Black Ships (5 page)

Hurry. Hurry.

I took the best and lightest of the mantles and settled it about my shoulders, the veil that I wore only at the Feast of the Descent.

Hurry. Hurry.

The sky was graying when I left the Shrine, hurried across the thick mat of cypress needles and down the mountain. Everything was quiet and still.

I reached the turn in the road before the sun did. The sky had turned to silver. Another scorching day waited.

I sat down at the turn of the road and drank a little from my water skin. The sky lightened to pink behind me, behind the mountains. I watched the dawn come.

Long before it touched the rocks where I sat it cast the mountains as long shadows across the plain, across the shape of the river. Beyond, it kindled the sea like a mirror, silver in the morning.

Making toward Pylos in the bright sun were nine black ships.

IN HER HAND

A
s I watched the ships making for Pylos in the morning, I did not curse that I could not run. I cursed that I could not fly. It would take me half the morning to get to Pylos, down the mountain and around the road, following the sweeping bend of the river, to the city gates.

My feet were swift upon the track. I had been this way many times, and if my twisted foot did not let me run, it hindered me less than it used to.

The road was dust. The flowers beside the road were gone to seed, yellow and brittle.

Hurry. Hurry.

My mind was flying ahead, as though I had launched myself, swift as a black-winged gull, from the mountain road, soaring over valley and stream. They would see the ships now, less soon than I did, without the height and the sun at my back. Such men as were left in town would rally. Idenes was not there. How should he be? He and his warriors were up the Illyrian coasts, harrying people who had never harmed us.

The shade was welcome where the road passed beneath the trees along the river. I was hardly conscious of my body.

My gull’s eyes could see the black ships beaching, the quick and furious fight along the wharf, the blood staining the stones of the harbor, pouring out like the libation at the Blessing of Ships.

Hurry. Hurry.

That ragged sound was my breathing. The sun was climbing up the sky. The track was rutted from animals and chariots. Here, just here, one had rolled over my leg so long ago.

Hurry. Hurry.

Now I could see a column of smoke rising. Something in Pylos was burning.

A gull could turn on the ocean breeze, see the fight moving toward the square, uphill toward the palace, slide through the rising smoke on tireless wings.

Hurry. Hurry.

The landward gates were open. Just inside lay one of the youngest warriors of Idenes’ house. He had taken a sword thrust to the stomach, and his entrails were spilled in the dust, mangled where he had rolled in his agony, but his eyes were open.

I cannot spill blood nor see it spilled,
some part of me that was Linnea whispered in my head. I ran to him and knelt in the blood.

His eyes widened, and I knew what he saw—Death, with Her white face and long cool hands. He tried to speak, but he could not. I put one hand against his forehead. “Let go, sweet boy,” I said, and he died.

I closed his eyes.

I could hear the shouting. They were near the palace. A long column of smoke rose from the market stalls near the harbor.

I rose and I was wind. She filled me like a vessel brimming over. I ran down the street.

A knot of defenders had drawn back before the palace gates, which were open and broken. They had breached them, then, and the men of Pylos had counterattacked. There were bodies in the street, soldiers, and two of the palace menservants who had taken up swords. Shouts, curses, the ring of sword upon sword. The screams of the wounded.

A boy in a blue tunic stood beside the wall, where the vines overhung in flowering abundance. There was a sword in his hand, but he handled it awkwardly. I knew him. It was Aren.

His opponent had the better of him, a young raider with long black hair, shirtless in the sun, his shoulders gleaming with oil. He was inside Aren’s guard. His sword rose, knocked Aren’s sword to the side, returned for a swift upward stroke.

In a whirl of black like the flurry of wings I was between them, the blade tip almost grazing my stomach.

“Stop!” Her voice burst out of me, pitched for festivals, to carry over musicians or screaming warriors. “Lay down your swords!”

The raider’s eyes widened. The sword slipped from his hand into the dust. Behind me I heard the
thunk
as Aren’s dropped as well. The raider sunk to his knees beside it. “Great Lady,” he said.

