There’s a ragged cheer as I thrash to the surface, another rope slaps the water and I let them drag me in. The first shark – a big lamia with jagged teeth – arrives as I’m pulled aboard. The catodon has vanished, and the shark and its fellows confine themselves to hunting back and forth through the cloud of blood.
The ship hasn’t come through unscathed; a few of the timbers have sprung and there’s a worrying amount of water gathering in the scuppers. We manage a makeshift repair by passing a spare sail under the hull and lashing it to the railings on either side, while the rest of the men bail her dry. One of the steering oar shafts has fractured, a longitudinal split, but we lash it as tight as we can manage, which seems to do the trick.
Eurybates has regained consciousness but he’s weak and groggy from his head wound, so Tollus takes the helm. Thankfully, he’s no slouch at this job, having had plenty of practice over the years. Laertes has always drummed it into me that you should never rely on one person for a key role – including oneself.
I push those thoughts aside as I rub myself dry and rearm, glaring angrily ahead at the ship in the middle distance as we renew our pursuit.
You blinded that catodon, Nauplius, not I – you made me do it.
Within the hour we’re closing in on the fugitives again, despite the state of our hull. It’s a beautifully built ship – Laertes’s best – and the crew are working it magnificently.
I’m lodged in the prow, straining like a hunting dog, with the wind whipping at the ragged remains of my hair, when Diomedes and Bria join me. ‘Well fought, Ithacan,’ the Argive says, slapping me on the back.
I’m pleasantly surprised that he’s acknowledged another person’s feats, though it has taken him a while to get round to it – I’ve met theioi who are incapable of any generosity in that regard. ‘If that’s the worst they can do, we’ll be lucky,’ I reply, my mood turning sombre again.
As the sun climbs to its zenith, we approach a rocky archipelago, just a cluster of rocks out in the middle of the sea with some sparse shrubs clinging to the crevices. They’re coated in gull shit and shrieking, haggling birds. Nauplius is again visible on the aft deck of his ship, arms aloft. What monsters are being conjured up now? The northern horizon is darkening – there’s a storm brewing and already clouds are streaking across the skies. Soon, gusts of wind begin to howl and shriek in our rigging.
‘He’s realized the catodon has damaged our ship,’ Bria conjectures. ‘He’s guessing we’re in poor shape to withstand rough weather.’
‘He’s conjuring a storm?’ I exclaim, glancing back along the ship’s length. Already the rising waves are working at the timbers, letting more water into the hull, and most of the crew are hard at work bailing. ‘Can he do that?’
‘Afternoon storms are common here in the Aegean, Ithaca. A sorcerer who serves Poseidon can’t create them, but he can harness them to his will if he’s good enough.’
‘Then let’s close with them as quickly as possible.’ I stride back along the gangway to the mast, where Eurybates is crouched, white-faced and with a bloodied bandage round his head. ‘Up you get,’ I say, necessity overriding my concern for his injury. I lever him to his feet and hurry him aft, where Tollus is straining against the crossbar of the steering oars. Together, they’re able to get more from the ship as we plough through the waves, easing into the peaks and surging down into the troughs.
Thanks to Eury’s skill, we gain on Nauplius’s ship once more but the storm darkness is approaching fast. Before it can strike, great clouds of grey gulls launch themselves from the rocks of the archipelago amidst shrieks of fury. Then they’re diving at us, beaks and claws scoring our faces. The crew are forced to abandon their bailing scoops, arms flung over their heads to protect themselves.
Diomedes launches himself along the gangway, his xiphos blade a blur as he hacks at the gulls as they swirl about him, arriving in the stern scratched and torn, the rowing benches and scuppers behind him littered with slashed corpses. But this is only the beginning – by now every man on board has recovered enough to fight back. I reach for the Great Bow and begin to shoot, every shaft a hit, but still more birds come pouring in. Then Bria cries aloud, a torrent of words in some strange tongue, and a huge flock of larger, black-headed birds come diving in to sweep the gulls away in a bloody tangle of feathers. In moments, the assault falls apart and the larger birds climb and circle us like guardians.
