Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (11 page)

“I do not yield the speaker’s staff to you, you arrogant puppy!” Peirít’owo raged at the younger boy, struggling with Askán over the wooden shaft. “You are just a child and have no right to speak to an assembly of men!”

St’énelo came between the two, taking the staff himself with his knobby fingers. “Sit down, both of you,” he snapped. The two teenagers continued to glare at each other, but they obeyed the aging charioteer, for behind him Ainyáh crossed his arms on his chest with an icy glare at both young men, signaling his support for the speaker. “There is no point in discussing what might have been,” St’énelo admonished Peirít’owo. “But neither is there anything to be gained by quarreling and delivering insults, Askán.” Raising his emaciated arms to the cloudless sky, the Lakedaimóniyan’s voice took on the sing-song intonation of a seer. “The Tróyan god of gates and pestilence has traveled to all the shores of the Inner Sea, these past years. Apúluno has shot his invisible arrows of disease into people of every land. But the Divine Archer has poisoned this island with the deadliest venom of all. If we stay here, we will soon be settling in the darkest corner of Préswa’s netherworld. We have no choice but to leave Kep’túr, whether we wish it or not. There can be no question of that. Nor is there any need to discuss the time of our departure. Now that we have celebrated the summer solstice, we have no more reason to delay. The only question before us now is where we will sail. To that, I have no answer.”

T’érsite clapped his hands to his thighs.
“Ai gar
, by all the gods, St’énelo! All those words to say nothing!” The Argive rose, shaking his head in disgust, and took the speaker’s rod with such vehemence that the watchers thought for a moment that he would break it over his knee. “As everyone here knows, I advise leaving the Inner Sea behind us completely and heading west. We know what lies to the north, south, and east and there is nothing in any of those directions but more of the same bad news that we have already heard. The west is the only direction left. Now, the
ítalo
country is not like T’ráki, where even the wealthy live in shepherds’ cabins, if that is what you are afraid of. No, no, it is a civilized land. Dáuniya has told me all about it, many times. There is a great island there, far beyond Ak’áiwiya’s western isles, a place that is very rich in copper, called the Island of Fire. Beyond that, three days’ sail or so, there is another, the Footprint in the Sea. Dáuniya was taken from there by Ainyáh’s Tróyan kinsmen when she was just a child. We have only to restore her to her people, and we will be given a hero’s welcome there, a kinsmen’s welcome…”

As Peirít’owo opened his mouth to object, Ainyáh quickly interrupted. “We know you are against this, Peirít’owo, so do not bother with your usual arguments.”

But the younger man would not be so easily dismissed. “I have not yet said where I do want to go!” he cried, reaching for the walking stick.

The Kanaqániyan narrowed his eyes so that they all but disappeared in his heavily lined face. “It is my turn to take the speaker’s staff, boy,” he growled, between clenched teeth.

“Boy!” the youthful Kep’túriyan complained indignantly. “I am a grown man and a warrior! When will you ever learn to treat me with proper respect?”

“
Ai,
let the ‘boy’ speak,” T’érsite said laconically, tossing the stick to the youth.

As the young man stood, alternately opening his mouth to speak and closing it again to fume at the Argive silently, St’énelo added, “His father was an honorable man, at least. Many of us fought beside him in the Tróyan war. A hero’s son deserves some small consideration.” There was a murmur of assent from the crowd.

The aging mercenary yielded his place and sat beside his scowling son. “Then tell us where you would have us go. But leave rank out of it. I am as royal as any man here.”

“
Idé
, you were a prince when your wife was still living,” Peirít’owo scoffed, his pride injured by the manner in which his right to speak had been upheld. “But Tróya would hardly accept a widowed pirate for a king now, pile of rubble though the city may be!”

Both Askán and his father were instantly on their feet, their knives drawn. T’érsite and St’énelo, waving their arms, shoved their way between the two Kanaqániyans on one side and Peirít’owo on the other, preventing bloodshed. “Peace to you both, Ainyáh and Peirít’owo,” St’énelo gulped, gripping Ainyáh’s right arm with his bony hand. “We know your old ranks well enough. But that is beside the point now.”

