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Scene #98
He'd been careless. And now he was going to die for it.
Even as he dropped from the rope onto the desert sands outside
the city wall, Philos knew he wasn't going to make it. He'd known
it as he fled through the narrow streets, as he'd slid down the
rope of his escape route, known it like a cold sickness, a weakness
in his knees. He didn't have time. They were going to kill him.
Half an hour's start. It would be enough, if they would only
send the soldiers after him. But they wouldn't. He was their
worst kind of criminal—blasphemer, wielder of an unholy gift. They
wouldn't send soldiers after him. They'd send the maenads.
That thought set him off running as soon as he hit the ground, a
fast lope out across the desert sands where they swept glittering
under the morning sun. This early, heat was not yet beating up
from the sand to blind and bake him, but as the sun climbed higher
the moisture would evaporate from the air, the sand become hot as a
griddle-iron, the interior of a furnace of blazing white sand and
mercilessly cloudless sky. Already he was sweating from the
combined fear and exertion of the last half hour—another few hours
without rest or shade or water and he'd be dizzy, sun-sick,
helpless as a crawling beetle on a stove-top. He'd forced
himself to stay in good shape—homeless and in hiding or not, he'd
not been able to afford to let his muscles soften during the months
in the city—but he couldn't keep up this pace for more than another
half hour. And even if he could—he stumbled, now, fear clutching
at his joints so his knees weakened and he nearly fell—he had no
hope of outrunning the maenads. How could I be so stupid? How,
after all this time, could I let my guard down, make a mistake like
that, then, there? When he'd come to the city a year ago, as
spy and infiltrator, he'd known all too well that he needed to be
wary. He'd carried with him all the time the knowledge that he,
alone, could betray himself, give into his weakness, bring his
whole mission crashing into disaster. And for a year, a year, he'd
stayed on guard, he'd kept that from happening. I managed it
for that long, why could I not manage it even longer? He hadn't
so much as seen it coming, the mistake that had given him away.
Now, looking back—gods, he should have been so much more wary.
He'd seen people's faces change, seen them recognise what he
was, seen the fear and anger flash identically over every face.
One of them! Not a child, a man—he must have been hiding for
years. Hiding here. Amongst us. And he'd known, even as he
fled, he wasn't going to make it. Now, a mile outside the city
wall, he threw a glance upwards, squinting against the reflected
glitter of the sunlight. Far ahead, like a bank of storm clouds
against the sky, rose the first of the foothills that led to the
mountains. Two days' journey. He'd made it there before, but this
time…oh gods, they'd have his scent already—any minute now they'd
come pouring from the temple and it would all be over. There's
no hope. I should give up now, let it be done with faster. No
hope. I'm done. His pace slowed to walking speed, the soft
sand dragging at his feet. I can't escape. I can't escape him.
He saw me come back, he knows I seek to steal his servants and
sacrifices, overthrow his priests. He knows I'm guilty. No one
guilty can escape the god. He stopped walking. A sort of peace
fell around him, dull and deadening, the calm of just before a
storm. Death would find him here, unresisting, giving himself to
the god, obedient at the last if never before. It is only justice,
after all. Only what I deserve. It was the inevitability of
the thoughts that saved him, the words' sudden familiarity hitting
him like a slap across the eyes. How often had he had those
thoughts—how often had he fought them off? How often had they—all
the refugees—talked about how easily their minds were drawn back
into those long-familiar patterns? And how dead would I be if I'd
let myself listen to them before? The hold the priests had on
them all—raised in the city, in the caste system, not one of them
had managed to grow up free of it—it could not be brushed aside in
months, even years, of freedom. It was why he, one of the first
refugees, had been one of the very few who'd been able to risk
returning, able to try to help others escape. Those who'd
escaped more recently—they'd all known they couldn't do it.
Couldn't go back under the shadow of the temple. Not yet. Not
till the old patterns in which they'd walked had disappeared, blown
away like lines drawn in the sand. Even he, ten years out of
it, running for his life back to the village in the mountains that
had become his home, it could catch him still, make him believe he
had no real power of his own, tell him he'd do better to give
himself up, submit to the will—the vengeance—of the god. Well,
no. He'd not submit, not until they forced him. He set off,
running again, his thigh muscles protesting, his head already thick
with heat and thirst. And then, from behind him, from back
towards the city, shrill enough to drag ice-cold shivers down his
back, rose a wild wordless yelling. The voice of the maenad pack,
women who were no longer women, who had not been women for years,
blood-mad, incarnate claws of the god, set loose to hunt him down.
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