by David Bell
“Not this man,” said Luzar, pulling back the last by his hair. He held up a length of cord from which hung a pebble of glittering tinstone. “Talisman of my brother,” he said. “This man stays here, with my brother.”
From the side of the ship they watched Luzar tie the pirate’s hands behind his back and then drag him out into the water to where it was knee-deep, and push him down. He tied a heavy boulder to each of the man’s ankles and left him sitting there. No one thought of intervening, not even Kanesh. From the look in Luzar’s strange eyes they judged it would be unwise.
The anchor stones were raised, larboard oars dipped and the Davina’s bow turned in the direction of the river mouth.
“Hard as you can,” said Potyr to Typhis. “Get us out to sea before the current turns.” The helmsman bellowed out the order and the crew heaved as one, glad to leave the place.
In the bay, smoke from the burning houses rose like a dark tower into the clear blue sky of morning. Luzar watched the shore slip away into the distance. Perhaps the wave surge would reach the pirate before the seabirds with their hard, curved beaks found him. No matter: his brother would now find rest when his bones were no longer alone on the bed of the Kharron river.
STANDING STONES
In the days and nights that followed, Luzar was almost always on the bow as lookout or on the stern with Potyr and Typhis, pointing out the reefs and shoals, looking for sudden changes in current and turning of the flow of the sea, and finding safe anchorage. When he does not know a coast or a crossing, even the captain gives way to the pilot and Luzar seemed to know this coast as if it were his own, so Potyr let him to guide the ship.
For what remained of the day on which she left the Kharron river astern, the ship sailed along a coast of sand dunes, with the sun on her larboard beam. In the evening she entered a bay with three islands dead ahead, standing out from low cliffs of white rock. Guided by Luzar, Typhis steered through the narrow passage between island and cliffs, turned to larboard and brought the ship to anchorage in shallow water offshore from reed-covered marshes. It was a sheltered haven but that was not the only reason for choosing it, as Luzar soon explained.
“Many birds here, and seashells; good to eat.”
Wading birds that probed the mud with bills that were thin and curved upwards, or flattened into spoons at the tip, were left alone, as were the storks that flapped to their untidy nests in the low trees. Ducks were the favoured prey and soon the nets were full of them. Leptos and Leptos refused to gather the black sea shells, saying they were not fish, so Namun took the baskets and soon had them filled and the shells cleaned and ready to plunge into the cauldron once the water began to boil.
“Don’t gulp them down like that,” said Kerma. “Chew them, especially that soft red part, then you’ll get the taste and if there’s a pearl inside your teeth will feel it.”
“They have pearls inside?” asked Namun, starting to nibble very delicately at the shell’s meat. “Right enough,” said Myrtias. “Now think what a big shiny pearl would get you if you offered it to a sweet young thing in one of the villages round here.”
Namun grabbed another handful of the half-open shells and began to search inside them very carefully. “I haven’t seen any villages yet,” he mumbled. “Luzar, does anybody live here?”
“Not here. People come hunt birds and gather shells. Tomorrow after we sail, you will see where people live.”
But that day they did not see where the people lived, although they did see where they lay when they died. A thick mist hid the marshy shores of the bay but left the higher ground clear to view. Standing on the bow Luzar pointed inland to a green-topped hill that rose above the reed beds. On the level summit were smaller green mounds, the shape of large beehives, each with a dark patch in the side which the keen eyes of Sharesh could make out was a wooden door in some and a great flat stone in others, and every one facing towards the rising sun.
