by David Bell
Good, I needed that drink. Just thinking about the place and what came afterwards makes me thirsty. Yes, we found the people who lived there, the ones whose boats we’d seen. I was right about the smoke. When we came on their village it was getting near evening and one or two cooking fires were going. Women were stirring things in pots. They didn’t run off like the ones I told you about earlier, even though we must have looked a bit wild after so long at sea. Even the archers with their shafts on the strings didn’t seem to worry them, nor Kerma with his axe. In fact they didn’t take much notice of us at all, just kept on stirring their pots and putting bits of dead palm tree branch on their little fires. I thought that was very strange. Maybe it was the lord. He went and talked to them. That stopped the stirring. People stop what they’re doing when he talks. I saw one of the women point to the houses. He must have asked where the men were because he sent Kerma and an archer to look inside. After a long time they came out, bringing two men with them. They looked half asleep, heads hanging down and mouths yawning even when the lord spoke to them. I couldn’t follow everything he said but I did catch some of the words, and that surprised me because they were like enough to Black Land words. The things I can remember him saying, or I think he was saying, were something like who we were, what was this place, was there any water and food to be had and could they tell him anything about places further along the coast and what was it like sailing there. They shuffled about, blinking at him, yawning and scratching and mumbling until he lost patience and his mood changed in that frightening way it sometimes does: he looks straight at you, I mean down at you because he’s so big, speaks very slowly in a quiet but hard voice that you have to listen to because if you don’t, you know something awful will happen to you. The two men shook themselves like dogs, livened up as much as they could and told him all he wanted to know, most important of which was that they had a well near the middle of the island. That done, he thanked them politely and gave them that smile of his that always reminds me of a wolf eyeing a flock of sheep and led us off back to the ship. I slept on the beach that night with some of the others. I say slept but it was too hot to get much sleep and I had one of my bad dreams. It was about the Deshret and the god who rules it, I can’t tell you his name because we’re not allowed to say it, and scorpions and snakes. I hate snakes. I know I shouldn’t say so because they’re sacred, but I do. I woke up with a start. I think it was seabirds crying as they flew over. Anyway, it wasn’t long before dawn and it was cooler. I must have dropped off because when Typhis shouted out from the ship for us to wake up, there were baskets of fruit and dates covered in leaves at our feet.
Early morning, before the sun had lifted, was really lovely, all cool and the sky the colour of a pink pearl. That’s what Sharesh said, not me. He’s the poet, the singer of songs. He hadn’t been playing much in the bad weather but he did play later that day and in the evening, I remember. Everybody gobbled up the dates. Sailors like sweet things. You don’t get much sweet stuff at sea after the figs have run out. They were suspicious about the fruit, small and round and with shiny yellow skins, until Myrtias bit into one and said it was soft and sweet, something between a date and a something else he couldn’t remember the name of. They ate the lot after that. Sweet sticky dates can make you thirsty, so some of the crew were allowed to go off with jars back to the village to see if any water could be had from the well. The skipper had said we would sail at noon so they were told to be sharp about it. I was glad not to go. I remember feeling drowsy, from not having slept very much, as I thought.
They weren’t back by noon. Skipper was furious. He doesn’t say much or look angry, but you can tell. It was the first time ever we hadn’t been able to sail when he said because crew were missing. I was still feeling a bit sleepy and couldn’t stop yawning but the lord put me in the party he led off to find our men. It didn’t take long. They were all in the village, in one hut or another, dozing or sitting about looking at nothing in particular. The same men we’d seen the day before were sitting there with them. They must have been eating more of that yellow fruit and they’d got hold of some drink as well, judging from the skins and beakers lying about. They weren’t drunk, just, well, content, not bothered about us, the place, the ship, nothing. All they wanted to do was sit back or lie down and let the time go by. I was sure the lord was going to tell the archers to flog them back to the ship but he didn’t do that. He went to talk to the women. I noticed something about them then. Funny it hadn’t struck me before: there were no children with them. A village always has children playing about or watching you from their mothers’ arms: not that place. And the women: they weren’t sullen, or doing nothing, like the men, but they didn’t smile, or glance sideways at you like women do at strange men, especially sailors. They were quiet, just going about their work. I noticed they all wore blue flowers in their hair, blue flowers with spiky petals. The lord spoke softly to them. They didn’t say much back to him. They looked, well, how can I put it, as if that’s what things were like and there wasn’t much they could do about it. I know he asked them about the fruit and the stuff in the beakers and they did look a bit shifty about that. He’s always surprising you, the lord is. Know what he did? Only put his palms together and thanked them and handed over some pieces of silver. Must have been for the dates and the water, not the fruit and not what was in the beakers.
