Farther along the shore, someone was shouting. “Flea! Flea! Over here!”
A small battered-looking ship packed with escaped slaves was rolling in the shallows, and Periphas was beckoning. “Flea! Hurry!”
“I can’t!” shouted Hylas. “I’ve got to find Pirra!”
“Who’s Pirra? We can’t wait!”
Hylas raced off along the beach, dodging carts, donkeys, people. No Pirra. Then the wind tore a rent in the ash and a ship loomed over him. Astonished, he took in its beaked prow and huge painted eye. What was a Keftian ship doing here?
On the deck, he made out a young man with a shaven head and black-rimmed eyes, shouting at the oarsmen. Hylas recognized Userref, Pirra’s Egyptian slave, but as he opened his mouth to call to him, someone blundered against him and he fell over a crate.
The crate yowled. It was Havoc: upside-down, half-dead with fright, but alive. The Crows had brought her this far, then abandoned her.
“I’m here,” Hylas told her, righting the cage and pushing his fingers through the bars, while the frantic lion cub mewed and tried desperately to lick his hand. “It’s me, you’ll be all right now, I’ll get you out.”
But as he drew his knife to cut her free, he hesitated. If he freed her, she’d be off like an arrow, he’d never catch her again. He would have to leave her to wander alone until Thalakrea blew up.
In consternation, Hylas glanced at the Keftian ship, then back to Havoc. His heart twisted. She would never understand. She would think he was dooming her to captivity; which he was—but at least she’d be alive.
“Userref!” he yelled, staggering into the surf with Havoc’s cage in his arms.
The Egyptian saw him and his jaw dropped. “Who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter!” gasped Hylas. “Take this!” His arms shook as he held up the cage. “Her name’s Havoc! Pirra said you worship lions! You’ve got to save her!”
“You know Pirra? Where is she?”
“Take her! Please!”
He felt the cage lifted out of his hands as the Egyptian swung it aboard. Then the oars creaked and the ship was pulling away, and Hylas stood with the gray water swirling about his waist and the ash raining down like thick tears, watching Havoc struggling wildly in her cage. Her yowls pierced his heart. Why are you abandoning me?
“Hylas!” shouted someone behind him.
And there was Pirra. Bizarrely, she still had the waterskin slung across her back, and she was filthy and grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t believe you got out!”
“What about you?” he panted. “How’d you get away from Pharax?”
“There was a landslide, I—”
“Pirra!” shouted Userref, signaling to the oarsmen to stop rowing. Pirra saw Userref and the Keftian ship. Her face worked.
Userref yelled something in Keftian and threw her a line.
It struck the waves near her. She shook her head. “No! I can’t go back to Keftiu!”
Hylas stood blinking seawater from his eyes. There were no more boats, and at any moment, Thalakrea might blow up. “You’ve got to,” he told her.
She turned on him. “We’ll find another boat—”
“What boat?” he shouted. “They’ve all gone!”
“I told you, I’m never going back!”
“This is your only chance!” Grabbing the line, he splashed toward her and slung it around her waist.
“What are you doing?” Desperately she clawed at his hands but he ignored her, securing a knot she wouldn’t be able to untie. “Pull her in!” he yelled to Userref.
“You can’t do this!” screamed Pirra. But Userref was hauling her in and lifting her struggling on board, while barking orders to a seaman to cast another line to Hylas.
“You too!” cried the Egyptian.
Hylas waded for the line—but the Keftian oarsmen were pulling hard and the ship was moving too fast, dragging the rope out of reach.
A massive crash behind him, and another vast chunk of cliff toppled into the Sea. The impact sent a huge wave racing toward him. He was rolling over and over in gray sludge, he couldn’t tell up from down. When he surfaced, spitting sludge, the Keftian ship was already far out in the bay.
Hylas floundered ashore. No one left except a panicking donkey and a litter of discarded possessions. Not long now, he thought numbly.
