Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (29 page)

“But, what if Ainyáh is right?” Diwoméde asked. “If Érinu truly is planning to invade the south, I must warn Orésta. He is the
wánaks
of Argo and Lakedaimón, now. He will be Érinu’s first target. I must help him. He is my brother!”

His wife was troubled. “I understand, but if you leave to go to Orésta, you will tear our little group apart, just as we have finally achieved unity. Surely you realize that most of the Ak’áyans would follow you. Then, the Assúwans would go on to Párpara, and they would never forgive you for betraying them. In fact, that would probably convince them to join forces with Érinu against the rest of us. We cannot let that happen. That would be worst of all fates. We must stay together, we simply must. We cannot allow ourselves to be sidetracked by any other concerns besides finding our new home. The most dangerous part of our journey is still ahead. We are going to need every single man’s strength and courage if we are ever to make a new place in the
ítalo
country. My homeland is a good place, but life there is not easy.”

Diwoméde shook his head and was silent for a long while. “I owe a great deal to Orésta. He sheltered you and T’érsite, remember? Besides, aside from him, I have no other family but you and T’érsite. What can I do? I do not want to leave you, but I cannot abandon my only brother.”

“Flóra, too,” Dáuniya reminded him gently. “You have her, also. But, I understand. You feel torn between competing loyalties. So do I. So do we all, in one way or another. It has taken us a long time to get our traveling clan this far. Every day’s journey was gained through hard work and suffering. We have still more difficult waters to travel through, ahead, too. But, there can be no turning back, now. In Párpara, we will be joined by many others, both Ak’áyans and Kanaqániyans. They have been waiting for us. We cannot disappoint them. The Párpariyan oracle will approve our plan, when we ask, I am sure of it. Then it will take us only one more sailing season to reach the Island of Fire, in the Italian Sea. It must happen in this way. It must!”

Her hands grew cold as she clasped him to her. Diwoméde could feel the pounding of her heart speeding up against his hairy chest. He had hoped for comfort from this woman. Instead, he found that he had only spread his fears and worries.
“Ai
, Dáuniya,” he whispered, stroking her dark hair, “do not give up now. I will get you home again, someday, somehow. I swear this by the Stuks, by the river of death itself.”

She squeezed him more tightly, wetting his knotted shoulder with quiet tears.

Before the sailing season ended, the travelers arrived at the great bay where they intended – where they hoped – to spend the coming winter. Heartened by the timeliness of their arrival, the refugees pushed themselves as never before to reach their final destination. The sun still shone in all its glory when the ships found their stopping place. The permanent village of the paramount chieftain was clearly visible to the newcomers on its hilltop perch.
“Ai gar
, look at that!” T’érsite cried out, standing on his rowing bench and pointing. “It is only a wooden fort with a thatched roof! If I did not know better, I would think we were in T’ráki!”

“It is small compared to the grand citadels of Ak’áiwiya,” St’énelo observed anxiously. But, after a moment’s consideration, his drawn face brightened. “At the same time,” he added, “the gates are still standing. That is a welcome change. You can see smoke rising from the window over the door of each house, large and small. That is a very welcome change, indeed!”

“The pirates and marauders who have plagued the Inner Sea and the Great Green have not come this far north,” Peirít’owo was also pointing out on Tushrátta’s ship. “This land is green, not pale and dried out, do you see?”

From the stern platform and the rowing benches, the refugees stared with wide eyes and opened mouths, taking in the fertile beauty of the place. The slopes of the many mountains were blanketed with pine and fir trees. The golden grass of the foothills was adorned with thick stands of oak and laurel, myrtle and birch. In the open fields and meadows, plentiful flocks of sheep and goats grazed contentedly, watched by long-haired dogs. Here and there, the travelers spied a few head of cattle and wild asses. The sleek, round bodies of the animals showed no sign of any food shortage, quite unlike what they had seen in the lands they had come from so recently.

