The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  It was then that I was able to observe where all the screaming had been coming from—the pirates were amusing themselves. They had tied one end of a rope around the surviving sailor’s waist and the other end to our ship’s mast. The game was to kick him into the sea, where the sharks could get at him, which had probably been attracted to the spot by the smell of blood, since the deck was clear of corpses. After a few minutes the pirates would pull him out again, give him a few minutes to rest on the deck and contemplate how much flesh was missing, and then throw him back. It seemed they had repeated this process several times already because the poor creature had grown remarkably tattered, with great pieces pulled loose from his legs, particularly his right thigh, and one foot completely gone, so that the deck was stained red with his blood and he hardly seemed to know what was happening to him anymore. He might even have been dead already.

  I watched with no particular emotion. I did not even feel pity. Why should I have? In a short time I would probably be taking my own turn at the end of that rope.

  “We do that to the ones who don’t fight,” one of the pirates said, crouching beside me and showing me a smile full of yellowed, broken teeth. He had a long scar that ran from his right temple straight down into his beard, as if someone had tried to hack him open with a mattock. “The ones without enough spirit even to fight aren’t worth the trouble of sparing. Generally they don’t last a month on the benches. You, on the other hand. . .”

  “That mark on your palm—where did you get it?”

  Another, the one who had rolled me over, grasped my wrist and held my hand up before my face, as if he imagined I had never seen it before.

  “I was born with it,” I said, wondering what difference it could possibly make.

  “He is no good to us then,” he said. “Some god has put his mark on him, whether for a curse or a blessing no man can tell. But it is wise to be prudent. It is a pity.”

  This respecter of prudence and of the gods was remarkably thin, with glittering black eyes and a face pitted over by the ravages of some disease. His beard consisted of no more than a few irregularly scattered tufts of hair growing at peculiar angles. In all he made an unpleasant impression, so that I had little confidence in his mercy.

  “Then let us throw him overboard,” suggested my friend with the scar. “Perhaps the sharks will get him or, if he lives, the desert, yet either way his god must hold us blameless of his death. That is the best way—give him an empty waterskin that he does not sink at once, then let the sea have him.”

  This idea met with such approval that it was immediately put into execution. I found myself being picked up by the arms and legs and carried to the railing, where I was pitched over like the dead goat that had been sacrificed at Mauza. I could hear the pirates’ laughter behind me even before I hit the sea.

  The waterskin struck me between the shoulder blades as soon as I came back to the surface and I turned over and grabbed it, clutching it to my breast with strengthless arms that I might not slip back under and drown. They laughed still—I saw them, standing at the ship’s rail above me, watching the sport—but I paid them no heed. They were not important now, for I had remembered that I wanted to live.

  A few seconds to catch my breath and I kicked out awkwardly, trying to swim. The shore seemed far away, part of some other world, out of reach forever. I kicked again, and again, but without any sensation of moving. Again I tried, attempting to sustain the effort, and when I stopped to rest I found I had moved at least out from beneath the ship’s shadow—perhaps it was merely that the current had carried me a little. I let myself drift and then tried again. By degrees it became easier.

  It was fear of the sharks that drove me, even more than the fear of death. I did not want to be rent to pieces, to end as a few torn fragments floating in a cloud of blood until the sea disbursed me to nothing. It seemed horrible beyond imagining to die thus, unburied even by the thoughtless, wind-blown dust. If I could make the land I would stretch out my bones there with an easy mind, though my ghost might wander over this barren place forever.

  Yet even fear has its limits, and when I grew weary enough not even the sharks frightened me.

  At last, as I floated helplessly, my arms stretched across the waterskin, which had just air in it enough to keep my face above the surface of the water, a single black fin approached from the left, wandering this way and that, as if it could not decide about me, yet coming ever closer.

  All I felt was annoyance. What am I to do about this? I wondered. The shark rose a little in the water, so that its back was visible, and very tentatively approached.

