Dangerous Secrets (103 page)

She took the jug from my hands and lifted it to
her mouth, tilting backwards to balance the weight. I could have counted to
twenty before she took it away.

Her eyes were bright. “What else can I offer
you, hero?”

I was suddenly keenly aware that an old rug was
not an ideal covering for a naked man. “Another drink?” I said, and hoped my
voice stayed steady.

She held the jug against her hip. “Of course.”
She made me reach up to take it.

“A very handsome piece,” I said, caressing the
thick glaze on the shoulder.

“It was a gift from our late king on the
occasion of my grandfather’s fiftieth birthday, twenty years ago.”

“A generous gift. Um...where is your
grandfather?”

“Tending to the beasts. He’ll be some time.”

She reached up, her breasts rising against the
simple white draping of her gathered dress. Freeing her hair from the thong
that held it, the locks tumbled over her shoulders, deep black and so rich it
looked moist.

My senses, deadened since my first waking,
roared back to life, like a river bursting through a dam. I could smell the oil
she rubbed on her skin, the boiling resin in the wood on the fire, the fleabane
strewn on the floor. When I took another drink, the sharpness of the wine
mingling with the sweetness of the honey rushed through me like a madness.

She touched her shoulders, her fingers fumbling
a little, and the bronze clasps that held up her dress fell to the floor. She
clutched the fabric to her body. Her eyes were huge as she stared down at me.
“What do you want, hero?”

“What do you want, Omphale, and why do you want
it?”

“I will never marry now and you will be gone in
a day or so. I want to have a memory to take away what I saw today. Every time
I close my eyes, I see that thing eating....” She swayed.

I took her hand and pulled her down beside me.
She looked startled, surprised that I’d taken her offer. Sliding my arm around
her smooth young shoulders, I said, “That isn’t the worst thing I saw today.
Believe me, the only cure is time.”

Omphale tilted her head back, her eyes wide,
her lips parted. Her hair curled over my arm as cool as water. I struggled to
maintain my gallantry. She felt warm and firm against my chest.

“You’re turning me down?”

“Nobody walking in here right now would believe
it, but yes, I am. You are young, brave and good. I have no doubt that you will
indeed marry one day.”

“And still I must face the night alone,” she
said forlornly. The tears gathered and slipped down her golden-ivory cheeks.

“Even if you slept in my arms, you would still
sleep alone. I cannot by my strength keep the nightmares away. Have you told
your father or grandfather about what happened?”

“I didn’t know how without making Pacci sound
like the fool he is. They are so glad to have him back again.”

“How did he behave?”

“He knelt at my father’s feet and begged his
forgiveness. How could I say anything after that?”

I could be certain that she’d always protected
her brother at the expense of her own soul. Coming from a village not unlike
this, I knew how little importance would be given to the feelings of a woman,
even one as conscientious and strong as an Omphale.

Now that she was soothed, I gently moved her to
a safer distance. I looked into the fire as she refastened her clothing.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “I want you to accompany me to the palace.”

“The palace? Me?”

“They need extra help now that the
head-housekeeper, Nausicaa, is dead. They pay well and you could use a change
of scene, I think. You’ll like Iole or do you know her already?”

“Iole? She’s one of the taverna keeper’s
daughters. We’ve met at weddings and such but I don’t know her well. We don’t
associate much with the townspeople. And I’ve only ever seen the palace from
the outside.”

“You’ll like that too. It’s a handsome
building.” I would make a special point of introducing Omphale to Temas. I had
a feeling those ‘suitable princesses’ would hear no more of him.

Matchmaking...just another service I offer.

When her grandfather returned, we were playing
noughts and crosses on a piece of old slate with half-burned sticks from the
fire. Seeing us playing like children seemed to allay his surprise at finding
his granddaughter there, alone, with a man not of their family. Nevertheless,
as he untied the worn fleece from around his shoulders, he said, “You should
not be here alone, child.”

“I’m not alone; I have a hero. Besides, now
that I have won again...”

“What?” I exclaimed, studying the board.

“I’ll be on my way home.”

“You’d best stay here tonight,” the old man
said gruffly. “Strange portents in the air tonight. I saw yet another star
shoot low across the sky, a ball of fire trailing a golden vapor. There have
been many such of late. It is a bad omen.”

