by David Bell
All was done. The boxes and crates were roped, strapped or nailed, according to size and content; all the jars had wooden plugs hammered into, or skins stretched and tied over, the openings, to seal them. The smell in the hold was a rich mixture of oil, honey and spice mingled with the tang of resin and salt. Dareka always loved that smell, then always worried if that was all that would be left if the voyage did not go well. He looked at Potyr.
“There’s copper and tin in this ship to make enough bronze to fit out an army.”
“And enough wine to make it drunk.”
“Do you have a full crew?”
“Most slept on board; a few soreheads keep coming in. Typhis and the boy have gone up into town to wake up the last two or three, wherever they are.”
In a gutter, somewhere, or a bed they shouldn’t be in, thought Dareka. “With his voice Typhis will wake up half the street,” he said.
They went out onto the stern deck. Potyr called an order to a shadowy figure below and the man moved off towards the bow, bending down here and there to shake sleeping crewmen awake. Gradually the ship began to come alive as men began to stir, although it was still dark except where the stern and bow lanterns threw down a feeble glow. The carpenter and his mate took two men forward with them and started hammering out the dowels that held the ceremonial bowsprit in place. It would be stored in the warehouse until needed again the following year. Dareka could hear similar noises from the warship further along the jetty.
“Passengers should be coming soon,” he said.
Voices came from the direction of the harbour yard gate and a few moments later Sharesh and Namun appeared, whispering excitedly to each other, and jumped aboard. They were closely followed by Typhis who was herding a pair of tousled, yawning sailors ahead of him.
“Found this one cuddling a deer’s head mask and, when I kicked him awake, he asked where she’d gone. Where’s that boy?”
“Stowing kit,” said Dareka. “Where are the others?”
“If you mean the chosen children, I should have told you; word came from the Governor that they were to sail on the warship. Palace thinks it more fitting than being mixed up with the crew of a trader,” said Potyr.
As if his words were a signal, a group of small, hooded figures ushered along by women in long dark cloaks, appeared in the dimness, hurrying along the jetty. They stopped by the Dolphin, unsure in the darkness as to which ship was which. Typhis bellowed down into the hold:
“Up here, you boys, and show these ladies the way.”
Sharesh was first onto the jetty. He bowed to the leading cloaked figure and led the way towards the warship, closely followed by Namun. They watched as the party was assisted on board by two sailors holding lamps. Once on deck the children lowered their hoods and looked around.
“See that girl?” said Namun. “She’s the one who won the hill race. Come on, better get back before Typhis lays into us; it’s cold standing out here.”
Sharesh could see the girl’s face quite clearly in the light thrown by the stern lantern. There were tears on her cheeks. She raised her hand to wave, and without thinking, Sharesh raised his in response, realising a moment later that she was waving to some of the cloaked women who had remained on the jetty. But she had seen him, and her hand moved in his direction, and he was certain she smiled. She was going to Keftiu, for how long he did not know, perhaps forever; anyway, longer than he would be there. She would be in the Palace, learning things he would never know. For some reason that made him feel sad. Still, he would be in the city and the shipyard with Kanesh and the others, learning things she would never know, and that made him feel more cheerful. But where was Kanesh?
Kanesh picked up the pouch containing the tablets that bore Koreta’s despatches and slung the leather strap over his shoulder. He slid the scabbard along his belt onto his right hip, pulled his cloak about him and stepped towards the courtyard gate. Akusha stood in front of him. In the fading light of moon and stars he could see only the curve of her cheek, and her lips.
“You are leaving me again, then, my Lord.”
“But taking with me something, someone, to make me return.”
“Again. I cannot bear to be there when the ship carries him away. I have said my goodbyes to him and my prayers to the Lady Mother. He is yours now. Keep him close.”
She was still standing motionless in the courtyard when the little maid came at dawn to draw water from the painted jar. She could still feel the insistent strength of his arms drawing her to him, and the light touch of his lips on hers.
