The roar of battle neared. Definitely, the Turkmen had found the inner ways. Who knew when they would reach this shrine?
Again, the great cave resonated with the goddess’ birth anguish and rage. After all these thousands of years, the power that lived below the earth would be extinguished, along with what it struggled to bring to light. If she were to die, why allow any of these puny creatures to live? Perhaps the land itself should die in fire, quake, and molten rock, as better lands had died, and then lie covered by the sea.
Leo drew his sword. At the very least, he and Kemal could guard the door of this birthing chamber and trade their lives for a chance at a healthy child.
He stole one last look at Asherah. Somehow, she had struggled back onto her feet. Her eyes met his. They held fear, but a blazing determination as powerful, in its way, as the fire in the amethyst's core as it struggled to break free.
“You can't do it alone, you know,” she spoke to the goddess. “In all these years, haven't you learned that yet? You need a human focus. And you need a midwife. I am here.”
The goddess and Leo cried out as one. Asherah picked her way back to him, stood so close that he might have embraced her, might have carried her away to safety, had a dream like safety existed.
“Leo,” she whispered. Her breath warmed his cheek. “My Leo. Look at her. See what pain she has lived with. I have a chance to heal that. How dare I not try?”
Now, he did embrace her. The upright, curving body in his arms made him ache. “God, I shall miss you,” he whispered. The words turned into one sob before he imposed ruthless control upon himself. “All the long years...”
She had healed him: would he begrudge her attempt to heal what labored before him? Still, he feared the immensity of the pain he would face for the rest of his life if she failed.
“Leo,” she told him, her head against his shoulder as it had rested during the weeks they had had together, “it is my choice. My will and that of my mother. Tell my father...” She managed a shaky laugh. “...that like Deborah and Judith and Esther, I risk my life to save a people. Now, let me go.”
His arms opened as if he had no power over them.
“Leo.” That beloved, inexorable voice. This time he was certain his heart was being ripped out.
“I must have your knife. To cut the cord, you know, when the baby comes.”
Theodoulos had her father's daggers, and she would not ask for them back. Leo offered her the sword he would have no heart to use, but she shook her head.
“That is your weapon. A man's blade. Give me...”
He knew her mind. From within his garments, he drew the obsidian blade that she wanted. He bowed as he presented it.
“Thank you, my love.” Asherah turned away quickly. Too quickly. Did her courage waver too? She advanced upon the laboring goddess, deliberately, as matter-of-fact as a midwife in the upper world. “Now, you and the other men must leave.”
Once again, he thought, he stood before a general and faced certain defeat.
“Get up,” he told Kemal.
“Lion's cub...” the Seljuk grasped his arm and clambered back to his feet.
Leo shook his head. He did not want pity. What he wanted, he could not have. He would take what he could get. Death stalked the corridors, no doubt eager to collect the debt Leo owed.
“It is Manzikert again,” he told Kemal. “Only, this time, we fight on the same side.”
Then, Leo saluted his wife and her mistress and marched out of the birthing chamber toward his war.
Kemal's sword rasped out of its sheath, a partner to his, as they stationed themselves outside the door.
“If I told you to flee, would you obey me?” Leo asked Theodoulos. He had two sound legs now: he might get quite a way before he was brought down.
“Not a chance,” said Theo. Out came the daggers he had fetched for Asherah, but not returned to her. Joachim's daggers: a man could spend a lifetime as a soldier and not see steel as fine. Theo might fall fighting, but not because his tools betrayed him.
“Stay behind us,” Leo ordered.
At least, Asherah would not have to see him finish what he should have done at Manzikert. Still, if he had died then, he never would have known her. Don't think about it, Leo. You have no time to think.
The clamor of battle, the reek of blood and voided bowels, bodies falling against rock, rolling, and taking other victims with them, the steady clatter and crash of rock falling from above drew nearer. He advanced some way to meet it, feeling as if he walked upon the most treacherous of seabeds. The further they went, the better their chances of deflecting invaders from the shrine. Perhaps, if they could make it to the whispering galley where so many tunnels met ...
