Gods and Warriors

by Michelle Paver

  Did it count if you pretended you were grieving for your uncle, when really you were mourning your friend? Would the gods still hear you?

  Right up to the moment when he and the girl had found the scrap of bloodstained tunic on the shore, he’d kept hoping that Hylas was alive. Even afterward, he’d found it impossible to believe. Hylas dead? Never coming back?

  The fire crackled and spat as it devoured the oil-soaked driftwood and started on the body.

  After yesterday’s cloudburst, the sky was clear, the Sea as smooth as milk. Telamon stood blinking in the sunlight. He felt the greasy smell of burning flesh steal down his throat. Turning his head, he watched the wavelets sucking sadly at the pebbles. He thought of Hylas’ body lying somewhere out to Sea, with no rites to help his spirit on its way.

  Scooping up a handful of hot ash, he smeared it on his face. It stung, but he needed that. He needed to punish himself. Everything was his fault. If he hadn’t met Hylas at the wreck, Kratos would still be alive. And so would Hylas.

  From a distance, the men were watching him with new respect. They’d seen him prize the dagger of Koronos from his uncle’s cold, dead fingers, and now they saw him smearing ash on his face. They approved. This was how it should be: the young kinsman taking over from the dead.

  Telamon knew he should be proud. After all, he’d regained the dagger, the heirloom of his House. Instead, he felt ashamed.

  It didn’t help that until they reached Lykonia, he was supposedly in charge. He knew he wasn’t up to it, and he suspected that the men did too. A boy of thirteen summers, leading warriors twice his age?

  Yesterday Ilarkos, his uncle’s second in command, had asked if they should burn Kratos’ body according to the rites he’d followed, or take it back to Lykonia for burial in the usual way, at the Place of Ancestors. Telamon hadn’t known what to do. He hated the idea of burning a corpse, just as he hated the rites his uncle had practiced; but he daren’t say so, and in the end, Ilarkos had made the decision for him.

  “So now you’re a hero,” said a sneering voice behind him.

  Telamon bristled.

  The Keftian girl looked like a bedraggled little hawk. She was filthy. Although she’d been overjoyed to see the Egyptian slave whom her mother had sent with them to look after her, she’d refused his offer of a clean tunic; and she’d scraped back her hair, as if to draw attention to the scar that scythed across her cheek like a new moon.

  “Go away,” snarled Telamon.

  “How does it feel?” she said sweetly. “You’ve got your precious dagger back, and Hylas is dead. Are you proud of yourself?”

  “Proud?” He glanced around to check that no one could hear. “He was my best friend!”

  The pyre collapsed in a flurry of sparks. The girl regarded him with narrowed eyes. “I suppose you know that your kinsmen burned a whole valley?”

  “Shut up!”

  “I sent my slave to take a look. He says it’s already turning green. Soon it’ll be as if they’d never made their sacrifice.”

  Telamon strode off down the shore, but to his fury, she followed. “What’s going to happen to me?” she said.

  “We’ll take you back to Lykonia,” he muttered. “That’s where your mother is, she can deal with you.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. I don’t care if she did strike a bargain with my father, I’m not mating with you.” Pointedly, he stared at her scar. “You’re too ugly.”

  She barked a laugh. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

  He picked up a stone and hurled it at the Sea.

  Near the ship, Ilarkos was sacrificing a pig to the Earthshaker, in the hopes of gaining a safe crossing to Lykonia. It put Telamon in mind of the first sacrifice he’d ever seen. He’d been four summers old, and astonished by the jet of blood spurting from the ram’s fleecy throat. “Will it work?” he’d asked his father, and Thestor had squeezed his hand and said, “That’s for the gods to decide.”

  Now, as Telamon watched the greasy black smoke twisting skyward, that struck him with the force of a revelation. Of course, he thought. Everything is the will of the gods. Why didn’t I see that before? It’s because of them that I’ve been torn between Hylas and my kin. They decreed what I did. I had no choice.

  No choice, he thought. He felt a little better. It meant that none of this was his fault.

  He made a promise in his head. Soon as I get home, I’m going to the meeting rock on the Mountain. I’m going to sacrifice a calf for Hylas and Issi.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s the right thing to do.”

