Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (5 page)

Drinking the offered beer from a two-handled cup, the Kanaqániyan responded, “The dog will not make a decent rower, either. A man with only one good arm cannot handle an oar properly.”

Bikurnár shrugged, sipping the brown liquid through a hollow reed. “I did not tell you that he would be a good laborer, remember. I called him a singer.” When his companion only grunted in reply, he went on, “If you do not mind my asking, why did you take him? Who would contract with you to purchase such a defective item? My friend, Mirurí, claims that he was a king, but I know that he is lying.”

“No, he was no
wanáks
,” Ainyáh agreed, shaking his head as Diwoméde stumbled and nearly dropped the last two poppy jugs. “You are right about that. But he was a
qasiléyu
.”

“A what?” Bikurnár asked, wrinkling his dark nose and brow as much in reaction to the bad beer as the Kanaqániyan’s remark.

“
Qasiléyu,”
the other man repeated, enunciating carefully. “He was a troop leader and commander of a fortress in Ak’áiwiya, next in rank below a king. That barbarian country is north of the Great Green Sea. His people will pay me well to get him back.” He shook his head and spat, as if he could hardly believe it himself.

The slave-merchant’s thin eyebrows rose in surprise, watching the ungainly slave sink down, exhausted, beside the little cluster of jars. Mirurí stood over him, moaning about the small price and Satmarítu’s inevitable displeasure with it. “I would never have guessed,” Bikurnár said, standing and fanning himself with his sweat-soaked wig. “By all the gods, I should never have come this far north. I would have been better off staying in Káush, herding goats in the highlands.
Ayá
, calm down there, Mirurí!” he called out. “I will let you take both of those stirrup jars. Just leave me the poppy flasks.”

Mirurí responded with a long wail, throwing his hands in the air. “The
maas
will kill me when he sees how little I got. I might as well throw myself in the sea right now and pray for the fish to eat me! The least you could do is let me get drunk on the poppy juice before I go home.”

“The
maas
?” Ainyáh asked, suddenly interested. “Mirurí, that is what he said, is it not? Mirurí, did you say that the slave belonged to the village headman?”

“Yes, why?” The Libúwan was suddenly suspicious. His desire to get drunk was instantly forgotten, along with his earlier threat to do himself in.

“I will accompany you to him. There is a matter I must discuss with him.”

Mirurí looked the man up and down with narrowed eyes. “What matter do you have in mind?” he demanded imperiously. “Tell me first. Satmarítu is my older brother. He has no secrets from me.”

Ainyáh refused to speak, though. In fact, his hand went to the short scabbard at his side, and his fingers curled around the wooden hilt of his dagger. “This is between the
maas
and me.”

“
Ayá
, go ahead, Mirurí,” Bikurnár encouraged him. “Take the Kanaqániyan with you. If Satmarítu is angry, encourage him to speak directly to the man who paid so little for his esteemed singer. That way, he will be angry with his visitor, not with you.”

Mirurí began to chuckle, jiggling his large belly. “That is not a bad idea.”

As the two friends laughed easily together, Ainyáh had a crewman drag the fainting slave to his boat in the shallow water. “Take him to my lead ship, Peirít’owo,” the Kanaqániyan ordered brusquely. “Put him under the stern platform and stand watch. See that he does not escape or drown himself in the sea. The rest of you men, find some shade and sleep while you can. If my negotiations are successful, we will set out at twilight. With a little luck, we will reach the ships out in the harbor before it is too dark to see. As soon as the moon rises, I want to be heading north. We will row straight through till morning, steering by the stars. The wind is bound to pick up and carry us the rest of the way. If Astárt is willing, we could reach the big island some time tomorrow night.”

“Kep’túr is farther away than that,” the youthful Peirít’owo argued, but he took his position in the reed boat. The others were too hot and sleepy to press the issue with Ainyáh.