T’érsite held the younger Kep’túriyan prince’s wrist to keep him from drawing his own dagger. “No man here has any home to speak of!” the balding Argive cried in exasperation. “If he did, he would not be sharing my moldy bread at this miserable fireside. Just tell us where you want to go and then sit down, for the gods’ sake!”

“Very well,” Peirít’owo agreed, nervously smoothing his sparse black beard. “I liked what I saw in Mízriya.”

“
Ai
, Mízriya!” scoffed a graying man who had not spoken before. Short and stocky, he squatted close to the smoky fire, poking at the embers unconcernedly. Chewing a dry blade of grass with the same nonchalant air, he did not bother to rise or reach for the speaker’s staff. “Every Assúwan, Ak’áyan, and Kanaqániyan who has a bronze blade wants to go to Mízriya, and many more besides. But that empire is overcrowded and newcomers have not been welcome there for the last decade, or have you forgotten? The Great King of the south has more than enough mercenaries and he cannot feed the ones he has now, anyway. I tell you, boy, I have fought my last battle there. Mízriyans may look small and easy to beat, but they have the archers of Káush to do their fighting for them. The bows they use are as tall as a man, too. Only a bird can fly farther and faster than a Káushan arrow. Those bowmen have the strength of Apúluno himself in their arms, and they never tire, either. Their sight is keener than any eye but the sun’s, and they never miss their targets. The Lady of the Sun herself gave them birth, you know. That is why their skin is so dark, from living so near her house.”

“Do not waste your breath telling us lies, Tushrátta” Peirít’owo said airily. “My father warned me about you. Every other word you utter is untrue. I tell you, dark skin is no more divine than pale eyes. A man will bleed when you spear him, no matter what color his skin is, and whether he comes from the southern rim of the world or the northern edge. I say Mízriya has more need of mercenaries now than ever, precisely because everyone wants to live there. They need a constant supply of new warriors to keep from being overrun by nomads from the desert and pirates from the sea.”

Tushrátta grinned, showing a mouthful of dark teeth, and waved his grass blade at the younger man. “If the Great King of Mízriya had needed your services so badly, you would be there now instead of here. The fact that we are talking on this island in the middle of the sea, now, proves that I am right, not you. I say we should go east, to Aláshiya. There are certainly no sea
dáimons
around that island, and no end of copper in its hills. If any king can afford to take us into his army, it is Aláshiya’s.”

“
Ai
, that island is already packed from one end to the other with refugees from Kanaqán as well as the old Náshiyan empire and Ak’áiwiya too, all of them at each other’s throats,” Ainyáh argued vehemently. “It is seven times worse than Mízriya! My kinsmen were only too happy to leave its shores last year! The only place we would find there would be enslavement in the copper mines. I, for one, have no intention of spending my last years digging in the earth like a dog, tempting Apúluno and angering all the souls of the dead!”

“Yes, it is indeed an offense against the gods to dig in the mines,” Peirít’owo agreed. “Besides, it is fit work only for barbarians and slaves, and I am neither one. No, the east is as poor a choice as the west. I tell you, we must go south. Mízriya is the only civilized country strong enough to withstand the piratical raids that have blighted every other nation. If the southern emperor is too blind to see that he needs us, then that can only mean that he is too weak to keep a group of hardy adventurers from doing as they please on his coastline…”

“
Hoyá!”
Tushrátta cried, bursting into laughter. “You have just ruined your own argument, you ignorant goat! If Mízriya is too weak to stop us, then why has it not collapsed into disorder like the Náshiyan empire? But if it is so powerful and withstands every attack, how is a miserable, little band like this one going to make any impact on it? Tell me, tell me! You cannot do it, can you? No, you have turned your chariots in too tight a circle and toppled all your carts onto their sides! Your wheels are all spinning in the air!” He howled with laughter, much to the distress of the younger man.

