by David Bell
“They’re coming! Heading straight for us!”
Men started up from the thwarts, shouting in alarm. Namun rushed to the rail, as if ready to jump overboard. Sharesh laughed wildly as the thought of throwing a pig in the sea for the Lord Potheidan flashed through his mind. Typhis raced for the stern to join Kerma at the tiller but Potyr reached the deck before him. Kanesh strode amidships and roared at the top of his voice:
“Back on your thwarts! Ready oars! All’s well, lads! Wait the captain’s call!”
He towered over them and the power in his voice and his eyes took hold of them and quelled their rising panic. They fell to shuffling on their seats and gripping their oars so hard their knuckles turned white, but they were a crew again, with their eyes on Potyr, waiting for his word.
Potyr was watching the ripples swirling towards the ship as the giant shapes drove for the bow. If one were ahead of the other, would a touch on the tiller and a tap on the oars give him the turn that would let him through? They were too close together, and even if he did slip past once, they could come back at him with ease, from astern or abeam. They are too fast and strong for us, Lady Mother; only you can help us now.
They passed, one on each side, so gracefully and slowly that every scar and barnacle on their great curved backs, and every long worm clinging and sucking at their flanks, could be seen by every man and every man in turn found the curious gaze of the fish fixed on him as it passed by. Kanesh felt the ship rise slightly as their great bulk pressed the water against her sides. Potyr watched them drift beyond the stern, turn and head back, draw level a ship’s length out, and send up fountains of spray from the side of their heads. They dived, straight down, and the last he saw of them were two waving black tail fans. Namun saw them too. To him it seemed like a farewell.
“They’re his creatures, so they does what the Lord Potheidan tells ‘em to,” said the grandfather to the young Kallista oarsman. “I promised him a pig if we gets back home. There you are, see?”
“Steady as you go, helmsman,” said Potyr. “Oars inboard. Water and smoked fish for every man.”
“With some music to calm our nerves, perhaps?” said Kanesh.
WIND OFFSHORE
“Land! Land ho, dead ahead,” Namun sang out from the bow. A hoarse cheer went up from the crew.
He had been right to believe her and there was the proof, that low dark line on the horizon that meant the end of five days of sleepless struggle, loneliness and gnawing doubt. There, high in the sky to starboard, strode the sun and there, ahead was Sapanim; but where on Sapanim? Were there reefs and shoals hidden by the swell? How did the current run and when would the sea rise, threatening to drag his ship ashore? Potyr looked again towards the sun, conscious that he had done the same only moments before. Close, but not close enough: night would be falling when he reached the coast. Best keep on until the sun neared the horizon and then stand out, head into the wind and seas and wait for daybreak. He turned to Typhis.
“How much water do we have?”
“None since sunset yesterday, Captain.”
A thirsty night at sea after a thirsty day and no surety of finding water when they made landfall: a time for sucking pebbles, or a time to keep faith with the one who had brought them this far?
“If we want water, we must row for it. Set a smart rate, helmsman and take us in.”
“When we draw close have Sharesh and Luzar on the bow,” said Kanesh. “If one does not see the reefs, the other may feel them.”
The moon was in the sky ahead of them before the sun went down and in the twilight lit a path across the waves as if to show their way. As the Davina neared the coast, the pale cliffs of a cape came into view, seeming to Sharesh like the bow of a stately white ship bearing down upon him.
“Cape of many birds,” said Luzar. “Islands you can see but not the hidden rocks. Go, tell captain. He will remember. He must steer starboard past this cape to find the river.”
First there was another, smaller cape to round and then a bay with a sandy beach to cross, and after that a dark curving headland that sheltered the mouth of a river. While the oars held water, the sail was furled and Namun sent to the bow with the sounding line. The Davina crept slowly upstream, edging to larboard where the riverbank rose steeply and Potyr judged the stream would be deeper. Namun called out his soundings every time the ship moved on two lengths. When he called two knots on the line, the ship hove to and Sharesh was told to get over the rail and taste the water. It was salty. The ship moved on again in the now sluggish stream. Namun called one knot on the line with sand on the lead. When Sharesh declared the water to be still salt, Potyr decided he had gone far enough and ordered the ship to be secured as best she could be for the night. Anchors were dropped on the starboard side and lines secured to trees on the riverbank. While this was being done Luzar and Sharesh and one of the archers were sent in search of fresh water.
Fish were roasting over fires when Sharesh returned with three full goatskins that were soon emptied down parched throats. He said Luzar had led the way upstream, stopping from time to time to listen for the sound of animals drinking. He had led them to a pool in some marshy ground where pigs were rooting in the mud. The archer had shot two and the rest had fled.
Typhis had little need to order a water party to form up; men were already bringing jars from the hold and fitting the carrying harnesses to their backs. With fish hot from the fire scorching his fingers and lips, Sharesh was hurried away by men whose one thought now was to get to that pool and plunge into its cool, sweet depths.