I stare at Bria in surprise and she gives me a wicked grin. ‘My mistress also has some influence in the realm of the winged,’ she crows. ‘She’s not just a mistress of owls. These are her sea eagles, and I have the power to call on them.’
I’m impressed – and of course, burning with curiosity. But with that assault broken, we plough onwards, because we’re running out of time: the storm is upon us, the sky almost as black as night and the air thick with spume torn from the tops of the breakers crashing around us as we close on the sorcerer’s ship.
And now, through the driving spray, I can see some kind of struggle aboard it, at the base of the mast: Palamedes is wrestling with the heavy yellow cloth that Arnacia has been wrapped in. She’s fighting back – somehow she’s found the strength to resist him – and she’s gripping the cloth with both hands, trying to keep it in place, though enough of it has been torn away to free her long, honey-brown hair. Nauplius, his purple robes swirling about in the wind, is holding a large, ornate jug high in the air above her, pouring something from it, though the wind is whipping the liquid high in the air.
What are they doing?
Then the jug is gone, and Nauplius produces a wicked-looking knife – I can see it gleaming, despite the darkness, as though he’s conjured some mystic light into it…
A ritual cleansing, as they prepare her for sacrifice? Or worse…?
‘They’re going to kill her!’ I rasp at Bria. The bastards would rather have her dead than let us rescue her. I nock an arrow to the Great Bow and draw, the deck bucking under my feet, aware that the slightest error could see me shooting her instead of her attackers.
Bria shoves my bow aside and raises her hand, her voice cutting through the howl of the wind. I see Palamedes crack his open hand across Arnacia’s face; she staggers, Nauplius grabs a handful of her hair and raises the knife…
…then huge dark shapes, Athena’s sea eagles, come screaming back again, tearing at Palamedes’s face. He reels away in fury, drawing his sword and swinging vainly at them as they engulf him…
And Arnacia dashes to the side of the ship and plunges into the waves.
I catch sight of the furious faces of Nauplius and Palamedes as the sea eagles rise up into the air, their work done. Already the girl is lost in the ship’s churning wake. If they put about, to try and pluck her from the sea, they’ll have us to deal with. But if they keep running, they’ve lost their prize…
My heart thuds as they somehow bring their boat around, with waves dashing over the rails and the sail flapping like thunder before filling again.
‘We’ve got to reach her first,’ I yell, only just managing to make myself heard above the wind howling in the rigging. ‘Ready hands to furl the sail. Tollus, Eury, keep us on course! Watch her, watch her… There she is!’
Arnacia is still afloat, barely visible amidst a chaos of breaking waves. She’s shed the heavy yellow veil, which would have dragged her down, and evidently she can swim – a rarity among women, though I shouldn’t really be so surprised. Artemis girls, the traditional kind at least, are a tough breed.
But there were sharks in the water earlier, and if any have followed us…
I lean from the prow, a rope slung over my shoulder, hanging on with all my strength as the seas buffet our ship about like a cork. ‘Stay calm,’ I call out to her. ‘We’re here, we’ve got you!’
But Nauplius’s ship is drawing near…
I’m readying the rope when someone shouts: ‘’Ware!’ I look right, following his outstretched arm, and I see a large triangular fin cut
ting through the boiling, foam-streaked water: a shark, and it’s a damned big one!
‘Arnacia!’ I shout, hurling the rope. It just reaches her, she snatches at it and I thrust it into Diomedes’s hands so I can grab the Great Bow. Diomedes leaps to the railing – a totally irrational stance but it does make him look tremendously heroic – wrapping the rope around his hands and hauling, making his muscles bulge. That fin is hurtling towards Arnacia though; it’s closing in and she’s struggling to hold on to the rope as Diomedes hauls on it and there’s a real danger she’ll be pulled beneath the hull as our ship lurches about wildly.
If she isn’t bitten in half first.
I draw and fire in one movement, aiming forward of the fin as the shark shoots towards her like a thrown spear. The arrow slashes the water and thumps into flesh, the beast convulses and we see a flash of bulging eyes and rows of serrated teeth and then the monster thrashes away in a flood of scarlet.
