Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (13 page)

“I still have it,” Dáuniya answered, hardly breathing the words, frightened to speak them. “I wrapped it in fleeces from the queen’s own bed. Help me, please, I am begging you. Tell me what to do with it.”

“Get rid of the whole thing! Bury it all in the forest!” Mélisha urged her, trembling with fear. “I understand your thinking, Dáuniya. But you cannot use it to turn the evil from Diwoméde. Lawodíka is far too powerful for a mere foreigner like you. Only a seeress could accomplish such a thing. We will not see a priestess, though, until we reach Put’ó. That is going to take us quite a long time and we must brave many dangers to get there. Now, you listen to me, Dáuniya. You cannot take such a powerful, magical object as a bronze mirror on a long voyage like this. It would be much too dangerous! Poseidáon would raise a terrible storm at sea and sink us all! Your recklessness will surely destroy us, my dear girl! The goddess of wild things could send her
maináds
to lure our ships to destruction on hidden rocks in the midst of the salt waters!”

More troubled than ever, Dáuniya let the older woman hurry onward, down to the shore.

It was with hopeful trepidation that the mixed party of refugees gathered on Kep’túr’s blighted coast, early the following morning, just as the sky began to brighten in the east. St’énelo delivered a quick prayer of thanksgiving to the goddess of the dawn and made an offering of roasted barley strewn on the shore, to the god of the seas. Each adult saluted the heavens, hailing the rising solar disk, some calling her Lady, some calling him Lord. The departure being thus sanctified, they turned their minds and hearts toward their first landfall to come, the island of ‘Elléniya. The men were the first to board the three longboats, drawing the women and children up behind them. With words of encouragement, the women descended to the hold of the big boats, while the men took their places on the rowing benches. With calloused hands, the men fastened the oars to the sides of the longboats with wooden pegs and leather straps. Beneath them, the women settled the contents of the hulls, arranging amphorae, skin bags, and linen sacks. They sought to ensure that there would be little or no movement of the contents during the journey and, at the same time, attempted to make their own seating as comfortable as possible.

When all was made ready, the oarsmen on each ship passed around a cup of diluted wine. Each man swallowed a mouthful and spilled a drop or two to the deities, while St’énelo loudly asked the blessing of Poseidáon, lord of the deep. Standing on the stern platform of the smallest of the ships, the former charioteer called out, “Hear us, Divine Horse of the Inner Sea. You shake the islands with your unseen hooves. You rule the waves of the Inner Sea and of the Great Green. Pity us and do not send angry storms against us. Release a gentle wind from your great bag and blow us to Laidaimóniyan soil in peace.”

“
Owlé, wánaks
Poseidáon!” cried the assembled Ak’áyans and Assúwans.

After them the men of Kanaqán called out, “Hail, queen Astárt and your consort, Melqárt!”

Ainyáh took his post at the long steering oar at the stern of the lead ship. “Raise the anchor stones!” he cried. The strongest men on each longboat drew up the heavy weights and packed them carefully in the hold. Beside the aging mercenary, young Askán chanted the cadence to get the oarsmen working in unison. With their backs to the open sea, the men bent over the oars. Tushrátta and Peirít’owo together took the helm of the second ship in a similar fashion. Diwoméde was pressed into service steering the third with St’énelo beside him calling the cadence. Together, the pitch-blackened longboats moved out into the sea, dark as good wine.

Squatting beneath the benches of the oarsmen, the women and children did their part to keep up the spirits of their toiling menfolk, singing rhythmic song of the loom. They recalled the deeds of the mighty ‘Erakléwe, mortal nephew of the divine Dove ‘Éra and her greatest glory. With sweeter voices, the passengers recounted the courting of great Diwiyána, wánasha of all the rivers, mother of horses and cattle, progenitrix of humankind and of gods alike. Laughing between verses, they sang of the competition between Poseidáon and Díwo for the favors of the best of goddesses. Tushrátta’s kinfolk contributed their own paeans to Shardánna, son of Assúwa’s storm god, Tarqún, and to the fiery lady of the horse, Pírwa.

