Vengeance of Orion (16 page)

BOOK II

JERICHO

Chapter 25

As Lukka had predicted, our journey was neither easy nor peaceful.

The whole world seemed in conflict. We trekked slowly down the hilly coastline, through regions that the Hatti soldiers called Assuwa and Seha. It seemed that every city, every village, every farmhouse was in arms. Bands of marauders prowled the countryside, some of them former Hatti army units just as Lukka's contingent was, most of them merely gangs of brigands.

We fought almost every day. Men died over a brace of chickens or even an egg. We lost a few of our men in these skirmishes, and gained a few from bands that offered to join us. I never accepted anyone that Lukka would not accept, and he took in only other Hatti professionals. Our group remained at about thirty men, a few more or less, from one month to the next.

I kept searching anxiously to our rear, every day, half expecting to see Menalaos leading his forces in pursuit of his wayward queen. But if the Achaians were following after us, I saw no sign. And I slept at nights without being visited by Apollo or Zeus or any of their kind. Perhaps they were busy elsewhere. Or perhaps whatever fate they had prepared for me was waiting in Egypt, inside the tomb of a king.

The rainy season began, and although it turned roads into quagmires of slick, sticky mud and made us miserable and cold, it also stopped most of the bands of brigands from their murderous marauding. Most of them. We still had to fight our way through a trap in the hills just above a city that Lukka called Ti-Smurna.

And Lukka himself was nearly killed by a farmer who thought we were after his wife and daughters. Stinking and filthy, the farmer had hidden himself in his miserable hovel of a barn—nothing more than a low cave that he had put a gate to—and rammed a pitchfork at Lukka's back when he went in to pick out a pair of lambs. It was food we were after, not women. We had paid the farmer's wife with a bauble from the loot of Troy, but the man | had concealed himself when he had first caught sight of us, I expecting us to rape his women and burn what we could not carry off.

He lunged at Lukka's unprotected back, murder in his frightened, cowardly eyes. Fortunately I was close enough to leap between them, knocking the pitchfork away with my arm.

The farmer expected to be killed by inches, but we left him trembling, kneeling in the dung of his animals. Lukka said little, as usual, but what he said spoke volumes.

"Once again I owe you my life, my lord Orion."

I replied lightly, "Your life is very important to me, Lukka."

I did not sleep with Helen. I hardly touched her. She traveled with us as part of our group, without complaining of the hardships, the bloodletting, the pain. She made her own bed at night, out of horse blankets, and slept slightly separated from the men. But always closer to me than anyone else. I was content to be her guardian, not her lover. If that surprised her, she gave no hint of it. She wore no jewels and no longer painted her face. Her clothes were plain and rough, fit for traveling rather than display.

Still she was beautiful. She did not need paints or gowns or jewelry. Even with her face smudged by mud and her hair tied up and tucked under the cowl of a long dirty cloak, nothing could hide those wide blue eyes, those sensuous lips, that unblemished skin.

Poletes gained strength and even some of his old cynical spirit. He rode in the creaking oxcart and pestered whoever drove the cart to tell him everything he saw, every leaf and rock and cloud, in detail.

Ephesus was the sole exception to our litany of warfare. We had spent the morning trudging tiredly uphill through a rainstorm, soaked and cold and aching. About half of the men were mounted on horses or donkeys. Helen rode beside me on a light dun-colored pony, wrapped in a dark blue hooded cloak, soggy and heavy with rain. I had sent three of our men on foot ahead as scouts. Several others trailed behind, a rear guard to warn us of bandits skulking behind us—or Achaians trying to catch up with us.

As we came to the top of the hill, I saw one of our scouts waiting for us beside the muddy road.

"The city." He pointed.

The rain had slackened, and Ephesus lay below us in a pool of sunlight that had broken through the gray clouds. The city glittered like a beacon of warmth and comfort, white marble gleaming in the sunshine.

We all seemed to gain strength from the sight, and made our way down the winding road from the hills to the seaport city of Ephesus.

