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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 undergrowth.

Utterly disheartened and defeated, the old priest let himself slip to the ground and sat propped up against a big trunk, uprooted like a little twig by some immense force. He had hoped not to abandon life before learning the truth, but now he felt his energies forsaking him on the shores of that dead water, although nothing had happened. No vague idea had formed in his mind, no sign had appeared before his eyes. His weariness weighed so heavily upon his eyelids that sleep finally overcame him and he sank back, head lolling and arms outspread. In his uneasy sleep he saw the deserted cities of his people crumbling into ruins, one after another; the canals filling with reeds, the palisades rotting away, swarms of rats invading the roads. A turbid grey sky covered all, swollen with disease. His closed eyes filled with tears and his heart brimmed with anguish.

But then he saw the black lagoon fill slowly up with mud and sand, becoming a swamp, first, and then a marsh, until it became solid ground and was covered by a forest of aged oaks. And over that land he saw that the sky was blue again, and the sun shone, and a new people descended from the wooded mountains to occupy the deserted plain. Many, many years. . but one day life would flourish again in the great valley of the Eridanus; the newcomers would mix with the last descendants of his unlucky people.

He saw men tilling the earth, digging canals and building cabins. Ripe wheat rippled in the summer sun and exuberant grapevines stretched their cluster-heavy shoots towards the sun.

He did not see the warrior of the flaming hair who had passed twice between the severed heads without harm, but he felt his shadow vanishing beyond the wooded mountains, beyond the blue summits.

The old man never stirred again, and the wind covered his wasted body with white down, like a larva in its cocoon. But his spirit was soaring with great butterfly wings over the sea of swaying reeds, over the waters of the Eridanus, high above the swollen grey clouds, through the pure, transparent air, towards the infinite light.

9

Diomedes advanced westward with his warriors, journeying up a muddy little river in the hopes of finding more welcoming lands and less hostile skies, but as soon as he had left his refuge and ventured on to open land, he immediately felt the presence of a hidden enemy who seemed to be everywhere.

By day the men would hear distant sounds, like animal cries, in the midst of the plain or the deep of the forests. By night, fleet, faint shadows passed in the glimmer of the moon; shapes, similar to beasts or fantastic birds, appeared out of nowhere before the sentinels who stood watch in the darkness, only to vanish like the creatures of a dream.

Telephus, the Hittite slave, warned everyone to stay alert; to take care not to be lured away from the camp or guard post. He said that he wouldn’t be provoked by a shadow; crossing swords was the only way to challenge him. No flimsy shade could frighten him; he had never heard of anyone being killed by an apparition or a ghost. Only a good span of bronze or iron would do that job.

‘You don’t believe in invisible creatures and gods, then?’ the Chnan asked him one evening as they were roasting a wild pig they had snared in a trap.

‘I believe in the gods of my land when I am there, but here. . who could ever desire to live in a place like this? There can be nothing but the spirits of animals or of trees here; nothing that can worry us. Stay within call and within reach, always, and no harm can come to you. I commanded a chariot squadron in the Hittite army, but I’ve had to patrol the mountains and forest of Toros and Katpatuka on foot, as well. Those places are crawling with fierce, treacherous savages. We simply watched each others’ backs; no one ever went out alone to look for water or forage for the pack animals.’