I nodded in admiration. Back on the island of the Cyclops, I’d seen him do the same thing, binding a mob of frightened men into a dedicated group with a few words.
The rawhide knot binding Kassander’s wrists and ankles suddenly came free, and as I unlaced the remaining cord on his ankles, he pulled his hands from the net and clutched at my arm. “I’ve got to go, before anyone looks this way. When I’m gone, get away from this spot. Wipe away your tracks. Sleep on the far side of camp tonight. Near the Greeks. I won’t see you again.”
I nodded. “Kassander, I—”
He tugged his hands and feet out of the boarding net and got carefully to his feet, feeling his ribs and wincing. “You’ve helped me escape. All debts are paid now.” He looked toward the camp. “A lot of debts were repaid tonight.” He hobbled around the bow of the Pelagios and vanished into the night.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Revelation
A FURIOUS BELLOW WOKE me the next morning. Ury, of course. He was so angry he was hardly making sense, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was about.
“That kopros-eating traitor! Where is he!” he was roaring. I fought my way awake and rolled over to watch. Ury was stomping across the beach, kicking men awake as he passed as if he expected to find Kassander hidden in a Greek bedroll somewhere.
We had been up most of the night. Desperately relieved to have Lopex back in charge, the Greeks had jumped to follow his orders, incinerating the hacked-up remains of the cattle: hides, bones, offal and all. I had been forced to clean up the puddles of vomit around the camp, scooping them up with a shovel and burning them away to ash in a sizzling bronze pan set up at one side of the huge fire. A disgusting job, but still better than what Pharos and Adelphos had been tasked with, loading the still-pulsing lungs and hearts onto a shield to carry to the pyre. Even cutting them into small pieces hadn’t worked, and several men were kept busy sweeping the burning chunks of organ, flesh and bone back into the fire as they struggled to crawl away.
Dumping fresh meat directly onto the fire kept threatening to put it out, and two other soldiers were kept busy searching the nearby coast in the ship’s skaphis for more driftwood, clutching torches against the moonless dark. The night was almost over by the time Lopex stirred the embers with his sword and declared the carcasses destroyed. “Now get some sleep, all of you,” he added. “Tomorrow we leave. Unless any of you think you know better, of course.” Ury stared at his feet as Lopex’s gaze swept over him.
Now, with the morning breeze blowing away the guilty stench of burnt flesh, Ury had found his bluster again. “The traitor’s bonds were untied,” he shouted, holding up the rawhide cords that I had unpicked last night. “Someone here helped him escape!” I ducked my head beneath my sailcloth sheet as his glance came my way.
A second voice rang across the camp. “Ury!” It was Lopex, standing beside his tent. “I need all hands to break camp. You are to waste no time on the traitor. Furthermore, your behaviour in my absence has disgraced you as a commander. I will no longer permit you in a command position.” Ury opened his mouth to argue but was silenced by Lopex’s fierce glance. He subsided, muttering.
After a breakfast of the gritty, chewy shoots that Lopex had brought back, we were put to work breaking camp. “There must be no sign we were ever here,” Lopex announced. “Every scrap, every piece of shaped wood, pottery or bronze must be stowed on board, all cooking pits dug into the sand and buried. You, boy,” he called to me, “take this shovel and fill in the cess trench.”
I came over to take the shovel from him, but he held his grip for a moment. I looked up. “You helped Arkadios escape,” he said quietly. I was about to protest but he waved me to silence. “I expected you would. Why do you think I had you untied?”
He must have seen my confusion. “A commander can’t always give orders, Alexi. Sometimes he has to work through others.” He let go of the shovel. “Off you go, then.” I headed for the cess trench, wondering. Had I heard an apology in his voice? I shook my head. I didn’t like being used. But like it or not, he was good at it. I frowned, choking the thought off angrily.