Torches sparked and swung, used as often as weapons as they were to provide reddish tongues of light. The stink of burnt flesh mixed with the iron tang of blood, the hot reek of excrement, polluting the ancient cleanliness of the ways beneath. This was not even battle as strategists described it. They were down to swords, and if the blades snapped, doubtless, they would continue fighting with whatever rocks they could snatch up. This was not war—the massing of wings of riders, the positioning of archers, the game of wits pitted against enemy wits. This was sheer, brutal hacking, as old as the eldest primal curse.
Torchlight glinted off the blade of an axe used as deftly as farmers might use a scythe. Nordbriht fought, standing at bay, swinging his axe, surrounded not just by Turkmen, but by a host of shadows that snarled and pounced like maddened wolves.
A scream of pain echoed through the long, long corridor, drowning out all other noises. Was that a battle cry, or the scream of a woman in torment?
Triumph, of course, was as past praying for as Leo was done hoping. Despair keened in his blood as shrilly as the battle cry of a Varangian who had seen his lord die on the field.
Two Turkmen rushed up to him, and Leo stepped forward, ready to meet them.
The ground buckled, hurling Leo against the cave wall. As he fought back onto his feet, his sword out before him to ward off attackers, a leopard rushed past him, pouncing into the fray, followed by another.
The ground quaked one final time, and then stilled itself. The torches, those not quenched in bloody wounds, flickered. Their fire changed color and form. Flames of a spectral white twined out, creating a half-light to illuminate an unholy resurrection.
Now, allies fought at his side. Some wore arms and armor such as the land had not seen for thousands of years. Some of that gear could have been issued by Alexander's officers as his troops marched through Gordion. Some of it was new when Uriah the Hittite paid his respects to David the King in Jerusalem. And some ... the men shambled forth in skins, swinging clubs in which deadly shards of flint or wickedly edged obsidian had been embedded. He could not touch those men, could scarcely bear to look upon them; but their eyes were alight, glowing with a terrible eagerness.
Where they struck, Turkmen fell. Where they struck, enemies and unwilling allies gave way in horror. Swords and spears passed through their bodies, but still they advanced. Turkmen and villagers, monks, farmers, and aristocrats gave way before these fighters who had appeared out of the bowels of the earth.
When it seemed as if no more men could possibly emerge from the caves behind Leo and Kemal, the screaming reached such a pitch that Leo's hearing mercifully blanked. Now, as though protected, Leo watched men fight and fall. The leopards reemerged from their battles, to be joined by great, blocky lions such as he had seen carved of living stone, by maddened bulls, even by serpents hissing as they tangled warriors’ ankles and brought them down before raising wedge-shaped heads and lunging at their throats.
The terror was gone now, replaced by utter despair and the last desire of fighting men: to give as good an account of themselves as possible before the strength fled their hands, the light from their eyes, and the blood from their bodies.
That scream of pain again, prolonged unto madness. This time, Leo was certain he could
not have imagined the note of triumph in it. He shivered as if plunging into a mountain stream at dawn. Then he recovered just in time to slash the sword hand from a man who had leapt for him, rather than for what safety he might contrive. He knew he was going to die. He had never felt more alive.
The scream arched upward into exultation, to be met by shrieks of pure panic.
The land was no longer defended by men from all the years of this land's settlement, no longer beasts that menaced the land's invaders. Now, butterflies poured upward, legion upon legion of fragile, beautiful creatures. Their wings glowed and glittered as they darted past toppled bodies, flew in circles about flaring torches and blades awash in blood. Clouds and clouds of gleaming winged things poured out of the caves, from the very cracks in the walls that had split asunder in the terrible series of earthquakes and aftershocks that had all but turned solid rock into heaving mud.
Then, the butterflies attacked in their own fashion, flying at the faces of soldiers who tried to thrust them away with weapons, or who dropped their swords to swing at the tiny creatures with their hands.
