The Jewelled Dagger

The ragged howl cut through the stillness of the night, jolting Grave from his sleep. He sat up, startled, staring into the darkness. He found himself gripping the edge of his blankets rigidly, his senses sharpened. But it was quiet, apart from the sighing of the wind, and the occasional calling of the night-birds. Relaxing somewhat, he lay back down. It had been a dream, a call from a nightmare. Nothing more.

Another shout broke the silence, and was accompanied by a battering at the barred door.

“If you have any mercy or compassion, let me in!”

Visions of spirits, night-ghouls, or treacherous sprites stilled Grave, but he got up nevertheless, pushing aside his blankets and heading for the door. It was a man’s plea, and the heavy weight of a man’s fist against the wood. And then it was a man’s heavy breath, panting with fear as he unbolted the door – and a man’s body falling in, collapsing into the warmth.

A swirl of snow followed him in, as well as the distant growls of a pack of wolves, hesitating on the edge of the forest. The door slammed shut, but not before the bite of winter air chilled the small room. The stranger lay still on the floor.

Grave moved over to the fireplace and crouched down, piling logs and kindling, collecting the flint from the mantelpiece. The crack of the stones seemed to stir the stranger from his place on the floor; he got himself up and shuffled over to the flames, warming his hands, shaking the dusting on snow from his cloak. He shivered there, staring into the flames, and when Grave hoisted an iron pot onto the fire, heating up a scraping of soup, he stared at it ravenously. His mouth dropped open once the aroma of meat and vegetables rose from the pot; and when it was spooned into a bowl, and placed in his hands, he gulped it down as though he hadn’t eaten for a week.

“Few would open their doors to a stranger on such a night.”

Grave started. Turning back to him, he saw the stranger draw himself up, unwrapping his thick cloak, and laying aside the ceramic bowl gently. It was not the voice of a starved beggar, or the bitter tones of a young runaway. He had the build and face of an older man, who had not suffered a harsh life. Even his hands were soft.

“What kind of man are you, that would take in a ragged stranger, and give him shelter, and the last scrapings of your pot, on such a night?”

Grave tilted his head and looked carefully at the stranger. “A different man from a week ago,” he answered heavily, and then pushed the man into the chair by the fire. “Fireplaces and guests are good for stories. I can see by the lines on your face that you’ve got a few of your own. Let me begin with one of mine.”

The stranger opened his mouth to protest, then shook his head, sighing. Grave grabbed two mugs hanging from hooks beneath the shuttered window, and settled them beside a corked jug of mead, before sitting a three-legged stool opposite the stranger.

He looked around at his modest room. “I guess you’d call me a poor man, looking at my home. Just a bed, a chair, and a fire for my needs. Even the barn behind the house needs thatching.” He smiled a little, looking at the scrubbed wooden floor, the herbs hanging by the window, the trunk at the foot of his bed, with his clothes folded neatly on top of it. “I can see you’re used to better things, a merchant’s house in town perhaps, or a prosperous inn.”

"I've been vagabond before now," the stranger retorted. "I spent long years hunting down my enemy, Cortese. I've known the life of both rich and poor, hunter - and hunted, too."

"Well, this is all I’ve known, and it has been good," Grave answered him quietly. "I’ve lived a simple life. I married a girl from my village, took care of her, and mourned her when she died. So I thought I knew everything about love.”

“We had a child together, who lived but a day,” Grave went on, and his face darkened a little. “So I thought I knew everything about loss, too.”

“I know about –“ the stranger began, his right fist gripping the edge of his cloak, suddenly. But then he was quiet.

“I was out in the woods, late autumn, when I saw a man lying on a bank of fallen leaves. All red and gold – and he was dark against them, so dark I almost mistook him for a shadow. Lucky for him I didn’t, though, because he was lying there wounded. I helped him up and took him back here. He’d had an arrow to his leg, though there hadn’t been a hunt in that forest since I was a boy. They don’t hunt there anymore, you know – “

“Because of Artemis,” the stranger snorted. “Yes, I’ve heard that tale too.”

“Well, whatever the truth of it is, the young man had an arrow to his leg, and I had to dig the thing out with my poor skill. He was quite ill afterwards, but he never reproached me for my poor efforts. I suppose he knew that it had to come out, no matter the pain.”

“Once he was up and about he helped me out, with the last of the autumn harvest, and the preparations for winter. He worked hard, although it was clear he’d never held a tool in his life. And he was so often staring at the road that snakes past my place that half the chores never got done.”

“What did he call himself, this man?” the stranger asked suddenly.

“Lyceus – why, what is it?” Grave broke off at the stranger’s indrawn breath.

“Nothing, go on.”