Once in the damp hull of the ship, Diwoméde greedily drank from a half-empty wine-skin. It was hardly better than vinegar and left him so thirsty that his throat hurt. There was not even a possibility of stealing a sip from a poppy jar, either, for Ainyáh had traded the last of them to Bikurnár. Tying the bag of wine closed again, Diwoméde lay down and curled up in a fetal position, cradling his head. He was thoroughly miserable, hot, hungry, his shoulders smarting from blows and sick at heart. He would have wept, but did not have the energy. Sleep, the captive’s only refuge, stole him away in a moment.

Men’s voices and the sound of footsteps rocking the small water craft wakened Diwoméde. Shadows had lengthened and the oppressive heat had begun to moderate. He turned to his back, moaning a little as the feeling returned to his scarred arm. He was sticky with sweat, and felt the urge to vomit. Perhaps someone on the deck above spoke of the
maas
and a guarantee of safety. There was a woman’s voice, too, and a name. Elíssa, was it? No, he must have misunderstood, Diwoméde thought groggily, as that did not make sense. Mélisha, now that was a woman’s name, a good, Ak’áyan name.

“Where will we go after Kep’túr?” a young man’s voice asked, directly above the slave.

Diwoméde was suddenly wide awake and alert at the name of Ak’áiwiya’s southernmost kingdom, the great island of Kep’túr. Sitting up, he strained to hear more over the sounds of men taking up their oars and seating themselves on the benches at the sides of the boat.

“We have been all along the eastern and southern fringes of the old Náshiyan empire, and down the coast of Kanaqán,” the young voice complained. “Every country we have seen, every port we have called at has been devastated, either by drought or from attacks by pirates. Kep’túr is no better, and a pestilence strikes the valleys, there, every summer. Mízriya is overrun with refugees, now. Where else can we go, Ainyáh? Should we head north, to the Hostile Sea? Is that what you have in mind for us? But, I tell you, that is no sanctuary, either. The T’rákiyans say that the northern horsemen are being driven south by floods in the mountains that stand on the northern rim of the world!”

“You will see where we are going, Peirít’owo,” came Ainyáh’s curt reply. “You will know our destination soon enough. Now, close your mouth and take the steering oar.”

The wooden planks of the platform creaked over Diwoméde’s head. Ainyáh’s distinctive accent barked at the rowers, calling the cadence to keep them rowing in unison. The boat began to move.

“Why will you not answer my questions?” the younger man persisted, his voice deepening with anxiety. “Have I not proved my loyalty to you? I turned against my own brother Ak’áyans, did I not? I helped you draw them into the Mízriyan trap. I have followed you around the Great Green Sea for the last four years, now. What more can you ask of me?”

“If you helped me punish the Ak’áyans, you did it for the sake of your own desire for vengeance, not as a favor to me, boy,” the Kanaqániyan answered, his voice heavy with bitterness and contempt. “You wanted vengeance because Ak’áiwiya abandoned your father to his death, years ago. But that is nothing to me. Your father was among my enemies at Tróya. He helped sack my adopted city and he was as guilty of my wife’s death as any other Ak’áyan. As far as that goes, you are as guilty as every other Ak’áyan, too, because you are your father’s son. I owe you nothing.”

“I am no boy, old man, and you know it!” Peirít’owo shouted in a fury. “I am nearly old enough to father a boy the age of your own son! And I say you owe me everything! If I had not vouched for you, no Ak’áyan would have followed you to Mízriya, four years ago. Do not give me that lovesick story about your wife, either. No Ak’áyan forced you to betray Tróya. You chose to sell out your woman’s people of your own free will because you were afraid of death. You are a mercenary, not a lover, Ainyáh. You bear a greater share of the guilt for your wife’s death than I do! I was not even old enough to go to Tróya, much less fight there, and you know that as well as I do, you old sack of sour wine!”

The Kanaqániyan was stung to silence. “Enough of this petty bickering,” he growled. “Neither of us can claim any kind of honor, any
aréte
.”

“Lady
Aréte
died years ago,” Peirít’owo agreed, dropping his voice, and now it was he who was brimming over with bitterness. “
Idé
, I am as homeless as you are. All I ask is that you share your plans with me. You said that you knew of one last kingdom to be had, one final refuge from all this bloodshed and suffering. Where exactly is this new Tróya you promised? Is it in Párpara? Libúwa? Or do you propose to sail west, beyond the straits of ‘Erakléwe to the River Okéyano that circles the rim of the world’s plate?”

