Poul Anderson: The Boat of a Million Years

“Why didn’t they wait till we were asleep, except for our sentries?”

“They must be afraid of the dark. This can’t be their country. And so—Hold fast. Give me—I should have a peeled wand or a green bough, but this may suffice.” Hanno turned about and tugged at the standard. Its bearer clung and cursed him.

“Make him give me this, Demetrios!” Hanno demanded.

The mercenary leader hesitated an instant before he ordered, “Let go, Kleanthes.”

“Good. Now blow trumpets, bang on shields, raise all the noise you can, but stay where you are.”

The emblem aloft, Hanno advanced. He moved slowly, gravely, staff in right hand, naked sword in left. At his rear, brass brayed and iron thundered.

The Carthaginians had cleared away high growth as far as the spring where they got water, a distance of about an Athenian stadion. New brush sprang up to hinder passage and make it noisy. Thus total surprise was impossible, and the Gauls were not yet in that headlong dash which civilized men dreaded. They trotted forward as individuals or small groups, disorderly and deadly.

They were big, fair-complexioned men. Most flaunted long mustaches; none had shaved lately. Those that did not braid their hair had treated it with a material that reddened it and stiffened it into spikes. Paint and tattoos adorned bodies sometimes naked, oftener wrapped in a dyed woolen kilt—a sort of primitive himation—or attired in breeches and perhaps a tunic of gaudy hues. Their weapons were long swords, spears, dirks; some bore round shields, a few had helmets.

One huge man at the forefront of the roughly semicircular van wore a gilt helmet that flared out in horns. A bronze tore circled his throat, gold helices his arms. The warriors to his right and left were almost as flamboyant. He must be the chief. Hanno moved toward him.

The racket from among the Greeks was giving the barbarians pause, puzzling them. They slowed, looked around, damped their shouts and muttered to each other. Watching, Pytheas saw Hanno meet their leader. He heard horns blow, voices ring. Men sped about, carrying a word he could not understand. The Gauls grumbled piecemeal to a halt, withdrew a ways, squatted down or leaned on their spears, waited. The drizzle thickened, daylight faded, and he saw only shadows yonder.

An hour dragged itself into dusk. Fires blossomed under the forest.

Hanno returned. He walked like another shadow past Demetrios pickets, between the hushed and huddled sailors, to find Pytheas near the boats, not to flee but because there the water cast off enough light to ease the wet gloom a little.

“We’re safe,” Hanno declared. Breath gusted out of Pytheas.

“But we’ve a busy night ahead of us,” Hanno went on. “Kindle fires, pitch tents, get the best of the wretched food we have and cook it as well as possible. Not that our visitors will notice the quality. It’s quantity that counts with them.”

Pytheas peered, striving to read the half-seen face. “What’s happened?” he asked unevenly. “What have you done?”

Hanno’s tone stayed cool, with a hint of hidden laughter. “You know I’ve acquired enough Keltic language to get by, and a fair acquaintance with their customs and beliefs. Those aren’t too different from several other wild races’; I can guess my way past any gaps in my knowledge. I went out to them in the style of a herald, which made my person sacred, and talked with their chief. He’s not a bad fellow, as such people go. I’ve known worse monsters in power among Hellenes, Persians, Phoenicians, Egyptians—No matter.”

“What ... did they want?”

“To overcome us before we could escape, of course, take our boats, capture our ships, plunder them. The fact alone showed this isn’t likely their native country. Carthaginians have treaties with natives. True, these might have denounced the agreement for some childish reason. However, then they’d have attacked after dark. They brag about their fearlessness, but when it’s a question of booty more than glory, they wouldn’t care to take unnecessary casualties or risk our being able to stand them off while most of us got away to the ships. Nevertheless they came at us as soon as we were ashore. So they must be afraid of the dark hereabouts—ghosts and gods of the lately slain, not yet appeased. I played on that, among other things.”

“Who are they?”

“Pictones from the east, intending to settle these parts.” Hanno began pacing, to and fro before the eyes of Pytheas. Sand scrunched soddenly underfoot. “Not much like those tame and half-tame tribes hi your Massatian hinterland; but not entirely alien to them, either. They have more respect for skills, for learning, than I’ve generally found your ordinary Greek does. Their ornament, all their workmanship is beautiful. Not only a herald but a poet, any wise person is sacred. I proved myself a magician, what they call a druid, by various sleight-of-hand tricks and occultistic nonsense. I threatened—oh, very delicately—to lay a satire on them if they offended me. First I’d convinced them I was a poet, by a rough plagiarism of lines from Homer. I’ll have to work on that. I’ve promised them more.”

“You have what?”

Hanno’s laugh rang aloud. “Ready the camp, I say. Prepare the feast. Tell Demetrios’ men they’re to be an honor guard. We’ll have guests at dawn, and I daresay the festivities will brawl on through the whole day. You’ll be expected to give pretty lavish gifts, but that’s all right, we have ample trade goods along, and honor will require you receive severalfold the value in stuff we can better use. Also, we now have safe conduct for a considerable distance north.” He paused. Sea and land sighed around them. “Oh, and if we get decent weather tomorrow night, do carry on your star observations, Pytheas. That will impress them no end.”

“And ... it’s a part of what we’re journeying for,” whispered the other man. “What you’ve saved.”

Behind lay the Dumnonian tin mines, and the harbor to which no Carthaginians would come while the war lasted, and the three ships. Lykias kept a guard on them and saw to their careening and refitting. Demetrios organized overland explorations of the west and south coasts. The interior and north of Pretania Pytheas claimed for himself.

He came with Hanno and a small military escort out of the hills, onto a rolling plain where, here and there, wilderness yielded to plowland and pasture. A gigantic mound inside a fosse and earthworks dominated it. The chalky crater hollowed on top held armed men and their lodgings.

Its commander received the travelers hospitably, once he was sure of their intentions. Folk were always eager for word from outside; most barbarians had pathetically narrow horizons. Talk went haltingly by way of Hanno and a Dumnonian who had accompanied the party this far. Now he wanted to go home. A man by some such name as Segovax offered to replace him and lead the guests to a great wonder nearby.

Autumn was in the wind, chill and loud. Leaves were turning yellow, brown, russet and beginning to fly away. A trail went onto an upland where trees were few. Cloud shadows and pale sunlight sickled across immensities of sallow grass. Sheepflocks afar were lost in loneliness. The Greeks marched briskly, leading the pack ponies they had gotten in Dumnonia. They would not return to the hill fort but push on. One winter was scant time to range this land. Come spring, Pytheas must be back with his ships.

The sight waxed slowly before him. At first it seemed little, and he supposed people made much of it only because they knew nothing better. As he neared, the sense of its mass grew and grew. Within a time-worn earthen rampart loomed a triple ring of standing stones, perhaps seventy cubits wide, the tallest of them well-nigh three man-heights, slabs almost as huge joining them on top, gray, lichenous, weathered, powerful beyond his understanding.