Oracle's War

by Oracle's War (retail) (epub)

  They comply, levering up some oar benches and lashing them together, while I stay to ensure none of my crew take their own vengeance. As the moments pass, tempers settle, and most of my lads get on with looting the boat, though there’s precious little of interest, just some water barrels to top up our own, some arrows to replace those we’ve used and a few trinkets.

  ‘You should just kill them and have done,’ Diomedes growls in my ear.

  ‘When you’re in charge, you can do it your way,’ I tell him shortly.

  Soon the wounded have been tied to the makeshift raft and eased into the water, and we herd the rest of them overboard. The cliffs are a mile away, a fair distance, but these are men of the sea – they’ll make it. Then we knock holes in the hull, clamber back up into our own ship and watch as the pirate vessel founders.

  ‘Try and catch the tail of that wind,’ I call to Eury as I hasten back to the prow. ‘Come on, lads, I want to see some effort. Pollo, work us up to double time!’

  With a chorus of curses and groans – you don’t get silent acceptance from Ithacans – our galley begins to move again, in pursuit of Ophion’s vessel, now barely visible across the sapphire sea.

  * * *

  Despite all our efforts, we lose sight of Ophion within the hour; his conjured wind eludes us and our crew exhaust themselves on the oar benches for nothing. We bury our two dead crewmen on a southern beach that night, and say a few prayers. Next morning we round Malea, the cape that divides the western sea from the Aegean.

  We’re far from being the only ship at sea: we pass several informal flotillas of merchant vessels travelling together for mutual protection. At this point we gamble: rather than following the coastline north to Attica and then island-hopping over to Delos in the usual way, we cut directly north-eastwards across the Aegean, leaving the coastal traders behind. It will help keep our destination secret, but part of me is disappointed. The standard route would have taken us right past Syros, and I would have liked to run an eye over the island kingdom that Maeus’s family lost. The way we’re going, we’ll barely catch a glimpse of it.

  That evening, with not a scrap of land in sight, I make offerings to Poseidon – again, more to appease my crew than from any belief I have that the Sea God is listening. It does get me thinking, though: these beings we call gods are not always what they seem. So often, there are layers upon layers of hidden connections and meaning. And who better to ask than Bria?

  ‘Bria, tell me about Poseidon,’ I say to her, as we share a mug of wine in the prow, the rising wind in our hair. Diomedes is with us, and the lads aft are enjoying not having to row, as a stiff nor’wester drives the ship through a following swell, the waves cresting and breaking around us as we surge through the troughs.

  She gives me her usual superior smirk and says, ‘Well, children, Poseidon is a sibling of the other Olympians – Zeus, Hera and the rest. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Stop playing games,’ I reply, crossly. ‘That’s not what I’m asking.’

  ‘He’s also the chief god of Pylos,’ adds Diomedes, helpfully. ‘And Crete.’

  I’m about to say something rude – I hate being treated as an idiot – but, for a brief moment, something like a spasm of pain has flitted across Bria’s face, instantly gone. I already have a suspicion she has some link to Crete that she’s not telling us about. Is she a daughter of Poseidon? Or even a jilted ‘wife’? I decide to humour her – maybe she’ll lower her guard and add something interesting. ‘Go on,’ I say.

  ‘There isn’t a vessel that puts to sea without making offerings to him,’ Bria continues. ‘He’s important everywhere.’

  ‘Where does he stand on Thebes?’ Diomedes mutters darkly.

  Does the man think of nothing else? ‘Thebes is landlocked,’ I say. ‘It’s about as far from the sea as any place in Achaea can be.’

  ‘Poseidon is also God of Earthquakes, don’t forget,’ Bria replies. ‘Perhaps he can reach Thebes?’

  ‘Are you saying that’s the only way the fabled walls of Thebes can be breached – by a cataclysm beyond human power?’ I exclaim. ‘Whose side is Poseidon on?’

  ‘I have no idea, Ithaca,’ Bria answers, finishing her wine and holding the leather mug out for Diomedes to refill from the wineskin at his feet. ‘He wasn’t at the so-called Judgement of Parassi – that little farce of a beauty contest orchestrated by Zeus up on Mount Ida. As you know, Ithaca, having been there yourself. His primary interest is the sea, which is vast enough for him, and his most dedicated worshippers are fishermen and traders, itinerants mostly. As long as the big kingdoms pay him homage when they mount a seaborne mission, he’s content. He can afford to be neutral.’

