[The Book of the Gods 01] - The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  Maybe it wasn't you they were really looking for, Scholar. But it was unlikely to occur to Arnobius that anyone in the human world could consider him unimportant.

  Jeremy, having recognized Professor Tamarack in the pursuer he'd just left dead at the foot of the gravel bank, now had a good idea of how the ambush had been arranged. But just now he was reluctant to discuss it in public with Arnobius.

  Intruder, I badly need your help. But he uttered the silent plea with no real hope that it would be answered.

  The man who was gradually assuming authority among the ban­dits, taking over for the absent Death, made no answer to the Scholar's remark. He and his people continued to treat Arnobius and his companions reasonably well, assuming that all of them would be worth a fairly good price in the hostage market.

  "With perfect hindsight one can see that it was foolish for us to come this far from home without a sizable escort," said the Scholar to Jeremy, putting a slight emphasis on the last words. His eyes glared at his servant, trying to convey a message. Jeremy had no trouble in grasping the point: it was still possible to hope that the bandits didn't know how strong their full escort had been, that four hundred of Lord Victor's cavalry were quite likely only a mile or two away—possible, if not exactly a good bet. But Jeremy was surprised. Arnobius, of all people, was suddenly thinking in practical, worldly terms!

  "Yes, my lord," said Jeremy, nodding to assure the other that he had grasped the point. The scrapes he'd got from falling dur­ing the chase were hurting.

  He wanted also to convey the fact that he'd recognized the de­ceased bandit leader. Though it might be just as well not to try to tell Arnobius that his fellow Academic had also been Thanatos the god, the personification of Death. Knowing the Scholar, that would probably do no good at all. Anyway, Jeremy decided that would have to wait until he and Arnobius could talk without the bandits overhearing them.

  The bandits were growing impatient, waiting for the man who'd hired them and given them a plan to follow. "Where's the Mad One?"

  Jeremy thought that a likely name for them to give an Acade­mician—though not one they would have been likely to call Thanatos to his face.

  A tall man wearing one earring gestured toward Jeremy. "Last I saw of him, he was running after this one."

  "Why should we care what he's doing?"

  "Because he's paid us and he's going to pay us more."

  "Hey, wasn't that the Mad One's sword the kid was waving?"

  "Yes, idiot, that's what we've been talking about." The eyes of the last speaker came around and fixed on Jeremy; they did not seem unkind. "You'll lead us to where you last saw the gentle­man, won't you, lad?"

  All boldness had retreated, somewhere deep inside. Jeremy nodded, swallowed. "Sure."

  The bandits eventually located the body of their missing leader. His death dashed whatever hopes they entertained of eventually collecting all the pay the man had promised them when his ob­jective had been achieved.

  On finding the fallen man's dead body, the band seemed nei­ther much surprised nor particularly grieved. One or two of them declared they couldn't recognize it—refused to believe this worn-and sedentary-looking corpse was the terrible figure who, their attitude implied, had held them all in awe. According to them, even its physical size was notably diminished.

  The body did appear to be wearing their leader's clothes, which gave them cause to wonder.

  "He changed clothes with this one? Makes no sense. There's got to be magic in it somewhere."

  "If this ain't the Mad One, then the Mad One's likely coming back." The speaker concluded with a nervous glance over his shoulder.

  "Well, and if it's him, how did he come to this? Whatever killed him hit him in the eye."

  Someone finally suggested that Jeremy might be responsible.

  He tried a simplified version of the truth. "I threw a rock at him. He was going to ..."

  "Yes, a rock indeed." The arrowhead was still available. There was of course no sign of any shaft to go with it. "Well, one lucky throw."

  Presently they gave up, though one or two continued from time to time to throw wary, wondering glances at Jeremy. The consensus of opinion among the band was coming around to the view that they should get on with their business in their own way, and if they were lucky maybe the one they feared and worried about wouldn't come back at all.

