Desert God

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Ah!’ I feigned ignorance. ‘And who might those persons be?’

  ‘I do not mean to imply improper behaviour by anyone, but there are those who seem rather too familiar with the future brides of the Supreme Minos.’

  ‘Surely you do not mean little Loxias, the royal handmaiden?’ Toran dropped his eyes. I had discreetly reminded him that both of us had secrets to hide.

  ‘I leave it to your impeccable judgement.’ Toran withdrew gracefully from the discussion.

  When we descended to the main deck Captain Hypatos was there to meet with me a smile.

  ‘Sixteen days it was, my Lord Taita.’

  ‘I must compliment you on a masterly display of navigation, Hypatos,’ I commended him. ‘Please signal the captains of my galleys to come on board immediately.’

  Hypatos gave the order to back the sails of the flagship and hoist the signal ‘All Captains’.

  The commanders of my galleys launched their skiffs and had their crews row them across to the Sacred Bull. In order of seniority, headed by Dilbar and Akemi, they came on board. I pointed out to them Krimad harbour and explained that it was to be their future base of operations.

  Then Zaras and Hui formally resumed command of their own ships, and prepared to leave the flagship. Their servants had packed their luggage, and this was lowered into the skiffs to be taken across to the galleys.

  I had deliberately given Zaras and Hui very short notice of their transfer; and I had refrained from informing Tehuti and Bekatha of their imminent departure. At all costs I wanted to avoid a public display of emotion.

  However, my girls are not so easily duped. They had realized almost immediately that there was something odd afoot. They left their cabins and came up to the poop deck to investigate. They were in a light and relaxed mood which changed abruptly as they saw Zaras and Hui on the main deck below them, standing at the head of their men.

  Surreptitiously I watched my two girls coming to terms with the hard cold fact that the dreaded moment had arrived and that the parting was imminent.

  Tehuti’s features turned cold and pale as those of a corpse laid out on the slab for burial. Bekatha’s lower lip quivered and she blinked her eyelids to hold back her tears.

  On the main deck Zaras called his officers to attention and they saluted the poop. I saw Bekatha grope for the hand of her older sister and grip it so fiercely that her knuckles turned frosty white.

  Tehuti’s lips moved as she whispered to her, ‘Be brave, Bekatha. Everybody is watching us.’

  Loxias was standing close behind the two of them, but now she stepped up beside Bekatha, and took her other hand.

  Zaras addressed Captain Hypatos formally, ‘Permission to leave ship, Captain?’ And Hypatos replied just as formally.

  ‘Permission granted, Captain!’

  Zaras turned to the ship’s side and led his contingent down the rope ladder to the waiting skiffs. Hui followed him. Neither was aware of the girls standing on the poop behind them. They did not look back.

  As she watched Hui go Bekatha swayed slightly on her feet, and she made a soft choking sound. Then, still holding hands, the three girls turned to the companionway that led down to their cabins. Bekatha stumbled slightly on the first step, but Tehuti unobtrusively steadied her and prevented her from falling.

  Toran was standing opposite me on the port side of the deck. As the three girls disappeared below he glanced in my direction and gave me an almost imperceptible nod of approval.

  With that simple gesture we had become accomplices. I knew that in future we would be able to trust each other.

  Once the skiffs had left the Sacred Bull and were heading back to the galleys, Hypatos tacked the flagship and reversed our course, heading back to round the eastern cape of the island.

  I looked over the raked transom of the flagship and watched my galleys in line astern heading in directly for Krimad harbour. I was still saddened by witnessing the distress of my girls. I sought distraction by crossing to stand with Toran at the port rail and asking a trite question to which I already knew the answer.

  ‘What is the direct overland distance separating Knossos from Krimad?’

  ‘It is not so much the actual distance that is significant. That is a mere forty leagues or a trifle less,’ Toran explained. ‘The problem is that the road is steep and treacherous where it passes around the base of Mount Ida and heavy-going the rest of the way. Your horses might need as much as two days to complete the journey. You will kill them if you force them beyond that.’

