“I’m suggesting, Princess, that we admit reality. Tomorrow Petronius will ask to parley, because he’d rather negotiate a surrender from us now than needlessly lose any more men. And we could kill more of them if we chose to fight, but how many of us would survive if we did?”
The queen raised her voice now from where she sat silhouetted by the fire. “If we treat with the Romans from this position of weakness, there is little good we can hope to gain from any treaty. They will demand whatever they want and leave us only those lands they deem too much trouble to hold.”
“So what, then, are you suggesting, Your Majesty?” General Harsiotef asked deferentially.
“I am suggesting we pray that the gods show us how to make all of our lands more trouble than they are worth to Rome. But if they do not do so before tomorrow’s negotiations, then I suggest we agree to what we must and prepare for years more of slow, painful war.”
The council broke up shortly afterward, no one happy with the queen’s decision but no one offering a better one. Tari and Naga retreated to the rope-strung wooden cot set up for her under a spindly thorn tree. But she could not sleep. She had proved herself today a worthy warrior of Apedemek’s, but what good had it done? She was priestess of the god of war, yet not only was the war lost, so too, it seemed, was the peace.The greedy Romans and their aloof, arrogant gods would swagger over their land, treating a civilization thousands of years old as if Kushites were uncouth barbarians.
What kind of warrior priestess was she if she let that happen unchallenged?
Before the idea could become solid enough to seem ridiculous, she slipped from under her blanket; quietly donned her kilt, tunic, and shawl; and, leaving her armor untouched, strapped on her sword. Beside her, Naga, despite the rigors of the day, radiated tense, fierce energy.
The Kushite guards let Tari pass when they recognized her and her companion, and soon the two were slipping like shadows through the day’s gruesome battlefield toward the celebrating Roman camp. From her higher ground, Tari scanned the fort’s buildings, the surrounding campfires, and the torchlit wharf area. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she prayed that Apedemek would let her know when she had found it.
It was the river wharf that drew her, and she veered that way. Fewer sentries were posted there than around the fort, and praying for her god’s hunting stealth, she managed to evade them. A number of Roman boats were drawn up to the pilings, where crates and bales of supplies had been unloaded onto the dock. But some things were now being loaded onto boats as well. What, she wondered, could those be at an hour when every Roman should have been sleeping or drunkenly celebrating victory? She saw a tall cloaked man overseeing the loading, a man as pale and hawk-nosed as most Romans. She recognized him as the man Netak had pointed out to her— the hated Roman prefect governor, Petronius. Clearly he was taking great pains to ship some things away before tomorrow, when negotiating Kushites might see them.
Then torchlight gleamed off a patch of bronze where a bundle’s wrapping gaped open, and Tari knew.
The statues. These were the statues of Roman gods and emperors that the Kushites had captured in last year’s victories, the ones taken to the great temple as divine offerings. The statues Kinidad had died defending. Petronius was trying to spirit them away before the fact that the Romans were stealing them back could inflame the Kushites. But in that he would fail.
Tari crouched as low and tense as a hunting lion. Slowly she and Naga inched forward. Petronius, it was said, spoke Egyptian, and as an educated Kushite she did as well. But now he spoke to the workmen in his own barbarous language. Tari didn’t need a translator to understand his orders to unwrap the statue and redo the bundle.
In the torchlight, Tari saw the life-sized statue of a man. These pathetic Romans, she’d been told, had mere human forms for gods, unlike Egyptians and Kushites, whose gods shared the power of animals. This creature was a weakling compared to her own lion-headed warrior god, Apedemek.
Tari smiled, and before the workmen could move, she leaped among them. With a fierce swing of her steel sword, she sliced off the statue’s hollow head. It bounced nearly to the feet of the astonished Petronius. Tari lunged for it, wrapped it in her shawl, and fled into the night.
Yelling erupted behind her, and a startled horse whinnied somewhere ahead. Tari swerved that way, hacked at a surprised guard, and, wrenching the horse’s tether from a picket, leaped onto its bare back. The animal bolted off, spurred on as much by fear of the lion running beside it as by the rider’s urging.
