Capricornus.
« Aldebaran, I cannot explain it in full." Antonia was saying, " It would take too long. You will just have to trust us. Trust Melina if you can't me."
The Taurus Saint hesitated between frowning deeply and scratching his head. It was not a matter of trust for him but one of what was right.
When the fighting was over, and all Aleksej's men lay dead except the Lord of Blue Graad himself who had cautiously withdrawn halfway the proceedings, the Opiuchus Saint had ordered the complete evacuation of Rodorio. To Aldebaran's surprise, a great number of villagers, mainly young people between fifteen and twenty immediately got themselves organised, producing already prepared bundles and packs of food and cherished objects they did not want to leave behind. Obviously it was something they had been expecting.
The village priest however had protested, but Antonia, hands on hips, had looked him squarely in the eye and said: " There are two ways to go about this. Either you shut up and come along nicely, or you can stay and rot for all I care. You have three minutes to think it over. After that, we leave, with or without you. But if you dare interfere…"
She had left the threat hanging.
As several older villagers backed up their priest, she had merely shrugged: " Fine, be like sheep, do Sanctuary's bidding, let your daughters be used and abused. Be aware of one thing though: he (she pointed at the now trembling priest) he serves two masters: Jesus Christ and Athena. I doubt that the Patriarch of Athens would approve of this man's dealings with a pagan Goddess, if he knew, so he probably doesn't. What kind of Christian does that make your pope? What kind you?"
"You are a liar and a cheat yourself!" had snarled one of the old women
"Oh, so you do admit that he is one!"
"You wear the Sacred Cloth!"
"Sanctuary made me, and pressed me into the Cloth. San Antonio willing, I shall turn Athena's own weapons against her and unmake Sanctuary. For the future of Rodorio's children!"
"Bitch! Whore! We serve Sanctuary, we are proud to do so: it is our duty and an honour."
"Honour my foot! " had cried Melina, "Perhaps you have grown so old that you have forgotten how it was for a young and pretty girl in servitude, you ugly old bat! Perhaps you have closed your eyes to what it has been like these last fourteen years, or perhaps you want us to suffer out of spite because you are not so young and attractive anymore that the Saints will chose you. Perhaps you liked going flat on you back and spreading your legs for every good-looking Saint that asked you."
The old woman slapped her.
"I bore three fine sons to serve Athena. Two are guards and my youngest is a Silver!"
"That is not a recommendation." Antonia had remarked dryly.
Melina appealed to Aldebaran. "You were always kind and gentle with me. I felt protected. Then Antonia came and spoke of life outside Sanctuary, and I had hope of an existence other than grovelling and slaving for the Saints. What did they ever do in return for the food we provided by our labour? With their powers they could have assisted us growing better crops, but no, that was beneath them. I had dreams. I dreamed that you would take me away from here, of our children, growing up in freedom, going to a real school, being able to go where they pleased, children that would not be trained as murderers! I want to give them the choices neither of us ever had!"
Aldebaran came to a decision. The Taurus Saint had been a loyal follower of the Goddess, but he knew when to follow his heart. Melina had as much a publicly declared she loved him, and that was all he had ever wanted to hear.
Overjoyed, he grabbed hold of his girl, swept her up in his arms and kissed her abundantly. After a while when it dawned on him that he was doing it in full view of the entire village, he dropped her, and went beetroot.
"Sorry." he mumbled.
"Oh, you silly man!" laughed Melina, and then the little woman jumped up, hung around his neck and returned his kiss soundly.
"Prego!*" said Antonia, "This is all very nice and all, congratulations and everything, but could we please…?"
The two lovers let go of each other, smiling sheepishly. Their hands though remained clasped.
"Ever since, where Melina leads Pedro will follow! She can twist him round her little finger."
"One gets the feeling that he has replaced service to Athena with service to Melina. "
"Better that! Much better."
"You are selling him short. Because he's so big and string everyone takes for granted that he's stupid as well. But he grasped the situation in Rodorio better than Antonia or I did, and acted accordingly. We would never have gotten the evacuation started with those old folk being so mulish and all, if it hadn't been for him."
