by A. J. Demas
He wanted to get to Varazda now, to touch him, see how he was; he remembered the bad reaction Varazda had the night before after they tangled with the porters in the villa. What they had just been through here was much worse. He wanted to check that Varazda’s arm wasn’t too badly injured. But he couldn’t get close to Varazda. As far as the guards were concerned, Damiskos was another suspicious, ex-military-looking character—in fact, the one who had struck the first blow and the only one who had killed anyone (the man Varazda had shot was badly wounded in the shoulder but not dead). Damiskos hung back, trying to look as cooperative as possible. The least he could do for Varazda now was not cause trouble.
One of the guardsmen was looking at Varazda’s injury and wrapping a makeshift bandage around his arm. The blood had soaked all down his sleeve. He would probably need stitches.
The other injured men were being attended to as well. The captain of the guard addressed the unhurt men.
“What was this all about? You told us when you boarded our ship in Boukos that you were philosophers. This isn’t what philosophers usually do, is it? And what would possess you to fight Pharastes? He’s a—um—dancer.”
The man whose nose Varazda had broken moaned at this addition of insult to injury.
“We are philosophers,” one of the students announced grandly—or with an attempt at grandeur. It fell a little flat because his mantle was tangled around his knees, his hands tied behind his back, and he was dripping seawater on the jetty. “Ordinarily we do battle with ideas, not with blades. But we are no strangers to warfare.”
The captain of the guard gave him a pained look.
One of the other students spoke up, his tone patronizing. “The old man you saw running toward us when we landed? He used to be a great philosopher, but he has gone soft. Seduced by barbarian immorality. He needs to make way for the younger generation.”
“Ask Helenos,” said another student. “He’s the one who gathered us all to the cause when he was last in Boukos. He promised us places in his new school, here in his villa, away from the corruption of the cities. Here we will work toward restoring—”
“Yes, yes,” the captain cut him off, “the greatness of Pheme. One of your mates told us all about it on the ship. We thought that meant lying on couches and talking about things, not attacking people with knives.”
So Helenos had set all this up before leaving Boukos: two successive waves of reinforcements, the first students from Pheme, the second new recruits from Boukos. He couldn’t have known precisely what use he was going to put them to, but he had briefed them well enough that they knew to attack Eurydemos on sight.
“The thing is,” Varazda said in a tired, colourless voice, “the villa doesn’t belong to Helenos.”
The captain of the guard raised his eyebrows. “That’s awkward. Puts rather a different face on things.”
Varazda glanced around at Damiskos, and then his gaze flicked up, sharply, past Damiskos. He pointed discreetly, using one of the hand signals Damiskos had taught him. One enemy combatant that way.
Damiskos turned and looked up. One of the students stood on the cliff’s edge at the back of the garden, looking down on the scene.
CHAPTER XXIII
“THEY KNOW WE’VE taken out their reinforcements, so our position may actually be strengthened,” Damiskos explained as he, Nione, Aradne, and Varazda hurried across the beach. “But we do need to get up there quickly, before they begin making other plans.”
Specifically, before they did anything to hurt the male slaves, but Damiskos was not going to say that out loud. Part of the secret to effective command was knowing when projecting calm was more important than impressing the troops with a sense of life-and-death urgency.
He didn’t feel particularly calm himself. They had lost valuable time waiting for the men of the honour guard to receive word from their employer. When it came, it had been, “Give Pharastes everything he needs and invite him aboard the ship,” but Varazda had politely declined the invitation, saying he still had more work to do on shore. Damiskos kept glancing across at him now, worrying about him but trying not to show it.
Varazda looked sick and white, but he was setting the pace as they walked back to the stairs, staring straight ahead of him and saying little to the others. Holding on by the skin of his teeth, if Damiskos had to guess. Damiskos wanted desperately to hold him, even just his hand as they walked, but doubted it would be welcome. When you were in that state, sometimes you just needed to keep going or risk collapsing in a heap.
“But we’re not taking the soldiers with us,” said Aradne, rather out of breath from their brisk trot across the beach.
It was hard to tell with her, but Damiskos thought this was a question. “They’re an honour guard for a Boukossian diplomat, and he wants them to stay with the ship. Which is fair since he now has several prisoners on his hands. They couldn’t spare any of the sailors either. It’s all right. We think whoever came to the end of the garden only saw the aftermath of our engagement, not the actual fighting. With luck it shouldn’t be difficult to convince them that there were more of us fighting than just me and Varazda.”
“And that the rest are surrounding the villa now.” Aradne nodded.
“Please don’t let her try to sneak in to rescue the other slaves,” Nione addressed Damiskos.
She was labouring along in the sand in impractical sandals, holding up her skirt with both hands, looking almost as unwell as Varazda. She had looked scared enough by what she had witnessed of the fight on the jetty—and what had been reported by the hyperventilating Eurydemos when he stumbled back into the fortifications—that Damiskos had considered leaving her behind, but her authority as owner of the villa really was necessary for the coming confrontation. Besides, she seemed to have guessed what was in his mind, because she had said, “Don’t you dare think of leaving me behind.”
