Gods and Warriors (2 page)

He scrambled over the edge of the trail, grabbed a sapling, and clung like a bat.

The pounding feet came nearer.

Scrabbling with his toes, he found a ledge. He edged sideways beneath an overhang. His face was jammed against a tree root. He glanced down—and wished he hadn’t. All he could see was a dizzying view of treetops.

The warriors came on at a punishing run. He caught the creak of leather and the rank smell of sweat—and a strange bitter tang that was horribly familiar. He’d smelled it last night. The warriors’ skin was smeared with ash.

The overhang hid him from view, but to his left the trail curved around and jutted over the gorge. He heard them run past. Then they rounded the bend, and through a haze of red dust he saw them: a nightmare of stiff black rawhide armor, a thicket of spears and daggers and bows. Their long black cloaks flew behind them like the wings of crows, and beneath their helmets their faces were gray with ash.

A man called out, terrifyingly close.

Hylas stopped breathing. The warrior who’d shouted was directly above him.

Farther up the trail, the others wheeled around and moved down again. Toward him.

He heard the crunch of pebbles as a man came walking back. His pace was unhurried—Hylas guessed this was the leader—and his armor made a strange, hard clink.

“Look,” said the first man. “Blood.”

Hylas went cold.
Blood.
You left blood on the trail.

He waited.

The leader made no reply.

This seemed to rattle the first man. “Probably just the goatherd’s,” he said hastily. “Sorry. You wanted him alive.”

Still no reply.

Sweat streamed down Hylas’ flanks. With a jolt, he remembered the arrowhead, left lying in the dust. He prayed they wouldn’t spot it.

Craning his neck, he saw a man’s hand grasp a boulder on the edge of the trail.

It was a strong hand, but it didn’t look alive. The flesh was smeared with ash, the fingernails stained black. The wrist-guard that covered the forearm was the dark red of an angry sunset, and so bright that it hurt to look. Hylas knew what it was, though he’d never seen it this close. Bronze.

Dust trickled into his eyes. He hardly dared blink. The two men were so near he could hear them breathe.

“Get rid of it,” said the leader. His voice sounded hollow. It made Hylas think of cold places beyond the reach of the Sun.

Something heavy pitched over the edge, narrowly missing him. It crashed into a thorn tree an arm’s length away and swayed to rest. Hylas saw what it was and nearly threw up.

It had once been a boy, but now it was a terrible thing of black blood and burst blue innards like a nest of worms.
Hylas knew him. Skiros. Not a friend, but a goatherd like him: a few years older, and ruthless in a fight.

The corpse was too close; he could almost touch it. He sensed the angry ghost fighting to break free. If it found him, if it slipped down his throat…

“That’s the last of them,” said the first man.

“What about the girl?” said the leader.

Hylas’ belly tightened.

“She doesn’t matter, does she?” said the other man. “She’s only a—”

“And the other boy. The one who ran off.”

“I winged him. He won’t get far—”

“Then this is not the last of them,” the leader said coldly. “Not while that other boy remains alive.”

“No,” said the other man. He sounded scared.

Pebbles crunched as they started up the trail. Hylas willed them to keep going.

At the bend where the trail jutted, the leader stopped. He put his foot on a rock. He leaned over to take another look.

What Hylas saw did not resemble a man, but a monster of darkness and bronze. Bronze greaves covered his powerful shins, and a carapace of bronze overlaid his short black rawhide kilt. His breast was hammered bronze, surmounted by bronze shoulder-guards of fearsome breadth. He had no face: just an eye-slit between a high bronze throat-guard masking nose and mouth, and a black-painted helmet made of scales sliced from the tusks of boars, with bronze
cheek-guards and a crest of black horsetail. Only his hair showed that he was human. It hung below his shoulders, braided in the snake-like locks of a warrior, each one thick enough to turn a blade.

Hylas knew the leader might sense his gaze, but he couldn’t look away. He just had to keep watching the slit in that armored head, knowing those unseen eyes were raking the slopes to find him.

For a moment, the head turned to scan upriver.

Do something, Hylas told himself. Distract him. If he looks back and sees you…

Bracing himself on the ledge, Hylas silently let go of the sapling with one hand, and reached for the thorn tree where the body of Skiros hung. He gave it a push. The corpse shuddered, as if it didn’t like being touched.

The armored head was turning back.

At full stretch, Hylas gave another push. Skiros fell, rolling and bouncing down the gorge.

“Look,” chuckled one of the warriors, “it’s getting away.”

A ripple of laughter came from the others; nothing from the leader. The helmeted head watched the boy’s body crash to the bottom—and then withdrew.

Blinking sweat from his eyes, Hylas listened to their footsteps recede as they headed up the trail.

The sapling was beginning to give under his weight. He grabbed a tree root.

He missed.

H
ylas half slid, half fell all the way to the river. Pebbles rained down on him—but no arrows.

He’d landed facedown in a gorse bush, but forced himself to stay still, knowing that a hunter spots movement quicker than anything. He felt bruised and scratched, but he didn’t think he’d broken any bones, and he still had his amulet.

Flies buzzed in his ears and the Sun scorched his back. At last he raised his head and scanned the gorge. The black warriors were gone.

Skiros, however, had come to rest a short way up the slope. At least, most of him had. His guts were strewn over the rocks, like a fishing net spread out to dry. Vultures were already circling, and his head was twisted around, as if he was trying to take a look.