  I knew that I would need to travel that route regularly if I were to keep contact with my ship’s officers and also with my girls in the royal seraglio. On the other hand, I could not accept the delays that Toran was estimating. I decided that I would have to set up a chain of relays across the island. With fresh horses waiting at intervals of ten leagues along the route I would be able to drive them hard. I should be able to make the crossing of the island in seven hours or a little less. That would be my first concern just as soon as I had settled my girls in their new home.

  I went below for a short while to entice them up on deck, hoping to distract them from their sorrows. But they refused to come with me. Their misery was so profound that they could barely open their mouths to reply to my solicitous questions. They sat on one bunk, clinging to each other for some small comfort. Loxias sat cross-legged on the deck at their feet. Not for the first time I was touched by the Minoan girl’s loyalty.

  My girls needed time on their own to come to terms with the cruelty of fate and the heartlessness of the gods. The exigencies of life are magnified a hundredfold by youth, but are alleviated to the same extent by the leavening of age. We must all learn to endure.

  I left them and returned to the deck. Toran had gone below so I climbed back into the rigging.

  These were Hypatos’ home waters, and he knew them intimately. At times he skirted the reefs and the headlands so closely that it seemed I could step ashore from the deck without wetting my feet.

  I gazed across at the passing landscape with fascination. I had not expected it to be so mountainous, nor to be so lushly forested. I have spent so much of my life in the dry desert places that for me it was exotic and beautiful.

  It was past noon when we rounded the most easterly point of the island and changed course to head back along the northern shore towards Knossos. The angle of the sunlight was so altered that the water under our keel was transmuted to a wondrous shade of blue.

  The sea ahead of us was dotted with shipping: from tiny anchored fishing boats to the great trading triremes with their churning banks of long oars and their clouds of vivid sails.

  As we passed the mouths of the bays and harbours which indented the shoreline I saw that these were also crowded with anchored ships, taking on or discharging cargo. The cargoes they carried were the sinews of trade which generated the wealth that had transformed this small island into a colossus towering over the civilized world.

  And yet I knew from my studies that the land itself was rocky and rugged. The soil was poor, devoid of precious minerals and unsuited to cultivation. Although the great forests grew upon it in profusion, their roots offered a further barrier to the rearing of valuable crops.

  The Minoans had solved this problem by sending out their ships across the seas to gather up the raw materials produced by other lands. Paying a pittance for these riches, they transported them back to Crete. Here, by the application of their engineering skills and their genius for design and innovation, they transformed them into highly desirable products for which the rest of the world hungered.

  They refined the ore which other more primitive peoples had scratched from the earth with sharpened sticks, and they fashioned these metals into swords and knives; helmets and armour for warriors; and hoes and pitchforks and ploughshares for farmers.

  They had perfected the firing of silica sands and other minerals to make glass: an extraordinary substance which they fashioned into plates and dis
hes and utensils that graced the banquet tables of kings; ornaments and jewellery of myriad colours to delight the wives of rich men; and beads which some tribes used as currency. There were some primitive countries in which a string of these glass beads could buy a thoroughbred horse or a beautiful young virgin.

  The Minoans traded these products for the hemp and cotton, linen and wool that subsistence farmers in other lands had grown. They worked and wove these into cloth and canvas for garments and tents and ships’ sails.

  These in turn they sent out to trade; repeating the cycle endlessly until no other nation could match their wealth; not even our very Egypt.

  There was a hidden cost to this ceaseless and single-minded pursuit of riches.

  From my vantage point high in the rigging of the Sacred Bull I looked out across the land and I saw the smoke rising from the myriad forges and furnaces in which the ores were refined, the metals alloyed and the sands transmuted to glass.

  On the mountainsides above the towns and factories were wide areas of desolation, the scarred earth where the forests had been put to the axe to provide the timber for the hulls of the Minoan trading ships, or to be burned into charcoal for the furnaces in their mills.

