The Blood Star (6 page)

“We will go down among them at first light,”
I said. “Let us catch them when they are still half asleep and less
likely to be treacherous.”

“Good—men will believe anything at that hour.
And let us do something about the mark on your palm, lest it betray
you again as it did at Birtu.”

In the morning, before we set off to try our
luck among the caravan drivers, Kephalos wrapped my right hand in a
long linen bandage, so that I seemed to be wearing a glove with the
fingers missing.

“Should anyone inquire, you burned yourself.”
He smiled at his own cunning as he tied the final knot, just at my
wrist. “You are a clumsy, stupid sort of servant and only yesterday
morning had an accident while trying to bake the last of our flour
into bread. You ruined the bread, which caused me, your master, far
more anguish than the ugly blister you raised across the palm of
your hand. I called you many terrible names and threatened to sell
you if ever we reached a town big enough to have a slave market. I
said you would end your days making mud bricks with your own urine.
That, I think, is a nice touch to the story, the sort of detail
that makes men believe all the rest, since every slave reproaches
his master with such lack of feeling. Repeat it often.”

“And, for your part, let us settle on a name
and a history, since it would be embarrassing were we to be caught
in a disagreement on this point. In Birtu I styled you “Hugieia of
Sardes” to Dinanu—will you agree to that, since it seems to have
been a lucky choice?”

“Hugieia?” Kephalos considered the matter,
stroking the month-old growth of beard that now adorned his chin.
“Yes—well enough. At least it will be easy to remember, since
health is all that a physician can claim as the end of his skills.
Yet I am not as happy with Sardes, since I have never been there
and, in any case, have no great admiration for the Lydians. Let us
compromise a little with the truth that I may be Hugieia of Naxos,
since every man should honor his birthplace if he can. Hugieia,
yes. It was clever of you—almost clever enough to convince me that
you might make a Greek yet. And what of a name for yourself,
Lord?”

“I am Lathikados from nowhere in particular,
as befits a slave. That too is a compromise with the truth.”

Kephalos nodded in silence, understanding the
bitterness of my jest, and thus I took the name by which my Greek
mother had known me in the king’s house of women. “He who banishes
grief,” she had called me—and now I was banished myself, and the
name had been turned upon its head.

And before the sun had well and truly risen,
while the sky was still pale gray, we mounted our horses and rode
from our own encampment to that of the caravan drivers. It was no
very great distance, no more than a man might walk in a quarter of
an hour, but it marked the longest journey we had traveled since
leaving Birtu, since it carried us back across the frontier of the
race of men.

We entered their circle of tents even while
the breakfast fires were still cold, and the few who were already
awake stared at us in silence, blinking as if they could hardly
believe their eyes.

On the other side, there was little enough
for us to marvel at. Perhaps twenty men, allowing a tent for every
two of them, with perhaps twice that number of pack horses, their
trade goods bundled up in stout leather pouches that lay in a heap
in the center of the camp. The horses, tethered in a line beside
the lake’s edge, looked half starved and as if their ribs were made
of rotten wood, the men as if they might have found a life of
brigandage more to their taste. Doubtless, of course, we appeared
no better to them. A month of sleeping on the hard ground will rub
the respectability off any man.

No one welcomed us—no one even spoke—but
neither did any among them hint at offering to attack us. None of
them, it appeared, wished to take the responsibility for attempting
either. They seemed merely perplexed to find us among them. We
stayed on our horses while the impasse dragged on, waiting through
several heavy moments of silence.

And then, at last, a tent flap opened and
another of them stepped out into the cold morning sunlight. It was
easy to see, from the manner in which the others glanced at him,
with that mingling of relief and dread I had seen so often in the
eyes of my own officers and men, that this one was the leader
here.

I could well believe it. He was not a tall
man, but he had a way of carrying himself that made him seem as
wide and solid as a wall. His narrow, smiling eyes and pointed
beard suggested that this was one for whom life held no more
unpleasant surprises. He stood with his head cocked a little to one
side, seeming to mock at all the world

“Whose camp is this?” shouted Kephalos,
wisely seizing the initiative. “What route do you follow, and to
what destination?”

