by David Bell
Kanesh looked at the crowd of men trying to talk to the women, or entice the children to come and take an olive or a barley cake from their outstretched hands. One seized a baby from its mother’s grasp and laughing, hoisted it high, only to hand it back hastily when it started to howl and his mates jeered him.
“Where are the men?” said the Captain of Archers to Kanesh.
“Herding their goats and sheep to the mountains for the new grass. The older boys go with them to learn the paths and where the best pasture lies. They will not return until the first snowfalls cover the peaks. The old men are left here to be cared for by the women, when they find time from tending the few crops they plant and the hearths where they smoke their fish.”
“They fear a ship calling here. With their men away they are prey to any villain who sees his chance.”
“Clearly Luzar has been here before, on the vessel that took him to Gubal where he was bought and shipped to Keftiu. Last night I saw how the women greeted him. It appears he has their trust. He will have learned things from them that will be of use to us on the voyage along this coast. He will tell us in his own time and his own way.”
“From the way that some of them are fawning round him, I feel sure that he has amply repaid their confidences, in his own way, as you say. Hm, the captain is looking impatient. He is anxious to be away.”
Luzar said that the coastline they should follow now ran, as he put it, true for a day and a night to sail. He remembered some of it, not all. The women had told him that there was a river that came rushing out of the mountains and spread its water across green flat ground by the sea. The ship could anchor safely there to rest and take on clean water.
“We saw the fiery light in the sky across the sea last night, you and I,” said Kanesh. “We saw it rise and fall, and rise again, so it was not the sun. What did the women say of that, Luzar?”
“They say Lady Mother of Oceans sends fire to make beacon burn. They cover faces and offer prayers.”
“I say that there is an island in the sea that sends up fire and smoke, like a beacon, Luzar, and it is deaf to prayers. That is what I say.”
“Yes. I have seen it, by day before. They said another thing. They heard one great noise, like us.”
When Sharesh repeated what he had overheard, Namun’s face took on a troubled look.
“I wish he wouldn’t say things like that,” he said, anxiously. “It’ll only bring us bad luck.”
“What if the Lady Mother doesn’t hear everything, or chooses not to?”
“Quiet! Now you’re doing it.”
In the early morning light it looked a peaceful place. The women had spoken truly: there was the broad green triangle of grass and bushes through which the river flowed in many channels between banks of sand and boulders. Inland, the gorge from which it emerged could be seen winding between steep hills and up towards the stone clad slopes of towering mountains. There was no sheltering cove but the sea was calm and the wind had dropped. With care, a passable anchorage could be found.
The settlement stood near the entrance to the gorge on a levelled space well above the river. It was much larger than the last huddle of poor huts they had seen. Sharesh counted more than twenty round houses, all with roofs of thatch and walls built with boulders taken from the riverbed. Five of them formed a group set some distance away from the others. A pathway roughly paved with flat stones led from the village towards a grove of trees and another of broad steps cut into the hillside climbed up to the entrance of a large cave. On the lower ground were sheepfolds made from circles of piled up stones. Fowls scratched at the earth near the houses and a few goats stopped nibbling the grass and sprinted away as the men approached. There was a sweet smell of woodsmoke wafting from open doors. Outside one, a tall water jug, hastily put down, lay on its side with a handle broken and water still dribbling from the spout. A cat gazed imperturbably down at the men from the safety of the thatch. One very old man wrapped in a coarse woollen cape who sat on a stone bench outside one of the houses, staring at them with clouded sightless eyes. There was no one else to be seen.
“They will be in the gorge where it is easier to hide, not in the cave, I think,” said Kanesh. “Keep your archers and the other men here, Captain. Luzar will find them. We have until noon before the master calls us back to the ship.”