The cess trench that the Greeks used as a toilet marked the southern edge of their beach camp. It had been extended a dozen times since we arrived, now winding back on itself like a gigantic dirt snake. Many of the Greeks hadn’t been too careful about filling it in after using it, and I had to work my way along its whole smelly length. It was mindless work, and my thoughts wandered back to the girl I’d met. Phaethusia. I stopped. Was she watching right now? I glanced up toward the near edge of camp, suddenly embarrassed to be cleaning a cess trench, but couldn’t see anyone. I sighed. Even with her doe-eyed timidity—or maybe because of it—I realized I’d been hoping to see her again. Well, it wasn’t likely to happen now.
Someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned hopefully, but it was Palakis, a soldier I didn’t know very well, a younger man with a short, black beard.
“Come quick,” he said nervously. “He’s sore hurt. Slipped over the gunwale, see? Landed hard on the ground. I think there’s something wrong, inside. It’s my mate, you follow?”
I followed him across the camp, threading our way between half-buried cooking pits and stacks of bedrolls waiting to be loaded. At the rear edge of camp, the Greeks were standing in a circle around what sounded like a fight, but Palakis didn’t slow down. “Come on, come on,” he urged me, tugging at my tunic. “He’s sore hurt. Broke his leg, maybe.”
“I thought you said there was something wrong inside?” I asked, confused.
“Yes, yes, that too,” he replied. “But hurry along, he’s poorly, I tell you.”
He led me around the stern of the Pelagios to the starboard side, away from camp. I could make out someone lying in the shade of the hull and covered by a blanket. Only four overloaded spar poles were propping the ship up on this side, and I came over cautiously to kneel beside the injured man. I had just time to wonder what the blanket was for when Palakis announced, a little too loudly, “He’s here.”
The man under the blanket rolled over and whipped it off. It was Ury. Before I could leap back, he had grabbed both my arms and thrown me to the ground.
This was no time for pride. “Help!” I shouted. “Pharos! Deklah!”
Ury smiled nastily as he straddled my chest, pinning my arms painfully under his knees. “They won’t hear you, slave. I made a—” he hesitated, frowning, “a distraction.” He sounded proud of himself. “Palakis, go join the fight. Keep it going.”
My sister’s knife appeared in his hand as Palakis left. “Recognize this, Trojan? Now, I got to thinking this morning. That girl by the well, she was your sister, you said. So if she was there where my brother died, where were you?” His eyes narrowed. “You were there too. It was you that Takis saw on the steps behind my brother. It was you that killed him.”
I shook my head but Ury just smiled, a slow, nasty grin that split his face like a wound. “And I wanted to kill you just for being Trojan. I had no idea.” He shook his head. “All this time, my brother’s killer was right here.” He leaned down close to my face and the knife tip caressed my neck. “Lopex isn’t here to stop me now, boy. I can take my time.” The knife point began to slide up my neck toward my left ear.
As I struggled to get free, I realized something. The familiar wave of fear, the sickening terror that stopped my thoughts— it wasn’t coming. This time, what I was feeling was . . . anger. A cold, furious anger at Ury for terrorizing me for so long. And at myself for letting him do it.
Ury paused uncertainly as he saw my expression change. “Ury?” I whispered, quietly scraping up two handfuls of sand behind his back. “There’s one thing you need to know. Something you’re wrong about.”
Ury frowned and leaned down to hear, as I knew he would. I drew a deep breath and shouted the truth into his face. “It was my sister! Ury, your brother was killed by a girl!” Shocked, he rocked backward and his knees came off my arms for an instant. I yanked them
free and thrust my hands up to grind the sharp sand into his eyes. Bellowing like a wounded bull, he leapt up, clawing at his face. I scrambled to my feet and started to run off, but stopped as I passed a pile of unused spars. Running away would solve nothing. Was there another way? I glanced back, watching him curse as he rubbed his red and streaming eyes. I looked around. We were still alone, thanks to Ury. Perhaps this time I could teach him to fear me.
I picked up one of the unused spars from the pile and ran back with it. He had my sister’s knife, but it would be no help against the longer range of a spar. Ury’s puffy eyes widened as he saw me coming, and he grabbed for the spar beside him. With so few spars propping up the ship up on this side, it was wedged tight, and he braced one foot against the base of the hull as he pushed with both hands. Already bent under its load, the spar snapped suddenly, leaving Ury sprawling on the sand.
