Black Ships (7 page)

“What do you see?” Aeneas said gently. He had sat down beside me.

“Sparks,” I said. “Sparks flying from an altar. You will raise an altar at the other end of the world, at journey’s end beyond the sea. There are many roads between here and there, and not all of them are kind. But some of them lead to this city you must build.”

“A new city?” he said.

“You have said it yourself,” I said. “Wilusa is lost. We cannot live upon the sea. So we must build a new city far from our enemies.”

I shivered. Her hand on me was too much. I had not eaten since yesterday evening, and She had worn me like a cloak.

Aeneas drew his own mantle around me. “You should rest,” he said. “I do not know what battles you have fought today.”

“I am all right,” I said. “Though perhaps you are right that I should eat something, Prince Aeneas.”

“Come to the fire where they are cooking,” he said, drawing me to my feet with his hands. “There is fresh bread from Pylos, and a stew of lentils with greens in it. And fresh fish roasted above the coals.”

My mouth watered at the sound of it. Behind me, some of the dancers were lamenting, their cries mingling with the drums, calling encouragement to the two men who must find the River.

“I should stay until the fire dies,” I said.

“You can come back,” he said.

I was a little unsteady on my feet. “As you say, Prince Aeneas.”

“Call me Neas, as my men do,” he said. “And give me your hand. How will it look for the Avatar of Death to fall flat on her face?”

I stifled a laugh. “Not so well, in truth.” I took his hand and let him lead me to the fire.

ON THE WAVES

W
e slept on the beach that night. I woke cold and cramped and went to join the knot of women who were tending the fire. They drew back from me and did not speak, and I did not know what to say. I had never been much in the company of women except for those of the temple, and since the accident that broke my leg, I had not really had friends, girls who were my age. Perhaps it was because I was set apart by my dedication. Perhaps it was because I would never be a wife or the mother of a family, and since those things are women’s life, we had little to talk about. So I did not know what to say and sat there silent and still.

At last one who had known me in childhood reached out and gave me some of the bread from yesterday that they were eating. “She was Gull,” she said. “Her mother was a boatbuilder’s daughter in the Lower City. I remember her well. She died of a snakebite several years ago. Her mother gave her to the Shrine when she was a child.”

Several of them shifted then, looked at me less suspiciously. I took the bread. “Thank you,” I said. “I remember you from when I worked the flax as a child. Your name is Lide. You had a little boy.”

“He is here,” she said. “He’s nine years old now. And I have a younger son too. I never thought our people would come.”

“They have come too late for my mother,” I said. “And for so many. Eighteen years is a long time.”

“Are you so young then?” one of the women asked, a light-haired girl younger than I. “I thought you were very old.”

“She is very old,” I said. “I am not. My name was Gull, but now it is Pythia.”

“Is it true that you called down winds from the sky and struck the Achaians dumb? So that they didn’t resist our men at all?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. “There was a truce.”

Lide nodded. “That was well done. Otherwise many more men would have died before it was over, and we by the flax river might not have been saved, because who would have known where we were or how to send for us?”

“Did everyone come?” I asked.

She shook her head. “There were four who wanted to stay with men they have there. They stayed, and their children too. But all the women who were taken in the war this summer came.”

That did not surprise me.

W
E SAILED
at full morning, leaving the ashes of the pyre on the beach. As we were preparing to leave, Aeneas came to me. “If it suits you, Pythia, it suits me well for you to remain on
Dolphin.
Space is tight on the ships, and Xandros is the only one with a private cabin for you. He has given you his cabin in the prow, and he will sleep with the other sailors. I should give you mine on
Seven Sisters,
but...”

“I know,” I said. “You have your son aboard, and you must have a place for him.”

He nodded. “Is that well, then?”

I agreed, thinking it easier to continue on
Dolphin
rather than start over on some other ship.

We went south along the coast all that day, passing villages I knew the names of, villages that owed arms and service to Pylos. Before darkness we crossed the gulf and the shores beyond were lands I didn’t know.

Much as he disliked it, Aeneas brought us in to land on the mainland. There were no islands that were suitable, so the best we could do was a stretch of beach that was sandy and not right next to a town.

