Sabazel

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  And Danica was there, with Lyris and a number of the Companions, cutting a swath through the heaving, struggling bodies of horses and men to the king’s side. The crested helmets of the Sabazians caught and held the last brilliant shaft of sunlight. “Well met!” Bellasteros called, grinning, and Danica rang her shield with the hilt of her sword, equally fey.

  The baggage train halted, hopelessly entangled with itself. Another body of cavalry plunged into its midst. Fires sprang up, oxen fell butchered in their traces, women were snatched from the ground and thrown like sacks of meal across the imperial saddles. The screams of fighting men, of dying beasts and ravished women, swelled upward and burst against the sky.

  Mardoc’s cavalry cut through the confusion, following the falcon standard that he bore, charging in a tightly packed mass straight through the stalled carts to join with the infantry on the other flank. Arrows flew after them, but they were under orders to ignore the small imperial contingent that was slaughtering the camp followers. One Sardian, and one only, paused at Mardoc’s bellowed word to hoist the hooded form of Adrastes Falco onto his own horse.

  “Father!” Chryse screamed. She scrambled out of the cart, her veil thrown heedlessly aside, her face gaunt and pale “Father, here I am!” Her outstretched hands clutched at the heaving flank of Mardoc’s horse; it pounded by, throwing her aside. If the general saw her, he showed no recognition.

  Side by side Danica and Bellasteros fought, the falcon’s wings fluttering above them both. Their horses danced together in an intricate and deadly step. The star-shield flared casting fleeting shadows about it. Solifrax rose and fell as quickly as a serpent’s tongue. The Companions wetted their swords in the service of Sardis—and of Sabazel.

  One of Chryse’s serving-women was seized by an imperial soldier and thrown down in the dirt behind the cart. Chryse screams were as loud as the woman’s. She shrank back, her hands covering her face, and a man’s hands touched her from behind. Spinning, she screamed again. It was Declan.

  Without formal preamble he grabbed her arm and jerked her into a run. An imperial trooper bore down on them, spear raised, harness jangling. Declan dodged, Chryse stumbling behind him, and they fell into a tiny shelter behind the boxes and bags spilling from an overturned cart.

  “He picked up …” Chryse gasped, “He s-stopped for him but not for …”

  Another mounted trooper grabbed a baby from a woman’s arms and dashed it against an ox’s yoke. The woman, howling, clawed at the man’s legs. He kicked her away with taunts and jeers.

  Chryse screamed again and Declan set his hand firmly over her mouth. Her eyes rolled, the whites glinting; she subsided into a trembling huddle.

  Imperial horsemen made another breach in the shield wall and mangled Sardians beneath their hooves. They drove straight for the red plume and the gleaming blade, the unmistakable signatures of the conqueror himself. Bellasteros and Danica and their guards with them gave way, drawing the enemy deeper into the deadly embrace of the infantry. More than one Sardian soldier risked flailing hooves to stab upward, felling horse and rider into a shrieking, crashing tangle. Those imperial troopers who could be unhorsed did not rise again.

  Mardoc’s standard appeared beyond the far flank of the enemy, cutting into them from the side, throwing them back in confusion. More than a few of the imperial soldiers jerked their horses about and ran; others had no chance.

  Solifrax rose and fell, hissing. The star-shield snapped in reply. Patros raised the falcon standard to salute the last gleam of the sun, and then the sun was gone. But still a light hung about the battlefield, a lingering red twilight as if the clouds themselves were wounded, as if blood ran down the sky.

  Three imperial troopers leaped down from their horses to drag Declan and Chryse from their hiding places. One dealt the young man a glancing blow with the flat of his sword, knocking him sprawling, blood soaking through his dark hair and staining his face.

  The other troopers seized Chryse, tore at the fine fabric of her cloak, ripped at her necklaces. She was too terrified even to scream; she could only squeak and clutch futilely at her garments.

  A streak of light in the gathering gloom, and one of the soldiers reeled backward, a javelin protruding from his side. The other turned, raising his sword; he received a javelin in the throat and crashed heavily down, eyes still open and surprised, hand still clenched on his weapon.

  Chryse stood swaying, staring out between her spread fingers, as Atalia and Ilanit ran to her side. “Are you mad, woman?” Ilanit exclaimed. “Would you just stand there and let them use you?”