  ‘But what if Achaea falls, and he’s supplanted by whatever sea god the Trojans acknowledge?’ I wonder.

  Bria grins. ‘I doubt he feels threatened: the Hittites and the Trojans worship Aruna as their sea god, but Aruna is weak – he’s only a “son” of their Goddess of Magic, Kamrusepa.’

  Her words remind me that Kyshanda of Troy gives her allegiance to Kamrusepa. My face must have betrayed me, for Bria smirks. ‘You’re still doe-eyed about that skinny Trojan bint,’ she sneers. She nudges Diomedes. ‘Ithaca here fancies the daughter of Piri-Yamu of Troy, would you believe?’

  ‘Best you forget her,’ Diomedes growls, as if it’s something I don’t know.

  I pointedly ignore the jibes. ‘So Aruna would be no threat to Poseidon?’

  ‘Think about it,’ Bria replies. ‘In their tales, the Goddess of Magic and Mystery begat the Sea God; what that says to me is that to them, the sea is a mysterious and untamed entity. They’re not seafarers in the way we are.’

  ‘All right,’ I say, ‘but what about Poseidon himself, this rouser of storms and earthquakes? Is he really a fish-tailed giant with a trident?’

  Bria sniggers. ‘A fish tail! That’d be hilarious.’ She pats Diomedes on his bulging right bicep. ‘Imagine him at parties, flopping around because he’s got a tail instead of legs. And where does he keep his equipment?’

  She’s openly flirting with Diomedes, but he seems oblivious. Yesterday she claimed that his main obsessions were Thebes, food and fornication, and not necessarily in that order. Wishful thinking on her part, perhaps?

  In the absence of sensible responses, I answer my own question. ‘Tales have him taking human form to impregnate women. They also say he’s used animals to do that too, with gruesome results. Given how lusty he is in the myths, he must have many theioi.’

  ‘Scores,’ Bria agrees, standing a little straighter so that her bosom is positioned under Diomedes’s nose.

  ‘How many does our Lady have?’ Diomedes asks, ignoring her proffered cleavage. I’m unsure if he’s feigning indifference, or genuinely uninterested.

  Bria scowls. ‘Not so many.’

  ‘I just hope we’re not the only ones. We need a plan for Delos,’ I add, partly because we do indeed need to plan, and partly to prise Bria’s thoughts away from her groin – and Diomedes’s.

  It works, to an extent. Giving the towering Adonis beside her an irritated look, Bria turns her mind to the next few days. ‘I’m going to go in as a Cretan acolyte of Artemis.’ She looks Diomedes and me up and down. ‘I’ll need a servant, a bodyguard. How are you two on Cretan dialects?’

  ‘I speak to sailors every week, from all corners of the Mediterranean. I can manage a Cretan accent,’ I tell her, imitating one – perfectly.

  ‘But it should be me,’ Diomedes says, butchering the same accent. ‘Besides, I’m…’ – he peers down at me – ‘…taller.’

  ‘Mmm, you certainly are,’ Bria says appreciatively. ‘But that’s the worst Cretan accent I’ve ever heard.’

  Diomedes frowns. ‘I suppose the Ithacan does have a more servile look,’ he concedes.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I tell him.

  ‘But his red hair will give him away,’ Diomedes muses.

  ‘Don’t worry about that – I’ll be brown-haired by the ti
me we arrive,’ I assure him. I haven’t yet found a magical way to disguise myself, but the walnut juice concealed in my baggage will do the job.

  I pull out a sketch map Bria has already drawn me of the island of Delos. ‘The island is no more than three miles long,’ I point out. ‘I imagine every foot of it can be seen from that small hill overlooking the town.’

  ‘Come now, Ithaca,’ Bria giggles. ‘The locals call it Mount Kynthos, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘Is there really only one settlement?’ Diomedes asks.

  ‘Yes, a scrappy little place,’ she replies, ‘but it’s growing as the importance of the shrine increases.’

  ‘So, if you and I are to preserve our disguise, we won’t be able to arrive on an Ithacan ship crewed by Ithacans,’ I point out. ‘Too many questions, especially if Ophion has got there ahead of us. We’ll need to put ashore somewhere other than at the port, at night and after the moon has set.’

