Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (8 page)

Out of the corner of one eye, he barely caught sight of a woman with long, dark hair who scooped the child up in her arms. But he clearly saw the garment that this
mainád
wore. Oddly, the garment was not the flounced skirt of many colors that divine and human queens of Ak’áiwiya wore. Nor was it the greenery or animal skins that decked the limbs of Artémito’s mountain
maináds
. It was nothing but an old, faded skirt with a ragged hem, much like the simple garment worn by an ordinary serving woman in a
qasiléyu’s
fortress. “Wait, wait!” a woman’s voice seemed to call, with an oddly familiar accent. “Look at his foot! Look!”

The spear stopped moving forward when it was less than a hand’s breadth from Diwoméde’s face. Then it withdrew. The slave was still shaking, still crying out. He howled still more loudly when a man’s burly arms dragged him to his feet and clasped him in an embrace as powerful as a bear’s. “Diwoméde!” the man’s gravelly voice shouted in his ear. “It is you, after all! Look at me, boy, it is your old Uncle T’érsite!”

The slave blinked, silent but with his mouth still hanging open, not believing what he seemed to see. The round, sweaty face before his eyes did indeed resemble T’érsite’s. There were fewer teeth than he remembered. The curly beard had more white in it. But the apparition looked so much like T’érsite that a pang pierced Diwoméde to the very heart to gaze on him. And the woman, though he was still sure that she had to be a
mainád
, looked for all the world like his own concubine, Dáuniya. But none of this could be real, he told himself. That little, blue-eyed thing crying so loudly had no place in his memories, or in his dreams of coming home. Was that not what the
maináds
were most feared for, catching a man’s soul so that he went mad? Would the tree spirits now dance him to his death? His voice had trailed away and now the sickness once more rose in his throat. There was nothing left in his stomach to throw back, but his body convulsed anyway, in dry heaves. Brightly colored lights danced before his eyes and the roaring of an unseen river filled his ears. The world went black.

CHAPTER THREE

‘ELLENIYA

When Diwoméde came to, he was in the smoky shade of a little hut. Through the open doorway, he thought he saw Ainyáh’s unmistakable profile. The mercenary was squatting on his heels, talking to someone who was just out of sight, scratching in the dusty ground with a stick. “I have fulfilled my part of the bargain,” the Kanaqániyan was saying, waving a cloud of gnats from his ears. “Now it is your turn. I want to set sail at dawn tomorrow. I have no intention of becoming the next victim of Kep’túr’s infamous plague.”

“
Ai gar,”
came the voice that was so remarkably like T’érsite’s. “We have been here for nearly four months and we have not had a single illness.”

“Thanks to Apulúno,” a third voice piped up quickly, a higher-pitched and youthful voice that Diwoméde did not recognize.

“Yes, my son, thanks to Apulúno,” Ainyáh repeated, with a nod. The harsh lines of his face actually softened as he spoke, something Diwoméde had rarely seen on that visage in the many years the two men had known one another. “But the Divine Archer is notoriously fickle, my boy. We cannot count on his favor for long. Our Lord Storm is a better guide.”

“Yes, Apulúno is especially unreliable when we have no sheep or goats to sacrifice in his honor,” agreed the young speaker. Then he came into view, a boy of perhaps sixteen, nearly grown, but still slight in build, with only light down sprouting on his cheeks and chin. He squatted beside Ainyáh and asked, “Are we going to Libúwa then? Have you decided, Father?”

Ainyáh shook his head and looked down at the earth. “It is not my decision alone, Askán,” he responded, his voice so low that Diwoméde could barely hear him. “Peirít’owo is against it, as well as several of my best oarsmen. But we can certainly find a better haven than this to shelter us while we make plans for a permanent home.”

