by J K Ishaya
"'You cannot defeat them,' a somehow familiar voice said with an accent I'd heard before.
"I squinted to see, in the dim light, the face of a man in perhaps his twenties, long haired but clean shaven. He wore neither Dacian nor Roman garb but a sleeveless leather jerkin of foreign design. There were straps across his chest, which held a sword and scabbard to his back. I gaped, blinking. At first, I stumbled back a few feet, not believing my eyes.
"'You do not need your blade here,' he said softly, and by some unexplainable compulsion, I found my hand lowering back to my side. 'I would never harm you.'
"'You?' I rasped. I had not seen him since childhood, in those dreams grown dusty and almost forgotten, but now they flooded back to me, every little detail: a surrounding void of blackness, a light far below me like a gate into another world. And then him, the guardian on the threshold who had frightened me far worse than anything I ever faced in the waking world. His clothing had changed only a little; the jerkin was new to me, but still the same style as before. It bore gashes as if torn in battle, as did his trousers. There was the same resplendent bird-headed golden torque around his neck, which was another means to identify him, but I mostly remembered that face. It had not changed at all in the years since I'd last seen it, and now he appeared to be younger than me.
"It was the stranger from the stairs."
✽✽✽
"So, he was real?" Howard asks incredulously.
"Yes, very real, though at that moment I questioned my sanity when I saw him." For a moment I recall the figure, so distant over the course of time, yet ever near in my mind. "I declared immediately that he could not possibly be real, that thirst had finally begun to play with my head.
"'No, it is not,' he said with authority. 'You know that they will not stop, Zyraxes. It is Dacian gold they want, and it is Dacian gold they will have. Trajan was never to be trifled with.' Then he added under his breath as if speaking from experience, ‘Any more than Caesar.’
"'How do you know my name?' Strange instances induce strange logic. Not only was he a figure from my old dreams, but he seriously critiqued our handling of the war with Rome. I could have begun with any number of other questions that made more sense to the situation.
"He gave a dry chuckle as he looked me from head to toe, the glance so familiar and charging my every nerve. 'I've known you since you were a child, a new Dreamer come into the world. I never intended for you to ever see me, but then the steps tempted you.'
"His mention of Dreamers for that first time did not quite faze me except to think of the strange dreams I'd had in my early years. 'The steps,' I murmured and pictured them stretching down into that chasm of nothing, with that speck of light at the end.
"'The Steps of Light Slumber, the first juncture,' he said. 'You came to them again and again, and I dared not let you descend. The world below is wonderful and terrible, but there is risk there I could not let you take.'
"I cannot describe now the whirlwind of other questions that consumed me, but none made it to my lips to ask. I could not move, so I only stared at him dumbfounded. It began to faze me that every noise within the vicinity had gone quiet. I could not hear the people's prayers that had been a wave of murmurs moments ago. There were no crickets or night birds calling, and very little crackling from the fires.
"'You cannot beat them,' he repeated. 'Your king has led you into a losing battle and there is nothing more you can do. He would destroy his own people before surrendering. Take your family and leave. Go over the north wall. I will ensure your safe passage.'
"This jarred me from my trance and I found my strength again. Reaching to my side, I gripped the handle of my falx, lifted it from its caddy and swept it around before me. I could readily wield this two-handed weapon with only one if necessary. No one was going to call my father, the man who gave me the will to persevere, anything other than perfect, and to suggest that I secretly flee with my family sounded too cowardice for me to stomach. My arm lifted and leveled the tip of the falx with the side of his throat. One neat swipe and his blood would decorate my blade, but he did not so much as blink. 'Who are you to speak of my father that way?' I replanted my feet, preparing for him to take some counter measure, but he only looked at me sadly.
"'Do not follow Decebal down, Zyraxes.' It was almost a plea. 'Save yourself, your wife and children. Live out your life in peace. You know the north lands are all but untouched by the Romans. Go there, start anew.
"Then he just disappeared. I felt a sensation, such as when you nearly nod off to sleep but then snap awake. An instant of fogginess and then full alertness. I looked around and realized none of the worshipers seemed to have noticed a warrior lord suddenly ranting near the northwest wall with a complete foreigner. As my anger ebbed, I felt more embarrassed and glad that my antics had gone unnoticed. Thirst again, I told myself. It caused hallucinations. Was that not the likeliest possibility?"
I stare at the floor and Howard is keen to wait out the glaze in my eyes, my sudden distance. Kvasir remains quiet, letting things take their course. "I just…" I try to get my head around it. "I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I been wiser, had I taken his advice and gotten my family out under his care."
Howard can only nod, though he does not yet understand any of it, or how profound my speculation.
Chapter Five
"I headed for the temple then, past the rows of worshipers. I wondered how, even bowed over with their faces to the ground, all of them could have missed my display. Had not one pair of eyes lifted and cut toward the voices near the wall? I slowed down, turned about uncertainly to look down on them, catching the smell of piss and sweat wafting from them and I understood. These people were too tired to notice if a wolf pack traipsed through the fortress let alone one of their own having a dialog with a phantom. At the temple steps, guards let me past the front golden columns and opened the great double doors for me to a scene that put my little moment of delirium to shame.
