by Laura Gill
“We were told this would be a fair trial.” Aramo crossed both arms over his chest.
“The verdict should not be a foregone conclusion,” Dravan interjected weakly. “Custom states that Knos is entitled to—”
“We have no need to debate this matter further.” Shobai bulled right over him, which he did with everyone he considered inferior. That amounted to more or less the entire island.
Aramo clenched his callused brown hands into fists. “Our chief elder and the accused have the right to speak.” He drew a breath. “No one here will argue that a disobedient wife or daughter ought to be punished, but when she foolishly plays the harlot and misleads the man who lies with her, then what crime has he committed?”
“This is an insult,” Rabbas wheezed, “to our dignity.”
“Since when was insulting a man’s pride punishable by execution?” Aramo shot back.
Knos shook his head in an effort to clear it. Had Sinopi painted herself and played the harlot to get away from her gross husband? Was that what she had done? Knos did not want to contemplate the possibility that he had been deceived.
“Quite right.” The elder seated to Shobai’s right stroked a black beard rancid with the animal fat he used to smooth it down. “Perhaps we can reach some sort of profitable compromise, perhaps material compensation in place of bloodshed.” Knos rolled his eyes. Sarduri always awaited him on the beach whenever he returned from a voyage, in order to nose through the baskets and bundles Knos’s men unloaded, and to palm whatever obsidian blades, beads, and other trinkets he fancied. Because he was head of the influential Seagull Clan, he could get away with his petty thefts. “As I recall, the Bull Clan breeds some very fine cattle.” Sarduri’s teeth, when he smiled, gleamed whitely despite their unevenness. “Let’s say about forty or fifty head of cattle would suffice to restore good relations between the clans.”
“That’s outrageous!” Knos answered sharply. “Not even a chieftain’s daughter is worth that much.”
“We can’t meet that price,” Dravan croaked, “and this council knows it.” Knos did not bother stifling his exasperated groan. A competent chieftain would have argued against extortion, suggested a fairer price, anything but slump his shoulders and admit defeat.
“Why are you even negotiating?” Rabbas’s objection came out as a plaintive whine. “Kill Knos and be done with it.”
Knos shouted, “I committed no crime!”
“The law—” Aramo started.
“Quiet!” Shobai voiced Knos’s own raging thoughts. “Sarduri, your eyes are bigger than your common sense. The Bull Clan obviously doesn’t own fifty head of cattle. Twenty-five head will have to suffice, with fifteen rams and ewes, thirty goats, and a man’s weight in obsidian.”
Abbek exploded, “You didn’t even ask that much as a bride price for your daughter!”
“Ah,” Sarduri crooned, “but we are putting a price on the Dolphin Clan’s dishonor. Surely you weren’t intending to cheat those your kinsman wronged!” He adopted a mask of mock horror.
A tense and anticipatory hush descended over the chamber. Knos began perspiring in that close, rank space. Were they actually contemplating hanging an innocent man? Blue-bearded Marynos, where was his crew?
“Ten head of cattle,” he said, “five rams and ewes, but no obsidian and no goats.” He did not care that he lacked the authority to barter with the clan’s collective property, because it was obvious to him what Shobai and his cronies were trying to do. Not only was his life at stake, but the entire Bull Clan’s future, and Dravan, that useless goat’s asshole, could not be relied upon to help him. “That’s a fair price for a chieftain’s daughter.”
Shobai tilted his head, his eyes shiny and cold as the precious obsidian Knos brought back from Melos. “The insult was very great.” He gestured to Rabbas. “My son-in-law is now without a wife and his honor. How can he hold up his head? Where will he find a bride to replace my daughter?”
Shedding his triple chins would go a long way toward easing the burden of holding up the man’s head, Knos reflected sourly. As for a wife, Rabbas needed a nursemaid, not a broodmare. “Sinopi insulted you, Rabbas. The woman on the waterfront never told me her name. She didn’t look anything at all like your wife. Please, if I did any injury, I never...”
Rabbas looked away.
“Do you enjoy your life, Knos?” Shobai asked maliciously. “Is it such a sport with you, seducing and despoiling other men’s wives?” Since he had begun speaking, he had not twitched a muscle, but sat there regarding his prey with viperous concentration. “Either we hang or stone you for your adultery, or you pay the thirty head of cattle.”
