“My cousins have come for a sparring match,” said the king. “Nothing more than that.”
“On the contrary,” said Cleon, stepping forward and throwing back his shoulders. He announced, “I, Cleon of Eddis, call Eugenides to trial.” He sounded like a bad actor in a bad play.
The Eddisians looked embarrassed. The king murmured, “Oh heavens, what a surprise.”
“It has been decided!” orated Cleon. “We cannot follow an untried king into battle!”
“I am not your king.”
“Nor a high king, Gen,” said Aulus, the very large man standing beside Cleon. He didn’t sound particularly happy about it, but he was siding with Cleon.
Hilarion knew a disaster when he saw one looming right in front of him. “Your Majesty, no. I don’t understand, but no, no.” He signaled to Sotis, and Sotis started back toward the archway we’d just come through.
“Sotis, come back,” said the king, and Sotis had to return. “Hilarion,” said the king, putting his hand on Hilarion’s shoulder. “Calm down. It’s a few matches. You’ve seen it before.”
Cleon said vehemently, “It is not just a few matches! This is a sacred matter!”
Aulus said, “Cleon, shut up.”
The king said, “So, so, so. It’s a few sacred matches, Hilarion, don’t wet yourself.”
It was not just a few matches, sacred or otherwise. The king was being disingenuous. Trying the king was an Eddisian tradition that had grown up in the years when Hamiathes’s Gift had been lost. It was an intense and lengthy ritual. There hadn’t been a royal trial in Hilarion’s lifetime, as Eddis, when she became queen, had not had one, and when Eugenides gave her Hamiathes’s Gift, he’d made her queen beyond any mortal right.
Hilarion should have put two and two together. The king had been worrying all morning, and the royal guard was nowhere to be seen. Still, the king had in the past taken on, in a very public display of skill, an entire squad of the Attolian royal guard, and that had ended well—he’d won both the matches and the guards’ loyalty, even Teleus’s. Remembering that, and deliberately misled, Hilarion stepped back.
An older man came forward. The zigzagging line in blue at the corner of his left eye marked him as one of Hephestia’s warrior priests, and for him the king temporarily set aside his bitter humor. “Thalas,” he said, greeting him with a respectful bow.
“That she may show us her approval, you come before the Great Goddess and your subjects to be tried as king,” said Thalas. Unlike Cleon, he carried his authority easily.
“As annux,” the king said, and the priest nodded.
“As annux, then,” said Thalas. “Will you give all you have to be judged by Eddis and by the gods?”
“I will.”
“Swear in the name of the Great Goddess.”
“In her name and in the name of my god, I swear.”
“Do not offend the gods,” the priest said to the king. Then he turned to the rest of the Eddisians and asked of them, “Do all of you swear, in the name of the Great Goddess, that you will give all you have to this, that it be a true trial?”
“In Hephestia’s name,” they all swore together.
“Do not offend the gods,” Thalas warned again.
The first match was short and surprisingly fierce. The king won, and Hilarion relaxed a little. The second match was longer. Dionis pulled on Hilarion’s sleeve and pointed. Sotis, once the king was engaged, had left the courtyard and was being escorted back in by two Eddisians. Hilarion, realizing he’d been outmaneuvered, shrugged helplessly.
The third match was when it became apparent that the Eddisians weren’t following commonly accepted rules of sparring. They were playing their own game, one focused on demonstrating how hard they could hit someone with a weighted wooden stick, and there seemed to be no rules at all. The king lost the third match and hopped around on one leg swearing nonstop while he rubbed the spot where he’d been struck, just above the ankle.
Ion came forward to object to the violent play. “Your Majesty, this is not appropriate,” he protested.
“He’s right,” growled one of the Eddisians. “Show some gods-damned respect, Gen.”
“If I offend the gods, Crodes, you can leave them to tell me,” the king said, straightening up. He waved Ion away, and another Eddisian stepped forward.
