Gods and Warriors

by Michelle Paver

  As he swam deeper, the Sea grew darker and colder. He clicked faster, listening to the craggy rocks crusted with coral. Mullets fled from him in panic, and groupers grunted warnings to each other. He ignored them. Down he swam, clicking faster and faster till he reached the Black Beneath, where he couldn’t see at all, but he could hear the peaks and valleys and the blind creatures moving in the dark. Here the Sea surged heavy and slow, which was a relief after the crashing, uneasy Edge. But whatever he was supposed to find, it wasn’t here either.

  As he sped back to the Edge for air, the dolphin wondered what to do next. It never took him long to decide things, even though he sometimes made mistakes, and now, in a splash, he knew. Telling the pod that he’d be back soon, he turned tail on them and struck out bravely for the open Sea.

  For a while he was busy sorting the tangled noises, and tasting the currents. The swell was bigger here, and he had fun racing up and down inside the waves. The whistles of the pod were growing fainter, but he wasn’t scared; he was excited. He was the most adventurous young dolphin in the pod, and he loved exploring.

  He also liked meeting new creatures, even if most of them didn’t enjoy meeting him. After several failed attempts, he’d learned that jellyfish stung and crabs pinched, and that it was no good playing with fish, because he always forgot and ate them. The best time he’d ever had was an amazing game with a seal, until it had remembered it was a seal, and swum away. The worst was when he’d tried to make friends with a dolphin from another pod; she’d butted him in the belly, then raked her teeth across his nose, which had hurt a lot.

  Suddenly he heard a large, lumbering body wallowing on the Edge.

  At first he thought it was a whale, but as he swam closer he heard that it didn’t have a tail, and was made of trees. Humans!

  The dolphin liked humans. They were so odd. They had no blowholes, and they talked through their mouths; and as they couldn’t really swim, they just splashed about on the Edge. He also felt sorry for them, because they had to live in the Above, on horrible little dry scraps of land.

  But humans were brave too, and almost as clever as dolphins; and the best thing about them was that if you swam just in front of one of their piles of floating trees, it pushed the Sea at your tail, so that you could go faster without even trying. It was exactly like riding the nose-wave of a whale, but without the danger of annoying the whale.

  For a while the dolphin wove happily in and out of the waves in front of the humans, while they leaned over the side, calling to him and flailing their flippers. Although he couldn’t understand their strange, muffled speech, he felt that they were friendly and glad to see him.

  It came to him that he was getting too far from his pod and ought to turn back; but at that moment he sensed that one of the humans wasn’t happy.

  He couldn’t see her, she was hidden deep inside, but he sensed that she was half-grown and scared, and angry. He was sorry for her and he wanted to help, but he didn’t know how.

  Faint and far away, the pod was calling his name-whistle.

  The dolphin felt a tug of regret. He wanted to stay with the humans. He hadn’t found what he was seeking, and he felt in his fins that it was still out there waiting for him—and that it had something to do with humans.

  But the pull of the pod was strong.

  To say good-bye, the dolphin leaped out of the Sea and flicked his tail flukes, while the humans waved at him and bared their teeth.

  Then he splashed down again into his beautiful Blue Deep, and raced off to find his pod.

  7

  Pirra heard the splash on the other side of the hull and pictured the dolphin plunging back into the Sea. She knew it was a dolphin because she’d heard the sailors shouting, but she couldn’t see it. She wasn’t allowed.

  It was hot in the hold and it stank of almonds and sick. She couldn’t move. The cargo was crammed in around her and the deck was only a hand’s breadth above her face.

  Her throat tightened with panic. She gulped air, but couldn’t get enough. If the ship went down, she’d drown.

  Don’t think about it. The Sea is calm. We’re not going to sink.

  Clutching her sealstone, she lay listening to the slap of rigging and the creak of timbers. They’d been sailing forever, the ship rolling nauseatingly from side to side. She’d been sick over a bale of linen. It was too dark to make sure, but she hoped it was her mother’s best. Serve her right for shutting her in the hold.

