Daughter of Lir (14 page)

Minas’ heart clenched. “Mother! Are you safe? Is it Etena?
Is—”

“I can look after myself,” she said. “See that you do the
same.”

“Do you know what he’ll do?” Minas asked. “Does anyone?”

“Anyone but Etena? Her women,” Aera said. “But they never
speak. She’ll not trust a man, not that one, nor any woman not soul-sworn to
her.”

Not her son, certainly, Minas thought. And not Aera who had
always been her dearest enemy.

“Watch him,” said Aera. “Guard yourself. Be wary, and keep
trusted men at your back. And remember the morning song in your heart. The gods
will hear it, and may protect you.”

Minas bent his head. Indeed the world had not ended because
that song was silenced—though he had begun to wonder if that end was but
deferred.

There was a cold knot in his belly, but a fire in his heart.
He bowed to his grandfather and his mother, gathered up his beautiful new
weapons, and went in search of what sleep he could find.

o0o

He sang the morning song from the eastward edge of the
camp, shaping the words without sound, filling his spirit with music. He was
dressed in his battle finery, his cheeks and chin stinging with the razor’s
closeness, his hair plaited and wound tight about his head. He had his sword
and dagger of bronze, and his bearskin cloak. He danced, because he had not
been forbidden that, and welcomed the sun into the camp of the People.

He began the dance alone, but when he was done, they were
all there, the young men who rode with him to battle, and his brother, and the
chariots waiting beyond their circle.

It was time. The fighting men were massing on the open
plain. The rest of the chariots circled the edges. The king was not late this
morning, nor had he ever been for battle. He was mounted in his golden chariot.
One of Minas’ brothers was his charioteer—Arios who had just come to manhood in
the autumn. The boy had a white, wild look to him, as if his soul was given
utterly to terror.

It was Arios’ first battle, and a great charge was laid on
him, to drive the king’s chariot while the king plunged into the thick of
battle. Minas knew. He remembered.

Now he was a man, and he rode in the warrior’s place. Dias
was calm beside him, keeping the horses quiet, smiling faintly as he always did
before a fight. Minas rested briefly in that calm, before the drums began to
beat and the horns to bray. Slowly at first, then with greater speed, the army
of the People advanced over the plain.

The enemy were waiting on the far side of a long hill,
massed on the bank of a little river. Maybe they hoped that that trickle of
water would stop or slow the chariots. But it took more than that to do such a
thing.

They were as rich as Minas had suspected from the sight of
their outriders. They gleamed with gold. Their horses were splendid. And all
along their line, under the banners of princes, he saw the fierce glitter of
bronze.

His heart chilled at that. Of all the princes and fighting
men of the People, only he had bronze. The rest carried copper or flint or
fire-hardened bone.

He raised his voice for as many to hear as could: “My
people! Beware of the golden blades. Capture them if you can. But never challenge
them. They break flint—they cleave copper. They carve flesh and bone. Beware of
them!”

“Gold?” someone asked nearby. “But gold is soft. It can’t—”

“Not gold,” Minas called back. “Bronze!”

They did not understand. He could only pray the gods that they
remembered, and eluded those terrible blades.

Then there was no time to fret. The mounted warriors had
swarmed past the chariots, whooping and shouting and singing their
battle-songs.

The chariot-teams fretted, fighting strong hands on the
lines. But the charioteers held them back. They would have their time, after
the riders had swept through the ranks of the enemy. Those in the older,
smaller chariots would leave them to fight afoot. Minas’ warriors in their
splendid new battle-cars would plunge onward, archers and spearmen sweeping
through the ranks of the enemy.

Minas was calm now, as Dias was. His heart beat steady. His
breath came deep and slow. His hand rested on the hilt of the bronze sword,
cherishing the heft and the feel of it. He did not draw it. This was arrow-fight,
spear-fight. Later would be time for bronze.

He watched, dispassionate, as the riders hurtled across the
stream. Water sprayed. Through the veil of it, he saw how the enemy held their
ground; how their weapons glittered.

They met with a ringing clash. The chariot rocked with the
force of it. The team jibbed, half-rearing. Dias held them easily, gentling
them, crooning to them in the language every horseman knew.