  “Where shall I bite you?” it seemed to be asking. “On the belly or along the ribs? Shall I take your arm?”

  The creature was so slow, almost leisurely, that I actually felt insulted. At last it began to swim straight for me, turning a little on its side as it drew close. In a passion as much anger as fear, I lashed out, striking the thing on the point of its snout with the back of my fist. It stopped abruptly, turned straight about, and carved a deep trench in the water as it sped away.

  “Lord Ashur, my protector,” I whispered, “hold me in the hollow of your hand that my life may be spared. Forgive me that ever I turned my back on you.”

  Perhaps my prayer was answered, for I saw no more sharks. Perhaps all the rest were sated on the corpses of the Bootah’s crew, yet whatever the reason I did not meet with another.

  Still, my strength had failed me at last. I could only drift, waiting until I lost consciousness and the sea took me. It was like being dead already—there was no fear, no. . .

  Then, suddenly, I heard a great commotion somewhere nearby. There was the sound of splashing, as if the water were being torn apart, and then I felt a pair of arms about my waist.

  “Master—bless the gods that you live still!”

  It was Kephalos’ voice. Somehow, it was Kephalos, pulling me to shore. All at once my heart swelled within me, so much that I wanted to weep.

  . . . . .

  Kephalos has told me how, even as he dragged me to shore, I could not be persuaded to let go of the waterskin. It was well, for we discovered that, though swollen with air, it still contained three or four cups of water, enough to wash the salt from our throats and give us hope of life for that day at least.

  “How did you make it to land?” I asked him, when rest and a few sips of water had returned me to myself. “I half expected you to drown, or for the sharks to make a meal of you.”

  We were sitting on the sandy beach, just under a bluff that provided a few handspans of shade. Kephalos picked up a pebble and threw it contemptuously at the hissing sea foam.

  “As I seem continuously to be reminding you, Lord, I am a Greek, and an island Greek in the bargain. Even as a child I could swim like a porpoise and, although it has been many years since I have exerted myself in that way, fear is a wonderful stimulus to effort. If any sharks thought to pursue me, no doubt they were left far behind. That cut on your head is a nasty business, but fortunately the seawater has washed it clean. I wish I had something with which to stitch it closed.”

  “I am pleased enough simply to be alive. I will not tell you what happened, knowing such stories are but little to your taste.”

  “Please do not—by the gods, look! They are burning the ship!”

  And so they were. We could see the smoke and, at last, pulling out from behind it, the pirate craft.

  “They must have all that they want of her,” I said, with some bitterness. One grows attached to a ship, as to a woman, and it was not pleasant to see this one abused thus.

  We watched for a long time. We watched the pirates disappear over the horizon as the hull of the abandoned Bootah, trapped now in the tidal currents, floundered helplessly. It was a mournful sight.

  After perhaps half an hour, the smoke thinned almost to nothing. The fire, it seemed, had burned itself out.

  Yet the hull was still intact above the waterline. An idea was beginning t
o form in my brain.

  “The currents will carry her ever closer to the shore,” I said, suddenly filled with wild hope. “She must run aground somewhere, and then perhaps we can swim out to her.”

  “Lord, recall what you yourself have said,” Kephalos answered, clearly not enthusiastic about the idea. “The pirates have doubtless already taken everything of value. And, lest you have forgotten, there are still the sharks.”

  “There may be much aboard of no value to the pirates but of use to us. She has a shallow draft, as I recall her master complaining while the storm carried us. Doubtless she will hang up somewhere close to shore. Besides, alone in this wasteland, with no water nor means of sustenance, what other chance have we?”

  He was forced to agree that in our present helpless circumstances, with nothing between us and death but a few mouthfuls of stale water, we had little enough to lose by indulging this whim of mine. Thus we followed the ruined Bootah all that day and even into the night, for there was a full moon and we could see her very clearly. Towards dawn it became clear that she had stopped drifting.