“The camp and all within it are mine—Hiram of
Latakia,” the caravan leader answered, in the most villainous
Akkadian I had ever heard. He crossed his arms over his chest in a
way that implied the mere sound of his name should strike terror
into our hearts. “We carry metal to Babylon, which the new king of
these lands, who does not care how much treasure he spends, is
rebuilding to appease the Lord Marduk. I expect to make good profit
out of the god’s wrath. I have finished ingots of copper and iron.
And now, what of you?”

“I. . ?”

Kephalos, that master of self-presentation,
dismounted his horse with all the dignity of a great general taking
possession of a conquered city. He looked about him, surveying the
tents and the wretched, slat-sided pack horses and the men
themselves as if he had been offered the whole lot in payment of a
debt and was sure he was being swindled. At last he fixed his gaze
on Hiram of Latakia and smiled a tight, not-quite-disdainful
smile.

“I am Hugieia of Naxos—physician and
adventurer, scholar and man of affairs, counselor to the great of
many nations, sometime trader, sometime shareholder in the trading
schemes of others, presently the victim of a cowardly attack by
bandits that has left me. . . as you see. I would be grateful for
the opportunity of traveling with you some distance along your way,
since two men alone are seen as all the world’s natural prey, and I
am not without means of manifesting my gratitude.”

The expression on Hiram of Latakia’s face as
he listened to all this was not one to inspire much trust. He
seemed very pleased with us, the way a cat is pleased with the bird
under its paw.

“As you say,” he began, “two men alone—”

The words caught in his throat when he saw
that I had drawn one of the javelins from their quiver and was
balancing it in my hand in a way that suggested it might not stay
there forever. It was a moment in which no man’s intentions were
clear, which was perhaps just as well, since caution has saved more
lives than strength and daring put together. After a while he
switched his glance to Kephalos, who merely smiled a trifle
broader.

“Yes—my servant.” The daring and formidable
Hugieia of Naxos—just then I could almost myself believe there was
such a person—shrugged his heavy shoulders, as if at the
intricacies of life. “He speaks no language except his own, which
makes him suspicious in foreign lands. And, it must be granted,
recent experience has confirmed him in his distrust. As a friend I
would advise you to tell your men that they had best tread
carefully around him.”

Suddenly the crisis, if such it had been, was
passed. There would be no blood spilled this day. The rule of
civilization, that delicate counterbalancing of fear against
violence and avarice, that web of tenuous, insinuated threats had
once more, if only this once more, prevailed. We were safe enough
in the camp of Hiram of Latakia. He had seen the wisdom of not
attempting to cut our throats.

He uncrossed his arms and made a wide gesture
of welcome, as if to acknowledge the fact.

“You may travel with us as far as Babylon,”
he said.

“And, of course, you will gratify me by
accepting my contribution toward the expenses of the journey.”
Kephalos reached inside his tunic and produced a small leather
pouch. “Shall we say—some twenty shekels of silver? Ten now, and
ten when we reach Babylon. I trust that seems reasonable to
you?”

All men despise a foreigner. If his habits
are dissimilar he is without manners, unclean, uncouth and savagely
indifferent to the feelings of others. If he cannot speak their
tongue it is because he is as mindless as a beast. To be unlike
others is to be less than human. Such is the prejudice of every
nation, which men carry with them even into lands where they
themselves are the foreigner.

That day, traveling with the caravan, we set
our faces to the south. There was no risk of our losing our way. We
would follow the Tartar River and then, when it disappeared into
the spring mud, ride on until we reached the Euphrates, where it
forms a great eastward loop into which we could not help but be
drawn. That night, when we camped, Kephalos dined with Hiram, and
I, the slave, was suffered to eat out of the common pot of horse
drivers who scorned me as their inferior because they were free men
and had been born in the Land of Hatti and could not begin to
comprehend my Ionian gibberish.