“I do not think there is any danger of starvation here,” Askán announced loudly, “or of being carried off by monsters.” He glared pointedly in the direction of Diwoméde’s ship, where he knew Odushéyu was now lying low.

The It’ákan had made an indelible impression on others, however. He was not yet completely discredited, even now, in the eyes of every man and woman. “It is sorcery,” the aging pirate whispered to those followers who still gathered at his side. “Beware! Trust no one. Stay close to me, no matter what you see or hear.”

The three ships had stopped close together, and the strongest oarsmen wrestled the stone anchors overboard. Several refugees in the Ak’áyan longboat and both the Assúwan ships overheard the young Askán’s pronouncement. They nervously made the sign of the Evil Eye. “Hold your tongue, boy!” St’énelo anxiously called out to him. “If you speak too soon, you tempt the gods to strike us down!”

As if they heard the thin man’s warning, several hounds on shore turned hostile eyes toward the ships in the bay and began barking furiously. Hostile, too, were the eyes of the stocky shepherds who cautiously made their way toward the water’s edge in their woolen tunics and leggings. Like their distant T’rákiyan cousins, these Párpariyan men tattooed their faces with blue stripes, giving them an alien look. The women too, tilling the soil farther inland along the riverbanks with their hoes, sported blue circles or zigzags on their cheeks. Their dress was essentially the same as that of the men, except that they sported skirts of colorful strings over their long tunics. The garments, the faces, the buildings on the hill, all shone with barbarian splendor. The land of Párpara seemed at that moment to rule the world.

In contrast, the refugees were weak and impoverished, ill-fed and poorly clothed. Every traveler pointed index and small fingers toward the well-fed inhabitants of this truly foreign land, hoping against hope to keep back the Evil Eye. Fear of the still-uncertain future quickly crept back into their souls. “We will be slaves here,” T’érsite groaned. “I am sure of it, now.” Even those who had come this way before were no longer eager to leave the familiar, if battered, longboats.

The chief of the varied tribal leaders of the northern land received Ainyáh and Tushrátta, quickly chosen by lot to represent the weary group of travelers. Most of the other refugees, women as well as men, loaded themselves into the small ferry boats, and went ashore. The group as a whole had determined to test the hospitality of this green land, come what might. But Diwoméde remained with the ships in the harbor, and he insisted that Odushéyu stay with him. In a cramped shed on the stern platform, the
qasiléyu
and the one-time
wánaks
watched in silence as the longboats emptied. Dáuniya delayed her own departure until all the others had gone, clinging to her husband’s arm. Finally, T’érsite paddled the slender ferry boat to the big ship’s prow, calling up to the woman, “Come on now, Dáuniya, there is no one else left aboard.”

“Go ahead,” Diwoméde told her. “I will be all right here.”

Her eyes met his, swimming in tears. “Keep Flóra for me,” she whispered to him, her lips trembling. “I hate to leave her, especially since she has been sick. I think she had a little fever again, last night.”

“Then take her with you,” the
qasiléyu
urged, confused at his wife’s distress. “I am sure that Mélisha will help you take care of her while you talk with the queen.”

But Dáuniya shook her head, kissing the dark curls on the little girl’s sleeping head, as she handed the child to her husband. “I am afraid of what Érinu might do to her when he sees her eyes. When I was a captive in Tróya, Qántili’s first wife gave birth to a blue-eyed baby. Then Kashánda took the omens, and said they were evil. She said that the great goddess, Mother Dáwan, gave her a vision of Tróya burning. That would come to pass unless the child died. The king insisted that the babe be exposed on the peak of Mount Ída because of that. Qántili wanted to keep his daughter but Paqúr sided with his father, as always. It nearly led to civil war.”