Diomedes leans right down over the rail, with two men hanging on to his legs to stop him falling in head first. On the second attempt he grasps the girl beneath the armpits and pulls her bodily from the waves and onto the deck.
The storm is passing as suddenly as it struck. And for a moment there’s stillness, if not silence, a frozen tableau with the girl in her white tunic held upright in Diomedes’s powerful arms as she staggers against him, exhausted. Knowingly or not, he puffs up like a hero of the old tales, even though she largely rescued herself.
A hoarse cheer goes up from the crew, who are punching the air in triumph. Bria dances along the gangway to the prow, slaps my shoulder then returns to extricate the girl from Diomedes’s grasp.
Despite her ordeal, Arnacia is resolutely calm, and though Palamedes’s handprint is still livid on her cheek, she’s barely shaking. She’s looking at Diomedes like he’s a god, but – bless him – he barely notices. Bria wraps Arnacia in a thick woollen cloak and takes her aft, summoning a solid ring of armed sailors to guard her. We’re almost on top of Nauplius’s ship by now, and it looks like we’ve got a fight on our hands.
But as we bear down on them, Nauplius orders his sails furled, and waves a scarf. ‘Parley,’ he calls across the water, in a voice that isn’t quite so smooth any more.
* * *
‘Parley?’ I shout. ‘Never!’
‘Why not?’ says Bria, ‘We could learn something to our advantage—’
‘Learn something from a bunch of murderers?’ I’m so angry I can barely get the words out. ‘They were about to cut Arnacia’s throat. And now you want to have a cosy chat with them, in case there’s some scrap of information that might come in handy for your mistress—’
‘Shut it, Ithaca,’ she snaps. ‘You’re being an idiot. They weren’t going to kill her—’
‘Really? So what the fuck was that knife for?’
‘To cut a lock of hair off, dung-head. They were trying to marry her. To Palamedes. That would have let them argue that their abduction was legal.’
Of course. I take a deep breath. The ritual cleansing with water, hence the ornate jug; the yellow veil that had to be removed from her head; the ritual cutting of hair that would take her over the threshold into womanhood. Obvious, now – and quite possibly legally enforceable. A fate not much worse than death: once trapped into marriage with a fornicating kopros like Palamedes, and subjected to Aphrodite’s rule, Arnacia might well have wished they had cut her throat, there against Nauplius’s mast.
I’m still furious, and I’m not the only one hungry for blood. Following the long chase, and after what they think they’ve witnessed, our men are as eager to punish these villains as I am, and so is Diomedes.
But Nauplius calls again. ‘Parley! My master wishes to speak with you.’
My master: those are the two words that decide the matter. Bria is suddenly adamant, and although Diomedes and I argue, she overrules us. Something in her eyes hints that Athena is entering her even as we speak, and then it dawns on me properly: I’m about to meet Poseidon himself.
As the two ships nudge closer, we have Nauplius’s crew well covered, our bows drawn so they know that at the first sign of trouble our arrows will cut them down.
Nauplius and Palamedes make a show of disarming before clambering over our rail; we make sure they can only access our prow, so they’re well away from Arnacia. I’m glaring at Palamedes, an arrow trained on his heart and my fingers itching to release the bow string. If he doesn’t feel mortally threatened, he’s deaf, blind and a fool.
I can see in his eyes that he knows.
Once they’re on board, I lower my bow. Bria has a subtle presence about her now, her eyes like grey adamant and a sheen to her complexion that is all Athena. Diomedes is gazing at her in reverent awe, but I’m more interested in studying our foes.
Nauplius’s smooth face has taken on a similar aura to Bria’s – only his eyes are deep sea-green, the air about him is cold and salt-laden, and he’s standing with such utter solidity that it seems he is an immovable axis, with the ship and the whole sea moving around him. Poseidon is indeed within him, that much is evident – he’s an avatar as well as a sorcerer. But I note that neither he nor Bria wish to make an open exhibition of their god-infused nature, even though both crews have retreated, white-faced with fear, as far away as they can without jumping overboard – they too must feel the instinctive menace that the gods can wrap themselves in.
As for Palamedes, he still looks like the pretty-boy scum that he is.
