Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (49 page)

BOOK: Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time
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CHAPTER 32

Admiral Himilco decided to make a run for Gadir. It was time to leave; the food stores in the hold had dwindled to handfuls. And no water.

Sabrann stood at the
Astarte’s
prow, her hands clenched tight on the railing. Thombaii and Glas floated below in the ship’s small boat, yet their voices carried the way sound often does on the water. The carpenter pointed and talked to the boy as he slowly guided the boat around the
Astarte’s
water line.

“Look carefully, Glas, one last time. Are all the seams caulked with pitch? The steering oars sound? No cracks in the portal openings for the sweeps? We cannot leave anything to chance on the ocean.”

Glas glanced anxiously at the ship. Sabrann knew he wanted to please Thombaii. Now he went everywhere with the carpenter, as close as his shadow. She only saw him late at night when he came and slept in the ship’s hold with her. Glas caught sight of her and waved.

She turned as she felt someone come up behind her. The hairs on her neck bristled. It was the seaman who watched over the Gaesatae. He stood very close. Too close.

“Akmu-en-Swnw asks when his morning meal will arrive,” he said.

Sabrann nodded in a wordless answer. She would have to bring food for the Gaesatae, too. He made a point of not meeting her eye when she served him. She did not want to look at him either. She was more afraid of him than ever and wanted to forget what had happened. She would not risk that again. When she returned to Mai Dun, she would find out in her own way who ordered him to kill her.

She turned to pick up the pail that held the thick
puls punica
and the last of the dried grapes. The seaman grabbed her arm!

“Here, I’ll take it.”

His hard grasp felt threatening. He pressed close. She jerked her arm away and stumbled back. The pail went tumbling and dried grapes scattered over the deck. Captain Adonibaal came on deck just then and cast a stern look at the man. The seaman started picking them up, mumbling an apology. She stepped away, rubbing her arm. It was just an accident. He was tainted by the Gaesatae. She wanted to avoid both of them.

The captain handed the pail to Sabrann and with a curt nod, sent the Tartessian on his way. Captain Adonibaal usually sniffed out anything that might disrupt his ship. And it did seem as if he was everywhere and knew everything that was going on. It was his long nose the crew joked, and secretly called him “Big Nose Dog.” Everyone on the
Astarte
had a special name except the Admiral: he was sacred. She wondered what they called her. If she asked, they would have told her: Hawk Eye.

She hurried to Akmu and then to the Admiral’s cabin. Hero was writing at the table, his clay ink pot close to his ink-stained hand. When she served him he smiled, and his hand brushed against hers. She remembered the touch of his hand, warm and light, as he guided her in making her letters. The scent of lavender wafted up from his clothes. Her face flushed warm at the memory, and she sneaked a look at his face. She wanted to feel his arm around her again. He winked and grinned.

Two days out from the Tagus River, the
Astarte
stayed away from the coast, in the safety of deeper water. Fast-moving green waves, like giant ripples, covered the ocean.

Sabrann stood on the top rung of the ladder that led to the open deck, gathering courage to cross over to the Admiral’s cabin with his morning meal. Each morning always brought the same test. She started early, hoping no one saw her long hesitation; her fears must be plain for all to see. Two seamen sat mending brail rope and did not look up as she slowly moved onto the deck and started her uneasy trek. She walked far away from the sides, aiming for the cabin door.

She felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and she squeaked a sound. It was Carloi the Navigator. Short and withered as a piece of dry driftwood, his sinewy arms and legs didn’t look strong enough to pick up a stick, yet his was the body that held the
Astarte
steady in a storm and carefully guided the great steering oars. He kept the ship from foundering in heavy seas, and followed the underwater currents that guided them true.

All their lives rested in his gnarled hands. He spoke in the Tartessian dialect, and she could understand only a little of what he said. But he gave his familiar, toothless smile and held out a length of rope.

“What?” She shook her head, questioning.

He deftly tied the rope around her waist and pointed to the other end, anchored through a lead ring on the mainmast. The long rope was used to lash him to the steering oars in rough weather. Then he walked a little ways across the deck to the ship’s railing; his skinny body moved in a parody of Sabrann’s fearful walk. He jerked to a halt at the railing and gestured to the rope around her waist. She would be safe.

She gave him a nervous smile. He led her by the hand, all the while speaking in the Tartessian tongue, and stood with her at the railing, pointing at the frothing curve of the
Astarte’s
path through the green waves, and then above them, where the graceful swoop of iridescent gray and white sea birds drifted on gusting updrafts of the wind. His lined face shone with the light of someone greeting his family, and she knew this was his beloved land, his world.

It was nothing like hers. In Albion, her world was firm, bound and weighted in the earth with the roots of trees and corn. Everything was solid, always in the same place. Carloi’s world constantly moved—a churning, shifting landscape. Unknown gods and goddesses of his watery land swirled and dipped, sang and cavorted with the creatures at home here. When a wave lifted high beside the railing, she saw into its depths, where schools of silvery fish, half as small as her hand, twisted and flowed with the strange underwater winds. A black fish with large fins cruised in the lower depths, its shiny eyes tracking the glittering forms of the smaller fish. In the distance, a pod of sleek porpoises playfully leaped and bounded down the foaming curl of a wave, a watery slide.

Secured by the rope, she was free to see the living beauty in this, Carloi’s home. For a while, she forgot the danger in the water.

Later, Hero found her sitting behind Carloi, chattering in Tartessian as the navigator guided the steering oars and taught her his language. Busy with the Admiral’s
periplus
, he hadn’t talked to her since he found her, eyes closed, touching the Gaesatae’s head.

