The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Three: A Long-Awaited Treachery Read online

  “I will speak to Boris and the engineers,” Luka told them, after the laughter had died down. “Perhaps they can devise some solution to the issue of weight.”

  “Very good, Luka,” Zawditu said. “Very good.”

  At that moment, Luka heard shouting from the gate, accompanied by the pounding of horses’ hooves. All three of them turned in the direction of the noise, as did several of the soldiers. Soon enough, a horse charged into the courtyard, ridden by a young Svan named Koba—a distant cousin of Luka’s, which showed in the shade of his dark brown hair and in the style of moustache he was trying to grow. Koba rode with one hand, using his other to help secure a man who rode behind him. Koba’s passenger was bloody, exhausted, and he looked nearly dead. He all but fell from the horse as the soldiers hurried to help him down.

  Luka was on his feet instantly and ran to join them, with Zawditu and Mata Kaur close behind him. He grabbed Koba’s passenger and kept the poor fellow steady on his feet. The man babbled almost incoherently in Circassian, in which Luka had very little fluency. All he could make out was something about an attack, which was plain enough to see from the man’s battered condition.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Zawditu demanded. “Koba, what has happened to this man?” She quickly pointed at one of the soldiers standing nearby and shouted, “Bring me a doctor!”

  Koba swung down from the saddle and bowed to Zawditu.

  “I do not know, Strategos,” he replied, his face pale with worry. “I came upon him while on patrol. He was running from someone or something. I thought it best to bring him here.”

  “You did well, my boy,” Zawditu said, patting Koba on the shoulder. She turned to the Circassian man and said to him, as precisely as she could manage, “What happened to you?”

  By then, Seteney had joined them in the company of the remaining troops. As she came close enough to recognize the man, she ran the remaining distance and grabbed him by the arms. The man gasped at the sight of her and almost began to weep.

  “Seteney, you know this man?” Zawditu asked.

  “He is my uncle,” Seteney said. She began speaking to the man rapidly in their native tongue. As their conversation progressed, her face contorted into a scowl and one hand gripped the hilt of her sword. Finally, she turned to Zawditu and Luka and spoke:

  “He says that our village has been attacked by armed men. He does not know who they are. They’ve burned houses, attacked people in the streets.... He tried to ride for help, but they shot his horse and it died on the way.”

  A muscle in Zawditu’s cheek twitched as she clenched her jaw.

  “Luka,” she said, without looking at him, “take a party of soldiers and investigate what has happened. Mata Kaur, have the castle secured and signal the guard posts for reports.”

  “Yes, Strategos,” Luka and Mata Kaur both said in unison.

  Luka studied the soldiers for a moment and selected his party, addressing each in turn:

  “Seteney, Koba, Movses, Anuka, with me.”

  * * * *

  They rode out into the countryside, Luka at the head of the party with Seteney as his guide riding alongside. Seteney’s village was located along the river to the north of the valley, at the edge of one of the deep forests that girded the fields and pastures. Like the other settlements in the valley, it was a town of towers, of brick and stone, strongly built and easily defensible. But the roofs were wooden, and several of these had been set on fire, as had a number of sheds, barns, and various outbuildings. Had Seteney’s uncle not reached them, the smoke from the fires would have alerted the Shashavani before long.

  There were bodies in the streets, cut down with swords or stabbed through with crude spears. Luka grimaced at the sight of the violence and held his carbine rifle ready, but he saw no sign of the attackers. Whether they had finished their business or fled at the sound of horses, they were gone now.

  “My God!” Movses exclaimed at the sight. There were children and elderly among the men and women. “Who would do this?”

  “It cannot be anyone from the valley,” Koba said. “Bandits perhaps?”

  Anuka, her carbine braced against her shoulder, glanced toward them and asked, “How did they breach the pass without someone raising the alarm?”

  Luka wondered the same thing. The passes into the valley were all well guarded, and while bandits sometimes managed to break through, it was a rare occurrence. Inevitably, the trespassers were sighted and caught by one of the patrols before they could cause trouble. What had happened to the village was a horrible anomaly of which Luka could make no sense.

  “You there!” someone shouted in Circassian. “Who are you?”

  Luka looked up and saw men standing on the balconies of several of the towers above them. Their clothes were bloody, and they all carried muskets, which they aimed at Luka and the other soldiers.

  “I am Luka of the Shashavani!” Luka replied, his Circassian broken but intelligible. “We have come to help. Is there one among you who speaks Svanish?”

  As the native people of the Shashavani valley were Svans, Svanish was the lingua franca of the Shashavani, though nearly matched in prevalence by its cousin tongue, Georgian.

  “I do,” answered one of the Circassians, a young man with a bloody wound across his temple.

  “What happened here?” Luka asked him.

  “We were attacked,” the young man replied, his tone a mixture of anger, fear, and confusion. “The men came upon us from the forest with swords and spears.”

  “Were they mounted or on foot?”

  “On foot, though they were so swift in their attack they may as well have been on horseback. We did not know what was happening until they began to...to kill.”