"The city is dedicated to Artemis the Healer," said Lukka. "Men from every part of the world come here to be cured of their ailments. A sacred spring has water with magical curative powers." He frowned slightly, as if disappointed in his own gullibility. Then he added, "So I'm told."

There were no walls around Ephesus. No army had ever tried to take it or sack it. By a sort of international agreement, this city was dedicated to the goddess Artemis and her healing arts, and not even the most barbarian king dared to attack it, lest he and his entire army fall to Artemis's invisible arrows, which bring plague and painful death.

Helen, listening to Lukka explaining these things to me, rode up between us. "Artemis is a goddess of the moon, and sister of Apollo."

That made my heart quicken. "Then she favored Troy in the war."

Helen shrugged beneath her sodden cloak. "I suppose so. It did her no good, though, did it?"

"But she will be angry with us," Lukka said.

So is her brother, I knew, although they are not truly brother and sister. I made myself smile and said aloud to Lukka, "Surely you don't believe that the gods and goddesses hold grudges?"

He did not reply, but the expression on his dour face was not a happy one.

Whatever its patron deity, Ephesus was civilization. Even the streets were paved with marble. Stately columned temples of fluted white marble were centers of healing as well as worship. The city was accustomed to hosting visitors, and there were plenty of inns available. We chose the first one we came to, at the edge of the city. It was almost empty since the few who traveled in the rainy season preferred to be in the heart of the city or down by the docks where the boats came in.

The innkeeper was overjoyed at having some thirty of us as his guests. He kept rubbing his hands together and grinning as we unloaded our animals and carts.

"Your goods will be perfectly safe here, sir," he assured me, "even if they were made of solid gold. My own sons protect this inn and no thief will touch what is yours."

I wondered how certain of that he would have been if he had known that inside the boxes we carried to our rooms there
were
treasures of gold. We stacked all of the boxes in one room, the inn's largest. I chose to sleep in that room myself, with blind Poletes.

The city also had whorehouses. Lukka's men disappeared like a puff of smoke as soon as our horses were stabled and our goods safely stashed in our rooms.

"They'll be back in the morning," he told me.

"You are free to go, too," I said.

"You'll need someone to guard our goods," he said.

"I'll stand guard. You go see the city."

Lukka's stern face remained its impassive mask, but I knew he was debating within himself. Finally he said, "I'll come back at sunset."

I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Come back at dawn, my dutiful friend. Enjoy the city and its delights. You've earned a night's entertainment."

"You're certain . . ."

Gesturing toward the boxes stacked next to my bed, I said, "I can guard our goods."

"Alone?"

"I have the innkeeper's ferocious sons." We had seen the sons. Two of them were big and burly, the other two slight and wiry, as if they had been born of a different mother. They hardly seemed dangerous to us, not after the fighting we had seen, but they appeared adequate to ward off sneak thieves.

"And I am here also," said Poletes. "Even without ears, I can hear better than a bat. In the dark of night, I will be a better guard than you and your two eyes."

Very reluctantly, Lukka took his leave of us.

Helen was in the next room. She had commandeered the innkeeper's two young daughters to serve her. I heard them chattering and giggling as they hauled steaming buckets of water up the creaking stairs and poured them into the wooden tub that the wife of the house had provided for Helen.

None of them knew who we were, of course. I knew there would quickly be talk about the beautiful golden-haired woman and the band of Hatti soldiers who were with her. But as long as no one associated us with the war at Troy or with the Achaians, we were safe enough.

"Tell me of the city," Poletes asked. "What is it like?"

I went to the balcony and began to describe what I saw: temples, inns, busy streets, a bustling port, sails out in the harbor, splendid houses up on the hills.

"There must be a marketplace in the heart of the city," Poletes said, cackling with glee. "Tomorrow one of the men can take me there and I will tell the story of the fall of Troy, of Achilles's pride and Agamemnon's cruelty, of the burning of a great city and the slaughter of its heroes. The people will love it!"

"No," I said softly. "We can't let these people know who we are. It's too dangerous."

He turned his blind eyes toward me. The scars left by the burns seemed to glower at me, accusingly.

