The Sighs of the Priestess Ch. 03

She kissed him and worked her way lower on him until he stopped her, asking her to lie beside him. Face to face on their sides, they loved slowly until she extinguished the little oil lamp with a wave of her hand.

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In the pale light of the morning, the sun was barely up when they were at the gates. The young priestess sat behind him on his war horse wearing his singlet under a blanket.

"Try to forgive my words here," he whispered to her.

He had to beat on the shuttered guardhouse window with his fist to wake the sentries. "Do you sleep on guard," he roared, "or are you all dead?"

Two of the men spilled out of the door to blink at him.

"Open the gate," he said tersely.

The guard knew instantly who it was who addressed him here. The fighter was known in the city and what was more, the guard knew that he was favored by the lord general. Still, he hated being addressed like this.

His eyes slid past the man and he saw the the woman behind him with her cheek against his back, looking as pleased as a well-fed cat. To his mind, she would look better impaled over a huge fire and screaming in agony. he had no use for living Amorites of any sort. A witch of their kind was only useful as fertilizer.

"This woman is the Amorite witch! Where do you take her?" he demanded.

The fighter reached down and grabbed the man by his shirt and almost pulled him off the ground, "I go where I will, and I do not answer to sleeping snails like you. It is daylight now. If you were at your post you would have enough of your wits about you to know that no one is challenged now."

He looked at the man with a mixture of mild curiosity and open contempt. "Where do they find buffoons such as you? This is a city, not an outpost. In the city, you may only challenge after dark, and even then, you challenge those coming IN, idiot, not leaving. We need men such as you in the army," he said, "to walk in front attracting the other side's arrows. Your only talent is wasted here pretending to be a soldier."

The rest of the guards laughed at this, but stopped when he looked at them.

The tendons in his neck stood out as he lifted the guard to shake him as the man's feet dangled in the air. "I am tired of the stink of ones like you in this place. I seek a quiet little dell for a bit of fun."

He dropped the guard and leaned down close, his voice dripping with malevolence, "And where I go to breed my bitch here is none of your concern. Open the gate or I make a new door with your heads."

The guards almost fell over each other in their haste.

As they rode away, the priestess turned back and saw the one that he'd spoken to call to one of the archers on the wall. She watched the archer draw back his bow, but the bow snapped and the man tumbled backward off the wall to land by the passageway with a broken neck.

She pulled a hair from her head and wove it quickly into her flying fingers for a moment before dropping the knotted hair from her hand. She didn't turn back again, knowing that the insulted guard now fought against his own tongue as it strained to go down his throat.

He felt her pull herself tighter against him and he heard her quiet laugh.

"What is it?" he turned, smiling.

She chuckled, "I liked what you said, nothing more. Why did you speak such hard words to the one there?"

He shrugged, "Something that I have always loathed about cities. Duties such as jailer and sentries should be a shared and changed task, a part of the guard and only done a few days a month by any one man. They grow soft and act hard like this and do not do any task well anymore."

An hour later, they were at the caves. "There is the sign," she said, pointing past him at the inscription in the rock over the high entrance of one of them. He turned the horse up the small rise and they stopped for a moment just inside.

"Are you afraid of empty spirits?" she asked.

He shook his head, "I am only cautious. I do not wish to cripple my large friend by making him walk on the bones here, and the cave ends just there."

"Go ahead," she said quietly, "all that lies here is illusion. Feel the wind from the closed wall. There is no wall."

Urging his horse forward, they found themselves in a vast cavern. She told him to stop for a moment so that their eyes could become accustomed to the dimness. After a moment, they saw that the cavern wasn't really dark at all, but was lit by phosphorescent plants growing from the ceiling high above them. As they moved forward, every so often they could see by thin shafts of daylight coming in between boulders high above them.

"If you are ready," she said, "ride hard now."

The road ahead of them - such as it was - was fairly even and smooth. They only had to slow up a bit whenever they passed below the open slits in the mountain above them for there were the bones of animals on the floor there from unfortunates who had fallen through over time.

