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Once the war's over I'll have to settle down and plow my way through this stuff, dammit. Oh, well, I can study up on the religious twaddle while I'm pregnant.
When his hands were clean, Kashtiliash clapped them together. "Leave us," he said.
"But King of the Universe-!" a eunuch chamberlain bleated, from where he'd been standing to direct the choreography of the meal.
Eunuchs still creeped her out more than a little, but she ignored the plump shocked face. Usually the King's retiring was an elaborate ritual, each undoing of sandal strap or sash a jealously guarded privilege of some official or flunky or whatever; it all reminded her of things she'd read about the court of Louis XIV, only with oracles and diviners mixed in. At least upper-crust Babylonians washed a lot more frequently than eighteenth-century Frenchmen.
"Leave us! The King speaks!" Kashtiliash said, not taking his eyes off her.
Everyone prostrated themselves and backed out. The King's grin grew wider. "Good," he said. "It has been much too long, my golden lioness. It would shock them, did I vault over the table and ravish you upon the supper couch."
"You couldn't," she said. "Because I'd meet you in midair."
She stood, reached down with crossed arms, and pulled the robe over her head.
"Golden lioness indeed," Kashtiliash said, hoarse through a throat gone tight.
"Let's see if you can catch me, Bull of Marduk." Kathryn laughed.
"While I am at war, I leave the realm in the hands of Odik-weos son of Laertes, Wa
Walker's voice rang out across the square. Odikweos went to one knee and bowed his head before he held out his hand for the signet ring that would make him Regent of Great Achaea while the King of Men was abroad.
And I am a much safer regent than any of your own Wolf People, he thought. They will watch me and I will watch them.
Then he walked beside his overlord down the marble steps and waited while the King poured the incense into the coals that smoldered in the bowl of the golden tripod. The translucent grains fell on the low hot flames of burning olive wood and then burned themselves in an upward spiral of blue smoke, sweet and bitter at the same time. Walker lifted his hands, his voice rising in the Invocation:
"Hear me
Lord of the battle-shattering aegis, whose power is set above Olympos
Who are lord in strength above the countries, Father of All,
If you are pleased that I built your sanctuary
If ever it pleased you that I burn all the rich thigh pieces
Of bulls, of goats, then bring to pass this wish I pray for;
Let your almighty hand shield me in battle,
For when the bright bronze spear stoops like the stallion-crested eagle,
Then safety is hard to find and only your hand…"
White-robed priests then led a garlanded bull of sacrifice up to the altar. Behind them came a chorus of handsome youths and another of maidens richly clad, flower garlands on their brows, singing as they came. The watching crowd-cityfolk, the ordered ranks of the regiments, great lords and their retainers summoned to follow the hegemon to battle-held their breath. It was the worst of omens if the sacrificial bull should bellow or fight. This one came unresisting, with a slow majestic tread. The priests gripped its gilded horns; Odikweos had to acknowledge that such things were done more neatly now, when priests were full-time specialists paid by the Throne rather than men of rank serving only for the God's honor and their own.
Behind the impassive mask of his face he shuddered. And the King had pointed out-how casually, how easily!-that priests appointed by the government could be relied on to get the omens right.
An acolyte bore the sacred basket; each of the great men taking part in the rite reached into it for a handful of barley to toss at the bull. The animal blinked in curiosity, and its broad pink tongue came out to lick up grains that stuck to its muzzle. From the basket Walker also took the sacrificial knife, long and curved and razor-sharp. First he cut a lock of hair from the bull's poll and tossed it into the holy fire beside the altar. Then he waited while Odikweos sprinkled water from the god-blessed spring over the animal's ears and eyes. It tossed its head and lowed, the symbol of its assent to the sacrifice.
The priests twisted their grip and exposed the neck. The King stepped forward and swung the blade with fluid skill; the strength and speed reminded Odikweos of his first meeting with the future sovereign, in a dark alley below the citadel of Mycenae where Walker battled assassins. He'd thought then that the foreigner was a man of his hands to be reckoned with, and he'd been right. His curiosity had led him to intervene, and that had brought him Walker's favor. From that begi
Blood flowed out over the altar, startlingly bright, smelling of salt and iron, and the bull went first to its knees and then to its side. Women screamed at the moment of the kill as the rite prescribed, long and shrill, drowning the death-bellow. A cheer went up from the crowd, deep and rhythmic from the soldiers, a chaotic wall of sound from the commons.
He felt another invisible shudder gripping his heart. The eyes of his mind remembered Agamemnon holding out his hand, wet with his own blood. "The blood of Zeus, the blood of Poseidaion." Then leaping from the cliff, as if into the arms of the Gods his ancestors. That blood still lay on the land.
Walker laughed at it, laughed at curses and death and fate- in the secret places of his heart, laughed at the Gods. And yet he won, and won, and won…
Athana Potnia, Gray-Eyed Lady of Wisdom, he prayed, in his own i
When the ritual was complete and the fat-wrapped thighbones smoked on the altar the square emptied, crowds surging away and troops marching in rippling unison, another thing Walker had brought to the Achaean lands. Odikweos put doubt from his mind as the King's closest gathered around him.
"The omens were good," he said politely. "The sacrifice went quiet and willing."
"Amazing what some poppy juice in the feedbag can do," Walker said dryly, and went on: "I shouldn't be gone long. I expect Troy to fall before the winter solstice."
Absently, the Ithakan noted that the last traces of the nasal whistling accent he'd once had had faded from the Wolf Lord's Achaean.
"And I'm leaving you enough troops and ships, counting your household regiment and the Ithakan fleet-keep a close ear out for news of the West, and if Isketerol asks for help, send it."
Odikweos nodded. "The Gods send you victory, King of Men, and spare your camp the arrows of far-shooting Apollo."
Walker gri
The Ithakan blinked as a chuckle ran through the group. Yes, cleanliness about dung did seem to have something to do with the spread of sickness in a war camp, and he'd been glad to learn the rites that kept diseases of the belly away; they killed more men than bronze ever had, or bullets would. Still, it was not wise to openly taunt the power of Paiwon Apollo.
He thought of the slopes of Olympus. And striding down them a tall blackness edged with fire, like the shadow of falling night…
He forced a smile himself, lest he be singled out. The only other in the circle around the King to be Achaean-born was the chief scribe, Enkhelyawon son of Amphimedes; and he was a man who'd been raised from a mere clerk to great power, not a noble born or a fighting-man. Walker's man…