  Chryse said nothing, did nothing but look from face to face as if the two Sabazians were imperial soldiers in yet another guise.

  “She is not mad,” said Atalia. “Her mind has been cut and dried by her men, giving all, daring to ask nothing.” She turned, set her foot against the ribs of the first soldier, yanked the javelin from his side. A gout of blood splattered Chryse’s cloak. The trooper expired. Chryse fainted.

  Cursing, Ilanit and Atalia threw Chryse over a stray horse. The girl led the burdened animal away; Atalia turned to supervise the rest of the Companions. Their swords and spears were wreaking havoc among the plundering imperial soldiers, sending them to their deaths with their booty and their women still in their hands.

  Atalia threw her head back, laughing, letting the paean thrill from her lips. The song rose high and clear above the battle, and the wind repeated it.

  Danica heard. Her throat filled with the sound. The shield sang in her hands, bearing her forward. Bellasteros was at her side, urging his horse to longer strides; Patros carried the falcon at her other side. The guard, Lyris, and the Companions rallied behind.

  Their charge scattered the remaining imperial horsemen. The infantry broke the shield wall at last and followed, hooting with delight. Mardoc’s troops chased the enemy far into the scarlet-shadowed tints of the lowering night.

  One remaining imperial officer saw the falcon, the shield, the scarlet plume. His bloodstained face twisted in rage. He wheeled his horse, set his lance, and drove straight for Bellasteros.

  Patros glanced around, his mouth shaped to comment on the apparent victory. He saw the charging horseman and emitted instead some garbled warning cry. Even as Bellasteros and Danica whirled about, Patros jerked so abruptly at his reins that his horse reared, falling sideways into the path of the imperial officer.

  The horse scrambled, regaining its balance. The officer screamed an epithet. But it was too late to redirect his blow.

  The lance hit the edge of Patros’s cuirass, glanced off, bit deeply into his abdomen.

  Patros’s face went stark white. He dropped his sword, grasped the lance, and with a superhuman effort pulled it from his side. The officer, still clinging to the other end, was toppled from his horse. He scrambled upright.

  “God’s beak!” Bellasteros cried. He reached out. Solifrax swept in a glittering arc through the dusk. The imperial officer’s head parted cleanly from his neck, bounced onto the churned and bloody dirt, and was trampled instantly into fragments. His body stood upright for one long moment and then collapsed like a deflated bladder.

  Patros swayed in his saddle, his breath rasping through clenched teeth, blood streaming over his thighs. The falcon standard wobbled and began to fall. Danica’s heart wrenched. No, such loyalty deserves a better end than this—Harus deserves more. Marcos, he is your brother and therefore mine … The shield glinted, streaming light, an aureole of starshine reaching out to the wounded man. It lifted him, holding him on the back of the plunging horse; it carried the gilded form of the god from his hand to Danica’s.

  She grasped the pole with her left hand, holding it above the glowing shield, her face set almost in surprise at what she found herself so assiduously protecting.

  The Sardian Aveyron appeared from nowhere, his long arms easing Patros from the back of his beast. Bellasteros leaped down and knelt beside him, shouting for compresses, for wine, for the surgeon
. With his own cloak he staunched the flow of blood, leaving Solifrax for a moment abandoned in the dirt. The sword gleamed in crystalline purity, unstained, although Bellasteros’s hands and arms and thighs, and the shining bronze of his armor, were splashed and spotted with rusty crimson.

  Danica watched, silent, leaning down from her horse. The shield faded, becoming dull and featureless, just as the light waned from her eyes. The paean, she realized, had scraped her throat raw, and her arms and shoulders ached under the weight of shield and sword. The form of Harus gazed down at her calculatingly. Test me not, she told it. It is Ashtar who would plumb my strength to its bitter dregs.

  Ghosts shifted around her in the dimness, shrieking, lamenting. Then torches sprang up, and she saw that the ghosts were men, living their pain. Attendants bore away the twitching form of Patros; Bellasteros picked the streak of pale phosphorescence that was Solifrax from the ground and stood contemplating it.

  Mardoc and Adrastes materialized from fire-streaked shadow, leading their horses by their foam-flecked bridles. The beasts stumbled, wheezing, exactly like the infantrymen they passed.

