by David Bell
The boys were left in the care of Leilia, although Kanesh came to see them every day, arriving early in the morning and leaving them with orders to watch a particular craftsman at work when their own duties allowed. On the following day he would ask them what they had found out. They were given their own place to sleep in one of the store sheds but they often crept out at night to lie among the dunes or on the beach and look up at the stars, or if the moonlight was bright enough, hunt for crabs. They sometimes saw Leilia, always in the same place, standing on the crest of a dune, her cloak wrapped closely about her, looking out to sea, always in the same direction. Perhaps she knew they were there, perhaps not; she never said. One day Sharesh felt bold enough to ask her about Naudok. It was a long time before she answered.
“His father was captain of a ship lost at sea before he was born, whether from storm or pirate attack is not known. His mother’s milk seemed poison to him. He was near death when an old woman brought milk from a donkey for him, and the child lived. He never smiled nor played as other children. When they began to crawl, then walk, he lay still in his cot, and when they uttered their first words and sang the songs their mothers taught them, he stayed silent. His mother despaired. She went to the shrine of the Goddess of Healing, placed the honey and the dolls and a curl of his hair on the sacred altar and vowed that if the Lady gave her son his life, she would give the Lady hers. The next morning when she awoke, the boy was not in his cot beside her. In fear, she searched through every room in the house. He was not there. She ran into the courtyard and found him bending over the basin of the fountain. “Look,” he said, “how well my ship sails.” In the basin floated the rind of half of a pomegranate into which he had stuck a bird’s feather for a sail. She knew then that the Lady had listened to her prayer, and would expect her to fulfil her vow. She took the boy to the home of a childless woman she knew whose husband was a master shipwright. When she left, he was playing with the counters of a game; no, not playing, placing them in lines and counting them as he put them down. He did not look up as she left. True to her vow, she entered the service of the Lady of Healing and her son grew up without her, guided by the Lady, although never acknowledging it, into such mastery of his skill that none can match him. When the Lady is with him, he cannot speak; and when she is not, he becomes like a little child again.”
“The Lady is Kamrosepas, isn’t she?” whispered Sharesh. Leilia bowed her head.
“When did you find him again?” said Sharesh. There were tears in his eyes. Leilia put her hand on his shoulder and looked away, so that he should not see hers.
***
The Dolphin had not been seen in the bay for many days when one morning Kanesh arrived and told the boys to gather up their belongings and go back with him to the town harbour. As they made their way along the track behind the dunes, Kanesh explained that the Dolphin’s refit had been completed and she was to make her first run to the stone quarries that day. When they arrived at the jetty the boys were surprised to see how much the Dolphin had changed. Most of her upper decking had been removed to allow easier loading of the stone and a new floor deck made of thicker planks installed to bear greater weight. The decked hold space had been halved and five thwarts removed, both to give more room for cargo that needed no cover from the weather.
“She’s nothing more than a barge, now,” said Typhis. “Fully loaded she’ll squat down like an old sheep having a shit. The Lord Potheidan save us if she gets into heavy weather.”
“Better keep a pig on board,” Namun sniggered in Sharesh’s ear.
By mid-morning a light cross-shore wind was blowing, and with a pilot sent by the Palace port contoller onboard, they cleared the harbour and changed course to put the sun astern. Potyr decided to follow the line of the coast on this first sailing after the refit with the ship in ballast only, and fewer oars powering her. Soon, on the larboard beam, they could see the little bay with what Sharesh now thought of as Naudok’s shipyard. A thin column of smoke rose from the smouldering heap of waste wood on the shore and the tiny figures of men moved about between the jetty and the stacks of timber near the sheds. Further on, a river meandered across scrub-covered flats and where it entered the sea a few small fishing boats lay offshore, their nets already cast. Past this, a long gently curving yellow strand stretched into the hazy distance, but from his lookout post in the bow, Sharesh could see the vague outline of the coast turn and sweep to starboard across their heading. At midday they changed course and rowed past a shoreline of low rocky headlands and small coves. As the ship drew level with one of these headlands, the pilot signalled for slow ahead, and then a turn to larboard. The ship entered a small sheltered cove and guided by the pilot drew alongside a high stone quay and made fast. Potyr and Typhis stepped ashore.
The head quarryman was there to meet them, a large, muscular man wearing a scuffed and dusty leather kilt. His skin was as black as Namun’s and the big wooden mallet he was carrying looked as light as a toothpick in his massive hand. He walked over to the edge of the quay and looked down into the Dolphin.
“We’d better be careful loading this old girl,” he said. “She doesn’t look as if she was built for the stone trade. Nor you either,” he added. “Come on, I’ll show you what we’ve got.”
He led them to the end of the quay where there was a large pile of limestone blocks which had been roughly squared off with chisels. Potyr put the question to him, and the quarryman explained how they loaded these onto a ship.
