Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (48 page)

Owl-eyed, Glas stared at the Gaesatae.

“But why? They lied!” His round eyes glistened with tears.

Lorc’s grip on Glas’s neck tightened. “It matters not. You must not speak. They will kill you if you speak against them. Do as I say!”

They were nose to nose. Lorc could smell the man’s scent on the boy.

“Swear it!”

“By the god Cernunnos, I swear it,” Glas said in a frightened voice.

Lorc shook him. “Now go wash yourself. You smell like a whore!”

Glas ran from the room.

The singing and yelling, the dancing and drunken brawls kept up all day, then gradually died away. When the wine gave out, so did the drunken seamen. Bodies were strewn about the deck in various abandon.

Early that morning, the Admiral had brought Sabrann into his cabin and told her to stay there. He guarded her now like a chest of gold. Akmu-en-Swnw found her there late in the afternoon, hiding under the table, intently making her awkward marks with her wooden stylus on the small writing boards.

“Come, young maid, we have work to do,” he said and led her down the ladder to his room. Sabrann felt her stomach tighten and roll. Her throat closed as she felt a premonition of something awful ahead of her. Akmu quietly gave her his instructions; she was to minister to the Gaesatae’s wounds. Then he left her to go tend to other wounds from that fight.

Sabrann parted the curtain and stood at the entrance to the physician’s small room. She could see the big Gaesatae lying on the table. He was asleep or passed out. Akmu said he had gotten into a drunken fight with some seamen and needed salve put on his wounds. She did not care about his wounds and hoped he died a long, slow, horrible death, but not before she discovered who had sent him to kill her and the others.

Her Maigrid was dead! Her heart ached. She wanted to scream Maigrid’s name in anger. When the Admiral took her back to Mai Dun she would seek her vengeance.

And now the gods put what she needed to know within reach.

Soon they would be at Carthage, and the captain said the Gaesatae would be sold as slave. This was her only chance to find out. It was a great risk. She died a little every time she used her gift.

The Gaesatae moved at her sound. She did not want him to wake up and moved on bare feet toward him, like a cat. She had watched
Mau
stalking a prey, some small mouse or flying creature, and glided soundlessly over the rough floor, in perfect imitation.

His body filled the narrow table and his feet hung over the end. He was on his back. Akmu-en-Swnw had already bound his chest with strips of heavy linen and she could see how tightly they were tied. Akmu said he had a broken rib. The Gaesatae’s breathing was shallow and labored; each breath caused a flicker of pain to cross his forehead. Good. She hoped it never stopped hurting.

Stripped of his tunic and clad only in a rower’s loincloth, his body lay exposed. Across one shoulder was a heavy scar where the skin had healed over in a strange circle. Faded scars from older, smaller wounds covered his arms and legs. One thigh had a long, ugly, jagged scar that still showed red and must be new. And on his left arm, the tattoo of a coiled serpent, like an arm band, marked him as the king’s man: a Gaesatae clan tattoo. His was the body of a warrior.

Sabrann slowed her breathing, the way she had learned to approach a dangerous prey. But her prey was his soul, not this big scarred body. Unbidden, the scene with Vodenix played in her thoughts. Her stomach twisted at the memory. Deep inside, she felt her body tighten and muscles close in memory and rejection of that raped entry. Touching Vodenix’s head – seeing the twisted landscape of his life, his killings! Could she stand it again? Surely there would be worse with the man in front of her. Gaesatae were trained warriors. And killers. They killed with the king and the gods’s blessings.

Walk like
Mau,
she reminded herself. This must be done; it was the only way. Soundlessly, she moved around the table and stood in back of him, his head directly below. Dipping a cloth in a bowl of water, she started to wipe the blood from his head. There was a long gash over one eyebrow, reaching deep into his scalp.

There was no hair to get in the way. A blessing. She remembered Isis boasting that he shaved the barbarian’s head after the fire, when he was chained to the rower’s seat.

“And no barbarian lice,” he said to anyone who would listen. There were nicks and marks where Isis had scraped off his hair with a knife. It was harsh punishment for a Gaesatae. Their hair was a symbol of strength and power. They braided it in elaborate patterns and affixed gold and bronze ornaments. When Gaesatae went into battle, some put slaked lime in their hair so it stood up straight and they looked fearsome to an enemy.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her!

Her heartbeat fluttered wildly in the soft part of her neck.

“Akmu sent me to help.” Sabrann’s voice was low as if he might not notice her. Her hand shook as she rinsed the cloth and dabbed at the gash.

The Gaesatae didn’t speak. He stared up at her; there was hate in his look. She didn’t think she could do it while he was looking at her. She turned away, and her hand shook.

If only he wasn’t looking at her. She looked down. Akmu’s box of herbs and potions stood open on the floor. She recognized the vial of poppy syrup and reached for it.

If he was asleep ...

“Akmu said this was for you,” she said, and pressed the vial against his mouth. He nodded and swallowed. It was a big dose.

Sabrann waited, amber eyes fixed on his face. She glanced at his tattoo: the snake, wrapped tight around his arm. Hawks hunted and killed snakes, she thought. Today, she hunted, like her reviled namesake, the predatory
speirleag
. She would be the hawk, but not to kill.

