The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  The racket from among the Greeks was giving the barbarians pause, puzzling them. They slowed, looked around, damped their shouts and muttered to each other. Watching, Pytheas saw Hanno meet their leader. He heard horns blow, voices ring. Men sped about, carrying a word he could not understand. The Gauls grumbled piecemeal to a halt, withdrew a ways, squatted down or leaned on their spears, waited. The drizzle thickened, daylight faded, and he saw only shadows yonder.

  An hour dragged itself into dusk. Fires blossomed under the forest.

  Hanno returned. He walked like another shadow past Demetrios pickets, between the hushed and huddled sailors, to find Pytheas near the boats, not to flee but because there the water cast off enough light to ease the wet gloom a little.

  “We’re safe,” Hanno declared. Breath gusted out of Pytheas.

  “But we’ve a busy night ahead of us,” Hanno went on. “Kindle fires, pitch tents, get the best of the wretched food we have and cook it as well as possible. Not that our visitors will notice the quality. It’s quantity that counts with them.”

  Pytheas peered, striving to read the half-seen face. “What’s happened?” he asked unevenly. “What have you done?”

  Hanno’s tone stayed cool, with a hint of hidden laughter. “You know I’ve acquired enough Keltic language to get by, and a fair acquaintance with their customs and beliefs. Those aren’t too different from several other wild races’; I can guess my way past any gaps in my knowledge. I went out to them in the style of a herald, which made my person sacred, and talked with their chief. He’s not a bad fellow, as such people go. I’ve known worse monsters in power among Hellenes, Persians, Phoenicians, Egyptians—No matter.”

  “What ... did they want?”

  “To overcome us before we could escape, of course, take our boats, capture our ships, plunder them. The fact alone showed this isn’t likely their native country. Carthaginians have treaties with natives. True, these might have denounced the agreement for some childish reason. However, then they’d have attacked after dark. They brag about their fearlessness, but when it’s a question of booty more than glory, they wouldn’t care to take unnecessary casualties or risk our being able to stand them off while most of us got away to the ships. Nevertheless they came at us as soon as we were ashore. So they must be afraid of the dark hereabouts—ghosts and gods of the lately slain, not yet appeased. I played on that, among other things.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Pictones from the east, intending to settle these parts.” Hanno began pacing, to and fro before the eyes of Pytheas. Sand scrunched soddenly underfoot. “Not much like those tame and half-tame tribes hi your Massatian hinterland; but not entirely alien to them, either. They have more respect for skills, for learning, than I’ve generally found your ordinary Greek does. Their ornament, all their workmanship is beautiful. Not only a herald but a poet, any wise person is sacred. I proved myself a magician, what they call a druid, by various sleight-of-hand tricks and occultistic nonsense. I threatened—oh, very delicately—to lay a satire on them if they offended me. First I’d convinced them I was a poet, by a rough plagiarism of lines from Homer. I’ll have to work on that. I’ve promised them more.”

  “You have what?”

  Hanno’s laugh rang aloud. “Ready the camp, I say. Prepare the feast. Tell Demetrios’ men they’re to be an honor guard. We’ll have guests at dawn, and I daresay the festivities will brawl on through the whole day. You’ll be expected to give pretty lavish gifts, but that’s all right, we have ample trade goods along, and honor will require you receive severalfold the value in stuff we can better use. Also, we now have safe conduct for a considerable distance north.” He paused. Sea and land sighed around them. “Oh, and if we get decent weather tomorrow night, do carry on your star observations, Pytheas. That will impress them no end.”

  “And ... it’s a part of what we’re journeying for,” whispered the other man. “What you’ve saved.”

  4

  Behind lay the Dumnonian tin mines, and the harbor to which no Carthaginians would come while the war lasted, and the three ships. Lykias kept a guard on them and saw to their careening and refitting. Demetrios organized overland explorations of the west and south coasts. The interior and north of Pretania Pytheas claimed for himself.

  He came with Hanno and a small military escort out of the hills, onto a rolling plain where, here and there, wilderness yielded to plowland and pasture. A gigantic mound inside a fosse and earthworks dominated it. The chalky crater hollowed on top held armed men and their lodgings.