Then through the pattering ash, he glimpsed a small scruffy ship rocking in the shallows. He saw the escaped slaves thronging the deck, and Periphas leaning over the side. “Swim, Flea! We can’t wait any longer!”
With the last of his strength, Hylas flailed toward them; then many hands were reaching down and hauling him aboard.
As the oarsmen brought the ship about and headed into the bay, Hylas pushed through the crowd to reach the prow.
The Keftian ship had set sail and was speeding away from him across the ashen Sea. Pirra stood in the stern, her hair wild, her face ablaze with fury.
“I told you I couldn’t go back!” she screamed. “I hate you, Hylas! I’ll hate you forever!”
39
Thalakrea was far away, but the Sea was still rough and the ash was still falling. It had turned the whole world gray: the waves, the sails, the silent, fearful people.
Like a ship of ghosts, thought Telamon.
He watched the gray oarsmen rowing the gray Sea. The gray deck was sticky with a scarlet tracery of blood: They’d sacrificed a ram to beg safe passage of the Sky Father and the Earthshaker.
Telamon was sick with fatigue and his thigh throbbed where Pirra had stabbed him, but as he looked at his hands gripping the side of the ship, he felt fiercely proud. These hands had dug himself and Pharax out of the landslide. The Mountain had tried to kill them, but he’d fought back. He’d called on the Angry Ones to help him—and they had.
They had saved him, as they had saved his kin. And although the dagger was missing, the fact that the House of Koronos had escaped unharmed told Telamon that the dagger had not been destroyed on Thalakrea. And he sensed that the others believed this too.
A few paces from where he stood, a canopy covered the stern. Beneath it, Kreon sat brooding over the loss of his mines, while Pharax sharpened his sword and Alekto combed the ash from her hair. Koronos gazed out to Sea, as inscrutable as ever. For the first time, Telamon felt they were truly his kin.
The High Chieftain turned his head and met his eyes, and Telamon bowed. Then he moved away. It wasn’t yet time to tell his grandfather what he’d learned in those last moments at Thalakrea. He must keep his knowledge to himself till he knew how to use it.
Hylas was alive. Telamon had spotted him on the shore as their ship was leaving.
Anger, fear, outrage seethed inside him. But he felt no pang for the friendship that had been. That was good. It was all over now.
Suddenly a fierce wind gusted out of nowhere, rocking the ship and blasting him backward—and from the east came a deafening roar. People were shouting and pointing, clutching amulets and falling to their knees. In awe Telamon watched a black cloud rising from the horizon.
“That’s Thalakrea,” said Pharax, come to stand beside him.
“It’s the end of the world,” said an oarsman.
“If it is, then it is,” Pharax said grimly.
Telamon cast him an admiring glance. Here was a man who would meet the end of the world as he met everything: with a sword in his hand.
Yes, thought Telamon. That’s the way to be.
He realized now that the Angry Ones had saved him for a reason. He—not Kreon, not Pharax, not even Koronos—would be the savior of his House. He would crush Keftiu and seize the whole of Akea in his grasp. He would raise his clan to undreamed-of heights.
And no Outsider—no filthy barefoot goatherd—would get in his way.
Pirra heard the blast as she crouched on deck, trying t
o calm Havoc in her cage.
Gulls flew up from the cliffs and oarsmen shouted in terror. Userref gripped his eye amulet and chanted prayers to his gods. Havoc—who’d been seasick the whole way—flattened her ears and tried to make herself very small.
Pirra watched the ashcloud slowly darkening the Sun and turning the air chill. Even here, with Keftiu within sight, the Sea was scummed with ash. No one near Thalakrea could have survived that blast.
Userref finished his prayers and came to kneel beside her.
“Is it the end of the world?” she said.
“I don’t know. But my father was a scribe, and he knew many Words of Truth. I remember one: I am the Lord of the Horizon. I will darken the sky and separate myself from mankind. I will show you calamity over all the earth . . .”
Pirra clutched her sealstone and thought of Hylas in that scruffy little ship overburdened with escaped slaves. Had he reached safety before the Lady of Fire blasted Thalakrea to the sky?
