Soldier of Arete Read online

  "I did, and on foot he would have been nearly as big as you, but on our horses we were about the same. I stuck him in the neck."

  Several Thracians rushed into the cave on foot, but Amazons killed two with arrows, and the rest fled back out the mouth.

  I asked Io where she had found her sword.

  "The queen gave it to me," she said. "Queen Hippephode."

  I told her, "She shouldn't have, Io, and you shouldn't have taken it."

  She had finished wiping the blade (far more thoroughly than it required, and on the hem of her own peplos) and had knelt to blow on the embers, pretending to pay very little attention to what I was saying. "I asked her. I told her I couldn't shoot a bow, but I can ride as good as anybody, and you'd need everybody to protect you if you were going to steal King Kotys. She asked me if I knew what it meant, going into a battle, and I said I'd seen lots of fighting, I'd just never done it. Then she looked through her things and gave me this sword."

  "She wouldn't give you her own sword, surely."

  "It belonged to an Amazon who got killed before they met us. That's what she said."

  I wanted to take it from her, but how could I disarm her when I knew we might be fighting for our lives again very soon?

  "I guess she still feels bad about her friend that died," Io said, "because she was crying when she gave it to me. I didn't think they cried."

  And that is all I will write now. I must sleep a little—Hegesistratus has promised to wake me at dawn. Except that Io told me she had taken the young priest's robe, thinking that she might make a chiton from the unstained part. "He's been cut," she told me. "Like they do with yearling bulls." She pointed to her own groin.

  SIXTEEN

  The Horses of the Sun

  THE WHITE HORSES PHARETRA AND I stole are stabled with our own; and indeed (like the sun itself) they seem to wash every shadow. Queen Hippephode says that we must not slaughter them, no matter what happens, and Hegesistratus agrees; but the Thracians do not know that.

  I had been asleep. I believe this was the sleep I spoke of when I last wrote on this scroll, saying, "I must sleep a little—Hegesistratus has promised to wake me at dawn." But it was not Hegesistratus (he is the mantis, and has a wooden foot) who woke me, but the Men of Thrace.

  No, not even them in truth, but the sentry in the mouth of the cave. She shouted that they were coming, and I woke at the sound of her voice. I saw her draw her bow and let fly before she ran back toward the sacred fire. She nocked another shaft, turned, and shot again without ever breaking step; I would have thought such bowmanship beyond the reach of mortals, but I saw it and write only what I saw.

  The Thracians ran in through the narrow mouth, but by that time I was on my feet, and this sword—falcata is written on the blade— was in my hand. Those in the van were highborn, or so I should guess. They had fine helmets, well-painted shields, and costly armor, of scales sewn to leather. Behind them were many peltasts; some had helmets, and each two javelins.

  I believe that the Thracians would have been wiser to form a phalanx with their lances, but they had left them outside and came raggedly, sword in hand. I myself killed only two of the Thracian lords. After the fight, I would have claimed the mail shirt of one; but Falcata had spoiled both, cleaving the bronze with the flesh. There was a third with an arrow through his eye, however; Queen Hippephode and her Amazons presented me with his mail. I am wearing it now.

  I cannot tell how many peltasts I killed. There were many dead; but the black man fought with the priest's sword, it would be difficult to distinguish wounds left by Falcata from those of Hegesistratus's ax, and some of the Amazons used their swords, I think. Hippephode fears all may exhaust their arrows, but those shot in this battle they reclaimed, or most of them.

  In the cave's gullet, three peltasts could front me, and no more; I cut down several, while the bows of the Amazons thrummed like lyres. When the peltasts fell back to cast their javelins, the Amazons slew many more with arrows, and the javelins grazed the stone, which is so low in places that I must stoop to walk there. We laughed at them.

  When the fighting was over, and the Amazons had honored me with this armor, we decided that Hegesistratus should approach the Thracians crying a truce, for we had not wood enough to burn all the bodies. Besides, we agreed that if Hegesistratus could meet with King Kotys, he might make some agreement that would be to our benefit, since the War God was plainly on our side, and had in fact favored his daughters so greatly in the battle that not one had received a serious wound.