  We waited until the tide had gone out, thus saving us a few score paces of swimming and grounding the ship all the firmer on whatever sandbar held her, and then started out for her. We found it was possible to wade much of the distance, for she was in water not much deeper than the height of a man. Kephalos was the first to reach her. He clambered aboard easily enough, for she was heeled over so that her deck on that side was only a few cubits higher than the waves.

  Kephalos helped me aboard and we looked about us. The ship was a forlorn sight, with her mast charred and her rigging burned away—her deck was scorched in places, but one had the impression the fire had never really taken hold. Part of the rope from which the last sailor had made a feast for the sharks was still tied to her railings, but hacked through with a sword when, presumably, the game had at last ceased to be amusing.

  “Let us not tarry here overlong,” Kephalos said. “She may pull loose when the tide changes.”

  It was very good advice, and we made haste.

  And we were lucky. The cargo, whatever it had been, was gone, but my javelin was still where I had left it, leaning against the wall of our cabin—I cannot imagine why the pirates did not take it, since it had a fine copper tip, except that perhaps it was not a weapon of much value to sailors. I also found a sword, with the blade badly hacked, which perhaps they had left behind for a better one, and several knives. There was a little dried meat to which the sea had done no harm and, most important, four skins of sweet water. Of these we took two, the limit of what we could carry, and started back for shore. Once there, we made a good breakfast of the meat. It left us feeling like different men.

  “I lament having abandoned my purse,” Kephalos said at last. “I feared it might sink me—were I a braver man I might have had more faith in my own powers and we would not now be beggars.”

  I had no choice but to laugh, remembering the use I had made of his gold, but I thought it prudent not to share the joke.

  “On what would you spend it here?” I asked instead. Kephalos looked about him and nodded.

  “My Lord is wise. Besides, if we live to reach Egypt we will be rich beyond the dreams of greed.”

  “True. Let us hope that thought sustains us through what lies ahead, for we have but a few days’ supply of water and know only that Egypt lies somewhere to the north and west of us—how far, and what stands between, the gods keep hidden. By all means let us remember that we will be rich men in Egypt.”

  “My Lord Tiglath has an unfortunate way with the truth. Let us also remember that yesterday we expected by this time to be corpses. By the gods, what an adventure! Never again in my life will speak ill of a camel.”

  “My Lord Kephalos is wise.”

  We both laughed, for it is impossible to lose hope entirely while one’s belly is full.

  “Perhaps we should follow the seacoast,” he suggested, when we were disposed once more to consider serious matters.

  I shook my head.

  “No. If this sea is anything like a river, its banks will have more coilings than a snake. What might be only fifty beru in a straight march can be made a hundred if one follows the wanderings of water. We will choose our direction and stay with that, until we either find our way out of this place or die in it.”

  “Again I could wish that my Lord would learn to soften his expressions, but I see there is something in what you say. Tomorrow, when we have recovered somewhat from our ordeal. . .”

  “Today, while there is still food in our guts. Rise, Worthy Physician, for every hour we linger here is an hour closer to death. You see those mountains behind us? I intend that we should be on the other side before the light fails—come!”

  And he did, although not willingly, for the mountains to which we now turned our faces were as ragged and barren as any the gods ever made, as if hacked out of naked rock only the hour before.

  Did anything live in this place? Could we? One had the sense of being an unwelcome stranger, an intruder between the sun and the land that burned in its embrace like a woman made numbly wretched through surfeit of her lover’s passion. The wind seemed to carry her fitful, half-mad moan. Beyond was only hostile silence.

