Eve of the Serpent

by Jon Jacks

  Under the ferryman’s orders, Gilgamesh cut down one hundred and twenty trees, fashioning them into punting poles. In this way, they reach Utnapishtim’s island. Here Gilgamesh is challenged by Utnapishtim to stay awake for six days and seven nights – but a mist of sleep soon drifts over him.

  Utnapishtim said to his wife, ‘He’s seeking to overcome death, yet cannot even conquer sleep.’

  So each day, Utnapishtim’s wife baked a loaf of bread, placing it by the head of the sleeping Gilgamesh. When Gilgamesh was finally woken by Utnapishtim, he claimed he had only just fallen asleep: but the seven loaves, in various states of decay, proved otherwise.

  Even so, Utnapishtim took pity on Gilgamesh.

  ‘Take Gilgamesh to the washing-place,’ he commanded the ferryman, saying to Gilgamesh as they launched the boat and boarded it, ‘I’ll reveal a secret, a mystery of the gods. A plant grows under the water, with a prickle like a thorn, like a rose, that will wound your hand. If you succeed in taking it, however, then your hands will hold that which restores a man’s lost youth.’

  Hearing this, Gilgamesh let a sweet water current carry him out to the deepest channel. With heavy stones tied to his feet, he sank down to the waterbed, where he saw the plant growing. It pricked him as he took it in his hands, but when he cut the heavy stones from his feet, the sea carried him and threw him onto the shore, returning him via the gate through which he had come.

  Spying a well of cool water, Gilgamesh went to bathe, unaware that a serpent was lying deep within this pool. Sensing the sweetness of the flower, the serpent rose out of the water and snatched it away, immediately sloughing its skin and returning to the well.

  ‘Did I wring out my heart's blood for this: nothing?’ Gilgamesh wept. ‘Now the beast of the earth enjoys it.’

  Gilgamesh watched the stream carry it away, taking the plant of life back to where he had found it.

  ‘I found a sign,’ Gilgamesh wailed, ‘and now I have lost it.’

  *

  Chapter 28

  After the long journey home, with all its necessary boringly tiresome stops to ensure the king wasn’t suffering too much, most of the men were exhausted as they approached the stockade.

  Prytani had frequently invited Tamesis up to share her saddle with her, the horse only shying a little nervously the first time, but settling down once he realised the little vixen meant no harm.

  The doors to the stockade were open. There isn’t a full moon tonight, Prytani thought: there’s no fear of any attack from the werewolf.

  Far off to one side of the stockade, Prytani saw flames and trailing smoke rising from the great circle of stones that stood there, all signs that a ceremony was taking place. Despite her own exhaustion, she would have liked to walk over there, to take part. She found herself wishing for this all the more when she noticed the boy heading across the low hills towards the circle.

  Nechtan was busy tending to the king. She might be able to slink off for a while, without him noticing. As the column unpacked and dismounted in the yard, however, her resolution deserted her: Nechtan was glancing her way every now and again, checking that she was still with them.

  The princess and her attendants rushed out of the main hall to help the injured king down from his horse. They fussed over him, wrapping him in furs, the princess taking particular care as she hugged him warmly in greeting.

  ‘My lord, my lord! What have you done? We received your messenger earlier, and have prepared your bed to help your recovery! But how badly–’

  The king stopped her with a mocking, harsh guffaw.

  ‘I’m not an invalid, woman! How did this damn messenger of mine inform you of what happened yesterday at the Battle of the Ford to the Netherworld?’

  He looked about him, as if searching out the messenger from all the other villagers clamouring around the unpacking column.

  ‘Didn’t he tell you of my great victory? My amazing heroism? Killing five of a Dead Legion! This is what the tale he told you should have been about! This is how the tale will be told many, many years from now!’

  He grabbed the princess about the waist, pulling him towards him lustfully despite the faltering wheezing of his breath.

  ‘I’ll recover from my injuries soon enough,’ he growled. ‘And in good time for our wedding night tomorrow too!’

  ‘Come come, my lord! If you’re still struggling for breath tomorrow night like this, yes, I’ll be taking you to your bed; but only to ensure you’re relieved of your pain as soon as possible!’