Luzar had cast his spell again, thought Sharesh. The place was full of women eying them and whispering to one another, but all were obviously relieved that these men were not here for plunder and rape, only to fill their water jars and, perhaps, to buy wool and cheese and pay for them with salt, even cloth. They did not all look the same. Some wore smocks with a finer cut and coiled their hair on the top of their heads, not letting it hang lank over their shoulders like the others. They were taller and their voices sounded a little different, deeper, quicker in speech. Two of them kept their hands close to bronze knives that hung from their girdles. These were the ones who lived in the bigger houses. Sharesh had looked inside one and seen painted pitchers standing next to shallow plates on a wooden table. A bronze sickle with a wooden handle was leaning against the wall just inside the door. He walked with Namun along the path to look at the grove. The low trees were myrtles, enclosing a cleared patch of ground with many graves. At one side the graves had stones piled on top with flowers strewn over them. On the other side were simple mounds of earth. They crept away, hoping they had not been seen disturbing sacred ground. Back among the houses, they saw that the women did sometimes talk to one another and their children played together, but it was puzzling, this apartness.
Kanesh knew the reason. He had come across it in other places on his wanderings: near the sea where raiders could land from ships, or in other places where armies had passed through. Here it must have happened at this time of the year with the men away with their flocks in the mountain meadows. A few of the women would have got away when the marauders arrived but the rest would have been carried off, for pleasure, or for sale. When the men returned from the mountains at the end of the summer, only a few were reunited with their women. The rest had to wait until they went back the high valleys to look for long-haired mountain women they could persuade to live with them by the sea. They looked and dressed differently and some ate things the others would not, but they all lived under the same threat: that it might happen again.
The cloth was prized even higher than the salt. The salt paid for eggs and cheeses, fowl, and two male kids, but the cloth was exchanged for hanks of wool, finer, declared Typhis, than any wool from the hills of Kinaani. The Davina pulled away from the shore, as Potyr had demanded, precisely as the sun reached its highest. Some of the older children had run down to the beach to stare at the departing ship, but the women had gone back to working in the fields and did not look up.
The day was fine, the sea flexing with a light swell and the sun warm on the rowers’ faces. Kanesh watched the coastline to starboard slipping slowly astern. Potyr was beside him, swaying with the motion of the ship. He had on what Kanesh called his horizon look and was deep in thought. Without shifting his gaze, he spoke.
“Not a single ship have we sighted since leaving Alefisia. I had not expected that. The burning mountain might make any captain wary of taking his ship near Sikelia, but here the seas are clear and the air is clean.”
“I know what you are thinking Captain. Contact with another vessel, if we do not frighten her off, could bring us useful information about this coast, and what course we should steer. You know that Luzar could tell us only that the women said their knives and sickle were bought from a cargo ship that came from the direction in which we are now going?”
“It is very little to go on. That captain has not sailed this part of the coast himself. I heard him saying something to Sharesh about being blown across the sea to the place we left this morning.”
“I pressed him on this. He spoke of a land where there were high stone towers and quarries of obsidian. His ship loaded bronze ingots at one
trading post and cauldrons, ladles and weapons at another. The land was surely Shardana: it fits well with what Merida was told by the drunken seaman in Gubal. The next port of call was to be somewhere three days’ sail towards the rising sun: he remembers that it shone on his shoulder, not his back, when the ship set sail. He was not told its name but it can have been only Sikelia.”
“True. There is no other land in that direction and that distance from Shardana.”
“One day out, the ship was struck by a yellow storm – the Deshret wind, to be sure – and driven off course. It carried them helpless for days, how many he cannot say because the clouds were so thick with the dust they could not fix the sun. They almost died of thirst and then the storm blew out and they found themselves in the bay near that river. It saved their lives. The rest, we know. What are you thinking?”
“Did you see those knives?”
“The sickle is more important. It was fine work but, from the way it was hafted, not fashioned in Keftiu nor in Sikelia.”
“And not in Shardana, or Luzar would have said so.”
“You are still thinking, Captain.”
“We must hold course. The bronze makers we seek have their furnaces somewhere along this coast, I am sure.”
