by David Bell
“She says –”
“I know what she is saying,” said Kanesh. He spoke carefully to the woman, using the ancient words. Her eyes opened wide in amazement, then dropped in respect. She lifted her hands to make a gesture of reverence but Kanesh gently stopped her. He spoke to her again, a few words only. She looked uncertain, glanced across to Luzar, questions in her eyes.
“For her you are a god but you say not. What do you want of her?”
“Luzar, tell her all we want of her is the way to the settlement where her father lives. She and her boy are safe with us and we will restore her to her family. You will tell her this and be sure I will watch and listen as you speak.”
Luzar touched her hand as he spoke to her, glancing once down to the boy playing with Namun. She was silent for a moment, then briefly nodded and said a few words shyly to Kanesh.
“We must go with her now,” he said. “The way is difficult at first and we will need boats.” He left them and made his way back to the stern.
“Beyond the beach the rivers run into lakes and marshes. We must find boats and a guide who knows the pathways. She says there are huts where the fishermen and fowlers camp near pools where they gather the salt. Once through the swamps, it is another half-day’s march but the ground is firm.”
“How many men?” said Potyr.
“Seven, in two boats, and the woman; the boy will need carrying if he tires. That means Kerma, with his axe, of course; Captain of Archers, too, I think Luzar as scout; Namun, the boy has taken to him; Sharesh –”
“Yourself and one more. Take Tessias, he has good sense.”
As they were wading ashore, with Kerma carrying the boy on his shoulders, Potyr called out. “We will wait two days and then send a party to find you. Or what is left of you,” he added.
Kanesh could imagine the wry smile on his face. Once on the beach it took little time to divide out the loads to be carried. What food they did not take with them, they would have to catch. The woman led them towards the line of bushes that fringed the beach. Luzar had already gone on ahead.
Blue waters stretched before them and on either side as far as they could see, dotted with countless sand banks, reed beds and islands sprouting coarse grass and yellow flowers. A company of stately long-legged birds with drooping black beaks, standing alert in the shallows, took to the air at their approach and flapped languidly away to refuge on some distant strand. A hawk hovered above, heedless of them, intent on its prey. A kingfisher flashed by and swallows skimmed the wavelets where ducks skittered away from black-headed hunters that stalked about jabbing their long bills fiercely into the mud.
The sun was halfway down the sky when they came upon the huts near the salt pans. Luzar was there alone, waiting for them.
“They are here and they know we are here,” he said to Kanesh. The woman listened to him. “You are strangers,” she said. “You carry weapons. They fear strangers who come from the sea. Go back a little way along the path and wait until I call. I will sit here with the boy and in time they will come. They will know me when I say my name.”
They came from out of their hiding place at dusk; two short, muscular men with long hair, wearing nothing but loincloths. One had a fowling net over his shoulder and the other carried a wicker fish trap in each hand. A long time was spent in talking, with the men often looking and pointing across to the place where Kanesh and the others lay concealed. They seemed unconvinced until finally the woman stood up and spat out words that made Kanesh shake with silent laughter.
“She’s telling them if they do not do as she asks, each one of them will have one of your shafts through his throat before he can turn round,” he said to the Captain of Archers, “and, listen to this, her father will feed their children and their genitals to his dogs.”
“On the ship he seemed such a frightened little creature, all huddled up in that shabby cloak; hardly dared look at any of us.”
“She has authority here. Oh, there they go, and Luzar following them. Let us see what she has to say.”
“They will be back at dawn with the boats,” she said. “They have offered their huts for you to sleep in but they are full of fleas and stink of old fish.”
“We need a good fire out here,” said Namun. “Come and help me find some wood.” The boy took his outstretched hand.
Two long, narrow, flat-bottomed boats with pointed prows were there at dawn, as promised. The men of Shardana men stood at the stern, using long poles to send them gliding swiftly and easily across the still water, so silently that not a single bird rose in alarm. The sun had climbed barely three fingers above the now distant sandbar that sheltered the lakes from the sea when Sharesh in the bow found tall rushes swaying above his head and rustling aside as the sharp prow pressed through, slower and slower, until it came to rest on a muddy causeway twisting through the reed beds. The fowler stepped nimbly over the occupants of his boat, onto the causeway and disappeared into the reeds. A little later, he was back, followed by a tousle-haired young man carrying a goatherd’s staff whom he pushed forward in front of the woman who was now standing on the causeway. The fowler must have said something about her because the goatherd knuckled his brow and hardly dared meet her eyes. No sooner was everyone out of the boats than they were gliding away across the silent lake again, leaving arrowheaded lines of ripples spreading across the smooth surface of the water behind them.
“They will be back for you when they are told,” said the woman. “This fellow will guide us through the swamps.”