  He’d spoken aloud, and he braced himself for another sneer from the girl; but she wasn’t listening. She was shading her eyes and pointing at the shallows, where the ship lay at anchor.

  “Look,” she murmured. “The dolphin’s back.”

  Ilarkos came up, with some of the men. “It’s the same one that came for the Outsider,” he told Telamon. “We don’t know what it means.”

  “I’ll find out,” the girl said coolly.

  Telamon snorted. “No, you won’t! If I let you anywhere near the Sea, you’ll try to escape—”

  “Then tie me up,” she snapped. “Tie me to that tree on the point and set sentries to watch from the ship, if you’re scared I’ll get away.”

  He flushed. “I’m not scared. I just don’t trust you.”

  She drew herself up: a scrawny girl in a filthy tunic, but with an authority that made the men stare.

  “You can’t stop me talking to a creature of the Goddess,” she told Telamon. “I’m Keftian. We know the dolphin speech.”

  When Telamon didn’t reply, she addressed the men. “If you don’t let me talk to that dolphin—alone—the Goddess will be displeased. And then you’ll never get home.”

  41

  “Hylas!” whispered Pirra. “Are you there?”

  Leaning out over the rocks as far as her tether would allow, she watched Spirit swim past. A short distance away, the guard on the ship was watching too, fingering his amulet and muttering a charm. She gave him a cold stare and turned her back.

  Below her, on the side of the point that the guard couldn’t see, a fair head emerged from a clump of junipers. She sagged with relief. “You are alive! I found a pebble with a mark on it, and I guessed that you’d left it as a sign, but I wasn’t sure. Are you all right?”

  “Are you? They’ve tied you to a tree!”

  “That’s just to stop me trying to escape.”

  He made to climb up, but she warded him back. “Stay where you are, they’re watching from the ship.”

  “They won’t see me, I can—”

  “I mean it! It’s not worth the risk.”

  He scowled. He was bare-chested; what was left of his tunic was tied around his hips. He looked exhausted. Pirra wondered what had happened with Kratos on the wreck, and whether Hylas would tell her if she asked.

  They exchanged glances, and she felt the constraint between them. It was as if everything they’d been through together hadn’t really happened.

  I’m back where I started, she thought bitterly. An object to be pushed about by my mother, like a piece on a gaming board.

  Would Hylas understand if she told him, or would he growl at her to be glad that she had enough to eat? Suddenly he seemed a stranger: a sharp-eyed Lykonian, only out for himself.

  “Were you alone when you found the pebble?” he asked.

  “No.” She told him about her and Telamon finding the bloodstained scrap of tunic, and her guessing that Hylas had left it on purpose; then spotting the pebble nearby, with its spiky scratched-on mark. “You took a chance that I’d know it was a hedgehog,” she said.

  “Did Telamon see it?”

  “No. I made sure of that.”

  “So he thinks I’m dead.”

  She nodded. “When he saw the tunic he sat down and cried. The odd thing is, I think he meant it.”

  Hylas’ scowl deepened. Then he said,
“It was you who woke the Earthshaker. Wasn’t it?”

  She hesitated. “I couldn’t think how that triton shell had gotten all the way from the caves. Then I realized. It must have been Spirit.”

  They watched the dolphin swim past them again, then veer toward the ship, where men were leaning over the side, dangling offerings of fish. Pirra remembered the day when she’d taken hold of Spirit’s fin and flown with him through the Sea. All over now, she thought. She felt sick.

  “They’ve got their dagger back,” said Hylas between his teeth.

  “But they didn’t get you. While you live, you’re a threat. The Oracle—”

  “I don’t care about the Oracle. All I care about is finding Issi.”

  “It’s the words of the Goddess, Hylas, it means something. It all comes back to Her. She sent you here—”

  “For what?” he burst out with such violence that she hissed at him to be quiet; but the guards were busy watching Spirit snapping up mackerel.

  “For what?” Hylas whispered fiercely. “I’m back where I started—no sister, no friend, no nothing! Even if I can get off the island, what then? I’ll be alone on a raft in the middle of the Sea, just like before!”