The fifth match was against Cleon, and the king won. “Did you not think I would give as good as I got?” he asked as Cleon, blinking at the stars in his eyes, reeled back to his place in the circle of observers.
Some of the king’s opponents were almost genial. The king lost the next match to an opponent who grinned apologetically but still hit him hard enough to make him stagger. He lost the next one to another man less interested in smashing the king with a stick and more interested in testing his science. That match lasted some time. After winning it, the Eddisian bowed to the king with reluctant respect and the king, breathing hard, bowed graciously back.
One man, even larger than Aulus, with a leer of matching proportions, lunged forward after the salute so quickly that the king, even if he had deflected the sword strike, would have been flattened. Instead of sidestepping, the king dropped to all fours, tripping the giant, who stumbled over him. When the Eddisian whirled, sword raised to strike, the king sat with his knees pulled up, a mocking expression on his face. He’d clipped the giant in the knee as he passed. The match was over.
The Attolians gave a thin cheer. The giant said something in an incomprehensible accent. The king answered back with something insulting and equally incomprehensible. The giant lunged forward again, this time stopped by the priest.
“You had your chance,” said Thalas.
The giant retreated to the back of the crowd, glowering, but none of his countrymen seemed to sympathize.
“Try something new every once in a while,” I heard one of them say.
The king fought twelve matches against young men, those who had a right to test the man they would follow for the rest of their lives. Some now say he won all the matches. That’s an exaggeration for the poets, and the kind of thing that he particularly disliked. He earned the approval, however grudging, of his peers.
The king’s attendants and his guards, who had been standing around anxiously, hands hovering over their weapons, breathed a sigh of relief, all but Dionis. He’d been talking to one of the Eddisians and was moving through the crowd toward Hilarion. As Dionis passed Thalas, the priest reached out and took his arm, saying nothing, just holding him lightly at the elbow. Too respectful to throw him off, Dionis was stopped in his tracks.
There was a final match—against a seasoned warrior who represented the best of the old men, those with the years of experience to judge a new king. When the circle of Eddisians opened to admit Eddis’s minister of war, the king, sweating and tired, with bruises rising all over his body, said, “I thought it would be Ornon.”
“You would make short work of Ornon,” said his father.
“Yes, that’s what I thought, too.”
Ornon, who was standing right there in the crowd, glared.
Eugenides stepped back into a fighting stance as his father raised his sword. “There won’t be accusations of favoritism, will there?” he asked.
“No,” promised his father.
It was an unfair match from the beginning. It was meant to be, with the king already weary and the minister fresh. The wooden swords knocked against each other, making a noise like a house being built, or one being knocked down. The sound redoubled suddenly and the king, tired as he was, scored a hit and stepped back. It was a hard hit, and the minister grunted and tapped his chest in respect.
Hilarion thought the match was over. Looking around in relief, he realized that the Eddisians had slowly been shifting position. They were not just in a circle around the match; they were in a circle around the Attolians.
Then the king and his father crossed swords again, and Hilarion’s attention returned to the match. The next hit went
against the king and he retreated, circling to gain time to recover. The minister continued to press him and landed two more blows, though glancing ones, on the king’s upper arm and his knee. The second blow made the king hop, but he shook off the limp and attacked again. Unlike the contests with the younger men, this was not a trial to win. It was a trial to endure.
Hilarion had had enough. As he took a step forward, the Eddisians struck. Even the guards, with their hands on their swords, had no chance. As the king and his father battled on, there was a brief all-out brawl. The Attolians went down, but they went down fighting, with two or even three Eddisians on top of them. Even I, as I rushed for my king, ready to do my feeble best for him, was scooped up by a man I hadn’t realized was behind me. Aulus, holding me with my feet kicking in the air, rumbled in my ear, “Not a contest for you, little one.”
I bit him so hard I tasted his blood in my mouth. With a shout, he let go of me. Afraid of falling to the ground, I could not let go of him. I held on to the cloth of his tunic with my good hand and bit down harder. Aulus bellowed like the bull he was. By then my feet had found the ground, and I stumbled away. The Eddisians nearby were laughing, and I hated them as I’d hated no one since Emtis.