The ship was secured for sea as a band of livid red outlined the horizon. Dareka had given Sharesh all the advice and instructions he could think of before he had left the house, and now, after holding the boy close to him for a few moments, he climbed up onto the jetty. Potyr stood on the stern deck with his head bowed and his hands clasped in the gesture of supplication. Men stood at the bollards waiting for orders and the oarsmen were ready on their benches, oars held upright. Typhis grasped the handle on the steering oar. The first glint of gold ran along the base of the red band on the horizon and a horn on the Keftiu warship sounded the command to cast off. The bow of the long slim ship eased smoothly away from the wharf and oars gentled her out into the harbour. She paused, turned, and slid away towards the harbour mouth. Potyr looked across at Typhis and nodded. The helmsman called, “Cast off bowline!” and the ship’s stem drifted away from the jetty. The stern line splashed into the water, just as Kanesh stepped aboard. Dareka watched as the Dolphin followed the Keftiu warship out to sea, and fade into the dawn haze. He stood there until the sun had cleared the horizon, still feeling the firm grip of Kanesh’s hand on his and remembering his words:
“I will keep him close and on my life, I will bring him back.”
KEFTIU
The tally stones lay in their rows and files on the cedar wood table as Merida had arranged them. He wished now that he had gone down to see the Dolphin sail, but, then, all the talking and planning had been done, and it was now the job of others to deliver his cargo in good order to his agents on Keftiu. His eyes ran back and forth over the stones, calculating a profit here, a risk there. That was odd: he could swear he saw them move. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again. The stones seemed to quiver and he heard the tiny clicking sounds as some knocked against others. He felt a stab of fear. Great Diwonis: he reached for the alabaster beaker that stood on the table’s edge, but as his fingers felt for it, the beaker swayed and rocked from side to side and then fell to the floor. Its broken shards lay soaking in a pool of red wine. Great Potheidan!
“Land ahead, on the starboard bow!”
“Tholos,” said Potyr to Typhis. “Stand well clear. There’s a reef further on.”
“Warship signalling; red flag!” shouted the lookout.
“Red flag; she’s going to change course; turning astarboard now,” said Typhis.
The two larger islands of Tholos were now clearly visible, like helmets rising from the dark blue sea. Potyr could see a white fringe of surf along the shoreline and what might be a thin column of smoke rising from a point near some cliffs high up on the nearest island. He saw the starboard oars of the warship flash in the sunlight as she made her turn and headed for the narrow strait between the two islands. So this was the place the commander had meant he was to investigate when he had mentioned that he had a report to follow up before continuing on to Keftiu.
“White water ahead on the starboard bow!” called the lookout.
“That’s the reef,” said Potyr to Typhis. “Steer to larboard until we’re well past, then get back on course. We’re making good time. Should be off Keftiu before nightfall.”
Not long after the sun had reached its highest point in the sky a lookout reported a sail astern of them.
“Warship,” said Typhis. “She can’t have found anything to worry about on Tholos.”
“That, or she did find something and she’s heading back to Keftiu for reinforcements,” sai
d Kanesh. “The commander wouldn’t want to get into a fight when he has the chosen children on board.”
Shading his eyes with his hand, Potyr squinted into the distance. “We’ll know soon enough,” he said. “She has forty oars against our thirty, and a bigger sail. She has the legs on us.”
Well before the sun was halfway along its downward flight towards the horizon, the warship drew abreast of the Dolphin, a ship’s length distant, and on command both crews dropped their stroke and paddled to keep the ships under way. The commander raised a bronze horn to his lips.
“Nothing to report,” he boomed. “I am returning to Keftiu. I will keep you in sight. Good sailing.”
There was a shouted order and the warship’s oars swung back in perfect timing, dug in hard; and again; and a third time. She sprang clear of the Dolphin, and soon her wake was showing them the course for Keftiu.
“Always showing off, bloody navy,” grunted a sweating crewman. “Brand new ship, forty big oars and plenty of relief. What do you expect? Here, lad, give us a drink.” Sharesh squeezed a jet of water from the waterskin into his mouth.
