Cursed by the Sea God

by Patrick Bowman

  He ordered me to keep my head down as well, but delivering food and water to the men at their benches gave me the chance to snatch glimpses of him at the stern. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t doing anything special—just sitting at the steersman’s seat, one hand protectively holding the string around his sailcloth bag, the other clutching at the steering oar. He never slept, and his stare grew more bloodshot as each day passed.

  The men’s spirits rose as the fleet crept nearer to home, the island of Ithaca. Even Lopex, now so sleepy that he could hardly keep his seat, seemed to brighten, while my own concern grew. I had earned a place here, but back in Lopex’s household, would I be anything more than just another slave?

  It turns out I was worrying about the wrong thing entirely.

  The third morning after leaving Aeolia, one of the Greeks, a greying man whose skin had been tanned almost to leather, recognized the coastline of an island we were slipping past. He spoke to the men seated near him, and soon an excited buzz of conversation filled the deck. One by one, other men began to recognize landmarks on nearby islands. We were almost there.

  A noise from the sail made me look up. It was starting to flap, losing its taut shape. Ahead of us, the other ships of the fleet were slowing, their sails losing their curve as well. I risked a quick glance back at Lopex. He was slumped forward in his seat, his head across the neck of the bag, one arm still wrapped protectively around it. After three days and nights awake, he had fallen asleep.

  I bench-hopped to the stern to wake him before the other men noticed, but his long stretch without sleep had left him exhausted. Even shaken, he didn’t wake.

  “Look!” came a shout from Ury, on his bench amidships. “The sail!” The men stared up at it. “Lopex!” he called. “The wind has stopped!”

  Dead asleep, Lopex didn’t reply. Ury loomed behind me. Grabbing my shoulder, he yanked me away and threw me to the deck.

  “Well, well,” he exclaimed. “Now we know why he didn’t want us to look back.” His voice was nearly a purr. “He’s been holding out on us!” He wrenched the sack from Lopex’s unconscious grip and began to fumble at the silver cord with his stubby fingers. “What’s in here, anyway?” he muttered to himself. “Not weaponry or plate—too light. If you’re wasting our time with spices, Lopex, I swear I’ll stuff them up your gloutos and roast you on a spit!” The bag twitched beneath his arm as he tried to unpick the knot. Random gusts whipped at his face and tugged at the sail.

  Suddenly I knew for sure what had to be in that sack. “Stop!” I shouted, scrambling up from the deck and launching myself at him. “That’s not treasure!”

  Ury glanced up and gave me a backhanded slap that knocked me against the stern railing. “Want some, do you?” His eyes narrowed. “Well, boy, why don’t you come here and get it?” His free hand pulled a short knife from his belt. I circled, trying to approach, but the knife tracked me as I moved.

  “Lopex!” I shouted. “Wake up!” The other Greeks had twisted on their benches to watch, but Lopex remained asleep. I feinted toward Ury, hoping to grab the bag, but his warrior’s reflexes were too quick. Nearby, the port steering oar stood beside its empty seat and I ran to unlace it, hoping to use it as a weapon.

  From behind me came a cry of triumph. I snapped my head around to see Ury sawing at the silver cord with his knife. Couldn’t he guess what the sudden wind whipping his beard meant? As I lunged at him, the cord parted and the mouth of the sack billowed open.

  A scream escaped the bag like a hurricane unleashed. Ury was blasted off his feet and thrown through the air into the sail, sliding down to sprawl across the benches below. In the sudden wind the ship bucked like a terrified steed, tossing first one, then a second screaming man over the rail to vanish into the churning sea below. I scrambled up the tilting deck, already slippery with salt spray, trying to reach the sack before it could empty itself. The ship was thrown the other way and pitched me headlong onto the sack. A powerful splash of salt water from the surging waves below broke across the rail, soaking me as I struggled to seal the sack again but without the cord, my hands were too weak to pull it shut.