  ‘Most of the coast is pretty rocky,’ Bria points out.

  ‘But it looks like there’s a secluded cove half a mile south of the town… here,’ I say, prodding the map. ‘Then we can slip into town at dawn and pretend we’re fresh off a ship of pilgrims. They do get pilgrims, I take it?’

  ‘A few months ago, we’d have stuck out like cows’ tits,’ Bria says. ‘They’d get maybe a handful every week. But right now, half Achaea is descending on Delos, because of this mysterious prophetess. Once we’re there, I’ll enter the shrine, find whoever she is and see if I can persuade someone to repeat the prophecy for us.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ I ask. ‘Won’t the prophetess be closely guarded?’

  ‘Of course,’ Bria says sarcastically. ‘That’s why Athena’s asked special people like us to do it.’

  I roll my eyes, and return my gaze to the map. ‘Obviously we can’t leave our ship at the cove where you and I will land. Nor can we have it stand offshore all day and night – it will be easily seen from that hillock, and if a storm comes up it will be at the mercy of the weather.’

  ‘The big island to the west, Rineia, has several deep bays along its south coast,’ Bria replies. ‘You’ll see them as we pass – they’re only a few miles by sea from the cove on Delos. Any one of them will make a good hiding place for the ship. Diomedes, you need to organise a watch post on Rineia, on a high point overlooking the channel between Rineia and Delos. I’ll take a mirror to signal with during the day and we can shoot off some fire-arrows at night – our friend Ithaca is good at that kind of thing – to tell you when to pick us up.’

  ‘Sounds workable.’ I look up at the sky, and the clouds scudding across it. ‘If this wind holds, we should be off Delos by the night after next.’

  4 – The Island Shrine

  ‘But it is in Delos that you, O Phoebus, must feel such heartfelt delight; for there the Ionians in their long robes gather to honour you … they please you with boxing and dancing and song, holding you foremost in their minds whenever they join in assembly. A man’s … heart would be filled with pleasure as he gazed upon the men and well-girdled women, with their fleet ships and their many possessions. And add to this a wonder so great its fame will never die – the girls of Delos, the hand-maidens of the One Who Shoots From Afar; for when they have first sung paeans to Apollo, and then to Leto and arrow-loosing Artemis too, they sing hymns in memory of men and women of times past, and enchant the tribes of man.’

  —Homeric Hymn 3 to Delian Apollo

  Delos, Aegean Sea

  An Achaean war galley doesn’t have a deep hull, so we’re able to cling close to the rocky shoreline, picking our way along by starlight alone, oars muffled and our navigation aided by the enhanced night vision that theioi have been gifted with. We’re lucky the wind has dropped and the sea is calm, and we can ease the ship into the cove to within a few yards of the beach, but Bria and I still have to wade ashore, wet but not cold, with our bundled clothes and other gear held high above our heads.

  I wave to Diomedes as the galley backs oars and heads for the open sea again. Even from here I can see he’s looking grumpy – he still thinks it should be him, not me, guarding Bria.

  Bria gives me a pert look. ‘So, Ithaca, be a dear and help dry my legs,’ she tells me.

  I like Bria – mostly – and the body she’s wearing is attractive, in a muscular though not hugely feminine way. But she’s just being a pest, and anyway it’s someone else’s body, she’s only borrowed it for however long she wants it, and I’m not going to betray that other person, however consensual Bria insists the whole thing is. So I give her a stony look. ‘You’re an Artemis priestess now, remember? You’d better hope you don’t have to prove your virtue at the temple door,’ I retort, making her laugh.

  We change in the shelter of a clump of cypress trees, not that we’ve seen signs of anyone nearby, but you can never be too careful. Bria clothes herself in a woollen robe of a greyish hue, and plucks a sprig of cypress to weave into a circlet for her head. She’s unarmed and unarmoured, and her borrowed, athletic, sunburnt body suits her disguise. Artemis priestesses are raised and trained in the mountains, and spend as much time hunting as praying.

  I’ve also had to leave most of my war gear behind, except for a long sheathed knife which I’m wearing at my belt. Armour and larger weapons will be out of place in such a sacred place and the Bow of Eurytus would be far too distinctive anyway. I’m wearing a plain kilt and sandals, a rough cloak and a leather backpack loaded with obols, in case bribery proves a useful option, and with a few other handy odds and ends underneath, including Maeus’s scrap of embroidered cloth. The Caryatids and their secret place within the Artemis cult are very much on my mind: I already have an idea about how we might use the cloth to our own advantage.

