The Dancer from Atlantis (18 page)

Thus the handling characteristics turned out so odd to him that his crew caught the knack about as fast as he did. Before
long they were taking practice cruises on virtually every day of halfway decent weather. They were a hearty, laughter-loving
two score and ten, youngsters in the late teens and early twenties, delighted at this novelty, bound and determined to master
their ship and lay their wake in rings around those old fogies who grumbled at new-fangled foreign foolishness. No longer
needed as an instructor, Reid usually stayed behind with Erissa. Time for him and her was shrinking unbearably. And one of
his sailors, a slim youth of good looks and good family, who could scarcely keep his eyes off the girl, was named Dagonas.

But she came aboard with Reid for the final test, the test of the ram, before the vessel was officially dedicated. The governor
had released a hulk, traded to the state for cannibalizing by a merchant owner who hadn’t considered it worth his while to
make those repairs which Sarpedon now carried out. A rival gang, envious boys and skeptical shellbacks, agreed to man the
target craft and show up the radicals. Boats came along to rescue whoever got dunked.

It was clear and brisk offshore, whitecaps marching, the by now almost permanent black column out of Pillar Mountain shredded
by a gleefully piping wind. Overhead trailed a flight of storks, homeward bound from Egypt to the northlands, heralds of spring.
The ram ship leaped and rolled. Its sides were gay with red and blue stripes; on the sails were embroidered dolphins. The
waters rushed, the timbers talked, the rigging harped.

Erissa, forward on the upper deck beside Reid, clapped her hands. The hair streamed back off her shoulders, the skirt was
pressed against her loins. Oh, see!’ she cried happily. The vessel came about in a rattle of booms, gaffs, and blocks. It
had just passed the bows of the conventional ship, which trudged along on oars, unable to come anywhere near the wind.

‘Stop your fancyfooting and let’s have some action!’ bawled the distant skipper.

‘Well, I suppose we should,’ Reid told Sarpedon, ‘having proved they can’t lay a grapnel on us.’ They looked at each other
in shared unsureness. The boys on the thwarts raised a yell.

Standing off, the rammers lowered sail, racked masts, and broke out oars. The target crew poised uneasily at their own oars.
They knew what happened in a collision. Both hulls were stove in, along with the ribs of any rowers who didn’t get clear.

Reid went aft to his quartermaster. ‘You remember the drill,’ he said. ‘Aim for the center, but not straight. That could leave
us hung up on them. The idea is to rip out the strakes and sheer off.’

‘Like a bull goring a bear,’ Erissa said.

‘May that be no evil omen for you, Sister,’ the man responded.

‘Gods forfend!’ Dagonas called at his bench just below. Erissa smiled down upon him. Reid saw how smooth and lithe the boy’s
body was. His own – well, he kept in fair shape. And Erissa was clutching his hand.

The craft began to move. The coxswain’s chant gathered speed until water seethed white and the hull sprang forward. Abruptly
the target was horrible in its nearness. As directed, it tried to take evasive action. As expected, the rudder-and-tiller
combination was so much more efficient than steering oars that no escape was possible.

Reid’s people had rehearsed the maneuver often, against nets supported on logs. Oars on the inner side snapped erect; those
on the outer continued driving. The noise and shock were less than he had anticipated. Disengaging was awkward – obviously
more practice needed there – but it was managed. By then, the struck galley lay heeled far over. Wooden and unloaded, it didn’t
sink; but presently it floated awash and the waves were pounding it to pieces.

Cheers pealed from the victors. The vanquished were too busy swimming to the boats for a response. Reid and Sarpedon made
a thorough inspection. ‘No harm that I can see,’ the yardmaster declared. ‘This ship by itself could drive off a fleet.’ He
embraced the American. ‘What you’ve done! What you’ve done!’

Erissa was there. ‘You
are
a god,’ she sobbed. They dared not kiss in public, but she knelt and held him around the knees.

Again Atlantis swarmed with preparations for festival. But this was the great one. In the resurrection of Asterion lay that
of the world and its dead.

First he must die and be mourned. Forty days before the vernal equinox, the Keftiu hooded altars, screened off caves and springs,
bore through the streets their three holy symbols reversed and draped in black, rent their garments, gashed their flesh, and
cried on Dictynna for mercy. For thirty days thereafter, most of them abstained from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse; and
in their homes, lamps burned perpetually so that beloved ghosts might find the way back.