  Now that they had the son of the Harbor Lord, they seemed a little vague as to what they were going to do with him. The scheme to collect ransom, Jeremy gathered, was still in effect, but the details were hazy and perhaps growing hazier.

  At dusk, the bandits built a small fire, cooked and ate some food, belatedly and grudgingly fed their prisoners, and tied them up for the night.

  Privately Jeremy tried to understand how the expedition had been ambushed and why his own strange new powers had failed to prevent it or at least give warning. The Intruder either had been willing for it to happen or hadn't been able to do anything about it.

  The Scholar was even more angrily eager for some explana­tion.

  Obviously Tamarack, the renegade Academic, had known where to intercept the party and had help, whether magical or merely technical, in setting up the ambush. But when the trap was sprung, he'd not concentrated his attention on Arnobius, who was presumably its object. No, the one he'd never taken his eyes off, had chased like a madman, was Jeremy. Here, far from the Academy and its crowds of onlookers, Death had had a very different objective....

  Whenever the group stopped for a rest or to make camp for the night, Jeremy had a chance to discuss their situation with the Scholar and Ferrante. The bandits let them talk together, assuming that each would be thinking up the strongest possible arguments as to why he should be ransomed at any cost.

  Actually, not much of the prisoners' time was spent on that. In fretful whispers they all kept worrying at the same question. Someone at least suggested that magic must have been involved in their betrayal to Lord Victor's enemies.

  Now there was nothing for the three survivors to do but sub­mit to captivity and allow themselves to be dragged forward under the drastically changed circumstances.

  Arnobius went through the hours grim-faced and for once seemed fully aware of his immediate surroundings.

  Now the gang, new leadership having taken over and modified its goals, carried its prisoners off in the opposite direction from the Mountain.

  The prisoners exchanged glances but said nothing. They were now heading in the opposite direction from where they believed John and his lancers to be.

  The band stayed on small trails, avoiding the larger roads, which in this region all converged upon the Oracle. On those highways parties traveling with armed escorts were fairly com­mon. Instead the bandits preferred to look for an isolated farm­house to attack. Next best would be a small, poorly defended village. Jeremy failed to see how this harmonized with their primary goal of obtaining ransom for Lord Victor's son. But then he had already seen and heard enough of the gang's behavior to realize that consistency was not to be expected.

  Even with his left ear it was difficult to hear the leaders' words as they argued among themselves, but what he did pick up sug­gested they were experiencing some difficulty in reaching a con­sensus.

  Pressing on along the road, being dragged as a bound prisoner, Jerry had the Mountain now and then in sight, when the road curved, even though they were heading away from it. It even began to dominate the skyline, but its top was still obscured, even from the piercing gaze of his left eye, by natural clouds or subtler magical effects.

  The earlier loss of all their cameloids seemed to make little dif­ference to the bandits' plans. Everyone was walking, in keeping with their pose as pilgrims. They coughed and blinked in clouds of dust until a shower came along to settle it.

  Anyway, Jeremy had the hopeful feeling that the intrusive power inside his head was slowly, fitfully mobilizing itself in some new way. At least he could hope that something of the kind was go
ing on. He wondered if mortal danger had wrought a permanent change in the nature of his relationship with the In­truder. Since showing him the sparkling arrowhead, it had at least been fully awake and aware that the body it inhabited faced grave peril. But he kept coming back to the fact that it had not saved Sal's life for her.

  The longer the partnership went on, the more trouble Jeremy had thinking of the Intruder as really another person in his head. Maybe because the Intruder never talked to him in plain words. And the idea that he, the child of poor villagers, was now sharing his humble skull space with a god—least of all any of the truly great divinities, like Apollo—was very hard to swallow. The chill­ing thought came that his partner, or invader, acted more like the demons of legend were supposed to act, half-blind and fitful... That thought was not endurable, and Jeremy put it from him

  It was no demon that had killed the most recent avatar of Thanatos. Or at least had killed the man who had been the ser­vant of the real god, as he, Jeremy, had become the servant of...

