The Dancer from Atlantis (24 page)

What’s going on? Reid wondered icily.

‘Hurry, we can kill them,’ Ashkel breathed.

‘No, that’s Theseus himself,’ Erissa anwered. ‘More men are sure to be in call.’

‘To die killing Theseus—’ Rhizon’s blade lifted.

‘Hold. We’re here to save the maiden,’ Dagonas answered. ‘Let him take the soldiers waiting for him out of earshot.’

They stood. Hearts thuttered.

‘Go,’ Erissa commanded.

Reid led the charge around the corner. An Achaean yelled and cast his spear. Haras took it in the stomach. He fell, spouting
blood, fighting not to scream. Reid glimpsed the gray beardless face and thought – events seemed to be happening very slowly;
there was ample time to think – Merciful. A major artery was cut, I guess. Otherwise he’d have had to die of peritonitis,
by stages.

The second man prodded with his pike, Reid wielded his own clumsily, like a club, trying to knock aside the point that lunged
at him. Wood clattered. Erissa caught the shaft and hung on. The Athenian let go and drew his sword. Tylisson rushed. With
a slight movement of his shield, the Athenian sent the Cretan blade gliding off it. His own thrust over the top. Tylisson
staggered back, clutching a lacerated arm. ‘Help! To aid, to aid!’ the sentries were bawling.

Uldin attacked one. His saber whined and belled. When the bronze stabbed at him, he wasn’t there; he bounced from side to
side. Fighting, he screamed. The noise clawed. Rhizon
dodged in and flung both arms around the shield, pulling it down. Uldin laughed and swung. The Achaean’s head bounced free.
It lay there staring at its body. Blood soaked its long hair. Probably some woman and children at home were going to miss
it.

Dagonas had been keeping the other man busy. Now Uldin, Ashkel, and Rhizon could join him. The Achaean backed off, working
with shield and sword. Metal clashed; lungs rasped. The door was undefended.

Reid tried it. The latch had been left off. Opening, he stepped into a chamber that must be a shrine. Life-size in ivory,
gold, and silver, the Goddess held out her snakes who were the beloved dead. Behind her was painted the sun bull Asterion,
to right the octopus which meant admiralty, to left the wheat sheaf which meant peace and harvest. A single lamp burned before
the altar. Young Erissa knelt nearby; but she faced away, sagging, countenance hidden by the loose dark hair. Beneath her
was the full skirt of festival, torn off by the hands which later bruised her breasts.

‘Erissa.’ Reid lurched toward the shape.

Her older self brushed past him, bent down, laid arms around the girl. In the young face next to the half-aged one, Reid saw
the same emptiness which had been in his men after Atlantis was whelmed. She stared and did not know him.

‘What’s happened?’ he begged.

The woman said: ‘What do you think? Her destiny was supposed to lie with you. Her consecration lay in her being a maiden.
Theseus feared them both. So he took them away. I daresay Lydra counseled him to it. We know she helped.’

Reid thought dully: Sure, her first son was fathered by a tall blond man.

A yell and clangor outside spelled the end of combat. Erissa held Erissa and said most gently, ‘Come, let’s be gone. I can
heal part of your hurt, child.’ More noise broke loose. The garrison elsewhere had heard the fighting.

Reid glanced out. The second sentry lay slain across the body of Haras. But down the hall came a dozen warriors; and none
of this party had armor, and Tylisson was disabled.

Dagonas sped to the doorway. ‘Get out,’ he panted. ‘We can hold them a while. Get her down to the ship.’

Uldin spat. ‘Go with them, Cretan,’ he said. ‘The lot of you. You’ll need what strength you have. I’ll keep the corridor.’

Erissa of the white lock, upbearing the girl who followed along like a sleepwalker, said, ‘That’s much to ask.’

The Athenians stood hesitant, mustering their nerve to attack. They must have heard rumors. Yes, Reid knew: for the sake of
what Keftiu remain, she who danced with the bulls and is even now a vessel of Power cannot be let fall back into the hands
of their lord.

They were no cowards. In a minute they’d advance.

Uldin spat again. ‘A Hun and a dozen waddling charioteers. Good odds.’ His gaze came to rest on the woman. ‘I could wish to
die on a steppe where cornflowers bloom, in sunlight, a horse beneath me,’ he said. ‘But you kept your side of our bargain.
Farewell.’

He had taken a shield. Now he planted himself in the middle of the hall, saber aloft. ‘What’re you waiting for?’ he called,
and added a volley of obscene taunts.

