Mortal Suns (12 page)

Klyton was startled. He had not killed the man. He had an idiotic urge to search for him among the stampeding kicking hoofs. But then another man—another
enemy
—came hollering, and Klyton stuck him straight through, where the upper chest armor was undone at his ribs.

It was the press of horses now that carried Klyton in through the wall.

The buildings seemed to tower and reel over him, and he expected a further deluge of thrown matter, but nothing came.

Other riders were cantering after him. They yowled and yodeled, and echoes shot off the walls. Klyton did as they did. His voice did not break again. He sounded like the other men.

There was a barricade in the narrow street, barrels, an upturned cart. They jumped over it.

The other side, the houses clustered like honeycomb. Where there were doors, they were fast shut. No faces at the thin slots of windows. No sounds but for the insane cluttering of pigeons up on the flat roofs. And the rain.

Then more cavalry, their own, a surge of it, was thrusting through. The space was filled. A sea of horses, men, the upturned points of weapons. From all over the town came the noise, unmistakable now, of victory. And new screams, the screams of women.

“Gates have given,” said one, unnecessary. At the louder howls of pleasure, their horses reared.

So, it truly had been—only that. So easy. Flat, and nearly foolish.

Someone was shaking him.

“Klyton—look at me. Yes, that’s better. You’re covered in blood. It’s not yours?”

“No, I don’t think … Wait, just this—” Someone, the man with the ribbon, or the other one he had killed close to, had slit open his right arm up to the elbow. A spectacular cut, not deep enough to be damaging. Just deep enough to leave a proper scar. “Most of it’s theirs.” Amdysos studied him. “You’ve done all right, then.”

“I think so.”

“Pherox had no good reason to send you in like that. He should have waited. It could have been chancy.”

“I expect he went straight in himself. He would.”

Amdysos glanced
about. No one was listening. The men were using the hoofs of their horses to splinter doors, or laughing together, telling each other what they had done. “He did, but at the gate, with his bodyguard.”

Klyton said, almost idly, “I had a man’s cheek off. I didn’t mean to. I meant to kill him. He fell anyway.”

“That happens. You can’t always be tidy in this sort of thing.” “Did you?”

“Yes. At least three men. From the look, you had fifty.”

“That one … he had a purplish ribbon in his hair like a girl, but he called me a girl—or a catamite—something. It wasn’t that it worried me. You know, what the sword-master said, they do it to rile you. Don’t lose a cool head.”

“Oh,” said Amdysos. “A purplish ribbon. Was his armor fine?”

“Yes. He had colcai on it.”

“Don’t tell Pherox,” said Amdysos. “I think you did for the chief’s son.”

Klyton shook his head. He felt the same. Nervous now with, wanting to be doing something else. This must be wrong. They had told him of cowardice, ordinary fear, cold strategy, and battle-madness. What to do with each. This had been none of those. It was like sex the first time for a woman this—he had not been able to—to enjoy it. With some women, Amdysos said, they never could.

“So what?”

“You’ll get his arms, sword and so on. You’ve defeated him. He’s probably dead by now, if he went down.”

Glardor the Farmer rode into the Sirmian town. He had imposed a certain order, stopped most of the rapine and theft. He told the defenders they would be fined, but they must come on to the next town, to act as envoys there. He wanted to save bloodshed. His soldiers were not too pleased. Akreon had always let them have the first town or city of a campaign, even a small one. It taught the foe a lesson. And it was a Fighter’s just deserts.

As they were
standing in the square, where the market would be in time of peace, and all this was being digested, Klyton, looking up, saw a girl appear on a roof, quite close.

She was an extremely lovely girl, with long, dark tresses and fiercely flushed checks. He thought her about sixteen, old enough to be married and to have lost today her husband, but she was smiling. She had a basket on her hip.

A silence came, as the sullen murmurs from the soldiers died away.

Into this the girl called in a high silver voice, “Will you have an apple, gentlemen?”

It was an incongruous cry, made odder by an uneducated Sirmian accent.

Then she began to fling the apples at them.