"But I'm a storyteller! I have the greatest story anyone's ever heard, here in my head." He tapped his temple, just above the ragged slit where his ear had been. "I can make my fortune telling this story!"

"Not here," I said. "And not now."

"But I can stop being a burden to you! I could earn my own way. I could become famous!"

"Not while she's with us," I insisted.

He snorted angrily. "She has caused more agony than any mortal woman ever born."

"Perhaps so. But until I see her safely accepted in Egypt, where she can be protected, you'll tell no tales about Troy."

Poletes grumbled and mumbled and groped his way back to his bed. I stayed at his side and steered him clear of the stacked boxes of loot.

As the old storyteller plopped down on the feather mattress, I heard a scratching at the door.

"Did you hear . . ."

Poletes said, "It's someone asking to come in. That's the way civilized people do it. They don't pound on the door as if they intended to break it down, the way you do."

I picked up my sword from the table between our two beds. Holding it in its scabbard, I went to the door and opened it a crack.

It was one of the innkeeper's daughters: a husky, dimpled girl with laughing dark eyes.

"The lady asks if you will come to see her in her chamber," she said, after a clumsy curtsy.

I looked up and down the hallway. It was empty. "Tell her I'll be
there in a few moments."

Shutting the door, I went to Poletes's bed and sat on its edge.

"I know," he said. "You're going to her. She'll snare you in her web of allurements."

"You have a poet's way of expression," I said.

"Don't try to flatter me."

Ignoring his petulance, I asked, "Can you guard our goods until I return?"

He grunted and turned this way and that on the soft bedding and finally admitted, "I suppose so."

"You'll yell loudly if anyone tries to enter this room?"

"I'll wake the whole inn."

"Can you bar the door behind me and find your way back to the bed again?"

"What if I stumble and break my neck? You'll be with your lady love."

I laughed. "I may only be there a few minutes. I have no intention of . . ."

"Oh, no, not at all!" He hooted. "Just make sure you don't bellow like a mating bull. I'm going to try to get some sleep."

Feeling a little like a schoolboy sneaking out of his dormitory, I went to the door and bid Poletes a pleasant nap.

"I sleep very lightly, you know," he said.

Whether he meant that to reassure me that no sneak thief would be able to rob us, or to warn me to be quiet in Helen's room, next door, I could not tell. Perhaps he meant both.

The hallway was still empty, and I could see no dark corners or niches where an enemy could lurk in ambush. Nothing but the worn tiled floor, the plastered walls, and six wooden doors of rooms that my men had taken. Not that any of them would occupy them this night. On the other side of the hall was a railing of split logs, overlooking the central courtyard of the inn and its packed-dirt floor.

I clenched my fist to knock at Helen's door, then remembered Poletes's words. Feeling slightly foolish, I scratched at the smooth wooden planks instead.

"Who is there?" came Helen's muffled voice.

"Orion."

"You may enter."

I pushed the door open. She stood in the center of the shabby room, resplendent as the sun. Helen had put on the same robes and jewels she had worn that first time I had seen her alone, in her chamber in Troy. There, she had looked incredibly beautiful. Here, in this rough inn with its crudely plastered walls and uncurtained windows, she seemed like a goddess come to Earth.

I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against it, almost weak with the beauty of her.

"You have taken none of the treasures of Troy for yourself, my lord Orion," she said.

"I haven't wanted any of them. Until now."

She opened her arms and I went to her and swept her up and carried her to the soft, yielding downy bed. In the back of my mind I wept for a woman who was totally different from the golden, splendid Helen: a woman of lustrous dark hair and wondrous gray eyes, a tall and graceful goddess of truth and beauty. But she was dead, and Helen was warm fire in my arms.

The sun sank on the edge of the glittering sea and long violet shadows stole across the city of Ephesus as the cloak of night softly drew itself over all. The stars peeked through tattered clouds and Artemis's sliver of a moon came up while Helen and I made love and drowsed, half-woke and made love once more, then slept and woke and made love still again.

In the gray half light that precedes true dawn we slept in each other's arms, totally spent, unconscious with the sweet exhaustion of passion.