Knos opened his mouth, but it was Abbek’s voice which argued, “It was twenty-five a moment ago!”
The ghost of a smile flitted across the chieftain’s mouth. “And in another moment it will be thirty-five, plus twenty rams and ewes, forty goats, and twenty-five bushels of your barley crop.”
Aramo raised a hand as much to silence his outraged kinsmen as to speak. “And we contend that this charge of adultery is absurd. Why haven’t you objected, Dravan?” The Bull Clan chieftain looked noncommittal. Dravan never took so much as a piss without permission from the other elders. Aramo glared at him, then continued, “Everyone knows the law. It’s only adultery when—” Shobai tried to overrule him; Aramo simply raised his voice. “When a man’s wife and her lover are discovered in the act! In the act!” He enunciated each word by shaking his forefinger. “And then it’s Rabbas who gets to execute them, not you, Shobai. My brother never committed adultery with Sinopi because he never realized who she—”
“ENOUGH!” Shobai hollered. “You will all pay for this!” Sarduri and the elder of the Goat Clan had to restrain his arms. Had the ancient traditions not prohibited violence in the presence of the gods, there might have been a brawl.
Aramo regarded the elders coolly. “That’s what you really want, isn’t it?” he said, once they got Shobai seated and quiet once more. “You’ve been stealing our livestock and goods, and encroaching on our fields for the last ten years. When we complain, nothing is done. When by chance the offenders are caught—and somehow they always manage to be Dolphins or Seagulls, imagine that!—they’re rarely punished. So I say now, how dare you use Knos and your slut daughter as a pretext to continue robbing us.”
Knos heard Divos mutter a warning, something about Aramo watching his big mouth. And yet, his brother was right. How many times had Knos returned from a voyage to hear about another theft, another boundary dispute, another attempt at intimidation?
“This is a question of honor!”
Abbek once again added his voice to the clamor. “Honor? Pah! You avenged your clan’s honor this morning when you hung your daughter.”
The tension was becoming unbearable. Knos was by now spoiling for a fight. When would his men arrive, and overpower the Dolphin ruffians holding him? To accuse him of lying with another man’s wife—well, he technically was guilty of that—but to threaten him with death as an excuse to extort his clan? That was fucking outrageous. Would he beat Shobai’s skull in first, or his son’s? Or perhaps he should start with Dravan. That was the only decision he wanted to have to make in the next few minutes.
“Please! Let us work this out as reasonable men!” Rauda had not bothered opening his mouth until now; he was so superstitious that he did not think an ordinary fellow like himself ought to speak in the presence of the gods or clan totems. “Please! Shobai, would you accept an offer of ten head of cattle, five rams and ewes with their lambs, eleven goats, an infant’s weight in obsidian, and a daughter of the Bull Clan to replace the wife Rabbas has lost?” His voice, squeaky at first, gained confidence as he realized that the gods were not going to strike him down for opening his mouth. “It would come from our immediate kinsmen’s holdings, so the entire clan need not be punished for any wrongdoing Knos might have committed.”
“No,” Knos growled. Not on those terms, and certainly n
ot by admitting to a crime which he felt he had not committed. Rauda threw him a desperate look, trying to shush him.
Shobai spat contemptuously into the hearth fire. “Our family’s honor is worth more than that insignificant sum. Don’t insult us with your offer of a lowly peasant woman.” Rabbas’s lower jaw started to tremble, setting his treble chin to jiggling; he would not meet anyone’s gaze. Sinopi had been an exceptionally lovely girl. Rabbas must have been absolutely besotted with her.
Dravan raised a hand to speak. “Let’s assume,” he began, “that we surrender Knos to you for execution. Then would you—?”
“WHAT?” Aramo and Abbek roared simultaneously.
Knos lunged forward, snarling, only to have Divos’s ruffians wrench him back with such force that his arms were almost dislocated from their sockets. Then a man’s hand savagely cuffed his right ear, agitating the bruise Hariana had left there the night before, and Divos said menacingly, “Go ahead. Just give me an excuse to beat you senseless.”
