People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze)

by Diana Gainer

  "Ariyádna," Meneláwo said gently. He knelt beside the woman and drew her close to him. "Do not look back. It is over now. We are going home. Think how happy 'Ermiyóna will be to see her mamma and pappa again."

  Ariyádna laid her head on her husband's shoulder and closed her eyes. Tears fell from her eyelids and she moaned. "Owái, t'ugátriyon, my poor little daughter."

  Across the dark, gray waters of the Inner Sea passed the ships of Lakedaimón. They hopped from island to island, sailing whenever the wind blew toward the west, rowing when they had to, traveling from dawn to dusk each day. The first night away from the eastern mainland was spent west of Tróya on the large island of Lámno, barely reached before darkness fell. Here, their numbers were increased by the smaller contingent of ships led by Odushéyu, wánaks of the western islands of Zákunt'o, Dolik'áon, Ek'íno, and holy It'áka. The Lakedaimóniyans' spirits rose a little to have this leader with them, this master mariner who knew the sea better than any other Ak'áyan.

  But Odushéyu was gloomy and anxious himself, giving the others little reason for hope. Nor did their island hosts make them welcome. On Lámno, once an outpost of Tróya's rule, fear of ambush made the men's sleep uneasy. Despite the increase in their number, both the Lakedaimóniyan contingent and the men of the western isles alike kept their battered weapons close at hand.

  "We should not have come this way," Odushéyu told Meneláwo, over their evening fire. "In the summer, this would have been the best route. After a night here, we could have sailed west to T'ráki's triple peninsulas. We could spend one night on the first one, another on the third. And the following night would see us among our fellow Ak'áyans in T'eshalíya. But it is too late in the season to risk the northern crossing. The sky is too threatening. Tomorrow we must head south, the way we should have gone to start with. Ai, at least we should make the island of Lázpa easily enough, even without a favorable wind."

  Meneláwo listened quietly, gazing at Odushéyu with haunted eyes. When the mariner had finished, the Lakedaimóniyan king spoke. "If you advise it, we will head south. But we cannot afford a night on Lázpa, whether we row or the wind carries us. We must push on to K'íyo the same day. Then, clouds or no, we must cross the sea."

  Their second night was little better on K'íyo, reached after a hard day's rowing to the south. There it was not the number of hostile shepherds that concerned the travelers so much as the cold wind and the clouds that blanketed the island. Here, the men once again erected the tents that had sheltered them on Tróya's plain. From long use, the bases of the supporting posts were rotting. The coverings of sheepskin and linen were in need of patching, too. The men found that there was little fuel on the isle’s rocky hillsides for their campfires and the wind proved to be especially bitter. Though exhausted, the rowers slept fitfully, huddled close together for warmth.

  Odushéyu did not like the signs in the stars and clouds and he readily spoke his mind among the men of both contingents. Wandering from fire to fire that night, the mariner urged the helmsmen and the ranked warriors from the various ships to gather with him and speak to Meneláwo. They came reluctantly to where the Lakedaimóniyan king stood on K'íyo's pebbled beach, when the moon rose. Though Odushéyu's caution made sense to the men, still Meneláwo was the more powerful king. It was always unwise to anger a man of power. Wrapped in moth-eaten cloaks, shivering in the cold, stiff breeze, Lakedaimóniyans and It'ákans alike were nervous as they came upon Meneláwo long after sunset, as the king stood staring at the black sky and sea. Each man among the crowd hesitated to be the first to speak.

  "Wánaks," began Odushéyu, respectfully calling his friend by his title. "It is risky to cross the sea where land is not in sight, especially this time of year." Around him, the navigators nodded and murmured their assent. "We should keep to the coast and put an end to this island-hopping."

  Meneláwo did not argue. "It is risky, Odushéyu, I agree," he answered, in a low voice. "A sudden storm could easily rise up and devour every longboat, send every soul to the land of 'Aidé. But if we had gone north and skirted the T'rákiyan coast, we would have faced the same risk and for a longer time. That is our worst enemy now – time. The longer we are at sea, the greater the chance that winter's storms will take us all down. If the weather holds, we can make Mukénai, on the mainland, in only nine days. With a bit of luck, we could all be home in time for the festival of the winter solstice."