“Lay down your swords!” I shouted again. A burly raider with a cut bleeding across his cheek threw his down, fear and awe competing.

“On your knees to Death!” I shouted, and they went down like a wave, warriors of Pylos and raiders alike, all across the square before the palace, across to the Temple of the Lady of the Sea, like grain before the wind.

There was no sound except the moaning of the wounded, the slapping of my bloody feet on the stones as I walked forward.

Wild elation filled me, fury and power.

His head was bent, light brown hair pulled back in a leather thong. He wore a leather breastplate such as fighting seamen wear. His sword was worked with silver and laid by his hand. “You are their king, Captain of
Seven Sisters,
” I said, for I knew him. I had seen the stars on the prow of one of the beached ships, and I had seen his face in dreams before. “Why have you come to Pylos?”

He looked up, and he flinched. “I am not a king,” he said. “But I am their captain. We have come for the captives, for our wives and children taken in slavery, for the women of Wilusa. We have come to raze Pylos as they razed Wilusa.”

And I realized that I was speaking his tongue, the first one that I had learned with my mother’s milk. He was not surprised. Does not Death speak every language?

I reached out my hand, stained with the blood of the young guard, and touched his hair. He recoiled, then stopped himself. “You have come for the captives?”

“Yes,” he said. “For those women brought here by Idenes, King of Pylos, from the sacking of Wilusa.”

I pitched my voice so that it would carry, speaking first in the language of Wilusa, then in the language of the Achaians. “Enough blood has been spilled here today. The Shades are satisfied, and the dogs of the Underworld have drunk their fill. You have pled your case before the Lady of the Dead, and She finds merit in your claim. You, boy!” I turned to Aren, who knelt still by the wall, eyes as blue as the sea. “Go to the place where the women work flax beside the river, and tell the women of Wilusa to come forth, all the women of Wilusa with their children, bringing food and whatever belongings they have. Tell them that I command it.”

Aren leaped up and ran, his feet pounding in the dust. It would not take him long to reach the river, as young and as swift as he was. And he knew well where to go.

One of the palace servants knelt nearby, trying to stifle a moan as he held a long cut down the length of his arm. Across the square, in the high seaward gallery, I could see the women of the temple looking out, Cythera’s white veil stirring in the breeze. “You,” I said to the servant. “Get up. Go into the storerooms and kitchens of the palace. Fetch out the women of Wilusa. And tell the others to come, that the injured might be tended.”

I turned to the captain of
Seven Sisters.
“You will have your kin, and no more blood will be shed in this town. Tell your men that.”

“We have not touched the temple,” he said. “We are Her people.”

“It is good that you remember that,” I said.

The captain stood. “We are to have our kin,” he said. “We are under truce, by Her will and in Her hand.”

Behind me I heard a lapping noise. The buildings behind the palace by the harbor wall were burning, the rooms of the clerks who kept the grain tally, the workshops where pots were made.

I turned to the men of Pylos. “Put out the fire,” I said, “before it spreads to the storehouses, for all the grain is harvested and belowground.”

They did so with alacrity. Those storehouses contained clay jars as tall as a man, sunk into the earth, and also jars of lentils and olives, dried fish preserved in oil or salted, fresh olives in their own juice, new wine. Food they would sorely need.

Two of the raiders were attending to their wounded, the burly man with the cut on his face helping another to stand, when I heard a shriek behind me. A young girl in a stained tunic came running through the gates and threw herself about his neck, crying incoherently.

Tears were running down his face, salt mingling with the blood. “Ah, sister,” he said. “Little sister. You live. Ah, Tia.” He buried his face against her hair.

I turned away.

The doors of the Temple of the Lady of the Sea opened. Some of the townspeople looked out, women and children who had taken shelter at Her altar. With unaccustomed haste, Cythera and her two acolytes came forth, water skins in their hands, to tend to the wounded and the dying.