Suddenly T’érsite appeared, standing in the doorway. Silhouetted by the bright sun outside, his features were not visible to the slave in the hut. But that broad body, the slightly bandy legs, that stance so like a bear’s – all were unmistakable. “
Ai
, you two will never agree on anything,” the low-born Argive snorted. “The one talks of nothing but desert lands in the south and the other, the coast of the Hostile Sea in the north! But we have refugees from nearly the whole world in between right here on Kep’túr!
Idé
, the lot of us will probably die of hunger before the two of you stop arguing! It would take a command from an oracle to convince every man among us to agree, no matter where anyone suggests we should go. But what does it matter what each one says? You know the way to the Bull Country where Dáuniya’s people live. If we go to the
ítalo
land, as she wants, she will see to it that we are given shelter. I say, we should just go, settle down in the place, and leave the rest of the malcontents here to bicker until the sun bakes their skin black and sends them all to ‘Aidé.”

Ainyáh grunted. “It is not that simple, T’érsite. I remember the route we took to the Bull Country, all right. But that was almost twenty years ago. A lot can happen in that length of time. Even if Lady Fortune smiled on our journey – hardly a forgone conclusion – we do not know how Dáuniya’s kinsmen will receive us. They may have forgotten her, or she may not recognize them when we get there. For that matter, we cannot even be sure whether any of them are still alive.”

It was all so absurd, Diwoméde thought, true insanity on his part to have imagined such a conversation taking place. Ainyáh, once a prince of Tróya, ever the cold-blooded mercenary, calmly discussing a voyage to the western edge of the world? No, the Kanaqániyan might plan a raid with another pirate, but what was this nonsense about settling down? He would certainly never speak with T’érsite, a low-born man, as if he were an equal! Why, that old Argive foot-soldier had never captured anyone except one young woman in the whole, long Tróyan war. That single captive was Dáuniya, and she had later told him that she had only allowed herself to be taken because she wanted to be taken away from Tróya. Even so, afterward, T’érsite had felt so bad about dragging the girl away from what had become her home – after being abducted from her original homeland in the
ítalo
land years before – that he had given her to the army surgeon, a man who preferred to lie with boys. All that was missing from this ridiculous scene was Dáuniya herself, Diwoméde told himself, his spear-won bride smiling the way she had when Diwoméde bought her from the surgeon with a bit of bronze, all those years ago.

Instead of his concubine, it was the little, blue-eyed
mainád
who strolled rather unsteadily through the open doorway of the hut, a chubby finger in her pink mouth. Her somber, unblinking stare was fastened on Diwoméde, chilling him to the bone despite the stifling heat of the afternoon. He seemed to be in a shepherd’s hut, he realized, one of the temporary shelters that older boys often erected for a summer, while they pastured their flocks in the highlands of Ak’áiwiya. He had not been in such a rude structure since he had left off watching his adoptive father’s flocks and celebrated the rite of manhood. That image of Ainyáh’s son, outside, might be himself as he had been, years before, while he had been keeping the sheep.

The unnerving stare of the pale eyes was very close to Diwoméde now and he hardly breathed, not knowing what to expect. Sweat crawled over his ribs and back. He realized that he was lying on sheepskins that were already drenched with perspiration. Was it possible to be completely mad and still suffer such ordinary discomfort? The question crossed his mind briefly. But then his attention fixed on the little
mainád
squatting beside his head. She was looking him over with apparent curiosity. The child took the finger from her mouth and slowly, cautiously extended it toward his face. He was unable to tear his eyes from hers, and felt rather than saw when the damp digit touched the tip of his nose.

“Nose,” announced the small goddess. Then her finger returned to the round, little feature on her own face. “Nose,” she repeated and ran her finger up her babyish nostril.

Diwoméde blinked. He noticed that the bedding and the child smelled of sour milk. One little knee was adorned with a dark scab. Both shins sported a row of purple bruises. “Nose,” the little girl stated solemnly once more. With greater confidence this time, she reached for Diwoméde’s face and poked her wet finger in one of his nostrils.