  Odushéyu shuffled his bare feet and scratched absently at a scab that raggedly crossed his ribs. All the men looked at the ground or the sea, not daring to meet the tormented gaze of their overlord. "Meneláwo," Odushéyu said at last and the word was almost a groan. "You are pushing the men too hard. They are rowing all day with empty bellies. A little soup of lentils and barley does not sustain a man's strength. For this kind of work, they need meat."

  Meneláwo looked about at the men, at their wasting limbs and sunken eyes. "This too is true," he responded, as quietly as before. "But the Ak'áyan army was once so large and the siege of Tróya was so long, our forays depleted the flocks of sheep and goats all around the waters of the Inner Sea. It is not by my choice that all of you go hungry. Still, time is our greatest enemy. The longer we take to cross the sea, the longer it will be until we eat well. If we can maintain this pace, we will reach the island of Éyuqoya the day after tomorrow. The Éyuqoyans were our allies in this war. They will feed us well and give us shelter."

  Odushéyu sighed, shaking his short, tangled, and thinning locks. "I hope that you are right, Meneláwo."

  From behind him spoke another man, who had been silent until then. "But wánaks, Éyuqoyans are northerners and we are all southerners. Our peoples have never been allies for long. We will not rest easy until we get as far as Argo, your own brother's kingdom."

  Meneláwo's shoulders sagged. "Ai, St'énelo, I cannot argue with what you say. But what do you want me to do? I cannot turn back the seasons. It took us ten months to begin the siege and another three to crack the walls of Tróya. Even so, our honor would not allow us to leave before we had accomplished that task. You may blame me for staying in Assúwa for so long, but remember, it was Lakedaimón's wánasha we went to rescue, not just my wife. Are you suggesting that we should have left an Ak'áyan queen in Tróyan slavery?"

  "No, no, wánaks," the assembled group hastened to say, moving closer to their battered leader in support.

  "Lakedaimón would never prosper without its holy 'Elléniyan queen to intercede with the gods," St'énelo agreed. Emboldened by the king's unexpected humility, he added, "What we question is the wisdom of pushing the men to their limits, now. We are all exhausted from so much hard fighting and many of us have unhealed wounds. Two Lakedaimóniyans have died of lockjaw already, just since we left Tróya. Our wounds are beginning to rot with gangrene. We have no more clean linen for bandages and no more opium for the pain. Now we are hungry too. Just today, one of our lookouts climbed the mast for a sight of land. He was so weak from hunger and fatigue that he fell and broke his neck on the rowing bench beneath him. You must allow the men more time to rest or others will die."

  Meneláwo slowly shook his head, his cropped hair clinging to his face in the damp air. "I cannot give what I do not have, St'énelo. There is no more time. We must go on and go quickly. Even in my brother's capital city, time will remain our enemy. We must leave Mukénai before Agamémnon arrives."

  "What is this?" cried Odushéyu and about him the navigators' mouths hung open in surprise. "It is your brother's wife who rules his kingdom and yours in your absence. Surely we have nothing to fear from her."

  "I do not think Klutaimnéstra will do us harm, no. After all, we are bringing her own sister back from captivity. But there is bad blood between my sister-in-law and Agamémnon. Remember how this campaign began. The army seer insisted that Agamémnon sacrifice his oldest daughter to gain a fair wind."

  "Ai, the wánasha cannot hold that against her husband. It was his duty to sacrifice Ip'emédeya," protested St
'énelo. Behind him, some men nodded, but others gazed at their wánaks with understanding.

  "I do not know Klutaimnéstra's heart," Meneláwo said, his voice growing ever quieter, his heart heavier. "But I know my brother's all too well. He blames his wife for the death of his daughter, because she was the one who sent him the seer in the first place."

  "What? Have the maináds caught him?" cried St'énelo. "Is he mad? Qálki was not to blame for reading the will of the gods. Still less is Klutaimnéstra to blame for sending us a prophet with true sight. If Agamémnon blames anyone, it should be himself. It was his impiety that angered the goddess Artémito to begin with, so that she held back the wind."

