“Rumor,” she said.
“Repeated often enough, rumor begins to look like fact.”
“You think it’s deliberate?”
“It is too convenient a rumor for her enemies. Put that together with the influence Caesar would appear to have over the queen and it’s no wonder more nobles are drifting toward Ptolemy. He called her a mongrel openly in front of a room full of people guaranteed to spread such an epithet from Thebes to Rome. Many of the old houses feel the same, that Auletes foisted a blood usurper in Arsinoë’s place. Arsinoë, you will remember, being the true blood daughter of Auletes and his sister. Which so far as I could tell was the only reason to support her, for the uraeus never sat on a head with fewer brains inside it, and, yes, I include the kinglet in that assessment.”
She frowned at him. “But the nobles are almost unanimously in favor of this alliance with Rome. We give them grain and gold and they protect us and leave us alone to rule ourselves. Mostly.”
“Caesar has got their queen big with his child. It seems obvious to them that Rome’s influence will always lean Cleopatra’s way. They’re for Caesar only so long as she is not at his side.”
“But Ptolemy is such a spoiled, willful child,” she said. “He doesn’t know how to build anything, he only knows how to break things. Can they not see that?”
“‘No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.’” He sighed. “Sophocles and his annoying ability to have the proper epigram for every occasion aside, you know full well the Alexandrians and the Greeks in particular dislike Cleopatra’s determination to give the Egyptians a strong presence in the kingdom. Remember all the rumblings when she escorted the new bull to the temple in Baucis? I don’t think one Greek Alexandrian noble family was in attendance.”
She ran through the faces that crowded her memory of the event and had to concede that he was correct.
“As for Polykarpus, a dangerous man, that,” Apollodorus said thoughtfully. “He managed to chase Cleopatra out of Alexandria to seek refuge upriver and keep Arsinoë’s backside on the throne for almost a full year. I wouldn’t have put a single drachma on her staying on the throne a week. It certainly wasn’t her doing.”
“What was he before he was Arsinoë’s advisor? Do we know anything about his background?”
“I think we’d rather know something about his life now,” Apollodorus said dryly.
She stopped in her pacing and faced him. “What I want to know is if he ever trained as a soldier. And if so, if he has killed in action, and with what weapon.”
“As, for example, a sally rod.”
“Exactly.”
“You are good at this.”
She looked up, startled, to meet his eyes. The twinkle that usually lurked there was in abeyance for the moment. “You always seem to know the right question that should be asked to move the investigation along,” he said. “It’s a gift given to very few, Tetisheri, but you have it.”
“Sail ho!”
They both looked up to see Debu sitting on the masthead, staring to starboard.
They turned as one and squinted into the west, and there, clearly outlined by Ra’s pitiless rays, was a single mast growing taller on the horizon. A hull soon rose beneath it, and oars that dipped into the water at the beat of a drum.
“Pirates,” Tetisheri said in a hollow tone.
“Pirates,” Apollodorus said, a queer sort of smile on his face.
She glared at him. “Now would be a good time to break out the oars. Oh, wait, we don’t have an oars, do we?”
“Pirates!” Laogonus whooped out the word and Tetisheri stared incredulously as he threw back his head and laughed. “Now we shall see some fun!”
“‘Fun’?” she said. “Did he say ‘fun’?”
Apollodorus gripped her shoulder, forcing her to look up at him. “Do you have a knife?”
“Always,” she said.
“Good.” He said nothing more but he didn’t have to. She knew full well what would happen to her if the ship fell into pirate hands.
The crew exploded into action. Debu leaped to the mysterious object at center line and began whipping the lines free. The others formed a supply line from deck to hold and began passing objects up. They looked like—
“Amphora?” Tetisheri said blankly. “Is this really a moment for olive oil? Are we just going to grease the ship so they slide off when they try to board?”
“Not olive oil,” Debu said, his lips pulled back in a savage grin as he stripped away the tarp to reveal a ballista bolted securely to the deck.
Tetisheri’s jaw dropped. “What—what—”
“Can you shoot?”
