Black Ships (6 page)

He inclined his head. “Great Lady,” he said.

“Make haste,” I said. “Idenes will not tarry long in the north, and if you wish to be off without a fight you must hurry.” I turned away, then looked back over my shoulder. “You must be at sea before this storm breaks.”

In the gathering wind I crossed the square to the steps of the temple. Cythera was waiting for me. “I know,” she said. “You are going with them. I have seen it in you all day.”

“I am,” I said.

“You carry Her within you, like an unborn child, to places I cannot see,” she said. “I do not understand why, but perhaps I understand better than you do.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “I can see this journey’s beginning, but I cannot see the journey’s end.”

Cythera raised her hands above my head. “May the blessings of the Lady of the Sea, Silver Aphrodite of the Fishes, rest upon you and follow after you all of your days.”

I bent my head beneath the weight of her blessing, surprised to find tears starting in my still-mortal eyes. “Look after Aren,” I said.

“I will,” she said. “He’s a brave boy, and while he doesn’t understand what happened here today, in time he will, when he is grown to the manhood you have given him.”

I hugged her and walked away, down to the last ships beached in their place. I did not look back toward the Shrine, or toward Dolcis. She would serve Cythera, or wait until another should be called to the Shrine, though I doubted that would happen.

My Lady did not mean to return.

The captain was talking to the young raider with the long black hair. “I am ready,” I said. I felt suddenly light-headed, as though the freshening wind was lifting me with it. I had not eaten or drunk all day, except for the water at the turning of the road that morning.

“We will run
Dolphin
out,” said the captain. “And then
Seven Sisters
last.”

I turned. Pylos was smoking sullenly under the spreading cloud. The world spun suddenly, Her power draining out of me. I felt myself falling.

“Catch her, Xandros!” I heard the captain say, and then I knew no more.

THE SEA PEOPLE

I
dreamed that I slept at my mother’s breast beside the river. I could feel the gentle rocking of her breath, hear the sounds of the water and voices speaking in our language.

I woke.

The rocking was real, and the sound of the water. I lay on a pallet in the front of the ship, my head forward to the point of the room, which widened to perhaps my height a little beyond my feet. The ceiling was very low. I could just sit upright without bumping my head. There were no windows, but some faint light leaked in through the chinks in the boards overhead.

I could hear the slapping of the water against the prow, the voices of people on deck. I did not hear a rower’s chant. Perhaps we were under sail, then.

There was a water skin beside the pallet. I drank greedily. It had been dawn when I last drank. Now it was...when?

I splashed my face and hands as well, wiping off the residue of the paint with the inside of my mantle. Then I crawled out and went on deck.

I had not lain there long. The mainland lay behind us on the horizon, wreathed in storm clouds that stretched out over the sea. It was those winds that carried us, filling the white sail painted with a red dolphin. The oars were shipped, their ports blocked with wooden pieces fitted closely so that the seawater that splashed up her sides would not come in.
Dolphin
rode before the storm, leaping the waves like her namesake. White foam flew from her bow and the sail strained full with wind.

Some thirty men were on her deck, fore and in the pit where the rowers sat, along with ten or so of the women and children. On the afterdeck, broader and longer than the foredeck, the captain was at the tiller. He was the black-haired raider. The pious one, I thought, who was first to drop his sword.

When I came out of the shelter of the prow the wind hit me, lifting mantle and robes like wings, as though it wanted to hurl me into the sky. I made my way along the deck, to where the captain stood at his work.

“Are you well, Great Lady?” he asked.

I climbed the four rope steps to the afterdeck. The movement of the ship was wonderful, faster than a chariot. “I am well,” I said. “And you don’t need to always address me as Great Lady. I am Pythia. When it is only me.”

He nodded, but did not speak as he attended to a minute correction of course, changing the tiller just a bit as the wind shifted a little.

I looked out over the sea. Eight other ships bounded along, spray flying in the gathering night. Already Pylos was indistinct behind us. Nearest to us,
Hunter
leaped, barely a rope’s length away, her white sail painted with the archer, his bow drawn and his arrow ready, just as he hunts the skies. Beyond her I could see
Swift,
her sail painted with the sharp-winged bird she was named for. Behind us, last from the coast, was
Seven Sisters,
the bright Pleiades picked out on her sail. I could not see the people on her deck at this distance.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He took one hand from the tiller and pointed ahead. “There,” he said. “That smudge on the horizon is a small island.”

“I thought those islands off the coast had no water,” I said. “That is why the men of Pylos do not stop there.”