Not that business stopped. After all, seaborne traffic was
starting up again. And however devout, the Keftiu were incapable of long faces for many hours in a row. And the last ten of
the forty days were to be pure celebration. The god would not yet have come from hell to claim that Bride Who was also his
Mother and Grandmother, but man’s forward-looking joy helped make sure that he would.

Beneath somberness and decorum, excitement bubbled even on the temple isle. Soon the maidens would take ship for Knossos,
to dance with the bulls and the youths: soon, soon. Erissa worked her class daily. Reid stood by, gnawing his nails.

Why did Lydra keep refusing to see him? She couldn’t be that busy. Lord knew she had ample time for Diores, when the Achaean
showed up on his frequent missions. Why was she doing nothing about evacuation? She said, when Reid got together the boldness
to grab a chance to drop her a few words that she and he alone understood, she said she was in touch with the Minos; and true,
boats shuttled across the sixty-mile channel between, written messages borne by male oldtimers in her service who were both
illiterate and close-mouthed; she said the matter was under advisement, she said, she said.

Meanwhile the volcano spewed smoke and, ever oftener, flames. Its fine ash made the fields dusty. Sometimes at night you saw
fresh lava flow glowing from the mouth; next morning you saw new grotesqueries on those black flanks, and steam puffing white
from fumaroles. The ground shivered, the air rumbled. In the taverns men spoke dogmatically and at length of what precautions
should be taken against the possibility of a major eruption. Reid didn’t notice that anybody actually did much. Of course,
they never imagined what the blowup was going to be like. He himself couldn’t.

If he could tell them!

Well, at worst there were plenty of well-found boats. Practically every Atlantean family owned one and could put to sea, provisioned,
on a few hours’ notice. But they couldn’t keep the sea too long; and he didn’t know just when the hammer would fall; and he
did know that the time was very short now for him and Erissa to stand on a starlit hilltop, so close together that Pamela
and children couldn’t get in between, and for her to breathe, ‘We’ll be wedded right after the festival, right after, my darling,
my god,’ while the mountain growled at his back unheeded save for the glow it cast upon her.

Rain fell anew, but gently, little more than a springtime mist that quickened the earth and if it lasted until morning would
not hinder the procession of the maidens to the ships for Crete. But beyond its coolness and the damp odors it awoke lay absolute
night.

Lydra confronted Reid beneath the Griffin Judge. In the lamplight her black gown was like another shadow, against which her
face thrust startlingly white. From her throne she said: ‘I summoned you this late on purpose, exile. There are none to hear
us but the guards beyond the door.’

Reid knew with a chill: There need never be any to eavesdrop. The door is thick. Though not too thick for those men to hear
a call. And they are wholly vowed to her service.

‘What has my lady in mind?’ he got forth.

‘This,’ the Ariadne told him. ‘You thought to embark tomorrow with your giddy Erissa, did you not? It shall not be. You will
remain here.’

Suddenly he knew that his cage had no doors.

‘You have been less than candid,’ she said. ‘Did you imagine Diores and I would never talk about your companions in Egypt
and so learn what you were withholding about the woman? These are uncanny matters. If you did not tell the whole truth, how
can we suppose you did not lie? That you are not the enemy of him the gods have chosen, Prince Theseus?’

‘My lady,’ he heard himself cry, ‘Theseus is making a tool of you. He’ll abandon you as soon as you’re not needed—’

‘Hold your mouth or you’re dead!’ she yelled. ‘Guards! Guards, to me!’

He knew, he knew: Long before, the man with the lion eyes had come into her aloneness and promised her what no other man would
have dared, that he would make her his queen if he could; but for this, she must needs aid him in bringing about the downfall
of her king.

Why didn’t I see it? he shrieked in his head. Because I wasn’t used to intrigue, but mainly because I didn’t want to kick
apart the glittery little paradise she let me spin around myself, he whispered in his head.

He realized: When she passed on to Diores and so to Theseus the word I gave her, that was Lydra’s required service – that,
and whatever help she’s been lending to a conspiracy among the metics and the disaffected on Crete, and now her locking me
away lest I break the silence.

