Goddess of Yesterday Read Online Free PDF Page B

grandchildren learn it?
    I peered between the rocks.
    There was still some fighting on the sand. A few miners had run up the beaches to attack the enemy instead of heading for high ground. Among them was our king. Had he glanced up from his ruined mine and assumed, as I had, that these red-sailed ships were his own?
    Our harbor master, badly wounded, was thrown to the ground. The pirate placed a boot on his head, holding down the skull and getting it at the right angle. Then he slit the throat as easily as a priest slits the throat of a lamb.
    But my hostage father the king would not surrender. He had a shield, presumably ripped from the body of a pirate he had killed. It was not as large as his own shield. He had a sword also, and whether it was his or another's I did not know.
    Most of the pirates wore helmets whose horsehair plumes ran front to rear, extending the line of the nose back to the tip of the spine. But this warrior who fought my hostage father had plumes from side to side, arching around his head like a rising sun. The front of his helmet bulged out in a great metal nose, and the eye openings were vertical slices, like ravines in a mountain.
    Nicander was the only one of our people left on his feet. He wore no armor. He had been cut several times.
    Of course the pirates could have surrounded the king and done away with him easily. But he wished to die well and they wished to kill well, so the enemy did not interfere with the duel, but paused to admire.
    I sang my king's praises in my heart: how he thrust and forced himself forward. He had badly wounded the foe, goring him in the side. Blood cascaded down the man's legs. The foe was weakening. My hostage father would win.
    It would not change the battle and it would not keep him alive, for another of the enemy would continue the duel, but at least Nicander would die in glory.
    And then a pirate stabbed the king in the back, denying him the chance to die as a warrior. He died as a slave dies.
    Even the pirates were furious, especially the crossplumed warrior. “You had no right! He was my man!”
    “My brother, you are badly hurt. I cannot let you be killed.” The backstabber yanked his dagger out of my king'sback. Tearing strips from his own cape, he bound up his brother's gashes.
    No poet can sing of the foe being stabbed in the back. The bard threw up his hands in disgust. His song was ruined. “It is a shivery thing to kill a prince of royal blood that way,” he shouted from the ship. “You will call down the gods' wrath.”
    The backstabber shrugged, although it is not good to shrug when gods are mentioned.
    The battle ended. There were none of us left to fight. The town burned. The pirates waited for the fire to die down so they could go back for Nicander's treasure. Some of them sat in the sand, cleaning blood and gore off armor and weapons. Others gathered their own dead for a pyre. They sank several ships, which puzzled me until I decided that enough of their men had been killed that they were short on rowers. They were not leaving any ship for survivors to use.
    In dories they rowed out those women they were taking captive. They made Queen Petra walk over her husband's body. They did not have Callisto.
    The sun slid low in the sky, and the sky turned gaudy red. Great black shadows shot behind the ships.
    Grinning, the backstabber kicked Nicander's body. He knew the dead man was a king. He knew kings are sacred. He knew and was glad that a king's body would go unburied, a terrible ending for a fine life.
    In the water, circling my legs, was an octopus.
    It was not one of the small dainty ones. It was one of the big strong ones, its legs as long as I am tall.
    I had a horror of the octopus—its soft swollen body, its hundreds of fleshy sucking cups, its eyes staring in differentdirections. I wouldn't eat it, although everyone else loved sliced octopus, fried in oil and served hot and salty with rosemary and thyme.
    They say Medusa's hair was made of