Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Curse you!” the man screamed, still battering the ships’ planks with its captain. “Gods devour you! Your ship will sink in the deepness of the pelagos, your goods will go to the House of Swallowing, and your crew will be consumed by sheshrek and leviathans! Apash kek tomarach et tumasha kooreeng Baal!”

  The stunned sailors finally gathered their wits and raced to the aid of their captain, but they arrived only in time to have the battered and unconscious man tossed at them like so much cargo. They went down. They regained their feet, but the belligerent sea master was already returning to his own ship, like a storm on an unalterable course, the crowd parting before him. Rather than chasing after, even though the crew was armed with dagger, club and sword, and there was much for which to seek redress, they wisely chose to stay and tend to their captain.

  As the villagers started poking through the wares of the galley, looking for bargains and items of status, Kira made her way toward the other galley.

  Only one, she thought.

  “Why are you following me?” the Phoenician demanded, suddenly turning toward Kira, standing with his fists clenched. “Go rout through Caradash’s pearls like the other swine! My own wares won’t be out till after dusk.”

  “Caradash the other captain?” Kira asked.

  “Caradash favored of the gods,” the man spat. “Caradash favored by the Brotherhood of the Sea.”

  “Why did you attack him?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Was it because of the broken oars?” she continued. “Was it because he beat you to the best mooring?”

  The man merely growled and started to turn away.

  “Did you find the weather in Albion much to your liking?” Kira asked.

  The captain looked at her. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “My name is Kira,” she replied. “What I want depends on your destination once you are away from Parros.”

  “I don’t take passengers,” he snarled. “I don’t provide mattresses or awnings, and I don’t serve wine or delicacies.”

  “I would not be a passenger,” she explained.

  “You wouldn’t be a member of my crew.” His gaze narrowed. “You don’t look the type who would bow to any master, even a ship’s captain, who upon the sea is like a god.”

  “Not to bow,” she agreed, “but to serve, lending the keenness of my blade. Surely that and a regular fare of passage would be sufficient to tolerate my presence. Where are you bound?”

  “Colchis,” the man said. “It is not a long journey, but the sea lanes are often plagued by s’finah shel piratin. Another good sword on board would be welcome, if that sword is good for more than show and intimidation.”

  In less time than it took to draw a startled breath, Kira’s sword was out of its scabbard and at the merchant’s throat.

  “You make your point well.” He gently pushed her blade aside. “If Colchis can be your destination, then you are welcome to sail with Ashbhanubal.”

  She nodded her ascent. “That your name? It’s not Phoenician.”

  “Another reason I am rarely favored by the Brotherhood of the Sea,” he admitted. “I was not born into my position, but battered my way in. Oh, I have the blood all right, else I’d have not been admitted at all, but my father never set foot outside Tyre, much less on a ship, and my mother was a Babylonian slave.” He shook his head. “Enough of that. Are you sailing with us?”

  Kira nodded. “When?”

  “Three days, at the dusk tide,” Ashbhanubal answered. “We’ll see a profit here, then leave Parros to Colchis.”

  Kira jerked her head back toward the stone quay. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Because he deserved it. Because it’s half-expected of someone like me, someone they view as a savage no matter how well and often I beat them at their own games. Because these are violent times, no matter how many rules and regulations flow from the halls of the great kings.” Again he shrugged. “Make up your own reason, or have none at all, and it would likely be at least partly true.”

  “I’ll join you when you sail,” she finally said, turning away.

  “How did you know I had been to Albion?” he asked. “Or did you assume, as do others, that all who sail the hippos galleys know the uncharted ways of the Great Ocean?”

  “The white lead,” she explained. “Metal and not smelted from powder, so the source must be far Albion.”

  “Knowledge can be a dangerous thing,” Ashbhanubal observed.

  “Almost as much as ignorance.” She walked away. “In three days then.”

  “And bring your own provisions,” he called after her. “No frills aboard the Heart of Baal. But we might have a spare awning.”

  Three days in Parros was like three weeks anywhere else. Even with the excitement of a market day, it was still nothing more than a sleepy harbor town, where the greatest thrill was some fisherman returning with a record-sized fish. To be a citizen one either had to be religious or drunk or both—all the gods had shrines and temples in Parros, and the number of wine shops and taverns was beyond counting. Still, Kira had already been in Parros a week, waiting, so another three days was not much of a stretch for her. When she returned to the waterfront at dusk of the third day, she found the sailors getting the Heart of Baal ready to put to sea and Ashbhanubal standing on the deck overseeing everything.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you had had a change of heart,” the captain remarked. “Or had set off another way.”

  Kira sprang up the ladder, handling the heavy bags containing her possessions and provisions as if they were weightless.

  “Once my mind is set, I rarely change it,” she explained.

  At Ashbhanubal’s bidding, one of the sailors showed Kira where to stow her gear, then the location of the beth hamayim, the ship’s fresh water cisterns, of which there were two. As she was shown about the ship, she felt the gazes of the others upon her. They neither concerned nor alarmed her, but were rather expected, for these were sailors and she was a woman wearing leather and bronze, and carrying deadly weapons, a woman both beautiful and dangerous, an intoxicating mix for any man. After she knew her way about the ship, she joined Ashbhanubal at the rail.

