Authors: Gene Wolfe
"How can you speak my tongue and yet not know where it's spoken?"
Hegesistratus seated himself beside me; this was before we talked about my going to the temple. "Because I am the man I am. Do you know of Megistias?"
That name signified nothing to me.
"He was the mantis of King Leonidas of Rope, and died with him. It was given to him to know the speech of every bird and beast, and thus he learned of many faraway things, though once he told me that most beasts, and all birds, concern themselves little with the doings of our kind."
I asked, "Could a bird tell me where my home lies?"
"I doubt it. In any case, I—who sometimes talk with gods—cannot converse with birds. Yet another power of tongues has been given me as that was given him; I know the speech of every man I meet, and of every woman. I cannot explain how I do it. Mardonius often used to ask me, but I could only ask in reply how it was that he could not. It is possible I never learned, as other children do, to speak our own tongue at all."
I believe that at that moment I could have fallen upon my sword. "It seems to be the will of the gods," I said, "that I never find my home."
"If that is indeed their will, you must bow to it," he counseled me. "Will you read the words of the Huntress?"
I shook my head.
"Then I will tell you. She promised you that you should be returned to your friends. I did not speak of it earlier because your slave girl was listening; but I tell you now. I advise you to read that part of your book, and also to read again that part which you read aloud this afternoon in the tongue of the sons of Hellen."
Here I will write of the battle. The moon was low in the east when we heard the black man's cry. At once we broke the circle of our guards, Hippephode leading her Amazons at my left, Hegesistratus at my right. Two were before us, but the Amazons' bows sang; though I forget everything else, I will never forget the whiz of the arrows. The bones of the Thracians broke under our horses' hooves.
The king's hand was upon his sword, but before it cleared the scabbard I was upon him; I pinned his arms to his sides and wrenched him from his saddle. A Thracian charged me—I recall the gleam of the moonlight on his lance head. I swung my horse about so that the king's body would receive the lance, and the Thracian raised it and galloped past. The king is very strong; he freed an arm and struck me in the face, so that it seemed to me that all the stars of heaven had rushed into my eyes; but I got one hand around his throat and choked him until he no longer tried to pull my arm away.
All this time I was riding north by west as we had agreed, driving my heels again and again into my horse's sides. He is a fine horse, but he could not outrun the Thracian horses with two heavy men upon his back. The black man, Hegesistratus, and some of the women reined in until they rode beside or behind me. The black man held a javelin still, and with it he killed the first Thracian who would have overtaken us, turning in the saddle and casting it hard and well when the Thracian was very near. The arrows of the Amazons rid us of more, the men tumbling off their horses, or their horses falling under them; but there were too many.
Suddenly I felt that we were flying. I looked down and saw the silver bow of the moon below us, so that it appeared we had leaped above the sky. It was only one of the ditches with which the Thracian farmers drain their fields, and my horse had jumped it before I knew it was there. He stumbled on the farther side; I almost fell, and nearly dropped the king.
In a moment more, I knew that I must, or die. The man on my right was not Hegesistratus but a Thracian, his lance poised high for a thrust. I would have thrown his king at his head if I could; but though I lifted him well, I could not make such a throw from horseback. The king fell between us, and the lancer pulled up, as I knew he would. I could cast my javelins then. One I killed, I think; one I missed.
I do not know how we found this sacred cave. We rode into the hills, then along a road, because it was only there that our horses could gallop. I heard a voice:
"Latro! Latro!"
It was the black man, and though it seems that he seldom speaks, he was shouting. The road ended at the mouth; it glowed crimson in the night, lit by the embers of its altar fire. It is too low to ride through, even if the rider lies on the neck of his horse, though the chamber is much loftier a short way in.
When I reached the black man and the others gathered at the mouth, the black man dismounted and led his horse inside, waving for the rest of us to follow. A young priest rushed at him with a sword; the priest's thrust would surely have killed him had it been a finger's width to the right, but the black man caught his wrist and cut his throat,
Elata is no longer with us; we left her behind in the tent. I believed that Io was there as well until I saw her among the Amazons (this was before she built the new fire for us). I told her she would have been killed had she met one of the Thracians face-to-face.
"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 there 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.