“Did you hear anything?” I asked. No wonder no
one had reported the harpy glowed in the dark. They hadn’t realized what they’d
seen.

“Nay, naught but the wind. Yet there has been
so much evil walking abroad in this island, it is best to be cautious. I have
warned the others not to go home alone. You have done much, good sir. But there
is more yet to do.”

Chapter 9

I reported to King Temas first thing the next
morning.

Well, first I borrowed a tunic from Demos,
Omphale’s father, the blacksmith and largest man in the village. It covered the
essentials but hardly anything else. Many Greek men will walk around wearing
only their himation, the long length of cloth that serves as cloak, scarf or
what have you. I remember my surprise and shock the first time I saw a man
swaggering around Athens dressed in little more than his skin. We Thracians are
more modest or, as we prefer to think of it, sensible. Besides which, it is far
colder in my northern country. I hate drafts.

Nobody in the village had sandals big enough.

The smith greeted me civilly, holding a metal
bar in his hands, not in a threatening way. More as though he found the feel of
the metal to be a comfort. “I am grateful to you.”

“You have little reason. No doubt Omphale would
have taken care of matters herself given a few more minutes.” He’d asked me
what had happened yesterday and I felt I owed him the truth. If he didn’t know
his son was weak and his daughter strong, it was time he learned.

“She has always been a good girl. She got her
head turned, that’s all, and without a mother to talk sense into her,” Demos
said, running his finger over the metal. “That Yanni....” He spit into his
bosom to ward off ill-luck.

“Do his people still live here?”

“His mother married again when Yanni was a boy.
There was the timber yard to run. She has other sons, steady lads. Yanni was
wild, wild as his father. He was just such another, sending all the girls mad
about him. Blood runs true.”

Tactfully, we neither of us made any further
mention of Pacci. I hoped his fright-fueled reformation would stick, for his
family’s sake as much as for his own. Yet I wouldn’t be shocked to return to
Leros someday, only to find that he’d been lured away into the train of the
first stronger character he met.

Demos reluctantly agreed to my idea of taking
Omphale from this high village down to the palace. “They’ll look after her
well?”

“There’s some sensible women there. Another
Yanni wouldn’t make it past the front door.”

“That’s what we all need in this life, isn’t
it? A sensible woman. If her mother were still alive, maybe things would be
different.”

He shook his head, a burly, grizzled man who
could beat hot iron into submission but had no notion how to handle anything
delicate like hopes or dreams. He probably hadn’t talked about anything deeper
than chores to be done with his children in their lives. Like so many of his
kind, he was content to leave those seemingly unimportant matters to his wife.
With her gone, he had no idea how to cope.

“You’ve done a fine job with the girl,” I said.
“I’ll see her safely down to the palace.”

Demos nodded. I pretended to be absorbed in
some unassembled kettles while he knuckled his eyes like a child.

“Shall I bring her here to say farewell?” I
asked.

“No, you say it for me. You’ll know what to
tell her.”

“Very well.”

I’d gone not much above twenty steps when I
heard Demos call my name. I turned as he came hurrying up. In one hand, he held
a small bag. In the other, a short sword threw back the light of the torch
burning outside his forge. I raised an eyebrow as I waited for him, toying with
the idea that he’d changed his mind and had decided to kill me. A strange
ambush, to call a man’s name, in order to stab him and leave a gift of money
behind.

He held out the small bag first. “A few coins
for the girl. She’ll see things she’ll want to buy, fancy goods, hair
combs...um...things.”

I realized he’d probably never been more than a
couple of miles from his forge in his life. The simple village by the ocean
where I’d first landed must seem like Athens itself in terms of riches and
variety to a man like this. My own father had been just the same. He knew the
valleys and hills of his home like the face of his mother, but the thought of
visiting a large town turned his stomach inside out.

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate having some extra
money.”

“And this is for you.”

He popped it up into the air and caught it so
he could present it to me over his arm properly, hilt first. Any smith who
didn’t know the rudiments of sword-fighting probably didn’t make very good
weapons.

This was a very good weapon indeed. The blade
was as long as my forearm but as light as the harpy’s feather. I could see the
keen edge as I squinted along the straight strength of it. No marks of the
hammer that had forged it showed even when I turned it back and forth to catch
the light. Instead, a ray-like pattern seemed to have been woven into its very
making.