Potyr watched the night mists that veiled the river slowly twisting and fading away in the warmth of the rising sun. The bronze ring that he had let fall into the sea off the cape of many birds, as Luzar had it: was he giving thanks to the Lady Mother for a safe landfall, or to Eluwena who had told him the way? He was unsure and that surprised him. One ring only was left in his pouch: for the first sighting of the Keftiu shore, of course. But who would lead him there? The voice of Kanesh broke into his thoughts.
“They fed well last night. What of today?”
“Today we rest and tomorrow we put to sea again. We must fill every jar and hunt for more fresh meat, enough for three days at least. The fat we brought from Crakluz is turning rancid now. We need oil and that we cannot find on this coast.”
“The trading post, upstream from that great sand spit near the river mouth, where Luzar sat all night beside the stone and our fisher twins netted the silver fish: there was oil to be had there, not of the quality of Keftiu oil but good enough to rub into your skin. You will call in there?”
“If it can be found.”
“Luzar will find it. He will remember the stone. For him it is a beacon.”
“Seeing the trading post should finally quell the doubts of some in the crew who are still unsure that we have found Sapanim, even though we saw the cape of many birds.”
“I take it I need not look at the tablets Sharesh marked?”
“No. Given a fair wind such as we have had so far and the same current, it will be five days’ sail.”
“Again five days at sea. You press them hard, my friend.”
“But from now on we shall keep the coast in sight until we reach the Strait. After that, I cannot say, but we shall then be in our own sea.”
“So, light duties, rest, drink well and eat well, if the hunters are lucky, and perhaps some music from the pipes and dancing? They will suspect something, as they always do.”
“Now your lowland pig, like this one,” said Kerma, chewing thoughtfully. “Is fatter, especially after nut fall but there isn’t that tastiness you get in an upland pig.”
“Give me plenty of fat,” said the Taphian, Tessias, speaking up for once. “And tender meat. Hardly get your teeth into some of that highland boar.”
“Not if you have teeth as old as yours,” laughed Kerma. “Sorry, shipmate, only joking. How about you, Grandad? Do you want me to chew it for you?”
�
�The Davina’s grandfather mumbled something in reply.
“Says will somebody to crack open a bone or two so he can suck out the marrow,” said the Kallista oarsman from Mitoia.
“Do it for him, Namun, there’s a good lad. You’re not eating much for a young ’un. Something wrong with this?”
“Too rich for me. I can’t wait to get back to a nice stew of goat’s meat with beans and garlic and thyme, with barley cakes to dip in the gravy.”
“And where do you get that, my lad?”
“From the maid in my house,” laughed Sharesh, poking Namun in the ribs.
“Is that all he gets?” sniggered Myrtias.
“I heard tell he does a few jobs at the Ladies’ House as well, when he’s in port,” said the Kallista man. “Wear himself out, he will, when we get home.”
Namun smiled smugly as he cracked another bone for the grandfather. “Think what you like,” he said.
Kerma got to his feet and emitted a thunderous belch. “Hear that?” he said to Sharesh. “See if you can match that for tone on those pipes of yours, and you, Taphian. I feel like a bit of music to help send me off to sleep. You’re all going to need it. No need to tell you what a day off and a dinner like this means.”
With a following current and a light wind on the starboard quarter the Davina surged ahead, standing well out to sea but keeping the coast and the distant snow-tipped mountains always in view. When darkness fell and he had the star abeam for guidance, Potyr made a slight change of course to starboard and held to it through the night. When the sun rose on the second day his reason was plain. The line of the coast had swung across the Davina’s bow during the night, but Typhis now had her well positioned to clear a rocky headland very like the cape of many birds that thrust its point like a spearhead out into the great ocean.
Now came the day that tested the seamanship of Potyr and his whole crew to the utmost. A tangled coast of innumerable deep inlets, rocky headlands and offshore reefs had to be navigated with the ship running before a strong wind that put a belly in the sail and a rolling swell that relentlessly pressed her towards the shore. All through the day the riggers were at work on the flapping sail and humming lines, trimming, shortening, lowering and raising again, while Typhis bellowed orders at the oarsmen on one side or the other to slacken or quicken stroke and Kerma struggled with the tiller, sometimes needing the hand of Kanesh to hold the rudder against the power of the sea. They were all near the limit of their strength and stamina when Potyr felt a sudden change in the way the ship was riding. The wind had eased and backed onto the larboard quarter, and the current now ran straight with the line of the coast. She began to run easier and roll less in a lower swell. In the twilight Sharesh called out a sighting of a long, low, dark stretch of land. It pointed like a finger in the direction they were heading.
At his call, Potyr felt a surge of relief. He ordered half sail and rest for the oarsmen, turn and turn about. Namun was sent round with honey-sweetened water and slices of cold meat. He turned to look astern. The star was there. He was about to give the order steady as you go, but decided to keep quiet: Typhis knew what to do.
“There is your star, Captain,” said Kanesh. “Precisely where you want it.”
“And there is your Charioteer, urging us on.”
“I am pleased to see them both. I thought for a moment that was the end of the world back there.”
The wind fell away during the night and was no more than a gentle breeze by morning. Potyr and Kanesh were both right: the river with the sand bar at its mouth was sighted on the fifth day, in the afternoon by Luzar at lookout on the bow.
