Banished Sons Of Poseidon

by Andrew J. Peters

  Dam reached his arms around Hanhau’s, buttressing the warrior’s embrace. “Yes.”

  “It makes me happy too,” Hanhau said. “If you stayed, I’d be even happier. But I need to know that you’ve thought it through. You would be forsaking your cousin and your people. Those are enormous things to give up to be with someone you’ve only known for a short while.”

  “Why does everyone think they know what’s best for me?” He shifted around so his face was tucked into the crook of Hanhau’s neck. His lips nearly touched the warrior’s skin.

  Hanhau brushed his hand through his hair. Dam cocked his head to look up at Hanhau, then they kissed even longer than the night before. Dam held Hanhau’s side with his hand, pressing against his leathery body armor. He felt something funny. One of the scales was loose. Like a wobbly tooth, it could break off in his fingers if he jostled it a bit.

  The change was happening inside Hanhau, and if they kept doing what they were doing, his chest and his back would be laid bare. That was a tantalizing proposition, but another impulse warred inside Dam. Hanhau losing his armor was a sacred thing. He had never been with anybody before.

  Dam broke the kiss. He cleared his throat. “You should know some things about me.”

  Hanhau gazed at him. His eyes were bright and eager. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a pleasant story.

  “I’m the reason Hephad lost his tongue,” Dam said. That was the worst of it, and he circled back to the awful business with Leo and Koz. It was easier to say than Dam had imagined. He wasn’t sure how Hanhau would take it, but Dam knew that he wouldn’t be mean. When Dam finished the story, Hanhau’s arms were still wrapped around his sides. That was a good sign.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Hanhau said.

  “Of course it was. If I hadn’t gotten Hephad involved, Zazamoukh wouldn’t have made it so he couldn’t speak.”

  “Zazamoukh stole the lives of hundreds of men. All so he could live forever through the energies of the Oomphalos. He would have hurt anyone who got in his way.”

  Dam had thought about all of that before. He still felt like a villain.

  “You said Hephad accepted your apology. You saved his life bringing him down below while millions of others perished.”

  “I thought you’d be disgusted.”

  “We have an expression. ‘Let the past roll back like the current of the river. It’s a man’s deeds today that matter.’”

  Dam imagined his past drifting away. It would be like tossing an ugly clump of mud into a rushing stream, turning the water cloudy and brown. But as the stream carried it on its course, it would dissolve and break apart. Eventually the water would run clean again.

  “I’ve just told you the most embarrassing thing about my past,” Dam said. “And it’s not fair. I don’t know anything embarrassing about you.”

  A little glow flushed from Hanhau’s face. “C’mon,” Dam said. “There’s got to be something.”

  Hanhau leaned back behind him while he considered. “You remember the warrior Backlum?”

  Dam nodded. Alongside Hanhau, Backlum had led the charge to rid the New Ones from their city. He was the tallest and the broadest of Ysalane’s warriors, and each of his arms were scarred from his many kills.

  “When we were young, I was jealous of him,” Hanhau said. “He was stronger and better at the crossbow and with swordplay. He was everything a warrior is supposed to be. Disciplined and reserved. The elders used to tell me that I talked too much and asked too many questions.”

  Dam could picture that. It made him grin.

  “They told me I was better suited to be a nikwah. To your people, that’s something like a nursemaid. Keeping the children fed and clothed. Showing them right from wrong. Teaching them words and letters until they’re old enough to be sorted into a trade. Being a nikwah isn’t dishonorable. Everyone in the tribe has a role to play. But I wanted to be a warrior like Backlum. We wouldn’t have even had any children to look after until the women of my generation came of age for birthing.”

  “We had something called the Day of Challenges when boys and girls were called into the elder circle to square off in spars. It was my last chance to show I was meant to be a warrior. So I told the others if they got matched up with me, they had to let me win. My future depended on it.