  Pirra twisted off her last gold bracelet and tossed it down to him. “There,” she said crossly. “If a ship comes by, you can pay for your passage with that—and then you won’t need your wretched raft.”

  Doubtfully, he turned the bracelet in his fingers. “But would it get me as far as Lykonia?”

  “Hylas, it’s gold, it’ll take you all the way to Egypt if you want, and you’d still have enough left to buy the whole ship! Chop it in pieces. A scrap the size of an olive will get you to Lykonia.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said shortly. What good was gold? It couldn’t buy freedom. A wave of dejection swept over her.

  Two warriors were starting toward her across the rocks. With them was Userref, who’d just seen that she’d been tied up, and was looking outraged.

  “They’re coming for me,” said Pirra. “You’d better hide.”

  “What will you do?” asked Hylas.

  She swallowed. “Try to avoid whatever my mother’s planned for me. Try to escape. Again. What about you?”

  “Find a way back to Lykonia. Find Issi. Find someplace where we can be free of the Crows.”

  “That’s a lot of finding,” said Pirra.

  He gave a lopsided smile. “For you too.”

  “Hide,” she urged.

  But instead of hiding, he started climbing toward her. “I just remembered, I found this. Quick, take it!”

  Straining at her tether, she reached down and snatched it: a small slate-colored feather, banded with bluish gray.

  “It’s a falcon’s,” he said. “I found it in an inlet. I thought it’d make a good amulet.”

  “It’s the best thing I’ve ever had,” she mumbled. “And I’ve got nothing for you.”

  He flashed her a grin. “Pirra, you’ve just given me a lump of gold!”

  “No, I mean an amulet.” The awful thing was, she did have one for him, but she’d left it in the camp. Userref had brought back one of the lion’s claws from the burned valley, and she’d been planning to give it to Hylas; but now it was too late.

  She glanced down to find him watching her through his tangled fair hair. “You escaped once,” he said. “You’ll do it again.”

  She tried to reply, but her throat had closed.

  “You’re brave and you don’t give up. You’ll do it, Pirra.”

  She forced a smile. “Good luck, Hylas.”

  “Good luck.”

  She wanted to ask if he thought they’d ever meet again, but Userref and the warriors had almost reached her; and when it was safe to look back, Hylas had gone.

  Long after the ship had carried off Telamon and Pirra, Hylas remained watching on the shore.

  A brisk wind had sped them on their way, but now it had sunk to nothing, and the island was hushed. Not even a gull glided over the water. There was no sign of Spirit. He was probably off hunting with his pod.

  Hylas told himself that this was good, it meant that Spirit was happy; but he couldn’t feel it. He knew now that he and Spirit couldn’t be together. The dive had proved it. Spirit had tried to show him his beloved Sea, and it had nearly killed him.

  Did Spirit know it too? It was impossible to tell. Apart from that brief appearance by the ship, the dolphin hadn’t come near him.

  Hylas found Telamon’s supplies exactly where he’d said, under a sycamore tree with a broken branch. There was a full waterskin, a tunic, a belt, and even a plain bronze knife; also a goathide sack crammed with pressed olives, hard cheese, and salted mackerel. Telamon had kept his word after all. Hylas didn’t want to think about that.

  Trudging north, he came to the crack the Earthshaker had opened in the shore. There was no trace of the wreck. Where it had been, the Sea broke tirelessly.

  In his mind, Hylas heard Kratos’ terrible gurgling laugh. What had he shouted in that strange, harsh tongue? Why had he cried You’ll never do it now?

  After bridging the crack with driftwood, Hylas made his way over the headland, then past the wreck that he’d salvaged with Pirra. He didn’t want to think about her; or about what lay ahead: setting off alone on the raft, and saying good-bye to Spirit.

  It turned out that he wouldn’t be getting anywhere near the raft, as it was heading briskly out to Sea. The man who’d stolen it had fitted it with a mast and a scrap of salvaged sail, although this now hung limp in the windless calm. He stood with his legs braced and one hand on the steering-paddle, letting the current carry him past the rocks. He’d chopped off his hair to disguise himself from the Angry Ones, but Hylas knew him at once.

