“Settle in?” Greine gave her a sharp look. “Do you think they intend to stay?”
“Of course they intend to stay. Look at what they have brought with them. Cattle and sheep and goats and…”
“Armloads of children,” Eriu interrupted. “I have never seen so many little ones all at one time.” Her voice was very tender. “Those are colonists, beloved; the first colonists to come here since our ancestors Before the Before. Only good people could make such beautiful music. We must give them the warmest of welcomes, greet them with fruits and flowers and singing, offer them the best of everything we have.”
Greine hesitated. Ierne had been theirs since the time of his grandfathers’ grandfathers, and before. Feared and reviled because they were different—a difference that was their greatest blessing—the Túatha Dé Danann had found the one place in the world where they could be themselves. In gratitude, they had turned the island in the sunset into a paradise. They had been willing to share its bounty with the earlier inhabitants, but these were too primitive to comprehend what they were being offered. They hated the Dananns because they did not understand. And worshipped them too, because they did not understand.
Would it be the same with these strangers?
Or might they become comrades, learning and growing together? Was the long isolation of Danu’s children about to be over?
Greine watched with keen interest and some trepidation as the newcomers began to unload two of the galleys. Gaunt horses were led ashore on trembling legs; nervous, long-maned Asturian horses who carried the hot blood of the desert in their veins. They were to pull the chariots belonging to the sons of Mílesios: wickerwork chariots with timber wheels painted the color of blood, and round shields hanging from the sides. Battered shields with heavy metal bosses.
There was domestic livestock, too; a pair of half-grown bull calves and a small herd of pregnant heifers, plus some white-faced sheep. Every animal had been handpicked for its youth, strength, and quality. The calves would become seed bulls in time. While still young and amenable they would be trained to the yoke and used for ploughing the new land. Black Mílesian cattle provided milk and meat and fine, supple leather. The long-stapled wool that the Mílesian sheep produced was soft and durable.
As soon as the livestock was unloaded, the women began trying to herd the animals into groups. A pack of shaggy, long-legged hounds, happy to be on land again, raced along the sand and shingle, barking exuberantly and chasing anything that moved.
Cattle and sheep scattered.
Anxious women shouted at the hounds, irritable men kicked them aside, overtired children shrieked for no reason at all.
Meanwhile, the third and fourth galleys disgorged a similar cargo of people and equipment. The rest of the Gaelicians took their first tentative steps on what would be their new homeland. Weary but wide-eyed, they gazed around with the expressions of people just wakened from a dream.
When the unloading was complete, the chariots were drawn into a line on the beach. Horse boys motioned to waiting charioteers, who stepped forward and took up the reins.
The ruddy man who had paused to speak to the harper strode to the center of the line. His charioteer greeted him with a salute. Éremón’s chariot was the only one ornamented with rather bedraggled plumes. When he stepped up into the cart, the floor creaked under his weight.
He glanced first to one side and then the other, assessing the mood of his warrior brothers. Donn wore his usual grave expression, and Ír was staring down at his own knuckles, but Éber Finn grinned at Éremón. “At last, brother!”
Off to one side, Colptha was watching the chariot warriors with an expression that Éremón took for envy. Amergin was preoccupied with his harp. Bards had little interest in chariots.
Éremón settled his leather helmet with its bristling horsehair crest firmly on his head, then gave a terse nod. His charioteer cracked a whip in the air, and the pair of bay horses bolted forward as if the whip had slashed them. The other teams raced after them.
The warriors of the Gael screamed at the top of their lungs. They pounded their swords against their shields as they hurtled forward in an outpouring of explosive energy. The charioteers sawed on the reins; spumes of white foam streaked with blood poured from the mouths of the overexcited horses. Noise and clatter, rage and fury! They might have been a hundred, a thousand! They saw themselves as a conquering horde. So did the followers who ran after them. A seething mass of men and women and children, wild with joy at being on land again. Almost trampling one another in their eagerness. Shouting the traditional war cries of the Gael.