“They don’t,” he said. “But that’s where we’ve left the rest of our people.”

“The fishing boats,” I said. “You did not bring the fishing boats into Pylos.”

“No. Nor the women and children that we had with us. We will beach the ships for the night there and continue in the morning. Also,
Dolphin, Hunter,
and
Pearl
have stores from Pylos, which must be shared out among the ships.”

I nodded. I wondered how much they had brought aboard. I had been busy with other things in Pylos.

I looked up at him, and realized I was not looking far. Like me, he was small and dark, light but well muscled. “What is your name?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” he said with a wry smile.

“Death knows everyone’s name. But I am not Death now, only Pythia.”

“Xandros,” he said. “Xandros the son of Markai.”

I did not know the name of his father. “Are you a prince of Wilusa?”

He laughed, and adjusted the tiller again. “No, Lady. I’m a fisherman. Neas is a prince.”

“Neas?”

“Prince Aeneas. The captain of
Seven Sisters.
He’s our commander now. He’s the only one of the royal house left. Well, him and his son, but the boy’s not but four.”

“How did you survive?” I asked.

His eyes darkened. “We were away up the coast when the Achaians came. We came back as the city was burning.”

Xandros looked out to sea, to where the foremost ships were coming about, their sails lowering, as they turned the end of the island. “We landed and did what we could. There were a few fishing boats in the Lower City that had not burned, so we got everyone we could onto them and ran out, just as Neoptolemos got back from chasing some Tyrian merchants who had escaped. We got five boats away, but one foundered the next night, and one was so badly damaged we had to leave it on one of the islands. We’ve overloaded the warships, but they’re seaworthy.”

He looked ahead. We were not yet abreast of the island, but he saw something that I did not. “Stand by to drop oars!” he yelled. “Make ready with the sail!”

Men scrambled up from where they had been talking and resting. Two went to either side of the mast, to the bottom of the sail. The others went to the oars, removing the blocks from the ports and lifting out the oars.

Now we were nearly abreast of the island. Ahead of us, five ships had turned. To our left, a flurry of activity on
Hunter
’s deck told that she was doing the same thing. The oars went out through the ports, held parallel to the surface of the sea, the narrow side of their paddles to the wind.

“Your pardon, Lady,” he said, and gestured me out of the way. I stepped aside, against the railing on the right side. It was almost full dark now.

“Bring in the sail!” he shouted. The great white sail collapsed downward, the men fighting it into restraining ropes. Our momentum suddenly checked.

“Left side on the count of three!”

Down among the rowers another man’s voice took up the rower’s chant.

All the left side oars swept forward and bit as one, blades flashing as they turned in the air.

“Hard over!” Xandros yelled, and put the rudder as far as it would go, the muscles in his arms straining against the water.

Dolphin
turned neatly to the right, slowing and bouncing a little as she crossed the wake left by
Swift.

“Right side on the mark!” he called again.

As the left side oars left the water and then bit again, the right side swept forward and joined them in perfect time. We continued on, a full quarter turn off our original course. Behind us, I heard the rower’s chant start on
Seven Sisters
and knew they were about to do the same.

Xandros grinned at me. “Not seasick, are you?”

“No,” I said. “Should I be?”

“Ever been on a ship before?”

“No,” I said.

We were gliding into the island now. It was low, just a sandbar above sea level, with some scrubby trees clinging to life and providing some shelter. On its white shores were three old fishing boats, drawn up with their nets spread to dry. Above them, at the edge of the trees, there were people and shelters, awnings spread to catch the dew and fend off the midday sun. A fire leaped and shadows moved around it.

“On my mark!” Xandros yelled.

We glided toward the shore, sand glimmering ahead.

“On three, ship!” The oars lifted from the water at once, droplets falling, and turned in the air, side on.

“I’d hang on if I were you, Lady,” he said.

I grabbed the rail behind me as
Dolphin
’s prow slid onto the beach with a shock. I didn’t fall. Oars were brought in as the two men who had handled the sail jumped over, guiding the ship a little farther up the beach. A stone’s throw away,
Seven Sisters
glided into her place.

Now the oarsmen leaped down, pulling the ship farther up the beach with each incoming wave. Xandros jumped over the side, crossing around the prow and back, assuring himself that
Dolphin
would not drift off.

I went up to the side and looked over the rail at the oar ports. It was a drop of nearly my height. Xandros was below. “You’ll have to jump down, Lady.” He was standing thigh deep in water.