  “How did you come to Parros of all places?” he asked. “I wouldn’t think it would have much attraction for a woman like you, a battler.”

  “Sometimes we choose our paths,” she explained. “More often our paths choose us. I took a job in Rhymada that did not go well, then one that took me to Nordhelm. By the time I made my way back to Rhymada to collect, my money had been stolen, a price had been put on my head by the Keepers of the Purple Twilight, and the Crown-Prince wanted me quartered for crimes I had never even thought of committing.”

  “I’ve never been to Rhymada,” Ashbhanubal said, gazing down at the sea. “Large city, small minds. Great buildings, impressive canals and too many magicians. You had some tough breaks,” Ashbhanubal grunted. “I suppose you blame it on an ill countenance of the Triple Goddess.”

  She glanced at him sharply, suspiciously.

  “The signs of your faith are there to see, though few have eyes that notice,” he explained.

  “The bronze?”

  “The old ways are vanishing, the world turning to iron,” he said, “but old weapons and fittings do not necessarily indicate a denial of the new gods.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “None of my business, none of my concern. But you should find a haven in Colchis, if a haven is what you seek.”

  “We make our own ways in the world,” she finally said. “The Goddess gives us the strength to endure, but it is up to us to find that strength. The weak credit the Goddess for their successes and blame her for their failures. I am not weak.”

  “You had to leave Rhymada quickly,” Ashbhanubal prompted.

  She nodded. “I stowed away on a kouphegon; when they found me, they put me ashore on Parros.”

  “Jars of what?”

  “Just jars,” she replied.
“I hid inside one.”

  “Just jars,” Ashbhanubal sneered. “A ship that carries just jars. Certainly no Phoenician that one. Diversity of wares is the key to success. Sure, I have jars, but I also have everything you would ever want to put in a jar, as well as everything you wouldn’t. Another thing -- the Brotherhood of the Sea mandates stowaways must be given to the sea.”

  “The secret paths of the sea,” she said.

  “You know the law then.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” she admitted. “Is it true a Phoenician captain will run his ship onto the rocks rather than let himself be followed on routes known only to your Brotherhood?”

  “Death versus being shipwrecked?” he snorted. “It is not a difficult decision.”

  As dusk settled upon the port, the sailors cast free the apogaioni lines holding them to the dock. They let the out-current of the eventide catch them, sweep them gently toward the mouth of the harbor. They raised the sail and caught a favorable wind out of the west. The oars remained shipped for there was no need to break the backs of men when the breaths of the gods moved the ship near as swiftly.

  They passed not far from where Caradash’s ship lay still at anchor. Torches burned against the encroaching night, but only a few customers still poked among the goods.

  “A good trader knows when to move on,” Ashbhanubal remarked. “He deals now with those who carry only small coppers in big purses, and he doesn’t even realize it.” He shook his head. “Fool.”

  “Did anything happen because of the incident?”

  “No, that will come later, when he files a complaint against me in Tyre or in a shipping consul’s office, unless the gods decide to not make a liar of me,” he replied. “A man like Caradash lives and breathes for the Brotherhood; I have strong loyalties too, but I know when to take care of things on my own.”

  “Did you accomplish anything by attacking him like that?”

  “Who knows?” Ashbhanubal admitted. “If we meet again, maybe he’ll be less aggressive. If anything happens to his ship -- it doesn’t even have to be a trip to the House of Swallowing -- maybe it will get around that at least one of the gods has an eye out for Ashbhanubal’s interests. Maybe people will just think that I’m as much a savage as they always thought I was, which wouldn’t be altogether bad.”

  “The House of Swallowing?”

  “The be bl’i’e, the place where the waters go,” the captain explained. “All the rivers of the world empty into the sea and yet the sea does not overflow. There is a place in the deeps where water swallows water. If your ship is taken there, no spar or fitting or scrap of cargo will ever float up, and bodies are taken to such unknown regions that not even the gods will find your soul.”

  “A sailor’s tale,” Kira snorted gently.

  “I suppose so,” Ashbhanubal said, smiling slightly, the first time Kira had seen even a trace of a smile upon his lips. “But in the mysterious vastness of the sea, even a tale found at the bottom of a wine cup can become the truth.”

  The sky was cloudless. They left the confines of the harbor, passing the moles where signal fires were lit for fishing vessels making late for home. The stars emerged from darkness, bright and crystalline, reflected in the soundless depths. Ashbhanubal sighted on Thuban, the north star around which all others slowly wheeled, and shouted a course to the sailors at the rudders and the those at the yards. The ship lazily turned, tacked with the wind, then was carried toward Colchis across a sea of glittering stars.

  In the days that followed, the Heart of Baal stopped at many of the islands between them and the straight known as the other Pillars of Herakles, lesser known than the legendary passage at the edge of the world, this one a gateway to the Black Sea, where it is said fire fell from the sky long ago. Before they approached some of these islands, Ashbhanubal asked her to quit the deck for the hold so she might not see things that were supposed to remain unseen, and she always complied.