  “Akastos!” he shouted as he splashed into the shallows.

  Akastos turned, and for a moment his face went still; then he gave a shout that might have been laughter. “Flea! You survived!”

  Hylas was furious. “No thanks to you! That’s my raft! Bring it back!”

  Akastos gave another almost-laugh and shook his head.

  “But it’s mine!” yelled Hylas. “I built it!”

  “True,” called Akastos, “but you used my ship. And you didn’t do a bad job, for a boy from the mountains, even if you did forget a sail.”

  Desperate to keep him talking, Hylas asked how he’d managed to stay hidden from the Crows.

  Akastos stiffened. “The Crows? They were here? On the island?”

  “Down the coast! There was a battle on the shore. Then Pirra—she woke the Earthshaker. But now they’re gone.”

  “And I never knew,” said Akastos to himself. “Looks like the gods have tricked me again.” Then to Hylas, “But you’re wrong about the Earthshaker, Flea, He didn’t wake. That was the merest twitch of His tail in His sleep. When the Earthshaker wakes, mountains crack apart and spew rivers of fire, and the Sea attacks the land… When the Earthshaker wakes, you’ll know it.” He turned back to the steering-paddle.

  “Take me with you!” shouted Hylas. Akastos was ruthless, but he wasn’t a Crow; and even a man pursued by the Angry Ones was better than being left on his own. “Please!” he begged.

  “I can’t, Flea. You’re bad luck, and I’ve got enough of that already.”

  From nowhere a wind sprang up and filled the little sail. “Well now, that’s a surprise,” said Akastos, his voice carrying across the water. “That wind pouch actually works. And I thought it was a fake.” He raised his hand to Hylas. “Good luck, Flea. Don’t let the Crows get you!”

  Hylas dived in and started to swim, but already the wind was speeding the raft on its way. “My name’s not Flea!” he cried. “It’s Hylas!” But Akastos was too far off, and Hylas didn’t think he heard.

  As the raft was carried away, Hylas thought he saw a dark shadow moving after it, like a stain in the Sea. He wondered if Akastos knew he was being followed, and for how much longer he would manage
to escape.

  Dusk fell, and Hylas ate a lonely meal of olives and cheese.

  The graze on his calf from the sea-snake no longer hurt, and the wound in his arm was finally healing. It was half a Moon since the Crows had attacked. Issi felt very far away.

  He couldn’t sleep, so he wandered down to the water’s edge and sat watching the new Moon rise. The Sea was polished obsidian, the Moon’s path a trembling thread of silver.

  Far out in the bay, a dark arrow sped across it.

  “Spirit!” cried Hylas.

  But instead of swimming closer, the dolphin kept a wary distance, and no amount of whistling and patting the waves could persuade him to approach.

  It occurred to Hylas that maybe Spirit still felt bad because of that dive. “It doesn’t matter!” he called, even though he knew Spirit wouldn’t understand. “I know you were only trying to show me your world! I do know!”

  But he was talking to the waves. Already Spirit was far away, disappearing down the silver pathway of the Moon.

  The dolphin was unhappy. He’d done something wrong—again—and he didn’t know how to make it right.

  He’d only wanted to show the boy his beautiful Sea, but instead he’d nearly killed him. The boy had gone limp, and the dolphin had been horrified. What had he done? It had been such a relief to get him back to the shallows; but when the dolphin had tried to say sorry, the boy had kicked him.

  A few times after that, the dolphin had tried to make it up, but he’d always lost courage and swam away.

  His pod sensed his unhappiness and did their best to cheer him up with much nosing and rubbing of flanks; and his little sister brought him presents of seaweed and a crab. But he responded listlessly. He couldn’t bring himself to play, or even to hunt.

  The boy had been his friend. Even though they couldn’t swim together except on the very Edge, or speak to each other in the way that dolphins can speak, they’d felt each other’s feelings, and that had been enough.

  The dolphin missed the boy terribly. He feared that soon the boy would go far across the Sea, as the girl had gone. And then things would never be right between them, not ever again.