I began to worm through the tangle of sweating, greave-bound legs, belly to the ground. Any soldiers who saw me were too preoccupied with the battle to worry about a weaponless boy. Even so, I took several bad kicks in the side and a painful stamp on the hand before rising to my feet next to the plumed captain of the archers.
“Great Zeus, boy, where did you come from?” he exclaimed, pausing to parry a vicious thrust from a Ciconian soldier in a collarless breastplate, slicing his neck open with the return slash. Hot blood spurted from the Cicone’s neck as he collapsed, spattering my face.
I sputtered but bawled my message quickly in his ear, then dropped and slithered out of the front lines. The second man I spoke to nodded crisply and spun to comply, but when I reached Ury, he stared wildly at me for a moment before he seemed to understand. I slipped away before he could think to send a reply.
Safely behind the lines, I scrambled back up to the stern deck of the Pelagios before Lopex could assign something more. The other slaves were huddled in the hold, but I stayed above to watch the plan unfold.
The first phase was a disaster. As fifty men were pulled from the front lines and climbed aboard their ships, the Cicones seized the chance to push the remaining Greek fighters back down the beach, ever closer to the water. The shouts and screams grew even louder as they approached.
But the Greek bows were lined up at the stern rails as though it had been planned that way, and as each soldier came on board, he grabbed his bow and immediately started shooting. Now I understood why they’d been pulled out: they were the archers.
Arrows from all ships began hissing into the Ciconian ranks like wasps, forcing them to hold their tall bronze shields over their heads and exposing them to the slashing Greek swords. Shooting from above with the Cicones this close, the Greek archers couldn’t miss. Maybe it wasn’t as much of a disaster as I’d thought. Quick to seize the advantage, the defending Greeks halted their retreat and began to beat the Cicones back from the ships again.
Now the Cicones tried a new tactic. A volley of flashing arrows arced up toward us from the rear of the Ciconian ranks, passing over the archers’ heads to land on the deck behind me. Missed. As the Greek archers returned fire on the unshielded Ciconian bowmen, I smirked, but then I looked back and realized they hadn’t been aiming at people.
Most of the arrows had overshot the ship, but several had landed on the deck behind me. Their heads were wrapped in rags and coated in burning pitch, and as they landed on the stern deck, the fire leapt to the wood. My mouth went dry as the flames began to spread. I glanced back at the archers, but they were preoccupied at the stern rail. The on-board water cistern was below decks at the other end of the ship: too far.
The fires were still small, but the dry deck was catching fast. Whipping off my father’s tattered chiton I squatted and began to beat at the nearest flames. The ugly scent of scorched wool filled my nostrils, but the flames were out. I leapt to the second, then the third. It had fallen between the benches and landed on a sack of millet. With what remained of my chiton, I beat its flames out as well.
Panting, I held up the tattered garment. Scorched or burnt through in a dozen places, it was nearly useless. I was about to throw it over the side, but the thought of being naked in front of men like Ury stopped me. I threw it back over my shoulders and wrapped it as best I could.
As I did, the deck lurched violently. Had the Cicones reached the ship? I rushed to the stern rail and peered over, worming my way between the sweating archers.
A glance told me the battle wasn’t going well, at least not for the Greeks. More men had been pulled from the battle, this time to push the ships back off the beach, and the small number of Greeks still in the front line were being rapidly forced back. The Cicones were now so close that I could make out the designs embossed on their breastplates. At least our archers had stopped the fire arrows.
But it was the Greeks who were rocking the Pelagios as they heaved it off the beach. High tide had been just past noon and the sea had drawn off since, leaving the ships stranded high on the shallow beach. I clung to the railing as the men strained at the ropes, making the ship shudder as it scraped awkwardly down the pebbles and into the water.
With a sudden surge, the Pelagios floated free, and Phidios, the thick-lipped rowing master, scrambled up the ladder, panting. “You! Help me deploy the boarding nets!”
I stared at him. What was he talking about? “Oh, for Athene’s sake,” he grunted. “Like this.”
