Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (2 page)

Mirurí threw up his arms and addressed the cloudless sky. “Pity me, O great sun! Shine a bit of your light into Birkurnár’s blind eyes! My brother,” he went on, turning his exasperated gaze on his dark companion, “have you been listening to anything I have said? I am your oldest and dearest friend! I am trying to do you a favor, as well as the bidding of my
maas
. I could have sold this singer of tales to a visiting Kanaqániyan, myself, several months ago. If only I had, I would be enjoying my wife’s cooking this morning, instead of dragging myself about the trading post, suffering from this terrible heat! But no, I thought of you, my friend. Did you not tell me just last year that slaves are so plentiful and so wretched, they are as cheap as ducks? Now, here I am, bringing you a chance to make a fine profit, and you throw it all away!”

“What profit?” the slender man shouted, growing angry. “Whoever this ragged sack of wine really was, across the Great Green Sea, he looks more like a baboon than a man, now! Whatever the nationality of my future customers, they will see these obvious defects and they will not buy him. If you want to be rid of him, my advice is to take him out into the desert, stake him there, and leave him to die.”

Just as furious, the heavy-set Mirurí cried, “
Ayá!
You are as blind as a moonless night! Look at that foot again, and that arm! What massive scars those are! Now, what does that tell you? It means that the wounds were serious, but not fatal. And why were they not fatal? I will explain, since your heart is as heavy as a boatload of limestone blocks. It is a sign that he was cared for, since he would have died otherwise. You see, these so-called defects are the very proof that he was high born!”

Birkurnár’s anger dissipated in an instant. He burst out laughing, throwing back his head so that all his bright teeth showed. “You never did know when to quit,” he sighed, when his mirth subsided. Still, he turned back toward the small group of men, close to the water’s edge without another glance at the disconsolate slave.

It was not the reaction that Mirurí had expected. He stood for a long moment, staring blankly at his departing customer’s dark back. Opening and closing his mouth soundlessly, he suddenly had a moment of enlightenment. Puckering his lips and furrowing his brow, he dragged Diwoméde by the upper arm toward the cluster of seamen. Beseeching now, Mirurí suggested, “You could do me a favor, Birkurnár.
Ayá
, you must, you must! In fact, I will owe you my very life, if you will only sell this worthless rat for me. Put him in a tunic to cover the bad shoulder. That will hide most of the other marks, too. Make him hold his head up and look at the sky. Claim that he was a king, as I did. People will trust you. They always listen when you speak. Make him sing a bit, too, to demonstrate his usefulness, despite the foot. Your customers are not nearly as clever as you are. Kanaqániyans, especially, are easily beguiled by first impressions. The buyer would not suspect a thing...”

“Not until he got the mongrel home and got a good look at him. No, I could do as you suggest. But with those arms and legs, he would still look as woolly as a sheep. There is no disguising that defective foot, either.” The look of distaste on Birkurnár’s face remained.

“These are not insurmountable obstacles,” Mirurí persisted, pushing Diwoméde before him, as the merchant began to turn away again. “If the hair is a problem, cut it. In fact, I will shave him myself, just out of friendship. I will not even charge you for the service.” He had a sudden inspiration. “I have it! Never mind the songs – tell them that he is a scribe!”

Birkurnár’s brilliant teeth shone again as he began to chuckle. “The sea people do not know how to write, my friend, and everyone knows it. I have never heard of a northern barbarian who made a decent musician, either, for that matter. The tales they sing all go like this, ‘One barbarian struck the other with an arrow; this one thrust his spear into that one’s backside.’ Then, the names are all so atrocious that you cannot make them out or tell the first from the last. It is deadly dull. No, my brother, you are not being honest with me. You want to be rid of this dog very badly, indeed. He must have done something terrible, something that reflects badly upon you. Either that, or there is some other serious defect that I cannot see.” He raised a suspicious eyebrow, looking from the slave to the would-be seller.

With an air of wounded innocence, Mirurí raised his soft hands to the sky, calling, “I swear by all the thousand gods of Mízriya!”

