Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

“I think we’d better hold off on this kind of talk,” Diores suggested. “Till we’re in the palace in Athens. Right?”

The atmosphere did not turn unfriendly. The sailors obviously dismissed the incomprehensible remarks about time travel, setting that down to a misunderstanding quite natural when the speaker was from parts as remote as Oleg became careful to put his Russia and Byzantine Empire. It helped that, far from being accursed, this passage enjoyed unusually fair winds. Reid wasn’t sure how much was believed of what the Novgorodian related—and the Hun, after he came out of his shell; but everybody liked a good yarn. For their part, the crew were glad of fresh ears for their own stories: trading voyages where the Minoan navy kept watch, plundering and slave raiding elsewhere; hunting on the mainland, deer, bear, pig, the aurochs and lion that still roamed Europe; clashes with, wild mountaineers or with other Achaean statelets; brawls, binges, lickerish recollections of harbortown hetaerae and temples in Asia where a maiden must take the first man who would have her before she could marry; tales, solemnly sworn to, of gods and ghosts and monsters....

Reid avoided saying much about his milieu and concentrated on learning about this. The Achaeans were a race of husbandmen, he was told. The very kings plowed their own fields and did their own carpentry. The poorest yeoman had his jealously guarded rights. Among the turbulent nobles (those men wealthy enough to own the full panoply of bronze war-gear that made a common soldier easy meat for them) the king (the sachem, Reid thought) was no more than primus inter pares. Women did not have the complete equality of their Keftiu sisters, which Diores scoffed at as hen-predominance; but neither did they suffer the purdah of Classical Greece; a matron was honored in her household.

Only for a few generations, and thus far only in a few of their countries, had the Achaeans taken to the sea in any numbers. Diores was one of the rare skippers among them who would boldly strike straight across a days-wide stretch of open water, which the Keftiu routinely did. But his folk were superb stockbreeders and charioteers; not a man of them but wasn’t a fanatical expert on horseflesh, and their note-comparing and arguing with Uldin rattled on for hours at a time.

They stood unshakable by their families, their chieftains, and their pledged word. A man was expected to be as hospitable and open-handed as his means allowed. He kept himself clean, well groomed, and in trim; he knew the lore and laws; he appreciated quality in an artisan, a dancer, a bard; he looked misfortune and death squarely in the eyes.

Against this, Reid could place a pride that might at any instant bring on a fit of the sulks or of murderousness; a bloodthirsty delight in battle; an absolute lack of feeling for anyone considered inferior—and if you were not a free-born Achaean or a pretty damn powerful foreigner, you were inferior; a quarrelsomeness that kept the people divided into contending micro-kingdoms which often split further in civil war.

“There’s a reason the Cretans lord it over us,” Diores remarked, standing in the bows beside Reid while he observed the flight of a released dove. “Could be the top reason. We can’t pull together. Not that the Labyrinth ever gives us a chance to. The big mainland cities, Mycenae, Tiryns, that gaggle, they’ve sold out. Cretan wares. Cretan manners, Cretan rites. Cretan this and that till a man could puke. How I wish they’d go the whole road and put themselves straight under the Minos! But no, he’s too smart, that’n. He keeps their bootlicker kings, who can sit at council with ours, plot and bribe and turn true Achaean against Achaean. And when somebody plans a break for freedom, the way my King Aegeus did, be sure a spy from Mycenae or Tiryns will find out and squirm off to squeal it in Knossos.”

“And then?” Reid asked.

“Why, then the Minos whistles up his navy and blockades every port and grabs the ships of every vassal and—argh!—‘ally’ who won’t send men to help. So they help him. And that’s why next year seven more boys and seven more girls will fare from Athens to the Minotaur.”

Diores broke off, shaded his eyes, peered ahead for a while, until he said in a casual tone: “There she be Now you can begin to see what the bird saw. Can you make out that little blur on the world-edge? A peak on. Crete. Got to be, I swear by Aphrodite’s belly.”

They rounded the great island before sundown. Cliffs stood white. Behind, the country lifted steep and green. Vessels crossed the waters as thickly as gulls crossed the sky Erissa stood by the rail, looking. She had made no show of unhappiness these past days. She had merely spoken no more than was needful, and otherwise sat alone with her thoughts. Reid sought her

Her face did not turn toward him. He wondered what fears and longings dwelt behind that clear profile. As if reading his mind, she said low, “Don’t fret yourself about me, Duncan. The years have taught me how to wait."

Next eventide the Peloponnesus rose rugged from violet waves. The open hills, speckled with villages, and the water traffic that Reid remembered were not here. Forest lay deeply green; loneliness filled sea and sky, a quiet in which the chunk and splash of oars sounded too noisy and the coxswain softened his chant. The air was cool. A pair of cranes, high aloft, caught the light golden on their wings.

Diores indicated the island of Kythera a few miles off-shore. It resembled a piece ‘of the mainland. “Two days left to the Piraeus, maybe less,” he said. “But we’ll stop here the night, give a thank-offering for an easy voyage, stretch our legs and sleep where we’ve got room to turn around in.”

The beach in a little bay bore signs of use: fire-blackened circles of rock, his of rope and other inoffensive refuse, a beehive-shaped stone tomb opposite a crude wooden god whose most conspicuous feature was the phallus, a trail winding inward under the trees toward what Diores said was a spring. But tonight his ship had the site to itself. The sailors grounded the hull, put a boulder anchor astern and took a hawser along when they waded ashore.

Uldin reeled on his feet. “This place is haunted!” he roared, drew his saber and glared about him. “The land wobbles!”

“It’ll stop,” Oleg grinned. “Here’s a good medicine for that.” He ran to join the men who were uncramping themselves by footraces, wrestling matches, leapfrogging, and war whoops. Diores let them go on for half an hour before he called them. to make camp, gather wood and start a fire. e .

Erissa had sought the tomb. Leaving the cloak around her lower body, she pulled off her tunic; bare-breasted, she knelt, clutched her amulet and bent her loose-tressed head in prayer. Diores looked uneasy. “I wish I’d halted her,” he muttered to Reid. “Would’ve, if I’d noticed in time.”

“What’s she doing?”

“Asking for an oracle dream, I suppose. I wanted to do that. He’s said to be uncommon powerful, the man buried here. Now I can’t; he might not like it twice in the same evening. And I’d have given him part of the sacrifice, too.” Diores tugged his beard, scowling. “I wonder what vow she’s making in its place. That’s no ordinary she-Cretan, Duncan, mate; not even an ordinary sister of the bull dance. There’s something peculiar about her. I’d give her a wide berth if I was you.”

Erissa resumed her tunic and stood aside. She seemed to have gained a measure of inward calm. Reid didn’t venture to address her. He was finding out how alien her world was to him.

Night had fallen before the campfire coals were ready to roast the sheep which had been brought from Egypt for this landing. The sacrifice was brief but impressive: tall men standing ranked in leaping red light and wavering shadow, weapons lifted in salute to Hermes the Wayfarer; Diores’ chanted invocation; his solemn slaughter of the animals, cutting out of the thigh-bones, wrapping them in fat, casting them in the fire; deep-voiced “ O Herme, soi eucharistoumen!” rising like the smoke toward the stars; clangor of swords beaten on helmets and brass-faced shields.