  “Well done, my lord,” said Mardoc. His eye lifted to Danica, shied away, returned to Bellasteros. “Your ally fought well.”

  “Tell her that,” Bellasteros ordered. He sheathed his sword and rubbed his hand wearily over his face, as if he could not quite tell if the features were still there.

  “My … compliments,” Mardoc said grudgingly to Danica.

  She nodded politely. Adrastes was looking at her, narrow-eyed; “This,” she said, holding out the falcon standard, “I believe is yours.”

  The priest stepped forward and snatched it from her hands, inspecting it closely to see if it had been contaminated by her touch.

  “That is the standard Patros carried,” Mardoc blurted. “Where …?”

  “Wounded,” replied Bellasteros. “Wounded in my place.”

  “A brave lad,” Adrastes said. He lifted the standard regally, like a scepter, beginning a prayer. The bronze falcon remained mute and still on its perch.

  Mardoc bowed his head, Bellasteros shifted restlessly, but Danica turned to beckon to Lyris. Atalia was there, with some of the Companions. Gods! Danica thought. I am losing my touch, I did not hear her coming …

  “General Mardoc,” Atalia said, with some relish at interrupting the prayer, “I am pleased to report that your daughter Chryse, the first wife of the king, has been saved from a … nasty fate.”

  Mardoc’s mouth opened, hung open, and then closed. “Ah,” he said faintly, as if the name at first meant nothing to him, “my thanks.”

  Bellasteros glanced up, looking from Danica to Mardoc and Adrastes and back again, following the import of Atalia’s statement. “And mine,” he said at last.

  Adrastes pounded the pole of the standard against the ground, a chamberlain trying to attract the attention of a busy court. But Bellasteros had already turned back to his horse. “If you will offer a service of thanksgiving, Your Eminence,” he said. “Later.”

  “A sacrifice,” stated Adrastes, gathering his robes about him and following.

  Bellasteros’s eye met Danica’s. Sacrifice enough for one day, she thought. Forgive us, Mother, for our pleasure in it.

  The Sardians went one way, toward the ravaged baggage train; the Sabazians turned the other and slipped quietly into the torch-gutted night.

  *

  The torches and the campfires burned sullenly that night, the air of the valley thick and stale. The dead imperial horsemen were dragged to a nearby ravine, tossed like garbage into it, covered with rocks and brush. The howling of jackals soon began to waver down a discordant wind.

  Bellasteros spent the night moving sleeplessly from burial squad to baggage train to hospital tent—where surgeons often completed the butchery already begun on the hapless wounded. Everywhere he had an encouraging word, a compliment for brave deeds performed. Solifrax rested, murmuring just beyond hearing, at his side.

  More than a hundred dead Sardians were buried in tidy ranks, their families, massacred in the skirmish, laid like afterthoughts at their feet. A great mound was built over them, set with broken spears and swords. At dawn Adrastes raised the falcon standards and with his own hand cut the throats of three imperial prisoners, draining their blood in offering to the falcon god.

  Declan held the knives and the bowls. His flesh seemed almost green in the thin morning light, as if he fought to keep his stomach down. Surely it was his wound that so nauseated him.

  Bellasteros was also there; he stood to attention, his features stretched taut over his skull, deathly quiet, deathly reserved. Mardoc shifted uneasily beside him. Why should the king seem to force himself to this ceremony, so stiff, so still? The king had become a stranger to him.

  Danica and her Companions turned their backs on the Sardians and raised a pyre for four of their number. The flames were slow to burn, hissing and crackling above the dead faces, reluctant to consume them. These my friends, sacrificed for Sabazel, Danica thought; Ashtar, please that we may soon end this game. Please that we may soon begin a gentler one …

  The fire sputtered. Dawn came, with only a slight easing of the darkness. Thick gray clouds hid the sky, lidding the valley and trapping the various smokes and smells within. Brief sprays of sleet raked the camp, the huddled soldiers, the hunched backs of the horses. The army would move no farther that day.

  Bellasteros sent to Danica asking for scouts to join his; she dispatched three Companions. And he sent asking for Shandir’s help with a dying Patros. Danica could not refuse Ilanit’s desperate plea to go as well.