  Hegesistratus talked with the king, and afterward everyone began dragging the bodies of the dead Thracians to the mouth of the cave, where the living Thracians were to claim them. That was when I stole away, though it was not yet dawn.

  A hundred steps from the sacred hearth, the cave was darker than the blackest night. I very much regretted that I had not brought a torch, though I knew I could not have made one without drawing attention to myself; the black man would have insisted on coming, though his cheek pains him so much, and perhaps the queen would have wanted to send some of her Amazons as well. So many, I felt certain (and Hegesistratus had agreed), would only weaken the rest by their absence, and could accomplish no more than one; if Oeobazus were to be rescued, it would have to be by stealth, for we had not force enough.

  Yet as I crept along, I feared that I might forget; and in this, too, Hegesistratus had concurred. At his suggestion, I had thrust this scroll through my belt. I had promised him that if I discovered another way out of the cave, I would stop and read it as soon as there was light enough.

  As I have written already, I wore the armor the Amazons had given me; I should write also that I had Falcata, the helmet of one of the lords I had killed, a pair of javelins, and a pelta; for I had thought it would be well for me to look as much like a patrician of Thrace as I could. Of the helmet and javelins, I was soon exceedingly glad, because the first saved my head from many a knock, and I probed the uneven stones before my feet with the iron heads of the second; but I had to cast the pelta aside, for twice I had to climb in order to keep the faint draft I felt full on my face. I was counting my strides and had counted one thousand two hundred seventeen when I heard the roaring of a lion and the snarl of another.

  To meet such a beast in that blackness would mean my death, I knew—and yet I was not willing to go back, and tried to turn aside instead; but though I left what seemed the larger passage, I heard the lions before me still. Many times I wondered what had brought them so deep into the hill; though I knew they often slept in caves by day, I had not thought they would willingly enter one so far.

  When I had counted more than two thousand steps, I glimpsed light. Then I felt myself a fool indeed, because the answer to the riddle seemed plain: the lions had not gone so far into the dark, but rather had made their den in the very place I sought, the opening through which the draft blew. And though I had no liking for lions even by day, it seemed likely that a few stones and a shout or two might permit me to slip past them. Not many wild beasts will face an armed man by choice.

  As the light grew brighter, and the rocks and slippery mud over which I had groped my way so long appeared, I recalled the promise I had made Hegesistratus; but though I took this scroll from my belt and untied the cords, I could not distinguish the words, and had to walk farther before I could sit down upon a stone and read everything I wrote yesterday, beginning with "I would go now." And even then, I was not actually within sight of the mouth.

  At last I read of the oracles of the ox and the child and how each had been fulfilled, all of which I believe I recalled at that time, as well as my writing about them, although I have forgotten those things now.

  After that it was time to face the lions in earnest. I rolled this scroll up again, put it in my belt as before, and advanced with a javelin in each hand.

  Soon I met with an illusion so extraordinary that it ought to have forewarned me of what was to come, though in fact it did not. To my left t
here rose a pillar of the kind sometimes found in caves, lofty and damp. Stretching from the stone beneath my boots to the stone over my head, it glistened like pearl; but I am not sure I would have paid much heed to it if it had not at first appeared otherwise to me. For when upon approaching it, I had merely glimpsed it from the corner of one eye, it had seemed to me not a natural object at all, but rather just such a column as is often seen in the houses men build for the gods, columns of white marble or wood painted white.

  When I took my gaze from it and walked on, it again seemed to me a thing made by hands, so that I stopped, turned back, and stared.

  After that, I felt I traveled not in the cave but through a broken and tempestuous landscape, where rock and mud alternated with smooth walls and floors, and they with sallow grass and the bright blue skies of droughty summer. The sharp stone teeth of the cave seemed simultaneously a forest of columns and a thicket of spears, all echoing to the roaring of the lions who waited for me outside.

