Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (46 page)

Sabrann huddled together with Akmu and Glas in Akmu’s tiny room. Dumped from her safe perch on the high shelf,
Mau
hid in the corner under the table. Sabrann begged for help from the Matrones, from Maigrid, from her mother. Glas stuck to her side, and buried his face in her arm, his eyes shut tight. Akmu-en-Swnw spoke only in his Egyptian tongue—which no one understood—and prayed. They all prayed, clutching their amulets.

As night came, the wind stopped, but lightning flashed far off until late. The waves rose like mountains, and brave seamen wept with fear, praying to the gods for mercy. No one slept in the plunging, wave-swept ship.

Daylight came bleak and gray, bringing nothing to help the
Astarte.
There was no way to get a reading of where they were; an overcast sky blocked the sun and dense clouds hung low and heavy. The wind had changed and the tell-tail strips fluttered every which way. It was a confused sea with great swells coming from different directions. Not even a sea bird flew overhead to point the way to land.

The
Astarte
was alone, lost in the vast ocean.

When Sabrann and Glas came up the ladder, the first thing they saw was Carloi the navigator, flat on his back, sprawled on the deck. He was naked, his arms and legs spread wide, his eyes shut tight. Not even a small loincloth covered his tender parts. He did not move.

Captain Adonibaal and the Admiral stood off to one side. Admiral Himilco caught her eye and motioned with a finger to his lips to keep quiet.

“What is he doing?” Sabrann whispered to the captain.

He gave her an exasperated look. “Quiet, girl. He is looking for the ‘mother wave’. He will feel it in his balls, and then tell us what direction to take.”

After a long while, the navigator sat up and nodded his head as if to say yes.

“I have it, my lord. It’s clear to me now. The current runs this way,” and he drew a line with his fingers on the deck.

Sabrann watched, both puzzled and amazed, as the Admiral and the captain both smiled and warmly clasped him by the shoulder. Carloi put his loincloth back on and went back to the steering oars and adjusted the Astarte’s course.

“What were you doing, Carloi?” Sabrann asked.

“Why it’s a skill as old as the sea,” he laughed. “But only men have it. You see our private parts are very sensitive and if I lay on the deck I can feel the movement of the ocean in my balls and there will be one current that is stronger than all the others—the ‘mother wave’ we call it, the true current. It can guide us back to our course.”

Sabrann went to the galley and brought a pail of hard bread soaked in wine and a few olives and left it by Carloi. He would eat as he could. There was no one else to take his place at the steering oars; most of the crew labored down below.

She and Glas crept down the ladder to feed the rowers. All night they had struggled to keep the
Astarte
from wallowing in the bottoms of the great waves. With the mainsail gone and only the small foresail still in place, the only way to move and keep afloat was with the labor of their backs and arms.

The air in the rowers’ deck was hot and smelled rank, sharp with men’s sweat and urine, for no one could go up on deck to the latrine. Everyone took turns rowing. The Macae warriors, who protected the Admiral, were over to one side, all brown-skinned and shining with sweat. Even the Gaesatae, with his whipped back, was tied to a bench, forced to pull an oar.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she gave him some dried bread. He looked down and did not meet her eyes. Who wanted to kill her? He knew and would not tell her even if she asked. She had to know. She looked at her hands.

Somehow, she would place them on his head.

Lorc cù-luirg looked up from his bench as the girl passed out the meager rations. He was so hungry his stomach cramped in sharp pain. She glared at him as she doled out the food. The boy held a pail filled with wine and gave all the rowers a drink out of a ladle. The boy’s eyes met his and quickly glanced away.

All night he had pulled on the oars. His hands were raw with blisters, and the lash wounds on his back had opened up. He felt them bleeding, and his salty sweat stung the open whip marks. It was only three days since his punishment by the whip. Too soon, said Akmu, but there had been no other choice: everyone rowed or they would all die. Akmu-en-Swnw came and stood by his side and wrapped the freshly bleeding places with a tight linen cloth. Then he had tied long pieces of an old cloth around Lorc’s hands so he could row again.

“Rest time,” Isis yelled. He tapped him on the shoulder and undid the rope. Lorc’s arms shook as he lowered them. Other seamen slipped onto the benches and rowed, while the rest ate. Without Akmu-en-Swnw, he knew Isis would have kept him rowing until he died.

The girl was gone. Thank the gods! Every time she looked at him he felt her angry yellow stare burning on his skin. He sat down, crammed with the others against the sides of the deck and wolfed down wine-soaked sops. The wine burned when it hit his stomach, and he wondered why they were using good wine.

Midacritus sat down next to him. Lorc pointed at the wine-soaked bread with a questioning look.

“Not enough water,” Midacritus said. “We left the Veneti’s too quick.”

He spoke in the trade tongue, which Lorc understood a little. He gave a low laugh and leaned toward Lorc.

“I can help you get your name back,” he whispered.

Lorc’s body tensed. He shifted his painful back away from the wall and gave Midacritus a hard look. He was sorry this man knew what had happened.

“You don’t know what you are saying,” Lorc answered. “The wine is making you drunk.”