"This path here is a little too straight and flat," he remarked, "I have never seen a cavern that is straight for such a distance."

The priestess chuckled as she held onto his shoulder, "If you wish, I can make obstacles and hills for you. We are not really here where it seems that we ride. We were closer to Jebel Barez than to Jebel Bishri, and one cannot ride between them in a week but this way gets us there quickest. It is one of the roads of the dead and there is no distance here to ones who carry the favor of Belet-Seri." He looked back at her, but she said nothing further on the subject.

It wasn't long before they found themselves leaving the cavern. As they rode out onto a green meadow, sheep scattered before them. "Where now?" he asked.

"There," she pointed past him, "Straight over the rise, but slow a little near to the top. There are turns there and it is a long way down if you miss even one."

As she said, they were forced to slow and wind their way, but when they looked up, they saw the old keep, built into the face of a mountain not much farther in the distance.

"Jebel Bishri," she said. Pointing to the causeway over the river below, she said, "There is the gated bridge. See the smoke from the watch fires on the other hills. Our passage has been marked."

The warrior nodded, but inwardly, he wondered at what the welcome might be.

As they neared the bridge, the priestess cried out and jumped down, running to the bridge. The fighter saw some hooded figures there where there had been none but a moment before. When he plodded up, he saw that she stood in the embrace of her mother and a man that he guessed must be her father. He wondered about it, but the older woman smiled and nodded to him.

"A happy day indeed," she said, "I need only one look at you both to see that what I had wanted for you and dreamed of has come to pass in this dark time."

She laughed at his expression, "We are quite dead in the world outside, but here, those like us can live on. We see that you have done far more in a day than join the faith, Lugalbanda. Come and walk with us."

She whistled and the first gate began to swing open.

"This is all a defensive position," the man said, "Intruders would find themselves in only indefensible places at every turn getting here. That is why the path winds and twists to force an army to a thin line. This is the old place from where the faith first sprang. It has been added to over time, and it has never fallen."

They walked across the long causeway and into the keep. Over the next hour, several priestesses came to teach him secrets as quickly as their hands could move and his mind could absorb them.

He noticed that Nisi-ini-su had left him in their care, but she came back to him dressed in a fitted cuirass of her own, wearing long boots.

He stared as she approached with several others bearing things. She wore the cuirass, though unlike most, hers could be opened at the front down to below her navel. She also had light shoulder guards fitted to it, and she now wore black leather bracers on her arms. There was a clasp fastened around her throat to the long back cloak that she wore, though over one of her shoulders, he could see the haft of a sword, matched, he guessed to the one that she held in her hand. Her boots had scabbards down the outer sides for daggers and throwing knives. All together, it was a drastic change to the naked and chained slave that had been brought to him the day before.

"The people hereabouts are only now seeing swords and most fight with daggers and pikes," she said, "We have used swords for long years beyond count."

He nodded, "The trouble has always lain in the bronze that the sword is made of. Longer than a certain length, it is too soft and bends."

"But yours does not," she said, "because it has braces along its length. This makes it far too heavy to be used by most men all the day long. Ours are bronze too, but we weld harder edges and backs on before we begin. The blades are thinner and longer without the ribs and their weight ruining the balance. We begin to work a new metal which bronze cannot stand against."

She smiled, "We rode out as a warrior and a slave. We ride back as something different. These things here are my gifts to you. Please put them on, and only tell the smiths here what is needed if anything is too tight."

He looked around at the priestesses near to him. One of them smiled, "We were all high priestesses once, warrior, and we know what men look like, have no fear - or shame." As the smiths stepped forward to undress him to fit the new clothing, Nisi-ini-su's mother kept speaking as she and a few others chanted and sang to him at times.

The priestesses sang to them as they held each other and stood listening to the songs and watching the hands of the dead priestesses as they taught him one after another. Finally, Nisi-ini-su's mother stopped singing and spoke to him.