His ghost would need help to ease its passing, but Hylas couldn’t risk burying him or doing the rites. “Sorry, Skiros,” he muttered. “Rules of survival. Don’t help someone if they can’t help you.”

Willows and chestnut trees overhung the river; it was a
relief to be under cover. Stumbling into the shallows, Hylas fell to his knees and drank. He splashed himself, hissing at the cold on his hot, scraped flesh. He glimpsed his broken image in the water. Narrow eyes, mouth taut with strain; long hair hanging down.

The drink steadied him, and for the first time since the attack, he could think. He needed food, clothes, and a knife. Above all, he needed to reach the village. Issi would know it was the safest place to be, and she must have gotten there by now. She
must
have, he told himself fiercely.

The gorge rang with the squawks of vultures; Skiros had disappeared beneath a heaving mound of snaky necks and dusty wings. To stop the ghost from following him, Hylas hurriedly picked wood garlic leaves and scattered them behind him; ghosts feed on the scent of food, the smellier the better. Then he set off at a run, following the river through the gorge.

He felt the trees and the rocks watching him. Would they give him away? He’d grown up in these mountains. He knew their secret trails and the ways of the wild creatures: the cry of that hawk, the distant
ugh! ugh!
of that lion. He knew the charred gullies you had to avoid because of the Angry Ones. But now everything had changed.

This is not the last of them
, the warrior had said. He knew that Hylas was still alive. But what had he meant by “them”?

With a shock, it occurred to Hylas that Skiros hadn’t only been a goatherd. He’d been an Outsider.

Hylas was an Outsider. So was Issi. They’d been born outside the village; Neleos the headman had found them on the Mountain when they were little and set them to work. In summer they herded his goats on the peaks, and in winter they tended them down in the gorge.

But why were the black warriors after Outsiders? It didn’t make sense. Nobody cares about Outsiders; they’re the lowest of the low.

The Sun rode west, and shadows crept up the sides of the gorge. Somewhere far off, a dog was barking. It sounded anxious. Hylas wished it would stop.

He came to a little three-legged clay offering-table set under a tree for the god of the Mountain. It was covered with a moldy hareskin; he grabbed the skin and tied it around his hips. A lizard watched him coldly, and he mumbled an apology in case it was a spirit in disguise.

It was good not to be naked, but he was dizzy with hunger. Too early in summer for figs, but as he ran he snatched a few mouse-bitten strawberries. He spotted a thornbush where a shrike kept its food: On the thorns the bird had impaled three crickets and a sparrow. With a quick “sorry” to the shrike, he gobbled the lot, spitting out feathers and bits of cricket shell.

He began to pass olive trees and patches of flat ground cut into the slopes. The barley was ready for harvest, but there was no one about. Everyone must have fled to the village—unless the black warriors had burned it to the ground.

To his relief, it was still standing, although eerily quiet. Like frightened sheep, the mudbrick huts huddled behind their palisade of thorns. Hylas smelled woodsmoke, but heard no voices. Outside, there should have been donkeys, and pigs nosing for scraps. Nothing. And the spirit gates were shut.

They were daubed with red ochre and, from the wild bull’s horns lashed to the crossbeam, the Ancestor peered down. It had taken the body of a magpie, but it was an Ancestor all right—although not one of his.

Hylas scattered the barley he’d stolen on the way, but the Ancestor ignored his offering. It knew he didn’t belong. The spirit gates were there to protect the village—and keep Outsiders out.

The gates creaked open a crack, and grimy faces peered through. Hylas had known the villagers all his life, but they glared at him as if he were a stranger. Some held sputtering torches of giant fennel stalks; all gripped axes and sickles and spears.

In a frenzy of barking, the dogs burst through and hurtled toward him. Their leader was a sheephound named Dart, as big as a boar and trained to rip open a man’s throat at a command. He came to a bristling halt before Hylas and fixed his eyes on him, his head menacingly low. He knew Hylas wasn’t allowed in-village.

Hylas stood his ground. If he took a step back, Dart would attack. “Let me in!” he shouted.

“What do you want?” growled Neleos, the headman.
“You’re supposed to be on the Mountain, watching my goats!”

“Let me in! I want my sister.”

“She’s not here. Why would you think she was?”

Hylas blinked. “But—where is she?”

“Dead, for all I care.”

“You’re lying,” said Hylas. But inside he was panicking.

“
You left my goats!
” roared Neleos. “She wouldn’t dare come back without them—and neither would you unless you want a red skin!”

“She’ll be here soon. Let me in! They’re after me!”

Neleos narrowed his eyes and scratched his beard with one horny hand. He had a peasant’s bent legs and lumpy shoulders from hefting a yoke, but he was sharper than a weasel, always scheming to get more for less. Hylas knew he was torn between the urge to punish him for leaving the goats, and the desire to keep him alive so that he could do more work.

“They killed Skiros,” said Hylas. “They’ll kill me too. You’ve got to break the rules and let me in!”

“Send him away, Neleos!” shrilled a woman. “He’s been nothing but trouble since the day you found him!”

“Set the dogs on him!” shouted another. “If they catch him here, we’re all in danger!”

“She’s right, set the dogs on him! He must’ve done something or they wouldn’t be after him.”

“But who
are
they?” cried Hylas. “Why are they after Outsiders?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” snarled Neleos; but Hylas could see the fear in his eyes. “All I know is they’re from somewhere out east and they’re hunting Outsiders. Well,
let
them! They can do what they like as long as they leave us alone!”