Knossos

by Laura Gill

  She snuffled. “Really?”

  He patted her cheek. “Really.”

  Knos set the women to tasks to take their minds off their objections, and to strengthen the notion that, yes, they were leaving, and that everything would be fine. Children gathered wood for bonfires, women pried mussels from the rocks with stone scrapers, and unoccupied men fished, while the senior crew gathered their tools and crouched in Dolphin’s shade calculating the estimated space needed for passengers, livestock, and goods. They would not be able to take very much to their new home, meaning they would have to leave their furniture. Best not to tell the women, they agreed, until the very last moment.

  His wives returned in the afternoon. “Tell me you’ve had a good omen.” Knos did not care for the profound gravity or skepticism of their demeanor. “Masar cast the bones. The signs were good.”

  All three women remained silent as they took in the activity on the beach. Finally, Urope studied him intently and said, “The holy woman told us that if we make this voyage our names will live forever.”

  Oracles never spoke clearly, never said what was expected. “Did she say anything else?” Knos asked. It might mean success or disaster and infamy; the interpretation could vary.

  “She closed her eyes and said no more.” Urope turned to watch the women working on the sand. “I don’t like it, Knos. After all, when our children have children, and those children have children, we’ll become ancestors. We don’t need our names to live in song.” She remained soft-spoken and grave, even as she remonstrated with him.

  He sighed. “Then you’re not with me?”

  Urope remained noncommittal. “If we do this, if we go with you, then our going must benefit the clan, not simply salve your pride.”

  But how could he not feel the faintest rush of pride at the prospect of commanding such a voyage, of having his name remembered long after his bones were interred and his children and grandchildren ceased to be? “Of course,” he replied. “Didn’t I say before that we ought to go while we still could? This is the best thing for us.” And he believed that, too.

  A runner arrived in the late afternoon to report that Menuash had found good timber and would return tomorrow with enough logs to start building. Meanwhile, the remaining crew and their families enjoyed supper on the beach. A sailor produced a hand-drum and, tapping out a beat, encouraged his neighbors to break out into song. Several oarsmen staggered to their feet to dance the ancient circle dance, while the women clapped the beat. Yikadi, the Bull Clan’s singer, performed an episode from the Song of Katsa, the legendary clan chieftain who had led their ancestors from their ravaged home on the mainland to Rhodes hundreds of years earlier. It was a very long tale, comprised of blood feuds, encounters with the gods, love affairs, battles with terrifying monsters and sojourns in exotic places; it would have taken the singer many, many nights to recite it all.

  Afterward, Knos regaled his listeners about the lands he himself had visited, including the one the people were going to settle, and offered profuse assurances that he was not lying. “The coast and inland were empty, even the caves where men might have dwelt.” He winked at the ladies, even when his wives groused over his shameless flirting. “Ask any of my crew.”

  So the evening might have progressed with a pleasant festival air but for the arrival of a second group of elders.

  Dravan was there, still wearing his beads and bull horns, but beside him... Knos stood, the oarsmen stopped dancing and turned, and all talking and laughter and music ceased.

  Aramo edged closer to Knos. “What do they want?”

  Shobai and Sarduri, also dressed in their chieftain’s regalia, had brought more than a dozen kinsmen each. Knos regretted the absence of Menuash and his dozen sailors. After the way he had been set upon the other day, he wanted as many allies at his back as possible. Signaling to his wives, he said quietly, “If a fight breaks out, get the children away.”

  Then he stepped forward to greet the newcomers. “Why so much formality?” he exclaimed. “This is a friendly clan gathering on the beach.”

  “It is anything but.” Shobai’s headdress was festooned with shark’s teeth and shells, and his face darkened with paint that would have been pale yellow by daylight. “One would have thought that yesterday’s judgment would have cowed your impulses.”

  “And what do you care what we do?” Abbek called out, to shouts of approval from the sailors.

  Shobai pointed at them with all the arrogance of a high priest. “You,” he pronounced, “are plotting rebellion.”