  Its commander received the travelers hospitably, once he was sure of their intentions. Folk were always eager for word from outside; most barbarians had pathetically narrow horizons. Talk went haltingly by way of Hanno and a Dumnonian who had accompanied the party this far. Now he wanted to go home. A man by some such name as Segovax offered to replace him and lead the guests to a great wonder nearby.

  Autumn was in the wind, chill and loud. Leaves were turning yellow, brown, russet and beginning to fly away. A trail went onto an upland where trees were few. Cloud shadows and pale sunlight sickled across immensities of sallow grass. Sheepflocks afar were lost in loneliness. The Greeks marched briskly, leading the pack ponies they had gotten in Dumnonia. They would not return to the hill fort but push on. One winter was scant time to range this land. Come spring, Pytheas must be back with his ships.

  The sight waxed slowly before him. At first it seemed little, and he supposed people made much of it only because they knew nothing better. As he neared, the sense of its mass grew and grew. Within a time-worn earthen rampart loomed a triple ring of standing stones, perhaps seventy cubits wide, the tallest of them well-nigh three man-heights, slabs almost as huge joining them on top, gray, lichenous, weathered, powerful beyond his understanding.

  “What is this?” he whispered.

  “You’ve seen megalithic works in the South, haven’t you?” Hanno’s voice was less calm than his words, hushed beneath the wind.

  “Yes, but nothing like—Ask!”

  Hanno turned to Segovax. Keltic lilted between them.

  “He says giants built it in the morning of the world,” Hanno told Pytheas.

  “Then his people are as ignorant as we,” the Greek said low, “We’ll camp here, overnight at least. Maybe we can learn something.” It was more a prayer than a hope.

  Throughout the rest of the day he devoted himself to his eyes and his instruments. Hanno could give scant help and Segovax hardly any information. Once Pytheas spent a long time finding the exact center of the complex and sighting from there. “I think,” he said as he pointed, “that yonder stone outside—the sun will be seen to rise over it on Midsummer’s Day, But I cannot be sure, and we cannot wait to find out, can we?”

  Night approached. The soldiers, who had snatched the chance to idle, started a fire, cooked food, made ready. Their talk and occasional laughter rattled meaningless. They had no reason to fear attack by mortal men, nor to wonder what ghosts might linger here.

  The weather had cleared, and after full darkness Pytheas left the camp to observe, which he did at every opportunity. Hanno came along, bearing a wax tablet and stylus to record the measurements. He had the Phoenician trick of writing without light. Pytheas could use ridges and grooves to read instruments by his fingertips, measurements less close than he wished but preferable to none at all. When a stone had blocked view of flames, they were alone in the ring with the sky.

  Titan blacknesses walled them in. Stars flickered between, as if trapped. Overhead curved the Galaxy, a river of mist across which winged the Swan. The Lyre hung silent. The Dragon coiled halfway around a pole strangely high hi heaven. Cold deepened with the hours, the vast wheel turned, frost formed hoar on the stones.

  “Hadn’t we better get some sleep?” Hanno asked at last. “I’m forgetting what warmth feels like.”

  “I suppose so.” Pytheas’ answer dragged. “I’ve learned as much as I can.” Abruptly, harshly: “It is
n’t enough! It never will be. Our lives are a million years too short,”

  5

  After the long voyage north, past land that grew ever more rugged, ever more girded with holms and reefs, the coast finally bent eastward. These were waters as rough as the ground on which their surf crashed; the ships stood well out and cast anchor at sunset. It was better to huddle tireless than dare those unknown approaches. On the fourth day there appeared above haze the red and yellow heights of an island. Pytheas decided to pass between it and the main shore. His vessels battled their way on until dark.

  Men saw no dawn, for air had thickened further. Aft of them a whiteness towered from edge to unseen edge of the world. They had a light breeze and visibility of about a dozen Athenian stadia, so they hoisted dripping sails. The sheer island began to fall behind them, and ahead, to starboard, they spied a murk that ought to be a lesser one. Noise of breakers loudened, an undergroundish thunder.

