Stella Gemmell - Fall of Kings

“Helikaon!” he raged. “The Burner has stolen Priam’s treasure from under our noses!”

Menelaus frowned. “But Brother, that is impossible,” he offered nervously. “How could he get it out of the city?”

“He and his crew must have lowered it down the north wall in the night,” Agamemnon guessed. “That was why the rope was cut! To stop anyone following him and stealing it back. They will be far away on the Xanthos by now.”

“It is the fastest ship on the Great Green,” Menelaus added miserably. “We will never catch it.”

“We will if we know where Helikaon is going!” Agamemnon cried. Turning to Xander, he grabbed him by his tunic.

“Tell us, boy,” he snarled into his face. “The Hittites will not save your wounded friends. They will not care if they live or die! Tell us where Helikaon is going, or I will have them taken apart one by one in front of you!”

Xander looked around anxiously, but he could not see his champion Meriones, only the faces of the three kings staring greedily at him.

Please forgive me, Golden One, he thought.

“They are going to Thera,” he said.

Andromache was watching clouds of birds in the sky over Thera, wondering what kind they were. They were small and black, and there were thousands of them, swirling, diving, climbing, splitting into two clouds, then three, then four, then coming together again in smooth graceful flight. All the crewmen of the Xanthos were watching, and the ship was drifting in the warm morning breeze. Suddenly, as if under orders, the birds formed a single flock and headed away from the island. For a heartbeat they were over the ship, myriads of them blocking the light. Crewmen ducked instinctively. Then the birds had passed, racing for the north, and they soon vanished from sight.

The oarsmen picked up the beat again, and the Xanthos glided on toward the Blessed Isle. Andromache sat back on the wooden bench at the mast and peered down into the lower deck, where the boys were playing happily. She smiled to herself. For the first few days of their voyage she had watched them all the time, frightened that one would fall overboard. But she had found that on the Xanthos the boys had more than sixty fathers watching out for them. The oarsmen, most of whom had children of their own, treated them as they would their own sons, playing games with them and telling them stories of the sea. Sometimes they would sit the two boys on the rowing benches and let them pretend to row the great galley.

Astyanax and Dex had thrived during their time at sea. They were both nut-brown from being in the sun all day, and Andromache was sure they both had grown taller in those few days. Dex was still watchful, a little shy and slower to laugh than his brother. Astyanax was bold and sometimes reckless, and whenever he was on the open upper deck, Andromache watched him with the anxious eyes of mother love.

Since leaving Troy, Helikaon had set a fast pace toward Thera. His intention was to stop briefly at the Blessed Isle to take Kassandra on board, then sail on to Ithaka, where Kalliades and Skorpios would leave the ship. Then the Xanthos would make the long voyage, perhaps for the last time, to the Seven Hills in time for winter.

Once at sea and safely out of Trojan waters, they had no reason to race to Thera, yet Andromache felt a feeling of urgency all the time. She could not understand it. They no longer had to fear the Mykene, and the weather was mild and still, but she suffered a constant sense of subdued panic, as though they were late for something. Helikaon felt it, too, he admitted, and they believed that the rest of the crew did, although it never was discussed.

Andromache stood and walked down the aisle to the foredeck, where the two warriors were resting. She liked the fair-haired rider Skorpios. He was unlike any soldier she ever had met. She would talk to him in the long idle evenings spent on rocky shores and sandy beaches. The young man knew the names of birds and the small creatures in the rock pools. He had his own names for the star pictures in the night sky and would tell her tales of them. He had bought a set of pipes from a trader on Lesbos and sometimes would play soft laments as the sun set. He told her stories of his childhood, sad ones about his brutal father and careworn mother and happier ones about his brothers and sisters and the daily life in their village. He planned to leave the Xanthos at Ithaka, but she hoped he would go with them to the Seven Hills.

Kalliades looked up as she approached, and she gave him a warm smile. Rested by the voyage, his leg at last had started to heal. Each day she had dressed his wound, until this day she had thrown away the spent healing plant Xander had placed on it.

A sailor shouted, “Dolphins!” and she looked to where he pointed. They often saw a dolphin or two on their travels, and she wondered at the excitement in his voice. Then she realized he was pointing to not one dolphin or two but to hundreds of them, passing the ship to starboard, their sleek gray backs rising and falling as they surged toward the north.

“Doffizz, doffizz!” she heard one of the boys cry, and they ran up on deck and raced to the rail. She saw two crewmen catch them and hold them securely as they craned their necks to watch the creatures pass.

“Unusual,” murmured Kalliades, who had stood up to watch. He sat down again, but Skorpios continued gazing at the sea until long after the dolphins had disappeared. When he sat down, his face was flushed with excitement like the boys’.

“I have never seen dolphins before,” he explained. “In fact, I have never been to sea before, except to cross the Hellespont.”

“Then you have never seen Thera, the Blessed Isle,” she told him. “It is unique.”

“How so?” he asked, peering at the island looming ahead of them. “Because no men are allowed there?”

“Partly,” she told him. “But it is fashioned like no other island. It is in the shape of a ring, with just one gap where the ships sail in. In the center is a wide round harbor, which is very deep. No ships can anchor there, for the stone anchors will not reach the bottom. In the center of the harbor is a small black isle called the Burned Isle.”

Soon they were passing into the harbor, and Kalliades, who was watching ahead, commented, “Not such a small island!”

Andromache looked around and gasped. The Burned Isle, black and gray like a pile of coals, was twice the size she remembered. It now filled more of the harbor, and the Xanthos had to skirt it to reach the Theran beach. From its summit she could see thick black smoke arising and trailing off toward the east. She looked back to the aft deck, where Helikaon and Oniacus were talking urgently, pointing and gazing at the growing isle with wonder.

Young Praxos shouted, “Ship ahead, lord!”

Andromache could see a galley drawn up on the far beach. She could make out nothing of it at that distance, but within moments sharp-eyed Praxos cried, “It is the Bloodhawk, Golden One!”

Odysseus! What good fortune! Andromache smiled. But at that instant she heard the rumble of an earthquake beneath them. The sea churned, and she saw a landslip on the Burned Isle go crashing into the water. The waves it created lashed the Xanthos, and the ship rocked back and forth. Andromache looked to the children, but they were both safely on the lower deck. She gazed up at the isle again and shivered.

Within a short time the Xanthos had reached the beach, and crewmen were shinnying down ropes, ready to draw the ship up alongside the Bloodhawk. Helikaon slid down a rope, and a ladder was thrown over the side for Andromache. When she reached the beach, Odysseus was waiting, one arm around Helikaon’s shoulders. They both were grinning at her, and she smiled back. With a touch of sadness she saw that the Ithakan king’s once-red hair was now silver.