  “I suppose it all seems vaguely ridiculous to a land-lover, these veils of secrecy we pull over our activities,” Ashbhanubal remarked after they were away from an island where they had traded oil for a cargo of votive statuary and silver pins and brooches. “But they are vital. Secrets must be kept. There are secrets we keep from outsiders, and secrets we keep from each other. Mostly each other. Phoenician merchant captains will at times help each other, but mostly we help ourselves.”

  “We all have secrets,” Kira said. “Is it not said, though, the truth shall set you free?”

  Ashbhanubal laughed and shook his head. “Not by any Phoenician.”

  Kira was less interested in Ashbhanubal’s ports of call than she was in the man himself. When she had first seen him in Parros, she thought him a brutal beast untouched by either culture or civilization. His encounter with Caradash had convinced her that he would be a savage taskmaster upon the sea, a terror to his crew, a man capable of every villainy. Experience, however, had shown her a different man, for he rarely yelled at his crew in anger, and she was quite surprised when she learned that most of the sailors were freemen, not slaves as on other ships.

  “Slavery is highly overrated,” he told her. “I deal in slaves as I would any other commodity, for what is a household without slaves and how would anything get built without them? A captain who must command loyalty through slavery, however, is not much of a commander. Freemen row faster than slaves, and very few slaves ever become skilled sailors—to be one of the descenders of the sea, you must love the sea.”

  “Why don’t you set free the slaves you do have?” she asked.

  “They would just be put back in chains by someone else, and maybe by a crueler master – some men are born to be slaves just as others are born to wear purple,” he answered. “As least here they don’t get cuffed unless they need it, they eat well, and you’ll notice no one is chained to an oar. If I were to set them free, they wouldn’t want to leave.”

  “You could set them free and let them stay,” she suggested.

  Again Ashbhanubal shook his head. “Bad for morale and ultimately bad for business. It’s just not done.”

  “Then why have slaves at all?” she persisted.

  He sighed with no small measure of exasperation and reached into his purse, bringing out a handful of small incised copper fragments, pieces shaved off coins and trade weights.

  “Slaves are like these eighth-coppers you get when trade doesn’t come out evenly, and a little something extra is needed,” he explained. “They really aren’t worth anything.” He turned his hand over and dropped the slivers into the flowing sea. “I’m no richer or poorer than I was before, but if anyone else were to witness me flinging copper into the sea, no matter how small an amount, they would think me a fool, and they would be right.”

  Kira was also surprised that the Heart of Baal did not put to shore at night. With every other ship upon which she had sailed the mariners had always pulled ashore when the sun descended into the underworld.

  “I know the stars,” Ashbhanubal explained. “And I don’t fear the demons of the night as others do.”

  “Everyone fears demons,” Kira asserted, “even those magicians who are foolish enough to call upon them routinely.”

  He shook his head. “I have magicks. When I was in…when I was traveling, there was this alchemist and artificer who…”

  “A ship!” shouted the sailor stationed atop the narrow mast platform. “A ship to port coming up fast!”

  “S’finah shel piratin,” Ashbhanubal muttered. “Pirates.”

  Kira peered across the moon-sheened waters in the direction indicated by the lookout. Something black moved swiftly toward them, not by sail but by oars. It moved quietly, but too quietly. The oars moved rhythmically, but too rhythmically. She felt a tingle run up her spine and pulled her sword from its sheath.

  “Douse the running lanterns and unship the oars,” Ashbhanubal ordered. “Rowing master, a double-time beat! Quickly! Quickly!” He looked to Kira. “We’ll try running before
fighting.”

  The sailors sitting on their planks below deck extended their oars through the oar-ports and immediately settled into the double-quick pace set by the rowing master. The Heart of Baal seemed to fly across the waters, propelled by the muscles and the fear of the men below. Pirates were the scourge of the Central Sea, and despite half-hearted efforts of various confederations and leagues, no one had managed to interrupt for long or to any great extent the rampant piracy -- that would take a stronger king than any who currently ruled a land upon the shores of the Central Sea.

  Those sailors not concerned with propelling the ship across the night-layered sea were readying their weapons in case it became necessary to repel boarders, which appeared more likely with each passing moment. The pursuing ship was not dropping astern, but was slowly gaining.

  “It appears that sword of yours may come in handy after all,” Ashbhanubal said grimly. “Should we survive, I’ll consider refunding half your fare of passage.”

  Kira forced a thin smile. “Should we not survive, I would expect a full refund.”

  “You sure you are not a Phoenician?” he murmured.

  Ashbhanubal deserted Kira and the others standing ready at the stern and vanished momentarily into his cabin, which none other was allowed to enter. When he reappeared, he carried in his arms a device the likes of which Kira had never beheld. It consisted of a myriad of intermeshing geared wheels, crystalline rods, a large flattened quartz disc and projections of gleaming brass, all perched upon a wooden tripod. Ashbhanubal set it up at the bow of the ship.

  Though Kira was intensely interested in the captain’s actions and the strange device, she could scarce let her attention wander from the approaching pirate craft. Besides, she could see little of the device now since Ashbhanubal’s body blocked her vision.