by Peter Tonkin
Half a dozen sufficed to guarantee three that all looked to be the same thickness and length. He took the longest shaft and started fishing for sailcloth. There were plenty of sheets and rags of it which he pulled aboard. He did have to cut this free and trim it roughly to the size he needed, but even so, by the time the sun was at its highest, he had tied three twelve-foot lengths of wood together at one end, spread them at their base into a solid tripod and created a dripping pyramid of sailcloth which gave him a cool, damp shadow and protection from the noonday sun, and in which he sat, like Achilleus, brooding in his tent at Troy.
ii
As soon as the afternoon began to lose that midday fierceness, he started to hunt. He had spent time in his tent making lengths of fishing-line by unravelling rigging ropes. His caligae had hob-nails in their soles and he eased one of these out with his dagger, pleased to see that it was sufficiently curved to use as a hook. The footwear not only had laces, it had fairly hefty buckles and so by early afternoon he had made a rough handline that looked long enough and strong enough to be used for fishing.
Artemidorus had to use a rag of sailcloth as his first lure but it was effective enough to fool a young tuna. And that supplied not only blessedly moist meat but also the bait for his next attempt. Filling his belly relieved the pangs of hunger but oddly seemed to intensify his thirst – he would have to be careful what he ate, he thought; perhaps whether he ate at all. He could go weeks without food and had done so in the past. But he could only go days without water. It was time to try another ploy that old sailors said would help him survive.
By late afternoon, just as the gulls were coming back for their evening meal, he had the remains of two more tunas close at hand. He carefully inserted the makeshift hook into the smaller of these and left it out on the edge of the raft while he hid in the tent as far from the side as possible. The only thing that gave the trap away was the length of fishing line lying across the wooden surface. The tell-tale did not alarm the gulls however. A satisfyingly large one settled onto the raft beside the fish. Looked around suspiciously – fearing its companions more than anything else – then it snatched the fish and gulped it down. Artemidorus jerked the line. The screaming bird came pecking, scratching and flapping towards him, its throat already working to disgorge the fish. But too late: Artemidorus caught it by one wing and slammed it down against the deck. After that it was too stunned to fight him as he broke its neck, cut its throat, retrieved his bait and began to drink its blood.
The liquid was hot, foully iron-tasting and so disgusting that he had to choke it down, retching after every mouthful. But he believed it was mostly comprised of water and, combined with the juices he had sucked from the tunas’ flesh, it should go some way towards calming his thirst. Or so he thought until he threw the whole lot up.
With the fierceness of the day easing down towards a cool evening, Artemidorus turned his attention back to the corpse of the soldier. As he was not a man to sit and await events, he began his campaign to recover the helmet and the sword with the creation of other aids to his survival. He opened a barb at the end of his longest shaft of wood, making it a moderately effective boat hook. He then used it to catch other lengths of wood, becoming more confident working around the edges of his raft. Some of these bits of flotsam had metal casings and hinges – mostly twisted far out of shape as the masts and spars fell. The best of these he turned into a gaff hook with which he planned to bring his daily catch of fish aboard when his empty belly became too much of a distraction. And, finally, still vividly aware of the noises he had heard last night from just beneath the surface, he found a long, strong spar with a sharp-pointed metal plate secured to one end that he calculated would make an effective iron-headed spear.
Gulls came and went, doing their best to feed on the dead soldier but their efforts were largely thwarted by that helmet, the long metal mail coat and the fact that the dead man wore leather leggings which met his boots at the ankle. There were richer pickings more easily available elsewhere.
Sunset was made swifter by the arrival of rainclouds which filled the earliest part of the night with a steady downpour. Artemidorus put his dry clothes in the tent then lay out on the raft spread-eagled on his back with his mouth wide, allowing the raindrops to do what the gull’s blood had failed to do. He cupped his hands round his gaping lips, trying to channel the cool liquid straight down his throat. After a while he bestirred himself by wringing out the lengths of sailcloth he had not used for anything else so far until they were as free of brine as he could make them then he spread them out in the hope that they would soak up sufficient fresh water to satisfy his thirst in the morning. Then he lay back down, mouth agape, feeling the cool downpour seeming to soak into his naked skin. Finally, as the rain eased and absolute darkness closed down on him, he curled up in his makeshift tent and fell into a restless slumber. His last thought was that the rain had given him another day. He still had four days to go before he died of thirst.