  Luka’s mouth contorted in a scowl. How was that possible? Men on horses might have ridden through a poorly guarded pass without being captured, but on foot they would surely have been shot, unless bandits had found some new entry point into the valley, which was even more troubling.

  “Who were these men?” he asked.

  “They were like you,” the Circassian said. “Svans.”

  “And why did they attack you? For treasure? Or to take captives?”

  The young Circassian did not answer for a moment, but his expression spoke of hatred and betrayal. Finally, he answered:

  “They came to kill us. To kill us because we submit to Allah.”

  Luka exchanged looks with the rest of his party, reading confusion on their faces. The very thought of killing over a question of faith was alien to the valley people. Even Luka, who had traveled among the ignorant in the outside world, still could not understand such foolishness. And for such evil to have been brought there, into a land ruled by wisdom and by the Law of Shashava....

  Beside him, Seteney’s hand clenched upon the hilt of her sword and her body shook with fury, but her face was calm and she was silent. Still, Luka could not blame her for her rage, and he admired her restraint in the face of such evil done to her people.

  “We were promised,” the Circassian man said, drawing Luka’s attention back to him. His voice quivered, as if uncertain whether to shout in anger or weep with despair. “After what the Russians did to us, we were promised that it would never happen again. We were told that in this place such things do not happen!”

  “Such things are forbidden here,” Luka answered, bitterly acknowledging that what was law could still be violated in practice. “And I give you my word that the men who did this to you will pay for their crimes with their lives.”

  “You are a Svan,” the Circassian said. “And a Christian. Like the men who sought to murder us! How can we trust that there will be justice? There was no justice when the Russians came!”

  “I am not the Russians,” Luka answered. “I am Luka Davitdze Shashavani, and I will uphold the Law of Shashava, for it is the highest law in He
aven or upon the Earth. This I swear to you.”

  “You may trust in him,” Seteney said, nodding to Luka. “He shall uphold his oath, as shall I. By God, these men shall be punished.”

  The Circassian nodded slowly and relayed this news to his fellows. Many of the other men looked skeptical, but relief showed on the faces of some. One old man began to weep and quietly withdrew into the building.

  “More soldiers are coming to tend to your wounded and help put out the fires,” Luka said. “But we must pursue your attackers before they can make their escape. What direction did they go?”

  The young Circassian pointed toward the forest and said, “That way, into the woods. Only a few minutes ago. They fled when we escaped inside, and they realized they could not breach our houses. We wounded some. There will be blood.”

  “Good,” Luka said. It would make them easier to track. And it was heartening to be reminded that, though they lived lives of peace, the valley people could defend themselves in the event of war. “How many?”

  “Uh....” The Circassian spoke to his fellows quickly before answering, “Some twenty or so. We did not have time to count them.”

  Luka nodded. “We will find them.” He turned his horse toward the forest and motioned to his troops. “Come.”

  “Twenty men?” Koba asked aloud, sounding skeptical. “We are only five. It would not seem a fair fight.”

  “No,” Anuka said, patting Koba on the shoulder, “but these men have done nothing to deserve the privilege of favorable odds.”

  * * * *

  The trail left by the attackers was easy enough to follow. The men had rushed headlong through the brush in their flight, snapping branches and tearing the leaves from bushes in their passing. Footprints were plentiful where the ground was soft enough to leave them, and here and there were marks of blood—left either from the men’s own injuries or from the weapons they had bloodied during the massacre.

  It was difficult riding through the dense forest. They sometimes had to take a more circuitous route around the thick undergrowth, where the horses could not pass. And more than once, Luka was obliged to dismount to pick up the details of the trail where they could not be easily seen from the higher vantage point. But he preferred not to leave the horses behind. So long as the forest pathways permitted it, their greater speed was an advantage he wished to exploit; and being outnumbered, the advantage of height would be a welcome benefit if it came to violence.

  Presently, Luka heard voices speaking through the brush ahead of them. Readying his carbine, he motioned for the others to fan out and approach in a crescent, to hopefully catch their quarry at rest and cut off their escape. He advanced into a clearing and saw some two-dozen men sitting and standing about the place, tending to the wounds they had suffered. They had weapons with them: some swords and spears, but also improvised agricultural tools. These men were not bandits at all.

  “We should not have run,” one of the men said angrily. “We should have stayed and killed more of the heathens!”

  “And what good would that have done?” another demanded. “They fled into their towers! They had muskets! We would have been shot if we had remained.”

  “God would have protected us,” a third man countered. “We were given a sign. And now, instead of doing God’s work, we have run from our holy task. We shall surely be punished for that—”

  They stopped talking as Luka advanced into the clearing. The men on the ground leapt to their feet. Some grabbed for their weapons, while others started to run—only to be stopped as Seteney, Koba, Movses, and Anuka entered the clearing and surrounded them. Seteney in particular looked ready to start shooting at the first provocation, and Luka could not blame her for it.

  “Who are you?” one of the men demanded of Luka, pointing a sword at him.

  “I am Luka,” Luka replied. “We are Shashavani.”

  Several of the men swore. Some looked afraid, others suddenly hopeful.

  “We’re in for it now,” someone said.