He sat down beside her.
“Caraid
,” he greeted her. Friend.

Her head jerked up. He must have heard her use that word with Glas.

“So, you were healing the barbarian. How do you do that?”

Sabrann cringed at the memory. Hero had seen what she did and thought it was a healing. How could she talk about it? Could she trust him? An overwhelming need to not feel so alone was strong enough to overrule her doubt. And she liked him. A lot.

“I wasn’t healing. The gods gave me a special gift. Sometimes, if I touch a person’s head, I can see into their life.”

“Well, I would not want you to see into my life,” he said with a nervous laugh.

Her head still bent, she felt Hero’s eyes as if they bored straight through her skull.

“But why him?” Hero was always full of questions and his voice had a very puzzled, inquisitive tone. Somehow, she knew he wouldn’t give up until he found out everything.

“You know the Gaesatae tried to kill me. I wanted to find out who sent him.” She hesitated. “And I failed.” She would not look at Hero. They were both silent.

Sabrann kept her eyes averted. He couldn’t possibly understand. She felt a sudden yearning for Maigrid, who knew everything about Sabrann’s life. She wanted to lash out at the hostile world that took such a precious love from her and jabbed at the navigator’s rope laying on the deck.

“Is that why you have the tattoo? Because you are a seer?” Hero was not going to give up until he found all her secrets.

“No!” It was an angry shout and drew eyes their way.

She could not talk about the tattoo; it had ruined her life. And now Hero knew she was a seer. Something warned her that was a mistake.

Sabrann looked up at him. His tanned face was open and friendly; she saw no malice. He had been kind and was just curious, but she shouted at him. Apart from Carloi the navigator and Akmu, Hero was the only other person who treated her kindly on this forced voyage. He knew she did not want to be here. Everyone knew it after her attempted escape at
Ictis
.

Her heart softened. She touched his hand. She wanted to curl up in the shelter of his arms.

“I’m sorry, I miss my Maigrid.”

“Is she your mother—this Maigrid?”

Sabrann hesitated. Her true mother was like a dream, a goddess who only visited her in dreams and times of danger. Maigrid was real. Sabrann nodded. That wound was still too raw to say more. She had to talk about something other than Maigrid. Or her tattoo. Let him go on thinking her a branded slave, an ignorant barbarian.

“I just want to go home,” she said. That was better. They were all far from home, out here in the ocean.

“Where is your home, Hero?”

He hesitated, frowning, as if there was something he had forgotten.

“Home,” he said, in a flat voice and shook his head. A bleak look passed over his face as he turned his head away and gazed at the water.

A sharp pang touched his heart. An image of a white-washed building; a rooftop etched against a deep blue sky flickered through his mind. No more. He could never return home: he was in exile. With his mother, Rhio, and Lyxes, his dear father, he had lived in Halicarnassus, a Dorian Greek colony, but ruled by Persian satraps. Young and impetuous, he and his uncle, the poet Panyassis, had incited rebellion against the satraps and their puppet ruler—
Lydamis
, the tyrant of Halicarnassus.

Treason!
, the tyrant had cried, with little proof but the words of spies.
Kill them!

Hero hated the Persians: they executed Panyassis, who first taught him of love with a man. Then they exiled Hero from all he loved. He shook his head at the painful memory.

“Home and my mother are far away,” he answered.

“Why are you so far from your mother?” asked Sabrann.

Hero made a sharp, snorting sound. “It’s no place I can return to. Would that I could say I am like a child of Herakles, persecuted and exiled by a tyrant who hated my father. But I am only guilty of my own folly and my sharp tongue, perhaps from foolishness and certainly from political naivety. I spoke against our ruler, the Persian satrap. And no ruler can have a voice raised in protest that is witty, entertaining,
and
critical.

“The only thing that saved me was my father’s rich import dealings. If it were not for that and the taxes it brings to Halicarnassus, swish! And off with my head!” Hero made a motion across his neck with his hand, like a sword slashing.

He laughed! And that made Sabrann laugh.

“But that’s all too grim a tale. I simply sail the oceans and happily tell the stories of the wonderful things I see. Like the story of a girl who was rescued by dolphins.” He dropped one eyelid and winked at Sabrann. “I am content.”

“How did you start telling stories? Did someone teach you?”

He fell silent and thought that one over. He could not tell this young girl all. For one thing, there were parts he didn’t remember and some parts were ... too strong for a girl to hear, even for a barbarian. And, he felt protective of her.

Just then, Akmu called her name in an urgent voice.

“Go,” Hero said. “We will talk again later.”

Sabrann nodded and seeing Akmu-en-Swnw beckoning at the ladder, hurried to her duties as his assistant.

Hero moved and sat back against the Admiral’s cabin, finding some shelter from the stiff ocean breeze. He knew the simple answer to Sabrann’s question: life had taught him how to tell stories. He thought back to the beginning. He still called himself Herodotus then and was just barely sixteen. It was at the start of his new life as a political refugee.

He had been robbed of what few coins he carried, save one hidden in a small body purse. Sad and alone, in a poor waterfront tavern on the Nile River, he watched an old seaman tell a story about a creature of the sea he saw on his last voyage. His tale was full of improbable feats and gory death. Herodotus had not quite believed his story. If a fire-breathing fish consumed the ship, how did the seaman get home? He watched the faces of the other customers. They were amused, and at the end, two or three threw a few
drachmas
at the seaman. The storyteller promptly bought a cup of cheap wine from the tavern keep, a heavy-set woman who welcomed the coins into her wine-spotted apron.

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