*
Dawn broke early, calm and clear on the morning of the second day. Artemidorus’ main objective for the day was to retrieve the helmet and the sword which still lay tantalisingly just beyond his reach. He began by sucking brackish but potable water from the rags of sailcloth rain-soaked the night before. The result did very little to allay the pangs of thirst but was better than nothing, he thought. As he worked on a plan to get at the helmet and sword, he went after fresh fish for his breakfast, still by no means convinced that filling his belly would worsen his thirst. Besides, if he caught anything big, he could examine its guts in the hope of finding that bladder which was supposed to contain fresh water. He pushed the sharp-pointed nail he was using as a hook into the head of the tuna that had trapped the gull and let it fall over the side. Then he crouched as near to the edge as possible, allowing the line to pay out slowly through the crook of his right index finger.
As he felt the line slide deeper and deeper, he looked around. The wreckage from Cleopatra’s fleet was breaking up and spreading out, even though the sea was calm and the wind light. There must be powerful currents at work beneath the waves, he thought. Then his exhausted mind just began to drift.
He was jerked out of his reverie by a tug on the handline. Somewhere far below, a fish was mouthing the bait. He struck at once, pulling the line taut and hopefully driving the makeshift hook into the fish’s mouth. There was a moment of stasis then the hooked fish ran. He pulled back, trying to calculate the size of whatever was on his line. It seemed to be large so he began to test the strength of his line carefully before pulling his catch relentlessly, hand over hand toward the surface. As he worked, he frowned with irritation – he had failed to think this through properly. His newly fashioned gaff hook lay out of reach. All he had nearby was his iron-headed spear which would be no use at all if he needed to haul a fish of any size out of the water. Unwilling to ease the pressure on his line, he half rose, planning to reach for the gaff with his foot and pull it close enough to use when the time came. But the time came more swiftly than he anticipated – and in a completely unexpected manner.
iii
Just at the moment he was most dangerously off-balance, he saw the side of his catch flash in the upper water, a cloud of blood trailing behind it. Artemidorus just had time to register what he had caught, torn as he was by desire to reach beyond the spear and catch the gaff hook with the side of his foot, when the shark took it.
The shark appeared from beneath the raft, moving out of its square shadow with predatory focus. It looked to Artemidorus to be about the same length as the raft’s width, and its appearance was stunningly shocking to the naked, almost defenceless, man. Turning on its side, it closed its snaggle-toothed jaws over the wounded bass, one pectoral fin breaking the surface and splashing Artemidorus with chilly water. The cold drops jerked him out of his stasis. As the shark’s jaws shut, the fisherman leaned back, trusting the strength of his line. His left hand closed to a fist around the strand of rigging while his
right reached automatically for his spear. The simple power of the great fish flowed up the puny handline and came near to jerking Artemidorus overboard but he was leaning back as he reached for his spear and so he stayed on the raft. Almost miraculously, however, he turned the shark’s head. The massive creature doubled back, rolling over as it did so, seeming to observe this mere mortal with god-like detachment. Its eye was a golden sphere with a black centre, bedded beneath a frowning brow in the gold-flecked skin of its head. With no further thought, Artemidorus brought his spear down as swiftly and forcefully as he could. The iron head went straight through the eye and deep into the creature’s skull.
The shark exploded into a frenzy of lashing, twisting motions. Artemidorus dropped his line and grabbed the shaft of his spear with both hands, pushing the point deeper and deeper still. Such was the power of the shark’s reaction, that the centurion feared he would be torn off the raft and into the water after all. Desperately, he spread his knees for a better grip and bedded the upper length of the spear in the junction between his shoulder and his neck as he prayed to Achilleus for the strength to stay aboard his heaving refuge. The hero of Troy stood by him and instead of the spear-man being torn off his refuge, the raft itself began to move.