  For they were outside, beyond even this new, smaller, and more circular mouth. For a moment or two, when I had seen that they were not in the cave at all, I had come to doubt their very existence. Was it not more likely that the sounds I had heard were nothing more than the rage of rushing water? The roar that of a waterfall? That I, who saw a portico where none stood, who felt that there were a hundred men at his back, then looked to find himself alone, had dreamed the lions as I had so much else?

  Then a lion stalked before the mouth of the cave, snarling, tawny in level sunshine, with a mane as black as his exaggerated shadow. One javelin poised above my head, I hurried forward.

  The sun had just risen over the hill I left. Before me lay a narrow and rocky defile with a stream running along its lowest point; what I saw there was like—and yet utterly unlike—what I had anticipated. I had expected to find several lions, the sons and daughters of the black-maned beast that I had caught sight of through the mouth of the cave, and a mature lioness, perhaps with cubs. I indeed counted no fewer than four lions; but all were huge males, as large as that I had first glimpsed— and in fact the four were so much alike I could not have said which I had seen first.

  And though there was a lioness as well, she wore a woman's shape. Tall and strong, more massive of limb than the largest of Hippephode's Amazons, she regarded the stony lips of the cave from the elevation of a silver chariot no horses drew. Her face showed unmistakably her strength and her unswerving purpose; her large eyes burned yellow and fierce—eyes that might adore, thus they seemed to me, or thirst for blood. All of which was august enough; yet there was something more extraordinary still (while still more beautiful) about her appearance, a thing that in the whole time I spent with her I never dared to ask about and never fathomed: it appeared that a second sun rose behind her, between her broad back and the rugged wall of the defile, splendid light enfolding her in a mantle brighter than the purest gold.

  "Come." She motioned to me. "I have need of you." In her hand was a large tambour, and though her fingers did not appear to brush its head, its taut skin shook with each thudding of my pulse.

  I hesitated.

  "You fear my lions." She whistled, and all four bounded to her. She stroked their muzzles, scratching their chins and ears as if they were so many puppies; but when their amber stare fell upon me, I recalled that they were truly lions.

  "Much better." She nodded as I edged nearer her. "Do you know who I am?"

  I shook my head again.

  "My name is Cybele—to you, here, at this time. My priests would tell you that I am the greatest of all gods." She smiled; and seeing her smile I knew I loved her. "But their priests say that of most gods."

  "Do you hear my thoughts?" I asked her, for it seemed that she had read them.

  "When they are written upon your face? Certainly. Do you not kneel even to a goddess?"

  "Not when there are lions present, Cybele."

  "They are less than kittens to me—and to you, for as long as I protect you. Do you remember driving such a cart as this? Tell me what you are doing here."

  "No," I said, "I don't. The Thracians—King Kotys holds a Mede called Oeobazus. He will be sacrificed to Pleistorus, and I must find the temple and save him if I can."

  "You are children," Cybele told me, "you and that foolish seer with the crutch. He thinks to fancy the immortal gods as bettors fancy horses. Your black friend owes me a blood price, by the way. He slew one of my priests, a most promising young man."

  I said, "I didn't see everything, but I've been told that your priest was promising to kill him at the time."

  "He will not be permitted to pay in jests, although his are somewhat more amusing than yours." Cybele waved a hand, and her lions bounded away, scrambling up the sides of the defile until they had gained the hilltops; she rose and stepped down to stand beside one of the chariot's tall, slender wheels. "Get in," she instructed me. "Take up the reins."

  Slowly, I advanced and did as she bid. The chariot seemed higher than I had thought and lighter than I would have believed possible, as if its gleaming sides weighed nothing. There were four pairs of reins, a set for each horse; I looped them through my fingers in the proper way. And though only empty harness lay upon the ground before me, in those trembling strips of leather I touched the fire of four mighty hearts. "Yes," I told Cybele. "I've done this."

  "Then listen to me."

  I put the reins down and turned to face her, discovering that her eyes were now at the level of my own.