“Their knowledge of the sea lanes will be more useful to us than their metal. They should also know why this sea is clear of ships.”
“Did I tell you? Luzar says the women heard the great noise, too.”
Having made up his mind, Potyr relapsed into his usual silence. Kanesh thought back over their conversation and especially the words of Luzar. Sharesh had told him how Luzar had been captured by pirates and sold into slavery. It was clear now: he must have been taken from the same ship as that other tattooed slave Merida was told of who ended up in Gubal. Luzar’s brother had been killed when their ship was seized. He would want to avenge that if the chance came his way. That was something to bear in mind should they ever reach the place where it had happened. They could not afford to lose their pilot.
The lookouts were told to keep special watch for any ship: out to sea, or beached or anchored in any bay or inlet, no matter where. Potyr was determined to steer towards any vessel sighted and get alongside to question her master. The skies were clear and the sea was slight. There could be no excuse for missing a sail. Nothing was seen, not even a fishing boat. It seemed the shoreline belonged only to the sea birds and the sea itself to the dolphins. By night, the moon rose bright enough for them to keep the shore in view. With a light following wind the Davina glided along fast enough under sail, needing only half a watch at the oars and pulling easily, to counter any yaw. Sharesh scanned the coastline until his eyes ached, rubbed them hard, and stared again. There was no point of light from a lantern, no flickering warmer glow of a fire, only a dark emptiness of shore, headland and mountain. It was easier, more restful to the eyes, to look at the silver-flecked sea but that was empty too.
At noon on the following day, they passed a blunt low-lying point of land on the starboard beam and found themselves at the opening of a gulf whose farthest shore was so distant, it was no more than a dark scratch on the horizon.
“River and green country to starboard,” called Namun. “Any ship in sight, or smoke on shore?”
“No ship, no smoke, Captain.”
“Hold course, helmsman. Easy as you go. Dusk will find us off that coast ahead.”
“Drop anchor there?” said Typhis hopefully.
“If we find shelter and good ground.”
The sun was turning red as it lowered itself towards a purple horizon. Thrust across it, as if to shade its light, the long black arm of a spur sloped down from the mountains into the sea and then reared up again as a craggy island fringed with rock pinnacles, thrusting up from the waves like the fingers of a despairing, drowning hand. As the Davina drew nearer, Sharesh saw something small and white show up for a moment against the dark rocks, and disappear. Could it be what he thought? He hesitated, hoping it would show again, then he remembered Typhis telling him he must report anything he saw, anything at all. The captain would decide what to do.
“Sail! Sail ahead. Close in shore. I saw it. Now it’s gone.”
“There is a ship in there, helmsman. She’s lowered sail or gone behind some headland. There must be anchorage. Take us in and have the linesman up on the bow.”
The anchorage was in a cove fitting snugly between precipitous cliffs of bare rock. A ship with sail down and oars drawn in lay close to the beach at the far end of the cove, its anchors half lowered. Sharesh’s sighting call echoed from the cliffs. The ship’s anchors started to rise, oars were thrust out and her bow began to turn away from the shore. She stopped halfway through her turn and sat, rocking slowly as her oars paddled to hold her in place.
“He’s seen we can cut across him anywhere he tries to get out,” growled Typhis.
“Slow ahead, helmsman. Bring me close. I’m going to the bow,” said Potyr.
As the captain made his way forward, Kanesh spoke quietly to the Captain of Archers. “Hold your men ready but don’t let them show themselves.”
The distance between the two ships gradually lessened. Kanesh had a clear view of the other ship’s captain standing on the stern and other members of the crew. None of them held weapons. They all looked hesitant but watchful. She was a bulky broad-beamed cargo ship, heavy laden by the way she sat low in the water. She looked to be no threat to the Davina but it was wise to be careful. There were stories of ships that looked as innocent as a river barge until you got close enough and then out of the hold poured a crowd of yelling cut-throats armed to the teeth and swinging grappling hooks. Potyr obviously thought the same. He signalled to Typhis to bring the Davina about a ship’s length away from the other vessel and then, holding up both arms to show he held no weapon, he called across to her:
“Davina out of Keftiu, bound for the bronzesmiths’ island! May the Lady Mother give you safe sailing, Captain. What ship are you?”