“No, it’s true. I know a way, but I need some help in return. The girl said the Admiral has a sailing manual—a
Periplus
—in his cabin. I want that. It will be worth a lot of silver to certain people in Massalia.”

Midacritus looked around. No one was listening. They were all hungry and exhausted.

“We’ll stop at Gadir, not far from Massalia. I need you to distract the crew while I get it out of the Admiral’s cabin. If you help me, I’ll help you kill the girl. Then we can escape to Massalia. I’ll pay you in silver, so you can buy a horse and get home. In the end, we all get what we want.”

Shocked, Lorc said, “You mean steal it?”

“Of course. The Admiral is not going to give it to me.”

Lorc could not believe what this shifty-eyed Tartessian was suggesting. All his Gaesatae training came roaring to the surface of his mind.

“Gaesatae do not steal.”

Midacritus mouth dropped. “But you are going to kill her!”

“And that is different. That is by my king’s order. But no Gaesatae steal. We swear to certain things when we become part of the clan.”

He looked at Midacritus and felt a wave of disgust rise up. He called himself Tartessian, but Lorc knew he was really Greek. Did these Greeks have no honor?

Lorc leaned back his head and closed his eyes. The Gaesatae Code of Honor was sacred. Everything in his life, since the day Caradoc rescued him, had been about the code and honor. He lived by the Gaesatae Code. When he killed the Atrebate warrior he had gone against the code and that changed his life, causing all things horrible to happen.

He would not do that again. Never. Lorc turned away his head and kept his eyes shut so the Greek would think he was asleep. He was angry that this thief knew about the
geis.
He did not trust him.

Not long after the dawn, the lookout gave a shout. Far ahead, on the curve of the horizon, a thin line of land was sighted. Carloi’s ‘mother wave’ had brought them back from the wasteland of Eternal Ocean to the solid world of earth, sand, and rocky coasts.

At the first light, seamen covered the deck with large pieces of heavy linen from the foresail and scraps of sail cloth stored in the hold. They sat, patiently sewing them together with long, curved iron needles and skeins of hemp and made a new sail. Long lengths of rope brails were carefully threaded through lead rings sewn on the sail in a grid pattern and soon it would be hoisted up the blackened mast. It looked like a giant’s patched garment with no pattern or design. No priestly votive offerings or protective symbols of
Astarte
would fly in the wind. No magic charms protected the ship.

But it would get them home. And that was all that mattered. Admiral Himilco stood on his deck, watching the crew wrestles the brails in place. The seamen hung curled around the spars like monkeys, as the brails were dragged up and over.

Then he heard the long, single blast of the conch horn. A lookout was posted on the bow of the ship until the sail was up. What now? Had the fool Veneti’s found them again? If so, he would have to fight and the crew was exhausted. At least the sail was going up. It hung halfway up the mast, suspended from the spars by the net of brail lines. Maybe they should try and make a run for Gadir and safety.

Adonibaal came and stood by his side. In a fight he knew Adon would stay close. The Macae Libyans came roaring up from the rowing deck and formed a phalanx around him. They would rather fight than row any day.

The captain motioned with his hand and sent a sharp-eyed seaman scrambling up the mast. He called down there was something unknown in the water ahead.

The
Astarte
drifted on the current and soon found pieces of wood littering the water; an oily film swirled on the surface. Ahead of the
Astarte
lay the charred hulk of a ship, a black ghost, burned down almost to the waterline, but still afloat. The current was slowly casting it toward the coastline where rocks would crush it into small pieces. A piece of the ship’s mast was caught on the wreck with a body tied to it. Behind the mast trailed a long piece of partially burnt leather sail. So it was Veneti. There was no sign of the other ship.

Everyone on board the
Astarte
stood silent at the ship’s railing. A few dropped to their knees at the sight. An enemy to be sure, but no seaman wanted to die like that.

“I think they were hit by lightning,” said Adonibaal. “The God’s punished them.”

The Admiral looked at his friend. Adon fingered the amulet he always wore. Written on it in tiny letters, neat Phoenician script warned the careless:
Praise the gods each day, life without them is full of wrath
.

Adon was much more observant about honoring them than Himilco. Adon prayed a lot and laid everything at some altar. He knew the gods controlled man and all disasters were personally caused by man’s actions. Himilco was not so sure. He thought men were not so important; Gods had abandoned him before. And with their fickle humors, the gods were unpredictable time and again.

The
Astarte
turned and headed out from the coast, away from the reminder of the god’s wrath. The burnt wreck sickened the Admiral. He vowed to try and appease the god’s. This ship was his life: he must see it home. He would pray for their mercy.

Later, as the sun hit its zenith, he assembled the crew. Admiral Himilco donned a priest’s purple-striped shawl and prostrated himself in front of the ship’s altar. The small wooden altar held a carved stelae, an incense burner, a shining bronze offering bowl filled with amber colored incense. And, most important, two small bowls with the daily offering of bread and wine: an ancient practice to appease death. The wisdom was if death had enough to drink and eat, it would be content and forget about them. Always full, never wanting, that was the key to living with death at sea, where only a thin ship’s plank kept you from drowning.