“Put your backs into it!” bellowed Typhis. “Don’t let them get away from us. You know it’s nice to have company.”
Loud farting noises from the crew told him what they thought of that last remark.
Merida was feeling a little better. The tally stones were back in orderly lines on the table and his handsome young manservant had cleaned up the spilled wine and fragments of alabaster. He came back with a new beaker and filled it from the uptilted spout of a slender jug painted with barleycorns.
“Master Dareka is here, as you requested.”
“Ask him to come up to the terrace. What are you waiting for?”
“The cook says that two of the best wine flasks are broken and a jar of oil fell over and the oil is wasted. And the cats have run away.”
“Not the flasks with the swallows? Send for that potter Getron, and tell him I want them mended. Never mind the oil, or the cats; they’ll be back soon enough when they’re hungry.”
Dareka was looking down into the street where little groups of people were talking excitedly, when Merida came up to him.
“What do you think, Dareka? What are they saying down there? Any damage down at the warehouse?”
“Nothing to worry about. In any case the place is almost empty now the Dolphin has sailed.”
“Yes, but does it mean anything? Is it bad luck coming just after the Dolphin sailed? And what about it happening on the day after the Festival; after the Procession, and the ceremonies, and the sacrifice? The sacrifice! It was my bull! Great Potheidan, it was my bull!”
“Listen. It was nothing. A few broken pots and that’s about it. The ground shakes now and again. You know that. It’s like a dog twitching when it’s asleep, then it settles down again. Everything, everybody, has to shrug or shiver a bit. It’s natural.”
“A mason told me that this house was built on the ruins of an old place that shook down a long time ago.”
“Exactly: a long time ago. And look at it now. Solid as a rock ever since.”
“The cook says that flocks of birds were seen flying away from the Lagoon this morning.”
“They do that when they know there’s a shoal of fish out to sea. Stop worrying.”
“Hm. All right. Here, have some wine. But I want you to ask the Lady Akusha to tell me what the High Priestess thinks.”
“If you say so. Now we need to talk about the next shipment coming in from Telchina.”
Sharesh was woken by a hand shaking his shoulder. Still befuddled with sleep, he jumped up from the pile of sacking and nearly cracked his skull on the low deckhead.
“Come on,” said Namun. “You’re wanted on deck.”
His mind went back to the evening before: a sweet wind swelling the sail and dusk thickening the horizon ahead as the first points of light appeared in the far distance, the lights of Keftiu. Potyr had judged it to be too late for the ship to approach harbour on Keftiu in fading light with a tiring crew, and took her into a sheltered inlet on the island of Dia where she dropped anchor for the night. Now it was daybreak and the ship was under way again, and he had slept the night away like a drunk landlubber. He flung water into his face from a leather bucket and rushed aloft after Namun. After the stuffy warmth of the hold, the chill of dawn raised goosepimples on his arms and back. On the stern he saw Typhis leaning hard on the steering oar and Potyr as usual staring into the distance, and then from behind he heard the deep voice calling:
“Up here. Dawn is the best time for your first view of Keftiu.”
He scrambled up onto the prow and stood beside Kanesh. The ship was riding a light swell, dipping and rising, like porpoises he had seen hunting underwater. In the early morning light the waves were still dark grey and the coast in the distance was a dull blurred line flecked with white here and there, stretching either side of the bow as far as he could see. He lifted his gaze and caught his breath in amazement. Beyond the coastal haze rose great mountains, so high they made the Mountain on Kallista seem a little hill, and these peaks rearing into a sky still purple with the lingering light of night time were not green or fawn like the those on Kallista, but white, as pure white as fresh milk. As he watched, the white became suffused with pink, first at the summits, then lower and lower until it seemed as if the mountains wore rose-coloured bonnets with ribbons running part way down the slopes. He turned to Kanesh with a look of astonishment on his face.
“Snow,” said Kanesh. “You are seeing snow for the first time.”