They seized upon one warrior, alighting on his head, clustering about his eyes. He screamed, dropping his sword, his hands tearing the butterflies away from his face. His fingers came away red.
Like a wing of cavalry, butterflies attacked a man who stood astride a wounded man, choosing his moment to plunge his sword down into his throat. They flew into his mouth, open in a grin of triumph. Eyes bulging, he toppled upon his victim.
The very strangeness of this apparition created a panic as bad as the rout at Manzikert. Turkmen and townsmen alike pressed against the walls, huddled on the floor. They pitched from side to side, staggering up, crawling if they could not rise. The winged fighters were herding them, driving them upward like killer moths to the light of day, if they could reach it.
A roaring sounded in Leo's ears. The mad tide of panicked rage drove him toward his enemies, sword in hand, screaming. Dimly, he was aware that Kemal and Theodoulos had survived to follow him, but his sword was flashing, blood was sluicing off it—
Now, he could hear himself screaming. The blood that spattered his hands and face, his harness, and his now-notched sword steamed and glistened in the setting sun.
He had won through to the outer air. As he watched, other men and some women emerged from cracks and pits in the tumbled earth. Some wept. Some staggered. Some measured their lengths in the grit and just shook.
The wind wrapped around him, and his sweat made him shiver. He fell silent, his throat burning from his screams. No enemies were in sight, except the plain itself, under which the network of caves ran. The land rumbled. Dust puffed upward. And then the land collapsed inward upon itself, burying the living with the dead—those freshly dead as well as those who should never have risen at all. Beasts, butterflies, and ancient fighting men had all disappeared.
One final crack; one last rumble; and the land went silent. A few rocks toppled down the new slopes. Then all was still. The sense of the land that he had gained when Father Meletios’ blood splashed him ached in the stillness, ached with the losses that his domain had sustained. Malagobia would no longer be difficult to subsist in: it would be impossible.
Keening, Leo dropped to his knees, then collapsed, gagging, if there had been anything in his belly to heave up. The anguish of his true, lasting loss hit him like a belly wound. He hid his face upon the troubled land and wished the light would go away.
The sunlight had darkened from deep gold to glowing crimson by the time Leo's breathing steadied.
“Sir? Leo?” It was Theodoulos’ voice.
The word you want is “father,” isn't it? Leo thought. The boy—no, anyone who had survived what Theodoulos had, including a miracle, could never be a boy again—knelt beside Leo, earnestly trying to raise him.
He had survived. If he had survived, others had survived. If others had survived, he had no right to wallow in his personal sorrow. An Empress had told him that as he mourned—good dog, Leo, good fellow!—before the tomb of his old master.
He would, as he vowed, take Theodoulos in charge. Sooner or later, they must return to the valley, bury whatever dead the land's collapse (assuming it stretched as far as the valley) had not dealt with, then come back to the world.
The wind blew, tugging at his matted hair, cooling his temples. He shuddered at the faint whistling sound it made.
Was all truly lost?
Closing his eyes, he felt for the awareness that he had tested like a rotten tooth, resented with all his heart, and, at the last, come to rely upon. Vertigo seized him at the thought that he might never again reach that union he had known.
Not lost. Not now, or ever. But for now, the door was shut.
In the future, it would fall to his lot to see that no foolish boys in search of adventure, treasure, or any other false tokens of manhood ventured within the caves. For months, perhaps years, he would have to guard them against aftershocks, further rockfalls, and pits opening even in familiar passages. He and Theodoulos, probably, would have to inspect the underground cities, see if enough was left of them to reclaim. For now, the underground ways must remain shut.
He laid his arm across Theodoulos’ shoulder, whether to give support or get it, he did not know.
“Sir? Sir?”
They were approaching, they were circling, they were waiting on his attention. The boldest of the villagers had dared to pluck him by the filthy sleeve, penetrating the sphere of silence that had somehow surrounded him ever since he had had to abandon his wife to serve as midwife to a goddess.
