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Chapter 12 - The Herdsman

She felt vibration in the earth, as if the water-saturated, marshy soil beneath her hips and shoulder had turned to jelly. A low thrumming, a muffled, thudding roar, filled the predawn air. What was it? Pierrette pulled her legs up and pushed with her elbows until she could see around herself. She heard the deep, melodious bellowing of cattle. A great red-brown shape loomed up, then trampled past, scattering Cunotar's fire, setting Pierrette's damp tunic asmolder. Another followed. Great horns the length of a tall man swept back and forth like scythes.

Panicked horses whinnied and men shouted. A shadow fell over her. Cunotar? No—a big man, red-haired. A stranger. He grinned. Why did his expression look so familiar? "Hya, koukla," he said. "You're in big trouble—or you were, until I got here." He drew a bronze dagger and sawed at the ropes that held her. She hissed as painful circulation returned.

"Come on. Can you walk?" Then he shrugged, and swept her up under one thick arm, heading in the direction the cattle had gone. Ahead and behind, she heard their bellows still. What madness was this? The giant man had spoken in a peculiar, archaic Greek. "Doll," he had called her—and with her legs and arms dangling, she was no more than a doll for him to carry.

"Put me down!" she yelled.

He set her on her feet. "Hurry. We'll get you somewhere safe—then I have to collect my herd. Those Ligures won't be looking for you for a while."

"They aren't Ligures," she said. "They're Gauls. I'm a Ligure. Or my mother was."

"What are Gauls? Here? I've been followed by a bunch of Ligures, so I just assumed these were the same ones. Maybe I made a mistake. . . ."

"I'm glad you did—if you did. I'm glad you got me out of there." How could there be two groups of warriors wandering about this flat, wet plain, without them encountering each other? Were his Ligures and her Gauls one and the same? Was Cunotar's spell subtly different from hers, so instead of merely thrusting him into a different existence, he assumed the existence of someone already here? What of his men? Were they the same ones who had chased her when the plain was of stones? She had recognized only Cunotar. . . . But she had never seen his face clearly, in Heraclea. Who was to say that the Cunotar she knew was not as old and as horrible as she had imagined him before she had seen him? Perhaps his spirit now animated a young Ligure. But weren't all Ligures small and dark-haired, like her and her mother? There were questions, but no answers.

The big man tugged her along at a half-run—a moderate walk, for him. He was not really a giant, as she had first thought. He was no taller than Citharista's castellan Reikhard, a Burgundian, and his shoulders were no broader than many a fisherman's, after a lifetime pulling oars and nets. His thighs were no thicker than the stonemason Cerdos's. But putting all those things together . . . he was big, and strong not in one way, but every way.

"Here," he said. "This is high enough ground. You'll be safe here." Indeed the ground was dry, though no hill. It was covered in brush, not reeds or purslane and vetch. Safe from what? "I'll get my cows together," he said.

He pushed back into the tall rushes at the base of the almost-imperceptible slope. Soon, a broad-horned head appeared there; a big reddish cow ambled forth, then stopped to nibble at greenery almost at her feet. Another cow appeared. Or was it a steer? No, a cow. Was there a bull? She was not sure she wanted to be so close, if there were a bull. More cattle drifted from the reeds. How many did he have? How many had it taken to drive off her captors?

He came, driving a last recalcitrant cow with taps of a big staff. She thought momentarily of Yan Oors—but this staff was wood, not iron, and looked fresh-cut. Was Yan who he had reminded her of when he first grinned at her? She did not think so. Give it time. It would come to her.

"My camp's not far," he said. "Are you up to walking?"

Pierrette groaned, but got to her feet. "Why did you say they were Ligures? Those were Gauls."

"Gauls? Is that a tribe? I thought I knew all the local tribes. They've been following me a while, since I left Vindonnum, over there." He pointed toward Heraclea, whose scarp was a gray line blocking dawn's glow.

"Do you mean Heraclea? The city?"

He peered at her, as if she had said something strange. "Heraclea? No, that's not it. And if you call that a city . . . mud houses inside a wooden wall . . ."

Then she understood. She had indeed parted the veil. The changed vegetation reflected not her movement across the land, but her devolution through time. Vindonnum was a Ligure village, not yet become Greek Heraclea or Roman Ugium. In this era, even the Celtic Gauls had not yet arrived in Provence. Then . . . when was this?