  ‘My pain?’ The king stepped back from her, glaring furiously. ‘And why is that, my lady, that I suffer pain after my battle? If I’d had Siren’s sheath, do you think I’d have suffered any injury at all?’

  ‘Perhaps the sheath could now–’ Nechtan began hopefully, only to be curtly interrupted by the Princess.

  ‘Naturally, the sheath doesn’t work in that way!’ she declared imperiously. ‘It prevents injury to its wearer: but, of course, it can’t cure any injury sustained by anyone else.’

  ‘Now you tell me, woman!’ the king chortled bitterly. ‘All the more reason why you should have allowed me to wear it!’

  ‘My lord!’ The princess’s eyes widened as if hurt, bridling at what she obviously thought was an unfair accusation. ‘I was under the impression that you and your men were going out hunting! Not waging war on the dead!’

  She moved quickly across to the king’s horse, expertly withdrawing Siren from the sheath strapped to the harness. The blade sang a sad lilt that immediately blossomed into an ecstatic refrain as an attendant rushed forward with Siren’s real sheath.

  As deftly as if it were a well-practised move, the princess slipped the sword into the sheath being held by her attendant.

  ‘There, my lord! And there it should stay, keeping you safe until our wedding night!’

  King Cadeyrn grinned hugely.

  ‘I suppose I can wait.’ He gave a rich chuckle. ‘It’s only tomorrow night anyway!’

  ‘Good! I don’t want you receiving any more–’

  Like everyone else around her, the princess’s head whirled. There had been a terrified shriek from just by the stockade gates. More horrified screams immediately followed it.

  The men unpacking their mounts, the women and children who’d rushed forward to greet and help them; all began to edgily move aside, clearing a way between them. Even the horses shuffled nervously aside, whinnying, shying, some of the men having to hold tightly to their reins to stop them rearing or bolting.

  A man unhurriedly walked through this parting of the sea of people.

  He was a warrior, wearing the heavily padded jerkin, the helmet, and carrying a spear with a softly fluttering pennant.

  A pennant that snapped and curled in a completely different direction to every other banner fluttering in the village.

  The man’s back was wrenched into an odd angle, as if badly broken. His face was terribly gashed, his throat opened wide to reveal his innards. His stare was unyielding, his eyes milky.

  Prytani knew this man.

  She had watched him being brutally killed by the werewolf.

  One of the men who had snatched her from the port.

  One of the men whom King Cadeyrn believed he had killed only yesterday.

  *

  Chapter 29

  King Cadeyrn recognised the oncoming dead man. Not as a man whom he had only recently killed, but as a man who had recently served him as a fine soldier.

  ‘Cuamena!’ The king hailed the dead man heartily, uncertainly opening his arms in greeting. ‘So your new lord allows you to come and visit your old homestead! We must thank him for his remarkable benevolence!’

  ‘Thank him you surely shall, King Cadeyrn.’ The dead man’s voice was strangely hollow, an echoing created by the huge gouge in his throat. ‘But in ways, I think, you won’t find the slightest bit pleasurable!’

  ‘Is this how you reward your king’s greetings?’ Nechtan demanded angr
ily.

  ‘Not my king anymore, wizard! And he greeted me and four of my friends with his blade!’

  ‘I wasn’t to know you were there, Cuamena!’ The king kept up his contrived affability, controlled his wheezing. ‘Obviously, I would have stood aside for an old friend: even one who sought to block my crossing of a ford bordering my own realm!’

  ‘Why do you sound so resentful, Cuamena?’ Nechtan added. ‘Here you are, untouched by any blade. And, I presume, your four friends are now every bit as alive as you are?’

  ‘Of course! This Siren; it is undoubtedly a remarkable blade, to lie the dead low, if only briefly. But twice dead is, still, only dead.’

  ‘Then we have had good sport, at no expense to anyone!’ The king grinned.

