Soldier of Sidon

As I descended I saw that the temple had once been much larger than the part that we had seen. Wind and time had heaped up soil around it; the part we had seen and entered had been an upper story once. There was a small god of black stone, in appearance a man as old as Unguja, in a niche at the landing. I held my torch close to see his face. He was bald, bearded, and smiling, round-bellied. He held a cup and a flute. I felt then as I do when I see the king, felt that he was a better friend than I knew. I touched him, and he moved at my touch. When I lifted him from the niche in which he stood, I saw that there was an opening behind him and a scroll smaller than this one in the opening.

I took it out; and as I replaced the image of the happy old god, I heard the voice of my senior wife, Myt-ser'eu, behind me. I turned at once, almost dropping the scroll he had given me.

She stood on the stair. Behind her was a man blacker than the king, not the small and friendly god whose image I had moved, but a tall man with the look of a warrior who kills the wounded. His hands were on her shoulders, and there was a thing in her face I ca

I did not remember, nor do I know who Sahuset may be.

"You promised him. Swore that you would give it to him."

I tried to untie the cords, for I wished to see whether I could read it. There was no knot.

"You must not open it," Myt-ser'eu told me.

I was afraid for her. I would have cast my spear at the black man behind her if he had stood alone; I felt I could not throw without killing her, for he would lift her to receive it. "I love you," I said; I knew it was true, and that she did not know it.

"If you open it," she told me, "you will never find your shield."

I saw it was important to her and said I would not. The truth is that I could not. The leather case that carries this scroll was slung on my back, as I would think it always must be on the march. I opened that instead, and put the scroll I had found into it. It is a smaller scroll than this, tightly wound.

I stopped just now to look at it again, but did not cut its cords. It is not mine to open, or so I feel.

When I had fastened the straps of my scroll case, the tall man who had held Myt-ser'eu was gone. I asked her who he had been; she said there had been no such man.

"A tall, hard-faced man," I said, "darker than your eyes. His own seemed to burn."

"I've seen many men like that here," Myt-ser'eu replied. "There are dozens like that with us. Did you mean it? What you said when I was on the steps above you?"

I nodded and she kissed me. I held her close, delighting in the breasts she pressed so tightly to me. How small she is! How sweet and good!

We descended the second stair to the bottom hand in hand, and searched for the i

"You recall very little," she told me. "When you fought Cheche's brother-in-law you won his shield, but you did not like it. It was too big, you said, and not strong enough. The king did not want you to have it, either. You left it behind in Cheche's village."

If there were pictures on the walls of that temple once, the passing years had worn them away. We saw only bare stones, somewhat rough, somewhat soiled, and strangely fitted. Windows had spilled sand and shale onto the floor, and here and there a wall bulged and seemed about to fall. Once I heard a thrumming ahead of us, as if a beetle flew through the darkness there; and once I saw a faint gleam that might have been gold, though there was no gold there when I went to look where it had been.

The holiest place held the rude statue of a woman. From her left hand dangled such a cross as I know I have seen elsewhere, though I do not know where; her right held a long arrow. Her headdress was a disk, as of the sun or moon, held by curved supports.

Myt-ser'eu knelt to her, bent her head and prayed. Her whispers were too soft for me to make out the words, and I felt certain she was praying that she be returned to her city in the north.

The goddess stepped from her pedestal, becoming a living woman no larger than Myt-ser'eu herself-smaller, perhaps-but standing before a thing brighter than she. She held out her arrow to me; with the hand I freed by accepting it, she took the disk from her headdress and held it before Myt-ser'eu's eyes. "Your prayer for the man with you is granted," she told Myt-ser'eu. "You are to give him this. The wish you left unvoiced is granted as well. You shall return to your home as you desire, though you shall leave again by your desire."

Her arrow had melted into my hand the moment I grasped it. The disk she had shown Myt-ser'eu rang as it fell to the stones on which she stood, and at the sound there was no woman standing there, only the image of a woman standing upon its pedestal.

Myt-ser'eu straightened up and picked up a larger disk. "Look, Latro! A shield! We didn't see it because it lay flat on the floor, but here it is."

She held it out to me, and I took it. It is of bronze green with age. The handle on the back is bronze also. These small clipei have no strap for the arm. I have it before me as I write, and will polish it when I have written all I must.

When we returned to the upper level, I showed it to the king, who looked at it from every angle but would not touch it. When he had examined it in that fashion, he said that we must go, calling Mzee and Unguja to him. I was about to call my sons, when they ran to me trembling. Vinjari had seen a big snake, the younger said, and cast his spear at it. When the spear struck, it was a man.

I ran to look, making them come with me, though they were badly frightened. The man was my slave. His mouth was wide as he coughed blood, and I saw that he had fangs. I do not believe I can ever have seen a man with fangs before. I do not think anyone else saw these fangs.

I gave my spear and shield to Utundu, and picked up my slave. He died in my arms. I told the king we must bury him. He had belonged to me, and I owed him that and more. The king agreed.

My wives, my sons, my daughter, and our servant girl went with me into the bush. In the bed of the dry stream, in a place of many stones, we dug a grave with spears; but when we would have laid him in it, he was gone. I said that some animal must have carried the body away while we worked. The women and girls said it could not be. They had been sitting beside it a moment before, talking quietly among themselves and waving off the flies.

Perhaps they slept.

Or it may be that Vinjari took it, and they would not tell me. However that may be, he has gone off into the bush. Utundu and I tracked him a long way, but lost the trail at last. NOW I MUST write again. I have built up the fire, and there will be light enough for a time. I polished the new shield the goddess gave me while the others slept, rubbing it with fine sand to make it bright. Soon it was so clear in the place I rubbed that I could see the leaping flames behind me reflected there.

They vanished, and in their place I saw a self younger than I am whose head was wrapped in bloodstained bandages. This self threw his sword into the river, offering a prayer to the river god. The river god tempered it, heating it in flickering flames that rose from his waters and quenching it in them. At length he returned it, and nothing save my own shadow and the flickering flames showed in the bright metal over which I had labored.