Artemidorus’ attention was so fiercely focused on the shark that he was scarcely aware of anything else. The spear twisted in his fists, its smooth surface becoming slick with his sweat and with the brine splashed up by the convulsing monster. At last, fearful that he was going to lose his grip on the weapon, he reared back and tore it upwards. The spear came free, leaving a bloody crater in the shark’s head. The creature turned away and dived for the depths, trailing clouds of blood and taking the big fisherman’s hand-line with it.
Artemidorus looked around, panting, dazed, as though awakening from the deepest sleep. The broad, bright day seemed shockingly new; everything around him appeared to have subtly changed its position. It took some moments for him to realise that this impression was true, not a fantasy arising from post-battle nerves. And the thing that had shifted its relative position most obviously was the dead legionary’s corpse. Still in a daze, almost a dream, Artemidorus reached out with the bloody spear, snagged its iron point in the dead man’s belt and pulled.
*
The jumble of spars and rigging cradling the corpse moved surprisingly easily. It was a matter of moments before the dead soldier was within the reach of the living one. Artemidorus put the spear down and leaned forward. In his eagerness he leaned too far and the raft tipped, threatening to pitch him into the water. Artemidorus sat back, examining the situation as though it were one of Pythagoras’ problems.
Picking up the boat-hook, he used it to position the corpse so that he could secure a line through the belt. Frustratingly, the sword he coveted seemed to be trapped beneath the soldier’s far hip, still beyond his reach. But once he looped the rope through the belt things proceeded more satisfactorily. Pulling on the line not only secured the two sections of flotsam together, it also half-rolled the body onto the raft. But once again, the fragility of Artemidorus’ refuge became clear. As the corpse began to roll aboard, the edge began to dip beneath the surface. A naked centurion was one thing in terms of weight – a well-dressed, fully armed soldier wearing a three-quarter length coat of mail was something else again. But at least the corpse’s movement released the handle of his sword so that it stood clear of the body. Artemidorus stared at it, frowning. It didn’t look right. It appeared to be unlike the hilt of any sword he had ever seen. And then he realised the truth. The dead soldier wasn’t wearing a sword at all. It was an axe.
Whispering a prayer of thanks to Achilleus for this unexpectedly generous gesture, Artemidorus set about making the best possible use of it. He tied the ends of the rope that reached through the soldier’s belt together and slipped the resulting loop over his head, thus freeing both his hands while holding his objective secure. He leaned forward carefully, fearing that by doing so he would slacken the rope’s tension and lose his objective. But the dead soldier stayed close by, slumped on his side now, with his back towards the reaching centurion. At long last Artemidorus’ right fist closed over the haft of the axe and with a series of massive heaves he managed to pull it free – at some cost to the belt in which it had been carried. The motion of his action threw his weight back against the rope once more, doing further damage to the belt as the axe came out and swung high above his head.
As Artemidorus looked up at the massive iron blade of the weapon he had just recovered, the dead man rolled onto his back. The exultant centurion looked down again. The corpse’s movement had revealed its face. Lying under the water’s surface for two nights and days now, it had been completely eaten away. Beneath a line reflecting where the surface had been, the corpse’s skull was stripped to the bone, forehead, eyes, cheeks, nose, tongue and chin all completely gone. Framing the white-scrubbed skull, almost as though it was some kind of mask, the scalp, ears, dark-skinned throat and neck were all untouched.