  Divinity or not, familiarity was beginning to breed contempt.

  If only he could talk to the damned thing, person, or god—or he, or it, could say something, in plain words, to Jeremy—but whether the Intruder could not converse or would not, evidently that was not to be.

  Sometimes, especially just before drifting off to sleep or when waking up, Jeremy seemed to catch a glimpse, out of the corner of his left eye, of the Dark Youth of his dreams standing or sit­ting near him. When he tried to look directly at the figure, it in­variably disappeared.

  For a while, being herded forward with his fellow prisoners, walking at a brisk pace in open sunlight, Jeremy tried to devise a plan of escape that would take advantage of his ability to sun­burn himself free of ropes. But that would take some time, and someone would be sure to notice what he was doing.

  He decided he had better wait for guidance. Experience sug­gested that the Intruder would provide what help was absolutely necessary. But only when he was good and ready.

  TWENTY

  Having turned resolutely in the opposite direction from where their captives had hoped to go, the bandits brought their little knot of prisoners to a halt at a place where the Mountain, looming at a distance of ten miles or so, pre­sented them with a fine view when they turned back to look at it.

  Only a quarter of a mile away, reported the scouts sent out by the new bandit leader, lay what one of their scouts reported as the Honeymakers' village.

  From the recesses of Jeremy's natural memory drifted a vague recollection that Sal had once mentioned a village of that name, wondering if she had reached it. But Apollo's fund of informa­tion assured him that there were many such, scattered around the world.

  What exactly had Sal's words been, on that occasion? Bees would be a help; cattle would be a help. Yes, she had said that, or something very like it. But then of course she'd been delirious much of the time.

  Observing the village at hand from a little distance above it on a wooded hillside, where he had been herded together with his fellow prisoners, Jeremy saw that it was two or three times the size of the settlement where Uncle Humbert and Aunt Lynn had grown their grapes—and no doubt still did, if they yet lived. Here the houses seemed more sturdily built and were in a differ­ent style.

  Jeremy could see a few of the villagers, moving about, and his augmented vision strongly hinted to him that there was some­thing special about these people. There was a moment when he thought he could almost see the ghostly figure of the Dark Youth, walking among them in the swirling white cape that he wore for business. Almost, but not quite.

  The majority of the bandits now pulled out pilgrim costumes, pale cloaks and habits, which they slid on over their ordinary clothes and their sheathed weapons.

  The three prisoners were left, closely guarded by a couple of their nastier-looking captors, outside the town until the attack had succeeded. They were warned to make no outcry. "Unless you want to go back to Lord Victor's service with a few parts missing."

  Yet another village to be overrun, to die under the impact of a surprise attack by the forces of evil. The boy began to feel ill in anticipation of what was going to happen to these innocent peo­ple. Judging from what he could see of them, small figures mov­ing in the distance, they were common-enough folk, a natural mixture of young and old. He could hear someone in the village calling in a loud voice, speaking a dialect quite similar to that with which Jeremy had grown up.

  And now, once more, Jeremy's left-eye vision, which he had begun to fear had deserted him, was definitely becoming active. When he looked at these villagers from a distance, it seemed to him that each of them sprouted a thick growth of almost invisi­ble quills, like some kind of magical porcupines. He understood that this was only symbolic, but what did it mean? He could only assume it to be some kind of warning. Maybe these people could not be attacked with impunity. Well, that was fine with him. He wasn't going to try to pass the warning on.

  And his god eye also reported that something in the center of town, other than its people, was definitely glowing, with a dif­fuse but steady radiance. The source of this light, whatever it might be, was still out of Jeremy's sight, hidden from his view behind a leafy mass of shade trees, but its presence was undeni­able.