"Beyond, sconces burned on the circle of inner columns and the air under the high, round ceiling was draped with the smoke of myrrh and amber that burned in tall standards. I slowed again as I came upon a scattering of dead bodies, all young men. In times calling for sacrifice, to choose the most virile and needed is to prove to the gods that your petition is dire."
"Ritual sacrifice?" Howard asks. "Your people practiced ritual sacrifice?" My claims to Dacia's glory are suddenly reduced in his mind. He visualizes nothing less than a primitive tribe cutting out hearts on an alter, dancing to firelight and banging on drums.
"You see it as savagery," I comment, "but what is war other than one large wave of ritual sacrifice no matter the cause? Whether to some indifferent deity or over natural resources and riches?"
My question renders him quiet.
"Yes, we practiced ritual sacrifice," I continue. "Don't get me wrong, it's nothing I would condone today. As I said, we were a superstitious lot, and a lot of good it did us. Decebal had sent—" I clearly recall that temple floor and count them in my head now. "Six young men, all of whom we could have used on the western wall, to Zalmoxis. Their deaths were voluntary, for each believed that he could be the messenger to get our prayers through. An iron spear, forged just for this ritual, was affixed to the floor with its shaft and point at an angle, and each of them had thrown himself upon it. If he did not die immediately, then he had failed to deliver the message. In times of war, in the field away from home, the messenger was thrown from an elevated position upon a spear set up below. This portable ritual required no altar and viewed death as a doorway. The faster you moved through it, the greater you would hold onto your senses and the message you were to deliver upon your arrival. If you took your time, then the distraction of pain would cause you to lose your grip. These young men were all dead by now, pulled from the spear with their hearts or guts pierced and opened into dark red blooms, some with their intestines bulging. The spear shined with gore in the firelight and if it had not been f
or the overpowering sweet amber incense, I'm sure I'd have smelled their blood and excrement that soiled the temple floor."
"So, it was their choice to die?" my audience asks quietly.
My eyes drift to Kvasir, who has lapsed into silence and chosen to amuse himself with Howard's copy of Bulfinch's Mythology, pretending that he's no longer listening.
"If you call decisions driven by blind faith a choice," I reply. "They believed that they were going to the kingdom of Zalmoxis, a concept not too far removed from the Christian concept of Heaven and saints dying for their faith. However you look at it, they were dead and our army short a few much needed men. I didn't know what to say. I'd gone from one peculiar encounter to another as my gaze roamed across their bodies and to the center statue, where Decebal wavered on his knees, back hunched over, head bowed in supplication.
"'He is consumed,' a voice hissed beside me and I startled, turned to face Vesina, our high priest. He was a man in his fifties, hair and beard a stark gray against dark olive skin etched with lines around his eyes and down around his nose to the corners of his lips. He always donned the same long, robe-like tunic in white linen, now soiled to the point of gray and brown. His cap sat a little taller, a little more tilted, than the standard caps of the nobility. I asked him when this had started.
"'While you were on the west wall, he came to me insisting that we needed offerings. Then it began, one young man right after another,' he said. Had any of them gotten through? I asked, wondering, as I stared at a milky pool of bile, how quickly their deaths had occurred. Vesina shook his head grimly. 'All were slow to die, lord.' I cringed that their deaths should be all the more wasteful.
"Our voices stirred the king from his prayers and his head whipped around. Tired, old eyes focused past the glare of the flames and toward me. He looked as haggard as any other Dacian at that time, his cap removed, his hair in greasy disarray. His face, always so strong with its skin weathered by the elements and combat, was hollow from thirst, and his gray eyes seemed to have lost even more color. I dare say he looked much like a revenant clinging desperately to life. Stunned, I watched him not stand but scramble toward me on his knees, and I almost backed up when he reached me.
"'Zyraxes! My son.' His hands gripped the hem of my tunic and scale vest, trembling like a child's. 'Zalmoxis is still silent? There is no rain?'
"I did not answer immediately, seeing that his mind appeared currently too fragile for truth. 'How long has he been in this state?' I asked Vesina under my breath.
"'A few hours, that I'm aware of. I found the offerings for him.' He lapsed to stare regretfully at their bodies.
"'He's gone mad,' another voice issued from behind one of the columns. Previously Decebal’s lieutenant when he was a general, Bielis now held the high honor of my father's greatest confidant and comrade in arms. My uncle Diegis, once almost always in my father's presence, had passed from illness five years previous, so now Bielis alone strode toward us with a look of utmost disturbance.
"I staggered to reach down and get Decebal under the arms and pull him to his feet. This absolute loss of dignity made me hurt for him. At any other time previous, he was a very proud man, clever, a master tactician, and of course, I admired him all the more for how he had taught me to work around my affliction. As I drew him to his feet and better into the lights, I noted how his pupils were blown wide and dark beneath the glaze in his eyes.
