The Blood Star (60 page)

I took them, for I knew that he was right and
these were not the times for a man to walk about defenseless.

Since the wheat fields and the vegetable
garden were by then well established, and the women had taken
charge of the livestock, I had decided to yield to Kephalos’
advice—if so self-interested a suggestion can be called such—and to
clear a patch of land by the river, well watered and with just the
right amount of shade, and to plant vines there. We would have no
grapes for another two years, and no wine for three, but one has to
make a start.

Tullus and Icilius had been busy. A neat pile
of stones stood near the water’s edge, and the earth was nearly all
turned over and ready to receive the rooted plants. In a day or two
we would construct long rows of wooden frames to give the tendrils
something to climb over, and then, when Kephalos and I had selected
and bought the right varieties of vine shoots, we would have to
trust to time and careful tending. Vines are like a woman who knows
her own value and must be wooed with patient tenderness, but
perhaps that is why every farmer loves them above all else that the
hard ground yields to him.

We worked until dark, until the smoke from
the hearth fires was almost invisible against the evening sky, and
then we gathered up our tools and made ready to turn back toward
the house.

“I think we would do well to plant a line of
trees on the seaward side,” Tullus said, running his hand along the
eastern horizon. “It will shelter the grapes from the wind.
Otherwise their flavor may grow harsh in dry seasons.”

“If we plant trees today, it will be ten or
fifteen years before they are full enough to do much good,” I
pointed out.

“Yes, but if the vines take they will still
be yielding fruit a hundred years after we are all dead—one must
think of the future, Lord, and the generations to follow.”

“Then it shall be as you think best, Master
Tullus, for you are wiser than I in such matters. When we are both
old men and good for nothing except getting drunk on the veranda
every afternoon, we shall know if your trees were worth the
labor.”

He smiled, a willing, open boy’s smile,
pleased to have been judged right and pleased all the more, I
believe, to think of himself as having earned a place here that
would last out his life.

It was a warm twilight and I could almost
imagine I smelled our dinner cooking, for my appetite was sharp. I
had forgiven the Greeks their cowardice, or, more accurately, I had
simply forgotten their existence. I was looking forward to dinner,
and after that to drinking wine—but not enough wine to dull the
senses—and after that, to gathering Selana into my arms and
experiencing how the pleasure of the embrace made her breath catch
in her throat. I felt life to be a very fine thing indeed.

We had almost reached the edge of the
farmyard. I did not guess that anything could be wrong until I
heard horses neighing and the door of my house slamming shut.

This was followed almost at once by the
high-pitched screams of a woman’s terror.

At such times the senses are as quick as
fire. Even in that first instant, before a thought or an action
formed in my mind, I understood with wonderful precision what was
taking place. There were four riders. I had never seen any of them
before, but they wore the short belted tunics of Sicels. One of
them had already dismounted before the house and was loudly
demanding that everyone come out, and the other three had caught
Tanaquil outside and were trying to ride her down before she
reached the barn. She was running in a blind panic, her arms
stretched out before her as if she had to push her way through the
air. They would have her in a few seconds.

“Mother!” Tullus shouted. I had to grab him
by the shoulders to keep him from darting out and being trampled to
death—what could he, a boy, have done except get himself
killed?

“Mother!” he cried again, struggling to free
himself from my grasp.

It was Enkidu who saved her.

Twisting from the waist, he swung the great
ax in a wide circle over his head, cutting the air with a sound
like a gasp of astonishment. His hands parted and the ax tumbled
through empty space, end over end, and then with a sickening thud
buried itself blade-first in the chest of the first rider, yanking
him from from his mount as if he had been pulled from behind.

The other two reined in their horses at once,
making them rear up and claw at the air with their hooves.

Even over the horses’ wild neighing I heard
the whisper of metal against leather as swords were drawn from
their scabbards.

If they wanted to fight, I thought, well and
good. I raised my javelin, waiting for the Sicels to charge,
knowing that only then would these shadowy figures offer me a
target.