T’érsite threw up his hands in exasperation. Loudly, he told St’énelo,
“Ai gar
, I have heard enough nonsense from this whole flock of geese!” The rest, men and women alike, nodded their heads and voiced their agreement with the Argive. Seeing that he had the attention of the whole group, the burly commoner stood and took hold of the bowed staff. “We have to be sensible now. We cannot force any king to accept our presence, whether he is in the south, the north, the east, or the west. Just look at the lot of us. More than half are women, and a good many of the men are too old to make decent warriors,” he indicated Ainyáh with a wave,” or else too young,” he added, gesturing toward Askán. “No nation, no matter how desperate, is going to hire us as mercenaries, or shepherds, or even miners. We cannot bribe our way to safety, either. Among the whole herd of us, we do not have enough bronze to buy so much as a sack of decent wheat, much less a fortress. I say, the only option we have is to sail west, as Dáuniya…”

“What? Rely on a mere woman’s ties of blood?” Peirít’owo demanded, not expecting an answer. “That is a less reliable source of help than our meager possessions. If the gods cannot keep us safe here, in our own homeland, what hope do we have way off in the west, where even the good and noble sun dies every night?”

Tushrátta nodded his agreement, though with considerably less vehemence than the Kep’túriyan expressed. “I am an Assúwan, so I naturally prefer the east, where the sun is born. I have nothing but bad luck every time I go west. Look at this ragged bunch I am visiting now.”

T’érsite spat and shook his head, growing angry, but forcing himself to remain patient. “I will not let you provoke another argument, Lúkiyan. I am tired of this. It is getting us nowhere. I say we put the matter to a vote.”

Peirít’owo was shocked at the very idea. “What? Let a lowly horse trainer and a miserable foot soldier have the same say as the noble son of a great king? Never!”

“Vote all you like,” Tushrátta urged, amused at the notion. “But I am not going any further west than this and neither is my ship, unless a god or goddess sends me.”

The young Kep’túriyan had not finished his complaint. “Are you mad, T’érsite? Are you, Tushrátta? What are you saying? Are you suggesting that we descend to the pestilential valley and hunt up a village diviner, to discover the will of heaven?”

Tushrátta stood, putting his hands on his hips. “No, Peirít’owo, that is not what I meant. I would not listen any wandering prophet, either. You cannot trust them. There are too many charlatans running around, especially these days. For the fee of a duck or a sickly lamb, they will make a show of inspecting a goat’s entrails or the flight of birds. Then they will say whatever they think you want to hear and disappear before you can discover that they made it all up.”

“Then what are you suggesting?” T’érsite demanded. “Do you want the blessing of a real oracle? Should we send someone to the sanctuary at ‘Elléniya and ask for divine guidance?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, assuming that no one would sit still that long.

To the Argive’s astonishment, Tushrátta calmly nodded his graying head. “Exactly.”

CHAPTER FOUR

LAKEDAIMON

“Or,” the Lúkiyan went on, “we could consult the priests of Dálo. There is no place holier than that. It is only a few days’ sail to the east.”

Dumbfounded, T’érsite sat with his mouth agape. “What? Did you say Dálo? The only Dálo I know of is one of the Islands in a Circle. But there are no sacred places in that part of the Inner Sea.” As he spoke, the whole camp came alive with suggestions of holy sites.

St’énelo raised both of his thin arms to quiet them all. “I am a Lakedaimóniyan,” he reminded them. “My people have always been renowned for our piety. That makes me the closest this group has to a priest. So, listen to me, all of you, and do not start another quarrel about things that you do not understand. In my youth, our island of ‘Elléniya was the most famous sanctuary in Ak’áiwiya dedicated to the Mother of the Gods. But when the Tróyans abducted our queen and high priestess, ‘Elléniya was defiled.” He shot Ainyáh an accusing look.

The Kanaqániyan scowled and turned his face away. Beside him, his slender son glared back at the Lakedaimóniyan, but dared say nothing. He knew it was true.