Through how many springtime nights, while her maidens dreamed and whispered in their dormitory of the young men they would
meet, through how many years has she prayed for a chance like this? And to what gods?

The ships were coming in. Already the Piraeus strand was full and newcomers must lie out at anchor. There too was Oleg’s great
vessel; it could be beached, but with difficulty, and the Russian wanted to avoid curiosity seekers, thieves, and blabbermouths
as much as possible. Most crews pitched tents on the nearby shore and walked to Athens for sightseeing and amusement. But
on any given day, many men lounged in those camps.

Ribald shouts blew around Erissa with the smoke of cook-fires. Several Achaeans approached her as she came striding. She ignored
them, though she felt their stares on her back. A woman – bonny, too – who swung along that arrogantly – unescorted? What
could she be, if not one of the whores come down to ply their trade? But she spurned every offer. So maybe she had a rendezvous
with some important man in his tent? But the chieftains weren’t squatted here, they were in town at the inns, the mightiest
at the palace The warriors shrugged and returned to their roasting spits, their dice games, their contests of speed and strength
and bragging.

She came to a row of skiffs. Each had a ferryman on standby, whose boredom vanished when she appeared. ‘Who’ll take me out
to yonder ship?’ she asked, pointing at Oleg’s.

Eyes went up and down her height. Teeth shone wet in beards. ‘What for?’ someone asked knowingly. ‘What pay?’ laughed his
companion. ‘Mine’s the boat belongs to it,’ said a third, ‘and I’ll take you, but you’ll earn your passage. Agreed?’

Erissa remembered the barbarians of Thrace, the burghers of Rhodes, and too many more. She drew herself erect, widened her
eyes till the pupils were circled in white, and willed pallor into her face. ‘I have business concerning the Beings,’ she
said in her coldest witch-voice. ‘Behave yourselves – ’ she stabbed a gesture – ‘unless you want that manhood you boast of
more than you use to blacken and drop off.’

They backed away, terrified, scrabbling out shaky little signs of their own. She gestured at Oleg’s man. He all but crawled
to help her aboard, pushed his craft afloat, and worked at the oars like a thresher, never lifting his glance to her.

She muted a sigh. How easy to dominate, when you had ceased being frightened for yourself.

Oleg’s rubicund visage and golden beard burned in sunlight reflected off water, as he peered over the bulwark. ‘who the
chawrt
– Why, you, Erissa! Saints alive, I haven’t seen you for weeks. Come aboard, come aboard. Hoy, you scuts!’ he bellowed. ‘Drop
a rope ladder for my lady.’

He took her into a cabin, set her down on a bunk, poured wine that a crewman had fetched, and clanged his beaker against hers.
‘Good to greet you, lass.’ The cabin being a mere hutch cluttered with his personal gear, he joined her on the bunk. Windows
were lacking, but enough light seeped past the door for her to make him out. It was warm; she felt the radiation of his shaggy
tunic-clad body and drank the odor of his sweat. Waves clinked against the hull, which rocked slightly. Outside, feet thudded,
voices shouted, tackle creaked, as the work of preparation continued which he had been overseeing.

‘You needn’t look that grim, need you?’ he rumbled.

‘Oleg.’ She caught his free hand. ‘This host Theseus is summoning. Where are they bound?’

‘You know that. Been announced. A plundering trip to Tyrrhenian waters.’

‘Are they really, though? This sudden – this many allies—’

He squinted pityingly at her. ‘I understand. You fear for Crete. Well, look. You’d not get the Atticans, not to speak of what
other Achaeans they’ve talked into joining – you won’t get them to attack any place under the protection of the Minos. They
aren’t crazy. At the same time, they do grow restless, and the Minos finds advantage in letting them work that off now and
then, on folk who’ve naught to offer in the market but slaves and who themselves are apt to play pirate. Right?’

‘But this year of all years,’ she whispered.

Oleg nodded. ‘I went along with the notion, when my advice was asked. If we really are in for a tidal wave as Duncan claims,
I’d hate to see fine ships wrecked, most especially my lovely new dromon. Let’s get them out of harm’s way. How I look forward
to showing Duncan my work! His idea, you recall, that we build something really up-to-date that’d catch the notice of the
time wizards.’