Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  They were forming with their backs to the wall on Tros’s flank. Tros looked for Arsionoe. He saw her fighting on the left wing, disobedient, but as good as a standard to rally around. She was in the midst of her ex-pirates, plugging a gap in the recoiling left wing. They were fighting for her like well trained and determined devils.

  Tros struck Sigurdsen again to get his full attention. He sent him with all his Northmen, hot-foot, to re-enforce the left wing. “Hold them until I join you!”

  Tros had seen his chance — the enemy’s mistake! Fifteen chariots and at least a hundred men had been detached, westward, with the obvious intention to attack from the rear. To be able to use the chariots they would have to make a circuit around two or three square miles of opened tombs with heaped sand between. They would be useless without support, so their speed was reduced to that of the marching infantry. It would take them more than an hour to make that march over wind-rippled sand — perhaps they were only intended to cut off Tros’s retreat northward — to compel him to stand where he was and be cut to pieces. The enemy’s right wing was being heavily re-enforced, by men marching in column, in an effort to drive a wedge between Tros and the wall. They intended to have the wall. Tros saw fit to let them have it, At their rear, they had left the line toward the boats wide open; all their reserves had been detached for that encircling movement, to support the chariots.

  Tros sent a man to command Arsinoe to come away from the left wing. Meanwhile he reorganized his centre. He sent another man for Conops, who arrived breathless. Conops went down on his knees and carefully cut through the shaft of the arrow that had pierced Tros’s leg, leaving about two inches of the shaft protruding.

  “Stand by for a hot one, master!”

  He struck the protruding shaft one hard blow with the hilt of his heavy knife, then seized the arrow-point with his teeth and pulled it through. He wiped the blood off his face and looked swiftly for a dead or wounded man from whom to strip some sort of bandage. Arsinoe had come. Tros was swearing at her. She had on a gossamer linen dress beneath her armor. Conops, as quick as lightning, knifed off yards of the thin material, and she laughed as he bound it around Tros’s leg, artfully placing a pad to stop the bleeding.

  “What now, master?”

  Tros used terse sea-phrases to explain a land manoeuvre. “East-southeast in line ahead until I change helm!”

  “Aye, aye!”

  Conops returned to the right wing. Within a minute there began one of those brilliant manoeuvres that, if they succeed, are reckoned proof of military genius, but, if they fail, are denounced as rash, unmartial errors of a fool. An impossible manoeuvre without splendid discipline. It almost failed, because Sigurdsen hated to yield ground. Tros threw his whole line into column, Conops leading, and himself in command of the rear that had been his left wing. He outflanked the enemy’s left! The very suddenness of the manoeuvre threw the enemy into confusion. They found themselves, some with their flank against the wall, some with their backs to the wall, some of them holding the line that Tros had held, and their left wing reeling, routed, as the astonishing column changed front. Their baggage-guard bolted; there was not much baggage; it was principally arrows.

  Again the amazing column changed front — a mere eighty battle-weary men. Conops’s golden trumpet sounded the charge and Tros led them, limping. They were into the enemy’s rear before they knew what to expect. Their commander was shot down. He was not Alexis. He was a Roman, wearing Alexandrine armor. The enemy milled, broke, scattered and tried to retreat through the gap in the walled enclosure. Into that hopeless confusion Tros’s archers poured a devastating hail of captured arrows. The one chariot that had not been sent with the reserves on that fatal encircling movement tried to escape in the direction of the Nile. Tros’s archers mowed down the horses. Boidion was in the chariot — Boidion, Alexis and one other — a man in Roman equestrian uniform — a hood-nosed, mean-faced Etruscan — Lars Tarquinius! Boidion’s fan-bearers lay dead on a stricken field beside a heap of dead and dying. Most of the remaining enemy scattered across the honeycomb of tombs toward the encircling column in the distance, but some threw down their arms.

  No cavalry. Pursuit impossible. Nothing whatever that Tros could do but set the prisoners to work to gather up his wounded, and to retire on his boats before the fleeing enemy could reach them. He had left only ten blistered seamen to guard the flotilla.

