Soldier of the Mist

CHAPTER XXX-The Great Mother

The terrible goddess of the slaves appeared last night. I touched her and everyone saw her. It was horrible. Now the camp is stirring, but there is no need to write quickly; the market will be full before the bridge is mended. I will have time to read this again and again, so that I will never forget.

Cerdon crept to the fire while I sat staring at the flames, and crouched beside me. "There are sentries tonight," he whispered. "We must be careful. But the Silent One has gone, and that's more than I let myself hope for."

I felt that Drakaina might yet come and that Cerdon would not grudge us a few moments together, so I asked who the Silent One was and added, "I think you are all silent here."

"The young one." Cerdon spat into the fire. "The Silent Ones are always young men, because young men haven't begun to doubt."

"I'm a young man," I said. "So are you."

He chuckled softly at that. "No, you're no Silent One. Nor I. Besides, they're younger than either of us. They're Rope Makers, chosen from the first families-families that own whole villages and many farms. Do you know about the judges?"

I shook my head, glad of another delay.

"The judges rule. The kings pretend to rule; and they lead the armies, fighting in the first rank and often dying. But five judges rule our land. Only the kings can make war; that's the law. But each year the judges meet to make a war that's outside the law."

I said, "If there's a new war each year, you must always be at war."

"We are." Uneasily, he glanced over his shoulder. "The war's against us."

"Against you slaves?" I smiled. "People don't go to war against their own slaves."

"So I heard when I was in the north with the army. Masters there would laugh at such a thing, just as you did. Here it's so. Each year the war's voted in secret, and it's a war against us. The judges speak to young men, to the men who were boys until the full moon, when they were whipped for Auge. They become Silent Ones, seeming just untried shieldmen but each having the ear of some judge. A Silent One may kill us as he likes. You know the Silent One, I think. His tent stands over there. Do you remember his name?"

It was the tent to which Drakaina had taken me, and I remembered what she had said. "Pasicrates?"

Cerdon nodded.

"If the identity of the Silent Ones is kept secret, how can you know?"

"There's a look about their eyes. An ordinary Rope Maker-an Equal, like the one in your tent-may kill only his own slaves. If he kills another man's, even a Neighbor's, he must pay. A Silent One looks at you, and his hand moves by a finger toward his dagger, maybe because the others respect you, maybe only because you've talked to a foreigner." Cerdon shook himself as men do when they wake from evil dreams. "Now it's time to go," he said. "Past time. You'll have to leave that sword behind." He rose, motioning for me to follow.

I unbuckled Falcata and laid her in the tent. Cerdon was about three strides ahead of me. "Hurry," he said. As he spoke something moved beside his leg, and he cried out. It was but a muffled cry, smothered behind the hand with which he covered his mouth, but Io must have heard it in her sleep. She came running from the tent as I knelt beside him.

"Master! What happened?"

I told her I did not know. I carried Cerdon to the fire and by its light saw two wounds in his leg. Five times I filled my mouth with his blood. Io brought wine and water when I was through; I rinsed my mouth, and we poured wine on the wounds. By then he was dripping with sweat.

I asked Io whether Basias's slaves were awake as well. She shook her head and offered to get them up.

"No," Cerdon gasped.

Io said, "When Basias was bitten, the regent's healer said to keep him warm." I nodded and told her to bring my cloak.

Cerdon whispered, "You must go without me."

"If you wish."

"You must go. I saved you at the first meal. Do you remember?"

"Yes," I told him. "I'll go alone, if that's what you want."

Io covered him with my cloak and tucked it in around him, then filled a cup and held it to his lips.

"Follow the river. You'll see a white stone, and a path. Follow the path. There's a wood we never cut-not even for building timber… a fire there."

"I understand," I said, and stood up.

"Wait. You must touch her. Touch her, and I'm repaid."

"I will."

Io said, "I'll look after him, master, and hide him if he can walk a little when it gets light. I don't think he wants us to call anyone."

I ran, partly because Cerdon had said to hurry, partly because I feared the snake. There were sentries as he had said, but it was easy to slip between them and scramble down the bank into its shadow. The river-it is called the Eurotas, I believe-was nearly dead of the summer heat; the soft earth at the edge of its water muted my steps. There was an odor of decay.