  Knos choked with laughter concealing a blitheness he did not feel. “Is that what you’re calling it? How can I rebel when I don’t even belong to your clan? I owe you no allegiance. My crew and I are leaving Rhodes with our immediate families and everything that belongs to us—a thing which isn’t any of your concern.”

  Harsh laughter made the seagull wings framing Sarduri’s headdress jiggle. “You don’t have the permission of your elders!”

  “I don’t require Dravan’s permission or yours!” Knos shot back. “I’m a free man, taking what belongs to me and mine.” Sarduri started to interject, but Knos only raised his voice further, bulling right over him with immense satisfaction. “Yesterday wasn’t about Shobai’s daughter. You and Shobai wanted an excuse to steal our animals and goods, as you’ve been stealing them for years.” Now it was his turn to point his finger and accuse. “I refuse to be beggared and humiliated. Let those who don’t mind being buggered—” He jerked his chin at Dravan. “—let them stay.”

  Then someone hurled a beach pebble, striking the front of Dravan’s robe. The chieftain threw up his hands, dropping his staff, and cried out. Shobai gestured. Knos almost missed that small movement in his search for the agitator who had thrown the pebble, but there was no mistaking Divos and his dozen ruffians heading down the path.

  “TO YOUR CAPTAIN!” he roared.

  His sailors responded with a full-bodied collective shout, pushing their women and children aside to take the front line. Knos maneuvered into the scope of Divos’s assault, brought up a clenched fist, and smashed it with great relish into the younger man’s jaw. Divos’s ruffians were already engaged, brawling with Knos’s sailors, at a loss to come to his aid.

  “FIRE!” A woman’s scream alerted Knos to the shock of flames eating at Dolphin’s hull. Alarmed, he stumbled away from the gap-toothed man he had been pummeling, and toward the vessel where he noticed several women already trying to smother the blaze with their shawls. Another half-dozen women were kicking and clobbering a man on the ground, while Aramo’s first wife rallied some frightened children to collect seawater in wooden bowls, watertight baskets and any other available vessel.

  Forgetting the brawl, Knos went with them, scurrying to and fro checking for stray embers. The reek of charred fabric and wood hung in the air, more from the women’s smoldering garments than from any significant damage, as the ship’s timbers had been treated against fire and worm-rot when the vessel was constructed. Knos caught Hariana among the rowing benches, wafting away smoke. Her black curls were singed; he frantically touched her face and hands, searching for blisters or any other injuries.

  “I’m fine!” she cried, pointing to his cheek. Knos followed her gesture, discovered the beginnings of a bruise swelling his left cheekbone. He did not recall receiving the blow.

  The brawl had ended. Knos surveyed the scene with trepidation. The wounded were assisted by kinsmen and neighbors. Come morning, Shobai and Sarduri would probably try to swindle the Bull Clan for compensation—not that they would gain anything. Knos would make certain of that. Shobai had sent his son to interfere in a matter which did not concern the Dolphin Clan.

  He found Urope among the women who had mobbed the man on the ground. “We caught him running from the fire with a torch,” she insisted.

  Knos knelt down to inspect the unconscious figure lying in the sand. The man was covered in bruises and lacerations, mostly about his arms where he h
ad raised them to shield his face from the women’s pummeling. His ribs felt broken. The women identified him as a man of the Seagull Clan, and showed Knos the burnt-out torch. With the stench of smoke choking his nostrils, Hariana’s singed curls, and the unthinkable prospect of his ship—the vessel his dead father had built—reduced to ashes, Knos struggled against the urge to finish what the women had started. No one insulted his father’s shade, and no one—no one—harmed his Dolphin without facing the consequences.

  Unable to relax, Knos spent the night on the beach with his ship. His sailors elected to remain with him, as did their families. Hariana was shaken by the brawl and her close brush with the fire. Knos tucked her beside him under his goat-hair blanket, with assurances that their enemies would not attempt another attack.

  Morning saw a closer inspection of the damage, which was minimal, and the implementation of stern measures to ensure against a repeat incident. Knos selected reliable men, made certain they were armed with bows, spears, and slingshots, and stationed them around Dolphin with orders to defend the ship at all costs. “But don’t kill anyone,” he cautioned, “unless you absolutely have to.”