Erissa plucked Reid’s tunic. ‘Come,’ she said.

That departure shocked the Athenians into motion. They advanced four abreast. Those behind the front rank wielded spears.
Uldin let them get near. Abruptly he squatted, shield over his head, and smote at a leg where flesh showed between greave
and kilt. The man clattered down, yammering. Uldin had already whirled and wounded another. Blades clashed on his defense.
He sprang from his crouch, straight at a third man, who fell against his neighbor. They tumbled, and Uldin’s sword went
snick-snick.
A spear pierced him. He didn’t seem to notice. Forcing his way into the mass of them, he cut right and left. They piled on
him at last, but nonetheless they needed a goodly while to end the battle, and no survivor among them was ever quite hale
again.

The galley stood out to sea. It had a number of refugees aboard, those on whom Reid’s party had chanced. There’d been no time
to look around for more, though. The hue and cry were out. A patrol found them near the docks, and it became a running fight
– hit, take a blow, grope onward in the dark – until they got to their boat. At that point they made a stand and kept the
Achaeans busy until reinforcements had been ferried from the ship and a hopelessly outnumbered enemy was ground into meat.
Reid was too numb to regret that. And it was necessary, he realized, if the Knossians were to be rowed to safety.

Once in open water they could rest. No other vessel was left afloat near the sea king’s home. Exhausted, they lay to.

Wind was slowly rising afresh. By morning it would whip the fires in the city to a conflagration whose traces would remain
when the ruins were dug up more than three thousand years hence. The next days would see many storms as the troubled atmosphere
cleansed itself. But the ship could ride unattended till dawn. Reid would be the lookout. He wasn’t going to get to sleep
anyway, he knew.

He stood in the bows on the upper deck, where he and Erissa had been that morning. (Only that morning? Less than a single
turn of the planet?) Aft, the dim forms of crew and fugitives stirred, mumbled, uneasily asleep. The hull rocked under always
heavier, noisier blows. The wind whittered hot from the south. It still carried needles of volcanic ash – tossed back and
forth between Greece and Egypt till finally they came to rest – but smelled less evil than before.

Shielded by a strung scrap of sailcloth, a candle burned. Young Erissa lay on a straw pallet. Her older self had put clothes
on her. She looked upward, but he couldn’t tell if she really saw. Her features were slumbrous. The woman knelt over her,
hair and cloak tossing in the gusts, and crooned, ‘Rest, rest, rest. All is well, my darling. We’ll care for you. We love
you.’

‘Duncan,’ said the half parted lips, which had been like flower petals but were puffed and broken from the blow of a fist.

‘Here is Duncan.’ The woman beckoned. Reid could but obey. How deny Erissa the creation of that which would keep her alive
through the years to come?

Strange, though, to hear her tell of days and nights which had never been and would never be. Maybe it was best this way.
Nothing real could be so beautiful.

Dagonas must not know the truth, and wouldn’t. Erissa would speak little about it. He’d assume that tonight she had merely
been struck, and earlier on Atlantis she and the god called Duncan—

The first light of dawn sneaked through scudding ash-clouds. Erissa left peace upon the girl’s slumbering countenance, rose,
and said out of her own haggardness: ‘We’re not free yet.’

‘What?’ He blinked. His lids felt sandy as the wind. His being creaked with weariness.

‘She and Dagonas have to go off in our boat, you know,’ the woman said. ‘Otherwise Theseus might still find and use her. After
that, we’ve paid our ransom.’ She pointed. ‘Look.’

His gaze followed her arm, past the steeps of Crete on the horizon, across the sea which roiled black, west to that corner
of the world whence the Achaean galleys came striding. At their head was a giant which could only be the work of Oleg.

The Russian had built the closest possible copy of a Byzantine capital ship in his own century. Twice as long and thrice as
high as Reid’s, it had two lateen-rigged masts; but today, with the wind foul, it went on a hundred double-banked oars. Its
beak tore the waves as if they were enemy hulls. Decked fore and aft, it bore equally outsize catapults. Amidships a pair
of booms extended, great boulders suspended at their ends for dropping on hostile crews. Shields were hung on frames at the
waist, where the gunwale dropped low, to protect the rowers. Above those benches swarmed warriors.

‘Alert!’ Reid yelled. ‘Wake, wake!’

