by David
His relief lasted only for a few heartbeats. There was another terrifying sound from deep in the earth beneath them. As he watched, he saw the sea in the harbor dent in the middle, and an enormous whirlpool started to form, sluggishly at first and then with greater speed. There was another great noise, an army of thunders, and the sea suddenly fell away from them, swallowed instantly into the earth. The entire fleet of charred ships disappeared in moments as sea rushed into the harbor to pour into the hole in the world.
There was a building roar, and the ground started to shake wildly.
Agamemnon’s last sight was of Kassandra, a joyous smile on her face, as she waved goodbye.
He closed his eyes.
Then the island rose up under them and flung the kings screaming into the sky.
Not far to the west Helikaon stood on the aft deck of the Xanthos, his arm draped loosely over the steering oar, looking up at the sail stretched taut against the wind. He was at his happiest when the black horse danced over the waves. Although there were sixty or more men lounging about on the decks, gossiping, eating and drinking, laughing and telling tall tales, he felt alone with his ship when she was under sail. He could feel the shift and groan of the timbers beneath his bare feet, hear the finest vibrations of the huge sail, and sense through the oak of the steering oar the valiant heart of the galley. You are the queen of the seas, he told his ship as she cut through the waves, rising and falling with grace and power.
His eyes moved, as they always did when given the chance, to Andromache. She was sitting on the forward deck under the yellow canopy. The boys were curled up beside her. They had been running around the ship all morning, delighted to have the oarsmen at their beck and call to play games with them and tell them tales of the sea. Now, tired out, they were both asleep under the canopy, protected from the noonday sun.
Andromache was gazing back toward Thera, though the island was now out of sight. Helikaon knew her heart now and understood that she did not regret leaving Kassandra, as the girl had asked. Yet it had made Andromache sad to leave her sister to a lonely death, cared for only by the old priestess. Helikaon had spent some time since their departure cursing himself for not climbing the cliffs to fetch the girl, then had put those feelings aside ruthlessly. The decision was made. He always would remember Kassandra with love, but she was now part of the past.
He left the steering oar to Oniacus and walked down the length of the ship, drawn helplessly toward his lover. He made himself pause as if to inspect the racks of weapons—swords, shields, and bows and arrows—stored beneath the rails. As usual, thanks to Oniacus’ watchful eye, they were all immaculate, cleaned and ready for action if needed.
“Where will we beach tonight, Golden One?” asked gray-bearded Naubolos, a veteran who had sailed on the Xanthos since the launch in Kypros and on the Ithaka before that.
“At Pig’s Head Cove or on Kalliste if the east wind is our friend.”
There were shouts and grunts of approval from the men. Even before the war, the whores on Kalliste had been more welcoming than any others on the Great Green. Now there were fewer ships sailing these waters, and a galley the size of the Xanthos would receive an enthusiastic greeting.
Helikaon moved on. He checked the great chests holding the nephthar balls in their protective cocoons of straw. There were only ten left. He frowned, then dismissed the problem. It could not be helped. There was a good chance they would reach their final destination without seeing another ship, let alone a hostile one.
His feet registered a minute shift in the direction of the ship, and he looked back along the deck. Oniacus was steering the galley to catch the wind as it shifted slightly north. Helikaon gazed back the way they had come. There was no longer any sign of the Bloodhawk. The Xanthos’ greater speed had left the smaller ship farther and farther behind.
“How are you, Agrios?” he asked a leathery old sailor sitting on the deck with his back to a rowing bench. The man had suffered a terrible injury to his arm in a battle off Kios in the summer when a Mykene warship had plowed along the side of the Xanthos, ripping into its oars. Agrios had been hit by an oar as it whipped back at him before he could get out of the way. His arm had been broken in so many places that it could not be set, so it was cut off close to the shoulder. The old man had survived the amputation, and when he was recovered, Helikaon allowed him to return to the rowing benches, for Agrios swore he could row as well with one arm as most men could with two.
The man nodded. “All the better for knowing we’ll be on Kalliste tonight.” He grinned, winking.
Helikaon laughed. “Only if the wind stays fair,” he said.
He walked to the forward deck, aware that Andromache was watching his every step. She looked wonderful today, he thought, in a saffron robe cut roughly off at the knees. She was wearing the finely carved amber pendant he had given her, and the sparks of warmth in the stone matched the fire of her hair.
Her face was grave, though. “You are thinking of Kassandra,” he ventured.
“It is true that Kassandra is never far from my thoughts,” she confessed. “But at that moment I was thinking of you.”
“What were you thinking, goddess?” he asked, taking her hand and covering her palm with kisses.
She raised her eyebrows. “I was wondering how long we were to pretend we are not lovers,” she told him, smiling. “It seems I have my answer.”
Facing away from the crew, Helikaon felt a hundred eyes on his back, and he heard the lull as the men stopped talking. Then, almost instantly, the normal chatter resumed as if nothing had happened.
“It seems they are not surprised,” he told her.
She shook her head, her face glowing with happiness.
“Golden One!” Helikaon turned to see Praxos running down the deck toward them. The boy was trying to point backward as he ran. “There is a storm, I think!”
Helikaon looked quickly in the direction in which Praxos was pointing, toward Thera. On the clear line of the horizon there was a small dark smudge. It was like a storm but not a storm. As he watched, it rose into the shape of a dark tower. A feeling of dread formed in the pit of his stomach. There was a distant roll of thunder, and all the crewmen turned to watch the black tower rising ominously into the pale sky.
Heartbeats passed as it climbed and climbed. Then, suddenly, it was consumed by a massive eruption of fire and flame, filling the sky to the east. The sound of the eruption hit them like the noise of thunder increased a hundredfold, like the deep blast of Ares’ war horn or the crack of doom itself.
“It is Thera!” someone cried. “The god has burst his chains!”
Helikaon glanced at Andromache. Her face was as white as clean linen, and there was fear in her eyes. She pointed to the horizon, and he looked again. The cloud of the explosion, spreading swiftly out and upward, darkened the eastern sky. But it was vanishing mysteriously from sea level upward. Baffled, Helikaon gazed at the horizon. It was rising as he watched.
With awful clarity he knew what was happening.
“Take in the sail!” he shouted. “Get to your oars now!”
He ordered Oniacus to turn the ship around, and as his second in command shouted to the rowers, Helikaon grabbed a length of rope from the deck. With his bronze dagger he sliced it in three pieces. He thrust them at Andromache.
“Get the boys onto the lower deck and tie them securely to something solid. Then tie yourself down.”
She stared at him. “Why?” she asked. “What is happening?”
“Just do it, woman!” he bellowed at her.
Pointing toward the high horizon, he addressed the crew. “That is a wall of water coming toward us, as high as a mountain! It will be upon us in moments. We must all tie ourselves down. Anyone who is not securely tied will die! We will row straight into the wave, and the Xanthos will climb it! It is our one chance!”
Now they all could see it for what it was, a dark line of horizon much too high in the sky, coming toward the ship
with the speed of a swooping eagle. In front of it was a huge flock of gulls, flying frantically away from the great wave. As they passed over the Xanthos, the sky darkened, their screams beat on the men’s ears, and the thrashing of their wings created a wind that rocked the ship.
Rowers were at their benches, rowing for all they were worth to turn the great galley around. The other crewmen were tearing down the lines, cutting lengths for themselves and the oarsmen. All kept glancing fearfully as the giant wave bore down on them.
Helikaon grabbed some rope and ran to the aft deck, where Oniacus needed all his strength to brace the steering oar to one side. The Xanthos was turning in a tight circle. Helikaon lent his strength to the oar and took another swift look at the wave. It was mountainous and getting bigger by the moment, filling the whole of his vision. Can the ship climb it? he asked himself. All he was certain of was that it must not hit them beam-on. It would destroy the galley in a moment. Their only hope was to steer straight into it. The oars and the wooden fins Khalkeus had bolted to the hull would keep the ship stable.