Dravan, meanwhile, seemed unperturbed by the outburst. “I want to hear the answer.”
“You’re a fucking traitor to the clan,” Abbek spat.
“Well, let’s see...” Shobai narrowed his eyes, clearly toying with them. “We could execute Knos now and be reconciled for, say, thirty head of cattle, thirty rams and ewes with their lambs, twenty-five goats, ten pigs, and a man’s weight in obsidian and alabaster. You may keep your daughters.”
Dravan’s face fell. “I see.”
The entire right side of his face throbbing, Knos glared at his chieftain. “Disappointed, you bastard?” Divos made an unpleasant sound in his throat, which might have been a prelude to another beating but for the threatening stance of Aramo and Abbek, who were clearly done cooperating. Rauda looked as though he wished he were anywhere else but there.
Dravan ignored them all. Who in all the seven hells he think he was, anyway? His power came only at the clan’s sufferance. “What must be done,” he said ponderously, “will be done.”
What in the seven hells did that mean? Knos wondered. Aramo gave voice to those thoughts, and more, saying, “Your word alone isn’t enough, and you certainly don’t speak for the rest of us in this. Divos, there’s not going to be another execution this morning, so back away from my brother.”
“Go fuck yourselves,” Divos retorted, and his brutes chortled. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“No,” Shobai agreed, “he does not.” Exchanging a conspiratorial smile with Rabbas and Sarduri, he added, “Knos is an accused criminal. We cannot risk his escaping judgment while you and your clansmen hatch some scheme to have him flee aboard his ship and therefore deprive us of what is owed. Divos will stay right where he is, you will take your places, and we will settle the question right here and now, before the gods.”
*~*~*~*
After his release, Knos’s kinsmen had ushered him home so he could wash the blood from his swollen nose and get some breakfast. He was not hungry, but asked for pomegranate wine, which his kinsmen refused to give him. “It’ll put you in a worse mood,” Rauda said. “Have some beer instead.”
Aramo assumed the unpleasant duty of explaining what had happened to his wives, who did not take the news well. When it came to the honor price, Hariana screeched, “Is Shobai mad? His slut daughter’s not worth that much and neither are you.”
Urope balled her fists on her broad hips. “Seven hells, you stupid man, they should’ve just cut off your cock and—?”
“QUIET!” Knos roared. He had not spoken since before leaving the sacred hearth, since agreeing to the fine. He had let his brother and first cousin do the negotiating, because he had not trusted himself to stay rational. “I don’t want to hear another fucking word from any of you.”
Then he sat down, drew the obsidian dagger Divos had reluctantly returned to him, and began twirling it round and round on the hearthstones, scratching the dots of black and ocher with which his wives had decorated the plastered edges. Sometimes he stopped long enough to drink his beer and pour himself refills from the jug beside him. His limbs trembled against the effort of suppressing an urge toward violence—toward his wives, toward Shobai and Divos and Dravan and Rabbas, and yes, especially toward that imbecile slut who had already paid with her execution.
He was not going to take this. Something had to be done. A feverish chill shivered through him.
Rauda draped a blanket of well-worn goat hair around his shoulders. “You should lie down.”
Knos shook his head. Rest was the absolute last thing he could do right now. Last night, he had closed his eyes in the shadow of his vessel and they gotten him, jumped upon and bound him like a dangerous criminal, and then dragged him to that farce of a hearing. No matter what agreement had been reached, no matter what oaths had been sworn, he was not going to accept the blame for the wholesale theft of the clan’s wealth when his misdemeanor had been but a pretext. Shobai might talk about his family’s honor, but Knos had his honor, too, and this morning that honor had been trampled upon, violated, disregarded, not only by his enemies but by his own clan chieftain.
“We’re leaving.” His muttered declaration broke through the tension of an enforced silence.
Aramo glanced over at him. “What’s that?”
“We’re leaving.” Knos raised his voice. “Packing up our goods and livestock and leaving Rhodes.” He ignored the utterances of alarm from his wives, who were attending to the afternoon meal. No, he had not consulted them, had not thought to ask anyone’s permission after the liberties everyone had taken with his future. He had not even stopped to consider what he thought he was doing, when he had never cared that much about the clan’s livelihood beyond what his voyages brought to it. Yet once he explained the situation to his kinsmen, why they could not continue living as they had, why their honor and their children’s honor, and their very futures were at stake, yes, they would surely come around.