  "The goddess cast the plague down on us, too, because of his misdeeds," added Odushéyu, looking around at the others for support. The men nodded. "This makes no sense," the It'ákan went on. "People say evil things about me and some of them are actually true. But I always take care to keep the goddess At'ána on my side. A man can only achieve so much on his own. Even the greatest king must be careful not to offend a deity. Agamémnon surely understands that. He cannot seriously blame anyone but himself for the death of his child."

  Wearily, Meneláwo rubbed his eyes. "You do not have to tell me these things. I have said them all to my brother. But he will not listen. Madness or not, he does blame Klutaimnéstra for their daughter's death. He intends to divorce his queen as soon as he returns. And you know how he is about his plans. No man can change his mind by arguing."

  Unhappily, Odushéyu nodded. "Ai, yes, I suppose you are right. That is Agamémnon's way, to ignore the gods' role in every event. No misfortune has ever been so great he could not blame some man or woman for it."

  But the lesser-ranked St'énelo began to laugh, an uncertain, almost hysterical laugh. "He cannot divorce his wánasha. He would lose his kingship."

  Meneláwo smiled, a small, humorless curvature of his lips beneath mournful eyes. Kicking at pebbles he asked patiently, "What does a man have to do to gain kingship? Marry a holy woman. That is all. And that is my brother's plan. Agamémnon intends to take his captive, Kashánda, as his new wife. She is a priestess."

  "A priestess!" St'énelo cried, laughing wildly. "She is a Tróyan! She serves a Wilúsiyan goddess. The people of Argo will never accept a foreign captive as their wánasha, certainly not as a replacement for a holy Lakedaimóniyan priestess of their own, native Mother Diwiyána."

  Meneláwo threw up his hands. "St'énelo, you are wasting your breath when you tell me these things. No, Argo will not accept the loss of Klutaimnéstra. I agree with you. And no, the Argives will not allow the foreign priestess, Kashánda, to replace her. Agamémnon's plan is certain to start a civil war. And that is exactly why I do not want to be in Argo when my brother comes home. Even though he is in the wrong, I cannot fight against my own flesh and blood. But at the same time, I do not care to fight alongside him, opposing my wife's sister and the laws of Diwiyána.

  "No, my men, we have no choice. We must drive ourselves to the limit, stopping only at night to rest, pushing forward from dawn until sunset each day. We must stop in Argo, at least for a little while. I must travel to Mukénai to pick up my daughter. You will have that much time to rest. But then we go on to Lakedaimón. We must do this even if it means that only a third survive of those who once sailed for Tróya. The only alternative is another war, a new campaign before we have had time to recover from the last one. How many of us would return home then?"

  Odushéyu tried one more argument. "Let us keep to the Assúwan coast and winter in Millewánda. It is an Ak'áyan city at least."

  Still, Meneláwo shook his head. "Ak'áyan it may be, in language and in rulers. But Millewánda sided with Tróya in the war. No, Odushéyu, we cannot stay in Assúwa. The whole continent is hostile to us."

  No man argued any further. As the Lakedaimóniyan wánaks commanded, all strove with every ounce of his strength to speed the crossing from that time on. Alternately rowing and sailing toward the southwest, the Ak'áyan travelers spent their third night on the island Téno, where no amount of bronze could buy meat from even the poorest shepherd's flocks. On their journey, no ship capsized in heaving waves. No mast was split by lightning. Still, the number of men who would live to see their homes grew smaller with each passing day. Wounds blackened and drained foul-smelling liquid as infection took hold. Writhing with pain, burning with fever, men groaned upon their beds for the last time. Others collapsed of exhaustion to find no rest, every muscle drawn taut, their backs rigidly arched and their faces locked in the final grimace of tetanus.