  Until yesterday Pirra had never even seen the Sea, and if the High Priestess had had her way, she still wouldn’t have, because as part of her punishment she’d been blindfolded when Userref had carried her on board. But just before they’d put her in the hold, he’d broken the rules and unbound her eyes, to give her a glimpse.

  She’d grown up with pictures of the Sea. It was painted on the walls of her room: neat blue waves zigzagged with yellow sunlight, and smiling dolphins nosing tidy little fishes, while big-eyed octopuses clambered about on the bottom, among sea urchins and crinkly green weeds.

  The real Sea was nothing like that. Pirra had never imagined it would be so restless and so huge.

  All her life she’d heard stories of the world outside, but she’d never been there. She’d grown up in the House of the Goddess: an entire hillside covered in chambers, courtyards, storerooms, cookhouses, and workshops, where people swarmed like bees. She called it the stone hive, and she’d never been allowed out.

  She couldn’t see anything from her room, which gave on to a shadowy passage, but sometimes she managed to escape her slaves, and then she would race across the Great Court and up the stairs to the topmost balcony. From there she could look down over olive groves and vineyards, across barley fields and forests, to the great twin-horned Mountain of the Earthshaker.

  When you’re twelve, she would tell herself, you’re getting out. You’ll drive a chariot and climb the Mountain, and have a dog.

  Knowing this had made it bearable. Yassassara had promised: When she was twelve, she would be free.

  The night before she turned twelve, she was so excited, she couldn’t sleep.

  The next morning she learned the truth.

  “But you promised!” she’d screamed at her mother. “You promised I’d be free!”

  “No,” Yassassara had calmly replied. “I promised I’d let you out. And so I will. Today you leave the House of the Goddess: to sail to Lykonia to be wed.”

  Pirra had raged and bitten and screamed—but deep down, she’d known it was useless. High Priestess Yassassara had a will of granite. She’d ruled Keftiu for seventeen years, and she would sacrifice anything to keep it strong, including her only daughter.

  In the end, Pirra had gone quiet. In sullen silence she’d let the women dress her in purple linen spangled with gold, and when Userref had come in, she’d ignored him. Even he, who was like a big brother, had betrayed her. He’d been part of the lie.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d said quietly. “I wasn’t allowed to tell you.”

  “How long have you known?” she’d said without looking at him.

  “The harvest before last.”

  “That’s two years.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “So that’s why you were so keen that we learn Akean,” she’d said bitterly. “You said it’d be fun to learn it from the old man in the weavers’ shed; you said it’d be ‘something to do.’”

  “I thought it’d help if you could speak their tongue.”

  “You let me go on believing I’d be free.”

  Frowning, he’d smoothed his kilt over his knees. “You needed something to hope for,” he’d muttered. “Everyone does. It’s what keeps them going.”

  “Even if it’s a lie?”

  “Yes. Even then.”

  Coldly, she’d sent him away, but after he’d gone she realized that he’d been speaking of himself. He’d been ten when he was snatched from Egypt and sold as a slave to the House of the Goddess. That had been thirteen years ago, but
he’d never stopped wanting to go home.

  Uncomfortably, Pirra shifted position in the hold. Userref had given her a waterskin, so she’d managed to wash off the worst of the sick; but the smell was thick in her nostrils, and she kept finding bits between her teeth.

  In the gloom she made out the gifts intended for the Chieftain of Lykonia as her bride-price: man-high jars of strong black wine and bales of richly dyed linen; alabaster vials of perfumed oil that stank of almonds; ingots of the all-important tin. Pirra’s heart fluttered angrily against her ribs. She’d been packed in among them like part of the cargo.

  Her mother had known exactly what she was doing when she’d punished her daughter for daring to protest. Pirra was cramped and humiliated, but not really in danger; and her mother had given orders that when they reached Lykonia, they would make land away from the coastal settlements, so that Pirra could be let out and cleaned up well before the Chieftain set eyes on her.