“We fix a wooden ramp from the quayside down to the floor deck and grease it. Blocks are manhandled with levers and brute force onto one of these sleds. Team drags it to the ship. Now you see why this quay is high: it’s to make it level with the ship’s top strake. We lever the sled to the ramp – see those battens on the edge of the sled? That’s to stop the block sliding off on the slope; still, we lash a rope round and let it out slow when it’s lowered, just to be sure. Once it’s on the floor deck it’s levered into place: that’s your job to see they’re got right for the trim. Blocks stay on the sleds and we pack others on top. We have enough sleds, got a carpenter making them, but we’d like any back that aren’t smashed, when you come for the next load. Are you ready to make a start?”
Sharesh watched the first few sleds being loaded, and then dragged to the ship by the bullock team. The work was slow, heavy and dangerous, but the labourers knew their job and there were no mishaps. The cattle provided some brief amusement on one return trip when both emptied their bowels on the quay.
“Don’t clear it up,” laughed the quarryman. “Makes the sleds slide easier.”
“Stone trade, shit trade; what’s the world coming to?” growled Typhis.
“Quarry’s up that track,” said the quarryman when Sharesh asked where the stone came from. “I have to get back there in a bit.” He turned to Kanesh. “Is it all right if this lad comes for a look?” Kanesh nodded and said he would follow later. He watched them climb the winding track out of the cove. The young boy kept looking up at the huge black man and Kanesh could almost hear him asking his usual stream of questions.
The surface of the road had been flattened by the passage of countless bullock carts loaded with stone. The climb was steeper near the top and the track ran very close to an almost sheer drop into the river valley below.
“Lost one down there last year,” said the quarryman. “Beast slipped – they were too near the edge – and over she went. Both beasts killed. They were yoked to the cart. Lost the cart as well: smashed to bits. Stone’s still down there, look. Anyway, we ate well for a few days; beasts roasted up real tasty. Road levels out just round the next corner, then you can see the quarry.”
“Are you from the same land as Namun?” asked Sharesh.
“You haven’t seen many who look like us, have you?” said the man. “No; he’s from the mountains, he told me, Puwenet. Maybe there’s good stone there. My land is Deshret, sand and rock, beyond where the Great River Iteru turns. My land is Kerma where
the river runs fast and shallow. We work the stone there. We know its ways; when it’ll yield and when it won’t; where you have to light the fires on it and where it’s weak and where it’s strong.”
“Then why are you here?”
The big man eyed him. “Why do you want to know?”
“Well, Namun had to leave his village after the raiders burned it and now he’s here, working on the ship, and you come from somewhere near the Black Land, and you’re here as well.”
“All right, I’ll tell you. They were bad times. Still are, they say. Woke up one morning and the quarry was swarming with Hikshasus riders. Nobody had ever seen them as far upriver as that before. It was ‘come with us or stay here without your hands’. Not much of a choice, eh? I had no family. I went with them. Their king wanted to be like the great old kings of the Black Land. That meant big buildings, and big buildings mean stone: lots of it. I worked for years in the Deshret quarries: the limestone and the hard black stone that comes in slabs. And I know the red stones of Swenet. Then the fighting and raiding started again. All the work stopped. They put us in the army. I’m too big for cavalry. Axe man, they said, that’s you. That means the front line. Target for the first arrows. Only two of us were left after one do. We found a reed boat and shoved off down river. You don’t want to know about that. I ended up in Hatoret. No work for a quarryman in that place: it’s all mud bricks. Keftiu ships come up the river there. I got a job unloading cargo. An oarsman told me there was work in the quarries on Keftiu. I was taken on as crew next sailing, and here I am.”
“What is it like, the Black Land? Does everyone want to leave it?”
“Take me too long to tell you. Maybe you’ll go there yourself one day. It’s not like anywhere else, I’ll tell you that. Here’s the quarry.”
A deep hollow had been hacked into the face of a natural cliff of pale yellow rock. At the top was a platform where the grass and scrub had been cleared away to give a working surface. At the base, to one side, was the opening of a tunnel. The stone formed layers that slanted down, away from the sea and slightly towards the cliff face. There was a continuous noise of hammering; deep thumping sounds as men at the top of the quarry face banged wooden stakes into the rock surface with heavy betels, the hard slap of stone hammers spalling the edges from fallen slabs, and the metallic note of bronze chisels shaping the stone. The air was full of dust.
“Like the music?” said the quarryman. “We make gongs out of stone in my land, Kerma. The sound travels across the fields and rivers farther than you can see. Green fields, full of cattle.” There was a far-away look in his eyes before he shrugged away his memories and looked down at Sharesh.
“This isn’t bad stone; it’s easy to get out and work, and it lasts. There’s cracks that go down into the layers and that’s where the men up there are banging in the wedges. You put others in between the layers, to lift up a bit. Soak them, let them swell, and the stone starts to shift. Get the levers in deep enough and heave and your slab slides down its own slope and drops on the quarry bottom.”
“What’s in the cave, down there?”
“Tunnel, not a cave. Best stone comes out of that bottom layer. It’s for door frames and windows. Stone carvers want it up at the Palace. We’ve gone about as far in as we can. Can’t risk a fall. Going to have to drive another tunnel in further along. Here, the cart’s come back up again. I’ll have to see to it. You go and watch the dressers. Some have been doing this work longer than they can remember; used to be pirates, one or two of them, until they got captured. They’re safe enough now, don’t be scared.”
