Soldier of the mist l-1

by Gene Wolfe

  CHAPTER XXXI-Mother Ge's Words

  The prophecy of the goddess still echoes in my ears. I must write it here, though if it is read by the Silent One, by Pasicrates, he will surely try to kill me.

  He was not at the shrine of the Great Mother, but because I thought the leader of the Rope Makers (who had gathered to stare at the altar and the dead girl) might be Pasicrates, I asked his name. "Eutaktos," he told me. "Have you forgotten our march from Thought?"

  Drakaina said, "Of course he's forgotten, noble Eutaktos-you know how he is. But what about you? Don't you remember me?"

  Eutaktos said politely, "I know who you are, my lady, and I see what a service you have done for Rope tonight."

  "What of Eurykles of Miletos, who marched with you? Where is he now?"

  "Wherever the regent has sent him," Eutaktos said. "Do you think I meddle in such things?" He turned to his men. "Why're you standing there, you clods? Pull her off and tear down that altar."

  I asked whether he would bury the child.

  He shook his head. "Let the gods bury their own dead-they make us take care of ours. But Latro"-his harsh voice softened a trifle-"don't try to handle something like this by yourself again. Get help." As he spoke, eight shieldmen lifted one side of the altar, and it fell with a crash. There were about thirty shieldmen altogether, one enomotia, I suppose.

  As we stepped beneath the trees, someone threw a stone. That was how it began. Stones and heavy sticks flew all the way to the split hill. A shieldman was struck on the foot, though he could still limp along; soon another's leg was broken. Two shieldmen tied their red cloaks to the shafts of their spears and carried him.

  In the split the stones were much larger, and they struck much harder because they were thrown by men on the hilltops. Those who had thrown from behind the trees were mostly women and boys, I think. Without armor Drakaina and I hung back, but the shieldmen held their big hoplons over their heads and advanced. The cries from the hilltops and the clang of the stones on the bronze hoplons were like the din of a hundred smiths, all shouting as they hammered a hundred anvils; they deafened and bewildered us all, or at least all of us save Drakaina.

  She took my arm and drew me away to the thick shadows we had just left. I said, "They'll kill us here."

  "They'll certainly kill us there. Don't you see the Rope Makers aren't getting through?"

  Nor were they. The rearmost shieldmen had stopped and were backing away from the stones.

  "They've probably blocked the path in some way. Or if four or five slaves with weapons were stationed where it widens out, one or two Rope Makers would have to fight them all. In their phalanx they may be the best soldiers in the world, but I doubt they're much better than other men alone."

  The rest soon followed those we had seen retreating. Nearly every man was helping a wounded comrade with his spear arm while he tried to fend off the stones with his shield. Eutaktos bellowed, "Back to the fires! It won't be long till daylight."

  Drakaina screamed. I turned in time to see the flash of the knife. Then she was gone. The woman who had attacked her shrieked and fell.

  Another woman and a boy rushed at me in the darkness, and I cut them down with the billhook, though I am not proud of it. When they were dead, I examined them; that was when I saw I had killed someone's wife and a boy of twelve or so, she armed with a kitchen knife, he with a sickle [Latin falx.-G.W.]. Seeing the sickle, I wished for my sword, though the billhook was no mean weapon. The woman who had attacked Drakaina was writhing in agony, but of Drakaina herself there was no sign.

  I rejoined the Rope Makers, helping carry a wounded man. There were more stones as we fought our way to the clearing. I was struck twice, but I did not fall, nor were any of my bones broken. When we had marched to the split in the hill, the Rope Makers had stayed in file, and often they had seemed not to notice the missiles hurled at us. Now several rushed into the trees again and again. Twice they killed slaves, but one of the Rope Makers did not return.

  The fires had burned low, so while some of us treated our wounded, the rest (of whom I was one) gathered such wood as we could find and piled it on the flames. When I heard the voice of the goddess in the oak wood again, I told Eutaktos the slaves would attack us soon.