  Before they’d left Keftiu, Userref had tried to reassure her. “I’ll be there too,” he’d said. “You won’t be on your own.”

  She clung to that. But when she thought of the future, she couldn’t breathe.

  All she knew about Akea was that it was a long way north of Keftiu, and peopled by warlike savages who couldn’t be trusted—and that Lykonians lived in the south, and were the roughest of the lot. Akeans didn’t build Houses of the Goddess, and they weren’t ruled by priestesses; instead they had Chieftains with strongholds. That was where she would live, in a stronghold. Her mother said she would stay in it for the rest of her life, and only leave it when she was carried to her tomb.

  Panic rose in her throat. From one stone prison to another…

  “Let me out!” she cried, beating the planks with her fists. “Let me out!”

  Nobody came.

  You’re not here, she told herself fiercely. You’re not in the hold of a ship, you’re out in the sky with that falcon.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to go back to the moment when Userref had slipped off the blindfold, and she’d stood on the deck, blinking in the glare.

  That first sight of the Sea. The white doves fluttering on the golden shore, the green sails billowing in a sky of limitless blue.

  That was when she’d seen it. One moment she’d been craning her neck at the clouds—and the next, she’d heard a sound like tearing silk, and a bolt of darkness had come hurtling out of the Sun.

  In awe she’d watched it swoop upon the doves. They’d scattered, but it flew too fast, and in the blink of an eye it struck; then it eased out of the dive in a graceful curve and flew off with leisurely wingbeats, a dead dove dangling from one talon.

  “What was that?” she’d breathed.

  Userref had bowed to the dwindling black speck. “Heru,” he’d murmured, lapsing into his native tongue. “May He live for all time and eternity.”

  “It came out of the Sun,” mumbled Pirra. “Where—where does it live?”

  “Anywhere. Everywhere. It’s a falcon.”

  To live wherever you wanted. To go wherever you liked… “I never saw anything so fast,” she said.

  “You never will. Falcons are the fastest creatures in the world.”

  Huddled in the hold, Pirra ran her fingers over her sealstone. It was an amethyst engraved with a tiny bird that she used to think was a sparrow; but now she knew it was a falcon.

  Suddenly she caught her breath. She pictured herself perched like a falcon on the mast of the ship—then spreading her wings and flying away.

  Until now, she’d never thought about escape. She had believed her mother’s lie: that soon she would be free. But what if—what if she could get away?

  Excitement kindled inside her. Her thoughts began to race.

  Even if she did escape, she’d never survive on her own in a strange land; so that meant she had to get back to Keftiu—which meant putting an end to this match with the son of the Lykonian Chieftain.

  But how?

  Then it came to her. At the Feast of Green Barley, her mother had found a crack in one of the offering vessels. “Get rid of it,” she’d said with disdain, and a slave had taken it and flung it over the outer wall. Pirra had climbed to the upper balcony and spotted it lying in a clump of poppies. She’d envied it. It was flawed, but it had gotten away.

  At the time, she hadn’t thought any further than that. But now…

  Damaged things had no value in the House of the Goddess. Damaged things got away.

  She was jolted out of her plans by a change in the ship’s motion. It was no longer rolling from side to side, but bobbing up and down. She heard men calling to each other, and loud grinding sounds; she guessed that was the oars being pulled in. Suddenly the planks above her were being levered aside, and she was taking great gulps of salty air, and Userref was reaching down to pull her out.

  The Sun was blinding. She heard the splash of surf and the cawing of a crow. “Are we—is this L-Lykonia?” she stammered.

  Userref’s grip tightened on her hand. “Be brave, Pirra,” he said. “This is your new home.”

  8

  The crow in the thorn tree stared at Hylas with bright, unfriendly eyes.

  “Go ’way,” he panted.

  The crow laughed at him. In the time he took to wipe the sweat off his face, it could fly as far as he’d come all day. The coast was a tangle of spiny yellow gorse and mastic scrub that gave off an eye-watering smell of tar, and the glare was merciless. He’d long since emptied his waterskin. The Sea was taunting him: So much water, and nothing to drink.