Yet I was tolerated around their fire, if
only grudgingly and in silence. No one mocked at me or tried to
strike the food bowl from my lips, for I carried a sword. Their
contempt, like their master’s, was tempered by a reasonable
fear.

It is instructive to listen to the
conversations of men who imagine they speak among themselves
without being understood. I sat next to them on the bare ground,
and they talked, in Aramaic, of me and of my good master, as if I
were as insensible as a log.

“This Hugieia of Naxos, the fat rogue; I, for
one, have never heard of a place called ‘Naxos’ and do not believe
it exists.”

“This one—by Mother Kamrusepa, how he stinks!
Tomorrow we must remember to sit downwind of him,” murmured a great
oaf with one eyelid stitched shut over an empty socket. “I will be
just as glad when Hiram catches him asleep in his tent and puts a
knife under his ribs.”

He glanced at me furtively from time to time,
peering around the bridge of his nose as if he were concealed
behind the corner of a building, but could not be brought to look
me straight in the face.

“I cannot imagine why he hesitates, since we
are many and one man with a sword and a few rabbit-stickers is yet
but one man.”

“A scorpion, even when you crush it under
your heel, still has a sting. Hiram knows his business.”

There was a general hum of agreement around
the campfire.

“Doubtless he wishes to discover where the
Ionian conceals his money,” the man went on, licking the grease
from his fingers as he finished eating. He had the longest arms I
think I have ever seen on a man, and the muscles in them wobbled
loosely. “It would be a nuisance for him if he killed the great sow
and then couldn’t find it, eh?”

He smiled, revealing teeth as rotten as
year-old tree stumps.

I said nothing. Whoever spoke I did not look
at him, but maintained an appearance of uncomprehending
indifference. When it was time to sleep and I went to the tent
Hiram had loaned us, I told Kephalos everything I had heard.

“I am not surprised,” he answered. “Having
had dinner with him, I would not be surprised to hear that as a
child he had sold his mother into a brothel. I would not be
surprised to hear that he never had a mother.

“What of the others—do you think we have
anything to fear from them?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Hiram of Latakia
keeps none but toothless dogs. He is the only one here with the
courage to knife a man in his sleep—if it were otherwise he would
be dead already himself.”

We lay there in the darkness, neither of us
speaking, the leather walls of the tent enclosing us like a grave
vault.

“He will wait a while,” Kephalos murmured at
last, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I told him I have
money with the merchants of Borsippa, implying that the sums ran to
many hundreds of shekels of silver—I was far gone in drink, you
understand, and inclined to brag, yet I am convinced he believed
me. A sum like that would set up such a man for his lifetime, so he
wants to believe me. He will ponder for a few days how best to rob
me of it.”

“Nevertheless, one of us had best keep awake
through the night.”

“As you will, Lord.” Kephalos yawned
violently, for, indeed, he had drunk a good deal that night. “An
attitude of caution is perhaps the wisest thing. Let us do nothing
rashly.”

“In that case, if you think it best, I will
delay killing him until tomorrow.”

My former slave laughed softly, perhaps
imagining that I was in jest.

“I am glad you agree,” I said, keeping my
voice cold that he might understand I took the matter seriously.
“In the morning, then—as soon as he is up. I will make a public act
of it, that his men may understand we are not to be picked over
like a corpse.”

“By the gods, Master. . .” He sat up and
leaned toward me in the darkness, his head almost touching the peak
of the tent. “What has become of you that you show so little pity
and so little sense? Would you really kill him, just like that,
between rising and breakfast? No, Lord, it would never serve.”

“What would you suggest? The man plans to. .
.”

“What the man plans is beside the point! It
is better to have one enemy at our throats than many. I can control
Hiram of Latakia, and, should it prove necessary, you can always
kill him later. The fact remains that we are safer traveling in a
large party than we would be on our own.”

He took a deep breath—I could hear it in the
darkness, like the wind over ice.