I swung my legs over the rail. I had not noticed that my feet were crusted with blood.

“Jump,” Xandros said encouragingly. He reached his arms up. “I’ll steady you.”

I jumped. The cold sea water was a shock, splashing nearly over my head, as clear and as light as rain. It felt wonderful. Xandros grabbed me about the waist. “Careful,” he said. “Do you swim?”

“I swam in the river when I was young,” I said. “Never in the sea.”

A wave came in, splashing me to the chin. I scrubbed my dirty feet in the clean white sand. Then I followed Xandros up the beach. Already men were swarming back onto
Dolphin,
passing down jars and amphorae from Pylos, the stores to be shared out.

A child came running down the beach and caught one of the women who had been a captive in Pylos about the waist, a boy of nine or so. The woman went to her knees in the sand, clutching him to her, her words incoherent.

“He was one of the fishing boat children,” Xandros said, and there was a catch in his voice. “Some of them drowned when the boat capsized getting out of the harbor. That one was a good enough swimmer. He made it to
Dolphin.
But he had no family.”

“Do you have a family?” I asked.

I couldn’t see his face in the dim light. “They’re dead,” he said. “Killed for the pleasure of watching them die.” Xandros turned and walked back to the ship to help with the unloading.

I walked up the beach. It seemed odd to hear so many people speaking the language of Wilusa. Then I realized what was strange. Until today I had never heard it spoken by a man.

Their prince saw me walking and came over to me. “Pythia, I must talk with you.”

“I am here,” I said.

He drew me a little ways from the others. “We must light a pyre for the two men killed today. We have brought their bodies from Pylos, but we must pay them honor tonight, because tomorrow we must sail. We are too close to Pylos to remain once Idenes’ fleet returns. I will need you to do what is proper.” He stopped. “Today has given us hope that some of us may be reunited on this side of the River, and it will help if you can do this. It will do people good to see these rites done as they should be, not in the haphazard way we have since we sailed.”

I nodded. “Of course this can be done. I will need help building the pyre, and it will be hard to find enough wood on this island. But it can be done. And I will say the words that are right and proper. You will address their shades, Prince Aeneas?”

He nodded. “I will do it. I have done it before.”

Three men gathered wood and we heaped it for a pyre, across first one way and then the other to build a proper bier. The two men would lie on it together, like brothers. I arranged their limbs as well as I could, for the stiffness was setting in. It was well to do it now, given the heat of the days. There was wine to pour out in libation, the best of Pylos’ vintage, but I had no herbs or resins except the ones for the brazier that induce visions. We would have to do without. I went apart a little and straightened my dress, and repainted my face with the white and the black. I had enough paint for a while, but I should have to make more. The charcoal is easy to find, but the chalk must be rendered with fat carefully. It would be difficult to replace.

While I was apart they had assembled around the bier, quietly, respectfully, for the most part. There were four hundred or so in all, all the people left of Wilusa. When I appeared beside the bier some of the men stepped back. They had seen me in Pylos, but did not know that I had come.

I spoke the words that are right, the Calling of the Descent and the Lady’s Greeting. Sothis rose clear and bright out of the sea.

Prince Aeneas cleared his throat and leaned forward. He touched the torch to the wood. It took some little while to catch. Then he addressed their shades, telling them that they had fulfilled all their oaths in life, that they were revered and praised by their People.

He looked out at the crowd, this ragged bunch of pirates, and I saw what he saw. “My friends, your sacrifice has brought back two score of our blood, reunited our families, given these women back into loving arms, restored these children’s mothers. If you are waiting beside the River, may the ferryman be swift, knowing that he carries heroes who have given their blood for the blood of the People.”

I saw their faces in the firelight. So many young and so few old, so many men and so few women. Clothes that were tattered and could not be replaced without looms. And how can one weave on a ship? Where would the flax and wool come from? How long could we live on stolen food with no fields to plant? We could not live on fish alone.

The fire leaped. I raised my hands in praise and farewell. Two of the rowers started with their drums, a steady beat that got faster. There were flutes then, and the other drummers joined in. I stood still while they began a long, slow dance about the fire, the acrid smoke rolling over us with the smell of burning flesh. I had not seen this dance before, majestic and slow, yet as wild as the storm. Faster and faster, whirling their pain and feeling away, under the wheeling stars. Sparks flew and vanished in the air. I felt dizzy again, and sat down on the sand at the edge of the trees. Faster and faster. Sparks whirling up into the air.