Straddling two benches, he reached under the railing to grab a rolled net of twisted ox-hide and threw it over the side. I looked again in surprise and realized that it was unrolling as it fell, one end firmly tied below the rail. He gestured at the railing near me.
“Now do the same thing on the port side. Get going!”
I moved reluctantly to obey as the remaining Greek soldiers began splashing into the waist-deep water to swarm up the nets. The Cicones, realizing their advantage, had pushed the defending Greeks right to the water’s edge, but with no defenders in the way, the archers at the stern now had a clear field of fire, their bowstrings snapping off shots as quickly as the men could string them. The sudden withering hail of arrows forced the Cicones to a halt, giving the last Greek soldiers time to splash out to the ship. I couldn’t help a small smile at the sight of the plunder from Maroneia scattered across the beach. The Greeks were leaving it all behind.
Lopex was the last to board. The Cicones, after a moment of hesitation, started out into the water after us, holding their shields up to protect their heads. Lopex glanced up toward the mast.
“Get that sail up!” he shouted. The men needed no urging. Having committed themselves, the Cicones were coming out fast. With the mast already in place, the sail was hauled up by its ropes in moments and began filling with wind.
Looking back at the beach in the late afternoon sun, I could see at least two dozen Greek soldiers lying there, dead or dying. Many of them were missing an arm or leg. In the pitched battle, nobody had been available to bind or cauterise their wounds. Three Ciconian warriors were walking along the beach, two kneeling to hold down each dying Greek soldier by his shoulders, while the third stabbed him carefully through each eye with his spear.
“Pull in those boarding nets!” Lopex shouted as he pulled up the centre ladder. This time I scrambled to obey. I didn’t want the Cicones boarding us either. As I reached the stern, I noticed a lone Greek soldier in the water behind us, struggling to catch up with the ship, now cutting a visible swath through the grey water. His helmet and shield were missing, but his oversized breastplate and sword were weighing him down as he struggled to swim. He’d be out of reach of the stern boarding net in a few seconds. I leaned on the rail, watching. Behind him, the Cicones had given up the chase as the ships reached deeper water, and were wading back to the beach.
He was going to drown. His armour was too heavy, he was too tired. I wondered why he didn’t drop the large sword across his back. His head rolled as he started to go under, and he looked directly up at me for an instant, his eyes exhausted.
He was a boy, no older than me. I hesitated. Was there nobody else? But there were no Greeks near me, the archers having gone forward to help the wounded unlace their armour. I wanted to stay where I was, but from somewhere inside me, a deeper voice was demanding that I act.
Irritated, I jumped over the rail and scrambled down the stern boarding net, still trailing in the water behind the ship. As I reached the end, I hooked my arms into it and kicked my legs back to float free. I had never learned to swim, and the feeling was unsettling.
“Hey! Greek! Grab my feet!” I shouted. His head was already underwater so I kicked out at him. My foot clipped his chin and I felt a hand grab my ankle, a weak grip already starting to slip. I unhooked one arm from the boarding net, reached down and grabbed for his wrist. Pulling hard, I dragged him up and hooked his arms into the net beside me. We trailed in the foaming seawater behind the ship for a momen
t as I tried to catch my breath.
From above, I heard Lopex’s voice. “Boy! Why is this net still down?” His head appeared over the stern railing, but his angry expression changed as he caught sight of us. He leapt over the rail and scrambled down the net. Carrying the half-drowned soldier under one arm, he climbed back up one-handed and disappeared over the railing. He didn’t come back for me, of course. My resentment seethed as I struggled back up on my own. When I reached the deck, I was taken aback for a moment. Lopex was kneeling over the soldier, carefully taking off his armour to help him breathe. He looked up and his eyes flickered over my half-burnt chiton.
“Elpenor,” he said, “this is the slave who saved you.”
The boy opened his mouth to speak, but his body was wracked by a sudden spasm of coughing. When it was over, he looked up and gripped my hand weakly. “Pen,” he wheezed. “Call me Pen.”
Chapter 8
“LOOK AT THE SUN!” The navigator waved a hand skyward, where Helios was now creeping down to the western horizon. “And the charts hold no harbours after Abdera until beyond Thasos, another half-day’s sailing!” He stabbed at the sheepskin chart with an agitated finger.