She turned to see Old Pert holding out two recurved bows with two quivers full of arrows tipped with broad, flat bronze heads. “Yes, she can,” Apollodorus said, and Tetisheri transferred her incredulous gaze to him. “Pirates don’t wear armor as it will take them to the bottom if they fall overboard, so a direct hit with one of these should disable or kill.” He grinned at her, and to her steadily growing indignation she saw that he, like Laogonus, like the rest of the crew, seemed actually to be enjoying the prospect of this encounter. While she, for her part, was wondering exactly and precisely where to place her knife so as to not be raped to death.
He bent the string onto first one bow and then the other. He gave her one. “Try a dropping shot first, to—”
“Yes, yes, to get the range,” Tetisheri said testily. “I remember that much from the lessons at the Five Soldiers.” She took the bow, held it in her left hand and drew on the bowstring with her right. A tiny bump of wood had been fixed to the limb just above the grip for use as a sight, and she used it to aim at the pirate ship, which was closing with them at alarming speed.
She heard a grunt and a grinding sound and looked around to see that one of the amphoras had been placed on the slider of the ballista. The amphora had an unusually large mouth with a piece of hide stretched across it. Beneath the outwardly curved lip of the mouth was a line of tightly tied twine, securing the hide so that there was no leakage from within.
She was beginning to understand. “What is inside them?”
Laogonus’ grin was savage. “Let’s let the pirates answer that, shall we? Don’t fire until I give the signal, do you hear?”
Assent came from the crew, one of whom stood by to help load the ballista. The other three lined the rail, armed with bows like Tetisheri and Apollodorus.
First sighted a league distant, the ship had closed to half a league while they armed themselves. The boom of the drum from the other ship was getting louder and the details of the pirates’ ship were much more clear. She bore no name and no flag and she looked old enough to have ferried Hannibal’s elephants from Africa to Italy.
A quarter of a league and they could hear the slice of the oars into the water. A tenth of a league and she could distinguish the faces of the pirates. A rough count totaled about twenty in all, not including the rowers who were probably chained in place. Some cool part of her brain noticed that they looked a miserable lot, ragged, filthy, emaciated. They were hungry, which meant they wouldn’t give up this prize without a fight.
For the first time in her life Tetisheri prepared herself to shoot to kill. Her mouth went dry, and she had to blink the sweat out of her eyes.
Closer they came, closer. Clearly audible to the crew of the Thalassa, the order rang out on the other ship to raise oars on the port side. They did so and drifted ever nearer. As one Tetisheri and the rest notched their arrows and drew back on their bowstrings, lining up on either side of the ballista. It was as yet hidden from the pirates’ view.
The pirate crew sneered and yelled insults and obscenities. One turned and raised his tunic to show them his naked and extremely hairy backside. It was not an edifying sight, and yet for some reason the action steadied Tetisheri’s nerves. The fine tremor along her arms ceased and she sighted along the arrow to a little above the pirate who had so aptly demonstrated that he wasn’t w
earing a clout.
“Wait,” Laogonus said, almost crooning the word, “wait…”
The pirates stood on the railing, preparing to jump to the Thalassa when they were within range.
There was a tremendous THWAAAANG from behind her and one of the huge pottery jars flew over the side of the Thalassa and landed squarely on the center deck of the pirate ship. Artemis herself could not have aimed it better. The jar shattered on impact and sent a white cloud of some powdered substance up into the air like a miniature cloud. The pirate ship was still making way and the rear half of the ship was dragged inexorably through it. The pirates who breathed in the powder were immediately affected, coughing, choking, clawing at their noses and throats. Their faces turned bright red and they began dropping to their knees, and then falling prone, their heels drumming on the deck.
The sounds from the pirate ship were excruciating to listen to and Tetisheri was almost glad when Laogonus shouted, “Fire!”