"You knew of us as the Amorites and we call ourselves the Martu. The city of Ninab is gone and so the people have no structure now and go back to wandering as a nation of nomads once more. The overseers where we once lived will find themselves ruling over an empty land with no one in it very soon. This is the roving nation that you will rule together. We foresee that you will rule another nation as well, but the Martu will always hold themselves apart, fighting alongside what you build when you decide that it suits them and you."

"You will find friends unlooked-for often for we are widely spread and soon all will know that there is now both a high priestess and a warrior-priest to lead them. The greatest danger to you comes from your own kind, Lugalbanda. In this, you must trust in the friend that you have made in my daughter here, the one who sees and returns your love even now. She has already begun to defend you."

He had questions as the smiths worked, and they were answered, and it was not long before he stood in his new armor, holding his new longer sword, feeling for its balance.

"Your armor was chosen for you both for this rise. It is dark to hide you in dark places and to allow fear to grow. To you, seeing one dressed this way tells you that the one is trained here in our ways. Our blades are all black, the color carried on the surface of the metal. It is to force fear as well, though the harder the usage, the more the cold gleam comes through."

She raised her hand and a slender warrior approached, similarly dressed, but wearing a black leather and metal helmet with leather guards over the neck and a black face shield that showed only a pair of impassive and relaxed eyes. The warrior stopped and saluted by slapping a gloved hand against the closed cuirass.

"Try to kill this one, Lugalbanda."

He looked back in a confused way and then turned to find the warrior already attacking him. At first, his efforts were only defensive as he got the balance of the sword, but before long, he was advancing as his blood warmed to it. But though he tried, the other one was always moving out of his reach, avoiding the death-dealing strokes by inches each time.

What he realized out of it was that a fighter such as this one would be uneconomical to have to fight. Too much time and effort would need to be invested to get past this one fighter. When he had the feel of the sword, he made headway. The few strokes which had gotten through his defenses early on were stopped by the cuirass, though he did feel the strength behind them and the speed was astounding.

The priestess called a halt then and the attacker stood back. When the helmet came off, he stared.

"I did tell you that we had fighters for the faith," Nisi-ini-su said. The attacker had been a young woman.

The woman stepped forward and expressed her honor to have been chosen for this. "I knew that if I raised your blood, I had to be elsewhere when your strokes fell, priest. When you master these blades, no one will stand before you. I would ask for the honor to fight beside you then."

"I have a score more of fighters like her," Nisi-ini-su said, "This is their captain, Anat. We may consider them our personal guard and now you have assistants to help with the teaching."

"Women warriors to teach men?" he wondered, "It will cause trouble and the men will not learn from it."

"They will if one dies now and again," the captain said.

"You also want them for their other uses," the priestess told him quietly, "There are few more treacherous people than your own, Lugalbanda. You now have thirteen assassins."

"Things are changing, children," her mother said, "There will be no school. The lord general Enmerkar has his own dreams and you will play a part. When you return, much will change because it must. The king is dying."

Her mother smiled and beckoned them to a worn old balcony. In the courtyard below, stood more fighters also dressed in black. "I have my own additions," she said. "I can give you five score and ten fighters, priestesses and oathsworn warriors of old. All were pledged long ago against this slow and careful rising. Only call to them, Daughter, and they come"

He looked from one priestess to the other, not comprehending. The elder priestess grinned, "They are every bit as dead as I am," she said. "They do not hunger and do not thirst. They do not tire, and they cannot die.

And mighty priest," she nodded, ..."They do not lose."

After quiet and quick discussions which left him more confident and pleased, they set off to return to the city. He rode between his priestess, now on her own horse and the captain of his guard, and the three of them led the dozen fighters into the cavern.

"How will I explain this?" he smiled. "One or two, yes, even on horses, but thirteen ..."

"There is an old, small and forgotten gate in the wall outside the training area which I found this morning," the priestess said. "We go in there. No one will see since no one will look to see us, and if anyone thinks to look, everyone will need suddenly to sleep." She shrugged with a smile.