  My hair is now stained dark brown with walnut juice and cut to shoulder length. Hacking away my mane of red hair felt like sacrilege, especially as long hair on a man is a mark of the nobly born. Bria says I look quite different and I’m counting on that, given that Ophion may well have guessed we’re coming here. As for Bria’s new body, he will only have glimpsed it from a distance, during the sea battle, and she was wearing a helmet and armour at the time. She looks vastly different from her last incarnation, as Hebea.

  We find the start of a goat track by a wild fig tree, and take a circuitous route across the island until we round the northern slopes of Mount Kynthos to overlook the town of Delos and its twin harbours. It’s just before sunrise, and the whole scene is bathed in soft dawn light.

  The two beaches are lined with ships, their hulls half drawn up on the gritty sand, and there are dozens more standing off in the bay.

  ‘We won’t need to worry about finding a crowd to blend in with,’ I note. ‘I just hope we can find an empty room. Clearly we’re not the only ones who’ve heard of this new oracle.’

  ‘Blending in wasn’t my worry – I told you there’d be plenty of people here.’ Bria scowls. ‘But I hate it when there’s so many pieces in play. Who’s down there, I wonder?’

  ‘Ophion may well have arrived already, given his luck with wind and weather,’ I suggest. ‘And the letter I reconstructed back on Ithaca was addressed to “Father”. So there might be a son or daughter of his here as well.’

  ‘Probably. And every other damn theios in Achaea,’ she grumbles. ‘I tell you, this rogue prophecy is big news in our circles, Ithaca. There’ll be spies from every cult down there.’

  ‘Who is he, this Ophion?’ I ask Bria. ‘You said you had some sort of idea.’

  ‘I also told you it’s a guess, and a wild one at that. Better we keep an open mind.’

  Thanks for nothing. We’re supposed to be a team, but as usual she’s keeping the real facts to herself.

  As the sun rises behind us in a nimbus of pale gold, the ships filling the bay spring to life, a chaos of bobbing craft that threatens to turn into catastrophe but never quite does. Once we’re sure plenty of people are up and about, landing from the beached ships or emerging from the w
hitewashed buildings that cluster round the port, we take a winding path around Artemis’s sanctuary, perched on a low rise above the town, and slip into the bustling streets.

  The town square, once we reach it, is packed with young men and women, crowned in cypress or wrapped in ivy or grapevine tendrils, whooping and singing, tweetling and wailing on double-stemmed pipes, twanging on out-of-tune lyres and banging on hand drums, bells and rattles. I love good music – I play and sing for my own pleasure and I delight in the bards and their songs – and I don’t think I’ve ever heard such an excruciating cacophony as this.

  ‘What in Tartarus is going on?’ I ask Bria, staring at the cavorting revellers.

  The only Artemis rites I’ve witnessed have been the rather solemn activities of our own Ithacan priestesses, so I’m startled by the obvious drunkenness and unbridled lust of the dancing. It’s not that I don’t like a good party, but this is a holy site and I had expected something much more austere and restrained.

  ‘Those are maenads, followers of Dionysus,’ Bria tells me, pointing out a group of wildly cavorting young women with nut-brown skin, their unkempt black hair swirling. Under their loose-fitting tunics, their sun-bronzed breasts are swaying as they gyrate. In many places of late, the Artemis cult is being infiltrated by eastern influences like this. ‘The maenads believe they can attain higher states of spiritual awareness through wine and ecstatic dance, would you believe?’

  ‘What about all these young men?’

  ‘Apollo worshippers, judging by the symbol on their tunics. D’you see it – a lyre silhouetted against the sun’s rays? The Trojans worship Apollo, their Apaliunas, as a God of Light.’

  My heart races at the mention of Troy. Is Kyshanda here? There’s every chance her seeress mother, Queen Hekuba, will have sent her here. Kyshanda is Hekuba’s protégée, her eyes and ears. She’ll need to know what this spontaneous prophecy is as much as us. But she’s the daughter of a mighty king, so even if she’s here on Delos, she’s not going to be running around half naked, swigging wine from a goat skin. I collect my wits, hoping Bria hasn’t noticed my momentary inattention.