The soldiers dodged, cursing, partly entertained. They could get her down quickly enough. She was insolent, and surely even Farmer Glardor would not deny her to them now. Then a few of the apples struck home. The Akhemonians did not like the sting. There was growling, and men striding now, to get up on the roof. The omen too was not lucky. The apple might symbolize a woman’s pelvis, but was also the fruit of Phaidix, whose silver apples were a gift that signified approaching death.

Amdysos said to Klyton, without expression, “When they catch her, they’ll use her till she’s pulp. He won’t stop that, now.”

Just then, an apple whisked over their heads. It was meant perhaps for the King on his roan horse. It slammed instead directly into the face of Pherox.

Pherox’s head was punched backward. He arched on the black horse, letting go the reins. The gelding reared. And Pherox went flailing from its back.

He landed hard on the square, and there, between the legs of men and horses, his half brothers, like the rest, saw him spasming, cawing, hawking, clutching, seeming to try to vomit, violent—then feeble. Finally turning the color of cold ashes. Amdysos started forward. Already others were running, too late.

Pherox, blood and slime coursing from his mouth and nose, was almost still. His eyes were wide open, standing out like those of a hanged man.

The square
was full of roaring.

On the roof someone had reached the girl. She was squealing with laughter. Still laughing, as she was thrown down, still laughing as she was torn open.

To those who worshipped Phaidix, despite stories of sweethearts and mothers, it was no surprise a female might be vicious, ruthless, or courageous. And they had seen already, most of them, she too had killed her man.

Klyton was sitting in a side room of the chief’s house. He was stiff and embarrassed. The women, veiled, had washed him and seen to his arm, under the direction of Glardor’s own physician. This was the ritualistic sign of their servitude to the conquering Akhemonian men. No doubt, they were grateful Glardor had spared them rape. They did not overtly object to the Great Sun and his commanders talking over the battle, in the ax and knife hung, raftered hall, where last night their own little king, husband, father and son, had sat.

Sometimes they looked, slavishly, from the corners of their veils. They knew one of the Suns had perished, and that a Sirmian woman slew him. As a matter of course, any drink or food here would be tested for poison.

If there were any further attempt to insult, or take life, the town would be razed.

Amdysos came to the room in the late afternoon.

He admired Klyton’s bandaging. He, Amdysos, had none, not a scratch, though he had taken five men.

In the end, they were silent for a long while.

“It was a freak—it was a prank of the god who likes to play pranks.” One did not speak this god’s name. Amdysos added, “I know you. You’re thinking we talked about it. The apple that broke his tooth years ago.”

“We did, Amdysos.”

“All right. And she threw an apple. And the silver tooth got knocked out, and he swallowed it into his windpipe and it choked him. It could have happened, that same thing, a hundred ways in battle. We didn’t bring it down on him.”

“No.”

“Maybe,” said
Amdysos, “we had foreknowledge.”

Klyton said, in a cold voice, “Will you tell Udrombis what we did?”

“My mother? I should think not. She has enough to bear. It’s only four years since she lost the King.”

“Glardor’s King.”

“You know what I mean. Women mourn longer. She still wears the colors. No, I wouldn’t tell her.”

Beyond the window, the unending rain went on. The afternoon was dull, but in the puddles there still ran the galvanic red stain that had been the life of men.

Amdysos said, “By the way, that man was dead.”

“Which man?”

“The man with the ribbon.”

“I’d—forgotten.”

Amdysos came and stood directly in front of him. Klyton looked up.

“Leave this behind you,” said Amdysos. “We’re not guilty of anything. I know that I’m not. And I know you.”

“I didn’t wish him dead.”

“Of course you didn’t. You’re a prince.
Leave it behind.
”

Klyton got up. He walked up against Amdysos and put his head, for a second, on Amdysos’s breast. It was the symptom of a sudden childish fright and hurt: the numbness of war was going from him. But, too, in the days of Okos, of which they both knew rather a lot, it had been the tacit symbol, this gesture, of fealty, from a lesser king to the Great Sun.

“They’ve stripped the Sirmian armor. It’s with your gear. There was another man too, someone said you took him, and perhaps speared another. The men liked you. You were valiant and didn’t mess about. Straight through the wall, they said, with a battle cry.”

“Do you remember that pig at Airis?” Klyton said.