She hesitated, chewing her lower lip, before continuing. “Érinu was much younger then, not yet a priest. He was in training under Laqúwanna, Kashánda’s husband. When the queen asked Érinu to resolve the conflict, he did not know what to say, so the queen asked Laqúwanna. While he was making an offering to the goddess, a snake came from beneath an urn beside the altar and bit him. He died two days later. Both of his sons died of the summer complaint shortly afterward, too. Kashánda blamed all of their deaths on her brother, on Qántili. Her children and her husband were killed by the evil spirit of the blue-eyed baby, she claimed. After that, Érinu sided with his sister, and Qántili was forced to give in. He ordered me to take the child to the mountaintop and leave her there to die.” Dáuniya’s eyes overflowed and she could not bring herself to let go of the sleeping child. “If anything should happen to Flóra…”

Suddenly feeling protective, Diwoméde took both the woman and the child in his arms. “Stay here with me a little while longer. We will have T’érsite bring a branch from a laurel tree. Assúwans and Ak’áyans both recognize that as a sacred symbol of peace. Agamémnon did not honor it, but Érinu will. No priest would harm anyone who carries the laurel.”

Seated on thick fleeces, the Assúwan leaders soon partook of roast mutton, boiled chickpeas, and barley porridge, with thick slabs of aged cheese, alongside their royal host. They washed the meal down with river water and fermented milk, each item consumed with relish. The great hall in which they sat was filled with acrid smoke, as there was no opening in the roof, and it smelled strongly of goats. Even so, the guests extolled the chieftain’s wealth and his generosity with sincere admiration and appreciation. Askán and Tushrátta could not praise Érinu enough, as they eagerly stuffed their mouths, their bellies fully satisfied for the first time in many months.

“It is truly good to see you again, Érinu,” Tushrátta crowed, raising his bronze cup high overhead before drinking and carefully spilling a few drops to the unseen ones. “When I heard that Tróya had fallen, so long ago, I thought that you must either be dead already or would soon die in captivity. I thought what a shame that was, too, such an excellent priest as you! Who would have guessed that you were destined to leave Ak’áiwiya in triumph, instead? And to rule a new Wilúsiya,
hoyá
, what a victory you have had, in the end!”

“The goddesses spin the thread of a man’s life as their purposes require,” Érinu responded carefully, stroking his full beard of neatly combed and oiled, dark curls. “It may yet come to pass that one of my father’s house shall even rebuild the holy city of Tróya, honoring its namesake, the god of the storm, our lord Tarqún.”

The room suddenly grew tense and quiet. The newcomers focused their vision on their food. Érinu’s queen encouraged them in this, quietly offering a tray of dried apple slices, a scattering of pine nuts, a taste of smoked goat’s cheese. At Andrómak’e’s side, a boy sat, smaller than Askán in height, but more than his match in breadth across the shoulders. His sparse beard betrayed his youth. His sullen expression and the sharp looks that the chieftain often gave him told the Assúwan visitors that this had to be Sqamándriyo, the son of Andrómak’e by her deceased first husband, the current chieftain’s older brother.

Tushrátta was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. “Lady Andrómak’e,” he began, raising his cup again, this time in her direction, as he had already done toward Érinu, “you are looking fat and red. That is quite a tribute to your new husband! Now, tell me, how long has it been since I saw you last?”

“Four years,” the woman answered, with a wan smile.

Érinu frowned at her with downcast eyes. “If you were not feeling well, woman, you should not have come to dine with us,” he told her sharply. “Sqamándriyo! Help your mother back to her bed chamber.”

The boy’s dark eyes flashed angrily and he clenched his teeth against the hot words he was tempted to say. But he obeyed his uncle and step-father, a hand at Andrómak’e’s elbow.

“He is the very image of his father,” Tushrátta murmured to Ainyáh, a lump in his throat. “A good man, Qántili was, and a fine warrior.”

“A good man,” Ainyáh repeated, choking on the last word and the memory, hot tears filling his shadowed eyes.

“As laconic as ever, I see,” Érinu remarked dryly, stroking his beard as he noted his brother-in-law’s near silence. “But enough of this reminiscing, kinsman. I have provided food and shelter for the women of your household for some time, now. It is time you returned your payment for my favors. Tell me what you found in your travels and what news you have of my nephew. Is Kurawátta still living?”