  “No, no, they will understand,” said another. “They are men of God.”

  “Good Lord,” Koba whispered, aghast. “They’re valley folk....”

  Luka held up a hand for silence.

  “You have committed violence against your neighbors,” he said, “which is in violation of every just law known to man. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  One of the men—the one who had argued that they should have stayed and continued their attack—advanced on Luka. He held his head high and addressed him proudly:

  “We have made war upon the infidel. It is as God intends. He shall be pleased with us, as should you.”

  “Blasphemer!” Seteney snapped at him. “Murderer! I should cut your head from your body!”

  “Steady,” Luka told her. “All in due time.” He looked back at the ringleader. “There are no infidels in this valley. All who obey the Law of Shashava are welcome here, and none shall do them harm. You have violated our most basic principles! And for what? A difference of faith?”

  “You do not understand!” the ringleader answered. “How can you not understand? Are you not Christian? Those people were Mohammedans! It is our sacred duty to destroy them that the world may be made pure!”

  Luka felt himself shiver with disgust.

  “Who has taught you these lies?” he demanded. “What priest has confounded your reason with such falsehood?”

  “No priest,” came the reply, “for in this land all that is taught is heresy! But God spoke to us through the Blessed Virgin, who came to me...came to all of us to show us God’s will.”

  There were murmurs of assent from the other men.

  “The Virgin Mary appeared to you?” Luka asked, his tone thick with skepticism. “To you? And she instructed you to murder innocent people?”

  “Not innocent! Infidels!”

  The ringleader approached Luka further until he stood right beside Luka’s horse. The poor creature whinnied softly at the stench of blood and the movements of the stranger, but Luka merely patted its flanks to steady it.

  “She appeared to us and instructed us to find all the infidels in the valley and to put them to the sword,” the man continued. “For soon the time is coming when the Lord shall return to us to reign in glory and to judge the living and the dead! And we have been chosen to clear a path for His righteousness! So the Blessed Virgin told us!”

  Luka exhaled, trying to measure the anger he felt at such blasphemy. To think that a man could be so depraved as to justify barbarism as the “will of God”!

  “I hardly think,” he said slowly, “that the Blessed Virgin, the mother of our Lord, would instruct you to murder children! Nor that God, who is the creator of us all, would ever desire the death of any of His children, whatever their faith. For as Shashava said, ‘we have all been granted a portion of wisdom, each in our own way and in our own tongue, and so together we shall find Truth’.”

  “Blasphemy!” someone shouted. “Heresy!”

  “God commanded their deaths!” came another cry.

  “No God who is God could desire such a thing!” Luka shouted. “It is man who desires the death of man, not God! And the Law of Shashava forbids it! All who are obedient to Shashava’s commandments may reside in peace and harmony among us. This has been our way for a thousand years, and you shall not change it with your fanciful stories of visions.”

  “The Blessed Virgin said that also,” answered the ringleader, holding his spear to Luka’s throat. “When she revealed herself to me, she said that the Shashavani are apostates who have turned from God, for they follow the teachings of Shashava when they ought to follow Christ!”

  Nearby, Seteney looked at Luka and asked, “May we please just kill them, Sir?”

  “In a moment,” Luka replied. “I am being unreasonably patient.” He grabbed the spear that had been th
rust at him and shoved it to one side. Snarling, he addressed the mob: “The Law of Shashava is Wisdom and Justice. No God who is God would issue commandments that contradict Wisdom and Justice. Therefore, if the dictates of your faith contradict the dictates of Shashava, then your faith has been misunderstood and you must reexamine it.”

  “Blasphemer!”

  “I will give you one chance,” Luka said, “and one only. Throw down your weapons and surrender to me, and you shall be tried fairly. Otherwise, I will kill you for what you have done.”

  “You? Kill us?” The ringleader scoffed. He tried to pull his spear away from Luka, but Luka held his grip below the spear point and the man simply struggled in frustration. “Infidels and apostates cannot defeat the army of God! We have been chosen! We are protected! It is you who shall die!”

  Finally, he yanked his spear away from Luka’s grasp and raised it, preparing to strike Luka full in the chest. The other men raised their own arms and took up their leader’s cry as he shouted:

  “Kill them!”

  Chapter Three

  •

  “Apparently, it was a massacre.”

  “Indeed,” Iosef mused, as he walked down the corridor alongside the blond and bearded Magnus the Dane. “I am surprised that Luka showed so much restraint. He has never had much patience for brutality meted out against the innocent.”

  “Perhaps he is mellowing in his old age,” Magnus said. It was a joke, of course: Magnus himself was more than a century Iosef and Luka’s senior, and he certainly did not regard himself as “old”.

  “I think not,” Iosef said. “The day Luka’s temper ‘mellows’ is the day that Christ returns, and we are all granted the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  Magnus laughed loudly at this. “And I suppose, even on that day, Luka will berate the Lord for not keeping His followers better behaved.” Then he added, “The Lutheran faith excepted, of course: we are above reproach.”

  “Quite,” Iosef said. The corner of his mouth turned up slightly in a smirk, however.