But instead, after a second or two, they
seemed to think better of the idea and wheeled about to flee.

“Cowards!” Tullus shouted after them. I let
him go to rush into his mother’s arms, and Enkidu and I started
running toward the house.

The man who had been standing in front of our
door turned to look when his friends galloped past. He saw us too,
realized that he was outnumbered, and scrambled to climb back on
his horse, but he was an instant too late. I let fly, and as he
took hold of the reins my javelin caught him somewhere in the left
side of his back. It pulled loose and fell to the ground, but I
knew from the way he seemed to sway in his seat that I had wounded
him badly. He crouched down, holding on to the horse’s neck, and
rode away.

Suddenly the farmyard was quiet again. The
whole incident had lasted only a few minutes, yet nothing was the
same now. Safety had vanished.

The door opened and Kephalos timidly stuck
his head outside. An oil lamp burned in his hand, and he peered
about like an owl blinded by the sunlight.

“Everything is over,” I said. “Who is inside
with you?”

“Selana and Ganymedes,” he answered, after
swallowing hard. He looked a trifle ashamed of his own fear. “I
heard strangers riding up—no neighbor would call at this hour—and I
bolted the door.”

“You acted wisely. Everyone is all right
then?”

“Yes. Everyone is all right.”

He came out and together we looked at the
spattering of blood on the ground.

“You killed one of them?”

“No.” I shook my head. “At least, he was not
dead when he left here.”

Selana and Ganymedes came out, clutching at
one another for comfort. They followed us to where Tanaquil stood
with her two sons gathered around her. Ganymedes looked as if he
could hardly restrain himself from throwing himself into Tullus’
arms.

A little way away, Enkidu had pulled his ax
from the chest of the dead bandit and was busy dragging the corpse
out of sight. A few minutes later he came back. He had wiped the ax
blade clean and was holding the dead man’s severed head by the
hair. His expression was like defiance but amounted to no more than
a kind of harsh expectancy.

“Yes, there will be other trophies. We will
go after them,” I said. The idea had just come into my mind, and as
a settled matter. I had not decided anything, but only remembered
what was required of me. Such men as had done this, who had
ventured onto my land in order to rob and murder, could not be
suffered to live.

“At first light we will pick up their trail.
You need not think they will escape us, Enkidu. This whole island
is not big enough for them to hide in.”

Nor was it. We found the first one not three
hours after sunrise. His eyes wide with that surprise that so often
overtakes men in the last instant of life, he lay where he had
fallen from his horse, which was peacefully grazing some fifteen or
twenty paces farther up the trail. My javelin had gone deep, and
then torn a wide gash when it twisted loose. He must have bled to
death fairly quickly.

The others we surprised that night around
their campfire—I do not think it ever occurred to them that they
would be followed into their own mountains. We slaughtered them
like sheep and cut off their heads to take away with us.

We spiked the heads of the four brigands on
poles and set them out at the approaches to our farm for the crows
to feast upon. Anyone riding down from the mountains and intending
mischief would be sure to come upon those grinning faces, with
their empty eye sockets and the blackened, rotting flesh pealing
away from the skulls, and they would know that intruders could
expect harsh treatment.

The warning seemed to have its effect. Many
farms were raided over the next few months, and with ever
increasing frequency and violence, but my own was left untouched.
Even the Greeks saw the lesson in this, for whenever I had
visitors, and they passed by the grim trophies that were posted
beside the road to my door, they too were reminded that Tiglath the
Athenian had purchased immunity for himself at the price of
blood.

Thus it was that at last they came to me one
hot afternoon while I worked among my vines. I was not expecting
callers, and they found me stripped down to my loincloth—a
delegation from the Greek council, which, it seemed, had at last
agreed on something, for they included in their numbers those two
old antagonists Diocles the Spartan and my neighbor Epeios.

“I am embarrassed,” I said. “If you will
accompany me back to the house I can offer you some wine.”

