Serpent and Stone

Chapter 9

It took me the entire rest of the day to return to the site of the battle and bury the soldiers properly. Moving fast, I reached the forest battlefield in less than two hours. The grueling part was the actual act of digging the graves. I judged that there were perhaps two dozen dead soldiers to bury, their bodies littered across the clearing in the woods.

It had been less than a full day since they had been killed in battle, but already the stench of the dead was almost unbearable. I gagged as I walked between their limp forms upon the grass, carefully stepping over several severed limbs. My snakes ducked themselves into my neck, fruitlessly trying to escape from the horrifying stench of blood, rot, and decay.

If it weren't for the insignia on their shields and armor, I would have never known which man had been fighting for which king. I recognized the Argive men by the carving of a snarling wolf etched onto their shield's. It was the unquestioned symbol of the city of Argos, the Apollo Lykeius. In the very ancient days, a great prince of Argos had sought out an oracle to ask if he would be king. The oracle told him to return home and wait for a wolf to attack the bull of his herd. If the wolf prevailed, the prince would indeed become king. Surely enough, Apollo himself came as a wolf to attack the prince's herd, and he easily bested the bull. The prince became king of Argos and devoted the city to Apollo Lykeius, Apollo the Wolf, ever since.

I knew nothing of the city Seriphos which Perseus had mentioned, but I gathered that the shields decorated with a glittering, scaled fish marked the men as warriors from Seriphos. I did not look any further than the symbols on their armor- they were all buried in the same grave.

There was already a natural ditch nearby the site, formed from a recent landslide down the mountain. I used my shovel to widen it out a bit further, which in itself took several hours.

I tried to hold my breath and avert my eyes as I dragged each of the many bodies into the grave, but it was impossible not to see the blank, lifeless eyes, the yellowing skin just beginning to rot away. I gagged at the sight and hurried to finish the task as fast as possible.

I buried them with all of the swords and spears they had brought with them, wanting no trace of battle remaining. I heaved and pushed the last of them, a burly man with a bald head, into the ditch. I stayed there on my knees at the edge of the grave, huffing heavily with my exertion and wiping the blood and dirt onto the skirt of my chiton.

A breeze swept in from the sea, rustling the leaves in the trees and bringing a lingering scent of salt. Grunting, I pushed myself back to my feet. I still needed to cover the dirt back over the bodies. Once the task was finished, the rite would be complete. The spirits of the soldiers would awaken at the edge of the underworld, where Charon the ferryman would meet them with his skeletal boat and thin smile. Because their bodies had been properly buried, Charon would allow them passage across the River Styx and into the afterlife. It gave me a small bit of comfort, to know that my efforts here, however grueling, had helped the souls of these men.

I pushed the mounds of dirt into the hole with my blistered hands. Slowly, the blank eyes and limp bodies disappeared beneath the soil. I packed down the dirt, making sure it wasn't loose. The rite would be no good if animals came and uncovered the bodies.

It was already dark out when I at last finished the burial, exhausted and covered with cuts and scrapes. The moon stared down from a black sky, the stars winking at me among the scattered clouds. I hesitated at the grave site for a moment. I should say a prayer for them, as was proper, but my mind seethed at the idea of praying to any of the arrogant Olympians. I had sworn to myself they would never hear my prayers again.

In the end, I begrudgingly made a compromise with myself. I stood at the edge of the grave and closed my eyes, mumbling a quiet prayer to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. I asked her to guide the souls of the soldiers safely across the River Styx and into her kingdom, beseeched her to let the judges of the dead assess them with grace and leniency.

Though she was an Olympian like all the others, I had always empathized with the Queen of the Underworld and her tragic story. Like me, she had been the innocent victim of a god's selfishness and cruelty. Hades, the god of the dead, had tricked her into spending half of her eternity with him in the underworld, without the sun to warm her face or the high mountain breeze to cleanse her heart. Persephone's villain had been Hades while mine was Athena. In the end, though, all of the Olympian gods and goddesses were the same. Cold, vindictive beings obsessed with bending all around them to their will.

We are still better than them, I added in at the end of my prayer, my own small message of hope to the Queen of the Dead. If nothing else, we have our pride and our dignity.

I did not know if she received my prayer, but I gave the grave one last glance and turned from the spot. As I moved away from the clearing, I thought I caught the fading scent of narcissus flowers on the breeze.

I paused only a few steps outside of the clearing, the glint of an object in the moonlight catching my eye. Unable to hold back my curiosity, I moved toward it and knelt in the grass to look closer. It was a beautiful bronze sword, half buried in the dirt. I had been careful to bury all of the weapons and gear of the soldiers with them, but this sword, farther away than the others, must have escaped my notice.

I gripped the handle of the sword and lifted it out of the ground. It was heavy in my palm, certainly too much for me to wield one-handed. The blade was simple and unadorned, but nonetheless as strong and sharp as it needed to be.

I stood back up, hefting the blade between my hands as I considered the weapon. My mother had taught me how to fight, in case I ever needed to defend myself, but we had only ever trained with the wooden staves housed in the temple. I could twirl a staff around me as easily as a bird flapped its wings. I had no doubts in my ability to use it as a weapon of defense.

However, staves were only good for downing men, not killing them. But a sword, a length of bronze capable of ripping through flesh and bone in an instant, was meant for death.

Perseus' words from earlier ringed in my ear. They will be back. They won't give up their prize so easily.

My jaw tightened, as the images from my childhood nightmares flashed through my mind. Helmeted men storming my home, swords flashing and mouths snarling. Some of them turned to stone with horrified screams, but the ones who kept their eyes closed reached me. A man raised a sword, readying to bring it down upon my neck...

My grip tightened upon the sword's hilt. I had made my decision to bring it back to the temple with me. I would begin to train with it, for as long as I could.

I had the feeling that I would soon need to use it.