  He looked up from the dying Rope Maker he had been attending to ask what made me think so. Before I could reply, a lion roared from the trees, and a wolf howled. As though they too were lions and wolves, a hundred answered them. Every man had a stone, and each ran close before he threw, then dashed back into the shadows. We picked up such stones as we could find and flung them back, but most were lost in the dark.

  They charged our circle at last. I fought with my back to one of the supports that had held the altar, though it was not high enough to give much protection. A Rope Maker fell beside me, then another, and after that I no longer heard Eutaktos shouting encouragement. I fought on alone, ringed by slaves with clubs and hachets. All this took less time than it has taken to write of it.

  The cracked voice of the old goddess called, "Wait!" and though I do not think the slaves knew they heard it, they obeyed it nonetheless.

  Long strides carried her to the fires; the spilling of so much blood must have restored her vigor, if not her youth. The lion and the wolf frisked around her like dogs, and though the slaves of the Rope Makers could not see her, they saw them and drew away in terror. When she stood before me I was a child once more, confronted by the crone from the cave on the hill.

  "It is you," she said, "come again to visit Mother Ge. Europa carried your message, and my daughter has told me what she promised you. Do you recall Europa? Or my daughter Kore?"

  If I had ever known them, they were lost in the mist, lost forever as though they had never been.

  "No. No, you do not." Huge though she was, her voice seemed faint when she spoke to me; I could scarcely hear her above the snarling of the beasts and the cries of the slaves. "Why don't you threaten me with that hedge bill?" she asked. "You threatened Kore. Do you still fear my lion?"

  I shook my head as she spoke, for as she spoke, what I had known of Kore and Europa came flooding back to me. "If I were to kill you, Mother, who would heal me?"

  "By the wolf that gave your fathers suck, you are learning wisdom."

  The slaves were staring at me as though I were mad. They had lowered their weapons, and as Mother Ge spoke I dropped mine, went to her, and touched her arm.

  The slaves shouted aloud when I laid my hand on her, but quickly they fell silent again. When they came forward, many eyes streamed with tears-the eyes of men as well as those of women and of children. They would have touched her too, I think, if they could; but the lion and the wolf rushed at them, menacing them as the shepherd's dogs menace the sheep.

  "Goddess!" one of the slaves shouted. "Hear our plea!"

  "I have heard your plea many times," Mother Ge told him, and now her voice was like the singing of a bird in the sun, in lands that are drowned forever.

  "Five hundred years the men of Rope have enslaved us."

  "And five hundred more. Yet you are seven when they are one. Why should I aid you?"

  At that, they led the blind priestess forward. She cried, "We are your worshipers! Who will feed your altars if we lose our faith?"

  "I have millions more in other lands," Mother Ge told her. "And some for whom I am not yet bent and old." She paused, sucking her gums. "But I would have another sacrifice tonight. Give it to me willingly, and I will do all I can to free you. The victim need not die. Will you give it?"

  "Yes," shouted the priestess and the man who had spoken before; and after them, all the people shouted, "Yes!" Then Mother Ge told them what she required of him, and the blind priestess found a sharp flint for it, searching the ground on all fours like a beast.

  Twice he tried to strike but drew back his hand at the first blood. Though Mother Ge had said he need not die, his progeny died that night to ten thousand generations, and he knew it as well as I. He stood well back
from Mother Ge and from me; the other slaves crowded around him, cheering him and pledging tawdry rewards-a new roof or a milch goat. I knew then that I might slip away in the dark if I chose, but I waited as fascinated as the rest.

  Then there was a stroke in which there was no hesitation. His manhood came away in his hand, looking like the offal from a butcher's shop when he held it up. Someone took it from him and laid it upon the fallen altar, and he stood with legs wide apart, bleeding like a woman-or, rather, like a bull when it is made an ox. The others made him lie on the ground and stanched his flow with cobwebs and moss.