Soon Tari heard mounted pursuit. She first thought to take her trophy back to camp, but she couldn’t bring angry mounted Romans down on her sleeping people. Instead, she directed her mount into the desert.
The waning half-moon had risen in the east, and in the clear, dry air its light washed the rocks and gravelly ground with liquid silver. She looked over her shoulder. Three mounted figures pursued her. Laughing joyfully, she knew she didn’t care. This was her land—the desert, the abode of lions, the realm of Apedemek. She felt his closeness as she never had before. He would guide her in life and in death.
The chase wore on until Tari noticed there was only one rider behind her. Had the others fallen, or had they gone back for reinforcements? She didn’t care, but rode on and on until the clouds mounded along the eastern horizon blushed with dawn. Then, as the sun god reared above the cloud bank, her horse, blinded or exhausted, stumbled and sent her rolling over the gravel to the base of a bare rock outcrop. She staggered up and limped toward the horse, but it shied and trotted off. A gust of wind whipped sand into the air as the lone rider bore down on her.
In the gold light of an oddly clouded dawn, she saw his face. Petronius.
Wearily he dismounted and, sword drawn, walked toward her. “The head,” he rasped in Egyptian. “Give me the head of the divine Emperor Augustus. You have desecrated a god!”
“This is a god?” Tari laughed. “Our gods are not so easily humbled. This is their land; they draw strength from it and will not let you claim it no matter how many hollow statues you set up.”
Petronius halted at the sound of her voice. “A girl?”
Clutching the bronze head, Tari backed toward the rocks. “A princess, sister of the man you killed, heir of Kush and priestess of Apedemek.”
The man laughed. “Woman warriors—one weapon Rome does not have. But holding you should help our bargaining position.”
Trying to keep her voice steady, Tari continued to back away. “Any treaty you make will fail if you try to hold land that is ours. Your empire is a bloated monster. Kush is one bite too many.”
Petronius ran a tired hand over his face. “True, in time every empire finds limits. But I am to fight for mine until they are reached. We have not found them here.”
He stepped forward, but halted at the sound of a low growl. On the rocks above Tari stood a massive lion. Advancing clouds had dimmed the light, but Tari cast a grateful glance at what she thought was Naga, then realized that her lion was beside her. The huge lion on the rocks growled so deeply that the ground seemed to shake. Other lions appeared, striding from behind rocks or out of the cloud-darkened desert.
In the ghastly light, Petronius suddenly looked as pale as sand. Tari, dark and confident in contrast, drew her own sword and advanced.
“Go back, Roman. This is not your land. Draw your empire’s line where your pathetic gods can hold it, and leave us be.”
The Roman stepped back a pace; then, glancing over his shoulder, he stopped and smiled in relief. “Brave words, Princess, but more Roman soldiers are nearly here, and not even your storm clouds or unnerving beasts can turn us back.”
That was when the storm hit. A massive desert sandstorm crashed down, choking the air with blinding sand, windblown sand that cut through skin and clothes like merciless arrows. Tari crouched back among the rocks. She heard nothing but shrieking, the shrieking wind and human shrieks beneath it. She saw nothing but dark shapes moving
in the roiling air. Shapes of lions, perhaps, or perhaps the looming shape of a man, a man with a lion’s head, wielding two vengeful swords.
Three days later, representatives of Rome—their forces newly depleted, it was said, by a freak sandstorm and an attack of wild beasts—met with the queen, the heir, and the counselors of Kush. The foundations of a treaty were laid down. Rome would extend its empire only to the ancient border of Egypt. Territory to the south would remain the lands of Kush.
When, months later in Rome, the Emperor Augustus questioned his general on the treaty’s lenient provisions, Petronius was reported to have rubbed the healing claw marks on his cheek and answered, “When the gods tell men their limits, a wise man listens.”
Tari returned to Meroe. In time she ruled it long and well, with Netak as king by her side. But before that, when still a young warrior and priestess, she buried the bronze head of the Roman emperor at the threshold of the temple of Apedemek. It lay there for millennia, an offering of thanks and a promise to the protector of her land.