Lopex’s back was to me, his arms folded, but from my seat on the bow deck, I had no trouble catching the navigator’s reply. “At night? Are you mad? How can I navigate when I can’t see the land? And there’ll be no moon until second watch tonight. We could sail right onto a reef and not know it until the crabs are up our backsides!” He struggled for calm. “Look, I know we have to beach away from Ismaros. But I’ll tell you straight, Lopex, I’d rather take on the whole Ciconian army than be caught on unfamiliar water after dark.”
Lopex paused, then gave a curt nod. So just after sunset, Procoros directed us to a secluded cove. High, reddish cliffs rose sheer from behind a narrow, sandy beach, no more than a half-day’s sail from the beach at Ismaros. While the Greeks ate, we spent the evening hauling heavy skins of water from a spring at the base of the cliff to refill the ship’s cistern. It was well past midnight before I was done, too tired even to scrounge scraps for supper. I wormed my way into the tangle of snoring slaves and was asleep in moments.
It felt like I had hardly gotten to sleep when I was kicked awake again to a grey, foggy dawn. I staggered to my feet, still wearing the mangled chiton that was my only garment, but Zosimea didn’t comment as we were set to work making the usual morning meal of boiled millet porridge. The big bronze pots held a lot—back in Troy I’d seen vessels that size used to boil whole sheep—and I was sent for more water with a handful of goatskins.
Ury was sitting on a rock picking bits of last night’s cold stew from under his fingernails with a knife. He stepped into my way as I approached. “Watch where you’re walking, boy!” he growled. My burnt chiton caught his attention. “What did you do, slave? Jump into a fire?” He grabbed my shoulder as I went around him. “Try this one!” He gave me a powerful shove that sent me staggering toward a nearby cooking fire. My foot snagged on a tuft of beach grass and I pitched headlong into the flames.
Snatching up my hands to break my fall, I landed on the goatskins. They sizzled as my weight pushed them down into the coals, and I felt a sharp pain in my knuckles. I rolled frantically out of the fire, wincing. The smell of burning hair wasn’t entirely from the empty skins, and I reached up to beat at my smouldering scalp. Zosimea dashed over with some water in a small green kylix, pouring some on my head and face, then grabbed my hand and plunged my knuckles into what was left. Rolling out quickly had spared me a worse burn, but along with my knuckles, my face and one shoulder stung as though from a bad sunburn. I spun around angrily, knocking the water from Zosimea’s hands.
Ury laughed unpleasantly. “That was clumsy, boy! You’ve put the fire out!”
Heedless of Zosimea’s restraining tug, I snarled back at him, “You brainless Greek barbarian! You should have died in Troy with your brother!”
Ury’s laughter stopped. “What did you say, boy?”
A warning flickered in my mind, but I was too angry to heed it. “You heard me! If I had a knife I’d see you to Hades myself!”
He stared at me as though he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. His expression changed as it sank in. “I warned you, boy,” he growled, reaching for his knife. “I told you what I’d do if you ever spoke like that again to me.”
“You little fool!” Zosimea hissed at me, looking at Ury’s expression. “What did you say to him?” As Ury started toward me, she grabbed my arm. “Go for water, boy, and be sure you take a long time coming back!” She gave me a push that sent me staggering.
From behind me I caught Ury’s snarl. “You get back here, slave!” At least he wasn’t coming after me. Lazy barbarian.
The tan skins that had saved me from a worse burn were now blackened lumps in the fire behind me, so I circled around to grab some others from the hold. Picking my way over the rockfall at the base of the cliff, I made my way to the spring in a stand of scraggly willows at the base of the cliff. I lay down to rinse my burning face and knuckles in the water. It had a strange metallic taste, like blood. Why had I shouted at Ury? Stupid. Just stupid. Even if he had pushed me into a fire. Why couldn’t I control my tongue?
My burns gradually stopped aching, and I rolled over into the grass to watch the clouds scudding across the sky, breaking up the sunlight. Eventually, a slave from another ship came for water, and I stood up to return. Threading the loops on the skins through an ash branch, I balanced the load across my shoulders and headed back to camp. The base of the cliff behind the beach was strewn with rubble, and I picked my way awkwardly across it. It took longer, but at least from this direction Ury couldn’t sneak up on me. I kept an eye out for him as I entered the camp, but he wasn’t around.