  It was little more than an hour since sunrise. Vultures in dozens flew down from the broken ledges of the second pyramid. In the near distance the Sphinx, half-smothered in drifted sand, inscrutably suggested that Tros’s problem wasn’t solved. Cleopatra’s perhaps, for the moment, at least. But his own?

  “Is the Princess unharmed?”

  “Aye, aye, master.”

  Conops stooped and mercifully drew his sharp knife across the throat of a Syrian, wounded in the stomach.

  “Master, she’s the kind that don’t die easy. Yonder she is. Look at her! Look at her walk! If I was you, I’d—”

  “Pipe down!”

  Tros offered his wine-flask. Conops drank and wiped the mouth-piece with his tunic. Their eyes met. Conops saluted and marched away to count dead and wounded.

  CHAPTER XX. “What do you wish?”

  Of all life’s difficulties I have found it hardest to compel myself to recognize and to concede a woman’s right to meet me on even terms. But it seems to be equally hard for a woman to understand my attitude. No more than all the priests, philosophers and poets do I know what love is: unlike many of them, I am unwilling to pretend that I do know. Neither do I know what life is. But it seems to me that if love or life lack dignity, neither the one nor the other is worth the sacrifice of half a moment’s thought. But I know not what dignity is. I know its comfort. But what it is I know not.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  Roll call. Only eight-and-eighty men left standing. Transportation for the wounded was the first problem. Memphis could look to itself; the less Memphis learned about two Arsinoes, the better. Fugitives, who had lost their claimant to the throne, and with most of their officers dead, were no danger at all, unless some of them should make for the boats and get away with them. Outlaws, they would scatter, or be hunted down and executed or enslaved. There were more than a hundred men and fifteen chariots, with some mounted officers, still in the field as a unit, but they were several miles away and had nothing to fight for, unless they should attempt to rescue Boidion. They were far more likely to assume that Boidion was dead, because they would hope she was dead. True, fifteen chariots and a dozen mounted officers might do a good deal to harass Tros’s line of retreat to the boats; but they were much more likely to save their horses for flight to preserve their own skins.

  Seven Northmen dead; eleven wounded. Three decurions dead, including the gallant Thestius. Sigurdsen out of his head with wounds and melancholy, following on battle-frenzy; it was always that way with Sigurdsen after a hard fight; he had to be sung to by the skald. Too many prisoners, some of whom, however, begged to be enslaved by Tros; but some were undoubtedly getting the story of two Arsinoes, and it was not in the least improbable that one or two of them were Queen’s spies. She was better served by spies than by her generals.

  Prisoners were put to work to strip and bury the enemy’s dead, the battlefield loot was Tros’s seamen’s perquisite, and they burdened themselves with plundered armor. Tros’s dead were laid in a line, in a trench that the Egyptians had dug in search of ancient tombs. And, as he had done after Salamis, he lined up the survivors for a last, farewell salute and, with his right hand raised, pronounced his blessing:

  “Ye who dwell beyond the veil of death, receive these my men, who have died with their honor upon them, creditably. Give them honorable greeting, even as we, their comrades, bid their gallant souls farewell.”

  He had no word yet with Boidion. She and Arsinoe walked and talked together, looking strangely alike, even though the one wore armor and the
other a sort of priestess’s costume and a garland. The ex-pirate escort kept at a respectful distance, separating them from Tarquinius, whose hands were tied behind him, and from Alexis, who was not bound because he was wounded.

  The chariot, loaded with armor and weapons, was dragged by seamen. The wounded, such as could not walk between uninjured men, were carried on the backs of prisoners, and on stretchers made of spears and reed mats taken from the Northmen’s prison. Twenty men were sent ahead in a hurry to guard the boats from fugitives. Twenty men brought up the rear, and retirement began.

  It resembled defeat, not victory; but Tros knew, and all his men knew that he had saved the day for Egypt. Tros walked alone, unarmored, switching flies and limping, leaving the command to Conops, who had caught an officer’s gray nag and was clowning the part of a Roman general on parade.

