Cursed by the Sea God (16 page)

I looked at him, not daring to understand. “Then what happened to her?”

Pharos shrugged. “Now? Only gods may know. But on that night, alive she was.
Alive, running. Sophronios was for chasing her, but Pharos held him back. A
woman like that, planning, slashing, escaping, is surely alive still.”

I stared at him, feeling a great bubble of hope rising in my chest.
Melantha—could it be true? Had Sophronios lied? I
shook my head,
trying to clear it, as a shout came from the ship.

“Men!” It was Lopex, standing on the port flank that was now the highest part
of the ship. “The wind has died!” I looked over toward him and realized he was
right. The onshore wind that had thwarted our every attempt to leave the island
had dropped at last. “We must get to sea now, before it returns! Abandon the
camp. I want every man to help right the
Pelagios
and push her off the
beach immediately!”

Pharos and I hastened to help. Once the ship was righted and pushed into the
water, two of Ury’s swarthy minions were tasked with burying his crushed
remains, battered into pulp by the ship’s keel. They hadn’t much heart for the
task, or stomach either, and I watched out of curiosity as they scraped the
remains of his carcass out of the sand and folded it to stack on a shield, then
carried it over to dump into the end of the cess trench I’d left unfilled
earlier.

I trailed behind the Greeks as we waded out to the ship and boarded. The wind
that we all expected to blow us back didn’t come, and we rowed out easily and
caught a warm north breeze offshore. Behind us, only the outline of a couple of
half-buried cooking pits gave any hint that men had lived there, and died.

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the rail. Melantha. Alive. Or had she died
since? My drifting thoughts snagged on something: I hadn’t seen her in Hades.
I’d noticed it at the time but hadn’t seen the significance.
We’re drawn to
the peo
ple we knew in life
, Elpenor had said. And I
hadn’t seen her. I smiled to myself. Of course she’d escaped. She was a
survivor. A fighter too, it seemed. Since Troy, I had let events blow me about
like a dead leaf, while Melantha had been planning, thinking, getting
away.

Getting away. That made all the difference. If she was alive, I could find her.
If she was a slave, I would free her.

But first, I had to escape.

We don’t know that much about the language of bronze-age Greece. In 1200 BCE,
the time of the Trojan War, what we now think of as ancient Greece was still
centuries in the future. Although Homer shows the Greeks and Trojans speaking to
each other on the battlefield, the Trojans most likely spoke a different
language. I’ve called it Anatolean, after the region, but nobody knows for sure.
Throughout the book, I’ve used classical Greek words and expressions. Who knows?
Perhaps the same expressions were also popular five hundred years before, during
the Trojan War. Here is a list of the Greek words used, with their English
translations:

Akonitos
: Aconite. Poisonous root of plants in the monk’s-hood
family.

Amphora
: A large urn with two handles for carrying and pouring liquids.
Smaller than a
pithos.

Arachnios
: A nickname Alexi creates from the Greek
arachne
, which
means spiderweb. It was also the girl in the famous story of the weaving
contest, which Alexi would certainly have known.

Basternion
: A litter, or ornate chair on a platform
carried by slaves. Reserved for the rich and powerful.

Chiton
: A man’s tunic.

Eksepsis
: Blood poisoning. The English word “sepsis” comes from the same
root.

Gloutos
: Buttocks.

Hagios
: A Greek condition meaning, approximately, “protected by the
gods.” The best English equivalent might be “sanctified.”

Himation
: A garment, more like a cloak, probably worn overtop something
like a
chiton
.

Houmos
: Hummus, the middle-eastern garlic and chickpea dip. Probably not
an authentic ancient Greek word.

Khalash
: No meaning. Just something the Cicones said when they stabbed
someone. An English translation might be “Yahoo!” or perhaps “Take that, you
kopros
sniffer!”

Koprolith
: A fossilized or otherwise petrified piece of
kopros
.
Source of the English word
coprolith
.

Kopros
: Ahem. Dung.

Koprophage
: Someone who eats
kopros
.

Koprophile
: Someone who loves
kopros.

Kottabos
: A Greek drinking game that involved flicking drops of wine
from their goblet at a target.

Kuna
: A word with a variety of meanings, one of which is
(only literally) a female dog.

Kylix
: A wide-mouthed, shallow drinking goblet.

Krater
: A large vessel for mixing water and wine. About the size of a
punch bowl.

Lawagetas
: A mid-level military commander.

Lotos
: Untranslated. Homer refers to the “lotos-eaters,” from which we
get the modern spelling of “lotus eaters.” He describes it as a “flowery fruit.”
The seed pod of the opium poppy, from which we get heroin, could be called
that.

Methusai
: Drunken women. An insult, especially when applied to
men.

Nothos
: A person of no legitimate family, or more specifically, of
unknown father. An insult.

Ophion
: Opium. Not clear that this word is authentic. Also means
serpent
.

Pelagios
: The name—at least in this version—of Odysseus’s ship.

Pestillos
: Pestle, as in “mortar and—.” Probably not authentic.

Pithos
: A large urn with a wide mouth for transporting liquids and
grains.

Rhyton
: A cone-shaped cup or glass, often with a hole at the bottom from
which you could pour wine or liquid directly into your mouth.

Sakcharis, Sakchar
: Sugar. It’s unlikely that the Greeks had the
granulated white form that we’re used to.

Skatophage
: An eater of
skatos.

Skatos
: Also known as
kopros.

Stratiotai
: One of a wide range of words the Greeks had meaning
soldier.

Suagroi
: Wild pigs.

Sueios ekpneusis
: Literally, bad smelling gas from a pig.

Sueromenoi
: People with a romantic attachment to pigs. Singular would be
sueromenos.

Troglos
: Short form for the ancient Greek
troglodytos
, or cave
dweller.

Xeneon
: The guest room of a house. Since there were no hospitals, a
doctor would examine or operate on you in his
xeneon.
Ancient Greeks
didn’t do many operations, but they did do amputations. The stumps were probably
sealed and disinfected by cauterizing them with a burning torch. Chances of
survival weren’t that high.

Xenia, Xenios
: The ancient Greek concept of the honour of hospitality.
To the Greeks, giving gifts, especially amongst high-born families, was as much
a source of honour as receiving them.

Greek mythology has fascinated me ever since I discovered a copy of Bulfinch’s
Mythology
in my father’s library as a child. Even so, my writing
career took a twenty-year detour through software development before I became a
full-time writer. I began with Homer’s
Odyssey
because it’s a classic
story, but one that nowadays is rarely read outside of university courses. I
wanted to create a version that young people would read for fun: a realistic
adventure, told not by the traditional heroes but by an outsider. For centuries,
readers have been seeing the destruction of Troy through the eyes of the Greeks;
I felt it was time to see it through the eyes of a Trojan.
Cursed by the Sea
God
continues the adventures of Alexi the slave from the point that
Torn from Troy
leaves off. The third book of the trilogy is underway
now in Toronto, where I live with my family, watching the winters grow steadily
milder and the summers muggier. We have no dog—yet. For a preview of the
concluding volume, or to contact me, please visit
patrickbowman.ca
.