  “Alexi! What are you doing!” A shout came from behind me. I spun around, still grappling with the sack, to see Lopex, soaking wet from the last wave, struggling to his feet. He stared at the sack in my hands. “What are you doing?” he repeated. His eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”

  “It wasn’t me!” I bawled back over the howling wind, but he couldn’t hear. Snatching the sack from me, he struggled to close it, but without the cord even his mighty grip couldn’t force it shut, and the last of the wind whipped through his hands and out of the sack.

  The ship began pitching wildly, huge waves coming at us from all sides at once. “Oars out!” Lopex called, dropping the sack and making an arms-out gesture. Tumbling back and forth on their seats, the men struggled to obey. “Phidios!” he shouted, beckoning the rowing master to the stern. “Zanthos and Praxy, take your places!”

  As Phidios and the steersmen struggled back across the spray-slicked benches, I felt the motion of the ship change. The hurricane winds, until now dashing about randomly, had chosen a single direction.

  Lopex identified it immediately. “Get that sail down!” he shouted. “The winds are heading home! Furl it now or they’ll drag us with them!”

  The men struggled, but the tension on the sail was too strong to undo the ropes that held it in place. Lopex growled and headed forward, knife in hand. As I struggled to keep my balance, another wave broke over the stern and knocked me over. The steady wind was piling the waves up into the same mountainous peaks that had nearly swamped us after Ismaros, bringing back Zanthos’s words about the sail: It keeps us ahead of the waves; without it, they’d spin us broadside and swamp us out!

  Struggling to reach the sail, Lopex hadn’t noticed. The bow dropped as the Pelagios crested a wave and shot down into the following trough, leaving us momentarily out of the wind. Zanthos the steersman, wrestling with his steering oar in his seat nearby, saw the problem instantly. “Stop him, boy! We need that sail up!”

  I stared at the pitching deck, the benches soaked with spray. Lopex had reached the port stay line, knife in hand. “It’s too far!” I shouted over the noise.

  “You’ve got a good arm, boy! Throw something!”

  I glanced around and spotted the stern fire pot, long since extinguished by the waves. I staggered as I hefted it, trying to keep my balance on the pitching deck.

  “Throw it! Throw it!” Zanthos was shouting. Struggling for balance, Lopex was sawing at the stay line as the ship climbed out of the trough. In a moment we would crest the next wave and the wind would catch us again. I took a breath and heaved the fire pot as hard as I could, aiming for his broad back. The weight behind the throw overbalanced me and I sprawled on the deck as the fire pot caught him squarely between the shoulders.

  He staggered and spun about furiously but Zanthos took a hand from his oar to point at the waves. Lopex glanced angrily over the railing, then drew back, his face pale as he understood.

  Only a day later, I watched him walk back down from the palace of Aeolus, his back hunched against a cold drizzle. It had taken us three days and nights to reach the waters of Ithaca, but swept before the full fury of that howling gale, we returned in a single day and night, bailing constantly to sweep out the water that cascaded over the bows. The winds had died as they returned to their roost in the bronze tower, and as we made the lines fast Lopex had walked up to the king’s palace to ask the same favour once again. From his empty sack and slumping shoulders, the king’s answer was clear.

  I ran down the pier to explain but he threw the empty sack in my face. “This is your doing, you little su’eromenoi!” he said bitterly. “But for you, we would be home now. Was that your plan all along, Trojan? To keep me from my home and family?”

  “It wasn’t me!” I began, yanking the sack from my face. “Ury—” I choked as Ury came up and snapped his powerf
ul left arm around my neck, cutting off my air and lifting me off the ground. I kicked frantically, trying to catch one of his shins with my heel, but I might as well have been kicking rock.

  “I told you he was filth,” he growled. “Didn’t I tell you, Lopex?”

  Unable to breathe, I struggled to pull his arm free. It was like trying to bend a bronze cart-axle. To my horror, Lopex nodded. “You were right, Ury. I should have known.” He spoke up so that the ship’s entire crew, clustered behind us on the pier, could hear. “I hereby withdraw this slave’s hagios.” He turned back to Ury. “Make it quick.”

  I twisted as best I could toward them. “Wait! Stop him!” I gasped.

  Nobody moved. “Puffed-up little koprophile,” someone muttered. “No more than he’s got coming, if you ask me.”