PAMELA F. SERVICE
PAMELA F. SERVICE grew up in Berkeley, California, where she developed an early passion for science fiction, fantasy, and ancient history. Her degree from UC Berkeley was in political science with an emphasis on Africa, but that emphasis soon moved back in time. When she relocated to London, newly married to Robert Service, her field of study was ancient African history. She completed her master’s degree and spent a season in Sudan on an excavation at Meroe, the ancient capital of Kush.
Returning to the United States, Pam and Bob settled in Bloomington, Indiana, where she went into museum work and politics. During seventeen years as a museum curator, twenty years on the City Council, and the raising of daughter Alexandra, Pam also channeled her many interests and her love of the unlikely into writing for young people. She has by now published twenty books and numerous short stories and articles—a mix of history, fantasy, and science fiction. Today Pam lives in Eureka, California, where she continues her work as a museum curator, a political activist, and a writer for young people.
Her story “Lioness” combines her own experiences and studies of Sudanese archaeology with her desire to create fiction that shines light on the events, myths, and personalities of the past. Much in this story happened, much might have happened; the joy of fiction is the freedom to interweave the two.
THUNDERBOLT
Esther Friesner
HE TOOK ME TO ATHENS. I hate Athens. It sprawls like a bird-dropping over some of the meanest, least promising land in all of Greece. Just about the only things its fields can raise are olives, vases, and philosophers. He carried me up the narrow pathway to the citadel where the royal palace stands and set me down by the courtyard well, then took a step back and grinned as if he’d given me half of Mount Olympos for a birthday present. I wonder whether he wore that same self-serving grin right after he killed the Minotaur? No matter what he did, Theseus, king of Athens, was always so very proud of himself.
“Welcome home, Helen!” he declared, spreading his arms wide. He’d sent a runner ahead to announce our arrival, so there was a crowd assembled to greet us—slaves, guards, servants, and others who had no choice in the matter. They all sent up a small, dutiful cheer. Only Theseus’ mother, Lady Aithra, sounded as if she meant it.
I looked around. I wasn’t impressed, and I didn’t mind saying so. “What a midden. I thought you were bringing me to the royal palace of Athens.”
Theseus scowled at me. “This is the royal palace,” he said. There was something dangerous in his voice, but I was still too angry to pay attention to things like that.
“Hunh!” I snorted as loudly as my favorite mare. “In Sparta, we’d use a place like this to stable the king’s third-best horses.”
That was the first time he slapped me. He hit hard. I staggered back from the blow, and I think I would have tripped on the hem of my gown and taken a tumble if not for Lady Aithra. She moved with the grace and silence of shadow, suddenly there at my back to catch me. My face stung and tears tried to escape my eyes, but I reminded myself that I was Helen, princess of Sparta, and that it didn’t matter if I was only fourteen years old, this man would never see me cry.
“Child, apologize.” Lady Aithra’s voice was soft and gentle, but I could hear the urgency behind her words. She knew her son’s nature better than I did. My mother, Queen Leda, often complained I was a hasty girl, prone to act first and think afterward, but this time she would have been proud of me: I fought back my first impulse, which was to spit in Theseus’ eye. Instead I bowed my head, just as if I were some spineless little slave girl.
“I’m sorry,” I said, staring at my dusty feet.
He didn’t respond right away. He must have imagined that I meant my apology, that I really was afraid of him. I’m sure he drew out his silence because he thought it would make me squirm. He was a fool. In Sparta we know how to deal with our enemies. If sometimes we let them believe that they’ve won a battle, it’s only so we can study their tactics and weapons long enough for us to win the war.
We are never afraid.
At last I heard him chuckle, almost the way my father, King Tyndareus, does just before he gives me a present or a treat. When I hear that laugh from my father, it makes me smile. The same sound from my abductor was wrong, and the anger burning in my heart filled my mouth with bile.
“That’s better,” he said. “That’s a good girl. I forgive you. You’re probably tired from our journey. Girls are too weak to endure hard travel. Mother, take her to your room and help her get clean. Order food and drink—only the best for my bride—and have your slaves fetch her fresh clothing worthy of Athens’s new queen.”