  He had relented earlier, and had his men take the injured and still-unconscious Seagull man home to his kinsmen with an unapologetic explanation of what had happened. The family threatened retaliation, of course, but Aramo and Yikadi, accompanying the wounded man, had silenced them with a forceful reminder that their kinsman had instigated his own beating. As a singer and keeper of the laws and genealogies, Yikadi’s words carried with them a certain authority that, despite his arrogant bluster, compelled the family to back down lest he sing down a curse in the name of some god. Knos was simply grateful that Yikadi had sided with him and not the elders.

  In mid-afternoon, Menuash and his men returned with two laden ox-carts. The first mate assessed Knos’s fresh bruises, the guard around the ship, and, while others worked to unload the cargo, he asked, “Trouble?”

  Knos offered a quick explanation, but he was more interested in Menuash’s report. “A few troublemakers from the Dolphin and Octopus Clans followed,” the younger man said, “but we drove them out easily. No, it was Uzbet who gave us a hassle.” Uzbet was Dravan’s cousin, the female elder who yesterday morning had insisted that Dolphin was the clan’s property. “She claimed the tree goddess was offended, never mind that we’d already petitioned and left Hamaya an offering. Then when we told Uzbet that we were going ahead anyway, that the oracle bones were favorable, she threatened us with fines.” Menuash rolled his eyes. “It was all we could do not to gag the bitch and tie her to a tree.”

  Knos took the incident in stride, having feared much worse, and directed Menuash’s group to eat and catch their wind. They had done well for a day’s work, felling a mature cypress tree, stripping the branches, and splitting the thick trunk into rough logs, a laborious process with the stone axes and adzes they had to work with. More wood would be needed as the building progressed, which meant further excursions and more trouble with the clan elders, but for now a single cypress provided sufficient material to start constructing a second ship.

  Pine and oak were also suitable for shipbuilding, and Rhodes had abundant supplies, but cypress possessed a greater advantage in that it was a lightweight and flexible wood, resistant to insects, and naturally buoyant. And it was common knowledge that a sailor could survive a shipwreck and make it to safety simply by clinging to a few cypress planks.

  Menuash had also brought back yew wood, essential for binding the cypress planks. Knos assigned the boys and women loitering around the ship to shredding the fibrous, hardy plant into sinews that would harden and tighten over time.

  Knos found solace in the comforting knock of stone and antler tools on wood as the best carpenters among the sailors started shaping the logs. “It’s the sound,” he told his eldest son, “of men getting things done.” He was knapping flint to shape into additional spearheads. Flint was neither as sharp nor as lethal as obsidian, of course, but in a fight it would get the job done.

  Astaryas was more concerned about last night’s fight on the beach. “Will they attack us again?”

  “Who knows?”

  Astaryas shook his head. “I don’t understand. They should be happy we’re leaving, but they’re not.”

  Knos pondered that, while letting the flint core rest upon his knee. Every now and then, to rest his eyes, he looked toward the carpenters. With his stone axe, Masar expertly hit a wooden wedge driven into a log; the blow induced a fracture along the cypress grain with a satisfyingly audible crack. The carpenters would split the wood several times to extrude the rough planks. “Mortal men aren’t reasonable,” he explained, glancing again at the flint. “Shobai and his son are bullies. It diminishes them in the eyes of their clan and those they’ve oppressed when someone stands up to them and wins.”

  “What about Dravan?” Astaryas licked his lips as he watched the carpenters arrange the unfinished planks on a pallet raised above the sand; he obviously wanted to join them. “He’s not a bully, but he’s against us. He should be grateful for the stand we’ve taken.”

  “I made him look foolish by doing his job for him.” Knos touched the side of the flint core with his hammer stone, then gave it a decisive strike. Flint knapping took practice and a precise hand; one wrong strike would ruin the core. The flake that came loose was sharp enough for his wives to use for cutting leather or the stems of plants. “He won’t thank us for that.”