Not yet. His eyelids fluttered shut.

It is now, or not at all. She took a small breath and stretched out her arms. Trembling, her hands hovered over his head and slowly lowered. Lightly, they rested on the shaved crown of his head with its small, bristling hairs. Sabrann held her breath and almost hoped it would not happen. But then she felt the first tremors of seeing begin: the far-off roar, the oceanic wall of water forming, and her fear as another life moved faster and faster toward her. Her mind shrieked. She could not stop the wave. She would drown in the Gaesatae’s life! Then she was caught in it, and could not let go.

“What are you doing?” An alarmed voice spoke from the doorway. Someone moved her hands away from the Gaesatae. Sabrann fell back and fainted.

When she awakened, she was on the floor next to the table. It was over. Warm arms held her. She felt her own life humming through her thoughts and memories. Sabrann looked up. The Gaesatae was still on the table.

It was like nothing she could imagine. She had felt something so different; it confused all her thoughts.
There were no people
! Only fear! No love or hate. No killings. Nothing. Only a barren place glistening with rocks and ice. There was a fight, far off in the distance. Two men, a woman, but she could not see who was fighting. And isolated in the middle of the frigid landscape, something small, like a baby—a small soul! It had turned and looked at her, holding out its hand and ... then she could see it no more.

She was shivering uncontrollably as she remembered the cold and looked up at who held her. It was Hero. Gentle Hero. He sheltered her with his warm cloak and led her away.

“You must rest,” he said. “Come with me.”

Up above, all was quiet as the
Astarte
rocked gently at anchor. The sun descended into the west in a red sky, the land already darkened. Hero led her to the Admiral’s cabin and laid his cloak in a corner. Sabrann lay down and rolled up in it, like a cocoon. It smelled like Hero, and she drew in a deep breath.

“It will be quiet for a while,” he said.

The crew was asleep on the rowers’ deck, recovering from the wine. The Admiral and Captain Adonibaal were on shore in the meager Tagus village, trying to barter precious cloth for whatever food the poor fisher folk might part with. They were still a long way from Carthage.

Hero gave her a pat on the shoulder and left her to rest in the dim room.

But not to sleep. Each part of the scene with the Gaesatae played back in her mind, as though she searched for something she had missed. But what? It felt like pieces of different lives. The cold place she found in him made no more sense now than it did at the time. All the other times she endured touching another person, the lives she saw were cluttered with people and images. The coarse fabric of living. Not his. It was as though she only saw a part of a life, one just born. How could that be? He was a grown man. As she drifted toward sleep, her thoughts rose to the surface, rippled and then disappeared; not strong enough to break through her exhaustion.

Later—it was almost dark now—a muted sound awakened Sabrann. With one eye, she peered out from under the covering mound of Hero’s cloak. There was someone in the cabin, opening the Admiral’s chest, searching through Hero’s papers on the table, unrolling papyrus scrolls that made a soft rattling sound. A thief! The dim shape went to the doorway. Sabrann stood and tripped over a stool, sending her crashing to the floor. When she got up, the figure was gone. She hurried outside. There was no one on the deck, only a lone seaman tending the brails far up on the mast. He glanced down at her and nodded. They were all very careful toward her now.

The day finally ended. Late that night many on the
Astarte
found it hard to sleep.

Sabrann and Glas lay quiet, down in the ship’s hold, each deep in their own thoughts. No scrap of light made its way down into their safe nesting place.
Mau
was close by; the cat’s purring voice rumbled in a contented way. Glas broke the silence.

“I want to go home. Will Mai Dun be my home now?” There was a faint quiver in his voice.

“Yes, I promise you. And nothing will hurt you as long as I live.”

Glas clasped her hand and wondered if she knew what had happened to him today. He would never tell her. He had made a promise.

On the deck above their heads, Akmu-en-Swnw lay on a pallet placed under his table and dreamt homesick dreams of Egypt, vivid in turquoise sky and wheat-colored sand and yearned for his lost golden gods, and the lady Sekhmet, the goddess whom he loved most of all, and would never serve again.

Above him, on Akmu’s bed, the Gaesatae drifted in and out of a heavy opium sleep. The poppy juice Sabrann fed him had been enough to fell an ox, and he struggled to find his way back to the reality of this life and not stay forever caught in the past of old agonies. Now, the girl’s face took her place among all his other nightmares: Caradoc, endlessly dying, his body bloated with poison from a small wound; a woman—was it his mother?—tying a small knife to his wrist and then leaving; the Durotriges, turning their eyes away from him, as if he were a ghost;
and now the girl!

He saw her, looking down at him with her cursed eyes! He stared up at her wanting to scream.
Not her!
Why? What god made him say that? He was endlessly cursed by the gods, and would never find his way back to his clan.

Above them all, Midacritus lay wide-eyed on the open deck, while the rest of the crew slept deeply in their wine stupor. She had seen him! That thought vibrated through his body, touching every nerve. She was inside the cabin and must have seen him searching through the Admiral’s things.

But the light was dim. Had she seen his face? He was sure she did. When he left the cabin he heard a noise and had leaped up the main mast, climbing fast. The girl came out and had looked straight up. She would name him a thief to the Admiral and everything would be lost!

He would have to kill her.