Mood Riders (19 page)

It was hard to find the words. “The bloody-handed Ant Men—the ones we saw in Aulis!”

“Where were they?” Penthesilea bellowed.

“My mother . . . they have killed my mother!”

Penthesilea swore and held her tightly.

“They were killing them . . . all my tribe.”

“We will ride at once,” said Penthesilea, pulling her to her feet.

The Moon Riders did not spare their horses as they galloped through the night, around the foothills of Mount Ida, past the gathering place, over grasslands and hills toward the Lake of Kus. Penthesilea rode at their head on Fleetwind. Moonlight touched the cheeks and arms of the young priestesses as they traveled, revealing glimpses of their astonishing body pictures. Curling snakes, racing panthers, leaping deer gleamed in the gentle silver light, giving them a touching beauty that was at odds with the furious clenched jaws, gritted teeth, and rippling, rope-hard muscles of both horses and riders.

Dawn was breaking as they came to the Lake of Kus, but they saw the devastation before they reached the shore. Where once there’d been huts, now patches of smoking rubble lay, with corpses piled everywhere. All that remained of the strong Mazagardi tents was shreds of stinking, blackened felt hanging from scorched sticks. A few stray animals with raw flanks wandered distressed among the rubble; the corrals were smashed open and the bulk of the fine Mazagardi herd of horses gone. Most of the sheep and goats, which provided milk and meat through the Bitter Months, had vanished, too.

“So that’s the way it is,” Penthesilea hissed through gritted teeth. “All this murder, so that Achilles’ warriors may have fresh teams for their war chariots and meat to roast on their campfires.”

Myrina had ridden Isatis wildly, whipping her on as never before. Now she sat white-faced and silent on her mare’s back; only her eyes moved frantically, sweeping to left and right, searching every dead face as Isatis picked her way delicately through the wreckage of the Mazagardi camp. Beno was there among the slain.

At last Myrina saw what she dreaded most: her mother’s body on the ground, knife still gripped in her hand, her father, Aben, lying close by. She climbed down from Isatis’s back, her knees giving way as her feet touched the ground. She crouched in silence beside her mother, stretching out a trembling hand to stroke the fading pattern of roses that had been pricked into her cheeks. Gul meant “rose,” a true symbol for such a gentle, loving woman as Myrina’s mother had been. Myrina sat down between the bodies of her parents, her face still blank, her eyes and throat aching and dry. She reached out to hold her father’s cold, stiff hand on one side and her mother’s on the other.

She turned to her father. “You told us this would happen,” she said, her voice level and emotionless. “You warned us! Priam’s greed . . . any excuse would bring the Achaeans swarming over our traveling routes. Not just Trojans—the whole of Anatolia must suffer. . . . Blood across our lands . . . You were right, Father, you were right!”

Myrina did not know how long she sat there, talking on and on until she grew hoarse and the words made no sense. The other Moon Riders searched for survivors, their voices low and growling with anger.

“The poisonous Ant Men!”

“Let me get at them!”

“They’ll get my arrow in their back!”

“Death is too good for them!”

“Poison-spewing creatures! Why this?”

“Foul poison everywhere!”

At last, under Penthesilea’s grim direction, they began to drag together the remains of the tents and corrals to build a pyre, laying out the charred and blood-soaked bodies close by.

Friends stopped from time to time to touch Myrina’s shoulder in sympathy, but she shook them off and remained sitting between her parents’ bodies. At last she became aware that someone was standing still and silent in front of her; someone waiting both patiently and fearfully for the moment when she looked up.

Myrina was afraid to lift her head, afraid of what she might see. Then a young girl’s voice cut through the confusion, grabbing her attention. “Snake Lady?”

When Myrina did at last look up, it was into the deeply lined face of her grandmother, Hati. The old woman’s cheeks were smudged with ash, her mouth a bitter line of sorrow; in her arms a small bruised child, Phoebe, lay still as death. Yildiz stood beside her, clutching tightly to Hati’s worn smock, her face red and blistering, part of her hair burnt so that it stuck out in short rough tufts.

“Aunt Rina? Snake Lady?” Yildiz murmured again.

Myrina struggled to her feet, where she rocked for a moment as though she might fall, but then she steadied herself beneath Hati’s flinty gaze. “Phoebe? Is she . . . ?”

Hati shook her head. “She sleeps,” she said, her voice faint and breathless.

“Reseda?”

Hati spoke sharply. “Gone. They have all gone. I found Phoebe beneath her mother’s body, then pulled Yildiz out of the burning tent.”

Myrina tried to make her mouth say something, but no sound came out.

“Come.” Hati lifted her hand from where it rested on Yildiz’ shoulder and held it out.

Myrina went to them like a child, wrapping one arm around Yildiz’ small shoulders and the other around her grandmother’s stick-thin body and the sleeping Phoebe. “So we are all that’s left?” she murmured.

“Yes,” said Hati. “We are all that’s left.”

P
ENTHESILEA CAME UP
and stood beside them quietly. When Myrina at last pulled away from her grandmother, she saw that the Mazagardi corpses had been carried to a freshly built funeral pyre—all except for those of her parents. “Now we must take them, too,” Penthesilea said firmly. “We have found Reseda. Shall we take your parents to lie beside her?”

“Yes.” Myrina nodded. “The children . . . they must say good-bye to their mother.”

Myrina saw at once that Coronilla and Bremusa were carrying Reseda’s body carefully between them, while Alcibie and Polymusa stood ready to help pick up Gul and Aben, their eyes dark with angry sympathy. Myrina remembered that they had lost their own parents in just such a raid as this.