“Snow?”
“In winter on those peaks it is so cold that water in streams turns solid and cannot flow, and the rain falls not in drops but as soft white flakes and shreds like feathers shaken from a pillow. In your hand it will melt and turn back into water because your hand is warm. In the spring it begins to melt and feed the rivers, as it is now, and by midsummer most of it has gone. Men risk dying of cold up there to gather it and bring it in covered baskets down to the cities and palaces where they store it underground.”
“Why do they do that?”
“To sell to the rich people who use it to cool their wine.”
“You said ‘palaces’.”
“All in good time. You will see palaces, never fear, but first, we have to make port.”
They passed some fishing boats heading for the shore, their nets piled in the stern and clouds of seabirds swirling and shrieking above them. Sharesh waved as they swept by, but the fishermen were too busy gutting their catch to take any notice. He could now clearly see sandy beaches and houses near the shore. Further inland were fields and groves of trees in rows he guessed were olives, and patches of terraced ground that he later learned were vineyards. He saw bullock carts moving slowly along tracks between small villages and farmsteads next to valleys and watercourses running down from the foothills of the great mountains. On a hill rising from the side of one of these river valleys was a town of great gleaming buildings with wide windows and rows of columns, and towers and stairways, all set about with treelined roadways and gardens. The river skirting this town ran down to the sea into a wide bay on the far side of a rocky promontory that lay on their heading. On the near side of this promontory the coastline swung sharply inland towards the mouth of another river, then out again in the direction of a low headland on the other side of which a long sandy beach stretched into the distance, A little way offshore from this headland was a small island where some vessels rode at anchor, using it as a breakwater. Many other ships had been hauled up on the sandy beach. At a command from Potyr the Dolphin changed course, turning onto a heading that would take her towards the river mouth. Sharesh could now see that the promontory served as one side of a well-sheltered inner harbour and that a stone wall projecting out to sea formed the other, with the river mouth between the two. A ship now came into view, moving carefully out from the harbour, giving the Dolphin room to make her entrance. When she was about twenty
ship lengths out, Potyr ordered sail lowered and speed dead slow ahead. Eventually they came to a stop with oars gently paddling to hold her steady. They now had clear sight into the inner harbour. Work was in progress on the sea wall and Typhis kept a close watch on a barge which was close by unloading stone for the masons. The warship which had been with them for part of the crossing was tied up on the other side of the harbour. Some small figures in cloaks were being shepherded along the jetty away from the warship by women wearing long skirts and hoods. Two bullock carts stood waiting to receive them. Sharesh felt the pain of disappointment. He was not going to see her again. She would have left the harbour on one of those carts long before the Dolphin had docked. Still, if he got off first, and ran… perhaps…
“This is the Palace harbour,” said Kanesh. “The master is waiting for a Palace pilot to take us in to a berth. If they take too long, the master will drop anchor.”
A buzz of chatter rose from the crew. Some of them had families on Keftiu and were wondering what they were going to find after being away so long. Others were already planning what they would do once they were ashore and had been paid and were free for a few days. One or two simply welcomed the chance to lie back and doze for a while in the warm sun. A lookout shouted and pointed towards the harbour. A slender craft, smart blue in colour, and with prominent eyes under elaborately curving eyebrows painted on each side of the bow, came into view. Its mast held a furled sail and it was powered by six men working pointed paddles, with a helmsman at the stern steering it deftly through the crowded shipping. In the rear under a flagstaff bearing a banner depicting a bull’s head with gold horns, sat a portly man wearing a dome-shaped helmet. The boat headed smartly towards the Dolphin and was soon bumping gently against a fender lowered from the ship’s stern, and being held in place by a grapnel thrust down by one of the crew. After formal exchanges of identifications and welcome, the pilot boat pulled away and led them towards their berth. The Dolphin moved forward, all oars out, but only halfway so as to avoid clashes, and paddling very slowly because this was heavy work, until she lay about two spear lengths out from a vacant stretch of the jetty next to the warship.