“We have not come to drink wine, Tiglath, but
to seek your help,” Diocles, stepping forth from the group, spoke
with his usual forthright bluntness. “Events have unfolded just as
you said they would. We have tried to parley with the brigands—they
take our silver and rob us just the same. You said we should hunt
them to their dens and kill them there, but to do this we need a
man to tell us how. We are but farmers and know not how to answer
men riding war horses and armed with bronze weapons. By the Mouse
God’s navel, we need a soldier.”

“I too am a farmer,” I said, for in my bowels
I shrank from what they proposed.

“Now perhaps, Tiglath, but I think it was not
always so.” Diocles raised his hand and pointed to my bare chest.
“If I understand anything of the world, it was not by tending vines
that you received such wounds as you carry upon your body.”

“We ask you to accept the office of Tyrant,”
Epeios broke in, smiling as if at last he had found me out. “For
six months you will have absolute authority—for twelve if the
situation demands it and the council agrees. Then you must
surrender your power and answer to your fellow Greeks for the uses
you have made of it.”

“I must have time to consider.”

“My all means, consider. But do not take too
much time, for, Tiglath my friend, time runs against us.”

We walked back to the farmhouse together, and
Selana broke open a wine jar. An hour later they departed, leaving
me with a dark and divided mind.

“You must accept,” Kephalos told me, when the
evening meal was over and we had stepped outside to enjoy the cool
of the sea breezes. “You must, Lord. It would be for our safety as
well as theirs, since the brigands will in the end remember that we
are few and they are many.”

“I would be as powerful as any king—for six
months. Kephalos, my friend, have you and I not seen enough of the
evil power brings, and most especially to those who hold it?”

“Yes, Lord, but there must always be men who
hold authority over others. For in the rule of one over many lies
the only safety, the only peace. Our neighbors understand as much,
so they turn to you—as men have always turned to you. The greater
evil now would be to refuse power.”

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled rather
lamely, as if to excuse himself for speaking the truth.

“We enter now into a season of war,” he went
on, “And these men who call upon you to lead them are farmers, not
soldiers—I say no more than they acknowledge themselves. You are
the soldier. There was a time when men called you the greatest
soldier living. A ruler is not wicked if he holds power by consent,
and you know there is no one else.”

“Yes, I know.”

That night I dreamed of my father.

“
Do this which they ask of you,”
he
said.
“Only do not let them make of you a king, my son. It is a
bitter thing to wear a crown, although once that was all I wished
for you. Besides, I do not care to think of my son as a king among
foreigners—such a thing would be undignified. Yet do this which
they ask of you, for you were born to it.”

The next morning I sent Kephalos to Naxos
with my answer. It seemed the god had not finished with me yet.

XXVI

“How many forges have we altogether for
working iron?”

“Four—all in Naxos. The king ignores them
because they are used only to make farming tools.”

“He will not ignore them much longer, not
once we have begun hammering out swords under his very nose. We
must disassemble them so they can be moved to safer locations. We
must work in secret.”

“No secret like that can be kept
forever.”

“We will not need forever. Once we have a
sufficient quantity of arms, he will think long and hard before
attacking us. If we can keep two forges working for a month, we
will be safe enough.”

“You sound as if you are planning to make war
against Ducerius instead of against merely a handful of
brigands.”

“It may come to that. Few kings are foolish
enough to tolerate the presence of a foreign army in their
midst—and that is what we shall become before we are finished, an
army. Besides, to strike at the brigands is to strike at Ducerius.
We all know it amounts to the same thing.

“We will need to train and equip at least two
hundred men, since we will need to keep half that number in reserve
lest our enemies decide to attack our homes while we are off in the
mountains chasing shadows. Thus I propose a levy of all able-bodied
men between the ages of fifteen and thirty. There will be no
exceptions. That the burden will be shared out evenly, during
harvest time farms where no man is left may claim aid from more
fortunate households.”