I felt his rough hand come up under my chin, forcing me to look at him. I already knew every curve and crease and scar of that hated face. I’d had more than enough time to commit it to bitter memory during our headlong race from my beloved Sparta to this flea-fart of a kingdom. When he grinned at me, I recalled the tame baboon that a wandering Egyptian merchant dragged into my father’s court, except the baboon smelled better.
“Perithos and I have some business to attend to, but when that’s settled and we return, you and I will be married. Now smile for me, sweet Helen, and maybe I’ll bring you back a pretty present as a wedding gift.”
I couldn’t smile. I tried, if only to hurry him on his way and be free of him. I had things to attend to myself, things that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish if Theseus hung around. I wanted him gone, but I couldn’t smile. The best I could do was to twist my lips so that they must have looked like a pair of earthworms with stomach cramps. Theseus wasn’t pleased by my disobedience. He slapped me again. This time he did it harder, and so suddenly that Lady Aithra never saw it coming and couldn’t catch me. I fell on my rump in the courtyard.
“Spartan barbarian,” he snarled. “You should count yourself lucky I’ve brought you to rule a civilized land!”
I met his scowl with one of my own. The gossips claim that I am not King Tyndareus’ daughter, that my royal mother took Zeus of the Thousand Thunderbolts for a mate. I love my father, Tyndareus, and hate the gossips who try to dishonor him with such stupid lies, but when I scowled at Theseus I was Zeus’ daughter in truth. I put all the black ferocity of a storm cloud into my face and imagined I could make my eyes shoot flashes of heaven’s own fire. It worked. The fool-king of Athens actually blanched just a bit and took a step away from me, but then he recovered his nerve and was angrier than before.
“Mother!” he shouted, even though Lady Aithra was standing right there. “If you can’t teach this wildcat some manners by the time I come back, you’ll wish you had.” With that, he turned his back on all of us and stalked away.
Lady Aithra helped me to my feet, her eyes sad as she surveyed what her son had done to my face. Her fingertips were smooth and cool as they traced the spots where his heavy hand had fallen. I would have a bruise or two, but they’d probably heal before I could find a proper m
irror anywhere in this crude excuse for a palace.
“You must forgive him,” she said, her voice soft as the breath of a summer’s breeze through a barley field. “He has a king’s temper.”
“With respect to you, Lady, my father is a greater king than your son will ever be,” I said, bearing myself stiff and tall, the way I’d seen the priestess of Demeter stand before the holy altar of the goddess. “He says that if a man can’t govern himself, he shouldn’t govern others.”
That made her gasp and dart her eyes fearfully in the direction of the doorway through which Theseus and Perithos had vanished. Did she think he had a god’s heightened sense of hearing, or had he simply terrified her to the point where she could no longer think of him rationally? Had he struck his own mother? It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
“Princess, please.” It was painful to hear so much fear in a woman’s voice. “Don’t speak so rashly. If he should learn of what you say—”
“He will,” I replied. “He must have spies throughout these halls—all kings do, even the stupid ones. I want him to know what I think of him. What will he do about it? Hit me again? But then he might leave a mark that won’t heal. I doubt he’d risk that. Do you think he stole me from my father’s house because I’m so wise, so skilled at the spindle, the loom, and the needle, such a wonderful teller of tales to pass winter nights?” I laughed. “I’m a girl! I listen to the winter stories and I haven’t lived long enough to gather any wisdom worth the name. As for my handiwork, my royal mother tells everyone that I couldn’t make a worse showing if I spun and wove and sewed with my feet. Lady, there’s only one reason why your son made me his captive and wants to make me his queen: I am beautiful.”
She stared at me as though I’d uttered blasphemy. O gods, spare me; not another woman who’s been trained to scorn her own looks. How stupid! And how tiresome to have to hear such women go on and on about how their hair is too straight or too curly, their skin too dark or too light, their bodies too bony, too fat, too soft, too hard. Why do they do it? Power is a queen who carries many spears. Beauty is only one of them, but I suppose these silly women don’t dare touch any weapons for fear of what their men might think.
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