  They, were not pursued. There was not much fighting near the boats, although a group of fugitives did try to rush one boat and make away with it. Tros took his entire force and all his prisoners across the river. Then he sent a messenger at once up-river, to the temple, to command the priests to come and care for his wounded, on pain of having their temple burned and laid waste. He set the prisoners to work to build a reed encampment. He counted Arsinoe’s camels. He checked her supplies. Then he sent four more boats up-river, with a demand on the priests for provisions for a week for his entire force. After that, he questioned Arsinoe’s slaves. And at last, seated on a camel-saddle beneath a hurriedly constructed bower of reeds, with one of Arsinoe’s slaves to flick the flies away, he sent for Boidion.

  She stood smiling at him, Arsinoe to the life except for a vaguely absent element of self-assurance. The Queen’s and Arsinoe’s grandmother had been a Jewess. So was this girl’s mother. The coincidence of likeness was astonishing, but not, after all, such a miracle. Boidion could easily have passed for Cleopatra’s sister, although she and Arsinoe were much more beautiful than the Queen, as well as taller and with less prominent noses. All that Boidion lacked was an air of inborn royalty.

  Tros ordered another camel-saddle to be brought, that she might be at ease. Then he asked, her, suddenly:

  “Have you counted the number of men who have died for your false adventure?”

  “No, Lord Tros.” Her face changed. She appeared now to expect to be executed out of hand. She was considering whether or not it might pay her to weep.

  Tros paused, affording her full opportunity to excuse herself or to explain, if she should see fit. She was silent. “Was it your fault?” he demanded.

  “Yes. I did it. It was not my own idea. It was suggested to me. I was taken to the Roman proconsul Cassius, when he was in Damascus, and he agreed. He gave me money. But I did it. Who wouldn’t snatch at a throne, if the chance were offered? But for lacking the stroke of a scribe’s pen, I, too, am a Ptolemy.”

  “You have taken another’s name,” said Tros. He made his voice sound stern. He was not yet sure that he might not have to drag this girl to Alexandria, to measure the Queen’s mercy.

  He wanted, to arouse no false hope. “How can you restore her name to her, you having so misused it?”

  “Does she want it?” Boidion retorted. “Have you asked her?”

  “No. But I will.”

  He requested Arsinoe’s presence; so they brought another camel-saddle, and she came and sat facing Boidion, wearing a plain Greek amorgina of such fine, bleached flax that it resembled silk. It was of the latest court fashion. She had very evidently had the pick of Esias’s imported merchandise, had good needle-women with her, and was not inclined to appear before Tros at a disadvantage. She smiled at Boidion, with malice but without a trace of anger.

  “This girl—” Tros began.

  “My father’s daughter,” said Arsinoe.

  “Boidion,” said Tros, “has assumed your name.”

  “So I am nameless!”

  “You are Queen of Cyprus.”

  “I have tasted freedom,” she retorted. “Lord Captain Tros, I have told you, and again I say it: I am sick of being Queen of Cyprus. Never again will I go to Cyprus. Never. I have been a plaything of the vilest traitors that ever bought and sold each other, and themselves and their powerless victim. So, if this fool wishes to be Queen of Cyprus, let her be it!”

  Tros prodded the earth with his sword. He stared at Boidion. Suddenly he asked her:

  “Woman, you have taken one step. Will you take the other, and the consequences? Or will you plead for the Queen’s mercy?”

  Boidion answered: “You have heard her speak. She has said it already to me, just now when we walked together. I am as much a Ptolemy as she is. Perhaps I am more capable of being Queen. She seems to have had small pleasure of it, and no profit.”

  Tros met Arsinoe’s eyes again. “You yield your throne?”

  “Yield it? I have thrown it away, for any fool to have who craves it!”

  “You yield your name?”

  “It is stolen. Let her have it. I will choose a new name.”

  He stared at Boidion, considering her, and then pronounced his verdict:

  “Queen of Cyprus then you shall be, and Arsinoe you are, from this day forward; and the consequences be on your head. Never again answer to the name of Boidion! You hear me?”

  “If I am a Queen, you should address me more respectfully,” she answered.

