Soldier of the Mist

CHAPTER XLIII-A Soldier of the Mist

Lost in the night and its shifting vapors am I. Already I have nearly forgotten how this night began.

I lay on a pallet in a cold, dark room with a single high window, a window having narrow steps and a vantage for an archer beneath it. I think I had been asleep; a child, a girl, slept beside me.

A lovely woman came for me, and with her a hard-faced spearman. I must have known that they would come, for I rose at once and put on my cuirass and helmet by the light of the spearman's lamp, thrust this scroll through my belt, and took up my hoplon and javelins. I think I knew where we went and why, but that too is lost in the mist. "We will let Io sleep," I said to the woman. "She'll be safe here."

The woman nodded and smiled, her finger to her lips. Before she died, she said her name was Eurykles.

We hurried down dark and narrow streets reeking of ordure and joined a throng of silent people before the gate. The woman led me to the front, saying, "Artayctes and his guards will be here at any moment. Then we'll go."

I asked her who the rest were, but men on horseback pushed their mounts through the crowd before she could answer. The chief among them, a bearded man on a white horse, spoke in a language I could not understand; and to my amazement another man, who grasped his saddle cloth, spoke after him just as I write these words. This is what they said:

"In the most holy, most sacred name of the Sun! My people, does our situation seem desperate to you? Reflect! Here we have been penned like coneys, with scarcely enough to eat and without even clean water to drink. When next the Sun, the divine promise of Ahura Mazda, mounts his throne, we shall be free, every one of us, and once more in the Empire.

"So it shall be if we act like men. Those who fight must press ever forward as they fight. Those who need not fight must turn back and fight to aid their brothers. Horsemen, do not ride off, leaving your brothers on foot to fight alone. Surely Ash will know of it! And I will know of it too, and what I know I will soon tell the Great King. Rather, ride at the flanks of those who press your brothers on foot, and protect my household."

More was said, but the spearman tapped me on the shoulder and I listened no more. He led two horses, and he handed the reins of a champing gray stallion to me. The woman said, "Can you ride?"

I was not sure. I answered, "When I must."

"You must tonight. Mount, and this man will help me up."

I leaped onto the gray's back and discovered that my knees knew something of horses, whether my mind retained it or not.

Grinning, the spearman clasped the woman about the waist and lifted her until she sat behind me. Though I have forgotten so much, I still recall the flash of his teeth in the dark and her arm about my waist, and the musky, flowery smell of her that was like a summer meadow, with a serpent among the blossoms.

"At last I know why the People from Parsa put their women in these trousers." Her voice was at my ear, ecstatic with excitement. "For a thousand years they have not known but that they might have to gallop off with them next day." Someone shouted an order, and the gates swung toward us. "Stay with Artayctes," she said. "The best troops will be with him."

As we rode out, the mist from the harbor crept in, meeting us half a stade from the gate. Covered carts rumbled behind our horses. The woman said, "Now the enemy knows. If the wheels weren't making so much noise, you could hear their sentries shouting already."

Indicating the carts, I asked why they were here.

"For Artayctes's women. His wife and her maids will be in the first, his concubines in the others." She hesitated, and I heard how sharply she drew breath. "But where is he? Where are his guards?"

A few dozen foot soldiers with oblong shields followed the carts, and before them marched one who bore an eagle on a staff. My heart nearly burst at the sight of it (as it does now at the thought), though I could not have said why.

There was a shout from a thousand mouths. I swung about in the saddle to see the wide hoplons and long spears of the enemy break through the mist, and above them a black cloud of slingstones, javelins, and arrows. They had waited only until the last foot soldiers were clear of the gate, knowing perhaps that the Hellenes inside would close them against our retreat. Their phalanx was a hedge of spears.

"Go!" the woman cried. "He's tricked us! He must think I'm a spy-he's leaving the city some other way."

Before she had finished, I had loosed the reins and dug my heels into the gray's ribs. It sprang forward like a stag. In an instant, we had passed between the last cart and the soldiers who followed the eagle; but the mist held another phalanx as terrible as the first. I turned the gray aside and lashed it with the reins as I saw a third phalanx wheel to block the road; for there was a narrowing space between it and the second, and in that space only a scattering of archers and slingers.

Fearsome as the close-drawn shieldmen were when they fronted us, they could do nothing as we thundered past their flanks. One of my javelins I cast left, the second right, and though I did not see my foes die, each must have taken its toll. A bearded archer nocked an arrow meant for me, but we were too swift; I felt his bones break beneath the gray's hooves.

Horsemen followed me, iron-faced riders from Parsa with singing bows. We turned as one and caught the phalanx from behind, scourging the soft back of that monster of bronze and iron, felling its shieldmen like wheat before the reapers. Falcata scythed their spears and split their helmets, and they died, falling onto the dry yellow grass under a sky suddenly blue.

That is all I can recall of that time. When I lifted my head, a rolling mist had covered the lake. Somewhere the woman I had lain with screamed. As I struggled to rise, my hand touched a crooked sword half-buried in the mud. Not certain even that it was mine, I stumbled to my feet and limped among the dying and the dead in search of her.

I found her where the bodies lay thickest. Her feet had scattered gems that twinkled in the starlight, and a black wolf tore her throat. Its forepaws pinned her to the ground, but its hind legs stretched useless behind it, and I knew its back had been broken.

I knew too that it was a man. Beneath the wolf's snarling mask was the face of a bowman; the paws that held the woman were hands even while they were paws. Ravening, the wolf dragged itself toward me. Yet I did not fear it, and only fended it from me with the point of my sword.

"More than a brother," it said. "The woman would have robbed me." It did not speak through its great jaws, but I heard it.

I nodded.

"She had a dagger for the dead. I hoped she would kill me. Now you must. Remember, Latro? 'More than brothers, though I die.' "

Beyond the wolf and the woman, a girl watched me-a girl robed with flowers and crowned. Her shining face was impassive, yet I sensed her quiet pleasure. I said, "I remember your sacrifice, Maiden, and I see your sigil upon it." I took the wolf by the ear and slit its throat, speaking her name.

I had come too late. The woman writhed like a worm cut by the plow, her mouth agape and her tongue protruding far past her lips.

The Maiden vanished. Behind me someone called, "Lucius… Lucius… "

I did not turn at once. What I had thought the woman's tongue was a snake with gleaming scales. Half-free of her mouth, it was thicker than my wrist. My blade bit at its back, but it seemed harder than brass. Frantically it writhed away, vanishing into the night and the mist.

The woman lifted her head. "Eurykles," I heard her whisper. "Mother, it's Eurykles!" With the last word she fell backward and was gone, leaving only a corpse that already stank of death.

The man-wolf was gone as well. The man lay in his place. When I touched him, his beard was stiff with blood, his back bent like trampled grass. His hands thanked me as he died.

"Lucius… " The call came again. It was only then, too late, that I sought for him.

I found him beside the broken eagle. He wore a lion's skin, but a spear had divided his thigh and a dagger had pierced his corselet of bronze scales. The lion was dying. "Lucius… " He used my own speech. "Lucius, is it really you?"

I could only nod, not knowing what to say; as gently as I could, I took his hand.

"How strange are the ways of the gods!" he gasped. "How cruel."

(These are the last words of the first scroll.)