People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze) (27 page)

"We have learned from T'rákiyan prisoners that the tribesmen are being raided themselves, from time to time," the Kanaqániyan went on, directing a serving woman to pour his guests more wine.  "Horsemen come down on them from still further north, beyond the mountains.  There, on the northern rim of the world, they have what we lack and need most of all, rain.  But for the horsemen this means flooding and their crops are washed away.  A famine as widespread as ours has affected all the barbarians."

"How have you survived?" Mirurí asked, awed by the tale of woe.

"Look," Ainyáh said, pointing at the floor of his house.  "When I pull up this paving stone, see what is beneath."  He pried up the rectangular slab with a broken spear shaft.  Beneath it was a large storage jar sunk down in the earth and half-filled with dried lentils.  "Every stone on this floor conceals such a jar," Ainyáh told them, gesturing at the room, "and every floor in Tróya is the same.  Hidden provisions are in every dwelling, row upon row of storage jars, filled whenever possible by our last loyal vassals."

"But this is intolerable," Mirurí cried.  "This is no way for men to live."

Odushéyu agreed.  "Why have you not consulted a seer to find a way out of this predicament?  Or did we kill all your priestesses and prophets last year?"

Ainyáh was unable to suppress a frown that further creased his leathery face.  "You overestimate your effect on us, It'ákan.  No, we have our share of seers, despite the loss of prince Érinu and princess Kashánda.  The problem is that no two agree on who is to blame for this tide of disasters.  Some blame you, our new allies.  Others declare with equal confidence that it was the old Náshiyan alliance that turned the gods against us, and still others hold the new ruling family responsible.  An air of suspicion and rancor is everywhere.  Antánor no longer trusts me.  Can you imagine that?  I am the commander of his own army, by the gods.  He has not openly accused me of anything, not yet.  But I have been encouraged to spend time away from Wilúsiya.  'Take your loyal followers.  Seek plunder and glory,' he says.  'War is the only fit occupation for a high born man.'  Those are his words.  But he only wants me far away from him."

His eyes gleaming, Odushéyu clapped Ainyáh on the shoulder.  "I believe I have the solution to your problem, my friend."

aaa

On the shore below the fortress of Tíruns, Argo's king and queen stood watching an approaching longboat.  Surrounded by the people of the citadel and the lower port town, captive and free, the royal couple awaited the single vessel.  "Now, remember what we agreed," Aígist'o said patiently to the wánasha.  "Any man who survived Kt'oníya's mistreatment is favored by the gods and deserves to live."

"I already agreed with you on that," Klutaimnéstra said, not without bitterness.  "Ai, the goddess truly despises me if it was Diwoméde that she allowed to survive."

"And if the survivors take an oath of loyalty to us, as demanded, we will not banish them," Aígist'o went on, his voice as calm and measured as before.

"Tudéyu's son would never do that," the queen responded archly.  Seeing the king still waiting expectantly, she frowned and added, "Yes, yes, husband, I agree."

"Also," the tall and slender wánaks continued, despite his wife's increasing annoyance, "if any survivor spontaneously embraces your knees to beg for mercy…"

"…we will make him qasiléyu at Tíruns," Klutaimnéstra snapped, finishing the sentence.  "Yes, yes, I agreed to all this days ago, Aígist'o.  How could I argue when you showed me the favorable omens in the goose's entrails?  But I still do not like it.  The men taken captive at At'énai were Agamémnon's picked warriors.  Any soldier who was that loyal to a godless overlord is suspect in my eyes.  I do not like the thought of any of them guarding the seaward approach to Mukénai."

"Those men were and are Argives, my dear," Aígist'o explained, grinding his teeth with the effort to appear calm, as he had been over this ground many times before.  "These are hard times and we cannot be choosy.  Our kingdom needs all the trained warrior it can muster."

"Ai, at least I take comfort in the fact that Diwoméde will not sit on the throne of Tíruns," the wánasha said with a deep sigh, accepting a measure of defeat.  "He is a mindless shepherd boy just like Tudéyu was.  Once he swore loyalty to Agamémnon, it was 'death before dishonor.'  Nothing was worse in my husband's eyes than listening to his queen and we can be sure his addled qasiléyu will not humble himself before me."

"Klutaimnéstra," Aígist'o began in warning, "we agreed…"

"Yes, we agreed," she said curtly.

The king put a long-fingered hand on her shoulder.  "It will be as we said, even if it is Diwoméde who kneels before you."

"He will not," she said confidently.

"As we said, even for Diwoméde," the wánaks repeated, growing impatient.

Pressing her ochred lips together, Klutaimnéstra gave her second husband a thunderous look.  "Even for Diwoméde."

Behind the queen, a youthful captive woman suddenly gasped, as the advancing ship's hull scraped the sand in the shallows.  A broad-shouldered man leaped down from the stern platform and turned back to the ship, his arms reaching upward to receive.  As the oarsmen scrambled over the sides of the vessel to begin pushing and pulling the longboat up on the beach, the helmsman handed a limp body down to the big man in the water.  "Ai, T'érsite," the captive whispered, her hand to her mouth.

The low-born T'érsite carried the young man's silent form in his arms, toward the royal couple.  When he stood before them, he set down the youth, supporting him so that he could sit, and patted his face to waken him.  Diwoméde's eyes fluttered open for a moment, then rolled back in his head and closed again.

"He is the only one?" Aígist'o asked, disappointed.

T'érsite silently nodded, looking down on the wasted limbs still covered with a layer of grime, the hair as matted as any bird's nest, the swollen, draining wound in the shoulder, the right foot half cut away and black from its fiery cauterizing.

"Diwoméde!" the wánasha cried, recognizing him.  The color drained from her rosette-painted cheeks and she clasped her hands over her heart.  "Owái, Mother Diwiyána, what have you done to me?"