Aulus could have knocked me down with ease, could have ignored me, as I was no threat to anyone. Instead, he held up both his hands, blood on his hairy forearm, and said, “Peace. Peace, warrior.”
As he approached, I blew spit at him, and he stepped back again.
“My word as prince that I will lay no war on you, if you give yours to be still until this contest is done.”
“Aulus, he can’t give his word.”
“Shut up, Boagus,” said Aulus. “Do I have your word of peace?” he asked me.
The other Attolians and Perminder, the lone Sounisian, who had also given his all and had a cut above his eye and blood streaming down his face to show for it, were one by one giving their words and climbing back to their feet. The Eddisians were wiping away their own blood and rubbing their bruises. Only the guards were still pinned to the ground—the Eddisians not adding insult to injury by asking for their surrender. Reluctantly I nodded, and Aulus, very warily, reached out to shake my hand.
The king’s face was swelling and one eye was almost closed. His nose and mouth were bleeding. He was staggering backward when he suddenly dropped to one knee. The minister stepped in with a blow, but the king, who’d been faking, twisted away. He stabbed the minister in the knee and swept the other leg out from under him before he could retreat. His father fell heavily and the king lashed out, kicking him so hard in the head that he lay blinking at the sky for a moment while the king staggered away.
He had won, I thought, surely. Aulus, towering over me, slowly shook his head.
“You know your limits only when you reach them,” he said.
The minister got up and then they went on fighting. The king fought until he couldn’t stand. When he fell, he still fought, and the minister went on beating him until the king couldn’t move. Each time the minister stepped away, the king raised his sword, strokes so feeble they were harmless, but blows nonetheless. Finally the minister stepped onto the king’s hand and bore down on it with all his weight. When he lifted his foot, the sword dropped from the king’s hand. Eyes closed, the king still reached for it.
“Enough, Gen,” his father said, bending over him.
The king swung his other arm, the one with the hook, and almost caught the minister in the face.
Sighing, the minister walked around to the other side of him and kicked him hard in the bicep.
“Enough,” he said again.
The king shook his head, but that must have been the last of his strength. He tried to get up, but only made it onto his side. He pushed with his hand, but couldn’t lift himself. His feet scrabbled against the ground. He couldn’t get any purchase. Sobbing, I took a step forward, and Aulus gently wrapped me in his arms, pulling me back against his chest.
The minister of war trudged away, across the court to a bench against the wall, where he painfully took a seat.
The king lay very still.
I threw up.
Aulus said, “Oh for crying out loud,” but didn’t let go.
Teleus arrived.
Sotis hadn’t made it beyond the archway that led out of the training ground. Eddisians at its entrance had turned away anyone too interested in what was going on that morning. That didn’t mean that news wasn’t getting out. Some of the terraces of the palace overlooked the guards’ barracks below, and any soldier knows the sound of a brawl from a mile away. Word had finally reached Teleus, who’d come with men armed to the teeth and not with wooden swords.
He was restrained by the magus of Sounis, who’d been awaiting the captain’s inevitable arrival. Whatever the magus said, it kept Teleus standing with his hands balled into fists while we all watched the king, the sound of the hawkers at the morning market floating over the palace wall, the sparrows and pigeons who had been driven away one by one returning to peck at the dirt.
The king moved; he reached out, feeling for his sword. Then he lay still again, blinking up at the sky. A little later, he rolled onto his side and levered himself up on one arm. The arm still wouldn’t hold him, and he lay back down.
The minister of war nodded to Crodes, who stepped soberly out to the king and squatted down to ask him if he wanted help.
We couldn’t hear the king reply, but Crodes raised both hands and backed away as if from a hot fire. Returning to the minister, Crodes shrugged. “He said, ‘No, thank you.’” Only the Eddisians laughed.