"Right!" shouted the Taurus Saint, loud enough for even the deafest inhabitant of Rodorio to hear, " Those who want to come have fifteen minutes to get ready! Hop to it!"
"Take only what is essential! Food and water will be provided." added Antonia, "Three miles out of Sanctuary, at the old Temple, Red Cross trucks will be waiting for you. You will have NATO protection, and you have all been granted the status of political refugees. This means that both the United Nations and the European Community will care for you. Until we get there I…" she paused, looked at Jane and Aldebaran who both nodded, " We will see you to safety."
"So get cracking!" bellowed the Taurus Saint.
The people of Rodorio scattered like frightened hens, including those who had protested earlier on. They were used to obedience, and when a Gold Saint, a Silver and a Bronze tell you to move, you move.
The priest however was of another mind altogether. He had enjoyed authority and prestige for far too long to let go that easily. Gathering up his robes he took to his heels in the direction of the Arena.
Jane unfurled her whip. "I'll stop him!"
"Leave him be. Buy the time he has arrived at the Pope's Hall and convinced Dokho into doing something about it, we will be long gone. "
"There is still Shaka. He can command the Temple Guards."
"If he does, you can use your whip on them."
"What if he comes in person?"
" Then we will have to deal with it, won't we?"
The words had barely left Antonia's mouth was the glow of a Saint's mighty Cosmos inundated the village.
"That didn't last long." muttered the young Italian woman, They are on to us already."
The three rebel Saints took up their battle stances: Taurus, with his arms crossed against his chest, eyes closed and head bend a little, Chamaeleon feet apart, whip at the horizontal in both hands, Opiuchus with arms raised at different level and claws out.
But it was not Shaka who had come.
It was Shura. He surveyed the corpse of the Warriors of Blue Graad strewn about the village square with supreme indifference, and said: " Pues**, that swine Aleksej told the truth! He came limping back, ordering me –me- to kill you all. It seems that I put my eggs in the wrong basket after all. Time to remove them, I think. Athena will be grateful when I bring her your heads."
"You can try!" hissed Jane. The Chamaeleon whip swirled and lashed out. Shura caught it in his left hand and gave it a jerk. The girl was bodily lifted and propelled up and over and hard into one of the small whitewashed houses of Rodorio.
"Houses? I would not dignify it with the name house. Hut, more likely, or hovel. No electricity, no running water, earthen floors, goats running in and out, lamentable hygiene, I don't know how they put up with it. If Greece in that respect is one of the more backward regions of Europe, Rodorio is the most backwards of Greece. The only good thing Sanctuary ever did for it was ensure it escaped the terror of the Colonels and that it didn't pay any taxes…"
"Hey! Any Belgian would sign for that!"
"Taxes is what gets the trash collected, the roads build and the clean water. Anyway, Sanctuary may actually have been worse than the Colonels: they would not care about such a backwater. Ironic isn't it? The rest of the world went demonstrating to get Theodorakis out of prison, and nobody had the slightest that there was something worse than a fascist regime in Greece. And just think of all the aid the country received after they joined the EEC in 1981, which Rodorio missed out on!"
"Oh well, they can make a fortune in the tourist trade now. When Skippy and her archaeology team has declared the remains open to the public, they will be thronging in. I can see the signs: 'Authentic Greek village near a vast recently discovered religious complex'."
"God! What a prospect! They might wish for the good old days of the Saints…"
" No they won't No-one who has tasted of freedom could."
Not as sturdily build as the Temples, the wall gave way.
"There are people inside!" cried Antonia, " Aldebaran, take on that maniac, will you, I'll see the Rodorians safe."
The huge Gold Saint gave a brief nod. Then he announced to his zodiacal counterpart: " I am your opponent."
"Shura sniggered. " Do you imagine the Horns of the Bull, or rather his single remaining horn, is stronger than the horns of Capricorn? You may be heavier than I, but I am nimbler. Besides, you lost to the mere Bronze that was Seiya at the time, to Sorrent the Marina and to those measly Spectres, what does that make you? Wait: I have it: dead."