Minas kept his balance lightly, hardly heeding either team
or charioteer. The People had fallen on the enemy like a fire on the steppe—as
they always did. And as always, the enemy fell before them.

But not as many, not as easily as they ever had before.
These had bronze, and bronze was terrible.

The People had chariots. Minas looked to the king, at whose
command they must move. He stood in his shining car, erect, stiff and still.
The horns of his bull’s-head crown swayed in the wind that blew forever across
the plain. He had not strung his bow. He seemed blind and deaf to the world
about him.

The moment was coming quickly, when the chariots would best
advance. But the king did nothing.

The line of chariots had begun to bend and curve, as others
of the charioteers saw what Minas had seen. It was time, and swiftly coming
past time. Still the king delayed, as he had done in the war-council.

Now as then, Minas lost his strength to bear it. This time
the king did not stop him. He flung up his gleaming blade and loosed a great
war-cry. Dias, soul of his soul as he had ever been, slipped rein. The team
plunged forward. The whole line surged with it, all but the king.

Minas could not watch him and ride to battle. Later, he
thought. Now he must fight. The chariot rocked and swayed. The stream scarcely
slowed it. He barely felt the water that dashed against his body, though it was
snow-cold. He nocked arrow to string and loosed. It fell with the rest of the
archers’ deadly rain.

The enemy’s line was still strong—still holding. Bronze held
it. Too many young men of the People lay dead or wounded. Horses thrashed and
screamed. Blood dyed the trampled grass.

The chariots struck the line with the sound of hammer
striking flesh, crushing bone. Bronze was bright, and it was terrible, but
chariots were stronger than swords.

The charioteers at least heeded Minas’ warning. They aimed
for those of the enemy who carried no bronze, veering wide of the golden
blades. They overran the long line. They bowled over the horses, crushed the
men who rolled and tumbled underfoot.

“Capture the blades!” Minas roared. “Take the bronze!”

They heard him. Minas’ heart swelled with love for them,
amid the madness that came on him in the heat of battle. They left the mounted
men to killing the lesser folk, and turned on the princes. They wielded the
power of their chariots, the weight, the mass, the grinding of the wheels over
defenseless flesh.

The princes fought back. Oh, gods, how they fought. They
were brave in their extremity. But they were no match for the men of the
People.

Minas fought as they all did, driving deeper and deeper into
the swarm of the enemy. He let slip his awareness of all but the fall of
arrows, the clash of blades, the eyes gleaming, the faces stark and wild, men
laughing, shouting, singing, howling.

Minas bared his teeth at them. First his bow and then his
beautiful blade plucked the lives from them, and sent the bright blood
springing.

Some of them were clever. They went not for the men in the
chariots, but for the horses—if they could not sink bronze or copper in the
strong arched necks, they sprang to slash at the traces, to cut reins and
tangle harness.

Dias gentled the horses through that roil of combat. Hands
that reached for his reins fell away. Men who dreamed of springing onto the
horses’ backs met hooves and slashing teeth, or the darting bronze of Minas’
sword.

But one man had his gods’ blessing. He came from below, from
amid a heap of the dead, and he had a dagger in his hand. He slashed at the
belly of the left-hand stallion.

The horse screamed in mortal agony. The man echoed him, tumbling
beneath the flailing hooves. The chariot lurched over his body.

The stallion struggled onward, brave heart that he was, with
entrails trailing, glistening in the harsh sunlight. His yokemate jibbed,
snorting at the smell of his brother’s blood.

The battle was thick about them. Minas beat back a new
onslaught, even as he felt the chariot lurch to a halt. The stallion went down
as if he sank through water, slow, ah so slow.

Dias sprang onto the back of the right-hand stallion,
slashing at the traces, as a moment or an age ago, too many of the enemy had
tried to do. The other’s body dropped, life draining from it even as it fell.

Minas vaulted out of the chariot. On foot, but armed with
bronze, he set his back to the chariot and greeted his enemies with his widest,
whitest grin.

