Heroes

He ordered them to go and find a warm fire and some food. They obeyed with a nod, pulling their cloaks over their heads and running off. The king entered.

It was dark inside: a single earthenware lamp was smoking, burning sheep’s fat. In the corner was the food that had been brought to her and that she had refused to touch, left to be gnawed at by the mice. This was his wedding chamber? The perfumes and the scents? The wedding torches? He couldn’t even see the girl until his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. And when he did see her his soul filled with despair: she was scrawny and pale and he could barely see her face behind a tangle of dirty hair. She startled at his entry, and began to whimper softly. Then she backed away, creeping, into a corner and hid her face.

Diomedes took off his cloak and began to approach her, but when he saw her shaking in fear, he stopped in the middle of the bare room. He brought his lamp close to his face: ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘I need you too.’

At the sound of his voice, the girl turned slowly and the king could see her bewildered eyes, the pale flicker of her gaze. But he also perceived, greatly wounded and broken, that remarkable, ambiguous force of spirit that had struck him the first time he saw her.

The fire in the hearth had gone out; Diomedes put a little wood on top and lit it with his lamp. The flames licked up while outside the rain pelted down even harder.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, adding more wood to the fire. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ and he held his head low as if he, too, suffered from the same desolation as she.

The girl seemed to revive and moved slightly away from the wall.

‘Come closer,’ said the king. ‘Come warm yourself by the fire. Come; don’t be afraid.’

The girl raised her head and looked at him. Then she got to her feet and walked slowly towards the fire. She was trembling, and her step was uncertain after fasting for so long. She stumbled, but Diomedes, who had not taken his eyes off her, caught her in his arms before she could fall. He set her gently next to the fire, then removed his own wet clothing and took her delicately into his arms. She stirred and the king opened his arms so she could go. If she wanted to.

She didn’t go, and the king held her without speaking, listening together with her to the sound of the rain on the straw roof.

Time passed, so long that it stopped raining and the sun began to shine through the cracks in the door. The Chnan’s voice could be heard, saying: ‘The men have made bread, wanax.’ And the little hut was invaded by a ray of light and an intense aroma. The king got up, went to the door and took the bread, then went back to the girl and offered her a little piece. She opened her lips and ate it while the king lightly stroked her hair. He took some bread himself and ate it while looking into her eyes, without moving his other hand from her head. And in that moment, the beam of sun that entered through the door lit up his hair from behind, bathing it in blond light, like a god’s. He gave her more bread and she ate from his hand and accepted his caresses.

It didn’t take long for Nemro to learn where his enemy was hiding. The weather was bad and the incessant rain had wiped away the traces of Diomedes’s chariot and horses, but as soon as he could, Nemro had sent his men to search the land far and wide.

A group of them encountered the old priest who they had left behind when they had set off for the Lake of the Ancestors, to officiate the rite of the severed heads in the deserted city. He was wandering through the countryside with a satchel at his neck; he did not even seem to recognize them.

‘It is us, Oh Man of the Sun and of the Rain,’ they said. ‘Stop! We seek the blond foreigner who flies on a chariot. He has abducted the bride of Nemro and has kept her for himself. Without her, Nemro cannot guide his people to the Lake of the Ancestors and build a city on the water. She is our only hope; her blood is not contaminated by the Sun of the Swamp.’

The old man blinked repeatedly as if a violent light were wounding his eyes: ‘He has passed twice among the burnt heads and he is still alive,’ he said. ‘His flesh is harder than your bones. And he has spoken with the Sun of the Swamp: I saw it in his eyes. How can Nemro hope to combat him and win?’

‘You leave us no hope, then. But at least tell us where he is; we will do anything we can to have Nemro’s bride back. We fear nothing any more in this world.’

The old man pointed south towards the horizon and then set off again with his slow, shuffling step in the other direction. They would never see him again.

That evening they reached the city occupied by the invaders, and they slipped in during the night. They watched them from their hiding places for days and days. They watched the men train with their weapons, hurling their spears and shooting their bows, wielding sword and axe. They watched them fight each other, and stand guard at night with fine weather or with rain. They realized that their own forces could never defeat such warriors.

When they returned to report to Nemro, he listened to them in silence without a blink of his eye, then withdrew to his tent where he remained at length. He finally came out and assembled his men. He said: ‘We cannot go to the Lake of the Ancestors without my bride and we cannot fight our enemies alone; they are too strong and too fierce. We need help, and we will find it in all the surviving villages and among the other peoples. We shall ask the Kmun of the Mountains of Ice and the Ambron of the Mountains of Stone. We will tell them what has happened, and they will tell the other peoples who live near them: the Pica and the Ombro. We will say that the foreigners of the flaming hair have come to kill us and carry off our women. . that they have come to steal everything from us, even our hope. They will help us, and our enemies will find ambushes in every forest, traps in every valley. The water they drink will turn to poison, every birdsong or animal call will hide a signal for attack. They will die, one after another. . as we have been dying until now.’

Nemro lowered his head with a sigh and said: ‘Whoever survives, of the two of us, will have the bride for himself and will generate a new people with her. If I am the one who remains alive, I will take you to the Lake of the Ancestors, at the foot of the Mountains of Ice whence our forebears came. If it is he, the man who flies on the fire chariot. . if it is he who remains alive on the battlefield, then his seed will generate a new race of exterminators and there will no longer be any room for anyone else in this land. . for no one, between the mountains and the sea. We must destroy him, because he, perhaps, has come from the Sun of the Swamp himself! Perhaps he is the last and most terrible calamity.’

Nemro’s men took his message to the Kmun on the Mountains of Ice and the Ambron on the Mountains of Stone, and these warned their neighbours, the Pica and the Ombro, and these in turn told the Lat who had settled at that time in the plains of the western sea. Whatever path the invaders chose, they would find it fraught with mortal danger.

Meanwhile, the Man of the Sun and the Rain, the old priest, continued his solitary journey towards the place where none of his people had ever dared to venture. He knew that his energy would not suffice to follow Nemro in his quest for survival, but he thought that perhaps enough remained to discover where the poisonous seed of death had come from, when it fell from the sky like a globe of fire and sank its roots in to the swamp.

Although it was already late in the spring, it continued to rain hard and long every day. But he never stopped; he walked all the same through the tall grass and reeds that had overrun the fields once flourishing with crops and rich pastures for numerous flocks. He would rest now and then in a deserted village or an abandoned house when the inclemency of the elements prevented him from going on. And then he would take up his journey once again.

After seven days he reached the swamp where the seed of destruction had fallen. He was exhausted with fatigue, hunger and pain; his hands and feet were full of sores, his legs attacked by leeches. And yet he thought he heard the gentlest dirge, like the soft wailing of women grieving for their lost husbands. He followed that song, dragging himself to the shores of a large pool with a surface as smooth as a bronze mirror.

He leaned over to peer inside and saw his own image reflected in the shiny black water, nothing else. Only his own thin, dazed face. He moved all around the liquid mirror, forcing a passage between the thick reeds, the willows and millet stalks.

The wind rustled in the boughs of colossal poplars, filling the air with their white down, but not a bird took wing, not a chirp could be heard, nothing but the ancient lament that still echoed very faintly in the misty