Luzar saw them lying inside the stone houses under the grass-covered mounds of earth, knees drawn up, women on their right side, men on their left. He saw the bowls once filled with grain and nuts and the beakers with the honey drink. He saw the women’s beads round their necks and their bracelets on their wrists and their needles and pins set near their hands, ready to use. He saw the stone axes and the arrows with their barbed and tanged flint points in bundles near the bows, arranged where the men could reach them should the need arise. Boars’ tusks, the teeth of wolves and the clawed feet of eagles lay there, trophies of the hunters. And in one, the tiny body of a child lay in the arms of its young mother who had died soon after it was stillborn. These were the Old People. No one disturbed them now. When he was a boy he sometimes sat outside mounds like these on the moorland above his village and spoke, not in words through his lips, but in his mind, to those lying in the stone houses inside. His father knew he did this but did nothing to stop him. The boy was learning the ancient wisdom. It would serve him well.
“Do as he says,” said Potyr.
“He’ll have us aground,” protested Typhis, “Look at the waves. They’re breaking on sand.”
“Do as he says.”
All the previous day the Davina had sailed past a straight coastline of sand dunes and marshland and, in the evening, dropped anchor off the mouth of a small river where the jars could be replenished with fresh water. A little way along the sandy beach in the direction from which they had come stood a tall white stone, pointed towards the top and leaning inland. As the sun slid down through melting bands of red and gold sky to touch the purple horizon, its last rays turned the surface of the stone to the colour of flames. Standing before it, Luzar seemed poised to step into a furnace. Then the fire went out and twilight cooled sky, sand and stone. When he came back to the ship he sought Kanesh and Potyr on the stern.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we come to a village and find salt. Hold close to shore. Sea will carry ship across.”
There was a sandy point no more than three ship lengths away to starboard and the rocky tip of a long low island clawing towards them on the larboard beam. Luzar pointed straight ahead between the two where there was water, but so shallow everyone could see the white sand below. Potyr was beginning to understand the rise and fall of this strange ocean and had watched the waves breaking higher and higher on the beaches as the morning wore on. Sea will carry ship across. Potyr glanced at Kanesh, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
“Do as he says. Light paddle and keep your blades shallow.”
All sailors know and fear the sound of the keel scraping on sand. The Davina paused, like an animal sensing danger and hesitating to move. Not a man drew breath. Then she seemed to lift herself and moved on. The rasping noise faded away and she was across the bar and into rapidly deepening water. Someone in the middle thwarts raised a cheer and others made the gesture of gratitude towards the Lady of Oceans.
“Course now?” asked Potyr.
“Hold course,” said Luzar. “Landfall when sun is halfway down sky.”
“All right, I know. Do as he says,” sighed Typhis.
Kanesh scanned the settlement from the bow of the Davina standing two ship lengths offshore. For a trading post at the mouth of a large river, the village did not show much sign of life. There was a huddle of small houses thatched with reeds on a flat pebble bank above the beach and two larger buildings, one of which looked like a storage shed and the other part workshop and part stable, judging from the mound of donkey droppings shovelled to one side of the entrance. Ropes hitched round a few wooden posts driven into the sand lay ready for mooring boats when they returned. Dogs stood outside some of the houses, noses raised towards the sea, sniffing the interesting smells coming from a strange ship.
“No boats. Men are in the river hunting silver fish that come from sea in this season.”
“And the women are hiding from us in the huts or in the marsh.”
“Pirates came here one time. Davina is not like ships they know.”
“Go find them. You know what to say.”
Luzar dropped over the side, swam a few strokes, felt the sand under his feet, and waded the rest of the way to the beach. He could not see the silver fish crowding towards the river, but the urgency of their search for the place where they were spawned came to him through the water, making his skin quiver and his mind swarm with memories. Every year he had watched them gliding through the pools and leaping the waterfalls in the small rivers of his own land, searching for the gravel-bottomed shallows. Soon, only some days now, he would be there to watch them leap again.
The women came out of their hiding places in the marsh and followed him back to the village. They remembered him. They said the men waited in the river for the silver fish when the sea rose and carried them into the river’s mouth. They would return in their boats when the flood slackened. Times were better. Ships came now and then from the Tin Islands and unloaded their cargo here because the pirates ruled further down the coast. Trains of pack donkeys took the tin along the tracks upriver; how far they did not know, but men said it was carried over the distant mountains and down to another great river where some was loaded onto boats that passed down to another sea. Who could believe such tales?
