Gods and Warriors (4 page)

Not daring to breathe, Hylas reached for his gear.

In the corner, the dead slave opened his eyes and stared at him.

T
he corpse had the waxy pallor of the newly dead, and its eyes glinted in the moonlight.

Hylas shrank against the wall of the tomb. He watched the gray lips part. He heard it speak.

A voice as distant as death. Speech like the cry of hawks in a high, cold sky—in a tongue that he couldn’t understand.

No, he thought. This can’t be.

The corpse gave a long, rattling sigh. “Ah…
Stay…
”

Hylas gasped. He saw how its speech stirred the dusty moonlight.
Breath.
This corpse had breath. “You—you’re
alive
,” he whispered.

The corpse bared its teeth in a terrible grin. “Not—for much longer…”

Shrinking inside, Hylas edged closer. Beneath his hands the ground turned sticky. He smelled fresh blood.

The dying man was young: He had no beard. He wasn’t a slave as Hylas had thought; his dark hair wasn’t cropped, but long; it lay twisted beneath him. And he wasn’t a peasant; his feet were too smooth. He wore a knee-length kilt
of fine linen sewn with spirals around the hem, and a wide leather belt cinched tight about his slender waist. From the belt hung a dagger in a richly tooled sheath, and from his neck a beautifully carved amulet of white bone: a tiny, leaping fish with a mysterious smile. The fish swam on his chest in one black glistening slick of blood.

“Hide me…
”
he breathed.

Hylas tried to draw back, but the young man’s icy fingers clutched his.

“I am from Keftiu.” He spoke haltingly, in a tongue not his own. “A great island… far across the Sea…” His face worked. “Dawn. They’ll come to shut the tomb. They’ll find me—fling my body to the vultures.” His agonized gaze sought Hylas. “Help my spirit find peace.”

“I can’t,” said Hylas. “I’ve got to get away, if they catch me—”

“You need a knife,” gasped the Keftian. “Take mine. I stole it. It’s precious. Keep it
hidden.
”

The hairs on the back of Hylas’ neck rose. “How did you know I needed a knife?”

Again that terrible grin. “A man crawls into a tomb to die. A boy crawls in to live. You think that’s chance?”

Hylas didn’t know what to do. The Moon was setting, and the night crickets were changing their song. He had to get out of here before the villagers came.

“Hide me…” pleaded the Keftian.

A dying wish is a powerful thing. Hylas couldn’t bring himself to ignore it.

Quickly, he searched for somewhere to hide the man. The tomb was bigger than he’d thought, and in the gloom he blundered against piles of clay coffins. Some were for children, as small as cooking-pots, but others were bigger. He found one in the darkest corner and heaved back the lid, releasing a musty smell of bones.

Nothing would have made him touch them with his bare hands. Grabbing one of the broken arrow shafts, he shoved the skull and the larger bones aside, to make room. “I can’t carry you,” he told the Keftian. “You’ll have to climb in yourself.”

It was horrible, dragging the dying man across the floor and half pushing him into the high-sided coffin, then folding his limbs till he lay curled like a baby in an earthenware womb. It must have been torture, but the Keftian barely moaned.

“How did you get here?” panted Hylas when it was done. “And who killed you?”

The Keftian closed his eyes. “They come from the east—from Mycenae. They’re… I can’t say it in your tongue. Birds that make a noise…” He gave a feeble caw.

“Crows?”

“Yes. We call them the Crows. Because they’re so greedy and they feed on death.”

Hylas thought of the black warriors. He saw their dark cloaks flapping like wings.

Again the Keftian bared his teeth. “It was night… To disguise myself I wore a poor man’s cloak of rough
hareskin. They mistook me for a—an Out-sider. What does this mean, Out-sider?”

“It means someone who wasn’t born in a village,” Hylas said curtly. “It means you’ve got no Ancestors to protect you, and you’ve got to live out-village. You’re not allowed to take part in sacrifices, so you don’t get any meat unless you can snatch time to hunt, or kill a sheep on the Mountain and fake its death in a landslide. Everyone looks down on you. That’s an Outsider.”

“You’re an Out-sider,” said the Keftian, watching him. “Yes, you look different, your hair… you belong to the Wild. Are there many Out-siders in Lykonia?”

Hylas shook his head. “Far as I know, only a handful.”

“And—you have kin?”

Hylas didn’t reply. When Neleos had found him and Issi on the Mountain, they’d had nothing but the bearskin on which they lay, and Neleos had told them their mother had abandoned them. Hylas had never believed that: Partly because he never believed anything Neleos said, and partly because it didn’t fit his one memory of his mother. She’d loved him and Issi, he felt sure of it. She would never have abandoned them.

“On my island,” murmured the Keftian, “we call such as you the People of the Wild. They paint patterns on their skin. You don’t… How can they tell what you are?”

