Read Online The Blood Star by Nicholas Guild - Free Book Online Page A

him?”
    “Yes—has something happened to him?”
    Kephalos glanced about, his expression all
innocence, for the subject was not to his taste and fear made him
uncautious.
    But the headman did not regard him. His mind
was elsewhere as he considered the might of his god.
    “It is said that the Lord Tiglath was seen in
Birtu,” he said, “and that Dinanu, his heart blinded by greed,
pursued him into the wilderness. He would have stripped the prince
of his life, such was the wickedness he had learned from our king,
but that Ashur, in his wrath, surrounded his favored one with a melammu of divine fire so that none might harm him. A wise
man would have taken this warning and departed with his life, but
the rab abru was not wise. Ashur, who is mighty and just and
suffers no man to trifle with him, struck the fool dead, shattered
the heavens with his war cry and pierced Dinanu’s breast with a
bolt of lightning. To this hour his corpse lies unregarded on the
ground, and not even the crows will touch it.”
    . . . . .
    “What is a melammu ?” Kephalos asked me
later, when we were alone together in our tent. “I have lived
fifteen years among the Assyrians and have never heard that word.
What does it mean?”
    “It is an aura such as surrounds the bright
gods, and sometimes the heroes they most favor—the thing the Greeks
call a ‘nimbus’.”
    “No wonder then that I have not heard of it,
for life has not brought me into contact with many heroes—with, of
course, the obvious exception of yourself, Lord.”
    “Do you mean to mock me, Kephalos?”
    “No, Lord—of course not. How can you think
it?”
    “He was an old man speaking rubbish,” I
answered. “The god may have aided me—I do not deny it—but Dinanu
fell before my javelin and not a bolt of lightning. And his corpse
does not lie neglected on the plain. I buried it with my own hands.
You saw me.”
    “Yes, that perhaps is embellishment. Perhaps
no one went back to look, leaving each man free to assume what he
most wishes to believe. It is what men wish to believe that
matters, Lord. Those soldiers—that was why they rode away and left
you unmolested. You killed Dinanu, whom none loved. It is a rare
thing to cleave open a man’s breast like that, and at such a
distance. They saw the hand of their god in it and, like pious men,
withdrew. Who is to say they were mistaken?”
    Within a minute or two, I could hear him
snoring. Yes, perhaps that had been it after all.
    And I too was free to believe the god had
saved me. I did believe it. I will believe it until I die.
    The next morning, while I was building the
breakfast fire and Kephalos was struggling to warm himself by the
first tentative wisps of flame, Hiram strolled by and, seemingly
surprised to find himself among us, stopped to exchange a word of
greeting.
    Kephalos, who had not yet grown accustomed to
rising early, and who was always out of sorts until he had had his
breakfast, could barely manage a civil grunt but huddled closer
than ever to our weak little fire, as if afraid this intruder might
rob him of some of its warmth.
    The caravan leader, for his part, smiled his
jolly brigand’s smile, cocking his head to one side so that he
seemed to be aiming the point of his beard at Kephalos’ chest.
    “It is a fine morning, eh?” he said, in a way
that suggested he himself could hardly be bothered to notice. “And,
for a change, we dined well last night, although I confess I have
little enough desire to linger among these dung-caked Assyrian
farmers with their beer that smells like garlic and their
never-ending fables about the wrath of Ashur. I put it to you—who
could believe such tripe?”
    “They are a religious people,” answered
Kephalos, speaking with a tone almost of rebuke. “And all the
Assyrians, even the humblest villagers, are greatly enamored of
their princes. I have lived among them for many years and have
learned the wisdom of a respectful silence.”
    “Oh, I would not dream