The Blood Star (61 page)

“It shall be as you say, Tiglath, for we have
appointed you Tyrant over us.”

We sat beneath the sibyl’s chaste tree,
within sight of the house my neighbors had helped me to build.
There were six of us, including Kephalos and myself: Epeios and
Peisenor, representing the Greek council; Diocles, whom I had
decided upon as my second-in-command; and a man named Talus, who
could speak for the merchants and craftsmen of Naxos.

“There is a wide plain north of the city,” I
went on. “It is a good spot to drill soldiers. Let all those liable
to service gather there in five days’ time, with such weapons and
horses as they can bring. If men must fight they must be taught the
arts of war, for the only thing a rabble can do in battle is die.
The sooner we begin the sooner we will be ready.”

“I know that spot—Ducerius will be able to
watch us from the walls of his citadel.”

“That is true, Peisenor.” I smiled, as if
pleased that he had guessed my private thoughts. “I never claimed
we could hope to keep our intentions a secret. And that which
cannot be kept secret, even for a short time, is best done as
openly as possible. If we do not behave like conspirators, Ducerius
will lack an excuse to move against us as such. And we have only to
remind him that he has given us his mandate to solve this problem
for ourselves—‘It is sport I willingly leave to you,’ he said, and
before many witnesses. Let it be the king, and not the Greeks, who
breaks the peace between us.”

Selana had made up a leather corselet for me,
sewing strips of copper on the front and back in the childish
expectation that these might stop a sword thrust and thus save my
life. On a summer day it was hot as a pottery kiln and I felt like
a fool in it, but she would not be easy in her mind until I
promised to wear it, so for her sake did I go off thus to make war
against the brigands.

We assembled on what was called locally the
Plain of Clonios, after a farmer who had once had a house and some
vineyards there, two hundred and twenty Greek men, not fifty of
whom had even served in a city militia, and of these only eight had
ever felt the shock of battle. These eight I immediately appointed
squad leaders, even though one of them had two fingers missing from
his right hand and another looked as if he could hardly stand up
under the weight of his dented iron war helmet.

Yet what they lacked in experience and skill
they compensated for in enthusiasm. They stumbled like blind men
through even the most basic drill and many carried only pruning
staffs and wooden swords, but not one among them was not eager to
fight the brigands, and anyone else for that matter. For men
accustomed to spreading dung over their fields and listening to the
endless complaining of their wives, the enterprise of war had
almost the welcome character of a holiday. It is always so.

About ten of my more prosperous neighbors had
brought their own horses, and they thus became our cavalry. In the
Land of Ashur cavalry were of some importance in war, but the
Greeks appeared to be hopeless in this regard. Above a trot, they
could not seem to keep their seats unless they held on to the reins
with one hand and the horse’s mane with the other, and thus
occupied they would be of little value in a battle. I decided I
would use them for reconnaissance and divided them into two
companies of five men each, leaving them to spend the whole first
day charging up and down one end of the plain at full gallop, that
they might at least learn how not to fall off. This was a lesson
they would have to master for themselves, and one with which I
could not help them very much. Besides, my immediate concern was
with the foot soldiers.

“Most of you imagine that a soldier is
required to be brave and daring,” I told them, that first morning
while we sweated under the unforgiving summer sun. “You all hope to
distinguish yourselves by some great act of courage, and even if
you die for it you think you will be numbered among the heroic
dead. Allow me to disillusion you: there are no heroic dead. If a
soldier dies in battle it is generally because he is unlucky or,
more probably, has done something stupid, and the dead are merely
dead. If you are killed, your wife will grieve for you for two
months and then marry some other man, and your children, by the
time they are grown, will have forgotten your name. The fruits of
victory belong only to the survivors.

“Now let me tell you how to survive. It is a
simple matter, really: one only has to remember that battles are
fought not by individuals, one man against one man, but by armies,
and that an army exists to protect its members and to crush its
enemies. There is no such thing as single combat, not unless both
commanders’ plans have gone hopelessly wrong, so there is no place
for individual prowess. There are no heroes in an army; if you long
to be a hero, then compete in the games. An army is made up not of
men but of soldiers, and soldiers become an army by submerging
themselves in discipline and drill. Follow your training, look out
for those who fight to the right and left of you while they look
out for you, and remember that the one who breaks and runs is
usually the first one killed. If you can hang on to these three
rules, you have a good chance of living long enough to tell lies to
your grandchildren about the glory of war. When all of this is over
and we can go home again, you are free to believe whatever you
like. But for now, believe what I tell you.”

Of course they did not—I could see as much in
their faces—but at least they had been warned. Now my task was to
drill them until it no longer mattered what they believed, until
they had forgotten that they were many rather than one, until
thought had been replaced by habit. Then perhaps we would not be
utterly abandoned to fate.

I started by forming them up into three
battle squares, each eight men deep. They found this a clumsy and
comical proceeding, and none of them seemed to believe that armies
could possibly wage war thus.

“How can men fight, all bunched up together
like this?” they asked with some asperity. “Perhaps, Tiglath, after
all you acquired those scars fighting in taverns.”

“A man cannot even draw his sword when the
next fellow is jammed against his elbow. We will make a lovely
target for the brigand horsemen—they will trample us down like
spring grass.”

I listened, and said nothing, and held them
to their drill. We were at it all of the first and most of the
second day before they could advance without breaking up their
lines. As I watched their progress I picked out the best men and
moved them to the front ranks, where their skill and persistence,
which two are the only real courage to which a soldier can lay
claim, would be of most use.

After the third day, when the basic lessons
had sunk in, I set them to fighting mock battles, more like shoving
matches, in which two squares would run against one another and try
to crack each other’s formations. They enjoyed this—it was great
sport—and by the end of the fifth day I began to hope these farmers
might at last have the makings of an army.