The dark-skinned merchant interrupted his friend with his loud laughter. “Put your hands down, Mirurí, and spare the gods your empty vows. Since you are my friend, I will make you a bargain. Shave this cur, dress him in a clean tunic, and get him to stand as tall and straight as a one-legged prisoner of war can. I will do my best to sell him at a good price. Whatever I get, I will share with you, giving you one-third of the goods. But, let us be reasonable. I cannot tell my regular customers such outright lies as you suggest. I might get away with the sale this morning. But, by this afternoon, the man would be back here at the market place, accompanied by all of his grown sons and his loyal retainers, demanding the return of his ox hides and his ivory. No, no, I must use a better strategy. I will make him a singer of tales, as you suggested earlier. Then, I will try passing him on to a foreign merchant, say, one traveling to Kanaqán. If the gods are with us, slave and master will both be out on the Great Green before any problem arises. Otherwise, we will have to take what we can get from a mine-owner of Upper Mízriya. Still, it may be some time before even they run out of war captives and come looking for new stock.”

As the two men argued, Diwoméde kept his head down, looking only at the hard, dry earth beneath his feet. Seeking refuge from the unpleasant situation in daydreams, he imagined his previous master, Satmarítu, a man who was still heavier than Mirurí and taller. This village headman, the
maas
, would be wearing fine, linen robes over his white kilt that morning, as always. The dark tattoos on his back and chest would show clearly through the diaphanous over-garment, just the same, bearing silent testimony to his Libúwan identify, despite the veneer of Mízriyan culture. Diwoméde pictured the big man as he would be that day, relaxing in the central courtyard of his villa, his “palace” as he preferred to call it. The
maas
would be enjoying the relative coolness of the early morning, sitting cross-legged in his low chair beneath the shade of seven palm trees. A Mízriyan wig of shoulder-length curls would be on his shaved head, a lump of sheep’s fat, perfumed and decked with bright ribbons, would sit atop that, to lend its fragrance and soothing unguent as it later melted in the rising heat of the day. The wealthy man’s retainers would be scurrying quietly to and fro, bringing their master freshly baked, flat bread on burnished, metal trays. Other trays would bear green onions, dates, and figs picked just before dawn in his private garden. When the large stomach was nearly filled with these, the servants would bring boiled snails and cups of warm beer, freshly brewed from barley grown in his own fields.

While the great man dined, his oldest daughter would sing Mízriyan love songs for his amusement, while his wife plucked the strings of a long-necked lyre imported from Kanaqán. Both women, tall and slender like most Libúwans, wore tight-fitting chemises beneath their translucent robes, in the Mízriyan fashion. But, unlike Satmarítu, they had no chairs. Instead, they knelt before him, sitting on their heels on brightly dyed rugs of felt, fashioned from the coarse coats of the local sheep.

Only when the
maas
had completely filled his belly would the women of his household begin their own meal. As they ate, in their turn, the big man would make his proclamations and announcements to his officials and to his family. “I have decided to sell your slave, daughter,” he would tell Náfriti. “I sent your uncle, Mirurí, to the market place, with him, this morning.” There would be no explanation of the decision, and he would listen to no arguments. Then he would turn to other matters, hearing disputes between nomadic shepherds and settled fishermen, presiding over marriage negotiations between dark cattle-herders of the hill country and light-skinned horsemen who plied the caravan routes. For every transaction, for every judgment he made, he would receive a payment in trade goods from the countryside. Over the course of the morning, as the heat increased, the stack of items would increase: animal hides; ivory from the great teeth of elephants and hippos; dried figs and dates; leather or linen bags filled with grain of various kinds; tough, little horses; ornamented drinking vessels made from ostrich eggs. To the
maas
, barbarian though Satmarítu might be, Diwoméde’s fate was a trifling thing, a matter quickly dispensed with, and instantly forgotten.