Kanesh remembered another swamp, long ago, and another woman who splashed and floundered through the sedge thickets and mud with him in their flight to freedom. Freedom? It was so fleeting. But now and here, just ahead of him, there was Sharesh, who knew the woman but nothing of that time. Sometimes the pathway lay hidden below the water and they slipped as they felt cautiously for it with their feet, dreading the slimy grip of the soft mud. Sometimes they had to wade with water almost up to their necks, Kerma holding the petrified boy above his head, the woman’s ragged cloak floating about her shoulders as she smiled and cajoled the child. Always, the goatherd seemed to know where the causeway lay and never once slowed his pace. At last they stepped out of the reed beds onto firm ground, finding themselves on the bank of a slow, meandering stream of clear water. Without waiting to rest they waded into its pools to wash away the loathsome, sticky mud and clinging green slime. The goatherd squatted on the bank, watching them for a while, then slipped away, back into the swamp.
“The river will lead us to my father’s house,” said the woman, taking her child by his hand and leading him happily away across the grass.
The settlement was one of many round houses with stone walls and thatched roofs built near the river in a wide grass-covered valley bounded by forest-clad mountains. As they approached it, they found people working in the fields or watching over herds of cattle and goats, who looked at them curiously, saying nothing until the woman waved her hand and called to them. At that, two women dropped their hoes and came up hesitantly to look in her face and at the child, while she chattered rapidly to them. Tentative smiles replaced doubtful looks on their faces as they evidently realised who she might be. They gave the strange big men some roguish looks, eyeing them up and down and making comments that had unmistakeable meaning. Kanesh wagged his finger at them and said something in the ancient words that threw them into fits of cackling laughter.
Cooking fires were burning outside almost every hut, heating cauldrons of steaming stew or roasting fish skewered on green sticks. The savoury smells made every Davina man’s stomach rumble in protest at its emptiness as he walked past. The woman led them at last to a cone-shaped stone tower house that stood on a flat-topped mound in the middle of the settlement. A ramp led up to the platform. The house had gaps in the walls for windows and a single doorway facing the ramp. A solid-looking man with long white hair and a black beard streaked with grey stood before the doorway, looking down at them.
/> As Kanesh and the others watched, the woman walked slowly and hesitantly up the ramp, pulling the shy little boy behind her, sank to her knees before the white-haired man and lowered her head to his feet. He looked down at her for a long time before he put his big hands on her arms and raised her to her feet. Kanesh saw tears rolling down his cheeks into the black beard.
They sat on the platform in front of the chieftain’s house in the soft warmth of evening, sipping sweet wine from mugs stamped with seashell patterns and with their stomachs full almost to bursting after the feast he had ordered in their honour. The people had left their cooking fires to burn low and were thronging the space in front of the mound, stretching their necks for a sight of the strangers or a snatch of their talk.
“Big as a bull, isn’t he, that one with the axe?”
“Do you think he’s as big as a bull everywhere?”
“Better not let your man hear you saying that.”
“What about that young one? He’s lovely, such sad eyes. Got a look about him, though, he has. You can tell.”
“Well, leave that long-haired lad with the purple eyes to me. My legs go all soft when he looks this way.”
“One of them is a god, somebody said. That big one with the beard like the chief, it’s him. They’ve come from the sea. Gods do that.”
“They’ve brought the chief’s daughter back to him, after all these years. What a shame her mother isn’t alive to see her again, and that little boy.”
“Look at that bow there, leaning against the wall. Now if I had a bow like that –”
“Shut up! Listen, that young one’s starting to play.”
Sharesh had the pipes at his lips, playing the sad little song his mother used to sing to him about a swallow trying to fly home before the winter came. The chieftain listened to him and the tears came to his eyes again, but this time they came because of happiness.
“Play something they can dance to now,” said Kerma when the sad last sad note faded into the darkness. “They want to dance tonight.”
The chieftain looked down at the whirling dancers. All the settlement’s inhabitants, young and old, seemed to be there. His daughter was among them, twisting and laughing as Namun pranced in front of her.
“The boy plays well. Our dancers have only the music of the voice for their steps. His pipes will be remembered. He is close to you, I think and that is good. You have given me back my daughter who I thought was dead. There was nothing left for me after my wife died of grief for her. Now I have a daughter and a grandson who will grow to be chief after me. Whatever you ask of me I will do it, but it will never be thanks enough for what you have done for me.”
“This may sound strange to you but all we want is for you to tell us where we are on Shardana, if this land is Shardana, and what course our ship should steer for Kyronus. Once there we have a pilot who can steer us to our next landfall.”
“You mean the tattooed man? He spoke to me in our own tongue that you also know. This land is Shardana and you are where Shardana is nearest to the Libun shore. When the hot wind brings its dust it sometimes also brings ships from the Deshret Land, not to trade but to anchor in the gulf and rest and take on water. Kyronus I have heard of but what course you should steer I do not know. You must sail your ship round this coast, first following the sun, then keeping to the coast until you come to the sea lagoon. Ships anchor there to take on obsidian from the mines in the mountains. You will surely find a captain there who will tell you what you need to know. From here it is three days’ march along this valley. There are some pools where the water is always hot and you can soak yourself, if you pay the priestess enough. I can send guides with you.” He laughed at his own joke. “But you are seamen. You do not like to walk far. Look there, at my daughter. How happy she is to be among her own people again.”