Artemidorus was frozen, his attention torn between the strange sight and his lethal new acquisition, when the one-eyed shark returned.
iv
The wounded creature thrust the great gold-flecked spade of its head into the space between the raft and the jumble of wreckage. Its gaping maw, lined with an ill-contained assortment of finger-long snaggle teeth gaped mere feet away from Artemidorus. The shipwrecked soldier reared back until the rope linking him to the faceless corpse brought him up short, cutting into the skin of his bare back like a vinestock scourge. His immediate reaction to the pain threw him forward again, as the massive creature pushed its shoulders into the widening space, the triangle of its dorsal fin reaching half as high as the kneeling man. The power of the creature’s movement pushed the two pieces of flotsam still further apart. Artemidorus began to lose his balance, toppling forward, as helpless as he had been on Alexandros’ lead-lined deck. Without further thought, Artemidorus brought the axe down, aiming to cut himself free rather than attacking the shark once more. But, before he could chop through the loop of rope which threatened to pull him overboard, the belt gave way and he fell back, dragging that too aboard.
But the instant he did so, the situation changed once more. The wounded shark’s head jerked down, even as its torso was pushed up. Artemidorus realised two things both at the same instant. That whatever was happening would rob him of the helmet unless he acted immediately – whatever the risk. But he suddenly realised that what was happening was that the hunter had become the hunted - the one-eyed shark was being torn apart from underneath by its fellows.
The quick-thinking centurion threw himself forward once more, reaching with one hand for the corpse as it was pushed away. He missed it but managed to catch the long horse-hairs that made up the crest of that strange, pointed helmet. Reaching out across the heaving water, his chest for an instant seeming to rest on the icy roughness of the shark’s back, Artemidorus brought the axe down as hard as he could, with his other hand, unerringly across the corpse’s neck. Once. Twice, and the head came free. The rest of the body rolled sedately off the cradle of rubbish that had supported it so far and vanished into a cloud of brown blood as it too began to plumb the depths – followed downwards by the sharks.
Right at the very edge of losing his balance and falling into the water amongst the feasting sharks, Artemidorus rolled sideways and back. He strained his shoulder, swinging the axe towards his right thigh, burying the blade in the wood there and pulling on the haft just as he had pulled on the dagger’s grip while he climbed aboard all those uncounted hours ago. And, like the trusty dagger, the axe stood by him. Relieved of his weight and that of the soldier, the edge of the makeshift raft surged upwards and so Artemidorus was able to roll to safety, freeing the axe again. To lie, spread-eagled on his back, gasping for breath, scarcely daring to believe he was still alive, with the axe in one hand and its erstwhile owner’s head in the other.
Alive he might be, but that was j
ust about all. Sometime during his battle his shelter had collapsed. Salt water had washed across the surface of the raft making his carefully conserved sail-cloths unusable for storing fresh water for the time-being at least. The shark had taken his handline and hook – so he would have to make another if he wanted to continue fishing. He was covered in sweat – from the heat of the sun as well as the heat of battle. Short of licking it off his arms, it was water that was all lost to him. His sand-dry throat established how ill he could afford to lose water.
To take his mind off his increasingly dangerous and painful situation, he started work on the helmet as soon as he was settled and in control once more. But only after he had shrugged the rope off his shoulder and coiled it on the deck, with the unexpected bonus of the soldier’s belt beside it. And after he had re-erected the tent and created some shade. He was a man well used to death in all its forms – many inflicted by himself – but he found the eyeless stare of the faceless soldier strangely disturbing. As was his sardonic grin. Artemidorus met him stare for stare and sneer for sneer as he untied the lace holding the helmet in place then picked it up by its horsehair crest and shook it until the soldier’s head fell out. Venturing out into the bright noon, he took the head by the long braid of hair still attached to the back of its scalp and threw it as far into the sea as he could. Then he returned to the shade and the main objective of all this dangerous activity.
*
The helmet was made of a thick metal that looked like bronze to the centurion’s expert eye. And it was undamaged: whatever had killed the soldier, it had not involved a serious blow to the head. The headgear was in three main pieces – a bowl-shaped headpiece which came to a point where the crest was attached and two cheek-protectors that ended in the leather laces he had just undone. The headpiece was partially lined with thick leather, the forward edge of which had been nibbled by the fish which had eaten the dead flesh of the soldier’s forehead.
