Authors: Gene Wolfe
Hippephode confronted the king then, a woman taller even than he; anger flamed in her cheeks and blue ice flashed from her eyes. I do not know what she said, but she pointed toward the lowering sky, then to the temple, and at last to sky again, and her voice was like the snarl of a panther. The black man urged his horse forward as though to join her, but many hands tore him from the saddle and threw him to the ground. The king turned away from the Amazon queen again and again; always his eyes were upon me.
I said, "What sort of fool are you, who tell your people that we are to go in peace, and break your word with the next breath? Don't you know that it is thus that kings lose their thrones?"
"Take it if you can!" he shouted, and spat in my face. At that moment, the lance was thrust at me again, and I did as he said.
At once everyone fell silent. Those who had held the black man released him; he stood, wiping mud from his clothing and his person, his wounded face a mask of rage.
Hegesistratus rode to where we stood, and no one stopped him. The king said, "If you would speak to us before we fight, dismount!"
Hegesistratus nodded. "Out of the respect I have for Your Majesty." He slid from his horse, keeping hold of his saddle until he could brace himself with his crutch. "King Kotys," he said, "you have sworn before your gods and ours that you would let us go in peace. Do so now, before battle drinks the blood of a king. It may be they will forgive you."
"If that is all you have to say," the king told him, "be silent or we will stuff your mouth with dung."
Hegesistratus turned to me, his voice so soft that I could scarcely hear him. "Do you know how to use a lance, Latro?"
I said, "I don't know, but I doubt that there's a great deal to learn." The Thracian lords grinned at that, pulling their beards and elbowing one another.
"He has a helmet. You had one yesterday, but you seem to have left it behind. Do you want one now?"
I shook my head.
The king said, "You have your lance. Mount!"
I asked him whether we would fight on the hillside.
"No." He pointed. "Ride to that thicket, turn, and meet my charge."
Hippephode had been speaking swiftly to Hegesistratus; now he said, "The queen asks a favor of you: she wishes you to take her horse. Your own is badly unsettled and is, as she says, too small."
I thanked Hippephode and mounted her white stallion, still the holy steed of the Sun. A disordered mob, we streamed to the base of the hill; there some of the Thracian lords made the rest stay back, with Hegesistratus, the Amazons, the black man, and the others. The king reined up perhaps ten cubits before them. "No quarter will be given," he told me. "Do you understand?"
I said that I did not think I could kill a man who begged me for his life, but I would try. Then I rode down the misty valley to the trees he had pointed out. They were half a stade from the bottom of the hill, perhaps.
A lion roared as I wheeled the stallion. At the sound of his challenge, other lions roared to my left and right, hardly a bowshot from us.
The stallion reared, pawing air. Afraid the king's charge would find us unprepared, I shouted into the stallion's ear, digging heels into his sides and flourishing the lance overhead to make it clear we had to fight whether lions roared or not—though their terrifying voices rose behind us like the tumult of an army.
He sprang forward. I felt the earth quiver beneath us; the roaring of the lions and the thunder of his hoofbeats filled all the world.
I glimpsed the king at that moment, I know. He was urging his mount forward, his lance poised. Rain more violent than any we had seen that day intervened, washing the king, the throng of riders behind him, even the hill of the War God's temple from my sight. It cleared almost at once; and when it was gone, the king had turned from me as if charging the lords of his own court, or perhaps the Amazons. There was a swirl of men and horses, and a shriek that pierced the rain and freezing mist with astonishing immediacy, as though we were already in the midst of that wild melee.
Swords flashed; there was a confused shouting.
A moment more, and we were part of the fight indeed. I do not know whether I could have halted the stallion with a rawhide bit; I was so stunned by what I had seen that I scarcely tried. I could have killed half a dozen lords of Thrace then if I had wished, but I did not, lifting my lance instead and leaving them unscathed.
Yet a battle had begun. Before me two Thracians struggled knee to knee—a third stabbed one from behind. The black man rode past like a whirlwind, his pelta cut nearly through and his sword red with blood. Hippephode called her Amazons to her, her voice a trumpet. I tried to rein the white stallion toward them, ducked a thrust from a Thracian whose squealing mount was pinned between two others, and hacked wildly at the lance shaft; it was only then, with Falcata already in my hand, that I realized I had dropped my own lance and drawn her.
Someone shook my shoulder. It was Hegesistratus, with the Mede at his elbow.
"Run!"
he shouted.
"Get clear!"
Then they were gone. Before I could cleave a Thracian's helmet, the man threw down his sword and raised his hands. As I passed him I caught sight of Io and Polos, galloping off into the mist. I rode after them.
There is not much more to tell, and in any event our supper is ready. After what seemed a very long ride, I overtook Io, who explained that she and Polos had become separated. We rode on until even the stallion was exhausted and at last, long after this short day had grown dark, halted at this farmhouse. Io has money that she says belongs to me. She offered the man and his wife a small gold coin—at which their eyes grew large indeed—if they would feed us well, let us pass the night here in safety, and say nothing. Soon after that Polos joined us, leading three riderless horses. One is mine, and it had my scrolls and stylus still in its saddlebags. Io showed them to me and told me about the record I must keep.
I was reading how the mantis escaped from Rope when a wagon driven by a fat old man rattled into the farmyard. The farmer—who seems just such a man as the peltasts who came to the temple with their lords—swore he had seen no strangers today; but Io called, "Cleton!" and brought him in to share our wine. He says the king is dead; the old man, Prince Thamyris, rules the city. A strategist from Rope has come in a warship with many soldiers, demanding news of Oeobazus and of us.
TWENTY
Raskos
THE WOUNDED MAN CAME BEFORE sunrise; we three were sleeping on the floor. I sat up at his knock, and the girl, Io, sat up, too. I told the boy—his name is Polos—to unbar the door. He would not and looked frightened. I did not want to leave the warmth of my blankets; I tossed fresh wood upon the fire and asked who was there.
"Raskos!" he replied.
Then the farmer came out of the room where he had slept with his wife and opened the door.
Raskos came in. He had a pelta and javelins; I threw off the blankets at once, thinking that I might have to fight. He spoke to the farmer, who laughed, made a fist, and tossed his thumb into his mouth. He waved toward a stool by the fire, and though I could not understand what he said, it seemed that he was inviting Raskos to sit down.
Speaking in the way the Hellenes do, Polos whispered, "He's not drunk." He was shaking so much I put my arm about him, at which he breathed violently through his nose, which I think must be a habit of his. He is ten, I would say, or perhaps a year or two older. He has reddish hair and dark eyes.
Raskos spoke more, mumbling and looking around as though he had never seen the house before, often repeating the same words. Io asked what he was saying, and Polos told her, "He says he was lost in the snow."
I went to a window and opened the shutter. It had indeed snowed during the night; snow a little thicker than my thumb lay over everything, so that all the bushes and trees appeared to be covered with white blossoms, bathed now in moonlight.
Raskos was beseeching the farmer, whose name was Olepys, or something of the sort. I was about to close the shutter when I saw people walking up the road. Three of them were carrying a long and apparently heavy bundle upon their shoulders, and when one pointed toward the house, it was plain that they intended to stop.
But I was too full of my own thoughts to pay much attention to these travelers then. As I latched the shutter, I asked Io, "Do you remember what Cleton told us? I've been considering it, and since we're all awake, I think it would be best if we got an early start."
She said, "Do you want to send Polos into the city to talk to this Rope Maker?"
I shook my head, for I knew that no strategist was apt to tell the truth to a ragged boy. "The first thing is to locate Hegesistratus and warn him that the Rope Makers are here. We know that they've learned about him, and they probably want to kill him."
"Maybe they have already," Io speculated gloomily. "I know you don't remember it, master, but a few days ago Hegesistratus was trying to read the future for you and saw his own death. It sounded as if it was pretty close."
I was about to tell her that we ought to warn Hegesistratus just the same, if we could, when someone tapped at the door.
It was a weeping woman in a dark cloak. Straggling hair, loose and disordered, hung about her shoulders, and her cheeks were streaked with tears; with her was another, younger woman. The three men who carried the bundle waited a few steps behind them, looking uncomfortable. Two were hardly more than boys.
Io jabbed Polos with her elbow, and he told us, "She says her husband's dead. They're going to the burning. They want this man to come."
"This man" was the farmer, who smiled at the woman, shook his head, and pointed to the stool beside the fire, though there was no one there.
The woman only sobbed the louder, at which the farmer's wife came out of the room to comfort her.
"Ai Raskos!"
the weeping woman cried.
"At Raskos!"
The farmer shouted at her then, and when she paid no heed to him, at the three with the bundle, who shook their heads and would not meet his eyes. In a moment they laid the heavy bundle in the snow and removed some of the cloths; it was a man's body, and though it was too dark there upon the moonlit snow to be sure, it seemed to me that he looked very much like the one who had awakened us.
The farmer got a brand from the fire and held it above the dead man. His beard was marked with two gray streaks. His nose looked as if it had been broken. An eye stared at us from under a half-open lid; although I wished someone would close it, I did not try to do it myself. An ax or heavy sword had severed his left shoulder, cutting through almost to the final rib.
After a great many whispered instructions to his wife, the farmer replaced one of the youths who had carried the body, and all six trudged away. I made certain the children cleaned their teeth and washed their faces and hands, then went out to saddle our horses, who had passed a comfortable night in the shed with the cows; we had a big white stallion, a white mare, and four others. "Thanks be to whatever god governs horses," I said to Polos, who had come to help, "that this mare's not in season."
He grinned. "Oh, if we let them cover her a few times, it would be all right. It's the Earth Shaker, the Sea God. He's the Horse God, too."
The white stallion had been rolling his eyes and baring his teeth at me, but Polos calmed him with a touch. "Which one are you going to ride?"
"My own." I pointed to the one who had worn my saddlebags the night before.
"How do you know that he's yours?" Polos asked. "Io says you forget from day to day."
"This isn't from day to day," I explained. "It was late when you brought these horses, and the sun isn't properly up yet."
Polos thought about that for a moment as he saddled Io's small, docile chestnut. "Do you remember fighting King Kotys yesterday?"
I admitted that I did not know I had ever fought a king, and added that since I was still alive I appeared to have won.
"You didn't really fight. He ran away, and then his people killed him for running. Should I call you Latro, or can I call you master like Io does?" Polos paused. "Io's your slave, did you remember about it?"
I shook my head. "I'll free her, then, so that she can go home to her father and mother. If you're not my slave, Polos, you shouldn't call me master. I'm sorry to hear that this king was a coward; I suppose some kings are, but one doesn't like to think of them like that."
"I don't think he was," Polos told me, "but it's not the kind of thing I know much about."
I laughed at his solemn little face and mussed his hair. "What is?"
"Oh, horses and goats and dogs—all kinds of animals. And the weather. I'm a wonderful weather prophet."
"Really, Polos? What will today be like?"
"Sunny and windy, at first. The sun will melt this snow, so that the ground gets all muddy. But after that thick clouds will come, and the day will end too soon."
I sighed, reflecting that he might have been speaking of me, though it did not seem that he intended it.
"Master—Latro—I'll do anything you say."
"All right," I said, "but why are you telling me? Have you disobeyed me? Did I beat you?"
"No," Polos told me. "I've always done everything you told me, although you haven't told me much. But I wanted to say that I thought you were wrong about some things, and I don't want you to be angry with me."
I said we would see about that when I knew our disagreement.
"I think I ought to call you master. If I don't, lots of people will ask why I'm with you. But if I do, they'll think I'm your slave, like Io."
I led him back into the house so that we could toast our stiff fingers at the fire; it gave me an opportunity to consider what he had suggested. "Suppose I were to die, Polos. You say I fought a king yesterday, and if it's true, I may very well die today. Won't my heirs—if I've got any— claim you? You might have to spend the rest of your life as somebody's slave."
Polos shook his head, a little mule. "If the king couldn't kill you yesterday, master, who's going to kill you today? And besides, if you have heirs, they're probably nice people. There are lots of people—not very nice people at all—who catch boys and girls that don't belong to anybody."