"Shura made a fatal mistake there. He had always preferred and relied on Excalibur, and so neglected his 'Jumping Stone' technique. It was a weak form of attack. The Taurus defence would have held forever. He realised that after a while, and sought to draw Pedro out. Had there not been the villagers their combat would have lasted a thousand days and nights. Shorter, probably, depending on Shura's stamina. Taurus' endurance was enough to withstand twice that period."
"He would not have made a good matador, for all that he was Spanish."
"On the contrary, he would have made an excellent one. In a bull fight the poor beast is wearied out by men with spears on horseback, then weakened with pain as sharp stakes are pricked into the back of their neck, wearied further by cape-waving from those prancing peacocks who imagine themselves heroes but who can always be saved by another fellow with a cape when the bull comes too close; and when the creature is already tottering on his feet the coup-de-grace is given. Personally I would cheer every bull that succeeds in gutting his tormentor, may he die slowly and painfully. "
"Shun! What an uncharitable thought coming from you!"
"Sorry, Nastassia my love, I saw a programme on bull-fighting in Spain on television the other day"
"A Corrida is not what Pedro would call a bull-fight either, and he should know. His training consisted of taking on bulls with his bare hands, and from the bull's point of view, which after all never asked for nor ever provoked a fight, that was bad enough. Anyway they stood a better chance killing him that the other way round. At least, when he was little."
"It is hard to imagine him ever having been little…"
"What bother's me about that combat between Capricorn and Taurus us that Shura fooled us into believing he had changed. He did fight for Athena against Hades, leastways, he did not team up with Deathmask and Aphrodite at the time."
"He probably reckoned the Athena would come up trumps like she had done in the last war, back in the Eighteenth century. Aleksej's views of the strong domineering the weak met his own fairly swell, so for a while he sided with the Blue Graaders. People don't change overnight. He may have been impressed with Shiryu, and admitted being wrong, but his essential philosophy remained the same. So did his utter ruthlessness. He admired strength above all."
"The bastard."
When is direct attack did not affect the Taurus Saint in the slightest, Capricornus sought a better target.
At his appearance, several villagers had stopped to watch at a fearful distance. Among them was the old woman that had called Antonia names. At the sight of the Gold Saint taking on what to her still were rebels, she preferred to wait for the outcome and make sure that she was on the side of the winner. That decision cost her and those standing near her their lives.
They did not have time to scream.
"One…by…one!" panted the Capricornus Saint, by now somewhat breathless with effort,
"The whole village, unless you surrender!"
Aldebaran had no choice. He changed position, and charged.
Rodorio lighted up and shook with the clash of the two combatants.
Taurus lost his other horn. His opponent suffered a severe nosebleed.
"Is that the best you can do, hijo de toro***? " sneered the Spaniard.
And then Shura spat out blood. Aldebaran had broken three of his ribs, and one had punctured a lung.
He should have died there and then.
Pain can do strange things to the human body though, especially when that human is a Saint. Ordinary people will go in shock. Others, due to an extra boost of life-saving adrenalin, will go berserk.
This was what happened to Shura. He rammed into Aldebaran head first. The spiky horns of his helmet skewered the Taurus Saint midriffs. Almost automatically Aldebaran's right knee went up, breaking what was left of Shura's nose and shattering a few teeth. The Capricornus Saint gave a whining snort. Using both arms and bringing them down like flails he sought and succeeded in breaking the other's shoulders. Aldebaran bellowed and clenched his hands around Shura's neck, ignoring the blinding pain he felt.
There was a soft but audible 'crack', and then there was silence, as both men slowly sank to the ground, like lovers in a grisly embrace.
To be continued.
Author's notes:
*Prego: 'please' in Italian
**Pues : 'So' or 'But' in Spanish
***Hijo de toro: 'son of a bull' in Spanish (meant to be an insult like 'hijo de puta' no translation needed I think?)
On April the 21st, Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos launched a Coup d'état against the government of King Constantine II and Prime Minister Papandreou. The bloody military junta known as 'the Colonels' lasted until 1974. Mikis Theodorakis was the most famous political prisoner at the time.