Leo turned to stare blearily at them. A cut, scabbing over messily, marred one man's cheek, but he would have recognized that face on the shores of the Styx.
“Georgios!” he cried. “Did you...”
“My wife and children live!” the man exclaimed. He threw himself to his knees, took Leo's bloody hand, and carried it to his cheek. “This holy Sister and the old Jewish merchant led them all to safety.”
Georgios pointed to a knot of women and half-grown boys, surrounding children too young and adults too feeble to fight. They were blood-stained, and their eyes still seemed distended with horror as if they had gazed into the Pit. Reassured by the light and air, they laid aside their weapons and, as if robbed of the last of their fighting strength, sank to their knees.
Sister Xenia stalked forward, her robes pale with dust, but otherwise unmarred. Leo would have known that footstep, that glower before the throne of God. She held a scythe she had not yet cleaned. Seeing Leo's eyes upon it, she gestured for a lad to come and take it away.
“We followed your plan,” she said. “It worked. Just about.”
And that, Leo knew, was all that he would ever get from her.
He bowed his head. “I saw Her,” he told the woman.
Her eyes lit, then closed in sorrow.
“I tried. I failed. And now the earth covers them both. Your lady. And...” his throat closed, but he had to force the name out or damn himself forever as a coward. “...my Asherah.”
“Death is not an end, but a beginning,” said Sister Xenia. “The earth restores itself.”
But she forgot herself to the extent of smearing a hand across her face. It left a clean swathe. Then she, too, remembered what she would far rather forget. “Your wife's father stayed with us. It was either that, or that monster with the axe you sent us would have staged a one-man riot.” She tried to smile, but failed. “He must be told.”
And it was Leo's duty, not hers, to bring him word. Joachim was a good man, a kind man; and God knows he did not keep the Persian custom of killing the messenger. Still, Leo was certain that he would far rather die than tell Asherah's father she had not escaped.
Leo followed Sister Xenia across the plain, littered now with the figures of survivors and the few motionless bodies that were the only ones that they could carry to the surface.
“Lion's cub!” It was Kemal hailing him. He strode toward Leo,
wobbling somewhat from side to side. Truly, to the end of his life, Kemal would prefer horseback. His face bled from parallel slashes. Those wounds, Leo realized, were self-inflicted. Out of grief? He knew Kemal might never say.
A rumble sounded from behind him. Nordbriht. The ends of the big man's braids were stiff with blood. One was half a foot shorter than the other. He did not so much walk as limp across the plain, and he favored one side. Like Leo's sword, his axe was notched. But he had already wiped it clean of the worst stains and was burnishing its blades with a piece of leather he had found somewhere Leo was sure he preferred not to identify. No, one could not doubt that Nordbriht had been in the thick of the battle beneath the earth. But the shadowing that marked his face every time he fought, every time he changed shape was gone, leached away by what he had just survived. Exhausted as he was, he moved lightly, a man who has shed some terrible burden and has not yet had time to rest.
“Where are the Turks?” Leo asked Nordbriht. Stupid question. The earth had swallowed the Turkmen who had penetrated into the underground; and the defenses of the land itself and those who loved it had driven the others off.
For now. They would be back. Some would leave their bones in this land, and some would escape it; and none of them, Greek, Turk, Jew, or Northerner, would ever be the same again.
There would have to be a memorial here, he thought. Were he a great one in Byzantium, a church could rise, dedicated to the Holy Bearer of God. It would be a church, however, in which Maria bore the face of a Jewish woman who had loved him. Just as well he had no aspirations to greatness. He could imagine the howls of “blasphemy” if he had such a church built.
Some sort of memorial there would be. Perhaps Joachim would help him plan it.
His father-in-law had not lost flesh in the time he had spent sequestered in the underground ways. But now, it seemed to hang upon him like the folds of his heavy robes. So short a time, yet Joachim, the dominant, brilliant merchant and thinker, had withered into an old man.
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