  Weary of lamenting their kinsmen and friends, the rowers burned each dead man's flesh by night. Before dawn they sifted through the ashes to gather the bones and packed them in urns already crowded with the burnt remains of those who had died before. "It is a shame we have come to this," Odushéyu told the lesser-ranked men of Meneláwo's camp, watching yet another pyre burn low on Téno. "We had to burn the dead from the beginning, following the Tróyan custom and ignoring our own. That was bad enough. But there were so many dead during the war, we could not hold a proper funeral for them all. We held no games, not so much as a foot-race, except for Ak'illéyu and his brother. Now, no one bothers to sing lamentations for the dead anymore or even to cut our hair."

  "Let their families give them proper rites when we get home" St'énelo muttered from his seat near the flames. "We are tired of funerals."

  "Do you think I am not?" Odushéyu asked petulantly, not expecting an answer. "Owái, this is an evil omen of more hard times ahead. It calls to my mind the signs before Tróya fell. Do you remember how your king behaved that last month?"

  "He fought, in spite of his wound, just as we all did," St'énelo growled. "That was no omen."

  "Ai, but it was!" Odushéyu answered. Before continuing, he looked right and left to see that no one was near enough to overhear. He moved closer to St'énelo and spoke more quietly than before. "Every night, Meneláwo went to sit on a low hill as soon as darkness fell. He remained there very late, alone, staring at the city's white walls, constantly polishing his sword."

  He nodded at the Lakedaimóniyan with a knowing look. St'énelo only frowned and looked away, unimpressed. Nudging the rower with his elbow, Odushéyu went on, "That wound in his side, do you remember when he received it?"

  "I remember," St'énelo muttered, tossing twigs into the bright flames. "How could I forget?" He turned to look up at the stars, bright pinpoints in a cloudless sky. "It was after single combat on the first day of battle. Meneláwo downed the Tróyan champion. Then the Tróyans broke their oath and fired arrows at us. One of them struck our king." Leaning forward, he added forcefully, "But our wánaks insisted on fighting in spite of the wound. He ignored his pain and all Ak'áyans admired him for it."

  "Not all, not the northerners," Odushéyu argued. "Remember? The P'ilístas questioned his honor. They said it was the custom for wounded men to refrain from fighting. And what is custom but a law given by the mother of us all, the goddess Diwiyána? Meneláwo mocks the great Lady, they said. And the gods bring disaster to those who mock them." Odushéyu pointed his thumb and index and small fingers toward the Lakedaimóniyan king, who lay with the queen in his arms several yards away. "Mother Diwiyána, protect us from the Evil Eye," the mariner said in a dramatic undertone.

  "Custom!" St'énelo spat. "Those P'ilístas are great ones to talk about custom. Their own champion fought when he was wounded and they said nothing about Diwiyána's laws then. I never saw you make the sign of the Evil Eye toward him during the war, either. No, when Meneláwo fought, all true Ak'áyans admired his courage and persistence."

  "Yes, that was so, at least at first. No one blamed him for drinking from the poppy jugs, either. Not in the beginning," Odushéyu said ominously, dropping his hands to his lap and glancing at the other out of the corner of his eye.

  "Wounded men deserve that solace," St'énelo countered, disturbed by the direction the conversation was taking. "How else can a
man bear it when a spear has pierced his entrails and it takes him days to die? You cannot blame the wánaks for craving the essence of poppies."

  Odushéyu's gaze was somber. "No, no man blamed him at first. But as the days dragged on, the wánaks lost weight, his ribs showed more and more. He ate little, preferring the poppy to all other good things. Then, even you must have begun to wonder whether the king's mind was still in this world with us. Perhaps he was dancing with the immortal daughters of Díwo, the wild maináds. And what was he thinking about, on that mound by the sea each night?"

  "Dreaming of his wife's return, no doubt," St'énelo answered, nervously plucking dried leaves from the twigs stacked beside him. He squirmed under the It'ákan leader's eyes. "Dreaming of battle glory," he added in a whisper and he glanced back pensively at the sleeping wánaks.

  Odushéyu pressed on, his voice heavy with foreboding. "Or was he planning a dreadful vengeance like his father took years before?"

  "Those were just rumors about Atréyu," St'énelo gasped, looking about in sudden fear that they might be overheard. "You do not believe them, do you?"