"I think we must hurry now. You will need me to bargain for your servants this afternoon. I have only one small sadness for this day," she said, looking at him with a smile.

"I really liked what was said about finding a quiet little dell."

"Can we come back here?" He asked.

"At any time," she smiled, "do you make a promise to me? I know of such a place here."

"Then I make this promise," he smiled.

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Lugalbanda saw that both Nisi-isi-su and Anat, captain of the dozen fighters enjoyed each other's company during the ride back, laughing and joking for most of the way. Somewhere during the cavern portion of the trip, he was introduced a little better.

"Anat and I were close friends as girls," the priestess said, "but we saw each other less often once I began serving at the temple and she was chosen as a defender."

"It is true," smiled Anat, "we only met again and again whenever Nisi-ini-su came to Jebel Bishri to be taught to fight and ride. We have always enjoyed each other's company and we are old friends. Each meeting and parting brings tears to us."

"One thing that you should know about my friend," the priestess said, laughing "if she thinks it, she says it, for good or ill. Anat has the sense to hold her tongue if it is the wise thing to do, but if you want the truth of something, ask her then and you will hear it."

As they left the cave and took to the road, Anat wanted to know more of what duty they now had. As it was explained to her, she shook her head.

"Strange times we live in," she said, "I can but wonder what my poor mother would say to hear that we lose the homeland we sought to build to Sumerians, and now her daughter goes to serve one."

She looked at Lugalbanda, "I mean no insult here. I would lay down my life for my friend and the one that she has taken and I would gladly fight beside you at any time. They say that you are a great Ba'al –a warrior lord who seeks to change things and learns much of us. I welcome it and I welcome you, but what is to be done here?"

He smiled a little uncertainly, "I seem to have the favor of an ambitious lord. If I can, I will seek to rise there, and take some of the Martu along. I have learned that allies live longer than enemies with him."

"I mark it as strange and with my own humor at you and I, "the captain smiled, "To us, you have the title of Ba'al. It is used when speaking to - or of - a lord, and the name comes from an old god. I am named after his lover, who is a violent war goddess herself. The names suit us as a people as well."

"We are everywhere, coming from our beginnings in Assyria after Sargon of Akkadia laid waste to Ebla. We reach as far as Egypt. All know us as a fierce people best left alone. We are best seen by many if we are dead, for we may slip away in the night to return to slaughter with swords and our magic. We can be beaten down, and we can be enslaved singly, but we cannot be enslaved as a nation."

As they'd ridden far around the city, their return was unnoticed since they came from a side of the city near to some low hills. One by one, they approached and slipped inside the old gate. The ghosts remained outside and faded from sight.

The horses were settled into the stables and two tents were set up in some space made in the courtyard. Not long after, more food arrived and the warrior was now pleased that he'd been allotted so much.

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He sat with the two friends as the rest worked at settling into the accommodation. "If there is now to be no school, then why do we need the servants? Even if I must teach for a while, I see no need for the expense. Or is there something else here?"

"I have my own thoughts," Nisi-ini-su said, "but let Anat say her piece."

The captain nodded, "We are fighters, just as you are. You know that we can look after our things and our horses like any fighters can. But a stable hand who can work metal would be worth much, no?"

He got the hint. "Let us see what the overseer brings us I did say that I needed things built, but the two that I saw wouldn't be able to lift a hammer between them."

"Another thing, Ba'al Lugalbanda," Anat said, "We need at the least one who can go to the markets for us. We can hide what we look like," she said, pointing at herself, "so that we are not marked as Martu, but we cannot go about dressed as fighters in this place."

"No yet," he smiled.

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The overseer was a portly man and obviously much-used to opulent living. He appeared at the door and bustled in with a few prospects. He lined them up before Lugalbanda and began to barter, mentioning various physical features on the young people as selling points.

The warrior waved his hand at the man as though he was a bothersome fly. "Where are the two who were told to ask you to come to see me? I wanted to inquire about them, not about these here."