“The big she-pig? Yes.”

“It’ll be winter soon. She’s fair game then. We’ve left it long enough.”

Amdysos grinned. “That’s better.”

The rain ran on and on. It wore you away, that sound, but the worst sound was to come, the women keening, and Udrombis in her utter noiselessness of grief.

Klyton knew
he had seen them pass in his heart, Glardor and Pherox, and Amdysos rise like the Sun. And he, by Amdysos. Two Suns together. No. One must not think of that.

For highborn women of the court, not actually royal, there were always ways. If you must finally wed virgin, and often a sophisticated man would overlook it, providing you brought enough money and status with you, a wisewoman could give you a mixture. Applied, it caused a temporary dryness and tightening. He would feel you were not easy, see that he hurt you, and perhaps you bled. That was what, in simple terms, virginity amounted to. There were other draughts if your courses came late, to bring them on. A pregnancy carried to term, if unwanted, was rare. This was women’s business.

Only the highest women were kept sealed till marriage, for they made possible the treaties, and the marks of favor.

Ermias had had many lovers, and reckoned to garner an excellent marriage when her stint as guardian was done. She would be pensioned with enough goods and gold to make her an appetizing match. But she had wanted her looks too, to catch a husband who was young enough, and handsome.

Now, at just twenty-four, Ermias was a pillow, spillingly fat. Her neck was like a frog’s, with only a crease to show the demarcation of her chin. Her breasts had grown shapeless. Instead of bangles, rings of flesh garlanded her ankles. She waddled.

All Akhemony, all Oceaxis, was prone to lament. As the rain rushed down, down rushed the tears. Pherox had died in Sirma. And though another three towns had fallen since then and the campaign was almost done, this could not restore his life.

So, the sound of Ermias, weeping, was only that other sound brought indoors for me. I sat in my chair, listening, wondering if I too must weep, if his soul might be lost if I did not. Though insignificant in myself, I had heard legends where such things happened.

But he was not Klyton. If Klyton had been slain, I would have died at once. For any unknown other, there could only be regret.

At last the weeping stopped or, as it turned out, paused.

The door opened, and Ermias came through.

In the
lamplight, her eyes seemed bruised and the whites were red. Her puffy face was worse than ever, blotched with crying.

It was nearly my supper-time, and I thought she had come to say I must have my bath, now. Instead, she stared at me, stared on and on.

“Look at you,” she said, eventually.

I shifted a little. She was not my friend.

“Oh the gods!” cried Ermias, “why have they done this to me? Why?
Why
?”

In that moment I thought she too had lost someone in the war. Truthfully, I was not yet pleased to see her unhappy, she who was always so unkind, merely perplexed.

I said nothing.

Ermias said, “You filthy little monster, crouching there. Why aren’t you all a mass of fishy blubber, like me? It should be you, you little beast.” The tears came again, bursting out of her, sparkling like jewels in the light. “I’m so ugly. So ugly. But you—you—do you know what the women say about you, Calistra? Because they never see your legs, your
feet
? Eh?”

Now the full force of her malevolence bore in on me. I must give her some tribute or it was war.

I shook my head.

Loudly, she cried: “
Snake
. That’s it. They say you’ve got a
snake’s
tail under your skirt. Or you are a
fish
.”

The horror of this was dull. I was frightened of her, her vehemence, the strength of her emnity so massively displayed. There is too that terror which comes when civilized barriers, however flimsy, break down—perhaps children recognize this more swiftly than adults. Besides, fish, snakes—were beautiful, those I had been shown.

Ermias was drunk, I think, from a lot of wine.

“It’s you—you’re unlucky—you’re a curse on me—”

She spun heavily about, and ran from the room, lumbering, knocking over as she went a small table.

The door between the rooms stood open. I saw her throw herself on her couch, the place where for years she had slept, and frequently done with her lovers that incomprehensible thing which made noises.

Now she noisily cried, in an awful manner. She choked and struggled for breath. It was a real agony, this, for her. One should never dismiss pain of whatever sort. The child who cries for a lost toy, the woman who weeps at the loss of her loveliness, they have their station, beside the greater tragedies of this world. If you have been brought down to tears, who may say you have no right to shed them.