This night was very different. The fires were kept low, and the men took turns in arms around the camp, watch and watch alike, all night long. The men of
Hunter
had the first watch, and did not sit down to eat. After moonrise, when everyone was stretching out on the sands to sleep, the men of
Lady’s Eyes
took the watch.
Pearl
’s crew would relieve them before dawn.

I wasn’t sure where I should be, so I stretched my mantle on the sand near the others from
Dolphin.
I lay on my back and looked up at the moon, still waxing and growing brighter each night. It was strange to sleep this way, on sand under the open sky. The ocean was very loud, and all around me were the noises of a great crowd of people, snores and the occasional cry of a child, whispers, shuffles. I had slept for years in the darkness of the caves, and to sleep like this under the sky was both bright and strange. I rolled over, trying to block the moonlight with my mantle.

Xandros was a few feet away. He was not sleeping either. I could see the bright gleam of his open eyes. “You’re not tired?” I whispered.

“It’s hard to sleep on a strange shore,” he said. “When any minute the men of this place might fall upon you.”

“So why don’t we sleep at sea?” I asked.

“It’s dangerous,” he said. “We can’t anchor except in shallow water, and if we don’t we might drift apart in the night. We can’t have fires except in the braziers on the warships. There’s no water for washing. And people need to move about, relieve themselves. But we’re vulnerable on land.”

I heard the soft shuffle of
Lady’s Eyes’
men patrolling slowly around the edge of the camp. “Wouldn’t it be hard to attack a camp like this with the moonlight this bright? The sentries would see you. Wouldn’t a moonless night make more sense?”

“It would,” he said, “but people don’t always make sense.” There was something in his voice that was amused. “Did they school you in war at the Shrine?”

“No,” I said. “They taught me how to look at the world and see what is plain before me.”

“I meant no offense, Lady.”

“Were you schooled in war, then?”

Xandros shrugged, as much as one may while lying down. “I was a fisherman, and I went to sea with my father when I was old enough to be a help, not in the way. When I grew from boy to youth, my father talked to his friends and kinsmen, and they found a place for me on one of the warships, a rower’s bench on
Lady’s Eyes.
After a few years I moved to
Dolphin
and became the chanter.”

“The chanter?”

“The rower who sets the pace with the song. It has to be with the ship’s movements when she’s maneuvering. Otherwise the drum is fine, if it’s just going forward in a straight line.”

I remembered the differing songs, the way they wove in the orders for turns. “I see,” I said. “And how did you become captain?”

Xandros shifted. “The same man can’t stay at the tiller all day. It’s too tiring. I learned the orders for maneuvers and when to use them, so I took a turn at the tiller so the captain could rest. He was killed.”

“Getting out of the harbor,” I said, remembering my dream. “He was hit with a fire arrow.”

“Yes. I took the tiller, and later Neas made me captain.” His voice dropped a little. “I can’t imagine what my father would say, that I’m the captain of a warship. The last resort, of course, if the sons of fishermen captain ships like
Dolphin.
”

“She’s a beautiful ship,” I said.

“The most beautiful ship in the fleet,” he said. “One of the newest. She’s alive.”

“Yes,” I said. Everyone knows that ships have spirits. “Tell me about her,” I said. And he did, until he and I both slept.

T
HE NEXT DAY
was hot. We continued southeast along the coast, a little farther out to sea because here the beaches were rocky. By midday the sun was scorching, and the reflection off the water hurt my eyes. There wasn’t a breath of wind. The sailors rigged the sail flat over the forward deck to give the rowers some shade, and the children played listlessly in the shadow of it. Xandros had the rowers alternating benches, so that only half the oars on each side were in the water at once. It cut our speed in half, but half the men could rest at a time. They could not go on, hour on hour, in that heat.

My black robe seemed to trap the heat. I pulled it up in the belt, so that my legs were half uncovered, and pinned my hair away from my neck, but still the sweat crawled on me.

Xandros took turns at the tiller with another man, the burly man with a healing cut across his face, whose name was Kos. When Kos took the tiller, he came down and sat in the shade a moment. His shoulders were brown with sun, and like everyone else he reeked. I handed him the dipper for one of the water barrels lashed along the inside of the rail, and he drank thirstily.

“It’s hot,” I said. This was more than obvious.