Early in the evening the boats started to come back. The first ones stopped well away from the Davina, their crews clearly wary of the stranger.
“Get the women and children onto the beach and tell them to call their men in,” said Kanesh. The biggest boat had a sail and four places for four men to kneel and work their paddles. A fifth man sat at the stern holding a longer steering paddle. He was the first ashore and strode up the beach towards Kanesh, leaving his crew to unload the catch of fish. His brown smock tied with rope at the waist was ragged and flecked with silver fish scales, but it was made of fine wool and there was a silver chain round his neck.
“I am Maugan. This is my village. I am the merchant here.”
“And a fisherman, too, I see. I am Kanesh. This is my ship. It is seventy days since we set sail from Keftiu. You have nothing to fear from us. I have goods to trade and I have questions to ask, but first I ask your permission to anchor here and refresh our stores of water and salt.”
“Keftiu, Keftiu?” muttered Maugan, screwing up his eyes and shaking his head as if in an effort to remember a long forgotten name. “Keftiu? Impossible. A ship cannot sail to here from Keftiu. Keftiu is in another sea: if there is such a place. I have met no one who has seen it.”
“Now, my friend, you have. I am here and I have come from Keftiu.”
Maugan was still suspicious. “You speak in our tongue but not as we do and yet I understand you.”
“I have travelled much,” said Kanesh dismissively. “Listen to me. I am accustomed to being believed but I am patient. There is a man in my crew who will convince you that what I say is the truth. I will have him brought to you.” He turned to tell Sharesh to bring Luzar. Sharesh said something to him quietly so that Maugan could not hear. Kanesh thought for a moment, then nodded.
Sharesh took Koreta’s sealstone from its alabaster box, placed it on the flat of his hand and held it for Maugan to see. Maugan held it up to the light and turned the blood-red stone over, carefully examining both sides. He raised his head and looked from Kanesh to Sharesh and back again at Kanesh. Respect and the beginnings of belief were his eyes.
“Eye of fire,” he said slowly. “I have seen it only once before. I see on it a fine house, a ship under sail and the mark of a name I have not heard since I was a boy on my first journey with the pack train across the mountains to where the great river flows. A name with echoes of a great sea battle.” He looked sharply at Kanesh. “I see you know of what I speak. I believe what you say. I do not need to see the man in your crew. You are welcome here.”
Sweet dried figs, wine, though not the Halaba, thyme-flavoured honey in painted pots and cloth were exchanged for salt, small bars of silver, cut and polished jewel stones of clear blue, yellow and green and baskets of eggs and a sheep that would be taken on board when the ship left. The boats had returned with a good catch of the silver fish which Leptos and Leptos examined with great interest before the women started preparing some for the feast after sunset that Maugan had ordered for the visitors.
“Don’t eat that black bread,” said Namun to Sharesh. “I tried a bit and it’s sour. They make it from grass that looks a bit like barley. Typhis says he was given it once by a woman in a port in Anadolus and he had very frightening dreams and was hot and sick all next day. Eat the barley cakes instead.”
“I thank you for the flask of oil,” said Maugon to Potyr. “We make no oil here. The olive tree will grow but not fruit. But we have this: fat that the women make by shaking the ewe’s milk in a pot. They will bake the fish with it and herbs they gather in the marshes. You will not be disappointed with our simple food.”
It was a fish that any king would welcome on his table and allow only his most honoured or feared guests to share. The sweet pink meat fell from the bones in flakes that glistened with a mixture of its own oil and the creamy yellow fat the women had smeared on, before it was sprinkled with herbs and placed on the hot coals in covered pans.
“It is a strong and greedy fish,” said Maugon. “He goes no one knows where into the deeps of the ocean and the swimming gives him firm sweet muscle. His flesh is pink because he drinks the blood of his prey. Some we salt and some we smoke and cut thin to last because it is a fish that comes here only once in the year.”