“He called himself Lyceus, when I asked him his name – as though he drew the words out of some ancient memory. He liked to hear it on my lips, I could tell – he smiled a little whenever I said it.”

“Once, when he’d laid aside the spade for the hundredth time one morning, I asked him whether he wouldn’t rather follow that road, before the winter snow covered it over. But he shook his head. He told me that – with my permission – he’d stay, until someone came for him. And when I asked who he meant, he told me the woman he had longed to kill.”

The stranger laughed a little bitterly. “I don’t suppose that was what you expected him to say.”

“No. I asked him whether he would kill her if she found him. To be honest, I don’t know what I would have done had he told me, yes.”

“Run,” the stranger suggested, pouring another measure of mead into his mug.

Grave smiled. “Perhaps. But he told me he could have killed her a thousand times, and yet again, he could not. So although he longed to kill her, in truth he simply longed for her.”

*****

“That’s your story?” The stranger laughed, acid in his voice.

“That’s part of it,” Grave said mildly. “The rest can wait.”

He watched as the stranger stood, his face bright from the fire’s heat. He stretched out, and moved to take his heavy coat off. Something bright tumbled from the cloth and clattered onto the wooden floor. The stranger made an ineffectual grab, but the knife was already in Grave’s large hand.

“Nice workmanship,” he commented gently. “Silver – and those are rubies in the hilt, aren’t they? It’s sharp, too.”

The stranger opened his mouth, then closed it again. He moved to the door and hung up his coat quietly.

“You’re right. There is a story there,” he said. Then he looked at Grave directly. “But no threat.”

Grave held his gaze, then nodded. He handed the dagger to the stranger, and watched as it was handled – not with affection or respect, but with something like distaste. There was a hesitation, and then the stranger placed the dagger onto the mantelpiece, where it glowed a little in the firelight.

“My name is Tor–“

“You don’t need to tell me your name,” Grave interrupted. “In these times . . .”

“These times, yes.” And the stranger laughed again. “Did you shake with fear when the gods left us? Did you rejoice, or did you tremble?”

“The gods have left us, you say? I’ve heard they’ve left Olympus, yes – but now they walk amongst us like men.”

“Like men. As though they have anything human about them,” the stranger snapped. “A god cannot love like a man, or give honestly, or – “

“Or kill?” Grave offered, watching the stranger’s eye turn to the dagger.

“That’s one thing they know well. They know how to kill –“ Then the stranger slumped and shook his head. “There’s my story, for you. It has no pretty words. I’m searching for someone, and I mean to kill them with that dagger.”

“Why that dagger?” Grave asked quietly.

And suddenly the stranger’s eye was bright. “Because he killed my sister with that blade, and he’ll know death by the very same touch.” Then he laughed, or choked - Grave was not certain which. "You know something funny? It was she who told me to get rid of revenge, get rid of anger. Oh, I'll be rid of it - once his blood dulls the gleam of this blade."

*****

There was a silence. Then Grave leant down and added another log to the fire.

“The woman came for him, before winter fell.”

A night-bird called; a wolf howled, and another echoed its howl.

“They sat here with me by the fire, and I told her about the wound, and the arrow which nearly cost Lyceus his life.” Grave coughed, and brought the mug to his lips. “She told me she’d aimed the arrow herself.”

“So did they fight it out in your presence?” the stranger asked, chuckling bitterly.

“No. Or yes. At least – they fought to tell me a story.”

“More stories –“

“They told me about a dagger.”

The stranger’s hands gripped together convulsively.

“It was strange, I could hardly credence what they were saying. Except they talked of the gods, and their struggles so far above us all. This woman faced them, for the life of her daughter. One by one she slew them, with a power even she knew nothing of. Only one opponent remained.”

The stranger got up, began to pace by the fire, his lips white.

“She was down on her knees before the great goddess of wisdom. She was there, her daughter, her friend on the floor beside her, dying. Wisdom would not save them. Even Love fled. She had the dagger in her hand, and it was pressed against her own neck.”

“And thus she died, and thus she died!”

“She was there beside me, man, just as you are.” Grave said carefully, and leant forward, warming his hands. “She told me War laid his hands on those the others sought to kill, and saved them. And so she was saved.”

“No. No, it was not so . . .”

“The dagger, covered with the blood of a god, stayed gripped in her hand when they all fell from Olympus. “ Grave finished contemplatively. “She must have dropped it with some of her other things, at the foot of the mount.” He paused. “She asked me to look out for it, if ever I saw it.”

*****

Grave left the man in the chair by the fire, and went to his own bed. When he woke the next morning, the door was ajar, the wood-pile stacked high, and the room empty, but for a jewelled dagger resting on the mantelpiece.

...h.o.m.e...
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