by David Bell
Finding the track again was easy in the bright moonlight and bending low until they were well out of sight of the beach, they soon found it turn into a road of small stones and gravel beaten level and marked by the passage of cart wheels. The road sloped up gently towards the top of a small hill and when they reached this they found themselves looking down on a glittering sea washing the other side of this narrow point of Keftiu. A sleeping town lay below them, dim lights picking out its streets and squares. Other lights revealed the shadowy outlines of ships in the crowded harbour and fishing boats out in the bay. On a small hill a little way down the coast stood a high building, pale in the moonlight, which they knew must be a temple because of the flickering lights of torches burning in front of it. Still further away, the coastline swept round in a great bay dotted with islands and twinkling with the lights of ships in another harbour, much larger than the one below, at the edge of a town bigger than any Sharesh had seen, except for the Palace and its port.
Sharesh and Namun stretched out in the rough grass, marvelling at all the sights spread out along the coast below them: so many houses, ships, lights, all bathed in the moon’s silvery glow.
“Itana and Eruta: they set sail for the Black Land from these ports.” The deep voice brought them scrambling to their feet. “Some keep the sun ahead at midday and if they are lucky, sight the Deshret of Libun in three days. Then they must work along the shore against the current and through the sandbanks if they are to find the mouths of the great river, and some never do.”
“Iteru,” whispered Namun.
“Yes, Iteru, the great river that stains the ocean with the black flow of Akhet when it rises with the wakening of the Hunter’s hound and floods the land. A hardier skipper will hold the midday sun to starboard and see the colour of the sea change after four days and dock at Kanub in the nearest mouth of Iteru after one more. Or, he may coast past the sandspits and lagoons until he finds the last mouth and Hatoret, the port where he will land his cargo.”
“So Iteru has more than one mouth?” asked Sharesh.
“He has seven; enough for any river, I think, no matter how wide. Now, you men must get back to the ship. The journey ahead of you is longer than that from here to the Black Land and we must be on with it.”
Others might sleep, dreamless and peaceful, but in his mind Namun drifted again in the reed boat carried by the great placid river past shining stone mountains built to enclose dead kings, and the glaring stone face of a god with the body of a crouching lion, and the river dragons as they slid silently from the muddy banks into the dark water, sending arrowheads of ripples towards him.
Sharesh looked astern, watching the last tip of Keftiu disappear slowly into the mists of dawn. He felt the clutch of fear, as when his fingers had once begun to loosen their grip on the cliff’s edge and he thought he would fall. But he had not fallen and now he turned to look ahead and found mountains rising from the sea, black against the glimmering sky. The ship was steering directly towards the brightest point on the horizon where the sun would rise which meant she would pass the mountains to port. As they drew closer Sharesh saw that they were two islands, the first smaller than the second which had a great rearing peak just beginning to glow in first light. He asked Typhis their names.
“Little one’s Kelata, big one’s Kapera. Good seamen there: they have to be, seeing this is one of the windiest stretches of ocean you can come across. When it blows here you can find yourself stuck on a sandbank in Libun before you know where you are.”
“There’s not much wind now.”
“Just you wait. And while you’re waiting, get below and see if that caulking’s fast.”
By mid morning Potyr was offering a silent prayer of thanks to the Lady Mother of the Oceans for the sweet wind that had sent them clear of the ragged cape of Kapera and then backed in the direction from which they had come so that using the braces to set the sail, Potyr was soon on course for Telchina and, he hoped, a mid afternoon landfall. But if the Lady Mother had sent them a fair wind, the Lord Potheidan pressed the sea hard against them in the strait between Kapera and Telchina, or so the crew said later, forcing Typhis to call for another hand with the rudder and the oarsmen to strain their backs to keep her on the heading Potyr had ordered. It was a tired crew that drew thankfully into the lee of Telchina and dusk was falling as they reached their destination, a high white cape halfway along the coast with a bay on its far side where the ship could drop anchor.
It was still dark but they could hear feet scraping on the stern deck and people talking in low voices.
“Namun, listen,” whispered Sharesh. “What are they saying?”
“You stay here. I’ll find out. No, stay here, I said: you make too much noise.”
Sharesh waited impatiently in the hold until at last Namun dropped down beside him, as silently as a cat.
“It’s the skipper and Typhis and the lord. They’re trying to decide what to do. Typhis says the rudder didn’t feel right when we were halfway across that strait where the current was so strong. He wants to wait until it’s light enough to have a proper look at it; something about the fastenings, he says. The skipper says time is short and the wind’s favouring us and anyway if it needs serious work, like unshipping it, yes, he did say that, we can’t do it properly here because we don’t have deep enough water. The lord says if it’s still working, leave it for now and do the work in a cove somewhere along the coast we have to follow. There are plenty of them, he says. The skipper sides with him because he says if we lose the wind we’ll have to work a lot harder with the current against us. Typhis doesn’t like it, but it’s two to one and the skipper has the last say.”
“So we cast off as usual?”
“You know the drill: before first light.”