  ‘At no expense? And this tale, King Cadeyrn, of your battle against the dead: are you saying it won’t be told and retold, each time increasing the numbers of the dead? The dead you face: when, I wonder, will that be five times its real number? How many dead will the tale say you killed for a second time? Twenty? A hundred? We all know how these tales take on a life of their own, always so much better in the retelling. And do you think my own lord should feel no shame in this? To be made the fool in a tale that will be retold countless times?’

  ‘We can temper the telling of the tale,’ one of the king’s men protested hopefully. ‘How could we honestly say, anyway, that the dead lost any of their number, when we can also clearly see you have returned to us once more, Cuamena?’

  ‘Honesty? And what role does this play in any tale, Windioran?’

  ‘What can we do, Cuamena, to make amends?’

  The king’s grin had long faded. He was beginning to realise that some payment was expected of him.

  ‘You’ll soon be receiving reports, King Cadeyrn, that offshoots of the Dead Legions are already encroaching on your lands.’

  As Cuamena announced this, there were gasps of fear from all those who had heard his fluttering, rasping voice.

  ‘Yes, they are marching already, the pennants of their raised spears fluttering, their sound that of the heartbeats they will soon still.’

  Cuamena had a satisfied leer, relishing the sense of fear he felt growing around him.

  He likes embellishing his own tales, Prytani thought, noting his elated if horrifically disfigured expression.

  ‘Remembering the ties that used to exist between us,’ Cuamena continued, looking about him at the trembling villagers, ‘those better times we once shared, I would so like to tell you that you have nothing to fear.’

  He glanced the way of a pretty, particularly aghast woman. Was this his widow? Prytani wondered.

  ‘In all honesty, though, I cannot tell you this.’

  As he used the word ‘honesty’, he smiled maliciously at Windioran.

  ‘You have to realise, your king has attacked us! Sullied our name!’

  He paused, taking in the pale, worried faces surrounding him. The princess had grasped the king’s hand, perhaps seeking some form of reassurance.

  ‘Even so, my own lord is willing to forgive – provided adequate recompense is made!’

  There was a visible relaxation of the way everyone had been holding themselves so tensely, so rigidly straight backed. Strained faces relaxed a little, many eyes went back to a normal rather than a rushed, uneasy blinking for the first time in ages.

  Only the king and Nechtan maintained their edgy stances: only they realised the price expected of them would be high, perhaps impossible to comply with.

  ‘What are his demands?’ the king asked, grimacing uncertainly.

  ‘You must replace those you killed.’

  The king’s pained grimace was immediately replaced with a satisfied grin.

  ‘We killed none!’ The king chuckled at his own brilliance: he had seen the error in their ridiculously ill-thought out demands! ‘Your very presence here, Cuamena, is the proof of that!’

  ‘No, King Cadeyrn: you have killed fifteen.’ The dead warrior was firm and assured in his reply. ‘Or so, at least, we hear in the tale of your “victory” that is already spreading.’

  King Cadeyrn smiled wryly, apparently pleased that the numbers of dead were already growing.

  ‘And as the tally in this tale increases,’ Cuamena continued calmly, ‘so shall your payment: the price forever rising.’

  The king breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Fifteen men?’ he said with a dismissive wave of a hand. ‘So be it: we’ll let them chose amongst themselves, perhaps by use of a lot.’

  ‘Fifteen lords, King Cadeyrn.’

  ‘Lords?’ The king laughed in disbelief. ‘I only have fifteen lords!’

  Cuamena shrugged; this was not his problem.

  ‘But wouldn’t we be stupid to pay this, my lord?’ Windioran, being a lord himself, was horrified by this idea of payment. ‘He’s saying we need to sacrifice our own people, so they join their own ranks of warriors and–’

  ‘No!’ Cuamena bluntly interrupted.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not to join the warriors. To become our servants, our slaves.’

  From the whole crowd there rose gasps of fear, aghast cries of, ‘No, no!’

  ‘This is too high a price!’ The king frowned sternly.

  ‘Indeed, at first glance, it may appear so.’

  Cuamena half turned, preparing to leave. The discussion, he was declaring in his actions, was coming to a close.

  ‘And yet, if you refuse to pay it, there is an even higher price to pay: your own land, King Cadeyrn, will become a realm of the dead.’