He nodded shortly, the water dripping off his chin. “And we need to stay close in to land, so we can put in if we need to. Neas doesn’t like it either.”

“Doesn’t like what?” I asked. I had heard the shouted conversations a while ago, but there were always shouts back and forth between the ships when we rode close together like this.

“The sea,” he said. “Look there.”

I saw nothing and said so.

“There is no wind,” he said, “and yet the sea is disturbed and the waves are running a hand span below the oar ports. And there is a haze on the horizon. A storm is building where we cannot see it, and we must be able to put into a good shore before it breaks. See, there is
Seven Sisters
ahead and farthest in shore. Neas is looking for a place. But these beaches are too rocky. We will tear the bottoms out if we run in.”

He was right. An hour or so later, before the sun had begun to dip, we saw the clouds piling up on the horizon, white and billowing and deceptively far away. Shoreward, cliffs marked the edge of the land.

Dolphin
was meeting each wave, but the spray was flying up and soaking my feet fully the height of a man above the surface of the sea. The air seemed thick.

There was a shout ahead from
Hunter,
as far ahead as
Seven Sisters
but to the seaward of her. I squinted, holding up my hand to see what they had seen. White on the sea. Like a gull’s wings.

Ships. Several at least, some that I knew. I had seen them often in Pylos at the Blessing of Ships. And one in front with her sail set, running toward us on a wind that did not touch us yet, the
Chariot of the Sun.
“Neoptolemos,” I said.

I turned, yelling as I went. “Xandros!”

By the time I reached the stern,
Seven Sisters
had seen them too and was turning away from the shore, falling in line beside
Hunter.
Xandros had the tiller back, and Kos was on the prow.

The sail was unstretched from where it had been, and two men were hurriedly putting it back to the mast.

“All oars in on the stroke,” Xandros shouted.

The second pairs of oars hit the water, and
Dolphin
surged forward.

“Pick it up,” Xandros yelled. “We need to catch
Seven Sisters.
”

The drumbeat increased, like a racing heartbeat.

One of the women smothered the cooking fire in the brazier amidships. The children leaped about like startled birds.

Dolphin
gained on
Seven Sisters
and
Hunter.
Kos shouted across. I couldn’t hear what Neas said, but Kos did.

“He says pass the word back that the fishing boats are to set all sail and run before the wind, putting as much distance between them and the Achaians as possible.
Swift
is to go with them for escort, since she’s the smallest of the warships and the closest back in the line. We are to go forward between
Seven Sisters
and
Hunter. Pearl, Menace,
and
Cloud
are to be behind us, and
Winged Night
and
Lady’s Eyes
are to spread out to the seaward to come down upon them to ram.”

Xandros shouted the orders back to
Pearl,
three ships’ lengths behind us, a fragile link in a chain across the ocean.

Then he looked at me. “Get the women and children under cover in the stern or bow before we get in bow shot.”

I went forward and did so, sending most of them into the larger cabin at the stern. Kos’ sister, who was the thin girl from the kitchens at Pylos; the boy from the fishing boat, and his mother crammed into my cabin. We would all just fit. It was stifling hot.

The sound of the oars, the creaking of the ship, the drum, and the voices above were almost paralyzing.

Two days ago I had felt no fear. Now I felt it. I was shut in this cabin with nothing to do, while Death bore down upon us. I had no doubt that the men of Pylos had come to pay us for the raiding of their shores. Neoptolemos did not even need that pretext.

The ship shuddered. We were coming about. I could hear the shouted order for left side double quick.

Those men had been rowing in the hot sun all day. They must find the strength to row twice as fast, to stay with the drum. Quick thunking noises and a scream. They had peppered the foredeck with arrows. Those thuds were the arrows striking the boards above our heads, the scream meant someone was hit.

Splashing. Shouts.

Kos’ sister huddled in the very point of the prow, her hands in her mouth to stifle a scream. The other woman bent over her son, as though putting the fragile barrier of her body between him and the arrows above.

“Do you hear what they’re doing?” I said.

“I heard the captain just now,” she said. “We’re to pass close between two ships.”

Thunks again. Another volley of arrows all down the side of the ship.
Dolphin
bucked. Had we crossed someone’s wake? There was no way to make sense of the battle from down here.