Flocks of seabirds rose shrieking from sand dunes and reed beds and circled over the Davina as she slowly passed along a narrow channel and dropped anchor behind the sand bar.
“Looks deserted,” said the Captain of Archers as the party waded ashore and cautiously approached the collection of huts scattered along the edge of the salt marsh upstream from the sandbar. “Send Luzar up the hill over there to see if he can see anybody. He’ll want to go and stand by his stone again, in any case.”
Kerma and the archers were sent to search the huts. They were soon back, reporting that nothing seemed to be missing, except people, and boats. Hearths were cold, pots and bowls piled up in corners but none broken, even a few fishing lines and harpoons lying about, but there were no people and no dogs nor any other animal to be seen.
“We can’t have scared them off,” said the Captain of Archers. “They must be used to ships calling in. That’s why they’re here.”
“Not ships like ours,” said Kanesh. “But that is not the reason. This is a sweltering place at this time of the year. The marsh is alive with flies that breed sickness. The people have taken to their boats and gone upriver to escape the sickness and, I imagine, to hunt the silver fish.”
“So much for any oil.”
“Do not abandon hope. Traders never cease trading. You two Taphians! Take the others with you and show them where to dig.”
Some time later, a grinning Myrtias emerged from one hut and a straight-faced Tessias from another, each followed by crewmen who were brushing sand from long-necked jars of the kind made to hold oil.
“The Captain arranged for this when we called in here on our outward voyage,” explained Kanesh to the mystified Captain of Archers. “The oil was paid for at that time. It is pleasing to find that the trader has proved true to his word. Of course,” he added easily. “The certainty that his settlement would not survive our visit had he not kept his side of the bargain no doubt helped.”
The stone was a beacon, as the lord had said; a landmark to guide a ship, stand guardian of the tomb, mark the place from where the sun could be seen to rise above the cusp between the distant peaks. It was more. Place a hand here, where the hand that chiselled the rock face had brushed across gauging its smoothness. Place a hand here, on the carved shepherd’s crook, and here, in the spiral that was life unfolding and feel the presence of the ancient people, your own people. Feel their wisdom and their strength. They are not far away. The beacon brings them, as it guides the living, to the meeting place.
“See anything, or anybody?” said the Captain of Archers. “Not people from this place,” said Luzar.
Kerma looked away across the marshland towards the river mouth.
“Sea’s going away again,” he said to Tessias. “See yonder: ship’s touching bottom. We’re here for the night with all these bloodsucking flies. Better light a fire and make plenty of smoke.”
“You know they cannot face another five days at sea,” said Kanesh.
“I do. There are good anchorages along this coast as far as the Strait. Until we have it in sight we will sail by day and seek mooring each night, a mooring where there is plenty of fresh water and game if we can find it. I know well that we need a strong and rested crew if we are to pass the Strait.”
“There is one river, not far distant from our first anchorage after we passed through the Strait, where we should land a party.”
“You mean the river that flows red. Surely the water is too tainted for drinking.”
“Water for filling our jars before we attempt the Strait we can find almost anywhere. The water of that river is tainted, as you put it, because it carries metal. Where there is metal there will be miners. It could reward us later if we were to find out who and where they are, not forgetting what they may have to trade.”
“I hear you. We will land if time and weather permit.”
For two more days and nights the wind favoured them, blowing fresh on the larboard quarter and sending the ship hurrying through white-topped waves. Potyr kept her closer in, confident that the wind would keep her free of reefs. The coast they passed was low and straight, fringed with thin yellow beaches that passed inland into salt marsh and mudflat with here and there a sluggish river coiling its course behind low dunes until finally it broke through to meet the sea. Potyr was beginning to know the ways of this sea now and on each
night had the ship run up to touch ground near the beach a little upstream from the river mouth, confident that the swell of the sea would lift her clear in the morning. Sharesh remembered the second landfall, a broad river mouth reached after rounding a level-topped cape with pale cliffs that rose straight up from a narrow shore. He had it marked on one of his tablets because they had anchored there on the outward voyage. On that occasion, unsure of the sea, Potyr had taken the Davina upstream to where the river widened and split into many inlets and separate channels weaving past reed beds and sandbanks. This time, however, he had her brought into a small sheltered bay no more than a hundred ship lengths in from open sea. While lines were being turned round trees to secure her for the night, a water party and hunters were sent off up a wooded valley that led down to the bay, with strict orders not to come back empty-handed.
Namun was the only one of the shore party still awake when Sharesh and Luzar came out of the trees and walked to the smouldering fire on the beach.
“Is there anything left for us?” said Sharesh, poking through the embers with a stick.
“You’re lucky,” yawned Namun. “I kept back some rabbit legs for you. If you scrape the bowls you might find some bean stew. There’s no barley bread. Guess who ate the last of that. Leptos and Leptos pulled one of those big-mouthed fish with the whiskers out of the river. They come up if you shine a light. They wrapped it in leaves and baked it in the ashes. If there’s any left, it’s in that parcel by the fire. I don’t like it much: too watery. Where did you get to? The lord was asking. I told him after Luzar found the spring and we started filling the jars you two disappeared. Better let him know you’re back.”