The wounded man opened his eyes again at the sound of his name and looked without comprehension at the people assembled before him.  Blinking away the fog that engulfed him, he stared at the queen's face, passed on to the king's, and then back to the queen's.  A deep groan came from his lips.  His face twisted with pain as he realized what must have happened.  He shut his eyes tightly against the tears that threatened, whispering, "Agamémnon…"

"Agamémnon is dead," T'érsite quietly told him, biting his lip with anxiety.  "Come now, Diwoméde, wake up."  He patted the younger man's face again, more vigorously than before.

Aígist'o cleared his throat.  "We require an oath," he began.  But he did not finish.  It hardly seemed worth the bother now.  The sole surviving warrior looked more like a dead man's shade than a soldier.

Diwoméde's eyes opened again, tears spilling down his cheeks.  Leaning forward to take his weight on his uninjured arm, he began to cry.  Slowly, painfully, he crept toward the queen's feet, until he lay flat before her, a trembling hand on her sandaled foot.  Choking with sobs, he said, "Please have mercy, wánasha.  I swear by the Stuks," he gulped, hardly able to go on.  "You are the rightful queen of Argo.  I am your loyal servant."

Her mouth open in horrified amazement, the queen stared down at the filthy man who was bathing her feet with his tears.  "Owái," she whispered.  "It is fate."

aaa

Encouraged by the news of Náshiya's distress, Idómeneyu could hardly keep his men in check until his fellow exiles returned.  The entire western coast of the Assúwan continent was ripe for the taking, with ships and soldiers now far away in the southeastern end of the Great Green Sea.  There seemed little chance of retaliation from Qattúsha city, if the exiles attacked these shores.  Nor did it seem likely that, as marauders, they would face competition from Lúkiya.  Not with Madduwátta's army of vermin, as Tushrátta called them, busily swallowing up the provinces of Kuwalíya and other destabilized neighbor kingdoms.

The Kep'túriyan exiles' wait was not long.  Well before the festival of midsummer fires, Odushéyu arrived with additional reinforcements, men of Kanaqán and of Tróya under Ainyáh's leadership.  The commander of Tróya's army repeated his tales of the restless north, further encouraging Idómeneyu.  The troop leaders met in the abandoned mégaron of Millewánda's palace to plan their first campaign, Idómeneyu and Odushéyu representing Ak'áiwiya, Ainyáh and Tushrátta speaking for Assúwa, Mirurí trailing along unhappily, pining for the continent south of the Great Green Sea.

Odushéyu stood before the others, grasping a spear to show his position as speaker.  "I say we forget about Mízriya for now," the pirate king suggested firmly, stating his position as forcefully as he knew how.  "That empire is too far away and probably too strong for us anyway."

"I agree," Idómeneyu stated, equally firm.

Ainyáh nodded.  "We would need a far larger army."

"But," Mirurí began.  But he saw he was outnumbered and he said no more.

The It'ákan leader continued.  "Conditions in the far north look very promising, though.  Let us sail to T'ráki first, to replenish our stores of food, weapons, and horses.  Next, I say we take advantage of our new alliance with Wilúsiya to pass through the straits of Dáwan to whatever sea lies beyond.  It is time that we Ak'áyans commanded the tin route."

Idómeneyu and Ainyáh both leaped to their feet, taking hold of the speaker's staff at the same time.  The two men were of nearly equal height and build, neither one particularly tall or broad-shouldered.  Neither had suffered a serious wound in the Tróyan war, though both bore many small scars from that conflict and from others.  But Idómeneyu was clearly older, his hair shot through with gray, his face more deeply lined.

"Defer to your elder," said the Kep'túriyan exile.  "Let me speak next."

Ainyáh hesitated, his dark eyes flaming above his prominent nose.

Odushéyu, broader in the chest, though somewhat shorter, rested his hands on his hips and spat to show his disgust.  "Ai, my boys, do we have to draw lots to decide who will speak?" the It'ákan asked.  Behind him, still seated, Tushrátta and Mirurí shared quiet jokes, beneath their breath, about the hot-headed Kanaqániyan and the exiled Kep'túriyan.

The commander from Tróya frowned and sat, pressing his lips together, his fists clenched with suppressed anger.  "I yield."

Spear in hand, Idómeneyu ignored all but his fellow Ak’áyan, addressing Odushéyu.  "T'ráki does not interest me.  The gods brought us here at this time for a purpose.  I say we stay where we are for now.  We should make Millewánda our base and take up raiding the coast where Lúkiya left off.  All the Náshiyan forces are occupied with Ashúr.  That is nearly the other side of the world from here.  With no opposition to speak of, we could take every port in Assúwa this summer, before Tudqáliya could muster ships against us."

Ainyáh did not bother to rise and grasp the spear.  "What if you did take the coast?" he asked scornfully.  "There is nothing worth having on this side of the world.  The Lúkiyans have already taken everything of value."

"That is right," Odushéyu argued.  "If we wanted to go hungry and wait for commoners to throw us out, we could have stayed in Lakedaimón, or in Mesheníya, for that matter.  There was no need to cross the sea to Assúwa.  Leave the gods out of this, Idómeneyu, and listen to reason.  What we must do is head north, where there is no drought.  Not only will we find tin there, but also plenty of food."

"Ai gar, where is the honor in burning barbarians' huts?" Idómeneyu growled.  "That is all we would find past Dáwan's straits.  No, that is no place for true men.  I want my son to remember me as a sacker of cities, not as a miserable pirate."

"Ai gar, yourself," Odushéyu argued back.  "Honor and fame are all well and good.  But they do not buy much in the market place.  If we stay on the Assúwan coast, we will have nothing in the end but empty bellies and a few bronze trinkets in our ships' holds."