The archers hauled our men to their feet, slapped them about the cheeks a bit, and herded them off back to the ship. They didn’t seem to mind, just shambled away, not even noticing the odd kick up the backside when they loitered. They didn’t want to leave, that was obvious, but they didn’t have any willpower to resist either. We had to carry the water jars and luckily for the others they’d filled them before they fell for too much fruit and drink. The lord was first on board and went straight up to the stern deck to talk to the skipper. He listened, then nodded and without any more ado, gave Typhis the order to up anchor and put to sea. We were a few oars short but that didn’t stop Typhis setting a brisk rate once we were out of the gut and into wide waters again.
I heard them talking on the stern deck that night. I have sharp ears. The lord was explaining to the skipper what he thought had happened. He knew what the drink was. It was made from the juice of the fruit mixed with flower petals. It wasn’t like the syrup of the poppy. You could wake up from that. This took your mind away, washed away your memories, and, yes, your worries as well, so all you wanted to do was stay as you were. Why not, life was good enough? The skipper said he’d heard about that blue flower and nothing good about it, save it was a pretty flower. In the end, they reckoned there was nothing more to do about it. The culprits had been daft to be taken in like that but in the end no real harm had been done and they would be back at their oars soon enough. Typhis would see to it that they got some of the nastier jobs to do. The lord said that might surprise them because they wouldn’t remember what it was they were being picked on for. The skipper said one other thing: these particular men had no self-control and they were not to go on any more foraging parties. And they never did.
I have to tell you that I couldn’t help thinking about those women without children. I’m glad I ate only a bit of the fruit – I know now that’s why I felt drowsy – and none of the drink, otherwise I’d have lost interest in women as well!
I’m not sure I want to talk about what happened after we left that island. It still gives me nightmares, and they’re not about snakes, I can tell you. Well, if I must.
We started off all right, following the coast for three days. It was much the same as we’d found before we came across the island: low-lying, sandy shore but getting green inland with some mountains farther in, when the haze wasn’t too thick for you to see. That was early in the morning. When the sun was high the air got heavy and you began to sweat. But we did find water on the third night when we pulled in and ran the ship’s bow up on the sand, just enough to hold her. No need to guess who found it: Luzar. Send him off and
if there’s water, he’ll smell it out like a camel or a sand walker. The skipper ordered every jar and empty bottle, jug and bowl filled and sealed. Just as well. It was a long time before we found any more.
The coast turned away to starboard after that and changed a lot. Hardly a tree to be seen, only sand and rock with a few patches of dry-looking scrub as far as you could see. Now you could really smell the Deshret as well as see it. You know that smell? Dry, burnt, ashy smell, the smell of sand and bare rock burnt by the sun? You think sand doesn’t smell? It does when it’s hot and dry enough. There was a salt marsh just inland with a sand bar on the seaward side that we sailed past for a whole day and a night. We were still sailing past it the next day. We came in close enough to see the salt dried out along the edge and patches of it floating in what was left of the reed beds, all brown and dry and dead by then. Not a living thing to be seen. Even the birds had given it up. That was the biggest marsh we saw but there were lots more, all along that coast. It was getting hotter every day: sun as hot and as red as the inside of a smith’s furnace, sky a sort of hard flat blue and the sea as still and smooth as a painted board. Early on I heard the lord saying why not leave the coast and head for the rising sun. He had a feeling we would find landfall on that course and not have to sail so far. The skipper said we needed to keep the coast in view to find water whenever we could. We found it, but not in a way any of us would ever have guessed.
The sun grew so hot we couldn’t row any more during middle of the day. When it’s like that you lose too much sweat and when there isn’t enough water with a pinch of salt in it to put back what you’ve lost you can’t go on. Your strength goes first and then your mind goes. Kerma got hold of one of the crew just in time to stop him throwing himself into the sea. He was going to drink it. So the skipper had some sailcloth rigged up to give a bit of shade and stopped all rowing except at night. During the day a few oars took it in turn just to keep the ship under way and no more. For days we dragged her along that burnt brown shore in a dead calm – Sharesh said it was only four but it seemed a lot more than that to me – with us getting thirstier every day.
I was at lookout in the middle of the morning after the rowing had stopped and the ship was on paddle only, when I heard a strange noise, a long sighing sound like a dying beast drawing its last breath. It was coming off shore but what with the haze and the thick air there was nothing I could see except the brown streak of the coast. It came again and I felt my eyes drying and beginning to sting. I rubbed them and that made it worse. The sighing didn’t stop and the sky grew darker, a sort of muddy yellow colour. I couldn’t see the coastline any more. I tried to call to the helmsman but my throat was too dry. I swallowed and tried again but all I could do was croak and the sound was blown away in a great blast of hot, dry sand-filled wind from astern that took hold of the ship like a dog seizing a rat. The sail was up, you see, for shade, and with only a handful of men at the oars, and them dozing in the heat, she went out of control and veered off to starboard. The skipper soon had everybody on their thwarts and ready to steer her by oars as well as rudder and the sail was lowered. It wasn’t easy because that first blow out of nowhere had ripped the foot lashings on one side and cloth and rope were flapping about like mad as the riggers tried to get a hold. At last we got her in hand and she was flying along for the first time in days. The trouble was we were in a yellow fog with no idea where we were heading It was just like that time on Keftiu after the drought when the wind came off the Deshret and over the sea and covered everything in yellow dust and muck, only this time we were on a ship at sea and that’s a lot worse.