  Then the white wall rolled over them, and they were blind. The breeze died and they lay helpless.

  Never had they known or heard of a fog such as this. A man amidships saw neither bow nor stern; vision lost itself in smothering, eddying gray. Over the side he could barely make out turbulence streaked with foam. Water settled on cordage and fell off in a wicked little ram. The deck sheened with it. Wetness weighted hair, clothes, breath, while cold gnawed inward to the bone, as if he were already drowning. The formlessness was full of noise. Seas grew heavier, timbers groaned, the hull swayed crazily. Billows rushed and rumbled, surf roared. Horns hooted, crew wailed themselves hoarse, ship called desperately to unseen ship.

  Pytheas, aft by the helm, shook his head. “What makes the waves rise when we have no wind?” he asked through the tumult.

  The steersman gripped his useless tiller and shuddered. “Things out o’ the deeps,” he rasped, “or the gods o’ these waters, angry that we trouble them.”

  “Launch the boats,” Hanno advised Pytheas. “They’ll give some warning if we’re about to drift onto a rock, and maybe they can pull us clear.”

  The steersman bared teeth. “Oh, no, you don’t!” he cried. “You’ll not send men down to the demon-beasts. They won’t go.”

  “I won’t send them,” Hanno retorted. “I’ll lead them.”

  “Or I,” Pytheas said.

  It became the Phoenician who shook his head. “We can’t risk you. Who else could have brought us this far, or can bring us home? Without you we’re all dead. Come help me put spirit into the crew.”

  He got his men, because Pytheas’ calm words damped the terror in them. They unlashed a boat, dragged it to the side, shoved it over a rail when the deck canted and white-maned waves galloped just beneath. Hanno sprang down, braced calves between two thwarts, took an oar a sailor handed him, fended off while his rowers followed one by one. They fought free at the end of a towline and the next boat came after.

  “I do hope the other skippers—“ began Hanno. A dash of brine choked off what nobody heard anyhow.

  The ship was gone into wet smoke. The boat climbed a comber that was tike a moving hillside, hovered on the crest, plunged into a trough where men looked up the heights of water around them. Noise rolled empty of direction. Hanno, at the rudder, could only try to keep the hawser unfouled behind him. “Stroke!” he bawled. “Stroke, stroke, stroke!” Men gasped at oars and bailing buckets. The sea lapped around their ankles.

  A monstrous grip seized them. They whirled. A cataract leaped out of the fog. It burst over their heads. When they could see again, the ship was upon them. The boat smashed into her hull. The water ground it against the strakes. Wood broke, tore free of nails, shrieked. The boat fell asunder.

  Pytheas beheld it. A man flailed arms and legs. The sea dashed him at the ship. His skull split open. Brains, blood, body went under.

  “Lines out!” Pytheas shouted. He himself didn’t stop to uncoil any from a bollard. He drew his knife and slashed a sheet free of the slack mainsail. When he cast the end overboard, it disappeared in fog and foam. None of the swimmers he glimpsed, lost, glimpsed again had noticed it.

  He signalled for another length. The cut sheet still cleated and in his left hand, he slid over the rail. Feet planted on the hull, arm straining to hold the cordage taut and himself in place, he leaned straight out. With his right hand he swung the second line like a whip.

  Now he was visible to those he would save, except when the vessel rose onto that side and a wave fountained across him. A man swung past. Pytheas flicked the loose line at his face. The man caught it. Sailors on deck hauled him aboard.

  The third whom Pytheas rescued was Hanno, clinging to an oar. After that, his strength was spent. He got back with the help of two mariners and fell in a heap beside the Phoenician. No others attempted his feat; but no more waifs came to sight in the rage around.

  Hanno stirred. “To the cabin, you and me and these two,” he said through clattering teeth. “Else the cold will kill us. We wouldn’t have lived ten minutes in that water.”

  In the shelter, men stripped, toweled till blood awoke to stinging life, pulled blankets tightly about themselves. “You were magnificent, my friend,” Hanno said. “I wouldn’t have supposed you, a scholar—tough, but a scholar—could do it.”