  Ury draped me across the stone pier like a rag doll and straddled my chest. “I’ve wanted to do this since the day I met you, boy,” he hissed, kneeling heavily atop me and clamping a hand over my mouth. I struggled to pull my arms free but he had pinned them painfully beneath his heavy knees.

  “Go ahead, boy. Struggle. You and that sharp tongue of yours. I’ll add it to my collection.” His right hand, lumpy and misshapen with scars, stroked my ear as he buried his nose in my hair and breathed deeply. “Too bad we don’t have a little more time.”

  Thrashing hard, I kicked my legs up to drive my knees into his back, but he just grunted and brought the knife up to my throat. Sweet Athene, was this it? Opening my mouth wide beneath his hand, I bit down hard, trying for a flap of his skin, but he snatched his hand away. He slapped it back over my mouth, but not before I had put my breath into a final, desperate shout. “Greeks! I’m your healer!”

  It didn’t work. Ury grunted in irritation and hooked his grimy thumb beneath my chin, forcing my head back against the pier and exposing my neck. I squirmed as I felt the knife-point. Even as I flailed, I felt my body tense, ready for the thrust.

  “Hold, Ury.” Lopex’s expressionless voice came from behind me. “He’s right. He’s our only healer. You’ll have to keep him alive until we get a new one. Until then he’s yours. Just make sure he can still work. And you, slave,” he added tonelessly, “If you ever speak to me again, I’ll kill you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Land of the Ship Breakers

  “WATCH OUT, YOU sheep-hearted clod!” Yason, another scowling friend of Ury’s, growled at me as I pitched into him on his rowing bench. Ury had tripped me as I came by with a water skin, sending me scrambling to keep from falling between the benches into the hold. I glared back, but Pharos, across from Yason on the same rowing bench, caught my shoulder and shook his head slightly.

  He was right, of course. Since we’d left Aeolia for the second time, nobody would speak up for me, or even to me. Even Pen avoided my gaze, and Lopex acted as if I didn’t exist. Pharos leaned toward me as he set me back on my feet. “Very bad, to be slave of Ury,” he rumbled in my ear. “Young healer must take care.”

  No kidding. “On land, beware,” he added quietly. “Be found never, outside of camp. Ury will not harm while Pharos is near.” I glanced at him, surprised, but he had turned to face back out to sea again as though he hadn’t spoken.

  It was the morning of our fourth day out of Aeolia. The navigator had taken us north in search of the coastline but we had sighted no land, and now, after three hot days of steady rowing, the cisterns were running low. To everyone’s relief, the navigator spotted a low cloud in the distance off the port bow.

  We arrived at an island completely surrounded by high red cliffs that plunged into the sea. Circling it, we passed a tight inlet on the east side, and seeing nowhere better, Lopex had the ships turn and row back to it. By the time the Pelagios arrived, the other ships had already pulled into the small inlet through its narrow mouth, filling it completely and leaving us no space.

  “Just as well,” he muttered, watching their hulls grinding against one another. The navigator brought the ship right up against the cliff edge just outside the inlet, and we tied up to some straggly pine trees growing from the rocks.

  “Ury!” Lopex shouted from the bow. “Take a couple of men and search the island. We need to know who lives here.”

  I ducked into the hold but Ury spotted me. “You! Thief!” he shouted down. “Get up here!”

  Recalling Pharos’s advice, I held my tongue. As I climbed back to the stern deck, a heavy coil of ox-hide rope landed on my shoulders, nearly knocking me back down the hold ladder.

  Ury wrenched me up by my arm. I glanced around and spotted Pharos watching us from his bench. Ury, following my gaze, muttered something and let go. “Get up there,” he grunted, pointing up the cliff face. “Tie that off at the top and drop the end down. And by the gods, if your knot doesn’t hold, I’ll throw you down the cliff myself.”

  I scrambled down the boarding net against the hull and jumped across the gap to the base of the cliff. There were no handholds in the rock, forcing me to pull myself up by grasping at the scrub pines that grew from the crevices, covering myself with their sticky, pitch-scented resin. Back in Troy, I’d never learned much about climbing, but I was small and light, and just here the cliff wasn’t quite as steep. Even so, my hands were red and throbbing by the time I reached the top, my arms dotted with pinpricks from the needles.