  I saw the inshore waters stained and corrupted by the poisonous dyes and corrosive fluids they used in their mills, and which they drained directly into the sea.

  As much as any man alive I enjoy the weight and lustre of silver and gold in my hands. But faced by this defloration of pristine nature I wondered at the ultimate price that man is prepared to pay to feed his insatiable greed.

  My musings were interrupted by a hail from below and I peered down and saw Ambassador Toran had returned to the deck and was beckoning me to come down to join him. When I reached his side he was apologetic.

  ‘I cannot remain too long aloft,’ he explained. ‘I find the ship’s gyrations to be unpleasantly exaggerated by the height of the mast, and I would not care to part with the excellent breakfast my chef went to such pains to prepare for me.’ He took my arm and led me forward. ‘The view from the bows will be just as good as from the masthead, and I wanted to be able to point out the sights of interest as we clear Dragonada Island and have a full view of Knossos and Mount Cronus.’ We settled ourselves comfortably in the shade of the foresail while the ship tacked around the point of the island and a fresh vista of the northern coast of Crete was spread out before us.

  On our port side we had a marvellous view of Mount Ida; which was the complete reverse of that which we had enjoyed from the southern side of the island. From this angle the mountain seemed to be even higher, steeper and more rugged. Below it the city of Knossos and its harbour lay open to us.

  The harbour was vast, but its waters seemed barely expansive enough to accommodate the fleet of Minoan war galleys and cargo ships which lay at anchor within. Some of these vessels were large enough to dwarf the Sacred Bull on whose deck we reclined.

  Above the harbour rose the buildings of the city. I realized at once that it was many times larger in extent than Thebes and Babylon combined. However, compared to Knossos those two smaller cities were pretty, gay and welcoming.

  Despite its backdrop of high and majestic mountains and the scope and the grandeur of its architecture, Knossos was a sombre and dark-toned place. My senses are so finely tuned to the subtle undercurrents and hidden nuances of the preternatural that I knew at once that Knossos had been built upon one of those rare fields of power on which the gods have focused all their energies.

  In this enlightened age, it is accepted by educated men that the earth is a living and breathing creature, a gigantic turtle, which swims forever on the black ocean of eternity. The plates that form the carapace that covers the turtle’s back are fused along these lines of power. When the earth moves these junctions enable it to flex its body and limbs. These are centres of unimaginable force, some for good but others for evil.

  Here was evil; I had the rank taste of it on the back of my tongue and the stench of it in my nostrils.

  I shuddered as I tried to come to terms with the enormity of it.

  ‘Are you cold, Taita?’ Toran asked solicitously.

  Although I shook my head and smiled, I did not trust my face not to reveal my true feelings. I turned away from him and looked directly out to sea. Far from calming my forebodings I found them further agitated by my first close-up view of the twin peaks of Mount Cronus. My perturbation must have been obvious to him, for Toran chuckled and patted my shoulder in an avuncular manner.

  ‘Be of good cheer, Taita! Most people experience the same reaction as you when first they look upon the citadel of Cronus, the father of all the gods. Do you know the history of this place and the story of how all these mysteries came to pass?’

  ‘I know little or nothing about it.’ In truth, I was sure that I knew it all much better than Toran himself, but often it is best to plead ignorance. That way you are more likely to learn secrets that might otherwise have been denied you.

  Toran took up my instruction with relish. ‘As a man of letters and learning you must agree that Cronus is the father of all the gods. Before him there was only Gaia the earth and Uranus the sky. When those two mated Cronus was born of their union.’

  ‘That much I do know,’ I conceded carefully. I would not be drawn into an argument, although I knew there were other more plausible explanations of creation. ‘But please continue, good Toran.’

  ‘In time Cronus warred against his father Uranus and defeated him. Then he castrated him and made him his slave. Cronus ruled throughout the golden age of the gods. However, he was aware of the prophecy that one of his children would war against him, as he had done with his own father. So he devoured all his own children at birth to prevent this happening.’