As she loosed her bowstring she heard the thud of another projectile being loaded into the ballista, followed by the rough scrape of wood against wood, all the while she was shooting as fast as she could pull another arrow from her quiver and sight down its length. Her first shot found the mast of the other ship, her second narrowly missed the pirate who wasn’t wearing anything beneath his tunic, her third caught the man next to him in his left eye. She drew back on her fourth shot as another THWAAAANG sounded behind her and another jar flew overhead and again hit the pirate ship, this time just aft of the bow. Momentum kept the pirate ship moving and the Thalassa slid astern, and looking up the length of the other ship’s deck they could plainly see the hundreds of spiders and scorpions scuttling across the deck in the wreckage of the jar. The pirates were shouting and screaming and there were splashes as some jumped overboard. The oarsmen began to scream, too, when the spiders and scorpions overran the well in which they were chained.
Poor wretches, she thought, sickened. She clenched her teeth and set another arrow to her bow. It sang in her ear and caught a man in the back. He arched, his hand reached behind him, clawing for it, and then he fell forward out of her sight. Next to her Apollodorus’ bow spoke and another pirate fell with an arrow buried in his heart.
The pirates were desperate and one who appeared to be the captain whipped those oarsmen who weren’t bitten or asphyxiated into putting their oars back in the water. The ship turned, a little unsteadily, and came back at them for another pass. Laogonus waited until they were in range and THWAAAANG went the ballista again. This time a ball of snakes rolled out of the pottery shards, cobras, most of them, or so it looked from where Tetisheri watched, horror-struck. The screams of the pirates and the oarsmen intensified and more splashes were heard. The oars lost rhythm and clashed and tangled with each other. The ship lost way, slowed and in very short order stopped, dead in the water.
Tetisheri, breathing hard, lowered her bow and stepped back from the railing. Her entire body was suddenly possessed of a fine inner trembling. She made her way to the bow on unsteady feet and sat down hard on the deck, still holding her bow.
“Are you all right?” Apollodorus was next to her, running an impersonal eye over her body. “You weren’t hit?”
Her teeth were chattering and she couldn’t seem to stop them. “They barely had time to get a shot off. And they didn’t have that many archers to begin with.”
“Didn’t want to damage the merchandise.” He sat down next to her and watched the captain load the ballista with an enormous bolt wrapped in a pitch-laden rag. Old Pert set the rag on fire and THWAAAANG, Laogonus launched the ballista for the fourth time. It hit the pirates amidships. He followed it with two more fire bolts.
One of the torches ignited the sail. It went up with a whoosh and soon the mast and rigging were alight and crackling. The heat from the fire could be felt from the deck of the Thalassa even as the two ships drifted farther apart.
More of the pirates jumped overboard. One of them made it as far as the Thalassa. Leon shot him in the throat when he was halfway up the side. He fell back into the sea without a sound, the water closing over his face.
The cries from the pirate ship did not cease until it had followed him down into the blue depths of the Middle Sea.
“Cover your ears,” Apollodorus said.
“No.” She had helped sink a ship and kill its entire crew. She would not hide from the consequences.
The last cry ended on a gurgle and when Tetisheri stood on shaky legs she saw the top of the other ship’s mast sink inexorably beneath the sea. A wide, circular ripple spread out from the sinking and disappeared as Leon and Bolgios and Pert picked off the last survivors. The bodies ceased thrashing and floated, motionless, among a quantity of lines and deck boards and boxes and sacks from the ship.
Birds began to gather, and after them, the sharks.
Laogonus and the crew collected the bows and remaining arrows and stowed them below, along with the two unspent projectiles, which Tetisheri was glad to see they handled very, very carefully. The tarp once again covered the ballista and was securely lashed into place, reducing it to an innocent, rarely used piece of ship’s tackle.
As Ra set in the west the wind came up again, strongly, out of the north-northwest. “A gift from Pontus,” Laogonus said.
“If a belated one.”
He looked down at Tetisheri, who had come to stand by him at the tiller. Above their heads the stars winked once again into existence, and a promising glow in the east presaged Sefkhet’s rise. “You did well today. You’ve trained.”