  “Move it, boy! Throw that rope down!” Ury’s angry shout reached me clearly from the ship.

  Scattered along the cliff edge were piles of irregular stones. I looped the rope around a large boulder nearby, knotted it with a surgeon’s bind, then added three more for good measure and threw the rope down to uncoil as it fell.

  From down on the stern deck, Ury’s voice was just audible. “Get going, heretic.” So he was sending Deklah first. I was suddenly glad I’d put in the extra knots. Deklah climbed onto the stern rail, tugged at the rope and scrambled up to join me at the top. Behind him came Yason, then Ury himself.

  A steady, dry wind at the top whisked the sand across the flat plateau and into our eyes. Ury set off on a narrow trail that wound away between the windswept scrub brush and scattered boulders. The trail headed inland to meet up with a larger one, a gravel-lined road that took us down into a valley where the trees had grown into a patchy forest. A little distance inside it was a spring beside the road. A low rock wall had been mortared into place around it, creating a waist-high pool that was kept full by the spring inside.

  “Huh.” Ury scratched his head.

  At that moment we spotted a barefoot woman carrying a small amphora on her shoulder, apparently to fill it at the spring. She was short and broad-shouldered, a vacant expression in her eyes. A flat nose covered half of her paste-white face.

  “You! Slave girl! What land is this?” Ury called out, looking at her bare feet.

  She lifted her head and faced around expressionlessly. Her flat gaze paused at us for an instant, but continued past us. As she reached the well, Ury tried again. “Do you understand me?” he said loudly. She raised her head and turned it in all directions, but once again didn’t seem to notice us. Her amphora filled, she balanced it on one shoulder and turned to walk back the way she had come.

  “What sort of imbeciles do they raise here?” Ury grunted, striding forward to grab her shoulder, but Deklah caught his arm. “Wait, Ury. She’s carrying that water back to town. We can follow her.”

  We fell into step behind her. If she heard our tread and Ury’s occasional coarse comments, she didn’t look back but proceeded down the road for a while into a small town, stepping carefully as though finding the path with her feet. At a second glance, it didn’t look like anything I could have called a town. On either side of the wandering dirt road were dome-shaped huts of mud brick. Each had a single door, but no windows or chimney. As we followed the flat-faced girl up the winding road between them, we saw a few other trudging, thickset men and women with the same sightless gaze and broad nose as the girl. Most carried burdens on their heads or shoulders, wrapped in thick cl
oth bundles. Twice we had to dodge aside as a heavily laden man or woman trudged across our path.

  “You know, there’s something very strange here,” Deklah remarked, apparently to nobody. “They don’t even seem to notice us. You’d think strangers would get stares, at least. And they can’t all be slaves, even if they are barefoot.”

  Was he speaking to me? I nodded carefully and tried a reply. “Nobody speaks, either.” Even when two of them met, they touched one another’s faces with their hands and parted without a word. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Deklah’s half-nod.

  Just ahead, Ury fell back to walk between us. “What’s wrong with these people, anyway?” he growled, his eyes darting to either side. “They’re acting like animals, or something.” He caught my glance at Deklah and glared. “Do you know about this, boy? Speak up!”

  I was opening my mouth to deny it when Deklah pointed. “Look there.”

  The road between the houses was coming up on a sprawling, low building of mud brick, laid in wandering courses. Dozens of seams in the exterior wall suggested it had been broken open and extended many times, and newer sections of lighter-coloured brick grew off it on both sides. The few irregular windows were small and high up, clearly for ventilation, not beauty.

  Directly in the centre, two wide wooden doors were flanked by what had to be guards. Their eyes were as empty as all the others, but their faces were hard and hostile. Both wore identical dark leather breastplates and smooth, black helmets. Strapped across their chests were two cruel-looking curved scimitars whose sharp inside edges glittered with thorny spikes. Ahead of us, the girl walked right up to the wide wooden doors, which opened as she approached. The guards didn’t move, and the girl vanished inside.

  “Quick!” Ury hissed. “Follow her!” He sped up to close the gap.