in the middle of life, and by the standards that would apply among the Greeks he was an exotic enough sight. His beard, which reached to the middle of his chest, was carefully plaited, and he wore the elaborate, richly embroidered court robes of a royal chamberlain in the Land of Ashur. In his hand was his staff of office, and from this dangled the silver ribbons which meant his message was for a prince of the king’s own blood.

  I knew him, of course, by sight if not by name. As soon as our eyes met, he bowed from the waist.

  “My Lord Tiglath Ashur,” he said, in a voice that carried to every corner of the square—my friends and neighbors, it seemed, were to be treated to a spectacle—“son and grandson of kings, Prince in the Land of Ashur, attend me, for I bring you the words of your royal brother the Lord Esarhaddon, Lord of the World, King of the Earth’s Four Corners.”

  It was a shock. Whatever I had expected, it had not been this. Even the sound of my native tongue, which I had not heard in years, rolled in my head like distant thunder. For a moment I could only stand and stare.

  “I have no brother who is a king,” I said, when at last I found my voice again. “The Lord Esarhaddon has said I am his brother no more. He has turned his face from me, and he and I can have no business.”

  “Then it is the king who speaks, and it will be the subject who listens. Or do you deny that bond as well, O son of the Lord Sennacherib?”

  I studied his face with bitter eyes, hating him, feeling like a fox in a wooden cage. Did he dare to mock me, this one?

  “Speak then.”

  “Look about you, Lord. The king’s words are not for the ears of common men.”

  I did look about, at the staring faces of the Greeks, and all at once, and of its own will, a fit of laughter broke from my lips.

  “Be at ease, Chamberlain,” I said, still laughing. “The king’s secrets are safe enough. The king bid me hide myself in the dark lands beyond the sun, and I have made a reasonable enough effort to oblige him—there is not another within five days’ journey of this place who can understand a word we speak.”

  “Still, my Lord. . .”

  It was then that I noticed the man who stood beside him, a short, dark, compact figure in the costume of an Edomite. His interpreter, doubtless—but perhaps not entirely trusted.

  “As you wish,” I answered, gesturing toward the entrance of the wineshop. “I am sure the proprietor will oblige us.”

  We were met in the doorway by Timon the Arcadian, the owner, still in his leather apron, who had been just on his way outside to see what the stir was about.

  “Can you oblige us with a little privacy?” I asked him, smiling. He had fought at the Plain of Clonios and was a good fellow.

  “Of course, Tiglath, of course! Take whatever room pleases you,” he said, pointing up the stairs to the second story, where the harlots entertained their customers. “And if any of my girls are still asleep up there, just kick them out.”

  He laughed at this.

  When we had four walls around us and the door was closed, the chamberlain turned to face me, his lips closed as if he would never speak again. He bowed once more.

  “The king summons you home,” he said. “He demands your attendance upon him at Nineveh.”

  I do not know why I should have been so surprised. Perhaps anything he said would have had the same effect. Perhaps I had simply not recovered from my initial astonishment. Yet I found I had to repeat the sentence to myself before I could even grasp its meaning.

  “. . .Summons me home?” I shook my head. “It is my death if I return to the Land of Ashur—it was his judgment against me. I cannot go home.”

  “Nevertheless, he summons you.”

  “No doubt, that he might once again put me within reach of his assassins,” I said.

  “The Lord Esarhaddon guarantees your life, in token of which. . .”

  There was a small linen bag hanging from his belt. He undid it and placed it on a table beside the room’s only window, stepping away, inviting me to examine its contents.

  Inside was a human hand, severed at the wrist and dried in salt until the flesh was the color of harness leather. It was a left hand, and the smallest finger was missing.

  I felt a thrill of horror, without even knowing why, for I had seen many worse things in my life. Perhaps it was merely the nearness of my escape. And also there was in this something of the secret which had been betrayed.

  So the last one
was now accounted for.

  “The king cannot make me come,” I said, almost to myself—the words seemed in place of others that remained unspoken. “His power, even his name, is nothing here. I am beyond his reach.”

  “Yes. Nothing compels you except duty.”

  “I have no duty to Esarhaddon.”

  “But to the king. . .”

  I could have struck him, but instead I turned my back that he might not see how his words twisted my heart.

  “Leave me, Chamberlain. Your duty is done. Return to Nineveh and say you received only silence for an answer.”

  He bowed yet again and turned away. I could hear his footfalls on the stairs. I did not see him again.

  The hand remained on the table where he had left it.

  . . . . .

  As I drove the wagon home, I thought how it would please Esarhaddon to see me thus, a dusty farmer jostling along a rutted country road, on an island the name of which he had probably never even heard. I wondered why he was not content to leave me so, as I was content to be left. I was no danger to him here. It appeared he simply could not bear the idea of having me in the same world with him.

  I put no faith in his guarantee. A severed hand meant little enough, and Esarhaddon had already broken his word on this account—I had fled his realm and still he had sent men to murder me. It might be that the five assassins which my dream had foretold were at last accounted for, but perhaps my brother now felt safe enough on his throne that he had decided he preferred to enjoy his revenge in person.

  And he had the impudence to send for me thus, as if he were recalling one of his provincial governors.

  And that because he knew I would come.

  I was trapped. It was such a jest on me that I felt almost like laughing. Yes, Esarhaddon’s messenger had seen through me—as had his master. I might dress like a Greek, but this incident had been all the god required to remind me that I remained a man of Ashur. I had been an exile for many years now, yet I could not break the habit of obedience—Esarhaddon was still my king.