“You have told us me what I need to know and I thank you for that and this feast. I fear we must make an early start tomorrow if we are to keep our captain from sending out search parties. We have yet very far to go but you have told us the first stage of the voyage.”
“My daughter told me of your ship, the finest she has ever seen, she said, and like no other. Tell me, what land is such a fine ship seeking and what lies there that is so valuable that such men as you are drawn to it?”
“I will not hide it from you. We are bound for the Endless Ocean and the Tin Islands that lie in it.”
“Then may the Great Mother of the Seas and Storms protect you. I will make offerings for your safety here and at our ancient places in the mountains where we soon will be driving our herds for the new grass and the clean air that keeps the fever from us.” The chieftain fell silent, watching the dancers and moving his head in time with the music. He turned to face Kanesh again and his look was serious, warning. “There was a seaman came by here some time ago. He was to marry one of our women but seamen never stay long in one place – forgive me – and he went back to the sea. He drank too much of our wine one night and told me of a ship that called in at a port of Sapanim where he was waiting to join a crew. He was going to sail with them but ran off when he found out that ship was bound for the Endless Ocean. No one heard of it again, he said.”
It was time to leave. Hands were grasped and quiet farewells were said. The chieftain watched from his platform as the Davina’s men shouldered their burdens, and filed away between the silent huts, led by two yawning, half-asleep boys who were to be their guides. A tousled Namun came out of one of the huts to join them.
“Where are you going?” said Kerma .
“I’m coming with you. You might have told me we were off.”
“No you’re not. They said you were staying, you know, with the chief’s daughter.”
“The chief’s daughter?” Namun looked back at the hut he had just left.
“Like I said, the chief’s daughter. Took a fancy to you, she did. Said she liked your sad eyes and she could see you’d be a good father to her little boy.”
“You were the one that carried him.”
“It’s not me she’s marrying. You’re the one. It’s all arranged. There’ll be trouble if you leave now.”
Namun cast a scared look back at the chieftain’s tower house. “Lord Diwonis! Can’t we go a bit quicker…”
He saw the others grinning at him. Kerma almost flattened him with a slap on the back and roared with laughter.
“Caught you that time, eh? Hey, watch where you’re throwing that stone; nearly hit the Captain here.”
Sharesh found a small bead of white metal in his pack when he was feeling for barley cakes they had been given for their journey. He showed it to Tessias.
“Silver,” said the Taphian. “Always pay the piper so he won’t play a tune you don’t like next time.”
Potyr had determined to sail as soon as Kanesh and his men were back on board and by noon the Davina, now sheltered from the main blast of the wind that still churned the waves farther out to sea, turned a point which was clearly the tip of Shardana they sought. Ahead were two rocky islands with a channel between them and the coast that proved wide enough for safe passage. As the Davina glided past a cape on the second island, to gain the open sea, the crew gazed in awed silence at great stone columns standing out from the pale-coloured cliffs, whispering among themselves that these were the work of giants, or the ruins of the deserted temple of some island goddess. A safe anchorage was found before dusk in a bay with a stream running down a steep valley to the beach. When he went to fetch water for cooking Sharesh found it was coloured and tasted bitter, so Namun waded back to the ship for water from the jars. Luzar, who had come ashore with them, followed the stream up its valley and was soon lost to sight.
“The chieftain told me that there are mines somewhere on this side of Shardana,” said Kanesh when Sharesh told him of the tainted water. “He did not know where they are but this has the look and taste of water that washes the ground near diggings.” He looked up towards the hills, following the skyline runn
ing up the coast. “And farther on are the quarries where the obsidian is dug out. Tomorrow we shall be looking along these shores for the port where it is loaded.”
“Luzar is up there in the hills now,” said Sharesh, “and it will be dark soon. What if he falls into an ambush?”
“Never fear for Luzar. He sees everything and hears, even smells everything and no one ever sees or hears him unless he wishes it. He can turn himself into a tree and have you lean on him and you would never know. He is the best scout we will ever have. And here he is now.”
“Where? I can’t see him.”
“Behind you. You must learn to see and hear, Sharesh, as well as look and listen. Ask him to teach you.”
“Houses on hill,” said Luzar when they asked him what he had seen. “Many houses and tower houses, more than we have seen. They have dogs and goats and beehives.”
“People?” asked Kanesh.
“Women, some children but no men, only boys. Men work in another place.”
“No danger to us this night,” said Sharesh.
“Long stones stand outside the village. There is a burial place, this kind.” He placed his hands together like a mound. “In my land we have these things.”
Luzar stood on the beach, as still and silent as a stone, watching the sun quench its fire in the dark ocean. He was still there when the stars came out. Sharesh fell asleep wondering if he was thinking of the standing stones in that far off land of his.
“Call that a quarry?” jeered Kerma. “It’s a hole scraped in the hillside hardly big enough to shit in.”
He said this to Typhis who was pointing out the mountainside where the obsidian quarries were worked. The Davina was making good time along a coast where occasional mounds and platforms of black stone dimpled with blue rock pools interrupted long empty sweeps of smooth, yellow sand. Flat ground covered with trees spread inland, gradually sloping upwards to a range of mountains facing the ocean.