Chapter One

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Excerpt from ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake

Leonidas felt his way down the crevice into the cave.  His footsteps were as quiet as he could make them.  One hand felt the carved rock wall, the other was on the hilt of his scimitar.  Truthfully, he wished he had an axe instead.

During the confusion of the night before, many things had happened.  Fighting, fleeing, choking, burning… It was a night where it felt like the gods themselves were on fire. His heart was sick with the smell of the people who had been burned to death.  His head was like a child’s rattle.  The stones inside were his half-memories.  The general of the King’s army was dead.  His head had rolled away, falling down steps one at a time.  The Queen’s screams sounded exactly the same as the screams peasant women made when their sons were put to death.  It was so exactly the same that it made Leonidas want to make a sound himself, but if he started screaming, he might never stop.

So much confusion…

Leonidas had forgotten many things, but the one thing he remembered was his brother, Ciphas, who was a eunuch in the King’s harem.  He was a guard.  The ladies in the harem were supposed to be kept alive.  They were supposed to be given out as trophies after the rebellion, once the King was confirmed dead.  Every rebel promised beautiful women to his followers.  That reality put his brother in immediate danger.

Leonidas was an army man under the King’s flag.  He had avoided being caught or killed.  He wasn’t overly important, no decent rank, not because he wasn’t an excellent soldier, but because the older men kept him down.  So jealous they were of power, before the coup, he was daily astonished that he didn’t find a blade in his side.  Rather than that, they wanted to see him removed from the ranks that guarded the capital and sent to a place where he was no threat to their power.  Another perfect place was by his brother’s side… As a eunuch.  That hadn’t happened.

Earlier, when Leonidas arrived at the harem, he saw that it had been ransacked.  The women were gone.  The guards were gone.  His brother was gone.

Leonidas had spent the night searching the palace, the city, and everywhere else for Ciphas, but he had found no one from the harem.

Finally, he met a disoriented soldier who told him a weird tale of the most beautiful woman in the world. It seemed the plan to distribute the King’s wives among the rebels as trophies at a ceremony had been forgotten in the dizzying madness of the night before.  The soldier had seen the women collected, bound, and completely stolen away. That was… all but one.  The most beautiful woman in the harem was rescued by a eunuch.  He had taken her and fled.  The description of the eunuch matched Ciphas.  The woman, more beautiful than the Queen, had been captured along with her guard and tossed in a pit with starving tigers because that was an ending that fit their cooperation perfectly.

“If she was so beautiful, why didn’t they take her?” Leonidas asked the soldier.

The man laughed, showing the gaps in his yellow smile.  “They couldn’t touch her.”

“Why?  Because of the guard?” Leonidas demanded.

“No.  He was easy to take.  They threw them to the tiger because they could only order her around at sword’s point.”

Leonidas was confused.  “Why?”

“Oh, you know…” he trailed off.  “She was…”  The man’s voice abruptly stopped, and it seemed to Leonidas that the man was choking on his own words.  

Why was he choking?  

Unwilling to let the man die in front of him, Leonidas rammed his fingers between the man’s lips and tried to clear his airways.  There was nothing in his mouth or his throat.  Outside, there was nothing around his neck, but the words hissed and died on his tongue.  

Leonidas was disturbed, but only for a moment.  It was a peaceful death compared to the horror of the night before.  As Leonidas examined the dead soldier, he saw blood seeping from between the man’s forearms that were crossed over his torso.  It was a bloody gash from the night before that killed him.  

Death came with every flap of the raven’s wing on the night the rebels struck.

Leonidas knew where the tiger den was.  With his hand on his sword, he rushed there.  Hefting the plank that secured the door, he swung it open.  Stairs led down into the pit.  The morning light peered through the buildings and gave fresh light to the way he must descend.

In the diminished light of the cave, he could see the striped figure on the floor.  As he got closer, his courage increased.  Was the tiger dead?  Had his brother managed to kill it?  He got excited.  That would be magnificent.

“Is anyone here?” he whispered.

“I’m here,” a voice answered him, but it was not Ciphas.  

Leonidas turned to the sound of the voice, but what he saw in the half-light did not make sense.  It looked like a woman was resting in the arms of the tiger.  She stroked the striped coat and rose to her feet as gracefully as a deer.  The tiger’s chest heaved in breath as it stood up too, following her on four paws.  

Leonidas could not see her well.  He did not want to see her.  He only realised that she was the woman from the king’s harem whom the soldier had identified.  She was someone his brother would have fought to protect.  He was close.

Leonidas drew his sword.  “I’ll hold the animal back while you join me on the stairs.”

“Put your sword away.  I am not in danger,” she replied, her face still in shadow.

“Is it safe?” Leonidas asked, still confused.  

“Yes.  It’s quite safe.  The tiger will not attack… For now.”  She stepped past several corpses and, grasping the ruff of the tiger’s neck, she pulled him along with her like a dog until the animal came on his own.  “Thank you for opening the door,” she said as she stepped past Leonidas.  She put her body between him and the tiger as she ascended the stairs.

Leonidas did not follow her.  He went further into the pit.  The light was increasing by the moment as the sun rose.  He found three dead men, two of them were largely eaten, one left mostly untouched, except where the veins at his throat had been slashed.  Two wore the arm bands of the rebels.  They were the ones the tiger had eaten.

Leonidas steeled himself in the process of identifying the last man.  He wore the uniform of a harem guard.  Leonidas heaved one final breath of courage and bent to turn the final corpse onto its back.  

It was not his brother.  It was a man he’d never seen before.  

Leonidas abandoned the scene and tore up the stairs into the morning light.