“Now I know,” Myrina said to them. “I know the pain you felt.”

“Yes.” Coronilla spoke for them all. “You know the pain now and it is terrible. But it was you who made us live through it and survive. Since that day we have called ourselves Myrina’s gang and now we will help you.”

“Yes,” said Bremusa quietly.

“It is our turn to help,” Alcibie repeated.

They bent to the terrible task of gently cleaning the bodies, smoothing the singed clothing and carrying them respectfully to the funeral pyre. Black smoke rose again above the desolate landscape. The Moon Riders made a circle around the flames, dancing and singing the Songs of Leaving that would carry the spirits of those who had died safely into the arms of Earth Mother Maa. None could send Mazagardi souls swiftly to rest better than the young priestesses.

Myrina stood beside her grandmother, still dry-eyed, watching the smoke drifting high into the sky. Phoebe had woken, and though they knew she must be hungry now, she did not cry for food but watched the fire quietly, her eyes wide and solemn. Yildiz stood between her great-grandmother and her aunt, clutching tightly onto them both but making no complaint about her sore and blistered skin.

“We too should dance and sing for them,” Myrina murmured.

But Grandmother Hati shook her head. “Never again,” she whispered, her voice low and bitter. “Not I. You go and join them.”

Myrina looked at her grandmother, surprised. She could not remember a time when Hati had refused to dance, for their dancing was more, much more, than just enjoyment; it was a sacred duty that expressed their deepest emotions. Not to dance in honor of those who had died was shame indeed.

“But, Grandmother, you have lived all your life to dance for Earth Mother Maa,” she said. “We must dance now to honor our closest ones.”

“Not worthy.” Hati’s mouth curled with self-disgust. “I’m not worthy, not anymore. I wasn’t there when they needed me; I was away up on the hillside. And when I saw it happening—I . . .” Her voice shook, then came back firmly with a terrible honesty. “I hid. I could have raced to join the fight, but I hid. I never thought that I, Hati, could ever do that. To hide from a fight is the deepest shame and sorrow to me.”

There was a moment of silence. Myrina sighed. She understood this extra pain. Never through all her long life had Hati’s courage been doubted by any. All the Mazagardi children knew the story of how, as a young woman, she had ridden down through Thrace to Athens and fought the Athenian guards.

“Grandmother,” Myrina said at last, quiet but determined, “perhaps there is another way to look at this. Maybe Maa was holding you back, for you have never dodged a fight, not in all your life. If you hadn’t saved yourself up on the hillside, you wouldn’t have been here to take up Phoebe from her mother’s arms and you wouldn’t have been here to pull Yildiz from the burning tent. When you saved yourself, you saved these two precious children.”

Hati frowned for a moment, but then she reached over to Myrina with gratitude and grabbed tight hold of her hand. “Your words are like raindrops on parched land,” she whispered.

“And there will be more raindrops,” Myrina insisted, her voice gaining strength and conviction. “Until at last we flood the land and wash away all the filth that has been spread over it.”

Hati looked up at Myrina with surprise and grudging respect. “You are right, my Snake Lady. We must not forget that we are Mazagardi and we must dance to honor our dead, whatever shame we bear. There will be time enough to rid these lands of invaders. Come, Yildiz, you and Phoebe will be part of our ceremony.”

So all four of them went to join the circle of dancers, as the night sky darkened and the moon came out.

When the fires died down, the Moon Riders brought out what food they had and shared it about. Nobody felt much like it, but Penthesilea gave the order that everyone must eat, for a funeral feast also brought honor to the dead. “And we will need our strength for the days to come,” she said.

There were murmurs of agreement and everyone obeyed. Coronilla quickly made some flat, coarse bread from the rough flour they carried with them and produced a small but sustaining meal, with goat’s cheese and olives. All the Mazagardi stocks had been stolen along with the horses and kine. As they forced the food down their throats, angry conversations grew among the women, like the fierce buzzing of hornets whose nest has been disturbed.

But Penthesilea again gave the order: “Silence now! We dance for the moon and then we sleep. Tomorrow we hold a council—and believe me, it will be a council of war.”

The slow, gentle moon-dance at last brought with it the release of tears. Myrina and her grandmother wept openly as they turned and swayed, touching hands, singing the familiar, soothing songs of the night. Then Myrina took what was left of her family into her tent, and they lay down together, so weary that even the terrible bitterness of the day could not keep them from their sleep.

In the morning there was another job to be done before they could begin their council of war. Earth had to be heaped over the charred bones and ashes where the pyre had burned. It was a solemn job that required the help of everyone—Yildiz and even little Phoebe. At last the large hump of earth was patted smoothly over the burnt remains of the dead, so that it seemed to them that Maa had taken back her children, sealing the wound with life-giving soil, soon to be covered again in grass and flowers.

Myrina pointed out to Hati the straggling survivors who had appeared throughout the morning. “Grandmother, you are not the only one who hid,” she told her. The local fishermen and their families, who knew the country well, came down from the hillside caves where they’d taken refuge. Such flights had become a way of life for them in recent times.

At noon, dust was seen rising in the west, and as they all watched fearfully the sound of horses’ hooves could be heard. The Moon Riders ran to mount their horses and snatch up their bows, but they soon saw that the approaching warriors wore their hair tied up in topknots. It was the elderly warrior Peiroos riding at the head of a gang of Thracian tribesmen.

“Welcome,” Penthesilea cried, striding out to meet them.

“Naught to fear,” Myrina told Yildiz. “They are old friends of ours.”