Shortly after the sun’s chariot wheel had sunk into the western sea, they entered the harbor of ‘Elléniya’s main city. A handful of native islanders gathered near the shore to watch them come. As the anchors dropped over the ships’ sides, the travelers and the natives eyed one another with uneasy stares across the water.

“Do you see any archers?” T’érsite called up to Diwoméde from his seat at his oar. “Are there any spearmen?”

“No,” the former qasiléyu answered, squinting to improve his vision. “There are only fishermen, with their tridents. Something must be wrong. Who rules here now?”

But T’érsite was busy helping to wrestle an anchor over the side of the ship. He did not hear, and no other man volunteered an answer. Dáuniya clambered up to the stern platform, a small bundle of sheepskins under one arm. She set the packet down on the wooden flooring and reached down to take little Flóra from Mélisha. Diwoméde glanced down at the sheepskins, a bit confused, and repeated his question. “Who rules here, Dáuniya?”

“No one,” she told him, rising to stand beside him, her child on her hip. “King Orésta never bothered to send a qasiléyu to take command of this fortress. He has had to concentrate on his northern border and Argo’s queen. She was always hostile to his rule. But, even aside from practical reasons, he has little interest in this place. His wife has always refused to set foot here. She says that it was polluted by the Tróyans when they abducted her mother. She believes that the island is cursed.”

“Foolish girl,” T’érsite muttered, shaking his head.

“Ai, do not talk about queen ‘Ermiyóna that way,” Dáuniya scolded. “She was just a little thing when her mother was carried off. Think of what a terrible experience that was for her, seeing people slaughtered around her, the citadel burned to the ground, her mother taken from her and gone so long, all when she was too young to understand. It was many long months before the poor, little lamb saw her mother or father again, too. When they finally did come back, both were so changed, her mother raving about the end of the world, Meneláwo forever mourning the warriors he lost in the war. It is quite understandable that she hates this place.”

T’érsite only shook his head more vigorously. “Hating the island is one thing. No one said she had to come visit it again. But claiming that it is cursed is another thing entirely.”

“Maybe ‘Ermiyóna is right,” Diwoméde said quietly, gazing out at the place. Wisps of smoke rose, here and there, from small houses of sun-baked brick, below the citadel walls. No high roofs peeked above the great walls, with their foundations of massive stones. The brick superstructure and rounded battlements were deeply cracked, with large segments fallen in. The towers were all crumbling, too. “The fishermen have not even come out into the harbor to meet us,” the qasiléyu observed, frowning.

“It is too dangerous,” T’érsite explained matter-of-factly. “Pirates, you see.” He turned to the task of getting a small boat over the side of the ship and helping the crew and passengers into it, a few at a time.

Diwoméde hesitantly suggested, “Maybe we should go on to the Lakedaimóniyan mainland, and try to contact king Orésta.” But none of the travelers paid him any attention.

While some of the passengers rowed to the shore in the ferry boat, others, too impatient to wait for the boat’s return, doffed their kilts and jumped into the salt water. Young Askán was among those men and boys who chose to swim to the shore. Diwoméde’s eyes followed the youth, his limbs strong and supple, the black hair on his young head streaming down over his unmarked shoulders. Effortlessly, Askán approached the beach, the first of the swimmers to arrive. The
qasiléyu
watched the boy with a sense of disbelief. When Tróya had fallen, so long ago, this boy had scarcely been as old as Flóra was now.
“Ai
, so long ago,” Diwoméde whispered to himself, and yet it seemed to him, at the same time, as though it had only happened yesterday, so powerfully did it still dominate all his thoughts and dreams.

Seeing her lover’s frown, Dáuniya added an explanation to T’érsite’s remark. “There are too many pirates sailing these waters, nowadays. People do only a little fishing, now, and that must be close to shore. They are too afraid to approach a strange ship.”