Many of the soldiers were awake by now, but Elpenor was still asleep on a scruffy blanket in the sand, a once-fine brown chiton over his shoulders. This was the first time I’d had a chance to see him clearly. He was slender and delicate-looking, with narrow shoulders and smooth-skinned hands, his large eyes set into a small, pale face. A very handsome boy, nearly pretty. Just the type to become the butt of abuse in a camp of hardened soldiers. I realized with a jolt who the Elpie was that I’d heard the soldiers mocking yesterday.
Even in sleep, his face had a pinched, unhappy look, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. His left thigh, poking out from his tunic, was wrapped in a filthy bandage, badly tied and soaked with blood. The bandage was half off, dark streaks just starting up his leg under the skin. I recalled my father once pointing them out on a soldier he was treating. “You see those, Alexias?” he had said quietly. “The Egyptians call them the fingers of eksepsis. They reach in through the wound. If I don’t stop them, they’ll reach straight for his heart and pull out his soul.”
I glanced around at the other soldiers. Everywhere I looked, men were wearing dirty bandages, most tied badly and stained dark with blood, mementos of yesterday’s botched battle. Other wounds weren’t bandaged at all. I shook my head. Greek medicine.
Just then I caught Ury’s gravelly voice nearby, so I took off to dump my water into the pot. As I waited for it to boil, I heard Lopex speaking quietly to someone. “How bad is he?”
The other man spoke. “He’s unconscious. A lot of blood came out during the night. I don’t know if he’ll ever wake.”
Lopex grunted. “Keep it to yourself. It won’t help the men to know their healer is dying.”
Well, that explained why their wounds had been bound so badly. And without a healer to treat him, Elpenor— Pen—would probably die too. I stared into the blackened bronze pot, watching a few bubbles spiral to the surface as the water heated. If the whole Greek army died I wouldn’t lose any sleep. But from the way I’d seen the men treat him, Pen seemed just as trapped here as I was.
Trapped. At the thought, an image of my sister lying crumpled at the bottom of the stairs invaded my thoughts. Suddenly my face was wet with sweat, my heart pounding
. A surge of terror gripped me like a fist. The Greeks were coming up the stairs after me. I had to get out! I glanced around. Greek soldiers on all sides. There was a cluster of small cypress trees just off the beach; if I could reach that I could hide. I tried to run but my legs wouldn’t move. Any moment now the soldiers would spot me. Why hadn’t they already?
My legs unlocked and I stumbled, landing on my knees in the sand. I stayed where I was for a few moments as normal thought slowly crept back.
What had just happened? For a moment I had been right back in Troy, on that night. I didn’t dare think about it, terrified that it might happen again. For a little while I lay curled on the ground, waiting for the shaking to pass, trying to think of something else as the sweat cooled on my forehead.
Sounds from the pot roused me. I stood up, my knees shaky. The water had come to a powerful boil, and I wondered how long I’d been . . . elsewhere. I glanced around, but none of the soldiers nearby seemed to have noticed. Whatever it had been, I was glad it was over.
I’d saved Pen once. I’d be cursed if I was going to let him die now. Even if he was a Greek. I gave the pot an angry stir. The sight reminded me of my father boiling water in his xeneon. A memory surfaced. Perhaps there was something I could do.
Scrounging a torn tunic from the hold, I ripped it into several strips and dropped them into the boiling water. My father had never said how long it took, so I waited a while before fishing them out with a stick and wrapping them in a separate cloth. I dumped the end of a sailcloth sack of millet into the pot and went off to find Pen.
Kneeling beside him, I unwound his filthy, sodden bandage. Fully visible, the wound was even worse, a long, ragged gash through his thigh muscle, the skin on either side a fiery red. It was encrusted with sand and dried blood, and the smell had attracted sandflies. Holding the boiled white cloth with a dry one, I wiped the dirt and insects away. It was starting to come back to me.
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