After eight days most of them had exhausted
the food they had brought with them and, besides, it was time they
learned the use of weapons.

“Go back to your womenfolk,” I told them—an
order that was greeted with cheering. “And while you are at home, I
want each of you to cut a staff from wood fresh enough not to have
grown brittle. Make it half again as long as a man is tall, and to
a thickness of two fingers. When you return, we will tip them with
iron spearheads. Remember, if they are not strong, if they break,
it will be your own lives you impale upon them.

“And let every man make himself a shield. Let
it be round, and as wide as a man’s arm is long. Cover it with as
many layers of oxhide as will allow you to carry it through a day’s
fighting. Let those of you who are skilled with the javelin and the
bow bring these weapons as well when you return. We will all
assemble here again in five days.”

Kephalos met me at the outskirts of Naxos,
and we rode home together in the wagon.

“How goes the rest of our plan?” I asked
him.

“It is as you would wish, Lord,” he answered,
smiling to himself as if he had swindled the whole world. “Three of
the forges have been dismantled and the sections carried out into
the countryside in farm carts—I judged it best to leave one in
place, lest the king’s watchdogs grow suspicious. The blacksmiths
are presently at work, the spearheads are nearly finished, and,
since the day after tomorrow is a market day, I thought that would
be a convenient moment to smuggle them back into the city for
distribution to our soldiers. Each man has only to present himself
at the brothel of Melantho the Thessalian woman and he will come
away with something crammed into his loincloth a good deal stiffer
than anything he ever found there before.”

“You have done well, my friend. As always,
where cunning and good management are required to achieve a thing,
you have done very well.”

Kephalos closed his eyes and nodded,
acknowledging the justice of my praise, for indeed he possessed a
great talent for duplicity and was never so happy as when he had a
chance to exercise it.

“It is like the old days, is it not, Master,”
he said at last. “I might almost believe myself back in Nineveh,
when you were almost the lord of the world. Sometimes I miss those
days.”

He did not seem to require an answer, and I
was happy enough to hold my tongue.

I spent most of the next few days carrying
stones to clear a new field. Each evening I felt as if my back had
been broken for good and all, and I was glad to have found such
weariness, for it freed my mind from all thought of what was to
come. At night I buried myself in Selana’s arms and prayed that no
dreams would find me.

But in the cold black hours before the fifth
dawn, I loaded my horse with provisions and weapons, put on my
leather corselet, and set out for the Plain of Clonios, there yet
again to take up the work I once imagined I had put behind me
forever.

Fresh from home, my Greek neighbors were at
least beginning to look like soldiers. Drawn up in their battle
squares, the new iron points on their spears glittering in the sun
and their leather shields massed like the stones in a fortress
wall, the Naxos militia presented the appearance of a formidable
army. They were brave, and willing too, but still I harbored
doubts, for I was building this house with green wood. These men
had never seen blood spilled in anger—who could say they would not
break and run when the moment came?

Ducerius certainly was not impressed.

“Is this the force with which you plan to
conquer the world?” he inquired mockingly that third morning after
our return, when he rode a fine gray stallion down from his citadel
on his way to a day’s hunting. “It is a strange manner of fighting,
more suited to a festival dance than a war. Have you cobbled
together this army to drive me out that you may take my place upon
the throne?”

He lowered his gaze to where I stood on the
hard-packed earth before him and grinned, and his retainers, their
horses jostling each other nervously, laughed at his wit. I even
laughed with them.

“No, Great King—I have done no more than
assemble a small hunting party, perhaps not so very unlike your
own. Perhaps, when we return from our sport, you will accept a
trophy.”

The Lord of the Sicels was not amused by this
suggestion, and the eyes glittered dangerously as they scanned the
rows of iron-tipped spears.

“You prepare a disaster for yourself, Tiglath
Ashur. What do you imagine can be done with a mob of dung-raking
Greeks? In their hands, those spears are only good for lancing
boils. Paugh!”

His gaze returned to me, as if he had
dismissed my two hundred armed men as no more than a phantom.

“One is either born with a warrior’s fire in
his belly or he is not, and if I am any judge of men you are not
someone who has spent his whole life behind a plow. So I would
expect you to know better—even brigands are better fighters than
such as these.”

I had almost lost interest in what he said. A
cart piled to the top with loose hay was drawing toward us over the
plain. When it stopped, Diocles looked to me for a signal and I
nodded. At once several men climbed onto the cart and began
throwing its contents to the ground—mixed in with the hay were over
a hundred new-forged swords, their blades so bright it hurt one’s
eyes to look at them.

I turned back to Ducerius, my very silence a
challenge.

Suddenly he laughed, as if he had only just
seen the jest.

“Yes, Tiglath Ashur—play with your new toys.
We will have good sport, you and I, before we are done.”

With a vicious yank on the reins, he turned
his horse about and rode away, his retainers close behind. The
pounding of their hooves died away slowly across the wind-swept
plain.

I waited until the king was out of sight and
then stalked over to the wagon, my legs feeling as stiff as though
I had spent the whole day with my knees locked straight.

“By the Mouse God’s navel, what was that
about?” Diocles asked, making a gesture toward the still-visible
spiral of dust from the king’s riders.

“He is pleased with us,” I answered. “He is
pleased that we prepare for war. He looks forward to meeting us in
battle, although in his view it will hardly be a battle at all. We
are only ‘dung-raking Greeks,’ weak in numbers and unprepared to
face a seasoned army like his own. He is happy because now he will
have the pretext to destroy us.”

“But is he right?”

What could I do except shrug my
shoulders?

“The gods know, my friend. We are in their
hands now.”