Confused, feeling strangely detached from all the activity, the former qasiléyu hesitated to leave the longboat. “But, Dáuniya,” he began, “if the islanders suspect us of being raiders, why have they not taken up weapons? Or is this some kind of trap? Will they ambush us when we have all come ashore, do you think?” He shivered at the thought, recalling the flights of arrows that would begin such an attack, as had occurred to him years before. Instinctively, he put his hand to the thick scar on his shoulder.

“No, beloved, they will not harm us,” the woman reassured him, coming to stand very close, brushing up against his thigh. “Their numbers are too few for us to have anything to fear.”

He felt no greater confidence than before. “Ainyáh says there are barely enough men in this whole party to man all the oars. Perhaps it is we who are too few.”

T’érsite beckoned for them to join him in the small boat that would ferry them ashore. Despite his anxiety, Diwoméde meekly obeyed the summons, following Dáuniya and Flóra down into the little vessel. As the former
qasiléyu
took his seat, his burly “uncle” said in an undertone, “The islanders will not attack us. But neither will they accord us any hospitality, I am willing to bet. We cannot even expect that any ‘Elléniyan will invite us to share a single meal or the warmth of a hearth fire, for that matter. When times are hard, no one remembers the laws of Mother Diwiyána. Now, just watch. As soon as we are on the beach, St’énelo will start moaning and groaning about that, calling it a bad omen.
Ai gar
, the man was as sensible as I am when we fought at Tróya. But he has lost his wits along with his flesh since then.”

Diwoméde did not respond. But it seemed an inauspicious sign, indeed, with which to begin such a momentous journey. Did this blighted place foretell suffering for their little band? Did it mean that they would starve before they found a new home? The thought left him most uneasy.

Ainyáh wore his old helmet to the shore, apparently feeling as uncertain of their welcome as the
qasiléyu
. It was a battered thing, the bronze turned greenish, no longer shiny, the horse-tail crest that had once adorned it chopped off short, for the most part, and wispy where it remained. But the Kanaqániyan wore it proudly nonetheless, announcing himself to the local populace as the leader of the arriving expedition just as if he were a king at the head of a royal entourage. Despite the show, as T’érsite had predicted, the travelers found no welcome. It was Mélisha, though, who pronounced it a poor omen for their future. The other women nodded, murmuring their agreement of her gloomy assessment. “What are we to do?” they asked each other and each had a different answer.

“We should invoke the islanders’ higher instincts and beg for assistance,” Tushrátta suggested, rubbing his aching arms, weary from rowing.

Peirít’owo, younger and stronger, responded with his characteristic temper. “No! I say we threaten retribution from king Orésta and demand food and lodging.”

“I am as ready to fight as the next man,” Askán declared, his adolescent voice cracking with tension, “but I will never ally myself to an Ak’áyan king like your Orésta!”

Slapping his thighs to show his annoyance, T’érsite cursed the youth. “Préswa drag you down to ‘Aidé, boy, and feed you to her three-headed dog! What difference does the name of the king make? It is only a made-up story and an idle threat, anyway!”

As the travelers argued, Diwoméde noticed that Mélisha’s troubled eyes turned to Dáuniya repeatedly. His concubine, however, avoided the older woman’s gaze. Something was going on, the former
qasiléyu
concluded, something he knew nothing about. His sense of unease grew. Hunching his shoulders, he stared down at his feet and tried to clear his mind of all thoughts. Someone would tell him what to do, soon enough, he decided.

Finally, St’énelo called to them all to gather around him. “Since we will stay here this night, one of us should go immediately to make an offering on Diwiyána’s altar, in the courtyard of the old citadel,” he announced, with an air of authority. “Whether it is tainted by blood or not, this is the birthplace of the last high priestess of Lakedaimón. This is where the last great queen of ‘Elléniya celebrated the holy rites of the pure goddess, Diwiyána, every spring and autumn, as long as she lived. Our great
wánasha
is gone to ‘Aidé now. The high priestess and her spirit are here no more, but we still must leave a little something to show our respect for this place where she sanctified so many rites.”