  "If you do as you've planned, you will be killed. Not by me, directly or otherwise; but you will die. I can show it to you if you like—how you'll be found out near my son's temple, your flight, the lance through your back, and all the rest. It will seem as real as this to you. Do you wish to see it?"

  I shook my head.

  "You're wise. All deaths before death are for cowards—let them have them. Very well. You do not recall your meeting with the usurper, and that is my doing, though you do not recall that either."

  "She promised to reunite me with living friends," I said. "Hegesistratus and I were talking of it not long ago."

  "But he did not tell you her price, although he knows it." With an expression of contempt, Cybele waved that price aside, whatever it had been. "It does not matter; she would only cheat you in the end. And the end, you may be sure, would be long in coming. I can be cruel as well as kind, but my pledge is a pledge, even as my punishment is punishment. I have saved your life today, for you would have done as you planned and died for it if I had not been here. Now I ask you to reward me. Will you do it?"

  "Of course," I said. "And willingly."

  "Good. The Mede will be your reward—do as I tell you, and he will drop into your hand like ripe fruit. The usurper warned you that you would soon meet a queen. Have you met one?"

  "Yes, I have—Hippephode, Queen of the Amazons." I blurted out a sudden realization: "Why, they must be your granddaughters! They're the children of the War God, and he's your son."

  "And what does Queen Hippephode want? Do you know what has brought her to this land?"

  "Sacred horses from the Temple of the Sun. She has brought precious gems and gold—so Hegesistratus told me—with which to buy them."

  "This king will no more sell them than free your Mede—but we will force him to both. Do you know where the temple lies?"

  I was not sure which temple she meant, but since I knew the location of neither, I shook my head.

  Cybele smiled again, the smile of one who laughs inwardly. "The sun will show it to you. When you're clear of this gorge, look toward it. The temple will be directly beneath it. Look under the sun."

  I said, "I understand."

  "That is well—so does he. [Latro appears to have spoken Greek to the gods he encountered. If so, the word he used may have been one whose literal meaning is "I learn." The god of the sun was also the patron of learning and prophecy.—GW] His sacred herd grazes in the Meadow of the Sun; it lies between us and the temple. You
must drive the horses around the temple. There you will strike the processional road. Turn right at every forking, and you should reach the entrance of my own temple. Lead the sacred herd into it and hand them over to the queen, and you shall have the Mede, living and whole. That I promise you."

  "Aren't the Horses of the Sun guarded?" I asked, and added, "Surely you must know there are armed Thracians at the entrance to your temple."

  I wish I could describe her look as she replied; there was love and sorrow in it—rage as well, and towering pride and many other things, too, perhaps. "Why do you imagine I have chosen you?" she asked me. "If a child might do it, would I not send a child? Nor shall you be without assistance. The three whom you will meet first will be your auxiliaries, worthy of your trust because they come from me. Go now."

  SEVENTEEN

  Sworn Before All the Gods

  KING KOTYS'S OATH WILL SURELY bring destruction upon him and his nation, should he break it. One of the Amazons' best horses was our sacrifice, a red heifer the sacrifice of the Thracians. The terms: Hippephode may choose four, for which she must pay the price agreed. We must bring the rest, unharmed, to the temple of the War God, where Oeobazus the Mede will be handed over to us, also unharmed. We will leave Apsinthia, with the Mede and the four sacred horses, unmolested.

  The exchanges are to take place tomorrow, then we will go. Meanwhile, food and wine are to be brought to us. We have no need of water—there are many pools in the depths of this cave, which Hegesistratus has told me the Thracians say is a path to the Country of the Dead. The Amazons and I watered the horses from one such pool. Io helped us.

  I asked Hegesistratus about Cybele before I wrote of her. She is surely a mighty goddess—she saved me and will save the Mede. Hegesistratus says she is numbered among the friends of men, and was once accounted the greatest goddess, mistress of all the beasts, though Cynthia contests it with her as she does other things. The Queen of the Dead is Cybele's daughter, and I made sure both were among the gods to whom the oath was sworn.