  “The Day of Challenges came, and I drew Backlum for my challenge. I thought for certain he would honor my plea. The elders had already pronounced him the best of our generation. For him, losing to me would be a small sacrifice. He had already proved himself.

  “We drew pikestaffs for our battle. We had barely squared off in stances before he came at me and walloped my staff right out of my hands. Then he struck me low and knocked my legs out from under me. As I lay on the ground clutching my knee, everyone laughed. They all started chattering about how I had begged them to play weak so that I would win that day.”

  Dam knew it was a story that was shameful to Hanhau, but he found it encouraging that Hanhau’s people could be as cruel as his own. And that history was fascinating. Hanhau’s body looked like it was sculpted from iron. He bore the weight of chain mail and heavy manacles and anklets just to go about his everyday business. He had slain giant serpents.

  “How did you become a warrior?”

  “Not long after that day, everyone had to fight in a raid, and it turned out that when I was pushed to defend myself, I could hold my own. We took many losses. The days of sorting boys and girls into trades were over. The tribe needed everyone to be warriors.”

  Dam picked at the frayed part of his sandal.

  “Does that make you think less of me?” Hanhau said.

  “How could that make me think less of you? You turned out perfect.”

  “I don’t believe that. I became a warrior by necessity. Now that times have changed, it’s possible I could follow a different path. I wonder sometimes if the elders were right about me.”

  “You want to be a nikwah?”

  A shy grin passed over Hanhau’s face. “Maybe. There’ll be children soon enough, and we’ll need people to take care of them.”

  Dam smiled. Children would love Hanhau. He was handsome and patient, and he loved telling stories.

  “What do you think will become of me?” he asked. “I was lousy at being a priest. I have no idea how to take up my father’s trade. Even if I knew how to raise horses, I don’t even know if I would want to.”

  “Do you like children?”

  Dam’s face shrank up gruesomely. “Not particularly.”

  Hanhau sat up and tucked Dam into his body once again. “You’re a hero. You’ve earned the right to do anything you want.”

  Dam remembered the engraving on that bracelet Hanhau had given him. One of three who slayed Ouroborus. That hero’s epithet felt misplaced on him.

  Hanhau’s statement was enticing in a different way. If he had earned the right to do anything he wanted, there was definitely something that he wanted to do at that moment. He turned his head and reached for another kiss.

  Chapter Ten

  On the day of the vote, it seemed like everyone had gone mad.

  Dam awakened to what sounded like the hue and cry of a vicious brawl. He gathered his bedsheet around his waist and scampered from his pallet toward the commotion coming from the terrace just outside his room.

  What he discovered was a very ordinary scene. Some boys had set up a lane for bowling. Attalos stood at one end and Callios was at the other, aiming for the stone markers in the middle. The two had assembled teams behind them: Hephad and Tibor with Attalos, Deodorus and Heron with Callios.

  Callios launched a rounded stone toward the markers, and Attalos hurled a bigger one down the lane, trying to block Callios’ throw. Each team hollered bloody murder, and when the stones collided, an ear-splitting, triumphant screech came from Attalos and Tibor.

  Dam looked over the group, baffled. He didn’t begrudge their right to play the game. But why did they have to do it on the terrace when th
ey had plenty of space in the yards below? And why were they so keyed up about it? By the half-light of the Oomphalos, it was awfully early in the day to get excited about anything.

  When they all went down to the dining hall, the place was a typhoon trapped inside four walls. Cups were being hurled around the room for sport. Sparring matches had broken out in the corners of the room. Boys were hoisted atop the shoulders of other boys. Some ran around the room playing a version of tag where they tried to rip off each other’s loincloths. Others had climbed on top of tables and stamped their feet and linked arms to swing each other around in the style of a martial dance. Everywhere, people were shouting. Some clamored for more soup from the food line, where a grim scullery worker was trying to keep up with the traffic. Dam’s friends dove into all of that as though they were leaping into the surf of the ocean.