  And the more Jeremy looked at these simple folk, the stronger grew the feeling that they were, or ought to be, familiar old friends or helpers . . . who had played a role in his life, some­where, a long time back, though he couldn't recall exactly how or when or where. Damn it, he knew them somehow....

  Before he had time to consider the matter at any length, the at­tack was under way. The watchers on the hill could hear the screams of sudden terror, and they saw how a couple of villagers were cut down in cold blood.

  About half the population, crying their alarm, fled the little settlement, with a bandit or two shooting a few desultory ar­rows after them; and the other half were not so lucky. Half a dozen girls and young women among them were rounded up; if the rest were content to sit or stand by and watch the despoiling of their daughters and their property, it seemed they would not be molested much.

  A few minutes later, being prodded and herded with his fellow captives down from the hill and into the little village square, Je­remy was able to get a direct look at the source of the strange glow. It centered on the statue at the center of the crude shrine, the figure of a nude man holding what might have been a lyre under its left arm. With a sense of grim inevitability Jeremy rec­ognized the unskillful carving as intended to represent Apollo.

  Now the program of serious terror got under way.

  The marauders swaggered in, cowed anyone who looked at them, kicked open the few doors that were slammed at their ap­proach, and began disarming men—though none of these vil­lage men were bearing real weapons. Still several were knocked down, cowed, disabled.

  One or two brave boys and angry women met similar fates. Dogs that barked and challenged were ruthlessly cut down.

  The bandits seemed unconcerned about the villagers who had managed to hide or run away—it was probably a safe assump­tion they had really nowhere to run for effective help.

  An old man, evidently some kind of a local leader, stepped for­ward, trembling. Jeremy gathered, from the few words that he could overhear, that one of the young women already being mo­lested was the old man's daughter or granddaughter.

  Although his relatives were now trying to hold him back, he protested in a quavering voice, "It is a very foolish thing that you are doing—"

  The old man, now being surrounded by a little circle of ban­dits, screamed out his plea for Apollo's help against the darkness, the barbarians.

  "Other gods rule now, you old fool," one told him in a pitying, almost kindly voice.

  "In fact," said another, adopting a thoughtful attitude, "we ourselves are the only gods you need. What's the matter? Don't you recognize us?"

  A roar of laughter burst out around the little circle. "Anyway,
we're the only ones taking any interest in you today! Let's hear some prayers."

  The words that came out of the old man's mouth were not a prayer, and a bandit's fist soon shut it for him.

  Jeremy meanwhile was experiencing an increasing sense of re­moteness. He realized now that he'd been mistaken about the Intruder—the alien power inside his skull had not fallen idle. Something was going on, but he could not tell exactly what. Whatever it was produced a feeling of disorientation, unsteadi­ness, apart from what could be blamed on the horror he had to watch. And now there was a kind of humming sound—was it in­side his head or out?—that he could not identify. It was a distant very faint but slowly growing noise, a wavery, polyphonic drone, that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

  Jeremy closed his eyes—not so much in an effort to blot out horror as to seek something else; he knew not what. There passed before his view a parade of all the images of the gods that he had ever seen, most particularly a collection of the statues and paint­ings he had walked among while at the Academy.

  He knew that Apollo (the being whose image at the Academy bore that label) was considered God of "Distance, Death, Terror, and Awe," "Divine Distance," "Crops and Herds," "Alexikakos,"

  Averter of Evil.

  Now and again Jeremy grew afraid that the alien thing inside his head cared not at all what might happen to any portion of his own proper mind or body.

  The voices of the terrified villagers, men, women, and chil­dren, muttering, sobbing, in repeated and hopeless prayer, had blended into that other droning sound, so Jeremy could no longer separate the components of what he heard.

  The repeated invocation of Apollo, the sight of the crude smil­ing statue, riveted Jeremy's attention. There again was the one presence he could not escape; the Intruder inside his head, how­ever ungodlike certain aspects of his behavior, had to be in some way identified or at least connected with Apollo—with the entity to which humans gave that name.