The captain looked long and carefully at Potyr then up and down the Davina from bow to stern and back again before he gave a wary reply.
“Sea Horse. Shardana. You’re a long way from home waters, Captain.”
“We have farther yet to go, Captain. I fancy you are familiar with these waters and beyond that are unknown to us. Your help would be welcome and repaid with new information we have of where you may be sailing.”
“Where might that be, Captain?”
“You are out of Shardana and heavy laden. Your carry copper for the bronzesmiths but you are now here and still loaded. You are bound for Sikelia, port of Sakrosa.”
The captain laughed. “You know your ships, Captain, if not the waters here. We will share with each other what we know. Drop your anchors and I will do the same; the ground is good in this little bay. Bronzesmiths’ island you say? You are not far away from it but there are things to tell you before you set your course there. Now, what is it you have for me?”
“These matters take some time to talk about,” called Kanesh from the stern. “With the captain’s permission, come aboard and mix talk with wine.”
The Davina was moving slow ahead out of the cove and Typhis was waiting for Potyr to signal the turn to starboard that would take her into the strait that the cargo ship’s skipper had said they must pass through. Out to sea, a white dot no bigger than a seabird riding the waves showed how far off the sail of his own ship now was.
“What we told him about the burning mountain hasn’t changed his mind,” said the Captain of Archers.
“He has little choice,” said Kanesh. “He has a full load of copper the bronzesmiths now cannot handle and an owner in Shardana who would not welcome him taking it back there. He is gambling on the chance that the mountain will have burnt itself out by the time he gets to Sikelia. I like his spirit.”
“Hard a starboard, helmsman,” said Potyr. “Take us through.”
The skipper of the cargo ship had told Potyr that once he had p
assed through the strait and into the bay beyond, he would see the far shore ending with an island that rose like a mountain out of the sea. He must steer for that. It was not the bronzesmiths’ island; that lay too low to be seen from the strait, but would come into sight once they were some distance across the bay and they could then change course towards it. When asked about the coast beyond the bay, he could tell them little because he had never sailed it. He had heard it was mainly low, swampy land with slow-moving rivers until it turned and mountains came down to the sea. There were supposed to be islands with wild people living on them and one where it was said copper could be found. That was all. He sailed the lanes from Shardana to this bay and then along the coast they themselves had followed, to Sikelia. That was what he knew. There were seamen on Shardana who had sailed the lanes to Sapanim and to the trading settlement along the coast from a great river. They could be asked, if they could be found. But their own man with the tattooed face had come across to Shardana from somewhere near a great river. He must know something.
The waters of the bay were blue and calm. The crew were in good spirits, expecting a short day’s work. The coast to starboard ran away from the strait in a long line of sea cliffs and was lost in the hazy distance. Out of the haze rose the dark upper slopes of a double-peaked mountain. The shoreline on the mountain’s other side was also hidden but it had to curve round again because it ended near the mountain island whose peak could now be seen directly beyond the bow. Kanesh stood there beside Sharesh, waiting patiently in the hope that the light following wind would clear away the haze and let him see something of what the cargo-ship skipper had told them. He thought back over what the man had said: there were things they should know before heading for the bronzesmiths’ island. When it came to telling, however, he seemed at first reluctant, almost evasive. More wine loosened his tongue and as he spoke, Kanesh realised it was not shiftiness that made him hesitate, but puzzlement. He had seen things he simply could not explain and that made him worried. For him, gods or devils, or both, had been at work and that meant it was no place for a poor seaman to stay. He’d hauled up his anchor and put out to sea as fast as he could.