Someone behind me scooped me up one-handed and hauled me away from the ship. I turned angrily to find Pharos, but a noise behind me drew my attention back. With one spar gone, the remaining three were even more overloaded. They creaked and bent further, and the ship began to tip over toward us. Ury was trying to scramble out of the way, but he seemed to be stuck. I peered closely into the shade of the hull and realized with shock that his foot was caught, pinned in the sand beneath the hull as it shifted.
He looked up and spotted us. “You! Slave boy!” he shouted anxiously. “Come here! Pull me out!”
For some people I would have risked it, but not Ury. I turned to Pharos, but he shook his head silently, pointing at the last three spars. They were bending like bows, and even as we watched, one snapped with a loud crack, sending pieces of wood flying. The ship heeled further.
“Pharos!” called Ury, his tone panicked. “Help me!”
I looked at the spar in my hand. Surely even Ury didn’t deserve this. I was about to move forward to put it in place but Pharos grabbed my shoulder. “Too late,” he murmured.
He was right. The last two spars, carrying a load far beyond them, snapped at the same instant. With a great crashing and clanking as the storage vessels and plunder shifted in the hold, the ship rolled slowly onto its side, crushing Ury’s legs and torso into the sand. Only his head and one arm were still visible as the ship came to rest. He raised his head to look at me, trying to say something, but collapsed back into the sand.
Spotting the ship’s movement, the other Greeks were pouring around it from both sides as Pharos and I stood together, facing the ship. “Ury’s men started fight, ” he said. “Fight rang false to Pharos. Too much shouting, too little blood. And then Pharos could not see Ury or healer.”
I nodded, overwhelmed by what I had just seen. Should I have tried to save him? Pharos spoke as though he could hear my thoughts. “Not worth saving. Ship needs healer.”
Lopex strode up. “Boy? Alexi! What in Athene’s name is going on here?”
I stammered, looking for an explanation, but Pharos spoke. “Pharos saw. Ury, foolishly pulling propping pole from flank of ship. Trapped beneath as ship rolled. Dead by own hand.”
Lopex looked at the spar pole in my hand and I cursed silently. “Then what are you doing with that, boy?”
Pharos rode effortlessly to the rescue again. “Carrying to prop ship up again. Pharos held him back. Too dangerous. Needing healer more than foolish brute.”
Lopex peered at us both in turn, but Pharos’s expression gave nothing away. I struggled to keep my face still.
At last, Lopex nodded. “I always thought Ury would die in a fight. Or with a knife in his back. I didn’t see this.” He paused thoughtfully. “Come on, then. We need to right the ship.” He strode off.
I turned to Pharos, amazed. “Thanks. That was . . . quick.”
He shrugged. “Pharos told only truth.” A slight smile showed through his beard. “And if some truth unsaid, who is harmed? No one living.”
I nodded. “Ury would have killed me.” Pharos didn’t react. Was he feeling guilty? “If anyone ever deserved to die, he did,” I added. “He was an animal. Like his cousin.”
Pharos’s head twitched and I recalled that he was also a cousin of Ury’s. “Not you!” I added. “Sophronios, I meant.”
Pharos said nothing, waiting for me.
“He killed my sister, back in Troy. At least,” I added, recalling Kassander’s words, “he told me he did.”
Pharos turned toward me. “Sophronios, with your sister?”
“He found her lying by the well and . . . cut her throat.” I squeezed my eyes to keep the tears away.
Pharos shook his head. “Your sister that was, by well? In lower town of Troy?”
I nodded. “She killed his brother. But I was there.”
Pharos looked puzzled. “There with Brillicos, on that night? You?”
“When the Greeks came—” I hesitated, uncertain.
Pharos nodded. “Tell story. Pharos does not mind.”
After keeping it a secret for so long, it was a relief to let it out. “When you, the Greeks I mean, entered Troy, Ury’s brother Brillicos found Melantha in our room. She stabbed him in the neck as he carried her down the steps. But I was watching from the doorway.”