  "Now hear me," Mother Ge said. She straightened her back, and it seemed that a great light shone there, a light from which her body shielded us. "This man is sacred to me as long as he lives. In payment, I will fight for you, striving to make his master, Prince Pausanias, king of this land."

  The slaves muttered against these words, and a few shouted protests.

  "You think him your greatest foe, but I tell you he will be your greatest friend and perhaps your king, turning his back upon his own kindred. Still he, and I, may fail. If so, I shall destroy Rope-"

  Here the slaves roared so loudly I could not hear.

  "-then you must rise against the Rope Makers, your scythes to cut their spears, your sickles to beat down their swords. But first, your stones against their helmets. So you defeated them on this night. Remember it."

  Then she was gone, and the clearing seemed dark and far from the lands of men. One fire was dying, the other already no more than embers. In a litter they wove of vines, half a dozen men carried away the man who had unmanned himself. Others trailed behind them, bearing the bodies of relatives killed in the fighting. Some women asked me to come with them and offered to treat my bruises, but I feared them still because of the woman I had killed, and I told them to follow their husbands. They did as I ordered, leaving me alone with the dead.

  Though the billhook was not intended for digging, I was able to scratch out a small and shallow grave in the soft earth of the clearing. I buried the girl I had not saved and heaped her grave with the stones that had been flung at us. I believe one of the dead Rope Makers was Eutaktos, whom I had known in some time I have forgotten. Though I robbed several of their helmets to study their faces, I could not be sure; I had seen Eutaktos only briefly and by firelight.

  Nor did I any longer know who Kore and Europa were, nor what they had once meant to me, though I could recall a time not long ago when I had known. Their names and that memory troubled me at least as much as the thought that the lion and the wolf might still be near. I muttered "Kore" and "Europa" over and over as I built up the dying fire and carried blazing sticks to reestablish the other, until at last Kore and Europa ceased to have any meaning at all for me, ceased even to be names.

  Walking up and down between the fires, I waited for dawn before I made my way through the split hill. The bodies of many Rope Makers had laid on that narrow path, and there were still many bloodstains; but the slaves had dragged the bodies away, so that they lay in the shadows beneath the trees, wrapped in the green life of the oaks. I do not think the other Rope Makers will find them there.

  From the place where Drakaina had taken my arm, I could see the old goddess walking the valley, a woman taller than women, at once darker and brighter than the tree tops touched by dawn. She stopped at the grave, I think, for after a time she vanished from sight and I heard her weeping.

  When I had passed the split hill, I cast aside my weapon and hurried through the dew-decked fields to this camp on the bank of the Eurotas, where now I write these words in the morning sunlight. Io met me. After I had told her something of what had happened that night and she had salved my bruises and mourned with many head shakings the blow that had struck me down, she took me proudly to see Cerdon, whom she had hidden among the hay that fed our pack mules; but Cerdon had died while she slept, and already his limbs were cold and stiff.

  CHAPTER XXXII-Here in Rope

  Strangers viewed with the greatest suspicion. This morning Drakaina, Io, and I went to see the famous temple of Orthia. Its enclosure on the riverbank must once have been separated from the city, but now the Rope Makers have built their houses right up to the boundaries of the sacred ground. Drakaina said, "In the Empire, we wall our cities properly. When you're on one side of the wall, you're in the city; on the other, you're in the country. With all these straggling hamlets, who knows? Thought was almost as bad, but at least they had guard posts on the roads."

  "The Great King tore down your walls," Io reminded her. "That's what the regent said."

  Drakaina nodded. "The People from Parsa have a sense of fitness. Its walls symbolize a city, and pulling them down is the destruction of the city. Rope's been destroyed already-or let's say that it's never existed. This is just four villages; no wonder they call it scattered."

  Slaves turned their faces to one side when we passed, and even the Neighbors we saw did not wish to speak with us. Rope Makers stopped us and questioned us, women as well as men, and many told us we were unwelcome. We soon learned to reply that we would gladly go elsewhere if only their regent would permit it, which silenced them quite effectively.