Diwoméde’s thoughts turned to the daughter of his former master, to Náfriti, in her pale, Mízriyan gown. Her many black braids would be coiled over the top of her head, true to the ancient Libúwan fashion. She was slim-hipped and graceful. He had been surprised at the strength of the desire the sight of her had provoked in him. Because a slave wore nothing at all, as a token of his low rank, his desire had been obvious. She had smiled at him, that first day. That had given him hope, the first he had known after two long years of disaster and humiliation. But it had not lasted long.

As Mirurí and Bikurnár settled down to the minor point of dickering over the percentage of goods each would take from his sale, Diwoméde sank to the ground under the weight of his memories. To his mind came thoughts of the disastrous battle two years earlier in the river delta, when the Great King of Mízriya had destroyed the fleet of Diwoméde’s countrymen. Mirurí was right about his captive being high born. Diwoméde had, indeed, commanded a fortress. He had, indeed, led men into battle on several occasions before that final, crushing defeat. Diwoméde thought of the many lives lost in that horrific fight, of comrades-in-arms who had gone down in the murky waters of that faraway river. So many had been lost that day, men strong and brave from all the kingdoms of Ak’áiwiya, to the north across the Great Green Sea. He could not count them, so great had been the slaughter. Still more soldiers had collapsed soon afterward, during the journey from the riverbank to the capital city of Mízriya. The fibrous ropes now binding his wrists reminded him of that long march in a file of prisoners, each man bound to the next by the neck, hands bound behind their backs. Laden with captured booty like donkeys, they had been driven south to the capital, to Manufrí. Into that high-walled citadel, larger by far than any that Diwoméde had ever seen before, the defeated warriors had been taken, before multitudes of white-robed Mízriyans and their Great King.

Before Diwoméde’s clouded eyes, the scenes played themselves out again. Priests with shaved heads and high officials in dark wigs showered their ruler’s army with flowers and cries of “Life! Health! Prosperity!” Women sang and danced, clapping their hands overhead. The prisoners were paraded through the city’s broad streets so that the whole population could hurl abuse on them, curses from their mouths, mud and filth from their hands. Even the children, standing on the high roofs of the houses, pelted the captives with stones and bits of broken pottery.

Diwoméde squeezed his eyes shut, in a vain effort to stave off the memory of what came next, the sacrifice of the Ak’áyan leaders, at the hands of Mízriya’s Great King. Sweat trickled down Diwoméde’s back and he shuddered. Still, perhaps those who died early on were the lucky ones. The men whose brains were spattered in honor of Mízriya’s Divine Ram were spared the indignity of slavery, at least. To Diwoméde, the subsequent months of degradation were as painful to recall as the battle. He still felt keenly the humiliation of being handed from emperor to governor to troop commander to priest, as if he were nothing but a sack of wine and an inferior vintage as that.

A year had passed and then another. He was set to many unfamiliar tasks, all of them drudgery. It was bad enough helping brew the beer that he could not grow accustomed to drinking. It was worse straining his arms to transfer the fragrance of flowers into unguents and oils. With a body trained for fighting with spear and sword, he often found he could not perform his assigned duties satisfactorily. Beaten like a recalcitrant mule, fed little, he was passed ever further down the ranks of Mízriyan society. On the estates of the ram god, he was a thing of miniscule value. He was not considered fit even to herd sheep, a task normally given to every young boy in his own homeland. Instead, he spent long, hot days kneeling over a stone trough, grinding hard kernels of wheat and barley into flour, or scrubbing soiled clothing, mere women’s work. When he could not do even those chores well enough, he was sold yet again, from priest to scribe, from scribe to common soldier. His sale brought less each time, stealing away one more piece of his spirit.

When he thought things could not possibly get any worse, a none-too-prosperous merchant purchased him with a single vat of beer and pair of new sandals. Then Diwoméde spent his days carrying rolls of imported, purple cloth to and fro, in place of his master’s donkey, an animal that had recently died. Once the merchant even commanded him to get down on all fours and serve as a living stool for the feet of a high-ranked guest. His scarred shoulder had ached for days afterward, he remembered. At the uncomfortable thought, he tried again to adjust his arms to reduce the throbbing in that battered joint.