  He was furious with himself for losing the raft. He’d only left it for a while to scout out the coast, but when he’d returned the Sea had taken it, carrying it out of reach across the waves. Since then he’d been struggling over one rocky headland after another.

  We’ll find a boat and follow the coast, Telamon had said, then make land on the other side and head in from there.

  Find a boat? How? Apart from a few shepherds’ huts on the hills, there were no signs of people. And this was the third day that Issi had been alone in the mountains.

  Again the crow laughed. Hylas lobbed a stone at it. The crow lifted into the sky and flew away—purposefully, as if carrying a message.

  Hylas wished he hadn’t thrown that stone.

  The monster ship floated in the bay. It was ten times bigger than any boat Hylas had ever seen. It had a beak-like prow with a great yellow all-seeing eye. Oars jutted from its flanks like the legs of an enormous centipede, and from its back grew a tree with vast green wings. Once, Telamon had mentioned that some ships had wings so that they could fly before the wind, but Hylas hadn’t believed him.

  Below him, on the shore, men were pitching tents and heading into the surrounding pine forests to look for firewood. They weren’t Crows; they were Keftians. Like the young man in the tomb, they were beardless, and wore kilts bordered with spirals and cinched at the waist. Their weapons were splendid bronze double axes with curving twin blades, like back-to-back crescent Moons; but they’d left them casually propped against the rocks, as if they didn’t think they’d need them. Didn’t they know about the Crows? Weren’t they afraid?

  Then Hylas saw something that made his heart race. Tethered to the stern of the ship was a little wooden boat. Like a calf keeping close to its mother, it bobbed in the shallows. He could swim for it.

  As dusk came on, he picked his way down the slope into the scrub between the tents and the woods, and settled down to wait.

  The Keftians had brought animals with them; he watched them kill and skin a ewe. While it was sizzling on a spit, they gutted a netful of fish and set them to bake in the embers, then poured wine from jars and mixed it with water, toasted barley meal and crumbled cheese. Soon Hylas caught the dizzying smells of roast mutton and sizzling fat.

  The flaps of the largest tent twitched and a woman stepped out—and suddenly stealing the boat became a whole lot harder.

  She wasn’t a woman, she was a priestes
s. Her tight green bodice was cut away to reveal her breasts, and at her neck she wore a collar of blood-red stones the size of pigeons’ eggs. Her ankle-length skirt was a Sea of overlapping waves of purple and blue, spangled with tiny glittering fish like little bits of Sun. Golden too were the snakes entwining her arms and her crinkly black hair. Her pointed fingernails were yellow as the claws of hawks, and her haughty face was painted stark white.

  Even from twenty paces, Hylas felt her power. Now what? To steal from a priestess would be the worst thing he could do. Who knew what curses she might send after him?

  A slave handed her a stone bowl so thin it seemed filled with light. Chanting in her strange clicking tongue, she flicked wine on the fire, then moved to the shallows and cast gobbets of fat upon the waves. The offering over, her men settled down to eat, but she stayed at the water’s edge, staring out to Sea.

  A crow swooped for a scrap of fat from the shallows, then glided past her. She watched it intently. Hylas had a horrible feeling that it was the same crow he’d seen earlier, and that it was telling her about him.

  Sure enough, she turned to face his hiding place. He froze. Her dark gaze swept toward him. He felt the power of her will. He fought the urge to jump to his feet and give himself up.

  At that moment a girl burst from the tent and shouted something furious in Keftian.

  All heads turned. Hylas breathed out. The eye of the priestess was averted.

  The girl had the same dark eyes and crinkly hair, and he guessed they were mother and daughter; but if the priestess resembled a handsome hawk, her daughter was a scrawny young fledgling. She wore a purple tunic spangled with tiny golden bees, and a thunderous scowl. As she stalked across the pebbles she snarled incomprehensibly at her mother.