Between the two slopes of the gorge gurgled the shallow River Acheron. Its clear waters slipped over the sand and gravel of its bed as if it had not a care in creation, and yet, watching, some of the waiting warriors wondered how that could be, given that surely the Acheron’s waters carried within them the moans of warriors long dead and trapped by Hades.
Even if not contemplating the waters that flowed from Hades’ realm, every one of the silent warriors was tense with the waiting.
Surely Pandrasus would not ignore Brutus’ taunting letter? Surely he must soon issue forth from his citadel?
“He will not ride up this gorge.” Assaracus slid on his haunches down the slope to join Brutus. “He will know it is a trap. Pandrasus may be many things, but he is not stupid; he will have his brother Antigonus with him, a tried and true general.”
“He will come,” Brutus said, knowing the doubts that riddled Assaracus. The man had chanced everything on Brutus’ plan. “They both will. And they will both slip into the trap.”
What trap? Assaracus wondered. We have the advantage of height, to be sure, but the floor of the gorge is flat, and wide, and Pandrasus and Antigonus will have their chariots filled with archers. Moreover, who is trapped? Not a hundred paces further into the gorge the river sank into a sheer face of rock descending into Hades’ realm, and if Pandrasus blocked the entry to the gorge, then Brutus’ and Assaracus’ men were dead, trapped here for Pandrasus’ army to pick off at their leisure.
“Brutus—” Assaracus began, his nerve finally failing as he realised he wanted to be anywhere but here, and then stopped as one of the forward scouts waved a coded message.
“They’re coming,” Brutus said and signalled the men on both sides of the gorge to move slowly down the slopes to prearranged locations. He moved his head so he could stare Assaracus full in the face. “It is too late to change our plan now, my friend.”
Antigonus rode in the leading group of sixty-five chariots. He clung to the handrail, his feet firm against the stiffened leather and wood deck, bracing his body against the lurching, jolting movement of the chariot. Beside him the charioteer hung on to the reins of the team of three horses, his shoulders bunched against the strain, his eyes narrowed in concentration, keeping the horses to a slow trot, even though they wanted to race.
On either side of Antigonus chariots fanned out, archers braced beside the charioteers, their quivers of arrows tied firmly before them to the front walls of the chariots.
Behind this forward wave came Pandrasus leading a second wave of some fifty chariots. And behind this came almost a thousand men, jogging easily, their shields across their backs, swords sheathed, helmets firmly placed, minds and hearts set on proving their own glory against the descendants of the Trojans their forefathers had defeated.
Among them jogged Melanthus, desperately trying to keep the grin from his face, his two elder brothers on either side of him.
From the gates of Mesopotama they had turned to the wide road that led east along the banks of the Acheron. Two thousand paces from the city the road began to narrow and then climb, slowly at first, but then more steadily, and Antigonus waved the forward movement of the army back to a more sedate walk: no point in having his fighters arrive breathless. The ground rose to either side of the river, thickly wooded, and Antigonus peered closely at it, not wanting to be surprised by a sudden attack from the trees.
Nothing. The day was as still as the grave.
Antigonus put up his hand, halting the column. Before him the Acheron issued forth from a gorge, the floor wide and easy to manoeuvre in to be sure, but still a good place for a trap. If he was Brutus, this would be where he would set it.
There was movement behind him, and Antigonus turned; Pandrasus, directing his chariot forward to view for himself.
“They must be in there,” Antigonus said to his brother. “The fool said he’d wait in the eastern forests. But where? Would we be better riding in, or sending the infantry?”
Pandrasus grinned. “They think themselves cunning, but perhaps they have outmanoeuvred themselves. We leave a squad of chariots here, should they think to come running out towards us, and the other chariots and all the infantry we divide into two forces, taking the back tracks behind the hills. They surely have not the numbers to cover both the gorge and the back paths—even if they know they’re there. Then we come on them from above with both arrows and swords.”
