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

own, I felt the force of
everything he said, for I too, almost from that moment, had grown
tired of pretending to be one among the beasts of the wilderness.
Everything Kephalos said of himself applied to me as well, for men
were made to live among men.
    “We will go down among them at first light,”
I said. “Let us catch them when they are still half asleep and less
likely to be treacherous.”
    “Good—men will believe anything at that hour.
And let us do something about the mark on your palm, lest it betray
you again as it did at Birtu.”
    In the morning, before we set off to try our
luck among the caravan drivers, Kephalos wrapped my right hand in a
long linen bandage, so that I seemed to be wearing a glove with the
fingers missing.
    “Should anyone inquire, you burned yourself.”
He smiled at his own cunning as he tied the final knot, just at my
wrist. “You are a clumsy, stupid sort of servant and only yesterday
morning had an accident while trying to bake the last of our flour
into bread. You ruined the bread, which caused me, your master, far
more anguish than the ugly blister you raised across the palm of
your hand. I called you many terrible names and threatened to sell
you if ever we reached a town big enough to have a slave market. I
said you would end your days making mud bricks with your own urine.
That, I think, is a nice touch to the story, the sort of detail
that makes men believe all the rest, since every slave reproaches
his master with such lack of feeling. Repeat it often.”
    “And, for your part, let us settle on a name
and a history, since it would be embarrassing were we to be caught
in a disagreement on this point. In Birtu I styled you “Hugieia of
Sardes” to Dinanu—will you agree to that, since it seems to have
been a lucky choice?”
    “Hugieia?” Kephalos considered the matter,
stroking the month-old growth of beard that now adorned his chin.
“Yes—well enough. At least it will be easy to remember, since
health is all that a physician can claim as the end of his skills.
Yet I am not as happy with Sardes, since I have never been there
and, in any case, have no great admiration for the Lydians. Let us
compromise a little with the truth that I may be Hugieia of Naxos,
since every man should honor his birthplace if he can. Hugieia,
yes. It was clever of you—almost clever enough to convince me that
you might make a Greek yet. And what of a name for yourself,
Lord?”
    “I am Lathikados from nowhere in particular,
as befits a slave. That too is a compromise with the truth.”
    Kephalos nodded in silence, understanding the
bitterness of my jest, and thus I took the name by which my Greek
mother had known me in the king’s house of women. “He who banishes
grief,” she had called me—and now I was banished myself, and the
name had been turned upon its head.
    And before the sun had well and truly risen,
while the sky was still pale gray, we mounted our horses and rode
from our own encampment to that of the caravan drivers. It was no
very great distance, no more than a man might walk in a quarter of
an hour, but it marked the longest journey we had traveled since
leaving Birtu, since it carried us back across the frontier of the
race of men.
    We entered their circle of tents even while
the breakfast fires were still cold, and the few who were already
awake stared at us in silence, blinking as if they could hardly
believe their eyes.
    On the other side, there was little enough
for us to marvel at. Perhaps twenty men, allowing a tent for every
two of them, with perhaps twice that number of pack horses, their
trade goods bundled up in stout leather pouches that lay in a heap
in the center of the camp. The horses, tethered in a line beside
the lake’s edge, looked half starved and as if their ribs were made
of rotten wood, the men as if they might have found a life of
brigandage more to their taste. Doubtless, of course, we appeared
no better to them. A month of sleeping on the hard