“That boy on the shore,” said Userref. “Was he the one you met last summer? The one named Hy-las?”
Pirra stiffened. “Don’t ever speak his name again. I hate him.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.” She’d shouted it till she was hoarse, so it must be true. I could have been on that ship with him, she thought. If it wasn’t for Hylas, I’d still be free.
The deck creaked and rocked, and Pirra watched Keftiu drawing inexorably closer. She had begged Userref to set her down on the coast somewhere far from the House of the Goddess; at least that would have given her a chance. “Don’t take me back to Yassassara, she’ll never let me out. I’ll never see the sky again!”
But Userref—gentle, kind Userref—had been relentless. Pirra knew that it wasn’t to save his own skin, but because, in his obedient Egyptian way, he was convinced that his gods wanted him to do the will of the High Priestess.
Pirra watched him pushing scraps of fish through the bars for Havoc, who’d recovered enough to snuffle them up.
“I’m sorry I can’t release you, little daughter of the Sun,” he told the lion cub respectfully, “but when we get ashore, I’ll build you a fine large cage. You shall have many playthings, and meat every day. You shall be honored as a sacred creature of Sekhmet.”
Without turning his head, he said to Pirra, “You know, that boy was only trying to save you.”
“I could have saved myself,” she said hotly. “I could have found another boat. He did.”
“An overcrowded vessel, too low in the water. He might not survive. Do you really wish for that?”
Pirra glared at him. Turning aside, she unstrapped the obsidian knife and held it up. “See this? He made it for me.” She flung it across the waves. “There. That’s what I think of Hylas.”
Userref frowned. “That was unwise. Now you have no knife.”
Pirra rose to her feet and walked away.
But I do have a knife, she told Userref silently.
What he didn’t know was that after the landslide, when she’d dug herself out, she’d found something lying beside Pharax’s half-buried hand.
Userref didn’t know what she kept hidden in the empty waterskin slung over her shoulder.
Slipping her hand inside, she touched the cold smooth bronze of the dagger of Koronos.
Hylas watched the cloud spreading across the sky like a giant hand reaching south—toward Keftiu.
He kept seeing Pirra standing on deck with the wind whipping her hair about her face. The way she’d glared at him . . . I hate you! I’ll hate you forever!
Even here, so far from Thalakrea, the ash was still falling. Earlier, Periphas had sacrificed a seabird to the Earthshaker, and it seemed to have worked, because now, in the distance, a blur of land appeared on the horizon. The freed slaves gave a ragged cheer.
Periphas picked his way along the crowded deck toward him. Like everyone, he was grimy and haggard with exhaustion; but there was a glint of good humor in his brown eyes.
“Any idea where we are?” said Hylas.
Periphas shook his head. “That’s for the gods to know and us to find out.”
Hylas hesitated. “A long time ago, you told me you were from Messenia.”
“And so I am. Why?”
“My sister—she may be in Messenia. She’s ten. Did you ever hear of someone like her?”
Periphas’ face became grave. “I’m sorry, Flea. I wish I could tell you I knew of a girl with yellow hair and a ruthless expression, like her big brother. But I can’t. All I know is that the Crows didn’t get them all.”
Hylas sucked in his lips and nodded. So he was back where he’d started. The Crows had the dagger and Issi was missing. The only thing that had changed was that he’d doomed Havoc and Pirra to captivity.
Periphas clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, Flea, you’re not dead yet.”
Hylas scowled. “Why did you come back for me?”
“We owed it to you. You warned the wisewoman, who warned us. It’s thanks to you we’re alive.” He paused. “I don’t just mean the people on this ship, Flea, I mean everyone. The Islanders, the other miners, your fellow pit spiders. They’re all alive because of you.”
Hylas hadn’t seen it like that. But now he thought of Zan and Bat and Spit—whom Periphas had seen being picked up by an Islander’s boat—and of all the others.
The ship lurched, then righted itself. Periphas shouted at the helmsman to watch where he was going, and several people laughed.