  Dam stood off, watching, not understanding. Attalos and Callios clasped hands with two boys from House Gadir like they were old friends. The fellows from House Gadir shouldered the two to their table in the center of the room and called the rest of their group over to join them. The table farthest from the food line, where Dam’s friends normally sat, was empty.

  Overnight, it no longer mattered who was middle-house or upper-house? Not only that, boys from different clans were mixed together, wrestling under tables and tossing their soup bowls to each other. When had the rivalry between Calyiches’ friends and Aerander’s friends fallen away? Dam scanned around. It looked like the only people missing were Calyiches and his closest friends, and Aerander and Lys.

  A whistle knifed through the din. Heads turned to a young man standing on a table with a goblet in his hand. His emerald-colored robe was barely hanging from his shoulder, and it had come untucked in more places than not. He raised his cup. “To Aerander. The new King of Atlantis.”

  A boisterous bellow rose up from the room. Fists pounded on tables. Boys turned over their bowls on their laps and beat them like drums.

  When Dam got back to his house with the other boys from the middle-houses, Hephad threw himself down on his bed and started bawling. Everyone drew up around him, asking him what was wrong. Attalos interpreted his hand gestures. Hephad was certain that something dreadful had happened to the cats. They hadn’t been seen since the day of the feast, though Pleione still bedded herself on Hephad’s pallet.

  They could have gone a thousand places, and they had shown an interest in hunting lizards. Dam tried to tell Hephad that they should leave out some scraps of fish by the door that night, and the trio of cats would return. Hephad shook his head. Attalos insisted that they needed to find the kittens then and there. The others agreed, and Dam was outnumbered. They were determined to search every part of the Honeycomb and to fan out into the city from there.

  They started with the upper-houses, where more boys volunteered to join the cause. A herd of boys tramped down to the below-houses and spread through the old men’s quarters asking questions and calling out the kittens’ names.

  Dam followed them around halfheartedly. They were going about it all wrong. The nature of cats was to skitter away from commotion. They should have sent one or two people into the below-houses to search instead parading through the rooms where the old men slept. But nearly every boy in the Honeycomb had taken up the search as though an untold disaster awaited them unless the cats returned safely. The cats didn’t turn up in any of the houses, or the lavatory, or the yards around the staged apartments. A crowd of boys ended up in the polyandrium. Attalos fought through their noisy chatter to pick out groups to canvas the various districts of the city.

  That was when Dam spotted Calyiches and his crew headed to the stairwell of the Honeycomb. Gods knew what they had been doing all day. They halted and wandered over to the gathering.

  “What business is this?” Calyiches called out. Over the past few days, Calyiches had become reviled by many, but by his proud, patrician bearing, he still was a halting presence.

  Attalos explained to him that they were searching for the cats.

  Calyiches shook his head woefully. “Someone must have kidnapped them, if they haven’t eaten them already. You should try interrogating the prisoners. If nothing comes of that, investigate the Old Ones. They don’t like things that aren’t from their own world. They’d want to take those cats just to spite us.”

  Dam saw red. The crowd around him quieted. He could sense that Calyiches had planted worries in the other boys. Many of them were still distrustful of the Old Ones because their ways were different from their own people.

  Calyiches’ hands and face were streaked with dark smudges, and his friends were smudged as well, as though they had been digging in coal. No one else seemed to find that strange. They were hell-bent on finding the cats, and they headed out to their assignments.

  Dam stayed back, and he looked for Aerander. He remembered the smell of niterbats when he had run into Calyiches’ crew at the bathing lake. They needed to keep an eye on those boys. They should see if someone from the upper-houses knew something about their plans.

  Neither Aerander nor Lys was home when Dam arrived at their house. He traveled around the side of the upper-house terrace, drew up to the corner of the wall, and peeked down at the bathing yard. Calyiches, Perdikkas, Mesokantes, Boros, Leo, and Koz turned up to wash the black dust from their faces, arms, and legs.

  They were awfully quiet about it. No joking around. No complaining about the water from the spigots being ice cold. There seemed to be barely any conversation between the boys at all. Somehow, that signaled more danger to Dam than if they were boasting about the scheme in their heads.