“They are trapped. They cannot escape this gorge from the other end, for the mountains are too steep, and we have this single escape plugged.”
“They are truly a worthless foe,” Pandrasus said, swivelling where he stood in the chariot to give the signal for the men to break into two groups and climb the paths behind the Trojans.
“Wait!” said Antigonus in a most peculiar voice.
“They will not come in,” Assaracus said to Brutus, staring with squinted eyes down the distance of the gorge to where the Dorian army stood. “They are not that foolish. Look! Even now Pandrasus turns to give the signal that will see us dead!”
But Brutus did not respond.
Assaracus turned to him, and gasped.
There was a woman now standing beside the crouched Brutus, a bow and a quiver of arrows across her back, her hand on his shoulder, and she was surely no mortal woman.
She turned her head towards Assaracus, and bared her teeth, and her face was as Death.
“Wait,” Antigonus said again, his voice slow, lazy, seeming almost drugged. “I think we have been mistaken, brother. See? This is no gorge, not at all, but a flat field, newly harvested of barley. Even a mouse cannot hide among that stubble.”
Pandrasus looked, not understanding, then blinked. How could they have seen a gorge? There were no mountains, no forests, no river. Instead there lay before them a flat stubbled field, and see!—there lay the Trojans, unprepared, sitting about campfires drinking cups of unwatered wine.
These fools could be overcome with a squad of toddlers wielding nothing but their bone teething rings.
“Ride!” whispered Pandrasus. Then, screaming, “Ride! Run! Mow them down!”
There was a sudden thunder of hooves, then a roar of voices, and Assaracus jerked his head back to where the Dorian army now rode and ran unheedingly into the gorge. They splashed through the shallows of the Acheron, some tripping over, their comrades behind them treading in their backs in their haste to propel themselves forward.
The chariots came first, leading the charge, then hardly a breath behind them came the infantry, swords and lances raised to shoulder height, faces screwed up in battle lust.
“Pandrasus! Pandrasus!” they screamed.
“Brutus,” Assaracus whispered, overcome.
“Wait,” Brutus said, and beside him the strange goddess tightened her hold on his shoulder.
Antigonus found himself screaming with the men, screaming in bloodlust and triumph. He pounded the back of his charioteer, urging him forward, forward, forward, while to his right Pandrasus did likewise.
None of the men saw anything save what the Darkwitch put before their eyes.
“Wait,” Brutus whispered again.
Assaracus could not tear his eyes away from the Dorians. They were well into the gorge now, charging as if they had no care in the world, as if all that lay before them was a family of mice who had given themselves to the slaughter.
As the road narrowed deeper into the gorge most of the men and chariots had been forced into the shallow river, where, given the firm surface of the river bottom, they still managed good headway.
But headway towards what? Assaracus wondered.
Then he gasped, horrified, even though what was happening would win them an almost bloodless victory.
Suddenly Antigonus screamed. There was no stubbled field! No Trojan army sitting heedless and drunk about campfires!
There was only the steep and densely wooded gorge walls rising to either side of him, and a river underfoot…
…a river underfoot that had abrupt
ly risen to thigh height…no! Waist height!
Or was it that the river bottom had given way to the treacherous quicksand of the marshes? Were the men, the chariots, sinking into the very heart of Hades’ realm itself?
“Brother!” he screamed to Pandrasus who was riding in one of the few chariots still on the solid banks of the river. “Save yourself! Get yourself and as many as you can back to Mesopotama!”
“We move,” Brutus said, and stood, waving his left hand in signal.
Assaracus glanced at him. The goddess was gone now, and Brutus was grinning at him with a strange light in his eyes. “Will you join the killing, comrade?”
It was a slaughter. Antigonus’ archers managed to get off some arrows but they were soon overwhelmed by the Trojans, who—graced by the gods—walked across the river as if its waters were solid rock! What men of his that had not succumbed completely to the ensorcelled riverbed were all but trapped to their hips, unable to do more than parry a few blows with their swords, or jab uselessly with their lances.