She hesitated. It wasn’t really information he needed to know, that she and the queen both had been tutored in self-defense by the Five Soldiers at Auletes’ own command. “Yes,” she said. “Uncle Neb insisted I know how to defend myself if I were going to be traveling with him.”
“You learned well. An extra bow is always welcome.”
She was silent for a moment. “You aren’t just the queen’s private courier.” It wasn’t a question.
The sail luffed and he leaned on the tiller, bringing the bow a bit to port. The sail bellied out again and the Thalassa leaned a little harder to starboard. Their wake was a comforting boil astern.
“I come from a family of sailors,” he said. “My father, my uncle, my older brothers. We owned a small galley. We shipped anything anywhere east of Rome that would fit in our hold for whoever had the price.
“They were taken by pirates off Carthage. I was a boy still, home with my mother in Alexandria. They just—vanished. My mother— Well. Let’s say she died of sorrow and leave it at that. I was taken on by a fisherman who knew of my father. He wasn’t kind but at least I ate. I worked for him until I was of an age to go out on my own. Eventually, I became the captain of the ship I was working on.
“And then, fourteen years after they vanished, my uncle returned. As everyone had assumed, when our ship was taken they’d all been sold as galley slaves. The ship he was serving on was attacked, appropriately, by pirates, and in the confusion he managed to free himself and escaped into the water to swim to shore. He found a billet and worked his way back to Alexandria. His wife had died, his children didn’t know him. Sobek’s balls, I didn’t know him. But at least he died at home, not at the oar.”
He adjusted the tiller a fraction. The Thalassa responded to his hand like a lover leaning into a caress. “I’d always taken every opportunity to sink pirates wherever and whenever I found them. Sometimes, Poseidon’s favor being what it is, I had to run. I hated those times. I wanted to do more, to kill more pirates. After my uncle came home, I wanted that even more. I’d come across this model of a ship on a trip to Punt, and I thought it might suit my purposes in the Middle Sea. I will say she caused a bit of a stir as I was building her at Dorian’s Boat Yard. I suppose that was how I came to the queen’s attention. At any rate she sent for me, heard me out, and offered to finance the Thalassa if I would run it as her private courier.”
“How did you convince her
to trust her cargoes to a ship without oarsmen?”
She heard the smile in his voice. “Pirates are a plague to shipping on the Middle Sea and Alexandria is its biggest port. It serves her interests to support my hobby. Becalmed, without oarsmen, the Thalassa looks like a juicy target.” He patted the tiller. “They don’t know she’s bait for the trap until they swoop in and she shows her teeth. And then—” She felt him shrug.
“What about those poor wretches at the oars?” She could have said that his father or his brothers might have numbered among them, but didn’t.
“They’re better off at the bottom of the sea,” he said. “Even they would say so.”
“And you, your crew, the danger to you all—”
His voice was hard. “We know the risk. We have sworn an oath to each other that none of us will be taken alive.”
She shivered.
“Are you cold?” Apollodorus had come silently up behind them.
“No,” she said. “What was that powder in the first shot?”
Laogonus chuckled. “My dear Tetisheri,” he said, “ask your friend. She designed it. She designed and built them all. She is very well read in the classics.”
“None better,” Apollodorus said.
After a while Tetisheri left them to curl up in the bow and try to get some sleep. She was not successful, not even when Apollodorus lay beside her and covered them both with his cloak. When the light of Pharos winked at them out of the darkness the next morning she had never been so glad to see it.
But as the dawn lightened the sky they were forced to wait to enter the harbor, because Julius Caesar, after nearly a year in Egypt, after fighting and nearly losing and finally winning a war, after defeating one ruler and impregnating another, this of all days was the day Caesar had chosen to depart.
“He can’t even stay long enough to see his child born,” Tetisheri said.
“I would imagine he has received some pretty stiff messages from Rome,” Apollodorus said. “Pharnaces seems a true son of Mithridates, in that he isn’t happy unless he’s invading his neighbors to geld their men and enslave their women. Rome has to be terrified that they’re going to see a repeat of Mithridates’ massacre. I don’t think the Roman population in Anatolia has recovered its numbers even yet.”
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