“It is not for me to say,” said Damiskos now, “but I would strongly discourage it. That was a feasible plan only when we had the element of surprise—we’ve lost that now. I think,” he added to Aradne, “that you would be more useful now at your mistress’s side.”
“Yes,” Nione put in, probably wishing she had led with that line. “I need you with me.”
“Of course,” said Aradne, obviously not pleased. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”
“This is where we part ways,” said Varazda, turning to address the others. He was to take the vineyard path up to signal the women in the woods.
“Very good,” said Damiskos crisply.
He didn’t like to see Varazda going off on his own in his current state, injured and exhausted and fragile. He reminded himself that Varazda was not, as far as they knew, going into mortal danger. Once he made it up through the vineyard, he would signal the women and then make his way around to the stable to help bring the horses out. With any luck, he would not encounter any hostiles. He should be fine.
Damiskos had already made up his mind that there would be no embracing, lest it make Varazda break down. Instead he held out a hand as he would to a fellow soldier. Varazda grasped it hard for a moment, the grip of his slender fingers almost fierce. Then he took off at a run across the sand, left hand clasping his injured arm.
Damiskos, Aradne, and Nione reached the top of the stairs and took a moment to collect themselves. Damiskos was beginning to come down from the exhilaration of the fight and to feel sore and tired. Aradne was out of breath and clutching her side after the long climb, and Nione had to stop to remove a stone from her sandal. All in all, it was not an impressive entry into the garden.
The whole contingent of students, fishermen, and porters were there to meet them. At least, they were not standing awaiting them, but they were all gathered near the central fountain in the garden, arguing.
Gelon was there, with his arm in a sling, and Phaia was sitting on a bench, hollow-eyed and tragic-looking. Evidently they had decided to throw in their lot with Helenos after all. Damiskos didn’t like th
at much; they were both volatile, not to say crazy, and having them added to the mix could not be good.
There were fewer of the porters than Damiskos remembered from the fight in the atrium, and more were missing than just the one man he had killed. That might mean that some of them were guarding the male slaves, prepared to use them for leverage as needed.
One of the fishermen was the first to notice Damiskos and the two women approaching. He pointed and shouted to get the others’ attention. Damiskos gestured to his companions to stop, a safe distance away, on one of the quartz-gravelled garden paths.
He stood with his hand on the hilt of his sword. There was blood on his tunic, none of it his. He knew that he looked grim. He looked to Aradne.
“It’s time for this little game to end!” she bellowed. She had a magnificent voice for bellowing.
The men stared at her. A few laughed.
“Surrender yourselves now, and you may leave alive,” Aradne continued. “Give us any more trouble, and you’ll suffer the fate of your friends who just arrived from Boukos. Half of them are prisoners—the other half are dead.” That was an exaggeration, but Damiskos approved of it.
“You expect us to believe that?” one of the porters blustered.
“It’s true,” someone else said. “I saw what happened. There was blood all over the place.”
“Quiet, everyone!” That was Helenos. He stepped forward from the crowd, hands tucked casually into his mantle. “This is an unfortunate business,” he said coolly, looking at Damiskos rather than Nione or Aradne. “You have killed some men, and I don’t doubt you are very skilled. But can you take on all of us? Is that really what you propose?”
“Are you talking to me?” said Damiskos blandly. “Because I didn’t speak to you.”
Helenos was actually momentarily stymied by that. He gave Damiskos an ugly look, then transferred it grudgingly to Aradne.
“Well, slave?” His voice dripped contempt. “You seem to speak for both your mistress and this pitiful excuse for a soldier. I’m surprised you didn’t bring the Sasian gelding along to complete the picture. Which of you is going to kill us all, then? You, maybe? Smother us with your—”
“Since you ask,” said Nione loudly, stepping forward from beside her steward, “it is the men who are now in the forest surrounding my villa who will kill you if you do not surrender to us.”
There was a pause. She had spoken in a ringing voice, angrier than Damiskos had ever seen her and yet totally in control of herself. No one could have failed to hear her; no one could have failed to take her seriously.
“The what?” said Helenos finally.
And on cue, the rustling of leaves in the trees around the edge of the garden. The men glanced wildly around. Branches swayed. Sunlight flashed on something that might have been a spearpoint. (It was a marlinspike tied to the end of a wooden spoon.) A figure in Zashian clothes could be seen moving behind the screen of foliage, then another, and another.
The women must have moved back to surround only the garden, Damiskos thought, since all the men were clustered here. It had been a shrewd variation of the plan. The woods looked menacingly full of figures.
A horse neighed and stamped on one side. Hoofbeats sounded from the yard at the front of the house, echoing oddly so that it was hard to say how many animals were making them. Low shouts in—well, in gibberish, but it might have sounded like Zashian to the ignorant—rang out from the same direction.
The men by the fountain drew closer together, a subtle but telling movement.
“We’re surrounded!” Gelon yelped.
Phaia leapt to her feet. “They’re Sasians! Daughters of Night curse you, Helenos! You’ve brought the Sasians down upon us!”
“Where did they come from?” one of the fishermen quavered.