After what felt like a very long time, the king managed to get to his knees and then, using his wooden sword as a crutch, made it to his feet. The sword trailed on the ground behind him as he crossed the court one wobbling step at a time. His face was all blood and dirt caked together, and he could hardly see. The Eddisians lightly touched his shoulder and aimed him toward the minister of war.
I don’t know what I expected, but it was not that the king would sink onto the bench and his father would enfold him in his arms, that the king would lay his head on his father’s shoulder with a sigh and his father would rub his back as if he were a tiny baby.
The surly Eddisians around us all smiled like fond parents. I thought Teleus, who’d come into the ground with half the royal guard behind him, was going to tear someone’s head off. No one spoke, not even Teleus. He just stared, veins showing in his forehead.
“Ready?” the minister asked the king.
“Not yet,” he said, his voice muffled by his father’s shoulder. “I’m trying to get through this asinine business without being sick.”
Everyone looked at Aulus, and at me, and then back at the king.
At last the minister stood and lifted the king easily in his arms. He carried him back up to the palace, the Eddisians and the Attolians following, with Teleus and his guard coming behind. He met the queen on the stairs up to the higher terraces. She said nothing as he passed carrying her all-but-unconscious husband, but the look she gave the Eddisian minister of war would have melted brass, let alone lead.
In the king’s antechamber, the attendants pressed forward, suddenly aggressive, like dogs on their own ground. The minister of war continued to ignore them, carrying the king all the way to his bed, where he finally laid him down.
“Your wife,” he said to the king.
“Terrifying, isn’t she?” the king said with his eyes closed.
The minister grunted.
“You should have left it to Ornon,” the king murmured.
“You should have quit sooner,” his father grumbled.
With obvious effort, the king rolled his head toward his father and blinked through one swollen eye. “Tell Thalas that,” he suggested.
“How will you fight like this?” his father asked.
“I’m not allowed to fight,” the king said, sounding very smug for a man with lips almost too swollen to move.
The min
ister grunted again. “Be sure to tell me how Thalas’s approval feels when you climb on that fancy horse.”
There was a silence.
“O Great Goddess, aid me,” the king whispered. “I forgot about the horse.”
“You’re a damn fool,” said his father, indulgently.
When the Eddisian queen arrived an hour or two later, Hilarion stepped over as if to block the doorway. She only smiled in amusement and went around him. “Excuse us, Hilarion,” she said, dismissing him.
Hilarion tried to drag me out with him as he left, but I dug in my heels. He glanced at the king lying on the bed, recovering from the ministrations of Galen and Petrus, and threw me a murderous look, but released me. In his defense, he was not a weak-willed man, merely out of his depth.
Eddis sat on the side of the bed, and the king opened his eyes.
“Attolia is fit to be tied,” she said, “or I’d leave you to your rest. She has accused us of distracting her guard from their duty.”
“I did that,” said the king. “I told Teleus to escort Sophos and everyone else I could think of out to the Thegmis to tour the fortifications there. He had to take half the guard.”
“I assured her of that,” said Eddis dryly. “Somehow she is unconvinced by my word alone.” Looking down, she interlaced her fingers and unwove them again, twisting them together and pulling them apart. Abruptly, she said, “You were the one paying Therespides.”
The king weighed the likely success of a lie and said, “I sent the money through Relius.”
Eddis lifted her hands to cover her face. The king and I both averted our eyes, neither of us able to offer her the privacy she deserved.
When she lowered her hands, she had regained her composure, mostly. Her voice was only slightly ragged. “Have you considered, Gen, even once, that you might achieve your goals with the minimum damage to yourself and without the maximum amount of distress to those around you?” She said, “You were afraid too many of them might prefer a king, even you, to a queen who was Eddis.”
“My father could stop any rebellion, but not the gradual diminishment of your authority. They’d start by those calling you Eddia and then Sounia, and if the Medes didn’t come they would ‘forget’ you ever were Eddis. Cleon’s agitating rallied them to support you as their sovereign.”
Return of the Thief Page 18