  “Nor would I have.” Exhaustion flattened Pytheas’ voice.

  “You saved us few from the consequences of my folly.”

  “No folly. Who could have foreseen the sea in windless air would go so wild so fast?”

  “What might have done it?”

  “Demons,” mumbled a sailor.

  “No,” Pytheas replied. “It must have been a trick of these enormous Atlantic tides, thrusting through a strait cluttered with isles and reefs.”

  Hanno mustered a chuckle. “Still the philosopher, you!”

  “We’ve a boat left,” Pytheas said. “And our luck may turn. Beseech your gods if you like, boys.” He lay down on his pallet. “I am going to sleep.”

  6

  The ships survived, though one scraped a rock and opened seams. When fog had lifted and waters somewhat calmed, rowers pulled the three to the high island. They found a safe anchorage with a sloping strand where, at low water, they could work to repair damage.

  Several families lived nearby: unshorn, skin-clad fishers who kept a few animals and scratched in tiny gardens. Their dwellings were dry-laid stones and turf roofs above pits. At first they fled and watched from afar. Pytheas ordered goods set out, and they timidly returned to collect these. Thereafter the Greeks were their house guests.

  That proved fortunate. A gale came from the west. The ships got barely adequate protection from the bluffs around the east-side inlet, but everywhere else the storm ramped unchecked for days and nights. Men could not stand against it. Indoors they must struggle to speak and hear through the racket. Breakers higher than city battlements hurled themselves onto the western cliffs. Stones Weighing tons broke from their beds in what had been the shallows. Earth trembled. The air was a torrent of spume, whose salt flayed faces and blinded eyes. It was as if the world had toppled into primordial chaos.

  Pytheas, Hanno, and their companions hunched crowded together on dried seaweed strewn over a dirt floor in a cave of gloom. Coals glowed faint red on the hearthstone. Smoke drifted acrid through the chill. Pytheas was another shadow, his words a whisper amidst the violence: “The fog, and now this. Here is neither sea nor land nor air. They have all become one, a thing like a sea-lung. Farther north can only be the Great Ice. I think we are near the border of life’s kingdom.” They saw his head lift. “But we have not come to the end of our search.”

  7

  Eastward oversea, four days’ sail from the northern tip of Pretania, the explorers found another land. It rose sharply out of the water, but holms protected a great bay. On an arm of this dwelt folk who received newcomers kindly. They were not Keltoi, being even more tall and fair. Their language was kin to a Germanic tongue which Hanno had gotten a little of on an earlier wanderi
ng; he could soon make himself understood. Their iron tools and weapons, arts and way of life, did bear a Keltic mark. However, their spirit seemed different, more sober, less possessed by the unearthly.

  The Greeks meant to abide a short while, inquire about those realms that were their goal, take on fresh supplies, and proceed. But their stay lengthened. Toil, danger, loss had worn them down. Here they found hospitality and admiration. As they gained words, they won full comradeship, shared in undertakings, swapped thoughts and recollections and songs, sported, made merry. The women were welcoming. Nobody urged Pytheas to order anchors up or asked why he did not.

  The guests were no parasites. They brought wonderful gifts. On a ship of theirs they carried men who knew only longboats fashioned of planks stitched together, driven by paddles. Those men learned more about their own waters and communities elsewhere than they had dreamed they might. Trade followed, and visits to and fro for the first time ever. Hunting was excellent in the hinterland, and the soldiers fetched plenty of meat home. The presence of the Greeks, their revelation of an outside world, gave new sparkle to life. They felt themselves taken into brotherhood.

  This was the country its people named Thule.

  Midsummer came, with the light nights.

  Hanno and a lass went to gather berries. Alone under the sweetnesses of birch trees, they made love. The long day tired her, and after they returned to her father’s house she fell happily asleep. He could not. He lay for an hour on their bed of hides, feeling her warm against him, hearing her and her family breathe, himself inhaling the fragrance and pungency of the cows stalled at the far end of the single long room. A banked fire sometimes let slip a flamelet, but what made soft dusk was the sky beyond the wickerwork door. Finally he rose, pulled his tunic back over his head, and stole forth.