  At least Patros rated his own tent, Danica thought. The fabric shelter had been hastily raised during the night and now drooped in lopsided disarray. Aveyron stood guard outside the door; Hern slipped quickly away when he saw the Sabazians.

  Bellasteros stood at his friend’s bedside, hollow-eyed, stooped like an old man over the hilt of Solifrax. He was still flecked with the dirty stains of old blood, caked with dust and sweat; he straightened only slightly when the three women stepped in. His pain was a palpable current in the tent and Danica ached in response.

  Ilanit moaned in dismay at the sight of Patros’s still form. “If only I had been by his side. But I was rescuing that …” Danica’s hand fell on her shoulder, hushing her.

  Shandir immediately knelt by the narrow bed. “How did he pass the night?” she asked the surgeon who sat helplessly by.

  “Feverish at first, tossing and calling … strange names. Then, just before dawn, he quieted, began to sink.”

  And indeed the young man’s face was sunken, his cheekbones standing like mountain ridges above cavernous cheeks. Pale, too pale, and his breathing a shallow flutter. Shandir quickly called for warm water, peeled the bloodstained bandages from his wound, and began to apply an herb poultice. The rich scent rose upward, enveloping the tent, easing the harsh lines on Bellasteros’s face.

  Mardoc, with an unveiled Chryse on his arm, entered, followed by Declan. To Mardoc Danica said, silently, Will you thank us for saving your daughter from the fate you wished on us?

  “… I understand,” Chryse was saying. “I know so little of strategy. Thank you for explaining, Father.”

  Mardoc bowed slightly to Bellasteros. “She was … perturbed that I could not stop for her as I hastened to your side.”

  Bellasteros winced, imperceptibly, but Danica saw. “The general arrived in the nick of time,” he said, by rote, to no one in particular. “His courage and decision are to be commended.”

  Ilanit looked hatefully at Chryse. Chryse looked at Patros and her eyes filled with tears. Mardoc muttered something and vanished; Declan stepped forward to take Chryse’s arm in his place. “His Eminence sends his prayers,” he said. His voice was thin, as if it had been through a beer strainer. A bandage was stark against the tangled tendrils of his hair.

  Chryse drew herself up with a sniff and turned to Danica.

  “My … You
r … Danica …” She paused. Danica nodded encouragingly. “I thank you for your rescue of me. I … am grieved to cause such difficulty, but I have never been beyond the bounds of Sardis, and battle terrifies me …”

  “As it does us all,” Danica said graciously. Pitiful woman, dragged from her peaceful nest—but she is not a placid cow, Bellasteros.

  Bellasteros, oblivious, watched as Shandir’s long fingers probed Patros’s abdomen. He moaned. Ilanit forgot Chryse and stepped closer to the bed, biting her lip.

  “It is time to bleed him again,” the Sardian surgeon announced.

  “He lost enough blood on the field,” scoffed Shandir.

  The surgeon turned protestingly to Bellasteros. “My lord …”

  “You have done your best,” Bellasteros informed him. “He dies. This lady cannot hurt him.”

  “But my lord …”

  Bellasteros’s dark eyes lit, pinpoints of flame. His hand rose from the hilt of Solifrax and gestured peremptorily. The surgeon scuttled away.

  Shandir sat back with a sigh. “His internal organs are not damaged. But the wound is deep, and still his blood flows. I cannot heal him. Only the favor of—” She stopped, glanced over her shoulder at Chryse and Declan, continued, “Only the favor of the gods will save him now.”

  Ilanit emitted a shaky breath. “If only I had been with him …”

  “Then you would have been skewered as well,” Danica told her.

  She stepped forward and knelt beside Shandir, laying her hand on the damp skin of Patros’s brow. Her fingertips burned with the heat. If she could use the heat in his body, if she could mold his flesh together … His courage deserved the attempt. His courage, and his love for Ilanit.

  “Then we shall beg that favor,” Danica said to Shandir. “We must tap his strength.” She looked back at Ilanit. “Take his hand and call his name.”

  The girl fell to her knees, seized Patros’s limp fingers, pressed them with her own. Her voice caressed him and he stirred, his breath quickening. His eyelids twitched. Ilanit spoke again and his lips formed her name.