Each stone dresser squatted beside a roughly squared-off block driving a broad-bladed copper chisel along the faces of the stone with a wooden maul. Now and again one would check an edge with a wooden square. When a chisel was blunted the dresser threw it aside and took another from a pile beside him. The blunt chisel was snatched up by a boy who set to work on it with hammer and whetstone to give it a new edge. Everyone seemed to drink a lot of water and spit a great deal. Sharesh wondered how long it took to finish a block.
“Slow work,” said Kanesh who had arrived unheard because of the din in the quarry. “Now you’ve seen how it’s done and breathed in enough quarry dust you can thank the quarry master for his guidance and then we must return to the ship. But before we go, look up there, in the far distance.” Sharesh saw a patchwork of green and brown slopes give way to grey screes smudged white; and then higher, snow-covered ridges like ramparts fronting wide flat snowfields, and farther and higher still, one glistening peak after another stepping up to a final summit that seemed to pierce the blue sky. Sharesh, dazzled, shut his eyes but the shape of the summit was etched black against a film of red, like blood, behind his closed eyelids.
“That’s her mountain,” said the quarryman. “Id-e-ya, Ata-nia. Must be cold for her up there.” He grinned at them. Sharesh noticed for the first time that he wore a little carving of a god holding a staff on a string round his neck. He was stroking it between his finger and thumb as he spoke. “Perhaps her cave is shelter enough.”
“Go safely in your work, quarry master,” said Kanesh.
Namun had been set to making supper for the ship’s crew. He sat on the quay in front of a fire of driftwood, stirring a cauldron full of stew made from fish, onions and beans. Sharesh squatted beside him, poking a stick into the embers. The dusk thickened round them. Both were lost in their own thoughts. It was the time when his mother sat with him while he ate the roast kid he loved so much, thought Sharesh; and what was Tika up to; likely forgotten him by now; that girl, where was she and what was she doing?
Namun remembered the ewe’s milk he used to drink, and the herbs his mother had taught him where to gather when the moon was right; this stew would be tastier with a few of them; he’d rather be on the sea than the Great River; the sea was cleaner, no drowned dogs and burnt logs floating in it.
“He worked for years in the Black Land, the quarryman,” said Sharesh.
“I know. We’re both a long way from home.”
“Where’s that stew?” came a yell from the ship.
“Come on,” said Namun. “Shove that bar under the handle. I’ll take this end, you hold that. The bowls are in the hold somewhere. We’ll build up the fire afterwards and sleep here on the quay. They’ve grabbed all the places worth having on the ship.”
It was a fine morning after early haze and Potyr had a clear enough sight of the headland on the far side of the town harbour to set a course directly across the wide bay. He could tell from the way the seabirds were flying that not far out they would pick up enough breeze to be able to set the sail and make a much faster return time, even with such a load on board. The oarsmen were in a good mood, having less effort to make with the sail set, and the prospect of a night in port, at least for some of them. The stroke called by Typhis was low and the crew began to sing at their work. Seamen’s songs were always the same: girls left behind, shipmates drowned, ports they knew, storms at sea, lots about drink and thoughts of homes never to be seen again. Typhis let them sing: a good mood meant a good speed. A pair of dolphins criss-crossed the bow. They are just like birds, thought Sharesh as he watched them plunging and twisting in the dark blue swell; only it’s water they fly in. The dolphins had sheered off and left them long before they rounded the headland sheltering the Palace harbour. Sharesh was now expert at casting the ship’s line ashore and they tied up just as the sun reached its highest point in the sky. The Captain of Archers was waiting on the jetty with a request that Kanesh accompany him to the deputy commander’s quarters at the Palace.
“First,” said Sekara, “we have news that another ship has been taken, a timber carrier out of Alasiya with a full load of cedar logs and a hundred ingots of copper. She called at Telchina to take on… other… cargo, and after that should have followed the islands passage on to Keftiu. Where was she taken? Off Karakya. Yes, Karakya: why so far off course? Blown there, skipper drunk, some secret trading
with the Karakyans? They’re rogues enough, we know.”
“How came the news?”
“Koreta. The man who runs a trading post on Karakya is one of his agents. This man has the local fishermen tell him anything interesting they find or see. He gives them a little extra on the price of their fish. One came in and asked for a lot more for his find: a big ship run aground and half burned. There were ten dead bodies on board, all with arrow wounds, though she carried a crew of thirty. Charred logs of cedar had washed ashore and copper ingots were in the hold. The agent thought it important enough to report to Koreta in person. Koreta sent him back later to see if he could gather more information. A Kallista ship brought in Koreta’s despatch yesterday. This is serious. You know it’s not long since we had a ship on patrol in the islands to make a show and warn off pirates.”
“Crewmen shot but no arrows found means bronze arrowheads, too valuable to leave behind. The rest of the crew were killed by sword or javelin and thrown overboard. Pirates might kill the crew but would not burn a ship and its cargo. They can sell one and sail the other. We have been sent a message.”