“Ahh.” Pharos breathed a long sigh of understanding. “Then you, Ury was seeking!”
I nodded. “Takis and Deklah saw someone on the steps and thought he did it. It was dark, so they never realized it was me. Ever since then, Ury has wanted to find the person on the steps.”
Pharos frowned. “But cutting of throat, Sophronios said? Not he. Pharos, in same squad with Sophronios that night. Not permitting.”
I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“A liar, was Sophronios, ever since boy. Never to believe. Listen now. Came our squad to square in lower town of Troy. Near steps, we saw a girl, lying dead against well. But pretending, she was. As Sophronios came, she sat up, slashed his nose with knife. Sophronios grabbed it, angry, ready to kill. Pharos stopped his hand. Not killing women, never.”
I looked at him, not daring to understand. “Then what happened to her?”
Pharos shrugged. “Now? Only gods may know. But on that night, alive she was. Alive, running. Sophronios was for chasing her, but Pharos held him back. A woman like that, planning, slashing, escaping, is surely alive still.”
I stared at him, feeling a great bubble of hope rising in my chest. Melantha—could it be true? Had Sophronios lied? I shook my head, trying to clear it, as a shout came from the ship.
“Men!” It was Lopex, standing on the port flank that was now the highest part of the ship. “The wind has died!” I looked over toward him and realized he was right. The onshore wind that had thwarted our every attempt to leave the island had dropped at last. “We must get to sea now, before it returns! Abandon the camp. I want every man to help right the Pelagios and push her off the beach immediately!”
Pharos and I hastened to help. Once the ship was righted and pushed into the water, two of Ury’s swarthy minions were tasked with burying his crushed remains, battered into pulp by the ship’s keel. They hadn’t much heart for the task, or stomach either, and I watched out of curiosity as they scraped the remains of his carcass out of the sand and folded it to stack on a shield, then carried it over to dump into the end of the cess trench I’d left unfilled earlier.
I trailed behind the Greeks as we waded out to the ship and boarded. The wind that we all expected to blow us back didn’t come, and we rowed out easily and caught a warm north breeze offshore. Behind us, only the outline of a couple of half-buried cooking pits gave any hint that men had lived there, and died.
I closed my eyes and leaned back on the rail. Melantha. Alive. Or had she died since? My drifting thoughts snagged on something: I hadn’t seen her in Hades. I’d noticed it at the time but hadn’t seen the significance. We’re drawn to the people we knew in life, Elpenor had said. And I hadn’t seen her. I smiled to myself. Of course she’d escaped. She was a survivor. A fighter too, it seemed. Since Troy, I
had let events blow me about like a dead leaf, while Melantha had been planning, thinking, getting away.
Getting away. That made all the difference. If she was alive, I could find her. If she was a slave, I would free her.
But first, I had to escape.
WORDS THAT MAY PUZZLE YOU
We don’t know that much about the language of bronze-age Greece. In 1200 BCE, the time of the Trojan War, what we now think of as ancient Greece was still centuries in the future. Although Homer shows the Greeks and Trojans speaking to each other on the battlefield, the Trojans most likely spoke a different language. I’ve called it Anatolean, after the region, but nobody knows for sure. Throughout the book, I’ve used classical Greek words and expressions. Who knows? Perhaps the same expressions were also popular five hundred years before, during the Trojan War. Here is a list of the Greek words used, with their English translations:
Akonitos: Aconite. Poisonous root of plants in the monk’s-hood family.
Amphora: A large urn with two handles for carrying and pouring liquids. Smaller than a pithos.
Arachnios: A nickname Alexi creates from the Greek arachne, which means spiderweb. It was also the girl in the famous story of the weaving contest, which Alexi would certainly have known.
Basternion: A litter, or ornate chair on a platform carried by slaves. Reserved for the rich and powerful.
Chiton: A man’s tunic.
Eksepsis: Blood poisoning. The English word “sepsis” comes from the same root.
Cursed by the Sea God Page 15