“He is a noble fish with great wisdom.”
Maugon started a little at Luzar’s words and peered towards him through the smoke rising from the fire. He leaned towards Kanesh and spoke softly:
“That is the man you said would convince me? He was here once on a ship from the Tin Islands. We traded salt and barley for some of their tin that we later sent upriver. He did not stay long but many of the women, old as well as young, wept when his ship sailed. It never returned. The captain had said he would call in with oil and grain from another land where he sailed but that was the last we saw of them. Now he has returned, but only he. What became of the others and their ship?
Kanesh told him Luzar’s story. When he had finished, Maugon said, “How will he convince me that there is a land and city of Keftiu? I am a merchant and merchants are sceptical men.”
“Listen to him as your women have done. Like them you will believe every word he says. Now, if you would be so kind, tell me and the captain here of the trade in tin, how much you receive, where you despatch it, whether it comes as metal or as stone and, of course, the price you pay and the price you receive. Look at me as you speak; the noise of everyone chattering may blur your speech and, as you said, I speak the tongue but not in the same way as you do. Yes, like that; do not mind the music. The boy plays sweetly and I see that some of your girls wish to dance to his pipes.”
The dark-eyed girls danced sensuously to his songs of the sea and of a silver fish that swam away for a great distance, but came back to this river to find his own mate.
Later he lay on the sand with a blanket drawn up to his chin because the sky was clear and the air cool. He could hear low voices murmuring in some of the huts. A child cried out and was hushed. Across the water from the ship came the low mutter of the crewmen who always played dice. He looked for the Sailors’ Star and the Charioteer. There they were. He felt comforted and settled down to sleep. He half woke when Namun slipped under the blanket next to him. He put out his hand to push him away and he touched soft flesh that was not Namun’s. The dark-eyed dancer put her arms round him and drew him close.
Everyone, men, women and children, stood on the beach or outside their huts to see the Davina set sail at first light. Maugon had given Potyr and Typhis a course by pointing out to sea and saying they would have the coast in sight to starboard until the sun had started his descent, then it would curve away into a wide bay. By that time, however, they should be able to make out small islands dead ahead and a bigger one distant on
the port bow. They should keep a keen lookout for rocks as they closed on the first small island and look for a bay on its coastal side, where they would find safe anchorage.
When she cleared the headland that sheltered the settlement, the Davina met a fresh breeze blowing on the larboard beam that at first unsettled the oarsmen but, when the sail was trimmed and began to swell, she picked up speed and was soon thrusting along fast enough for the crew to settle to long steady sweeps of the oars. The wide river mouth to starboard slipped quickly astern.
“I saw no sign of tin in the warehouse,” said Potyr.
“The pirates have seen to that. But for a little trade in silver and the stones, small items, the place has become hardly more than a watering point with some salt to sell. That fellow Maugon puts on a brave front, but I got out of him that such tin as comes this way now goes straight to a trading post further upriver. After that there are too many smiths waiting for it for any ever to make its way to Keftiu.”
“Neither place will be too pleased when the Davina passes by with its hold full of ingots and no need for their services beyond a few jars of water,” said the Captain of Archers.
“Trade is most profitable when the goods pass through the fewest hands,” said Kanesh.
“Now that,” said Potyr, “is a remark worthy of the owner.”
In the failing light the lookouts kept warning of white water ahead and to larboard, until Potyr had no choice but to order Typhis to veer off the course towards the islands and seek safer water in the gulf. The waves rose and grew white tops as the wind off the ocean gathered strength and set the ship rolling and pitching as she fought to make way. Potyr began to fear they would be driven onto a lee shore and had Luzar called to the stern deck. He caught his last sight of the moon and the Sailors’ Star high on the starboard bow before churning clouds covered all. He strained to raise his voice above the wind’s howl and shouted to where he thought Luzar was standing:
