Black Ships

by Jo Graham

  “You could,” I said. “I promised you that Kianna would be my acolyte, and she will be.” I rubbed my cheek against Kianna’s soft face, her soft hair as she climbed against my shoulder. “I will take her when she is weaned and she will be a daughter to me.”

  “Perhaps by then you will have a daughter of your own,” Tia said.

  “I could have more than one daughter,” I said. I looked down, horrified to find myself blushing. “Are you surprised?” I asked.

  “The only thing that surprises anyone is that it took you so long.” Tia grinned. “You and Xandros are well matched. Kos says they’ve been friends a long time, and that he’s always needed someone like you. And it’s been coming for months, hasn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” I said. I had never really talked about a man, certainly not with a woman friend near my age. I wasn’t sure how to begin.

  I was spared from finding something to say by Neas arriving. He ambled in through the gates looking well pleased with himself and came up to us. “Where’s Xandros?” he asked.

  I colored again, but Tia answered before I could. “He and Kos went fishing,” she said. “In one of the little basket boats.”

  Neas looked irritated. “I suppose they’ll be half the day, then. I wanted to show Xandros this.” He held out a sword.

  It was longer than our swords by a hand span and more slender, with a leaf-shaped blade that curved gently. It was sharpened on both sides and the hilt was wrapped with stiff wool dyed dark reddish purple and fastened with gold wire. Other than that it was unadorned, and the sleek bright lines of the blade shone in the light, beautiful and lethal.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked Neas.

  “From one of the Nubians,” he said. “He gifted it to me. He had several that he took off prisoners from Byblos and the cities of the coast.”

  “It’s lovely,” I said. “I’ve never seen one like it. Can I?” I asked.

  Neas raised an eyebrow, but handed it to me. “I thought you were forbidden to shed blood?”

  “I’m not planning to kill you with it,” I said. “I can hold it, can’t I?” It was heavy, solid as a full carry-measure of grain, but beautifully balanced so that I could hold it in my hand without strain. It was much thinner than our swords, and the point was sharp. You could slash with it or use the tip, and yet it was strong enough to block a spear thrust. And I said so to Neas.

  His eyebrows went up even farther. “Our Sybil knows something of swords?”

  “Neas,” I said, “I can see what is plain before my eyes. It’s better than anything we have. With it you could get inside a man’s guard while he still could not reach you, and against a spearman you would be able to block.”

  “I could,” he said. “And if I had a shield I could withstand archers long enough to close.” He looked at me and his eyes were as bright as the blade. “Sybil, with swords like this a man could rule the world. There is nothing that can stand against them, not even chariots. And if you put together swords like this and men trained to fight in close order like the Nubians, rather than running as skirmishers as we do, not even chariots could break the formation. That’s the problem the Nubians have now. They can’t fight in close if the chariots come in. But with these swords you’d cut the horses to pieces and the drivers would be in too close for their javelins to work very well.”

  “With swords like those and men trained to fight in close order, a small group of men could hold off much greater numbers,” I said slowly. “We could win, even though we are few.”

  “Yes.” Neas looked down at the blade and he swallowed. “But no one is doing that. The Shardana have some of these, and the men of Tyre and Ugarit That Was, but they fight the same way we do, each man rushing in for honor. The Egyptians have the Nubians, and you have seen how they fight like one man, but they cannot stand against chariots.” He looked up at me. “Do you see? With swords like these, the day of chariots is over. These are the swords that destroyed Ugarit, and these are the swords that nothing can stand against.”

  “Except,” I said, “a group of men with swords like those, and shields, who know how to fight in close order.”

  “The enemy could run forward seeking honor even with swords like these and break off them like the sea off rocks.”

  “We could stand against anyone,” I said.

  “You see it,” Neas said, and clasped my hands. There was something light about him, something that reminded me suddenly of Mikel. “Sybil, you see it! The Egyptians do not!”

  “You have brought this up to the Egyptians?” I said, taken aback.

  “They have the swords already,” Neas said, “taken from prisoners or given as gifts in trade. And they don’t understand. They all just blink at me and say, ‘This is not the way it was done in our grandfathers’ day. This is not the Way of Maat.’ They have taken one of the best-balanced blades and gilded it for ceremony, but they don’t understand what it can do.”

  “Perhaps they do understand,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. Things must be done according to Maat, the Balance. Things that are well done should never be changed.”

  “But the world is changing,” Neas said.

  “I know that,” I said. “My prince, we are a young people with young gods. If there is a new way to do something we will try it. It might be silly, or there might be some advantage in it.”

  “How can we know until we try it?” Neas asked.

  “That is my point, Neas. You see every reason to try something, and they see no reason to. There’s a saying they have: Don’t fix it if it is not broken.”

  Neas shrugged. “We have every reason to, all right. We’re on a knife’s edge, and anything that gives us an advantage may be the difference between our survival and the deaths of all the People.” He took the sword back and hefted it experimentally. “I’ve been looking for the thing. The gods know that I have been praying for the thing. This is it.”

  “But not the sword alone,” I said. “The other piece is you. You must teach them to fight in close order like the Nubians. And no man has done this before.”

  “Then we will learn,” he said. “That’s why I’m hunting for Xandros. He’ll see.”

  “He will,” I said. “Of all the men here he will see.” Xandros had the quickest mind, and he saw straight through the how of things.

  Neas looked out at the swollen Nile, dark with silt and life-giving soil. “We are not like them,” he said softly. “For them safety lies in the old ways, in things that are unchanging year after year.”

  “And for us the world is changing,” I said.

  Neas nodded. “If we had kept to the old ways, Citadel and Lower City, horse people and sea people, each caring for our own, bound only by ties of kinship, we would die. You did not grow up in the City, Sybil. You don’t know how far we’ve already come from our traditions. The fishing boat children with no kin are cared for by others.”

  “There are so many women,” I said, “who have lost their children, so many with no bonds of kinship. Is it strange that they should take an orphaned child of the People?”

  “It would be in the City,” Neas said.

  “You learn differently in captivity,” I said gently. “It does not matter what your station was once when you are all slaves together, and it does not matter whose child it is if it is one of ours. You said it yourself on the Island of the Dead, Neas. Every life of the People is valuable. Even Kianna. Even Aren. Was it not so in the City?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “We were like everyone else then. There were some with much more than others, and some children were wanted and some were exposed.” He looked me in the eye. “The child of a rape would have been left on the hillside for the beasts, and you would not be Sybil.”

  “And Bai would not marry Tia,” I said.

  “Tia would live all her life in Kos’ house, unmarriageable and pitied, eating from his charity.”

  “That will not happen,” I said.

  “No.” Neas
smiled. “The women of the People are too few. There are three men for every woman, and a young woman who is pretty and well spoken, able to bear healthy children, can choose among her suitors, rape or no. If she picks Bai, it is he who has gained, not her.”

  “We must take care,” I said slowly, “to keep the good that has come from this when we are in our new city, to keep the People we have become. Perhaps that is what the gods intended all along.”

  Neas looked away. “Our new city. Do you really see it so, or was that encouragement spoken to me in a dark time?”

  “It is true,” I said. “I know it as I know anything. We will not stay in Egypt, Neas. That is not your fate.”

  I wasn’t sure if he looked troubled or relieved. “Where should we go? We can’t return to Byblos or the cities of the coast. Every hand there will be raised against us for the blood of their men lost in the great fleet. I see no choice besides staying in Egypt.” Neas looked at me sharply. “And besides, I thought you liked it here.”

  “I do,” I said, and I meant it with all my heart. “But it is not your fate to die here. You will found a new city in a distant land. That is what I have seen.”

  “And you, Sybil?” he asked. “Where will you die?”

  “I do not know,” I said. “No more than any other mortal.”

  I would that it were here, in this ancient land. I thought I would that it were here, when I had passed four score years in useful service. I would lie here, under this sun, in this quiet place that calls to me with deep voices of peace. I do not know why I loved the Black Land so, or why it filled me with a deep thrill like the sound of a great drum at a distance to know that I had played some little part in preserving that peace. I suspect, looking back. I imagine that I had loved this land before. Love is without end.

  AND SO our life fell into a peaceful rhythm, merging for a moment with the deep tides of the Black Land. The flood rose and descended. Tia married Bai, left the room she had shared with me for one with him.

  The flood waters subsided, and the planting began, big sleepy black oxen in the fields working the rich soil. Somehow Xandros found his way into Tia’s place. Some nights we just lay quiet in the dark, listening to the soft sounds of the river, of the People sleeping. Other times I would turn to him and in the darkness discover unknown worlds. I would go to sleep with his hair against my face listening to the firm, steady beating of his heart.

  In the fields of Egypt the first beans began to sprout, two green leaves unfolding to the sun. By day, Neas taught his men the skill of close-order fighting. As he had predicted, Xandros was the first to understand what Neas wanted. Day after day they sweated, shields made of bulls’ hide in their left hands, swords in their right. Not all of them had the new swords of course, but there were more and more among us. Many had been taken from captives or those slain in the great fleet, and as Egyptian soldiers learned that we would trade beer for them, they were glad to trade us their trophies.

  I watched them in the courtyard. Neas shouted out the orders, like a captain to rowers, with Xandros and Maris to pass them on. Indeed, it was the rowers who did the best, accustomed as they were to moving in unison and answering chanted directions. They stood in lines three men deep, shields on their left arms, each man covering the right of the man next to him, each boat’s rowers forming up as a company. Xandros would shout to Dolphin’s men, and they would turn on Kos, the front man on the right, facing first one way and then another, advancing at the same pace, swords drawn. In the dust that rose from their moving feet I saw endless shadows. Standing by the cooking pots I thought I saw other feet moving, not bare and tanned as theirs, but shod in leather sandals studded with bronze, medallions stamped with eagles.

  Like the leaves opening in the sun, two fragile sails pale green and trembling, I felt the beginning of something.

  WHEN THE PLANTING was done, Pharaoh ordered the ships down the Nile to Tamiat because there was the rumor of raiders. We waited, and the men sailed. This time Xandros had a breastplate of leather and a fine new sword, and he gave me a sideways smile as Dolphin slid away from the dock, his hands on the tiller.

  They were gone forty days, and came back without having seen an enemy, much less engaged one. Xandros came eager and happy to my bed, and I kissed his throat and chest as though we had been parted a year.

  Afterward, we lay replete, murmuring sweet things in the warm night.

  “There is no great fleet,” Xandros said. “What there was is shattered. There are a few ships left, but they are scattered and hiding, for the most part. This winter there will be few raids, and nothing that can assail Egypt.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I was not entirely thinking about ships.

  “The sailing season is ending,” he said. “We are wintering here.”

  “And I suppose Neas means for us to stay on,” I said.

  Xandros gave a short laugh, as though it wasn’t really funny. “Well, he’s certainly not going anywhere! The princess told him that she had hardly been able to stand it while he was away with the ships. Next time we’re supposed to go without him while he stays in Memphis.”

  I pushed myself up on one elbow. “He’s supposed to stay in Memphis?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the women and children and old men while his ships patrol against raiders?”

  Xandros nodded. “That’s what the princess says. She’s completely entranced with her barbarian prince. And she says he must never be allowed to leave her side again.”

  “Allowed?” I raised one eyebrow.

  “That’s the word she used,” Xandros agreed.

  “Will Neas stand for this?” I asked.

  Xandros shook his head. “I don’t see that he has any choice. If he doesn’t do what she says, what then?”

  “Our contract is with her brother, not with her,” I said.

  “Her brother is in Thebes,” Xandros pointed out. “And the sailing season has ended. In any event, we aren’t going anywhere until spring.”

  THE DAYS were at their shortest, and the fields of Egypt greened. Anchises sought me out as I returned from the Temple of Thoth.

  “Sybil,” he said formally, “I would speak with you.”

  I went aside with him, though I looked on him with trepidation. My dealings with him had never been what I should call pleasant. “How may I assist you, my lord Anchises?” I asked.

  “I want you to talk to my son about leaving Egypt,” he said, his mouth twisted as though it hurt him to ask me. “He may heed your council as he does not heed mine.”

  I thought carefully. “Why do you wish me to do this?”

  “If it is not done soon it will never be,” Anchises said. “Already four men among the People have taken Egyptian wives.”

  That much at least was true. And it was to be expected. Half a year we had been here, and there were three times as many men as women among the People. Our men, coming home with spoils and bonuses from the battle, accounted heroes who had helped Pharaoh preserve Egypt, were not unattractive to Egyptian women. Four had married so far, and I was certain that before the winter ended there would be more.

  “Are you afraid it will be five, my lord?” I asked.

  His mouth tightened and for a moment he looked very like his son. “It will never be five,” he said. “My son is not reckoned an appropriate husband for Pharaoh’s sister. And he never will be. Though in the old days his grandfather took to wife a niece of the Hittite emperor!”

  “Those days are gone,” I said carefully. “And even in the days of Wilusa’s power the Great Kings of Egypt did not send their daughters to marry the lords of other lands. No, I think that you are right. Aeneas will never marry Basetamon.”

  “Is that what we are to be?” he asked, and his blue eyes met mine, a little watery with age or light. “We are to be no more than the concubines and hired men-at-arms of a foreign nation?”

  “Some men would say it is better than slavery,” I said. I would say so, if he asked. Bu
t he had never asked me before what I thought.

  “Is that all we hope for? To avoid the lash? What has become of our pride, our sovereignty?”

  “My lord, if you had tasted the lash you would not disdain avoiding it,” I said a little tartly. But then I sighed. He was right. And though I hated to agree with him, I must. “You are right that this is not our destiny. I will speak with Neas when I may.”

  “I will not,” he said, and almost smiled. “If I say more to him of it he will only get his back up and heed you less.”

  “Then we are in agreement,” I said. “I will do as you ask.”

  I FOUND NEAS alone a week later, when we were celebrating another wedding. One of Maris’ rowers was marrying an Egyptian widow, a woman with a fishing boat and two young sons, and no man to help her fish the river. They broke a jar together in the Egyptian way, and then we did the snake dance, some of her relatives jumping into the festivities too.

  I found Neas by the fire, clapping in time but not dancing. His hair was cut to no more than a finger’s length, and his face was shaven.

  “My prince,” I said, standing beside him.

  “Sybil.”

  “My prince,” I said, “I do not think I will dance at your wedding to Basetamon.”

  He looked into the fire instead of at me. “No, I don’t think you will.”

  “And when she tires of you, my prince?”

  Neas shrugged. “We will be a fighting force her brother reckons valuable. He will not cast away a sword to his hand as easily as she will cast away a pastime. There will be no peace next year. There will be raids and war on the western border. The Libyans were emboldened by the great fleet, and they will make trouble.”

  I took both his calloused hands in mine, made him look at me. “Neas, is this the best we can do?”

  “I can do no better,” he said, and his eyes were full of regret. “What would you have me do? Steal away in the middle of the night with the People stuffed aboard ships, hoping that Basetamon doesn’t pursue? And go where?”