As was their custom, the last heroes of old earth gathered at the Citadel of the Dawn on the tenth summer solstice. Minerva arrived first, leaving her chariot at the base of the mountain and walking up the five hundred steps to the terrace to await the others. Next came Hamilcar, leading a retinue of a dozen men-at-arms clad in steel mail and riding matching blue horses. Later in the afternoon, Goldry careened across the plains in a chariot pulled by a pair of great hounds, his whoops and yells carrying up to the citadel and drawing a smile from Minerva. And when the sun slipped behind the mountains to the west, and a half-moon rose over the darkening plain, Neith emerged from shadows to bound up the stairs two at a time, bow slung on her nut-brown back. None noticed when or how Rostam the Demon-slayer arrived, for he moved silent as a firefly and had not spoken a word in decades.
Five. The number left Minerva bereft, as if an ink pot had gone dry. When they last met here ten years ago, they were twenty-one. The time before that, before Caradoc went mad, almost a hundred heroes of the age had feasted and made sport in these halls. Now five. Surely this would be the last assembly.
She was gladdened, however, to see Goldry. They had been lovers almost a century past. Minerva recalled the months spent racing chariots and making love in his castle at Tumbling Water. A happy time. It was Goldry who built the fire now, tossing logs into the great hearth until the blaze cast dancing shadows on the walls of the feasting hall. And after they ate the oat cakes and smoked fish Hamilcar had brought, and opened an amphora of wine, it was Goldry who took a worn harp out of its bag and played. He played sprightly tunes, the kind to make you rise up from your seat and dance a rondet, dizzy with the merriment of it all.
On this evening, nobody danced. The music could not chase away the melancholy of the hall, which had once been alive with dancing and carousing until the sun rose. Hamilcar tapped a toe, and Minerva smiled at Goldry in encouragement. That was all. Neith stood aloof at a window, watching the moonlit landscape below. Rostam peered into the fire and mused on whatever ghosts still stirred in his ancient mind.
When Goldry finished a song and was filling his goblet, Neith stepped away from the window and spoke.
“The beastmen will come. Not tomorrow - I saw none within a dozen miles of here. But they will come. And when they do, it will be in numbers greater than last time.” She regarded the others as though she expected them to gainsay her.
Minerva sighed. She had hoped they could pass at least this one night in peace. Leave the grim counsels until the morrow. Yet she was not surprised at the other woman’s anger. Neith was the last living hero of the Verdant Realm. Parsifal and the Green Pearl had fallen when the beastmen set the forest aflame with their cruel machines two years ago.
“The mountain itself is indefensible,” said Hamilcar. “At the last assembly, the beastmen surged up the slopes and breached the entrance to the citadel. And we were twenty-one of us then. We must defend the citadel only.” He set his elbows on the table. “I’ve seen the machines they employ now, that they’ve dug out of the vaults Caradoc revealed to them, curse his bones. They can scour a hillside clean in an hour. And there are more beastmen every year, spawned in their villages of logs and smoke. Last autumn they nearly overran my fortress of Eryx before my retainers and I drove them off.”
“Bah, I have no such problems,” said Goldry. “There is not a beastman within two days ride of Tumbling Water. I’ve told you not to let them breed and multiply, Hamilcar. I ride out in my chariot every fortnight and hunt them for sport. You may visit any time it pleases, and I will feast and entertain you until you are sated with all the good things in this world. But keep your beastman retainers at Eryx. Though they quarter down in the stables, I can smell the ones you brought from here.”
Such words would provoke a hot response from most heroes, thought Minerva. Even blows. However, Hamilcar was not easily roused to anger, his lean face rarely betrayed his feelings. And Goldry’s candour had no malice behind it.
He had nettled Hamilcar, though. “I do not have the great hounds your mother bred for you, Goldry. Nor the high mountains to shield me. I must look to my security with cunning and resourcefulness. These retainers of mine are as loyal as your hounds, and a good deal more intelligent. If properly selected and trained, given discipline and nourishing food, beastmen can make useful servants.”
“You sound like Caradoc!” spat Neith. “Clothe them. Feed them. Teach them. They learned all right. They learned how to use the accursed machines Caradoc uncovered in the vaults. Those machines that turned the Verdant Realm to cinders, and left the bones of our comrades black and charred.” Neith had never been cheerful, thought Minerva. A solitary creature more at home under a leafy canopy than in a feasting hall. Now she was like an owl whose nest has been destroyed, eggs smashed.
“I do not let any machines into Eryx,” averred Hamilcar. “My retainers use blades and armour of iron. And not the heirloom arms I keep in my hall, but crude stuff made by their own hands. Though you would marvel to see how clever they can be with their hands if given time to learn.” Neith cast him a black look, and he raised his hands. “I am not Caradoc. Do not insult me with that aspersion. He was mad. Not only did he teach the beastmen, he turned them against his own brethren. Do you think I am a monster like he?”
“No,” said Minerva. “You are not a monster, Hamilcar. You have always been among the cleverest of us, and the most concerned for the welfare of all. You have stayed in a region which others abandoned to find refuge in forests, mountains, or haunted ruins. That means you have more contact with the beastmen than we do. We value and need your counsel.”
Hamilcar nodded to acknowledge her words, and stroked his jaw. Logs popped as the fire died down. Goldry strode over and nudged them back to life with his foot.
“Let us finish this amphora of good wine,” said Minerva. “And drink another when it is done. I’d like to see the sunrise from the terrace of this citadel once again.”