With a bellow of martial voices and the thunder of seventy-two hooves, the Mílesians invaded Ierne.
SIX
THE TÚATHA DÉ DANANN WERE SHOCKED.
A warm welcome was out of the question and might prove fatal. With a hasty, all-inclusive gesture, Greine gathered his party and gave orders to withdraw before the strangers caught sight of them.
As far as the Mílesians could tell, Ierne was uninhabited.
Éremón undertook an initial reconnoiter of the surrounding area. Then he went back to the landing site. Before dismounting from his chariot, he raced his team in a wide circle, throwing up great showers of sand to impress the women—who were busy unpacking and setting up a camp for the night. They gave his display no more than a perfunctory glance before returning to matters of real importance. The children were tired and fretful, and there was cooking to be done. A night spent on the beach would not be so bad. At least the earth under their feet was not moving.
Taya, who had no children to tend as yet, went forward to greet Éremón. “Did you see anyone?” she asked anxiously.
“Not a tooth or a whisker of another person,” he told her. “This place is ours. It’s everything I promised you and more.” Seeing Sakkar watching them, he called to the Phoenician, “Amazing, is it not? This land is uninhabited.”
“Amazing,” Sakkar replied drily. He had not told the Mílesians all of the stories repeated in the taverns of Tyre and Sidon. If he had, they might have decided not to make the voyage, and Sakkar was as eager as any of them for a new beginning on the island in the sunset, the island on the rim of the world.
Which he alone knew was populated by someone, something.
He recalled the mysterious inhabitants the sailors had talked about in hushed voices. “Magic people” they had called them. Were they gods? Demons? Incredibly powerful sorcerers—or merely men more clever than those who sought to rob them?
In his previous life, Sakkar had not indulged in abstract musings. Rendered pragmatic by circumstance, he had relied on the strength of his muscles for answers to problems. He could hardly blame Age-Nor for abandoning him. What good was a shipwright who could not repair ships any longer?
Physical disability had forced the Phoenician to develop a better tool: his brain. He was thinking very quickly now.
Sooner or later, the natives of Ierne were bound to make their presence known. If they were more numerous or better armed than the Mílesians, it would be prudent to befriend them as soon as possible. The pretty speech Sakkar had made to Éremón about honor and obligation was just that, a pretty speech. His philosophy could be quickly adjusted. In the crooked streets and dangerous alleyways of Tyre, he had learned there was but one imperative: survive.
Always ally oneself to the strongest side.
Shielding his eyes against the sun with his left hand, the little man surveyed the tranquil face of Ierne. A fleeting vision of the coastal cities of the Levant slid across his memory, obscuring the verdant panorama before him. Tyre and Sidon, Biblos and Acre. Greatest of all was Carthage, built on a triangular peninsula covered with low hills and backed by the Lake of Tunis, the powerful capital of the Phoenician world. Towers, terraces, noisome crowds, and massive stonework hotly gleaming in the ubiquitous sunshine. Blowing sand and billowing dust, clouds of biting insects, shifty-eyed traders speaking incomprehensible dialects. Clever fingers bri
efly slipping into unguarded purses. Thousands of sweaty bodies trying to mask their stink with costly perfumed oils. And among rich and poor alike, the casual cruelty that had exemplified the only life Sakkar knew until fate delivered him to the Mílesians.
Now this. This luxuriously green island. This singular, solitary paradise. Whatever might be wrong with the place, it was better than anywhere else.
His eyes scanned the woodland beyond the beach. What sort of trees were those? Such dense leaves … were there any date palms among them? They surely must bear some kind of fruit. His mouth watered at the thought of fresh fruit. Figs and grapes and sweet purple plums. Perhaps …
When he squinted and tilted his head to one side, he glimpsed what might be a human form among the trees. Then it was gone.
Yet he knew someone was there. He felt the weight of their eyes.