Skipper did his best and so did Typhis We all did. But it wasn’t enough. I could see now why I’d had the nightmares. They were a warning from the god whose name I can’t say out loud. I’ve done everything I can think of to please him. I’ve said prayers and hidden offerings in the sand for him. It doesn’t do any good. I’ve done something that angers him. If only I knew what it was. Maybe I should have told the skipper about the nightmares. Still, even he can’t stop a god doing what he wants to do. Maybe it’s not me. Yes, maybe it’s somebody else that’s made him angry. Kerma makes jokes about gods that he ought not to. And the lord, well, I don’t want to say anything against him, but there’s times when I think he doesn’t believe in anything about gods or the Mother or Lord Potheidan, or any of them, and that can’t do us any good, now can it? So maybe it’s not me, after all.
All right, yes, I know. Mustn’t get upset. I know I’m still here. Yes, I’ll tell you what happened, but I need another drink first. Where was I? Yellow fog, yes but you don’t usually have a fog and a gale at the same time. That wind had most of the Deshret in it. Kerma tried to make a joke even then. He said when we got sight of the shore again there’d only be polished rock to see because the wind would have blown all the sand up our arses and we’d be shitting mud all the way back to Keftiu. Nobody laughed. You could hardly tell whether it was night or day. If I looked back to the stern, something I didn’t do much because I got my eyes full of dust, I could only just make out the shape of the stern cabin. The skipper couldn’t see the sun and it was a long time since he had sight of the star to steer by. He must have had larboard rudder on because the last time we saw the shore it was off to starboard and we didn’t want to get in too close among all the sand bars. What must have worried him was that we didn’t know what lay ahead, land, or open ocean. If it was open ocean, well and good. The storm would blow itself out in time. If it was land and the storm lasted we could be blown onto a lee shore and run aground before we even saw it.
The worst sound a sailor can hear and the worst thing he can feel, are the keel scraping on the bottom and the shudder a ship gives when she grounds hard and comes to a stop. It’s even worse when it happens at night and that’s what happened to us. A hot, howling wind, sand just about scraping the skin off your face, blackness all round and the ship beginning to list: what could be worse? What could be done? Get over the side. Find the shoreline. Get some lines out to hold her to rocks if you can find any. Throw the anchors overboard. Stop her being pulled off: she may be holed and sink. Get on with it or you’re done for. That’s what the lord and the captain made us do. You don’t argue at a time like that or against men like that. That’s what I say now. What I thought then, I don’t know. I just grabbed a line and dropped over the side. The water came up to my waist. I waded about with my line trying to find shallower water. I found the beach. It was sand. I felt around for rocks. I couldn’t find any. I couldn’t think of anything else to do but stand there holding my line as if I could keep the ship from sliding back into the water all by myself. I was still there when it began to get light again.
At least the wind had dropped and the sky was beginning to clear. I could see the ship and the figures clustering round her, some in the water, some on the beach. I felt like a fool hanging onto my line, so I dropped it and went to join the others. She was lying aslant the shore with her stern low down in deep water and about ten paces of her bow end reared up on the beach.
When I was floundering about in the dark I hadn’t seen how steeply the shore shelved away. When I got there the carpenters were going round the parts of the hull above water, tapping at joints and strakes to see what damage might have been done. I stood near the captain who was talking with the lord and Typhis and the Captain of Archers. I had a good idea of what I would be told to do once they noticed me. Typhis said we were lucky she’d kept her mast when she drove into the beach as hard as she had. He didn’t think the rudder had been damaged either because the tiller moved in the usual way. The captain said that must mean her stern was clear of the bottom, but by how much he couldn’t tell. Her timbers were creaking a fair bit but not groaning in the way they would if she’d hogged and might break her back. The lord said with her stern as low down as that the cargo must have shifted aft. Or she’s holed and taking in water, the skipper told him. The Captain of Archers said why not try to haul her off the be
ach before it got too hot and the men tired. The skipper shook his head. Until the state of her timbers was known she was safer where she was, hard and fast, where she could be worked on. That’s when he saw me, and it wasn’t long before I was taking my first deep breath and plunging under the stern to feel her backside. That’s what Kerma called it. He said I was good at that, the bugger. Sorry.