  When traveling long distances by foot, it is best to set a slow, steady pace and to stop for nothing. Neither hunger nor thirst, nor blisters nor the sheer weariness of the flesh—nothing. Perhaps, if we could have managed thus, we might have crossed the mountains in a single day, but it was not possible. First because Kephalos was still not hardened to such journeys and found, particularly since our path led constantly uphill, that he had to stop and rest every few hours, and second because the heat along those rock-strewn trails was like nothing either of us had ever experienced. I am forced to confess that when Kephalos sat down in the shade of some overhang, there to rub his legs and complain that the god must surely have been in a black humor when he made this place, which men would not even honor with a name, I was happy enough to sit down beside him and listen.

  In fact, as we discovered, for the first two or three hours after noon the sun was simply more than a man could bear, so when the night dropped like a curtain at the end of that first day we found we were no farther than about six good hours from the sea and so were forced to spend the night only a few hundred paces down from the summit of the first pass, where the winds were bitterly cold.

  Yet what I remember most vividly from that night—and all the nights to follow while we wandered through that bitter, lifeless landscape—was the moon, vast and beautiful, that seemed to bathe the whole world in its chill white light. Save for the strange shadows it threw across the twisted rock of those mountain trails, changing the face of every object, making a strange and haunted place of ground over which your feet had passed but a few hours before, you might have imagined the day was no different from the night, that nothing held you where you rested, that the path lay open before you.

  The moon was sovereign in that land, more even than the sun—or so it seemed to me in the ghostly night. The Great God Sin, I fancied, must love this place that he pours down his light thus. And thus it became, for me, the Place of the God Sin, and thus I named it in my private heart, calling it “Sinai” after the usages of my own tongue. And thus, one day, through the strange turnings of fate, would all men come to know it—Sinai, the land of the moon’s god.

  It took us four full days to cross the mountains, and by then our water was nearly exhausted and so were we, for the cold had hardly allowed us any sleep. Beyond the mountains we discovered only a great plain, a place of limestone and sand that seemed to stretch on endlessly without relief or variation. It seemed the end of hope.

  “It is now nearly sunset,” I said, when we were within an hour’s walk of this plain. “I suggest we go straight on until the heat of the day tomorrow, for in a land as featureless as this the moon gives enough light to see by without fear of falling and I would as soon walk and stay
warm as let the cold harden my sleepless limbs. Also, we will use less water if we travel by night.”

  “Ah, Master, you make of my life a misery and a bitterness. What is amiss with you that you have no fear of demons, which all pious men know haunt the night as their special time?”

  I glanced at him and saw that the tears had started already in his eyes—yet I did not think he wept for fear. I thought, in fact, that he gulled me with his talk of demons, trying to turn me aside from my purpose.

  “I am more afraid of death than of demons. Remember, Kephalos, this is a land which shows little mercy to weakness.”

  “Yes, I concede it, Lord—it is an admirable plan,” he said, sighing with resignation. “Except that I am so weary one foot will hardly consent to go before the other. But two hours of rest, I beg you—then it shall be as you see fit.”

  To this I consented, and then we set out across the great plain of the Wilderness of Sin—a place I was to know again, many years later, but then that was hidden from me. The moon lighted our way and the stars guided us, and we walked from darkness to first light, when we rested one hour only, and then until the noon sun stood in the center of the bright sky.

  There was no shade, so we took off our tunics and covered our heads and backs with them, sitting on the hard-packed limestone dust in nothing but our loincloths, the nearly empty waterskins stretched across our knees. I was weary enough, but Kephalos was a spent man.

  “These will run dry before the day is gone,” he said miserably, laying his hands flat over his waterskin. “By tomorrow, probably, in this heat, we will be dead.”

  “Do not take so dismal a view of it, my friend. By tomorrow it may be we will only wish we were dead.”

  It was a weak enough jest, and certainly one I should have kept to myself. Kephalos hardly even seemed to hear—and then, all at once, his breast began to heave with great sobs.

  “I wish it already.” He lowered his head to his arms and his shoulders shook under the weight of this terrible grief. “Were I dead, and the birds had picked the flesh from my bones—if there be birds in this wilderness—then my misery would have found its end.”