“Why do you call him the lord, instead of using his name?”
“I can’t say his name properly and when I try, he says it sounds as if I’m sneezing.”
“He’s only joking.”
“I’m not sure he makes jokes, are you? And another thing: how does he know there’s the right sort of cove further along the coast?”
“He has been to Gubal before, he told me. He must have sailed the same lanes.”
“Long haul ships call in at ports, not coves…”
Before they could continue the argument, orders came from above to rouse up and stand by the anchor ropes. Soon they were at sea, Potyr again setting course towards the rising sun, the course he intended to hold until he reached the mouth of a river that came from behind the mountains and flowed into the sea up the coast from the city of Ugarit. If the weather stayed fine, he would have land in sight on his port beam the whole way. He had a following wind and the air smelled good. He resolved to lie up for the night at a place he knew where they could take on fresh water and cook the fish their trailing lines would catch on the way.
The mountains came down almost to the sea, their dark forested lower slopes slashed by deep valleys leading up to grey bare cliffs topped with snow-covered summits glowing pink in the last rays of the setting sun. Sharesh lifted his gaze higher, and higher still, until his neck began to ache before his eyes found the highest peak. Keftiu had its great mountains but none so majestic as these. The ship was close to the shore, slowly creeping past two low islands standing clear of a rocky point to port, as Potyr conned her carefully into a square-sided bay that had a small stream entering the sea at one corner. A seaman on the bow was throwing the sounding line, calling the water’s depth by the knots on it and announcing what, if anything, was sticking to the grease on the weight when he raised it. Two ship lengths from the narrow strip of beach Potyr signed steady oars and the ship came to rest, rocking gently in the little waves. Anchors were lowered only after scouts, sent ashore as soon as the ship stopped, returned to report no signs of habitation. A party was then sent to the stream to refill the ship’s water casks and jars while the cooking fire was started and the ship secured for the night. Sharesh asked why the m
en were going about their tasks so quietly when usually they sang and bantered with one another at the end of the day.
“Can’t be too careful with some of the people around here,” said Typhis. “They have a nasty habit of taking what doesn’t belong to them. And they don’t mind putting up a fight to get what they want, either. A bit of a walk over there,” he added, waving his arm towards a hill. “There’s a river that runs yellow and a town on it, upstream. It’s usually safe enough there, so long as you don’t happen to go when the sun goddess festival’s on – Hebat they call her there – but the skipper doesn’t want anybody knowing we’re here and coming looking for trade… hey, you, only dry wood on that fire, we don’t want any smoke… because he wants us to slip away early again tomorrow. Are you helping with that dinner, or not?”
Sharesh told Namun what Typhis had told him.
“Could be worse,” said Namun, stirring the contents of the cauldron with a stick and licking the end, “and it might be, later on. I’m sure I heard the lord say something to the skipper about pirates on this coast.”
“They won’t catch this ship.”
“They might, if that rudder stops working.”
“Don’t worry: the archers will be ready for them.”
Potyr needed a sight of the sun at dawn to fix his course so the ship was coaxed out of the little bay when the birds began to sing that dawn was near, turned about and pulled clear of a scattering of reefs and shoals on the port side.
“We must stand well clear of those reefs,” he said to Kanesh. “I know of more than one ship that has foundered here in a sea, cargoes and all the crews lost.” He lifted his hand, waited and then pointed. “There is your course, helmsman. Hoist sail. Set a smart stroke.”
With the sail as plump as a pigeon’s breast and the oarsmen in good heart, the ship was soon throwing up a hissing bow wave and trailing a frothy wake astern. The shore began to angle away and as the day wore on, a great bay began to open on the port beam, the coastline of its far side too far away to see so that the high snow-topped mountains that lay above it reared like islands from the ocean. The light began to fade but Potyr held the ship on course. The wind filled their sail, the sea was gentle, there was enough food and water on board and the crew could divide into two watches, one to hold an even rate with a long pause between strokes, while the other ate and slept and waited its turn at the oars. He had plenty of sea room. The ship would stay on course during the night, keeping the sailor’s star high and steady on the port side.
At daybreak on the second day out of Telchina, the ship was halfway across the great bay and running well before the same steady wind that had served them since leaving Kelata. Oars were shipped and and the crew stretched out between the thwarts to doze, leaving the wind and sail to do the work. At mid morning the bow lookout called that he could see the coastline fine on the port bow. They were still on course. Then it seemed, thought Potyr, that the Lady Mother of the Oceans looked elsewhere, so suddenly did the weather change. The wind shifted and the sail began to flap, fell slack and flapped hard again. The sea darkened and took on a chop. Potyr saw a mass of cloud race towards them from the distant shores of the bay and moments later strike them in a squall of swirling wind and stinging rain. The ship heeled over violently to starboard sending men, water jars, food bowls, oars and tackle slithering towards the rail that luckily stopped anyone from going overboard. In a brief lull before the next squall struck, Potyr ordered the sail lowered and was grimly satisfied to see that there was no grumbling about weight from the riggers, this time. Oars were thrust out and the ship turned into the wind so that when the blast came again they were ready and rode it out. Three more followed but each was less fierce than the last and gradually the wind settled to a steady blow. Now, however, it was on the port quarter, driving them off course, away from the coast, towards Alasiya, thought Potyr, somewhere out there beyond the horizon. A ship could go there and follow the near coast that pointed like a finger almost directly at Ugarit, but not in this wind. It would drive them onto a lee shore where they could never claw her off and that would be the end of all of them. He must get back to the other coast and find the cape at the end of the great bay. Every ship’s master who worked these lanes knew it to be a windy point but, once past it, they would be in the lee of the mountain coast again and with no wide bay to funnel the winds that fell down the mountainsides and rushed out to sea. What Typhis now said to him meant there was nothing else he could do.