"'Heat and thirst will do that to a man, but this is something else, Zyr,' Bielis said.
“‘By all means,’ I hissed at him. ‘Say that a little louder.’ I gestured at other worshippers scattered around the inside of the temple. ‘Make sure they are all aware.’ To this Bielis looked away, cheeks suddenly flushed.
“I found myself pondering the stranger's warning, though I dared not speak of him. All he had said was corroborated for me as if an invisible fist had gripped me, and the deeper truth of the matter struck me. We could not win, not with our king suddenly so unstable. I whispered to Decebal, 'Zalmoxis clearly has other plans right now. Come back to the tower with me, Father. We can discuss more there.' I thought maybe I could at least get him to sleep off this derangement. He had probably been awake even longer than I had, the better part of three days. His body against mine felt feverish and I could see the flushing in his cheeks and across his forehead.
"'Father,' I said, 'come back to the tower house, please.'
"‘Zyraxes, listen,' he hissed. 'Listen.' His hands caught on my shoulders and he stared into my eyes with desperation in his. 'Whatever happens, do not let Dacia fall apart. Keep the clans united. The Romans cannot take everything. I name you king upon my death. It must be you.'
"This statement stupefied me given that kingship was not inherited. There should be an election involved, plus my purpose was leading my men, not an entire nation. I looked down at his right hand with its white-gripping knuckles crushing the sleeve of my tunic. On his middle finger he wore a golden wolf-headed ring. This king's ring had been passed down since Burebista, its craftsmanship unmatched by any other royal adornment I had ever seen, even our ceremonial helms could not surpass it. I looked at Vesina and Bielis, who had witnessed his statement, but we all had no words just then."
"What did you do?" Howard's pencil nearly falls out of his hand again.
"Despite my discomfort at his demand, I hoisted my father fully to his feet, got him balanced, and insisted on taking him back to the tower. I found his cap and put it on his head, pushed the dirty hair back behind his ears, wiped some of the grime from his face with the hem of my tattered cloak, the best I could do to polish him up.
"With another look at the bodies of the young men on the floor, I may have incidentally snarled my next order at Bielis, 'Clean that up. See that they are given proper burial.’ I was annoyed with him for having said Decebal had gone mad, and he looked none too pleased with me as well. Bielis hardly left my father's side when they were in public, and I had just given him a demeaning task and dismissed him without a thought. I knew he would probably delegate the job to another and be along behind us soon.”
Howard, sharp young Howard. His eyes widen, and I sense that he's noted a certain edge when I mention Bielis, but again he draws patience.
"Then with Vesina's help, I walked Decebal from the temple. We didn't have much trouble cloaking his current infirmity on the dark path, and our populous remained distracted with its own miseries. We left the spiritual district and returned to the main city, avoiding the square completely to reach the tower house. Scorylo had already gathered the rest of the elite and they were conglomerated around the front door, whispering amongst themselves about the plan. Vesina, without any prompting, engaged them immediately to distract them from the king as I took Decebal inside.
"I guided him to his chambers which were only one more floor up, and there deposited him on the bed. I all but cooed at him to take his water ration and go to sleep, whispering that he had done all he could for now, that he would be no good to his people without rest, and that we had to be patient with Zalmoxis who was no doubt testing our fortitude. My ploy worked, for in moments the exhaustion claimed him, and he drifted off."
I pause to gaze inward at those memories as if they are images on tintypes, my father's face grainy and paled out in dirty sepia.
"I had wanted him to know what the elite were up to, but that could not be, not now. I told myself that surely he would approve anyway, and as a military commander, I had autonomy over my men, I could make decisions without the king's every approval. I went down to the common room where Bendis had joined the elite on Scorylo's suggestion that she witness our plan being hashed out. By now Vesina had also been informed, so I entered the room to be assaulted with a barrage of questions and arguments. As my men swarmed around me, I looked past them to see Bendis, sitting quietly—too quiet for her—with her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes were reddened around the edges, tinged with anger and worry, whether at me or at the plan.
"'Yes,' I confi
rmed to them, 'Scorylo and I have discussed it. We go over the far upper end of the southern wall and down into the camp. We have several more hours of night, plenty of moon glow, time to strike and return before our damage is noticed. We capture water for ourselves and leave them bodies.'
"'What does the king say?' Comosicus asked.
"I looked at him, then my gaze shifted past him to see Bielis arriving, stepping quietly into the room and lingering at the back of the group. His brow sank heavily, and his eyes grew especially dark as they stared at me from over Comosicus' shoulder. Whether it was a wise choice or not, I do not know, but I took the initiative. 'The king approves,' I lied.
"'But leaving the fortress less the men to protect it—?' Bastiza said. Like the others and myself, he wore a tunic and scale vest, his belts heavy with his sica and a quiver. 'Even just the few of us. We have a better handling than the infantry.'
"'What good are we protecting it now?' I asked. 'We're drinking goat blood for water.'
"'Thank you for that, lord,' Diourdanus threw in. 'I would sooner have cum in the back of my throat.'