  Drakaina shook her lovely head after one such encounter. "There's no place in the world where men are less free than they are here, and none where women are freer-save perhaps in the country of the Amazons, the women who live without men."

  "Are they real?" Io asked. "Once Basias said I'd be a strategist among them."

  "Of course they are." Drakaina slipped her arm through mine. "But you'll have to go far to the north and east-much farther east than my own city. And you'll have to leave Latro here with me. The Amazons don't care for foreigners any more than these Rope Makers, and they consider all men spies."

  I said, "There can be no such race; they'd die out in a generation."

  "They lie with the young men of the Sons of Scoloti. If they bear a girl afterward, they sear her left breast so she can use the bow. Boys buy them the favor of their goddess, or so I've heard. I admit I've never seen one of these women warriors myself."

  I thought of the dream I had last night when she said that; perhaps later I will write of it here.

  "There it is!" Io exclaimed, and pointed.

  "About what I expected. They don't know what a real temple looks like here. Nobody could who hasn't traveled in the east, though some of these are at least beautiful. This isn't even that. In fact, if this whole city were destroyed, no one would ever guess from looking at the ruins that half the world had trembled at its name."

  The temple was indeed small and very simple, its pillars mere wooden posts painted white. I took off my sword and fastened the belt around one.

  Io said, "We're supposed to make an offering. See the bowl? Master, do you have any money?"

  Drakaina told her, "I'll take care of it," and tossed one of the iron coins of the Rope Makers so that it rang against the bronze rim.

  As we went from the brilliant sunlight of the portico into the shadowy interior, Io asked, "Where did you get that?"

  "Hush!"

  It was the age of the temple that impressed me most, I think, and perhaps it would be just to say that its age was the only impressive thing about it; but that made it truly a sacred place, the home built for a god when the world was young and men had not yet forgotten that when the gods are mocked they punish us by leaving us.

  A priestess, white-haired but as tall as I and as straight as any spear, glided from some recess. "Welcome," she said, "to this house in the name of the Huntress, and to this land in the name of the House of Heracles."

  "It's true," I admitted, "that we're all foreigners here, madame. But we've come to Rope at the order of your regent, the great Prince Pausanias, who does not permit us to leave."

  Drakaina quickly added, "We have the freedom of the city, however, and I am a priestess of your goddess."

  The white-haired woman made the slightest of bows. "As such, you may sacrifice here
whenever you wish. No one will prevent you. Should anyone question you, tell them you have my permission. I am Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes, mother of Pleistarchos, and widow of Leonidas."

  Drakaina began, "Then the regent is-"

  "My cousin and my nephew. Would you care to see the image of the goddess?" She led us to a wooden figure, cracked and blackened by time. "She is called Orthia because she was found standing upright, just where you see her now, in the days when our forefathers conquered this land."

  The bulging eyes of the statue gave it the look of a madwoman. In either hand it grasped a snake.

  "The wood is cypress, which is sacred to her. The snake in her right hand is the empyreal serpent, the one in her left the chthonic serpent. She holds both and stands between them, the only god who unites heaven to earth and the lower world. When she appears here, it is most often as a snake."

  Io asked, "Could she help my master? He's been cursed by the Grain Goddess."

  Drakaina added, "I've already offered sacrifices to our threefold goddess on his behalf. Do you remember Basias, Io? He promised to carry a message to her." She turned back to the priestess. "And Latro is much better. His memory was taken from him, and he still can't remember; but now he acts almost as though he could."

  I said, "The goddess is angry."

  "Why?" Gorgo's eyes were large and cool, the rare blue eyes that shine like ice.

  "I don't know. But can't you see the way she looks at Drakaina?"

  Io's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a shout of nervous laughter.

  "No," the priestess told me softly. "I cannot see that. But you do. What has this woman done?"

  "I don't know."

  Even in the dimness of the temple, I could see how white Drakaina's face was. She said, "He is mad, most reverend Queen. Pasicrates and I, and the little girl, care for him."