Urope started to interject, when Aramo signaled to her that he would handle it. “Knos,” he said quietly, persuasively, “you’re not thinking straight. Rest. We can discuss this again tomorrow, once you’ve rested and—”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.” Did he, though? As a sailor, yes, he knew where to go and how to get there; that was not the problem. But there was too much turmoil inside. He could not control the little quaver in his voice, and when he set down the obsidian knife and held his hand flat, he found himself trembling all over. Still, he had to continue, to fight, because Shobai was even now sending his clansmen around to seize payment.
“Are you drunk?” Fidra brashly inquired.
Knos glared at her. “I’m dead sober and mean what I say.”
Rauda started to say something, only to be interrupted by a knock on the threshold. Abbek, anticipating trouble, drew the stone axe thrust into his waistband and went to investigate, drawing aside a leather covering to peek through the main room’s single narrow window. “It’s Menuash,” he said over his shoulder, “and it looks like most of the ship’s crew’s come with him.”
Menuash, his second cousin and ship’s first mate—a sign from Marynos. “Let him in,” Knos rumbled, “but nobody else.” His men knew his moods too well; they would read his weakness.
Abbek pulled back the ox-hide curtain. Knos heard a chorus of agitated male voices; his crewmen were outside calling for him—and for the opportunity to instigate a brawl with Divos’s ruffians.
“There’ll be no fighting unless the captain orders it.” Menuash pushed his way across the threshold.
“Then give the order, sir!” a young sailor shouted into the house. Where in the seven hells had Parros and his friends been an hour ago, anyway? Knos rubbed his temple, squeezing the flesh between his thumb and two fingers.
A chorus went up among the sailors. “Come out, Knos!”
“They said you were hurt.”
Aramo called out, “He’s fine!”
“We’ll get them for you!”
As much as he would have liked to lead a retaliatory party against Divos and his companions—and gods knew how he would have leapt at the chance a quarter-hour ago—Knos knew that violence would only exacerbate the situation when there was a simpler, more effective way out. “Go home,” he mumbled. “Leave me be.” Menuash had to reinforce the order, giving a little shove to those sailors too agitated or slow to obey.
“You look like death.” Menuash gave Knos an appraising look. “We would’ve been there, but just before dawn there were scores of men from the Dolphin, Octopus, and Seagull clans barring our doorways, threatening our women and children. Dravan sent word ordering us to cooperate. We’d no idea what was going on until a quarter of an hour ago.”
So Dravan had conspired with Shobai and the others to put Knos and his immediate kinsmen at a disadvantage, but for what purpose? The Bull Clan gained nothing but dishonor and diminished substance through this morning’s extortion.
Aramo quickly explained the situation while Menuash accepted a bowl of beer. “It’s an outrage. Knos wants to leave Rhodes, but...” Aramo did not go so far as to claim that there was no point in going, but Knos caught the insinuation in his voice, and he bristled. Had his brother yielded so readily, accepted the punishment so quickly, the moment the oaths were sworn?
“There’s some good land to the southwest, just past Kasos. You remember, Menuash?” The younger man’s high black topknot bobbed as he nodded; the shark’s teeth braided into his hair and his prominent hooked nose, he resembled an exotic predatory bird. “We’ve landed there a few times, found some good springs, saw no people.”
“You’re asking us to come with you?” Rauda asked. “This is our home, Knos, where our ancestors are buried. No, it’s too sudden.”
“Maybe, but your troubles wouldn’t end with my going,” Knos answered. “This business with Shobai’s daughter was a pretext to commit another theft, to extort us.” He challenged his wives with a defiant stare; they could curse and claim whatever they wished, but he had not maliciously set out to insult them. His weakness for women was simply his way. “Either we let these hostile clans bleed us dry, or we take our fortunes into our own hands while we’re still able, and leave these shores. Our ancestors did it before, left their homelands in the east when land grew scarce, and so can we. We’ll petition our forefathers to bless this venture.”