He lightly brushed her hand away at the tickle and began to chuckle. This was no madman’s vision. That was no divinity in front of him. He had seen blue-eyed children before, he reminded himself, on the northern shores of the Inner Sea. T’rákiyans often had pale eyes, and while it had unnerved him to look upon them, he knew that those people bled and died in the same way that the dark-eyed peoples of the rest of the world did. It was not altogether unheard of for T’rákiyan captive women to give birth to pale-eyed children after lying with Ak’áyan masters, even as far south as Kep’túr. He laughed aloud at the thought.

The toddler was startled at the sound. Her eyes widened and she pulled her hand away from his face abruptly. But, as he continued to grin at her, she returned the favor with a smile of her own. She stuck her index finger in her mouth again, still smiling, and then touched the stubble on Diwoméde’s chin. “Dirty face,” she told him.

Sudden darkness fell over the room and both the man and the child looked toward the doorway. A woman’s form was silhouetted there, this time. She was wearing a long, ragged skirt and carried a jar on her head. “Dáuniya?” Diwoméde whispered, his heart pounding, hardly daring to believe that it might be her. He tried to rise but found that his body was strangely heavy and his arms weak. His limbs shook with the effort. Then Dáuniya’s arms were around him, squeezing him tightly, pressing his face to her shoulder. He felt her tears on his cheeks, heard her voice in his ear, smelled her unmistakable scent as her hair brushed his face. She was laughing and crying at the same time, calling him “beloved” as she always had when he dreamed of this day. He did not know whether to laugh or cry himself. He did both, clinging to her with all his feeble might, trembling and repeating her name endlessly. He did not understand what had happened. Why should she and T’érsite be there on Kep’túr when he had left them in Argo? What possible reason could his enemy, Ainyáh, have for bringing him to them? He did not know. But he did not care.

Dáuniya pressed her full lips to his cheeks, his neck, his mouth, and his eyes. “Everything is all right now, beloved,” she wept between kisses, repeating the words again and again. “Everything is going to be all right.”

He believed her.

As the sun dropped below the western hills, the number people around T’érsite’s hut increased. None wore more than a single patched and faded garment, while some did not have even that much. Many had recently cut locks of their hair as offerings for the graves of their friends or kinsmen. So great had been their losses that several no longer had a single strand of shoulder-length hair. Still, Diwoméde stood out from the rest with nothing but dark stubble on his head, on his face, and on his body and limbs. All eyes turned to him repeatedly throughout the evening, questions in their minds if not on their tongues.

The former slave cast only cursory glances at those who gathered to stare. His mind was on food, on the flat cakes of barley and the fish soup that Dáuniya prepared for them all. As he shoveled the bread and gruel into his mouth and gulped down diluted wine, the woman nursed her blue-eyed child. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but her face wore a broad smile as she rocked the little girl in her arms.

T’érsite shook her head, watching Diwoméde. “So, Ainyáh, you did not think to feed the boy between Mízriya and here?” the Argive asked reproachfully.

The Kanaqániyan answered sharply, “There was wine and barley in the hold. If he did not think to help himself to it, what is that to me?” But his eyes could not meet T’érsite’s accusing look. Anxious to change the subject, Ainyáh gestured toward the baby who was nursing contentedly in Dáuniya’s lap. “Where did that little
dáimon
come from? Back there, for a moment I thought I had stumbled onto the dancing ground of the tree goddesses.”

The balding Argive showed his bare gums as he laughed uproariously. “She nearly bowled you over with those blue eyes, did she? Yes, she has that effect on some people.”

Ainyáh scowled and spat, displeased at being the object of the low-born man’s mirth. But he said nothing about the insult. T’érsite leaned close to the mercenary and dropped his voice. “I found her wandering, lost, when we climbed to the sacred spring for water. It was the morning after you left us here. Dáuniya had just lost her little one, you remember, and would hardly eat a bite. It was her fifth child to die and she said she had no interest in living. But I could not have her starve to death before Diwoméde got back, could I? So I brought the baby back to the hut for her.”

Ainyáh frowned. “I do not see…”