Gold flamed beyond them. The king came on like fire in dry
grass: golden chariot, golden ornaments, wide sweep of horns. His blade was
copper, but it was as swift as a serpent’s strike. It clove heads from
shoulders, plunged into living hearts. It drove back the crush of bodies about
Minas.

It dawned on Minas, too slowly, that the king had no
charioteer. The reins were wound about his middle. His hand caught Minas,
pulling him up with more than mortal strength, into the royal chariot.

There were no eyes to meet inside the bull’s mask. The king
drove on, fought on, while Minas crouched behind him, gasping for breath. His
body stung with a myriad small cuts, but he had no greater wound. His bow was
gone. He still had his sword, and his dagger in its sheath.

He straightened. The chariot lurched over a stone or a
fallen body. He unwound the reins from the king’s waist, slipped past that tall
heavy body, settled into the charioteer’s place.

The horses knew his hand: he had trained them in their
youth. They were light to the traces, willing, and utterly fearless.

The king’s sword had broken, but his war-axe wrought
terrible slaughter. He clove his way through the enemy. Minas drove the team in
a long sweeping arc, as swiftly as the press of battle would allow; for they
all threw themselves at the golden car and the king who rode in it.

His father never spoke, never sang, made no sound. His
war-axe sang for him. Minas went where his heart bade him go, with no guidance
from the king. He was the will, his father the weapon. He herded the enemy,
drawing the warriors of the People behind him, driving these western tribesmen
back and back toward their guarded camp.

Bronze had great power, but chariots were greater. They
rolled over the westerners’ tents, flattened them as if a storm had struck out
of the turbulent heaven.

The enemy were broken. The battle was lost when Minas took
the reins of the king’s horses. The rest was conquest, raw and simple. The
People were born and bred to it.

They slew the men, took captive the women and the
girlchildren, dashed the menchildren against the rocks lest they grow to fight
against the People. They made a sacrifice of the enemy’s kings—for there were
five of them, a full hand of tribes gathered against the People—and offered
their heads and hands to the gods. Bronze blades clove them from the bodies,
and bronze gleamed before the gods’ faces.

What the gods thought, no one presumed to say. The priests
and shamans were banished. The king was silent. He performed the sacrifices
without a word. His warriors raised the chants, nor did he prevent them. They
worshipped the heavens and the earth and the realms below. They bowed before
the sun and invoked the moon. They offered the blood of these westerners to the
ancestors who, in their greatness before the gods, no longer suffered rebirth,
but were made gods themselves.

Minas led the chants. He knew what that could bring upon
him, but he did not care. He was covered in wounds, none of which he remembered,
and some of which were deep enough to be troublesome. His head was light from
loss of blood.

Sometimes he slipped from world to world as he had when he
hunted the shamans. Dim shapes crowded thick about the blood of kings: shades
of the dead who had not yet come back to the world of the living. They murmured
to one another in soft cold voices. Most of them had been living flesh only
this morning: warriors of the west who had fallen before the People. They were
not all convinced yet that they were dead. They tried to leap on the living, to
smite them with ghostly fists, to seize weapons and hew them down.

No one saw them but Minas. He lifted the cup of a king’s
skull, brimming with the blood of life. The king’s shade hovered, glaring with
dim eyes, cursing him in a voice no louder than the whisper of wind. He bowed,
for that had been a brave king, facing his death steadily, already so torn with
wounds that he was nigh dead of them.

The shadow-king started a little. His eyes met Minas’. Minas
shivered, though without fear. He was suddenly, fiercely aware of the fire of
life in him, the heart that beat beneath his breastbone, the sting of wounds in
his arms and breast and side. All that was gone from this spirit. Only memory
was left; and even that would fade and die, until he entered again into the
body of a living man.

The shade pressed against Minas. It stretched out long
shadowy fingers. It reached for his eyes, for the door of his mouth. It
strained toward the life that was in him.

“Brother!”

Minas gasped, started. Blood spilled from the skull-cup.
Dias braced him with a sturdy shoulder. “Brother,” he said in Minas’ ear,
“you’re out on your feet. Come, I’ll finish it. You go to the healers’ tent.”