W
HEN ALL WAS ORDERED
, it was not such a great slaughter. Ten men of the town dead, and two of the raiders. Another twenty or so with wounds but who would live. I watched. I ordered the men of Pylos to go and bring out the olives and wine in the storehouse nearest the potter’s shed, because the bright sparks were leaping that way in the brisk ocean breeze. They could not bring the heavy floor jars, but could at least bring out the small ones of brined fish and wine. The breeze caught and tore at my veil, sending it flying behind me like a flag, my twisted foot brown with blood.

I heard a step behind me. It was the captain of
Seven Sisters.
“You are a woman of Wilusa,” he said. “And yet I have never met you before.”

“I am Pythia,” I said.

There was a stir at the gates. The sun was midsky, and the women from the river had arrived. There were thirty or so, dark-haired and confused, and some five or six of my mother’s generation. They paused just inside the gate, pointing and speaking, looking at the ships, at the raiders engaged in loading jars of olives aboard. I had not told them they might take food saved from the flames, but it seemed cheap enough, that they might leave the rest in peace.

Then one woman started forward. “Husband? Nicos?”

A young man lifting jars of olives shoved the jar he was holding into the hands of another man and ran across the square.

Then they all started moving. Crying, searching. There were many who did not meet the eyes of the one they sought, raiders catching at women’s hands, asking after other names, after children. And the women of my mother’s generation hung back, children at their skirts. Could they hope that any of their kin would be here, after eighteen years?

At last one woman I had known in childhood reached out a hand, plucking at the sleeve of a warrior in his prime. “Anati? Is that you, grown up?”

His eyes went wide. “Aunt? Aunt Lide? It can’t be! You were dead in the great fire.”

She shook her head, tears brimming over. Two little boys watched speechlessly, the children of her captivity, younger than Aren.

I turned away. My mother was dead.

The fire was under control. Two of the storehouses were lost, but the rest survived. The men of Wilusa were loading the last of the amphorae into their ships, lifting women over the high rails and preparing to run out the ships.

The sun was sinking. A high pall of cloud spread from the mountains, alive with lightning. I could feel the wind on my face, moist and cool. The storm would break tonight.

I had been everywhere, laying out the dead of the town for their kin.

The captain was beside me again.

I turned and looked at him, veil pushed back and held by copper pins that were burnished by the slanting light.

“How is it that you’ve come here?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“I am Pythia,” I said. “And I am of the People too.”

He looked seaward, then back at me. “We are loading the ships,” he said.

“Where will you go now?” I asked. “Will you return to fair Wilusa with her people?”

The captain shook his head sharply. “Wilusa is no more. Surely you know that. This time they have burned it all, and killed everyone who was not taken as a prize of war. There are none left to rebuild, and the men of Tiryns winter on the ruins before they raid the Lydian coast.”

“But you and your men?” I asked.

“The fleet was at sea,” he said shortly. “We are all that is left.”

“Nine warships,” I said, remembering my dream of the burning city, “and three fishing boats. Some capsized running the blockade and some burned in the water.
Seven Sisters
and
Dolphin, Pearl,
and
Lady’s Eyes.
” I saw them again in my mind’s eye, the ships I had dreamed as a child in Pythia’s lap. “
Hunter
and
Swift
and
Menace. Winged Night
and
Cloud.
”

The captain looked at me. “We have none such as you. The Shrine at Wilusa has never been rebuilt, not since the Achaians razed it and dragged Kassandra from its altar. The women of the Lady of the Sea were taken as prizes, and we don’t know where they have been taken. We hoped that one of them at least might be here.”

I shook my head. “No, I would have heard if there were. Cythera would have known and told me.” I glanced up toward the temple. There was a glimmer of white on the steps, Cythera watching me. “You have no priest or holy man of any kind?”

“We have an old man who takes the auspices, who is clever about wind and sea. There is none other. We have no Sibyl.”

“You do,” I said, “for I am coming with you.”

He was at a loss for words.

“Am I not a woman of Wilusa, as you said? You have come to free the captives. I was born a slave here, but my mother was born in the Lower City, in the shadow of the Great Tower.” I touched his arm, Her hand within mine, Her voice in my throat. “She was born to do this. And surely you know that I would not let My servant come to harm.”