His folk dragged themselves from sleep. Dagonas alone seemed to have kept vitality. He bounded to Reid and the Erissas. ‘What’ll
we do?’ he cried. ‘They’re fresh, those dogs. They can raise sail if they choose. We’ll never outrun them. And when we’re
caught—’ He stared down at the girl and groaned.

‘We head for the big vessel,’ Reid told him. ‘Its captain is my friend, who won’t knowingly fight against us. I hope.’

The woman bit her lip. ‘You youngsters— Well, we must see. Stay close by her, Dagonas.’

She drew Reid aside. ‘Something will go wrong,’ she said bleakly.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he agreed. ‘But we’ve no choice, have we? And … remember our hope. That time travelers, hovering somewhere
about, will notice a ship that doesn’t belong in this age and come for a closer inspection. Well, here we have two. His is
even more out of place than ours. We
must
get together with him.’

He cast a glance upward but saw only clouds, gray, brown, and black, piling southward into lightning-shot masses that betokened
a new storm. Of course, futurian observers might well have some device for invisibility.

‘If we’re not rescued—’ he began, and faltered.

‘Then we make our way together.’ Both their gazes strayed to the couple in the bows, the sleeping, smiling girl and the boy
who crouched before her. ‘Or we die,’ Erissa finished. ‘But
those two will live. In the long run, I’ve been lucky. I pray that you have been too.’

The oars ground into motion. It was necessary to intercept the dromon before a lesser galley cut this one off. The Achaeans
were widely strewn, in no particular formation – the idea of a real navy would not occur for centuries, now that the only
one in the world was gone – but they were bound to notice the peculiar vessel and its obviously Minoan markings. Closing in,
they would see that the people aboard were Keftiu, fair game.

The deck rolled. Waves splashed over the rails onto near-naked lads, who rowing must push aside bewildered men, huddled women,
wailing children. Wind shrilled and carried the remote sound of thunder.

‘You’re not afraid, Duncan, are you?’ Erissa asked.

‘No,’ he said, and was faintly surprised to note that that was true. He thought: Maybe I’ve learned courage from her.

The dromon changed course. Evidently its captain was himself interested in contact. They were gesturing and hailing on that
foredeck, but their voices blew away and as yet no individuals were recognizable.

However— ‘My God!’ exploded from Reid. ‘They’re loading the catapults!’

‘That’s our disaster, then,’ Erissa said between clenched teeth. ‘They’ve seen our ram and are afraid.’

A ball of flame, tow soaked in pitch and set ablaze, arced from the Athenian. Reid thought wildly: Must be the closest Oleg
could come to Greek fire. ‘Forward!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got to close in – show him who we are—’

The first two missiles hissed into the sea. The third smote the upper deck. No persons remained there except Reid’s party
and the helmsman. The latter yelled and sprang below. Reid couldn’t blame him much. These tarred and seasoned planks were
a tinderbox. Flames gushed. The American jumped down likewise, into chaos. ‘Row on, row on!’ he bawled. ‘And somebody help
me!’ He grabbed a bailing bucket, filled it over the side, handed it up to Erissa the woman.

She cast the water across the fire but called, ‘No use. Another has hit. The wind’s fanning them.’

‘Well, get the young ones to the boat!’

‘Aye. Erissa, awake. You, Dagonas, follow me.’

They joined Reid in the stern. Amidst rampant confusion, only a couple of men noticed him draw the lifeboat in. Tylisson
pushed close and said through the racket, ‘No room for more than a few in that, skipper.’

Reid nodded. ‘Only these two will go,’ he said, pointing.

‘Me, desert you?’ Dagonas protested.

Reid met his eyes. ‘You’re not doing that,’ he said. ‘You’re serving better than you’ll ever know.’ His right hand gripped
the boy’s. His left arm went around the shoulders of the girl, who was coming out of her drowse into bewildered and terrified
awareness. Overhead, the upper deck roared with its burning. Forward, folk crouched and wailed.

‘Erissa,’ he said to her, ‘go. Endure. Know that in the end I’ll call you back to me.’ He could merely kiss her on the brow.
‘Dagonas, never leave her. Farewell.’

The woman briefly embraced her and the lad. They entered the boat. Dagonas stayed troubled at the idea of taking none else
along. But before he could speak further, Reid slipped the tow line. Shoved by wind and wave, the craft fell quickly astern.
It looked terribly frail and alone. Dagonas worked to step the mast. Before long, smoke off the blazing deck hid him and young
Erissa from sight.