  ‘In the circumstances, eating them was probably a reasonable option. I know of more than one mortal father who wishes he had adopted that expedient,’ I bantered with a straight face, but Toran took me seriously and nodded.

  ‘Quite so! However, to continue, when Rhea, who was Cronus’ senior wife, gave birth to her sixth child, she named the boy Zeus and hid him from his father in a cave up there on Mount Ida.’ He pointed across the bay at the mountain. ‘Thus Zeus survived to maturity. Then, as prophesied, he battled with Cronus. When he defeated him he sliced open his father’s belly and all his siblings leaped out to freedom.’

  ‘Then Zeus and his brothers and sisters flew to the peak of Mount Olympus where they abide to this day, ruling our lives with a high hand.’ I moved the lecture along at an accelerated pace. At times Toran can be a pedant. ‘Zeus is now the father of the gods and the lord of the storms. His siblings are Hestia the goddess of home and the hearth; Demeter the goddess of agriculture and bountiful harvest; Hera the goddess of marriage; Hades the lord of the underworld and Poseidon the god of the sea.’

  ‘You said that you were ignorant of their history.’ Toran looked mildly aggrieved, but then he hurried on before I could relate the rest of the story. ‘Zeus was unable to kill his father by reason of his immortality, so before Zeus departed for Olympus he imprisoned Cronus in the fiery depths of that volcano, which now bears his name.’

  Both of us studied the mountain in silence for a while.

  ‘It is the oldest and most powerful volcano in the world.’ Toran broke the silence. ‘All its power is controlled by Cronus. With it he protects us from the envy of foreign kings and the avarice of less civilized nations. In merely one instance, when the Euboeans sent their fleet to attack us Cronus hurled great fiery rocks upon them from the heights of his mountain, sinking most of their ships and driving the survivors back whence they had come.’

  I stared across at the mountain. It was indeed a forbidding sight. There was no evidence of plant or animal life of any kind on the steep, pyramid-shaped ramparts. They fell almost sheer to the water’s edge; shining black and glossy red sheets of solidified vitreous lava flow.

  From the twin apertures that pierced the summits of the peaks
the molten lava still oozed and trickled down, glowing and shimmering with heat, rivers of fire that exploded in clouds of steam when they met the sea that lapped the base of the mountain.

  ‘When Cronus is either very pleased or extremely angry he blows out smoke and fire,’ Toran explained. ‘The intensity of his anger or pleasure can be judged by the volume and force of his fiery breath. You can see from his gentle exhalations that at present he is sleeping, or in a jovial mood. When he is truly aroused he blows out molten rocks, and clouds of sulphurous smoke that spurt so high into the sky that they mingle with the clouds. Then his bellowing and roaring can be heard in every part of Crete, and his violent shuddering and shaking felt in distant lands far across the sea.’

  ‘What might make him that angry?’ I asked Toran.

  ‘He is the mightiest of all the gods. Cronus does not need a reason to be angry, and he certainly is not accountable to us for his whims and fancies. He is angry because he is angry; it is as simple as that.’

  I nodded wisely as I listened to Toran extolling the powers and justifying the excesses of his particular god. Of course I did not agree with him. I have studied the history and origin of all the gods. There are hundreds of them. Like the mortals and the demi-gods they differ vastly in their power and temperament, and in their virtue and their iniquity.

  What puzzled me was that a superior man such as Toran should pay homage and allegiance to a raging monster in preference to a noble and benevolent deity like Horus.

  I trust neither Cronus nor Seth. What is more, I have never been entirely certain of Zeus. How can you trust someone, even a god, who delights in playing shabby tricks on mankind and on his own immediate family?

  No, I am a Horus man through and through.

  The congestion of shipping in and around the port of Knossos was so great that as we approached the harbour-master sent out a lugger with a message denying the Sacred Bull immediate entry, and ordering us to anchor in the roadstead until a berth could be found for us in the inner harbour.