The white stone had been put beside the path as a marker, or so it seemed to me; the wide valley of the Eurotas is a place of wheat and barley, and not one of stones and sand. The path born beside this stone climbed the bank at once, crossed fields of stubble far from any house, wound among sheep meadows into the eastern hills, and at last reached a wood of stunted trees-a wood filled with ax-bitten stumps.

It would have been so easy to lose the path in the dim moonlight that I wonder now how I did not; yet it had been trodden by many feet not so long ago. In the meadows, sheep must have crossed anl recrossed it, but the marks of their sharp hooves had been blotted everywhere by softer walkers; in the woods my fingers told me of herbs crushed at its edges still damp with their own juices.

Two hills it climbed; the third it seemed rather to split as a man splits firewood with a wedge. When I had passed between those walls of stone, I walked as though in a hall colonnaded with mossy trunks, trees so softly furred that to brush against one was like caressing some vast beast, oaks as broad as boulders and as tall as masts.

A lion stepped from the darkness beneath the trees into a glade filled with moonlight, not half a stade away, and turned its black-maned head to stare at me. An instant later it had vanished in the shadows once more. I waited, fearing I would meet it should I go forward; and as I stood there, straining my ears to catch the least sound, I heard the singing of children.

Something in their song promised I need not fear even a lion in that enchanted place. I did not trust it and waited still; but after a time I went forward again, and soon I saw the red flicker of firelight through the leaves. I had walked quietly before; I sought to walk even more quietly now, so that I could assess the ceremony to which I had come before the other worshipers saw me.

The altar was a flat stone set upon two standing stones, its top only a trifle higher than my waist. The children I had heard were dancing in the space between two fires, stepping slowly and solemnly in the moonlight to the tapping of a pair of stone-headed hammers and the lilting of their own high, clear voices. Behind them, in the shadows of the trees, men and women murmured like willows stirred by the wind. Cerdon had called this a shrine of the Great Mother and indicated I must touch her, but I saw no goddess.

The clicking of the hammers was like the beating of my heart. For a long while I listened to it and to the children's song, and watched their dance; the girls wore garlands of flowers, the boys garlands of straw.

The clicking stopped.

The little dancers froze in their circle. The woman who held the hammers rose, and another led her forward. The child nearest the altar-a girl-went with them.

When they reached the altar, the woman and the girl held the woman with the hammers back; she was blind. She touched the altar with her hammers and laid them upon it. With the help of the other woman, she lifted the girl onto the altar. Slowly she chose a hammer and edged around the altar top until she stood at one end, nearest the girl's head.

As she walked, so I walked too-much more swiftly than she, but I had more ground to cover. I circled the clearing until the altar was between me and those who watched, and as she lifted her hammer I shouted a name and dashed forward.

A sighted woman might have stopped to look; then I would have succeeded. The blind priestess did not. The stone hammer fell, splashing the girl's brains upon the stone.

That was when I saw the Great Mother, an old woman half again as tall as I, leaning over her priestess and dabbling her fingers in the blood. A goddess indeed, but aged and crazed, her gown torn and gray with dirt. For all I owed Cerdon, I would not have touched her if I could. I turned to flee instead; something struck my head, and I lay stretched upon the ground.

Before I could rise, a hundred slaves were upon me. Some had such sticks as could be picked up in the wood; some only their fists and feet. One shouted to the rest to stand aside and raised a billhook. They released me, then turned and fled as though it were they who were to die. I caught the ankle of the slave with the billhook with one foot and kicked his knee with the other, and he fell.

As I scrambled up, Rope Makers were emerging from the trees, their line as straight as on the drill field, their long spears leveled. I snatched up the billhook and killed the slave who would have killed me, finding it a better weapon than I would have supposed.

It was then I understood that the others did not see the goddess: a man took the priestess by the arm and led her away, assisted by the sighted woman; and for a moment he stood within the Great Mother, as a fire within its own smoke. "I drink no blood that has wet iron," she said.

I tried to explain that I had not killed the man with the billhook for her, then Drakaina embraced me. "Thank Auge! I thought they'd killed you."

"How did you get here?" I asked. "Were you watching before?"

She shook her lovely head, making the gems in her ears glitter in the moonlight. "I came with the Rope Makers. Or rather, I brought them. I could find this place-and you, Latro-though they could not."

The Rope Makers reached us as she spoke. Save for the dead man and the dead girl on the altar, the worshipers were gone. So was their terrible goddess, though I could hear her old, cracked voice calling to her people among the oaks.