  Tros smiled. He commanded Tarquinius the Etruscan to be brought before him; he came with his hands still tied behind his back, between two seamen. They had taken away his helmet, but he looked rather spruce in his Roman uniform — lean, mean, avaricious, but possessed of a kind of courage. He kept jerking his head to shake off flies. Tros ordered his hands loosed and a fly-switch given to him. He looked at neither woman — looked straight at Tros, sly-eyed and daring.

  “Lars Tarquinius, you are a treacherous, faithless, unscrupulous, lying scoundrel.”

  “Have I ever pretended to you to be anything else?” Tarquinius answered. “You may as well omit the Ciceronian oration, Captain Tros. You have a use for me, or you would have ordered me killed and thrown to the crocodiles. What is it? Or have I come to hear sentence of death? It wouldn’t be like you to waste a sensible man like me.”

  “You were left in Cyprus, in command of the Queen of Cyprus’s bodyguard,” said Tros, “and with authority from Cassius and Brutus, conferred upon you by the Roman admiral Ahenobarbus, to advise the Queen how to conduct her affairs. You will return to Cyprus, taking the Queen of Cyprus with you.”

  “How? When?”

  “Now. And by use of your ingenuity.” Tros gestured toward Boidion. “Present your respects to Queen Arsinoe of Cyprus!”

  Lars Tarquinius gaped. Even he, past-master spy, opportunist, agent of sedition and secret treasons, was too astonished for speech. Then a smile stole over his hungry face.

  “Our respects,” he said, “I think are due to Captain Tros. But — who shall guarantee us that this other, who so resembles her” — for the first time he glanced at Arsinoe— “will not—”

  “I will guarantee your death,” Tros interrupted, “if I ever hear of your mentioning this lady, whom you have never seen, nor ever knew, and even of whose name you are ignorant! You left Cyprus, in a design on the throne of Egypt, with that same Princess Arsinoe with whom you will now return to Cyprus, having failed of your purpose. For the rest, silence!”

  Tarquinius gulped. Tros commanded the Lord Alexis to be brought in; he came with his hand on a seaman’s shoulder, looking gray-lipped and crestfallen.

  “You deceived me, Tros!” he began bitterly.

  “Do you wish to go to the Queen: I will not deceive your about that, if you would like to offer her your felicitations.”

  Alexis avoided the eyes of the women. He glanced at Tarquinius, who made no sign whatever.

  “Do you wish me to plead for your mercy?” he asked then, staring straight at Tros. “If you will spare my life, I will forever be your grateful client. Is that sufficient? Or should I grovel?�
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  “Shake hands with your ally Tarquinius!” Tros answered. “Make your bow to your Queen! You are to go with her to Cyprus. There are camels waiting. Doubtless there are prisoners who are willing to make that journey with you; you may choose from among them as many as there are camels to carry them. You and they may have weapons, and I will supply provisions.”

  “I have no money,” Alexis answered.

  “You have an order on the Queen’s treasury, haven’t you? Use that. I am not your banker.”

  “It is worth my life to use that.”

  “Die then! You have cost me more good men than your convenience is worth. I have nothing to add, beyond that you may have your luggage; I will tell the priests to bring it.”

  Boidion smiled it Arsinoe: “And what will you do?”

  “I will pity you!” she answered. “When your faithful friends have poisoned you, my dear, or have cut your throat or tortured you to death, I will go to some temple or other, somewhere, and lay flowers for you on an altar. Or do you consider yourself a Jewess? Would you rather I should have some cattle slaughtered and hire beggars to sing psalms?”

  At a gesture from Tros the seamen touched Tarquinius’s shoulder. Boidion caught Tros’s eye. He nodded, and she went out with Alexis. Except for the slave who plied the fly-switch he was alone with a girl who had thrown away throne and name. He knew why she had thrown them away. She had placed herself utterly in his power, and to befriend her would be treason against Cleopatra, as the girl well knew. But she seemed unafraid, confident. They were silent about twenty switches of the slave’s arm. Then it was she who broke the silence:

  “So you see, I can’t get killed in battle.”

  “I would speak with my man Conops,” he answered.

  She mocked him: “Don’t order him to kill me. Do it yourself!”

  “I will come to your tent.”