Beneath the platform, Diwoméde groaned. Were they sailing into a child’s fable? Or would they really reach the edge of the world and fall off into nothingness? Down they would go, he thought, falling endlessly into the night. He quickly swallowed the rest of the sour wine in the goatskin bag, desperate to dull the hard edge of his misery. The goddess must not have heard his prayers. Muttering snatches of half-remembered song, he lay down again and slowly drifted back into a troubled sleep.

Diwoméde woke from a dream, gasping and bathed in sweat, his heart pounding. He sat up abruptly, raising his arms to ward off blows, and gave a small cry as pain stabbed his knotted shoulder. There had been arrows falling all around him, fires that consumed men and wooden longboats. He had been sinking in the murky waters of Mízriya’s great river, unable to breathe…but no, no one was touching him. Only the quiet sounds of wood creaking above and beside him and the gentle splash of the waves broke the silence. It was dark and he could see nothing. Dropping his painful arm, he rubbed his shoulder with his good hand, blinking away the terror that had gripped him in sleep. That river battle was only a memory and a dream, he told himself. Then he remembered.

He was in the hull of Ainyáh’s longboat, sailing north across the Great Green Sea, toward the southernmost island of Ak’áiwiya. That seemed to be a reason for hope. But what awaited him on Kep’túr? Perhaps Ak’áyan was too hopeful a description of that place, he told himself, as Kep’túr’s former king had spoken Diwoméde’s language, but had long ago been driven out of his kingdom by commoners speaking another tongue and practicing different customs. They had kinsmen far to the east, in Assúwa, subjects of the now-fallen Náshiyan empire. There was no
wánaks
on the big island any longer, no supreme ruler commanding all the petty
qasiléyus
. In fact, most of the men who had once called themselves
qasiléyus
were also long gone. They had followed their exiled king to Mízriya and died, either in the great battle, or later, while toiling in the mines. Now the island was controlled by warring outlaws and bandits. Hardly a fortress or country villa remained standing. Each little village was its own tiny country, in these uncertain times. Diwoméde realized that he was not going home, after all. Still, there would be no great army waiting in ambush there, as there had been in Mízriya, four years before. The shores of Ak’áiwiya’s southern peninsula would be just over the horizon, too. Fear stirred in his heart, fear of hope.

He pushed thoughts of the future out of his mind, returning to the present. How long had he been asleep? Perhaps it was only later in the same day when they had set out. But he felt sluggish and heavy. He might have slept through the whole of the following day and into the next night. His bones ached and hunger made him lightheaded. He lay down again, squirming with discomfort on a lumpy bed of grain sacks. Between the coarsely woven bags, some of the brush that cushioned the hull poked its way upward, stiff and dry. Something sharp tore at the skin over his ribs and he raised up to turn the twig away. His fingers found a small mound of hard kernels alongside the wood. One of the sacks must have torn or come open. He filled his mouth with the dry grain, knowing that it must be infested with insects and the dung of vermin. But he was too hungry to care. Lying down once more, he chewed the hard kernels until his jaws ached. The barley inflamed his thirst as it expanded, absorbing every bit of moisture in his mouth. The sound of water lapping against the side of the ship only made it worse. The water was so near he could almost taste it. But he could not touch it.

Diwoméde forced himself to think of other things. Memories of Ak’áiwiya’s many kingdoms flooded his mind, thoughts of the kings and
qasiléyus
who had once sailed to Tróya to rescue an Ak’áyan queen from captivity. What an army that had been! He thought of the warriors with whom he had once marched across the Tróyan plain, northerners in their feathered crowns,
P’ilístas
who were as much barbarians as they were Ak’áyans. There had been larger contingents from the wealthier southern lands, too. Old king Néstor had come for his last, great campaign, leading his Mesheníyans. Lakedaimóniyans beside king Meneláwo had pressed onward, no matter what disasters befell them, impatient to avenge their queen. Diwoméde’s own
wánaks
, Agamémnon, the mightiest and wealthiest of the Ak’áyan rulers, had been elected to lead them all.