Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

And there were only three of them.

‘A boat like this needs eight rowers and a pilot,’ Kilushepa said. She stood with Noli, the Annid companion appointed by Raka for this mission of diplomacy. ‘What are you playing at, Trojan?’ She now spoke a heavily accented Northlander, practised with difficulty during the long journey, though she would lapse into her own tongue.

‘This is all I could find. Times are hard. And nobody wants to sail to Troy across a pirate-ridden sea, it seems. So — no more passengers. You will each be taking an oar.’ He pointed one by one to the men of the Northland party: Teel, Deri and his son Tibo, the young priest Riban, and Qirum himself. ‘And you, Queen,’ the Trojan said, ‘will work the steering oar.’

‘So it’s come to this,’ Kilushepa said with a sneer.

‘Do you want to get to Hattusa or not?’

Deri shrugged, spat on his hands and rubbed his palms together. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Tibo was the first to board the boat, intent, focused, eager, as he had been all summer. If Qirum told him he’d have to swim to Troy, Milaqa thought he’d try it. Riban looked wary, but he had toughened up on the journey, and he followed Tibo on board.

Teel, however, raised his eyebrows. ‘I swear this Trojan is out to torture me. Do I look as if I was born to row a war-boat?’

Milaqa snorted. ‘For a Crow you lack a sense of adventure, uncle.’

‘And you do not, I suppose.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back. ‘Qirum! Get rid of one of these men. This one with the leg. He’ll cause us more trouble than he’s worth.’

‘Not as much trouble as being one man short-’

‘One rower short. I’ve watched you all summer. I can row as well as any of you.’

He laughed out loud. ‘Typical of you, Milaqa. All right. But when you’re hunched broken over your oar, remember this moment and don’t blame me.’ He walked up to the man she had chosen and told him in coarse Greek that he was not to be used. The man scowled at Milaqa, evidently sensing she had something to do with it, but he limped away.

Milaqa clambered aboard the boat and chose a bench on the right-hand side; Riban was opposite her, so close they were almost touching within the sleek hull. There was room under her bench to stow her gear. The bench itself was worn smooth with use, and its coating of black pitch was stained with rusty splashes — blood, probably.

Qirum briskly helped Noli to a seat in the stern, near the platform where Kilushepa would work as pilot. Here bread was stored in leather bags, and water and wine in clay jars. With an efficiency born of the long practice of the journey, Noli stowed away her own precious baggage, the little sacks of potatoes and maize seed. Kilushepa was helped aboard and stood at the stern, taking the steering oar in her right hand.

Qirum himself took the bench ahead of Milaqa, so Milaqa was looking at his broad back. As soon as he had stowed his sword, spear, bow and arrows under his bench he barked an order, and the rowers each took an oar. Milaqa fumbled with the rowlock, but she got her oar fitted.

They used their oars to push away from the jetty, and then it was time to row. Milaqa found a shelf on the floor against which she could brace her feet. She dipped her oar experimentally into the water, and pulled it back. It was heavy, and she could feel how the water dragged at the blade. But she had made her first stroke.

The man behind her tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back; it was one of the locals. ‘Like this,’ he said in strongly accented Greek. He held up his hands; he had wrapped the palms in thick leather bandages. ‘Grip. No blisters.’

‘Thank you.’ She reached for her leather cloak, bundled up in a pack, and hastily cut strips from it with her bronze knife.

Qirum, settled over his own oar, waited with reasonable patience until his fledgling crew got settled. ‘Ready, are we? On my count. One — pull! One — pull!’

At first it was a shambles. The boat wallowed, the oars clattered against each other with heavy wooden knocks, and bodies bumped as the rowers tried to find a rhythm. Qirum yelled obscenities in Greek, Trojan, Hatti and Northlander. Deri laughed out loud.

But gradually they settled down, the oars biting into the water more or less together, and the boat slid away into deeper water. Kilushepa hauled on her steering oar, and there was hard work to be done as the boat swung around. At last the prow was pointing out to the open ocean, and the shallow hull skimmed over the water. Qirum even stopped swearing.

Milaqa felt a deep exhilaration as she hauled on her oar. She could feel the way the big muscles of her back and legs made the boat pivot on her blade. The boat itself was an extraordinary craft, quite unlike the oak-frame-and-hide boats of the Northlanders, which were designed for the rigours of the outer oceans. This was a black shadow on the water, sleek and menacing and startlingly fast when the rowers worked their oars properly. She had thrilled at her first sight of it, at the river mouth in southern Gaira. This boat was itself an instrument of war, as much a weapon as the bronze sword Qirum so cherished. And here she was, Milaqa of Etxelur, at its oar!

But as the day wore on, without a glimmer of sunlight, the rowing went on and on too, with only brief breaks for drinks and food and for pissing over the side. The energy in her muscles drained away to be replaced by a dull fatigue, and the joints in her back and neck ached. And still it went on, and she had to make another stroke, and another, and another.

Qirum glanced around, stripped to the waist, his brow beaded with sweat, his slab-like body tensed. ‘Told you so!’ he said. ‘You could be up there peeling apples for the Tawananna. But no, you knew best, and here you are, with your feet in the bilge and your muscles on fire. Told you so!’

She forced a grin. ‘Shame we aren’t in separate boats so I could race you, Trojan.’

He laughed, shaking his head. But then he turned away, and she had still another stroke to pull, and another.

Heading roughly north and east, they crossed a sea quite unlike Northland’s great oceans. This sea was a puddle, so crowded with small islands they were never out of sight of land. Smoke rose up from some of the islands, not from others. Following Qirum’s curt commands, Kilushepa kept them clear of all the islands. Occasionally they would see ships, looming on the horizon. Kilushepa steered well clear of these too, hiding the boat behind the curve of the world.

They made one overnight stop, on a small island that Qirum said had always been uninhabited. By the light of whale-oil lanterns — no moon was visible — they hauled the boat up on a beach of gritty sand, and made a camp in the lee of a bluff of rocks. Further inland the island was thick with trees and bushes, their leaves pallid, oddly tired-looking. Qirum detailed some of his crew to go off into the interior to hunt for game, while others walked the strand looking for shellfish.

Released from the punishment of her oar, Milaqa wanted nothing but to curl up on the sand and sleep. But the kindly local man advised Milaqa to take care of her body first, or she would be as stiff as a plank by the morning. So she ducked around a rocky outcrop to a more secluded part of the beach, stripped down to her loincloth and plunged into the water. It seemed saltier than she remembered of Northland’s seas, and more buoyant, and it was cold, but she swam back and forth, letting the sea replenish her drained body, and feeling her muscles recover as they stretched against the water’s gentle resistance.

That night she slept a dreamless sleep. But the morning found her back at her oar, and the grim slog of completing the journey resumed.