“We will tie the oar centrally,” he told Oniacus, “but it will need the strength of both of us as well to keep it steady.”
“If we can do it at all,” his friend replied grimly, his terror palpable.
The ship was heading into the wave now. Helikaon cut the rope in half, then looped half around his waist, tying it to the side rails. He did the same thing for Oniacus, who was holding the oar in a death grip.
“The nephthar, Golden One!” he cried suddenly. “What about the clay balls? If we survive this, they will be smashed and broken.”
Helikaon looked up to the wave, which was nearly upon them. “They will be washed away,” he shouted. “That is the least of our worries.”
The prow of the ship began to rise as the swell in front of the wave reached them. All along the deck Helikaon saw the wide eyes of terrified men leaning into the oars, horror at their backs, rowing like men possessed.
“Row, you cowsons! Row for your lives!” he bellowed at them.
The wave hit them, and Helikaon felt the whole ship shudder as if she were snapping in two. Then there was a hideous groan, and she started to climb. It is not possible, he told himself. The wave is too high. He fought down the panic in his chest. If any ship can do it, the Xanthos can, he thought.
Then they were underwater. Helikaon could see nothing but swirling sea all around, and he felt the air punched out of his chest as the galley lurched to one side, throwing him against the steering oar. He was tossed about like a rag doll, concentrating only on keeping his hands to the oar, holding it tight, feeling Oniacus’ hands there, too. It was impossible to steer. All they could do was hold on tight and try not to drown.
For a moment he emerged from the water and caught a terrifying glimpse of the ship suspended vertically above him, the oarsmen rowing like madmen, though most of the oars were out of the water. Then the sea came over his head again, and all he could glimpse was the blue and green of its depths.
The ship lurched and spun, pitched and heaved. It went on so long that Helikaon thought it would never stop. He no longer could tell which way was up or down or if he was rising in the sea or sinking through the depths. He could not tell if the hideous sounds in his ears were those of the ship groaning, the men crying, or his tortured lungs screaming.
Suddenly there was air to breathe again, and he quickly took a breath, ready to plunge deep again. But he realized they no longer were underwater. The ship had crested the great wave.
For a instant he feared that he was falling, that the ship was plummeting into a deep trough behind the wave. But looking ahead, he realized there was no hideous drop, only a gentle slope. It was as if the great-hearted Xanthos had climbed a giant step in the sea. Helikaon leaned over and vomited up a stomachful of seawater.
He looked along the deck. Nearly half the rowing benches were empty, the oarsmen claimed by Poseidon. Many of the men were hanging, drowned or unconscious, from the ropes tying them to the benches. The mast had been ripped away, as had most of the rails and many of the oars.
Oniacus lay on the deck beside him, half-drowned, one arm hideously dislocated from its socket. Helikaon started to untie his ropes, dread in his heart. He had to find Andromache and the boys. If he had nearly drowned on the top deck, how could anyone still be alive lower down in the ship?
He felt a hand on his arm. Gray-faced with pain and shock, Oniacus had pulled himself up; he put out his good hand to stop Helikaon from untying himself. He pointed ahead of them, terror in his eyes.
“There’s another one coming!” he cried.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DAWN OF A NEW DAY
The man who once had been called Gershom stood in the darkness that lay over Egypte and gazed toward the north.
Patience was a skill he had learned only recently. As a young man he had needed only such patience as was required by a royal prince accustomed to every whim being instantly obeyed, that is, none at all. Then had come the day when, in drunken anger, he had killed two royal guardsmen. He had had the choice of being blinded and buried alive or fleeing the country of Egypte. He fled. As a fugitive, working in the copper mines of Kypros, he again had little use for patience. He worked until exhausted, then slept, then worked again.