His camp was a greased goatskin lean-to and an earthen hearth atop a slight rise. Day had come while they walked, and she could see quite a way. A faint trickle of smoke marked their pursuers' camp.

"We can rest a bit. I want to lead them a few miles north today." He gestured. The northern horizon was marked by a range of sawtooth ridges. People in her day called them the "Little Alps."

"Tonight we'll camp on the far side of the river," he said. "If we're lucky, they'll be close on our heels."

River? Had she gotten turned around? There was no river this side of those mountains. Not in her time. How could she find out when this was? She couldn't just ask. What was his name, anyway?

"Alkides," he said. He pronounced it All-kee-thays, but it was Greek nonetheless. Greek had become a distinctive tongue two thousand years before her own time, so that did not say much.

"You want them to follow you? Why?"

"I want them in the right place, at the right time. And since they're mad at me, what better way to get them there than chasing us? If we cross the stream right at dusk, they'll have to wait until morning. Then we'll see."

"What will we see?"

He chuckled. "It's a surprise. Now come. Help me roll up this tent. I'll carry it. You can lead the goat."

"Why do you have a goat anyway?"

He put a finger across Pierrette's lips. "I'd best not discuss that in her presence." Food on the hoof, she realized.

* * *

Alkides told her he was a trader, exploring new routes to the west. "The Phoenicians have locked off the sea trade," he said. "There are tin mines out there, somewhere, but they allow no ships but their own into Oceanos." Oceanos—once that meant "the world river" that surrounded everything. The Atlantic. "I went to Tartessos to buy cattle—these big red beasts—but that was only an excuse, really. I wanted to find a land road around the Phoenicians' bottleneck, but no such luck. There is no good route north."

"There is a route to the tin country, the Cassiterides," she said. "Pytheas found it."

"Who?"

"Pytheas of Massilia." Alkides had never heard of either Pytheas or his city. Like Vindonnum, Massilia was only a Ligurian oppidum now, and the way he looked at her, he must be thinking she was a bit crazy. She changed the subject.

"What will you do with the cows?"

"If I can get them across the eastern mountains"—the Alps—"then I'll ship them home. They're all pregnant, so I don't have much time. That's why I have to shake these Ligures. If the calves come before I'm across the mountains, I'll lose most of them—and their sires' blood."

He had allowed them to be bred by the black swamp cattle of this land. "A fine strong breed—but not docile enough to be herded."

They reached the river in late afternoon. Alkides got a rope around the lead cow's neck, and by dint of persuasion, blows from his staff, and main force, got her to wade the broad, shallow stream. The rest of the herd followed, with Pierrette chasing the stragglers, yelling and waving a leafy branch.

Alkides eyed the steep northern bank. "We'll camp up there," he decided.

"It's nice and flat here, near the water," Pierrette protested, dreading the scramble up the rough clay bank.

"You don't want anyone sneaking up on us, do you?" She sighed.

"There!" Alkides pointed across the silvery river, where red firelight flickered. "They've made camp. We're safe here for the night." The ascent was just as rough as she had feared, but she climbed willingly. It was almost dark.

They stretched goatskins over a bent sapling poplar, and Pierrette kindled a fire. Alkides's eyes widened when he saw the small flame leap from her fingertips to the tinder. "You're a wizard!" He looked more closely at her. "But you're only a boy. I would never have suspected. You're so young." Again, his expression—surprise, this time—was like a tantalizing snatch of familiar song half remembered. It was a warm, comforting memory with no trace of fear to it, and Pierrette abruptly decided to do something perhaps unwise.

As she knelt by the quickening fire, she reached to the back of her neck, and loosened the thong that bound her hair. She pulled the length of it from beneath her tunic, then shook her head. Long swirls of rich, black hair tumbled about her shoulders.

She grinned as Alkides' eyes widened further still. "There's much about me you wouldn't have suspected."

He squatted across the tiny hearth. "Why have you done that? You were safe from me, when I thought you were a boy."

"I think I'm safe from you anyway. I trust you—don't ask me why. I just do. I didn't want to deceive you."