  *

  It was nearly dark when Hephad, Attalos, and their friends returned home. Dam could not believe it. They really had to get a move on to make it to the vote at Ysalane’s Hall.

  Everyone looked weighed down by defeat. They had searched up and down the stages of the city for the kittens to no avail. Hephad hand-gestured to Attalos that he wouldn’t go out to vote. He would stay back in his room in case the kittens came home. Everybody turned their attention to talking him out of that melodrama. Dam tried to tell the boys his suspicions about Calyiches. Attalos, Callios, and Heron had been part of the prisoner rebellion. They knew what niterbat cinders could do, but they were only mildly interested in Dam’s story.

  “What would be their plot?” Attalos said. “Attack the hall so nobody can vote? Guess we’ll know if they don’t show up. But they won’t get within throwing distance with all the warriors posted around the square.”

  Dam supposed he had a point. Firebombs were a rather conspicuous strategy for sabotage. They would need to load up a wheelbarrow to bring enough to do damage to the hall. How would they sneak that through the city?

  “Leo and Koz were probably just showing them some tricks in the backcountry,” Callios said. “Someone would have snitched if they saw them bringing that stuff back here. There’s no private place to store it.”

  That made sense as well. Dam felt a bit relieved. He would talk to Hanhau about it after the vote. The warriors could keep an eye on Calyiches. Dam left out with the others to make their way to the voting assembly.

  *

  When they reached the hall, the mood in the meeting room was serious and restrained. Everyone from the highborn boys to the freed prisoners was there. That included Calyiches, Perdikkas, Mesokantes, Boros, Leo, and Koz. Seeing that suspicious crew took a weight off of Dam.

  No one spoke while they waited for a straggling group of old men to take seats. Glancing around the hall during that uneasy silence, Dam was suddenly struck by the significance of the occasion. No one in their assembly had been asked before to give his say on how their country should be run. Even the highborn boys had deferred to their fathers, grandfathers, or uncles to make those decisions for them. They, the survivors of Atlantis, had become their country’s politicians. They had assembled to vote not by privilege but by duty. Maybe it had taken Dam longer than everyone else to appreciate the import
ance of that night. He had been too busy worrying about Hanhau, his own problems and what else. But at that moment in the hall, the meaning soared above Dam’s head like a pinnacle stretching toward the sky.

  Ysalane and her head consort, a tall warrior girl named Ichika, were the only Old Ones present. They sat at one of the head tables while the candidates and their sponsors sat at the other. The voting procedure had been negotiated by Aerander and Calyiches. Each candidate needed two sponsors to oversee the balloting. That also provided a way for the candidates to show who among their countrymen endorsed their candidacy. Aerander had used that strategy to a greater advantage.

  Aerander had chosen as his sponsors one of the women named Pyrrah and one of the freed prisoners named Markos. Calyiches had chosen his brother Oleon and Leo. Dam marveled at his cousin’s ingenuity. Aerander must have spent all day convincing the women to participate, and one had even agreed to help with the voting procedure. Those sponsors showed that he had a lock on every faction of their countrymen. Meanwhile, all Calyiches had was the sentimental choice of his brother and Leo, who might be popular enough to split off some votes from House Eudemon.

  Calyiches looked bemused by the proceedings. He had to know that the vote was a forgone conclusion, but it was his nature to disguise any chink of vulnerability. Dam caught his cousin’s gaze and smiled. He had never felt so proud of Aerander.

  The sponsors stood and scanned the room, counting heads. People stood clear back to the doors, so the four conferred until they finally agreed on a number. They looked to Ysalane, and she stood. The warrior chieftain had been appointed to announce the procedure of the vote.

  The candidates would each address the body of voters, and then the ballots would be distributed—a black disc for Aerander and a white disc for Calyiches. Each voter would come up to the slotted box on Ysalane’s table and select his candidate by depositing either black or white and exit the hall.