  *

  Chapter 30

  The stockade doors remained open.

  Cuamena had left, with no one, of course, attempting to bar his way.

  Alongside Prytani, Tamesis sniffed the air unsurely, still picking up that long-lingering stink of death. Even when the dead remained walking, even fighting, they retained an odour that somehow reminded you of the fate awaiting you. That was why that stench was so fearful, so distressing and disgusting.

  One day, we too will reek that way. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

  Nechtan, still tending King Cadeyrn through his last stages of recovery, had gone inside the great hall, along with the princess and her attendants. Prytani saw little reason to stay here.

  She headed for the open gates, wondering if anyone would stop her.

  No one did. She stepped out beyond the stockade walls without their even being the slight murmur of disapproval from the men guarding the entrance, let alone the angry cries she had expected.

  A series of small fires were still burning around the great circle of stones. The boy had been heading that way.

  Prytani followed in his footsteps, making her way towards the ceremonial circle.

  Although she couldn’t make out what they were, she could see that the sacred objects originally placed around the outer edges of the vast circle had now been carried towards the centre. In fact, a great deal of the ceremony had already taken place. Perhaps sensing this, or maybe because he had lost interest, the boy was walking away from the circle.

  He grinned in welcome when he saw Prytani and Tamesis more or less walking towards him.

  ‘So, what did you think?’ Prytani asked the boy, joining him as he made his way over to a thicket of bushes. ‘Of the ceremony?’

  ‘It seems we all need our priests to save us from everything that’s bad in the world. They raise up their gods so high that, soon, it is only through them that the people can converse with the gods. That way, the priests have power over the gods themselves, putting their own words – their own ideas of piety, of what ideals their followers should aspire to, what rules they must follow – into the mouths of gods. If any such god were to come to earth, would he recognise his own teachings?’

  ‘Hmn.’ Prytani hummed doubtfully. ‘I don’t think the White Goddess has fallen completely under their control just yet.’

  She stopped by a hawthorn bush, m
umbling a quiet prayer, asking permission of the Goddess before carefully snapping off a gorgeous sprig of pure white blossom. The boy watched with growing amusement as she threaded the thin stem into a buttonhole of his jerkin, transforming the burgeoning spray into a highly decorative brooch.

  ‘The bridal gown of the White Lady,’ she said with a shy smile. ‘The union of sun and moon: of man and woman.’

  She indicated the trees and bushes around them, the muddy banks of a languidly trickling stream.

  ‘These are her sacred places. The trees, rivers, wells, hills. We can see her just about anywhere we choose to look: she’s made manifest in many forms and ways.’

  The boy knelt in the mud by the river, careless of the mess it was making of his shoes. He picked up a small handful of the most clay-like substance he could find amongst the mud. Swiftly, deftly, he moulded it in his hands.

  On a nearby boulder struck by a bright sun ray, he placed an accurately rendered statuette of Tamesis.

  ‘For you.’ He grinned bashfully, glanced back at his work with a disappointed frown. ‘Sorry: I’m not sure the sun’s hot enough to bake it, as it would in my country.’

  ‘Why, I…thank you!’ Prytani was enthralled by the incredibly accurate image of Tamesis. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever given me!’

  She knelt down beside the boy, close to the little statuette. She wanted to reach out for it, pick it up and take it with her right at this very moment. But she could see that touching it while it was still wet, still freshly moulded, would only ruin it. Tamesis, however, sniffed around it unsurely.

  ‘I think you’ll have to wait a while before it dries,’ the boy said apologetically.

  Prytani didn’t have the heart to tell him she was leaving. It seemed such a shame to leave behind this unfinished work of the boy’s. It was beautiful. Apart from its size, its lack of colouring, it seemed so real, so lifelike. It had been specially made for her. And by the boy too.

  She wished it were finished, complete. Then she could leave with it right now.

  ‘There’s a story I’ve heard about you,’ she said uncertainly to the boy. ‘That you made birds from clay; gave them the breath of life.’

  The boy raised his eyebrows in surprise. He chuckled.