If Sakkar had not possessed a powerful instinct for detecting danger, he would not have lived past childhood. Fortunately, there was no chill on the back of his neck now, no instinctive tensing of his leg muscles, so whoever watched him was not inimical, at least not to him. There was danger, though. He knew it. Danger had come ashore with the warriors and their chariots.
It might be a good idea to do some exploring on his own, without waiting for Éremón and the others. The only person Sakkar trusted totally was himself.
Glancing around to make certain that none of the Mílesians were watching him, he set off for the trees.
The Danann party drifted away from the coast like smoke blown by a gentle breeze. They were in no hurry. Sure of their own powers, they chose to remove themselves from the immediate vicinity of the strangers and await developments.
Only one of them hesitated.
As they observed the strangers, Lerys, wife of Mongan, had noticed a short, swarthy man who stood apart from the others. He held his right arm clamped against his side, and there was a curious asymmetry to his shoulders. The right one was higher than the other, with an odd, lumpy shape. Although it might be a congenital deformity, the shoulder looked as if it had been badly damaged through accident or violence.
She turned around and went back.
When the cold shade of the trees fell upon Sakkar, he drew a deep breath. The air smelled wonderful, yet strange. It made his nostrils tingle.
Perhaps he was making a mistake. The recent voyage had been hard from the beginning and terrifying at the end; perhaps his good common sense was …
A woman emerged from a stand of ash saplings. She was very small and slender, dressed in flowing draperies the color of water. Her heart-shaped face was as pale as the moon; her violet-colored eyes were huge and brimming with sympathy.
What is wrong with your shoulder?
Although Sakkar was looking at her face, he did not see her lips move. Instead, words in a woman’s soft voice sounded inside his head. They froze him where he stood.
Do not be afraid. We mean you no harm. We only want to know if we can help.
And then a different voice said, Here you are, Lerys! I was wondering why you left us.
Sakkar’s teeth were chattering. In his mind he turned and ran back toward the beach faster than was humanly possible. In reality he remained paralyzed, watching slack-jawed as another woman appeared beside the first. On her unlined brow she wore a golden circlet set with glittering blue stones. Like a pouring of glossy cream, her pale hair cascaded over her shoulders and fell almost to her knees.
Sakkar had never seen a queen before, but he knew one when he saw one. She could not be anything else. To avoid embarrassing himself, he clamped his jaw shut to silence his chattering teeth. We never should have come here, he thought. Never, never.
The stately woman turned her glowing gray eyes full upon him. That depends, she responded, on why you did it.
Sakkar felt an inexplicable urge to kneel.
“He is very frightened, Eriu,” Lerys said aloud in the language of her race. To Sakkar it sounded like birdsong and the tinkle of a stream running over pebbles.
Eriu replied, “That is not fear you see on his face, Lerys, or not entirely fear. He is suffering from complicated emotions in addition to his deformity. We can help his shoulder, but I am not so sure about his emotions. They are unlike our own.”
Inside Sakkar’s head, she asked, Were you born with a misshapen shoulder?
He understood these words perfectly—and was dismayed. It was unthinkable that a strange woman could enter a space that was his alone and start asking personal questions! A man should have privacy inside his own head.
But the habit of obedience was deeply ingrained in Sakkar, forcing him to reply. “I was in a shipwreck more than a year ago,” he said aloud, “and the mast fell on me. The joint was crushed. It’s never been right since.”
Eriu rewarded Sakkar with a radiant smile. You are fortunate. Your body will remember what it is like to be whole. Bodies never forget; we need only to remind them.
She took her companion’s hand in one of her own and reached toward Sakkar with the other. He shrank back.
The women did not appear offended. What is your name? Eriu asked politely.
His mouth was dry. “Sakkar.”
Sakkar, she repeated. It is a good name, firm but not hard. Where do you come from, Sakkar?
His odyssey was too complicated to explain, even silently. “I came here with the Mílesians.”
The gray-eyed woman looked quizzical. And who are they?