“This is a princely weapon,” I said. “You
should be making these in Athens, not hammering housewares.”

“I didn’t make it,” Demos said. “It was left
here in payment of a debt.”

The hilt was handsome as well, leather bound
with silver-gilt wire to give a slip-proof grip, while the cross-guards had a
curling shape that reminded me of clouds without really looking like clouds at
all. The leather was dark as with sweat but not cracked or flaking. The pommel
had an indentation on the top, where it would be seen only when worn on the
hip. Perhaps a jewel had once resided there, now long gone. A tiny nick, hardly
noticeable to the eye, lay half-way up the blade.

“Who left it?” I asked. “And is he coming back
for it?”

“I doubt it. It’s been hanging up in the shop
for Gods know how long. My father remembers when it was left here. He was no
more than a lad.”

I am not often seized with possessiveness but I
very much wanted to keep hold of this short-sword. Partly because I’d lost my
own, a good blade but nothing near this good, and partly because to see it was
to wish to own it. It fit my overlarge hand as though it had been designed for
my use alone.

“What does he recall?”

“My father remembers his father talking about a
man passing through here but where he came from and where he was going, no one
ever knew. Only that he said he was running late and his chariot had lost the
pin that held the wheel on.”

“Had he crashed?”

“No. He had good horses. My father remembers
hearing more about the horses than about the man.”

“Men are all the same but horses are unique,” I
agreed.

“My father’s father was also smith here. He
fixed the chariot but the man had no money. He offered this as surety that he’d
come back to pay up. My grandfather was doubtful. So the man took it and threw
it at my grandfather’s feet. It sank in more than half its length just under
its own weight. We think that’s when it got the nick.”

He came with in a thumb-nail’s width of
touching the blade but he knew better that to smudge that gleaming surface.
“The man laughed, jumped in his chariot and drove away. No one saw him come or
go; no one except my grandfather and my father who was peeking out the door, as
children do. My grandfather would have thought he dreamed it all. Only it took
him all day to dig the blade out for pulling it did nothing at all. It was his
blisters that convinced him that it had all really happened.”

Maybe it had happened that way, though to me it
sounded like a mash-up of several other stories I’d heard in my travels. No
doubt the man was Phaethon, who had begged to take his father’s sun-chariot for
a spin around the heavens only to be refused again and again. Having stolen it
and in a sweat lest his father should discover that the pin had fallen out,
adding damage to theft, no doubt Phaethon had stopped in this remote place to
have it fixed. Only Phaethon had been killed by Zeus for driving so close to
the earth that Africa had turned to desert and had never returned to claim his
sword.

I liked my tale so much that I thought I’d
spread it around when I got home again. Plenty of places attract tourists on
slimmer connections with the gods than this. A few extra drachmas spent by
tourists, extending their journey from Artemis’ famous temple, could come in
very handy in this village, especially if the harvest had been bad.

“I can’t take it,” I said. The tourists would
be much more interested if they could gawk at the actual sword. “Keep it as an heirloom
of your house.”

“You must,” Demos said. “My father said it is
yours.”

“I don’t want you to go against your father’s
wishes, of course, but it’s too good for me.”

“You don’t understand. Father recognized your
name the moment he heard it,″ Demos said, his troubled eyes meeting mine.
“The man in the chariot also said that if he did not redeem it, Eno the
Thracian surely would by some act of courage.″

***

Sometime later, before the sun had come out
behind the clouds that veiled it, I turned to Omphale, walking two steps behind
me. She looked pale but clear-eyed. I didn’t admit, even to myself, how much I
regretted my virtuous refusal of the night before.

“Tell me, is your grandfather...?”

“Is he what?”

“Quite all there?”

She laughed. “Completely.”

“Just sometimes when men get old, they get
confused.”

“Not my grandfather. He’s sharp with eyes that
can still tell a black thread from a white one long before dawn. He can throw a
hammer farther than anyone else, young or old.”

“How’s his memory?”

“Long. He’s told me many tales of his boyhood.
He talks about things from fifty years ago or more as though they happened
yesterday.”