"Now I see you so differently," he said, amazed. "How could I have thought you a scruffy youth? Was it a spell?"

Was it? Somewhere, a long time ago—as if it had happened to another Pierrette entirely—she had told Cletus that "Little girls don't use magic." But was that so? Even as a child, had she used more than a physical deception to maintain her boyish semblance?

"What you see now is real," she said. But was it? Was she? Was he? Doubts and depression flooded over her. Was anything "real"? Was reality a mad girl dying on the slopes of Sainte Baume, her cold body untenanted? Was Ma real, or was the sacred grove only a gully where shade and moisture allowed foreign beeches and maples to grow in a dry land? Or did the madness have even deeper roots, in a strange girl-child of five whose mother had been killed almost before her eyes?

"What's wrong?" Alkides swiftly knelt with a protective arm about her shoulder. She was like a sponge, absorbing the warmth and comfort of that human touch, real or insane illusion. She now knew why he seemed familiar. Only two men had held her so. Not her father, who always distanced himself, uncomfortable with her resemblance to Elen, his dead wife. Only Aam, the golden man of her girlish daydreams, whom she had at last met by a shore now uncounted thousands of years ago beneath the sea. Only Minho, the sorcerer-king, who had begged her to stay with him, whose single kiss had been hot on her lips. . . .

Two men, both met within spells like this one, that had thrust her into a remote past when even Greeks were only beginning to explore lands beyond their own inhospitable peninsula, their scattered islands. Two men, and now a third, Alkides, who was no more real than his predecessors. She hid her face in her hands, and wept for all that was not, or might not be. She wept for her own helplessness, for the terror that Cunotar represented, consumed by the hideous spirit of the Eater of Gods, and for the bleak emptiness, the soulless desolation, of the Black Time. Above all, she wept because she could not determine whether even her worst fears were real, or only an insane girl's imaginings—the Eater of Gods representing the little-girl terrors of her mother's murder, the Black Time her personal distress.

She must have spoken aloud. "This is real," Alkides murmured, now holding her close, wiping away her tears with a big, calloused finger. "You are real," he said, running a broad hand up her back. She quivered, and not with fear. She felt his hardness against her stomach, the thumping of his heart, with her ear pressed against his chest. He turned his head and bent down toward her, and she lifted her face for his kiss.

It was madness. She knew it, but she did not care. This was what she had forsaken to follow the goddess's wishes—her womanhood, her very self. "No!" she pushed against his chest with both hands. "I can't! I must not."

"You want this," he murmured, his broad hands covering her buttocks, lifting her against him.

"I do! Please, no. Stop. Put me down."

His whole body shivered . . . and she felt his hands loosen. "You must tell me," he said softly. He let her slip all the way to her knees, and he knelt beside her. His hand trembled as he laid a small branch on the fire.

She told him of Ma, of the prophecies of Yan Oors and Guihen: "Follow this path, and be doomed to wander forever, never knowing hearth or husband, with never a child at your breast . . ." All that, she gave up—to become a sorceress. All that, to save the world of forest sprites and old magics from the devastation wrought by scholars' writings, magic-destroying machines, and world-spanning religions whose precepts were the greatest spells of all. . . .

Alkides waved a hand in front of her face, bringing her out of her monologue. "Did the goddess command you not to have fun?" he asked. "Did she say `never enjoy yourself or you'll not become a sorceress, no matter how many spells you learn'?"

Ma had not. "We humans can't always do what we think the gods want," he reflected. "It suffices to do what they command. And when those commands leave room for human cleverness . . . we have to outwit them."

"I don't understand."

"Come here," he said, pulling her onto his lap. She did not resist. Why did she trust him—because, before, he had stopped when she pushed him away? His hand slid up the bare skin of her back, lifting her tunic. She felt warm firelight on her exposed breasts. "You must remain a virgin," he murmured, cupping a breast and leaning down to it. "But that is just the kind of technicality gods depend upon . . . and virgin you will remain."

He carried her to the goatskin hut, and she watched as he unfastened his leather kilt. She stared, fascinated, not quite frightened, at his manhood. "We need not prick your bubble to enjoy what your goddess never denied you," he murmured as he knelt to remove her boy's trousers, and to explore what he discovered beneath them. . . .

 

 

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