“Father!” came the desperate cry, and Antigonus turned in horror.
There, only a few paces away, were his three sons. One, his eldest, had gained purchase on a sinking chariot, and had dragged the two younger boys to momentary safety. All were covered in the slime of the river, their weapons gone, their faces crumpled in horror, their eyes shining at their father in frightful hope that somehow he would save them.
Antigonus gave a wordless cry and stretched out a useless hand even as his own chariot lurched, its horses shrieking, and began to sink.
The Trojans, augmented by Assaracus’ men, surged into and among the trapped Dorian army.
It was as if they were once again in their youth and on the practice field, sticking their swords into straw dummies. Some of the Dorians screamed, some pleaded, some swung weapons uselessly.
All died.
Assaracus fought—if fighting it could be called; slaughter, more like—at Brutus’ side, when he suddenly realised that Pandrasus, together with perhaps five or six chariots and a hundred men, were escaping out of the gorge.
“Brutus!” he cried, grabbing at Brutus’ left arm to gain his attention.
Brutus stilled instantly, his sword almost fully through the neck of a Dorian charioteer. “What is it?” he asked, his voice strangely calm.
The stricken charioteer grabbed uselessly at the blade in his neck, his mouth open, gurgling as blood bubbled forth.
“Pandrasus escapes,” Assaracus said, staring in horror at the charioteer. “He—”
Brutus leaned back, pulling his sword free, and the charioteer collapsed, his hands still trying to plug the gaping wounds in his neck.
The man’s head rocked, and Assaracus realised, sickeningly, that the charioteer’s hands were the only thing holding his head on.
Then the hands collapsed, nerveless, and the head dropped, splashing into the river. For an instant the body still stood up to its waist in water, and then, gently, almost apologetically, it too sank beneath the waters of the Acheron.
“It is of no matter,” Brutus said, and it took Assaracus a moment to realise he talked of Pandrasus, not of the dead charioteer.
“We must send men after him! If he manages to lock himself into the city he can hold out for a year, maybe more. The city is well stocked for a siege, and we are hardly manned to conduct one. Brutus, you said we need Pandrasus to supply us with ships, and provisions, and…”
Assaracus slid to a halt, wondering why he was giving this speech when Brutus was grinning at him as if Pandrasus’ escape was of no consequence.
“I do not think we shall have much trouble gaining entry to the city,” Brutus said, then extended his sword to a group of sinking chariots some ten paces away. “Look.”
Antigonus called out to his sons, tears in his eyes as he considered their bravery.
“Peleus! Andronus! Melanthus! Oh, gods, I am cursed to have led you to such an inglorious death. Peleus, hold Melanthus’ chin higher, for the gods’ sake. I cannot lose him. Oh, I cannot.”
“And there is no need for you to do so,” said a voice behind Antigonus, and he whipped about.
A man stood in the river, as if on solid ground, his sword sheathed, holding out his hand for Antigonus to grasp. He was tall, and solidly built, and beneath his boar’s tusks helmet his eyes burned black and fierce amid features clearly Trojan.
“There is no need for either you or your sons to die,” the man said, and waggled his hand a little in his impatience.
“Brutus,” Antigonus said, his voice flat, “are you to walk through life as god-favoured as your ancestor, Aeneas?”
And then, as he heard the sound of sucking mud behind him, and Melanthus called out in horror, Antigonus dropped his sword into the river and grasped Brutus’ hand.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Llangarlia
Tired from her efforts on Brutus’ behalf, Genvissa strode through the meadowland that led from the northern bank of the Llan to the Llandin, the most sacred of Llangarlia’s Veiled Hills.
She was pale-faced with fury.
Not at Brutus, nor at anything that had happened during the battle—all had gone well, and Brutus had acted with as much decisiveness as she had expected—but at what she had felt from here during that battle.
Mag, trying her pathetic best to wriggle away.