“It’s no good, Skipper. One of the fittings, maybe two, have sprung; one might have sheared. The rudder’s hardly answering. We must get her into shelter and do something about it.”
“Can you mount the steering oar?”
“Not in this sea. We’d lose it before we could get it lashed on.”
Potyr steadied himself against the cabin and thought hard while the wind sang through the rigging and the crew looked anxiously towards him.
“Have the carpenter and the quarryman come aft and lash the rudder fast inline. The quarryman can hammer in some of his chisels as spikes. He will know where and how to tie the ropes. When the rudder has been stopped from moving we will make for the shore and steer by the oars. No time to lose.”
Rowing into the wind, and against waves that kept the ship pitching and falling away as if she were a rearing horse, was hard enough but to have to manage their stroke, hard port side, steady starboard, then the other way round, then back again, strained the rowers’ arms and backs near to breaking. All panted and spat and swore but none shirked: all knew their lives depended on reaching that shore and this was the only way to do it. At least the wind was clearing the sky and Potyr whispered brief thanks to the Lady Mother for letting him catch sight of the sun from time to time and so adjust the steering, but the wind also swept such spume and spray from the wave tops that any judgment of distance from the coast ahead was impossible. Looking across at Potyr, Typhis wondered not for the first time how the captain could keep so calm in the face of such danger. In his own mind Potyr had done what he always did in such situations: put aside everything else but the essentials. Accept what must be the Lady Mother’s will; keep the sun astern and in due course the coast would appear ahead; remember, she had stayed afloat in those squalls when almost any other ship would have broached. Typhis was astonished to see a faint smile appear on his skipper’s face. Potyr was thinking he now had the proof that this was a ship as sound as Naudok had said she would be.
By late afternoon, the crew had pulled the ship within sight of the cape where the great bay ended and the coastline swung in the direction of the rising sun. But the men were at the limit of exhaustion and the ship began to wallow in the relentless waves. Kanesh exchanged words with Potyr, then climbed down from the stern deck, followed by the quarryman, and stood in front of the first thwart, looking at the defeated men hunched over their oars. He spoke quietly, in such a voice that each man said long afterwards that he felt he was the only one being spoken to:
“Listen. Look at me. Good. We will row and I will call the stroke. We and the captain will now save the ship.”
He sat down on the aft starboard thwart and took the oar from its weary holder. The quarryman sat down and seized the port oar.
“Lift! Dig in! Pull!
Tortured backs bent forward, straightened, leaned back. Again! Lift! Dig in! Pull!
Muscles burned with the pain, but the ship began to edge ahead once more.
With Typhis raising his right arm to signal hard in starboard oars to Kanesh, left arm for hard in larboard, the ship held a wavering course towards the cape. The men heard nothing but that voice inside their heads, a commanding voice they could not resist, that somehow gave them the strength, and the need, to row.
“Now,” said Potyr to Typhis.
“Hoist sail!” roared Typhis. “Riggers, haul on that starboard brace! Hold her steady there!” Kanesh had known what was to come but most of the oarsmen, dazed with fatigue, fell from their thwarts as the sail
suddenly filled and the ship leapt forward, veering away from the cape and heading towards a bay that opened on its starboard side. Potyr had seen the change in the waves where Kanesh had told him the lie of the cape caused wind to sweep along the coast rather than out to sea and had given the order to hoist and trim sail at exactly the right moment. Soon they were in the lee of the mountains fringing the bay and out of the wind, needing only the oars of Kanesh and the quarryman to bring them to anchor inshore from a narrow rocky point. No one went ashore. Many of the oarsmen slumped in exhausted sleep between the thwarts. For those still conscious there was smoked fish and olives handed out by Namun and Sharesh and sweet, spiced wine from a jar brought up from the hold by the quarryman and unsealed by Kanesh.
“A small price for Merida to pay for saving his ship,” declared Typhis, smacking his lips and grabbing a second beakerfull.
Potyr and Kanesh stood on the stern deck while the rest of the crew slept. A slender arc of moon rose into the clear night sky like the wind-filled sail of a ship. A dim light was visible high on the cape at the other end of the bay.
“They celebrate the cult of the Mother here,” said Potyr, making the gesture of reverence towards the distant light. “Those are torches burning before her cave.”