Then he had fallen in with the sea people, roving traders, pirates, and raiders from the far northern fastnesses of the Great Green. He seldom thought of those days now, of his time with Helikaon on the great galley Xanthos, of his good friend Oniacus, of Xander, and of the people of Troy he had known for a few brief years. Word had reached him of the armies besieging the city of Troy; only in recent days had he heard of the death of Hektor, and he grieved for a man he hardly knew. He wondered at the fortunes of Andromache and her son and hoped that she was with Helikaon and was happy.
The affliction that had fallen on Egypte two days before had come out of the north: great waves that had devastated the land and a dark cloud of ash that had rolled across the sky, bringing perpetual night. The waves had swept up the river Nile, overflowing its low banks, destroying crops, demolishing homes, and drowning thousands. Then, from out of the river, polluted by ashfall and turned to the color of blood by the violent churning of the red Nile mud, had come millions of frogs and clouds of flying, biting insects. The frogs had invaded homes and crawled and hopped through meager food supplies. The insects had filled the air so that it was hard to breathe without sucking them in. They bit any exposed skin, spreading sickness throughout the land.
Standing on a rooftop in the darkness, the prophet heard a sound behind him. He turned to find hawk-faced Yeshua. “The sun will not rise again today,” his friend said with certainty. “The people are crying out to you to save them. They believe you have caused this catastrophe.”
“Why would they think that?”
“You asked the pharaoh to free the desert people from their slavery. He refused. Then the sun disappeared and the waves came. The Egypteians believe our god, the one god, is stronger than their own deities, and he is punishing them.”
“But does the pharaoh believe that?”
“He’s your brother. What do you think?”
Ahmose had gone to see the pharaoh, his half brother Rameses, risking bringing on himself the brutal punishment he long had escaped, and asked the ruler to allow the desert slaves to leave the land of Egypte. Rameses had refused. Seated on his high gold-encrusted throne, his beloved son beside him, Rameses had laughed at him for his naïvete.
“For the sake of our childhood friendship,” he had said, “I will not have you killed this time. But do not presume on that friendship further. Did you really expect me to wave my hand and release the slaves just because you, a known criminal, asked me to?”
As Ahmose had walked away disappointed, the pharaoh’s son had come running after him. Ahmose had stopped and smiled down at him. The boy was about ten, with a mop of black hair, intelligent eyes, and an eager smile.
; “They say you are my uncle,” he asked. “Is that true?”
“Perhaps,” Ahmose told him.
“I am sorry we cannot be friends,” the boy said. “But I will speak to my father about the slaves. My mother says he can refuse me nothing.”
He had grinned, then turned and ran back to his father’s throne.
Standing in the darkness, Ahmose told Yeshua, “I think Rameses is a stubborn man and contrary in his nature. I have told him what I want from him; therefore, that is the last thing he will give me.”
“Then perhaps you should have asked him to keep our people here in Egypte.”
The prophet looked around, startled, and realized that cold-eyed Yeshua had made a joke. He laughed, and the sound echoed strangely over the land of despair.
“I will go and speak to him again. Perhaps he will relent now.”
As he set off for the palace, he thought back to the night long before on the island of Minoa when he had lain by a burning bush and the dreams and visions he had endured, dosed with opiates by the fey priestess Kassandra. He had seen mighty waves, rivers running red, darkness at noon, desolation and despair. He had seen his half brother raw-eyed with grief. He wondered what tragedy could make the cold-hearted pharaoh suffer so.
Yeshua came after him, grabbing him by the arm.
“You cannot go! He will certainly have you killed this time.”
“Have faith, my friend,” Ahmose told him. “God is great.”
It was the morning of the third day since the destruction of Thera and the coming of the waves. Helikaon and his son walked through the twilight along the gray shore of an unnamed island, splashing their bare feet in the shallows.
Astyanax kept stopping to peer into the shallow water. One of the crewmen had fashioned a shrimping net for him, and he was eager to catch some of the creatures. So far there was just a handful of the tiny transparent shellfish flopping about in the bottom of his net. Helikaon waited patiently each time the boy stopped to add one or two more. After all, there was nothing to hurry for.