That had shocked Genvissa. She didn’t think Mag had that much spirit (let alone energy) left. Indeed, Genvissa thought she’d cowed the ancient mother goddess completely.
“Well,” Genvissa muttered, “perhaps it’s time I made sure of it.” She didn’t need Mag any more. The power she commanded from her darkcraft and as Mistress of the Labyrinth would be enough for what she needed.
Genvissa slowed her pace as she neared the base of the Llandin, coming to a final halt by a pretty spring that gurgled out of a nest of stones shaped like a woman’s vulva. Above it, shading the waters from the hot sun and the cold starlight, spread a massive oak tree, almost as old as the hill itself.
Genvissa stared at the waters as they emptied into a small rock pool before finally spilling over and running in a rivulet under the trees to join with the Magyl River. This was Mag’s home, her blessed waters. She would be inside somewhere, cowering, terrified, knowing Genvissa stood outside.
Genvissa felt a small twinge of sympathy (it was, after all, Mag who had welcomed Ariadne into the land, and given her succour) but she suppressed it quickly. “I’m sorry, Mag,” she murmured, “but it is truly more than time you joined your lover Og in perpetual obscurity.”
Her eyes still on the pool, Genvissa slipped out of her robe. Naked, she stepped to the edge of the pool and stared intently into its shallow depths. Many Llangarlian women came here when they wanted to conceive and wished to ask Mag’s blessing for a healthy child and an easy childbed…but today conception and the pangs of labour were the very last things on Genvissa’s mind.
She stepped into the pool and, despite its shallowness, sank from sight.
Mag’s realm was one of emerald light and eternal space. As Genvissa sank deeper and deeper, she caught sight of strange, ethereal creatures at the very edge of her vision, sprites from the Far World, Mag’s familiars.
Where is she? Where is she? Genvissa hissed at them. Where is the ancient hag?
There was no answer, save a scattering as the sprites withdrew, and Genvissa hissed once more. Where is she? Where is she?
But Mag, stunningly, had gone.
As Genvissa had stepped into the waters so Mag had summoned every remaining scrap of power she still commanded and did what Genvissa would never have expected her to do—flee into the darkness of the unknown beyond Llangarlia.
She risked annihilation, for this was alien to her, and she could do little to protect herself were she to be attacked.
Leaving herself vulnerable to Genvissa, however, was a far worse fate. Better the unknown than the Darkwitch.
Almost as soon as she had left the
boundaries of Llangarlia’s magical protection, Mag felt something reach out for her. At first wary, she resisted, then realised that this presence was comforting, reassuring, sisterly, rather than aggressive or destructive.
It most certainly was not Genvissa.
Sister? whispered a voice at the very limits of its reach.
Who are you? Mag responded, not yet ready to trust entirely.
My name is Hera, said the voice, and I have somewhere for you to hide. I have someone who can aid you. Will you come with me?
Mag allowed herself to follow the voice, and in the blink of an eye she found herself standing in something so abhorrent she gagged instinctively, managing to stop herself retching only by the most extreme effort.
She brought her stomach under control and stood straight, looking about her. She was in the centre of a stone hall so vast there appeared to be no end to it. It stretched east to west—Mag felt, if not saw, the presence of the rising sun towards the very top of the hall—and above her a golden dome soared into the heavens. Beneath her feet lay a beautifully patterned marble floor; to her sides soared stone arches protecting shadowy, mysterious spaces.
Mag relaxed a little. It was not as bad as she had first thought. As a creature of the fey, the womb and the water, she usually hated beyond measure any enclosure of stone, but this hall had a warmth about it, a comfort, as if…as if…
“You stand in a womb,” said a woman’s voice, and Mag recognised it as the voice of she who had called out to her. Hera.
She turned towards it, and saw a woman approach her from beneath one of the side arches. She was tall, graceful, and had about her the faint aura of power, but Mag could see that she was dying.
Streaks of decay stretched up and down the woman’s arms, and marred her smooth cheeks.
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