  Astaryas wore a look of bewilderment, when he was not hungrily eyeing the carpenters. That was no wonder, given the upheavals of the last few days, and Knos readily admitted that he had neglected the boy. Was he fourteen, already? The first patchy fuzz of a man’s beard shadowed the youth’s upper lip. Being tall like his mother’s people, he stood eye level with his father. Astaryas was going to be a big man when grown, but his knowledge of the wider world was lacking. Time to take him in hand, Knos decided, to instruct him in his father’s trade, and to teach him something about men’s foibles.

  “Mother says you make trouble.”

  Of course, Astaryas had overheard Urope’s complaints the other night; the conversation was not exactly private. “She knew that when she married me,” Knos replied. He paused to drape an arm over his son’s shoulders. “Whatever your mother might tell you, whatever you might hear elsewhere, this business has little to do with what I did with Shobai’s daughter.”

  “I mean, why do you always have to make trouble?” Astaryas ducked out from under his father’s paternal arm, a rejection which left Knos stunned and confounded. “Why do you always need women, when you already have three wives? Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “What in the world has your mother been telling you?” And what right did the boy think he had, openly questioning his father’s affairs? But Knos was reluctant to chastise him, to drive him further away, when it was clear that he had been too long among the women. “Some men are content to stay at home with their wives, but for sailors...” He sighed. “It’s the curse of Marynos, this constant hunger for adventure, women, to feel the salt wind in your face, and to see what’s beyond the horizon. You’ll understand once you’ve been out there a few times.”

  Astaryas stared at the ground, sulking. Something was eating at the boy, something more than merely his father’s misadventures. “Don’t tell me,” Knos speculated, “that you don’t want to go to sea.” There was always that possibility. Aramo had ventured out on a few voyages, but he preferred to tend his flocks and farm his homestead, which lay a mile inland from the village. Rauda had no stomach for voyaging whatsoever, could not swim, and had no commerce with the sea except for finishing animal hides for making sails.

  Knos watched his son ground his square jaw, working the muscles in his mandible. “Of course I do,” Astaryas grumbled, “but now you’ve made it impossible for me with my friends.”

  Knos had no idea what friends he was talking about, one more sober indication that he had neglec
ted the boy’s upbringing. “And how is that? Some of them are going to sea with you, aren’t they?”

  “Not Besho, Kyros, or Khikaro.” Those were names which Knos did not recognize, which meant that they were not Bull Clan.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “You mean to tell me you’re sore because you’re no longer friends with a few Dolphin and Seagull boys whose fathers steal our goods and livelihood?” Knos snorted contemptuously, his anger rising at his son’s continued brooding. Astaryas clearly needed to spend more time with the men of the Bull Clan, to learn his trade, as well as how to cherish his proud heritage, and to recognize the difference between friends and enemies.

  Knos then took note of the carpenters Astaryas had been eyeing. “Come with me,” he said. “Let’s find you some tools and put you to work.”

  *~*~*~*

  A dozen bull heads shoved their snouts up from under the earth. A dozen bull heads laid open to muscles and sinews by the skinning blade. All twelve—twelve, a sacred number—were lowing. Impossible after the sacrificial slash across the throat, after the bleeding-out, but there it was, they were lowing, speaking, and he somehow understood the tongues of beasts. They asked to join him, urged him to uncover them and take them with him, but how could he obey when he did not even know where they were buried, when the gods would see and condemn the act as sacrilege?

  He coughed in the acrid air of the shrine. The smoke from the burnt offerings overflowed the altar. It was too much, the sudden heat and...

  “Knos, wake up!” Urope was shaking and pummeling him, hauling him away from the land of dreams into a dark room that smelled of smoke. “The house is on fire.”

  Hearing that, he was awake in an instant. An ominous glow lit the doorway. Knos bolted from his pallet and tore the ox-hide curtain aside to discover a holocaust beyond. Fierce heat cracked and blackened the plaster; he could feel it through the wooden doorjamb. Orange flames ate at the rafters.