It seemed astonishing that they could laugh at such a time, when a vast cloud of ash was darkening the Sun. Hylas asked Periphas if he thought the world was going to end.
Periphas scratched his beard and squinted at the sky. “I don’t know.” He glanced at Hylas. “But until it does, someone’s found a sack of olives we didn’t know we had. So when you’ve finished being miserable, come and get your share.”
Hylas watched him work his way back along the deck.
The land drew steadily closer, and he leaned over the side, gazing down at the scummy gray Sea.
Suddenly, a flock of seabirds flew over the ship. They were wheeling and crying, and in the ashen twilight, their wings flashed brilliant white. Unexpectedly, Hylas’ heart lifted.
Periphas was right. He had saved them: Hekabi and Zan and Bat and Spit; the Islanders, the miners; Akastos too, if he’d managed to get away. Maybe that was why the gods had sent him to Thalakrea.
In his head, he spoke defiantly to Pirra. I know you’re angry with me, Pirra. But you’ve got to be alive to be angry. I saved you. I saved Havoc too. And I’d do it again.
For a long time he watched the white birds wheeling and crying overhead.
Then he went to join Periphas and claim his share of the olives.
Author’s Note
The Burning Shadow takes place three and a half thousand years ago in the Bronze Age, in the land we call ancient Greece. This was long before the time of marble temples and classical sculpture with which you may be familiar. It was even before the Greeks ranged their gods and goddesses into an orderly pantheon of Zeus, Hera, Hades, and all the others.
We don’t know much about Bronze Age Greece, because its people left so few written records, but we do know something about their astonishing cultures, which today we call the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. Theirs is the world of Gods and Warriors. It’s believed that this was a world of scattered chieftaincies, separated by mountain ranges and forests, and that it was probably wetter and greener than today, with far more wild animals both on land and in the Sea.
To create the world of Hylas and Pirra, I’ve studied the archaeology of the Greek Bronze Age. To get an idea of how people thought and what they believed, I’ve drawn on the beliefs of more recent peoples who still live in traditional ways, just as I did when I wrote about the Stone Age in Chronicles of Anci
ent Darkness. And although people in Hylas’ time lived mostly by farming or fishing, rather than by hunting and gathering, I’ve no doubt that much of the knowledge and beliefs of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers lived on into the Bronze Age, particularly among the poorer people, such as Hylas himself.
Here’s a quick word about place-names. Akea (or Achaea, as it’s usually spelled) is the ancient name for mainland Greece, and Lykonia is my name for present-day Lakonia. I’ve kept the name Mycenae unaltered, as it’s so well-known. I’ve adopted the name “Keftian” for the great Cretan civilization we call Minoan. (We don’t know what they called themselves; depending on which book you read, their name may have been Keftians, or that may just have been a name given them by the ancient Egyptians.) As for Egypt, although that name derives from the Greeks, I’ve kept it because, like Mycenae, it felt artificial to change it.
Concerning the map of the World of Gods and Warriors, it shows the world as Hylas and Pirra experience it. Thus it includes some islands that I’ve made up, and omits others which form no part of the story. What Pirra calls the Obsidian Isles are what we now call the Cyclades: the islands east of Mainland Greece. I made up the island of Thalakrea, based on my research trips to several volcanic islands—Milos and Sifnos in the Cyclades, and the Aeolian Islands of Vulcano and Stromboli—while Kreon’s stronghold was based on a visit to the spectacular hilltop ruins of Aghios Andreas on Sifnos.
To get a feel for Thalakrea’s mines, I visited the largest Bronze Age copper mines in western Europe, at the Great Orme in north Wales. Crawling through those claustrophobic tunnels really helped me imagine what it was like for Hylas. Then on Sifnos in the Mediterranean, I hiked out to the isolated ruins of the Bronze Age mines at Aghios Softis. I didn’t enter those tunnels—they’re unstable and I was on my own, miles from anywhere—but again, being there brought home to me how awful it must have been to be a slave, working by lamplight in such cramped spaces.
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