‘Athena,’ Nauplius-Poseidon says coolly. ‘You’re interfering again.’
‘And you are not?’ Athena replies, her voice ice-cold even though it’s Bria’s mouth that forms the words.
Poseidon shrugs. ‘We all want to hear what the girl has prophesied. Why should only Artemis and Apollo know – and their Trojan allies?’
Athena snorts in amusement. ‘So you’re playing the concerned Achaean, now that abduction has failed? You don’t fool me, Poseidon. This was all about your own gain.’
‘Isn’t everything? You weren’t just wandering by – you had agents inside Delos too.’ He runs his eyes over Diomedes and me. ‘A lesser prince of the doomed Epigoni, and the “Secret Son” of Sisyphus, that failed spawn of Prometheus. Not reputable company in anyone’s eyes.’
Diomedes and I share a look, of the ‘another crack like that and he gets it, god or not’ variety.
‘Your son Palamedes here is an agent of Aphrodite,’ Athena reminds him. ‘Is this little scam something you and the Clamshell cooked up?’
Palamedes goes to speak, but Poseidon gets in first: ‘I was approached by Aphrodite for my help – something you conspicuously didn’t ask for.’
‘I might have, if I’d known you were prepared to take sides.’
‘I’m not… yet. But perhaps this girl’s prophecy might change that?’
Athena looks interested, and I groan inside – she’s going to cut a deal, and these phalli are going to walk away free. ‘If it turns out her words affect you, we might let you know what they are,’ I put in, perhaps unwisely.
The Sea God fixes me with those oceanic eyes and I feel my skin turn cold and clammy. ‘Hold your tongue, scion of Prometheus,’ he growls. ‘Your presence here is unwelcome, and only your mistress’s sureties exempt you from the attention of every swordsman in Achaea.’
‘Let ’em come,’ I snarl – which is definitely unwise.
‘You blinded one of my creatures and killed another,’ Poseidon says, his words cutting through me like knives.
‘No,’ I say, gathering my courage, praying he can’t hear the tremor in my voice. ‘You killed them, by letting that scum Nauplius send them after us. My blade and bow were the weapons, but the wrongdoing lies with him.’ I’m feeling braver already, so I jab a finger at him – if you’re going to piss a god off, there’s no point messing around, as he’s going to hate you anyway. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking you have “plenty of fish in the sea”, eh? But your followers don’t truly worship you �
�� they merely fear you.’
All of their eyes are bulging now: Palamedes, Diomedes and even Athena. But Poseidon’s gaze bores into mine like a drill bit twisting into soft spruce. ‘Fear is belief, mortal. Terror is worship – something you will learn in very short order.’
Then my patron says, very quickly, ‘What Odysseus means to say is that we Achaean gods, whose worship is tied to these fair realms, should not be in conflict, for then only our enemies win, while we waste precious lives which would be better deployed against our enemies.’
The Sea God doesn’t buy that for an instant. But after fixing me with one last menacing stare, he draws himself to his full height. ‘If you can claim immunity for your new pet,’ he says, ‘then I claim it for Nauplius, and I daresay Aphrodite will take it ill if aught happens to Palamedes. As for this unhappy episode, I remind you that my reach is far greater than yours, Attican Goddess, and you would be well advised to adhere to my cult if you wish to weather the tempests to come.’
I open my mouth to tell him what he can do with his threats, but Athena puts a cold hand on my arm. Her glance is enough to freeze my tongue. ‘And you would do well to remember, “Uncle”,’ she says, ‘that Aphrodite has been colluding with Zeus for years now, and that right now you’re just their cat’s paw. Stick to your fish and seaweed, or take better advice. Mine comes for free.’
That hits home: Poseidon looks furious, but I can see that he’s not so informed about what happens on land as he’d like to be – and that Aphrodite has clearly played on his ignorance, for her own benefit and that of Zeus.
He gives Athena a curt nod, then abruptly he’s just Nauplius again. The trader-king blinks and looks around, momentarily disoriented, then turns back to face his antagonist, his face a mix of confusion and dread. For a brief moment Athena stares back, before Bria’s Hamazan body loses its godly sheen and her eyes return to their customary brown.
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