There was a convenient tumble of boulders
nearby. I motioned for Omphale to stop and sit. I unwrapped the sword from the
hemp cloth I’d picked up on my way out of the cottage. “You’ve seen this
before?”

“That’s the sword from the forge. So he did
give it to you,” she added in surprise. “I heard them talking about it early
this morning. Grandfather was determined that you should take it, that it was
yours. Father wasn’t so sure but he doesn’t argue with Grandfather, ever.”

Omphale touched the hilt gingerly as if worried
it would turn and bite her. “It always hung in the forge, above the chimney,
ever since I can remember. My father would stand in front of it, studying it.
I’ve seen him there, oh, so often, his hands behind his back, just watching it.
I think he used to try to copy it.”

“Not an easy thing to copy, I’d guess.”

“He never kept any of his attempts. Then, about
two years ago, he took it down and put it in the back, among the junk that
always collects, no matter how tidy you are.”

That explained why Demos had to go rummage for
it. The blade showed not a speck of rust, despite having been intentionally
‘lost’ for a few years. In the dimness of the morning, the shining blade had
bathed in reflected fire.

Here, in the open with the sun coming out, the
blade seemed to drip with liquid sunlight. The bright bronze of the curving
hilt glowed and tiny colorful flashes radiated along the curves of the
cross-guard. I ran my finger over it and felt tiny gemstones set into the
metal. They were the same color as the bronze, like stitches in a rich golden
seam.

Omphale squinted. “I’ve never seen it shine so
brightly.”

I went to wrap it up again in the hempen cloth,
though as soon as the sun went in behind a cloud, the dazzling light faded too.
I’d have to find a leather worker to make me a scabbard. Something simple to
conceal the sword’s quality. A weapon that was also a treasure was bound to be
used.

“Just a reflection,” I said reassuringly. But
there had been a surge of power up my arm that had left it fizzing. I decided
not to mention it.

“It troubles me,” she said. “It always has. My
mother thought it came from the Gods.”

“Hephaestus’ own handiwork?”

“Don’t scoff. There are such things. I’ve heard
that the warriors in Troy carry magical weapons.”

“There are always rumors about such things in a
battle zone. It heartens your allies and frightens your foes. But I have been
in many kingdoms and I’ve handled a lot of weapons. I’ve never seen one yet
that came from Heaven. The Gods are like careful merchants; they know where
each piece of their stock lies.”

“But this one is so magnificent.”

“Not too much so for the hands of a master
swordsmith. No offense to your father.”

“He never claimed mastery, though he makes some
beautiful things.” She fished in the neck of her cloak. “See this?”

She had pinched up a chain from within her
dress. I took the loop in my hand. The links were smaller than the tip of her
little finger, gleaming like silver but heavier by far. “Is this iron?” I
asked.

“He made it for my mother when they wed. See
how every other link is twisted?”

I looked more closely at the details. “It must
have taken him a very long time.”

“Yes, he said once....” Suddenly she gasped and
clutched my arm. Her lovely face contorted with pain.

I dropped the chain and took her by the
shoulders to hold her up as she almost collapsed. “What is it?”

“Can’t you hear it? The harpy!”

“Where?” Still holding her, I scanned the sky
over her head. I still didn’t understand the effect the harpy’s scream had on
everyone but me. I’d heard it more than once now and, despite Temas’ warning at
our first meeting, repetition didn’t turn my knees to water.

“It’s flying around up there somewhere. I can
feel it!”

I put my arm around Omphale’s slender waist and
picked her up. I thought it best to get her into some kind of shelter but the
nearest bank of trees was half a mile away at least.

She did not burden me at all, except that I
couldn’t use my hands for balance when the pebbles on the road slipped beneath
my unshod feet.

Then I stumbled and dropped the girl as, for
the first time, the harpy’s scream resonated fully in my mind.

I have stood dazed in a storm-tossed field of
war when Father Zeus struck the earth with his thunder-bolts. My hair stood on
end all over my body and the impacts shook me like a child in the hands of an
angry nurse. I felt so helpless, as if I could weep, while men around me threw
themselves to the ground. Several never rose again. A famous captain of
Corinth, splendid in his armor, had been struck directly and burned from
within, a great black mark charring the hilltop on which he had stood, shouting
defiance at us. I had been close enough to see his eyes boil white and the
steam issue from his mouth in a long plume.