Hylas touched his left earlobe. “We’ve got a nick cut out here. Neleos did it when he found us.” He swallowed. He’d never forgotten Issi’s screams when it was her turn.

“Do you worship the Goddess?” breathed the Keftian.

“What?” Hylas was startled. “We—we worship the god of the Mountain, and the Lady of the Wild Things. But what’s that got to do with—”

“Ah, that’s
good…
”

“Tell me about the Crows,” Hylas cut in impatiently. “Who are they? Why are they after Outsiders?”

“The Goddess… She has many names, in many different lands—but She is always the same Goddess…”

Hylas opened his mouth to reply, but just then a hoopoe called from the hillside:
oopu-pu-pu-pu.
Dawn soon. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

“No! Stay! I don’t want to die alone!”

“I can’t.”

“I’m scared!” begged the Keftian. “At home we bury our dead in sight of the Sea—but I have
nothing
of the Sea—I’ll never get home!”

“You’ve got that fish on your chest—”

“It’s not a fish—it’s a
dolphin
—but it’s made of
ivory
, that’s not of the
Sea
! Please…”

Hardening his heart, Hylas gathered his gear. Then, with a snarl, he crawled back to the coffin.

“Here,” he muttered, wrenching off his amulet and pressing the little pouch into the young man’s palm. “It hasn’t done me much good, but you’re dying anyway. It’s got a bit of rock crystal I found on the peak, that’s for strength, and some hairs from a lion’s tail, that’s for courage, I found a dead one in a cave. And a shell. I
don’t know what that’s for, but it’s from the Sea.”

“The
Sea
!” The Keftian’s face lit up. “So you’ve been there!”

“No, never. Someone gave it to me, but I haven’t—”

“The
Sea
will give you the answers you seek! Yes, and the Fin People will find you…” Suddenly he grabbed Hylas’ wrist and pulled him closer, his dark gaze piercing Hylas with alarming intensity.
“They know you’re coming,”
he breathed. “They are seeking you through their deep blue world… They will find you…”

With a cry, Hylas wrenched himself free.

“The Fin People will take you to their island… the fish that fly and the caves that sing… the hills that walk… the trees of bronze…”

He was raving. And gray light was stealing into the tomb. Hylas slung his waterskin over his shoulder and reached for his food sack.

“And when you reach the Sea—” the Keftian went on.

“I’m not
going
to the Sea—”

“—you must give it a lock of my hair.”

“I can’t, I just told you!”

“Take it, take it now…”

Grinding his teeth, Hylas grabbed an arrowhead and cut a lock of the crinkly black hair, then crammed it in his belt. “There! See? That’s the last thing I do!”

The Keftian smiled up at him: no longer a ghastly grin, but a true smile that transfigured his face. “And when you reach the Sea, you will ask the Fin People to fetch my
spirit… You will see them coming… leaping together over the waves—so strong—so beautiful… and they will take me to the Shining One—and with Her I shall know peace, as a drop of water becomes one with the Sea…”

“For the last time, I’m not
going
to the Sea!”

The Keftian didn’t answer.

Something about his silence made Hylas turn back and peer into the coffin.

The Keftian stared up at him with eyes that would never see again.

Without knowing why he did it, Hylas reached in and touched the lean cheek with his finger. He felt the warmth draining from the flesh as fast as water sinking into dust. A moment before, this had been a man. Now all that remained was an empty husk.

Again the hoopoe called from the hillside.

As quick as he could, Hylas slid the heavy coffin lid in place and muttered a swift prayer.

In the strengthening light he made out the coffins stacked against the walls, painted with red and yellow people dancing and making sacrifice. He spotted the Keftian’s hareskin cloak in a corner, and hid it behind a coffin. Where the dead man had lain was a big dark stain. He scuffed earth over it. That was the best he could do.

A distant music of reed pipes floated in from outside. The villagers were coming. Despite the terror of the black warriors, they had to bring gifts of wine and honey for the kinsman who’d become an Ancestor.

No time to lose. Hylas headed for the doorway.

The dagger.
The Keftian had said he could take his dagger, but he’d gone and left it on the body, inside the coffin. He glanced back—and was startled to see the dagger lying right there on the ground in plain sight,
beside
the coffin.

He told himself that the Keftian must have slipped it from its sheath and let it fall just before he’d climbed into the coffin. He must have done that. Because there it lay.

Take it… Keep it hidden…

It was made of bronze, very plain and unadorned. It had broad square shoulders and three smooth rivets on the hilt; a tapered blade twice the length of Hylas’ hand, with a strong straight spine sweeping down to a lethal point. The edges gleamed faintly red in the morning light. Hylas had never seen anything so beautiful.

He picked it up. It was heavy, and though its hilt felt cool to the touch, in a heartbeat it acquired the heat of his hand.

The song of the flutes was coming closer.

Clutching the dagger, Hylas fled.