“From Boukos!” a student answered, doing Nione and Aradne’s work for them. “The city is lousy with Sasians.”
“That’s right, and the ship this morning came over from Boukos!”
“I didn’t see any Sasians on the beach.”
“They must have been sneaking up here already.”
“They know we stole from them.”
That last sentence rang out into an unexpected silence.
“Stole from them?” a fisherman repeated, voice high and unsteady. “Stole what? Do you know what they do to thieves in Sasia?”
“We didn’t steal anything,” Helenos said silkily, at the same time that one of the other students, more loudly, said, “We don’t have it any more!”
“What do you mean, you don’t have it any more?”
“We sold it on to a buyer. It’s out of our hands.”
At this point several of the porters, who had been whispering among themselves, seemed to have come to a decision. One of them stepped forward and dropped heavily to his knees before Nione.
“If you’ll take us back, ma’am, we’ll accept whatever punishment we have coming to us. We’ve no quarrel with any Sasians. We’re sorry for our disloyalty. We were following Sesna, our overseer, and he’s dead.”
“I will take that into account,” said Nione sternly.
“You won’t let them do anything to me, will you, Nione?” Phaia tried to dredge up some of her old, insouciant charm, and failed.
Nione said nothing, but Damiskos saw her lips compress into a tight line as if there might have been many things she would like to say.
Before the fishermen could get organized to join in the requests for mercy, Helenos spoke again, his voice cutting across the confused babble.
“I should mention. We have hostages.”
There was another tense silence. Helenos’s expression was wolfish.
“No,” said a voice from the colonnade behind Helenos. “You don’t.”
Varazda strolled out of the deep shadow of the colonnade, one sword propped lightly on his shoulder. Except for the bandages on his right arm, he looked as fresh and relaxed as if he hadn’t just fought ten men on the shore with two blunt swords and run all the way up to the villa afterward. He was followed by the rest of Nione’s slaves, a dozen men and boys, bruised and haggard and blinking in the sunlight after spending two days in the cellars. Kleitos was with them, looking as bedraggled as the rest.
Helenos sagged visibly at the sight, and for once had nothing to say. Beside Damiskos, Aradne gave a little gasp and grabbed his arm.
“He got them out! How did he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Damiskos admitted, a smile spreading across his face. “I don’t know how he does half of what he does. He’s amazing.”
Varazda came on, flicking his sword down off his shoulder and twirling it gracefully around one hand. The men nearest him shuffled back.
Ah-yah, Damiskos thought.
“Tie their hands,” Varazda instructed the male slaves.
They came forward prepared with ropes and even a few pairs of shackles. The students were all quickly restrained, including Phaia, and Gelon had his good hand tied to his waist.
“I’m arresting you and taking you back to Boukos to stand trial for murder,” Varazda explained when one of the students demanded what he was doing. “I work for the Basileon, you know.”
Turning to Nione, he said, “I’ve no interest in the rest of them, but would you like to have them tied up too?”
“Do what you want with us,” one of the fishermen blurted. “Just don’t let the Sasians in the woods have us!”
There was a little pause while a glance flickered between Nione and Damiskos.
“I wonder,” she said, “if the Sasians in the woods should come out now?”
Damiskos looked over the prisoners, who were securely restrained and now quite outnumbered. He nodded.
“Why don’t you call them, Aradne?” Nione suggested.
“Girls! Time to show yourselves!”
The women of Nione’s household came out from the trees, grinning and giggling, some of them wearing Varazda’s clothes, one leading Damiskos’s horse.
Damiskos felt his heart swell with pride in them, as if they really were a troop he had led into battle. They had played their part magnificently; it hadn’t been done better at Abadoka’s stronghold in the year ’93. He doubted it had been done better at Sumuz in the year ’75.
“I knew it!” Gelon wailed. “I knew there weren’t really any Sasians!”
“No, you didn’t,” Helenos snarled back.
They were still arguing about it as the slaves, under Varazda’s direction, led them off to deliver them to the guards on board the Boukossian ship.
The garden had cleared out. The repentant porters and fishermen had been herded inside, and Nione and Aradne had followed, arguing over what should be done with them. “They wouldn’t have turned against me if they hadn’t had something to complain of,” Nione had said, and Aradne just snorted. The women were dispersing, some going into the house, some gathering up their props from the woods, others going down to the beach to bring back the children from the fortified huts. Niko, his grandfather, and the other men who had been hiding in the slave quarters came in from the yard, laughing over the success of their ploy with the horses. Kleitos and his wife had gone in, embracing tearfully. Someone had been dispatched to take the urn with Aristokles’s ashes on board the Boukossian ship.
Damiskos and Varazda were in the summer dining room, where they had met. Varazda had sat down on one of the couches, perched on the edge as if afraid to let himself become too comfortable for fear he wouldn’t be able to move again. Damiskos knew that feeling well.
“If I’d known you planned to go in and free the men from the cellar … ” Damiskos began.
Varazda looked up at him with a tired smile. “I know. You’d have told me not to.”
“No. I’d have worried about you more, that’s all.”
“Ah.”
“How did you manage it, anyway? Were they not guarded?”