“The sons of Mílesios.” This still explained nothing, yet she accepted it. I am called Eriu, and my cousin beside me is Lerys. Please stand still for a moment, Sakkar. We will not hurt you.
Her long, thin fingers closed on his ruined shoulder. He experienced nothing, neither pain nor comfort. And yet … and yet …
A peculiar feeling coursed through him like a flood of warm water. Starting at the base of his skull, his skeleton realigned itself. The sensation was one of incredible relief. When he felt the bones and tendons of his shoulder resume their normal position, Sakkar gasped. “How did you do that?”
You did it yourself, Sakkar.
“But you … I … it can’t be…”
Yes it can, said Lerys. Try and see.
He gave his arm a tentative swing. The formerly crippled limb responded effortlessly.
Again, Eriu said. This time use your arm just as you did before the injury.
Sakkar followed her instructions—and discovered that he had regained the full range of motion in his shoulder. There was no pain at all. Impossible. Unbelievable. Yet when he made a fist his right hand was as strong as it had ever been.
“How can I ever repay you?”
Eriu laughed. It was a small thing and you did most of the work yourself, Sakkar. No payment is needed.
“But I must give you something! I am obliged.”
Very well. Explain to me why the strangers are in this land. Do they think to establish trade here? If so, they are mistaken; we do not trade with foreigners.
When Eriu’s gray eyes fixed on his, Sakkar could not lie. What good would it do to lie to someone who could hear his thoughts? “The strangers, as you call them, are Gaels, members of the tribe of Mílesios. They have come…” He bit his lip.
They have come, Eriu repeated, gently urging. For what purpose?
“Conquest,” he admitted. “They’ve left their own land to start new lives here.”
They cannot! Lerys cried inside Sakkar’s head. This is our sacred island. We will never permit colonization!
Eriu turned toward her. Be quiet, Lerys. Anything you say in haste might reveal more than he should know. We must tell the others about this at once.
Because their silent communication excluded him, Sakkar tried to read their expressions. But their perfect features might have been flowers; they gave nothing away.
Can you make him forget about meeting us? Lerys was asking Eriu.
If I take away the memory, Sakkar’s body may forget the healing. Is that what you want?
/> Of course not. Ungifting causes a disharmony. I would not inflict that on him. Perhaps he will think it was a dream, Lerys added hopefully.
Perhaps, Eriu agreed. But storm clouds darkened in her eyes. We must keep what we have learned about his language and share it with the others, Lerys. I fear we may need to communicate with these strangers again.
A sudden wind whirled through the stand of ash saplings, propelling tiny grains of earth that stung Sakkar’s skin. He threw up his hands to protect his face. The wind ceased at once. When he lowered his hands, the two women were gone.
Sakkar took a hesitant step forward, paused, turned around, started toward the beach, then stopped again. Looked in every direction. Nothing. No one—if there had ever been anyone there at all.
But he could not forget those gray eyes.
When he raised his right arm above his shoulder, it still worked perfectly. His body was not any younger or any stronger, but just as it would have been without the shipwreck.
Sakkar sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to the fragrant earth.
Éber Finn saw the Phoenician returning and called a greeting to him. “Where’ve you been, Sakkar? The women are cooking some big blue fish, and it smells wonderful. If you didn’t come back soon, I was going to eat your share myself.”
Sakkar said nothing. He looked dazed. Walking past Éber Finn, he made his way to the campfire blazing on the beach, fed by a heap of driftwood. He held out his two hands toward the flames. He did not feel the heat. All he felt were Her fingers closing on his shoulder.
Éremón was having a similar but less sanguine experience. His wife Odba had managed to secrete herself among one of the Gaelician clans and make it safely to Ierne. She joined the other colonists on the beach and, to Éremón’s alarm, tapped him unexpectedly on the back. He had never been so astonished. When he recovered himself, he accused her of stowing away as a deliberate ploy to ruin his future.
Only the Stones Survive: A Novel Page 5