Cursed by the Sea God (12 page)

SOMETHING WAS WORRYING LOPEX. He had been pacing back and forth
on the foredeck near me all morning, pausing occasionally to peer at the
horizon, hardly visible under a grey sky. A cold wind was whipping spray over
the bow from the tops of the waves, leaving the foredeck slick and our clothes
damp. Twice Lopex turned as if to address the men as they rowed, but each time
he stopped. It was during a water break that he finally spoke.

“Men! Soldiers of Achaea!” he called out as the men lounged on their benches.
From where I squatted against the bow rail it looked like he was avoiding their
eyes.

He paused. “This has been a long voyage. We have had more
misfortune than anyone should have to bear.” One of his big hands was twisting
an edge of his tunic. He frowned at it for a moment before going on.

“Misfortune,” he repeated, staring at his hand. “I wish I could say that it
was over, that our misfortune was done. And with the help of Pallas Athene, we
may be near the end. The end,” he repeated. Gods, he was almost rambling. He
noticed the men’s odd looks and seemed to collect himself.

“I want you all to know that, whatever happens . . . I have been proud to
command you. Whatever dangers we may find, you will face them with courage and
fortitude. I will expect nothing less.” As he turned away, he added, in a low
tone that only I heard, “Athene protect us.” His face was as grey as the
sky.

He stood at the bow the rest of the morning, gazing at the sea ahead. Behind
him the men muttered as they rowed. The sun was hidden, but it must have been
around noon when I saw him stiffen. Peeking out between the bow rails, I saw
what seemed to be a solid line of cliffs on the horizon. “Set course for that
gap,” he called to Procoros. “No, there. To port, between those cliffs. There
should be a passage there.”

As the rowers drew us nearer I began to hear a noise, a powerful gurgling, like
water draining through a monstrous sluice-gate. Dead ahead of us, a gap in the
cliffs hinted at a way through. I couldn’t be sure, because a thick, sea-born
mist filled it from one side to the other. Lopex grabbed Procoros by the
shoulder.

“As the gods are your guides, keep our course to port, along
the eastern cliff. We’ll be safe there. Safer.” He glanced up at the cliffs to
port and turned around to face the rowing benches. “Men of Achaea! No matter
what happens, no matter what you see,
do not abandon your oars
. It is
imperative that we keep our speed up through the passage. Above all, do not let
your oars foul or we will lose headway. Phidios, set the pace to double time.”
He lowered his voice again and bent his head to speak quietly to the navigator.
“Procoros, arm yourself and take up station at the stern.”

Watching him, I felt the hair prickling on my arms. Not once, facing the
Cyclops, the ship breakers or even Hades himself, had Lopex ever looked
uncertain. But now, as I watched him climb out of the forward hold carrying his
bow, two spears and his helmet, his expression was uneasy, even anxious. He
stalked past me at the bow rail and continued up to the prow to peer
forward.

As we sliced into the fog, the sound of the rushing water beneath our keel
ceased as though a bronze door had closed. Even the oar splashes were muffled,
sucked away into the swirling mist that I watched grow thicker until I could
barely see past my outstretched hand. Ury and a silent man named Demetrios were
just shapes on the forward rowing bench, their backs toward me, the rest of the
ship invisible in the fog. By the bow, I could just make out Lopex’s broad
shoulders and the crossed-axe emblem on his helmet as he peered out at the sea
ahead.

At our doubled rowing pace, the ship was lunging forward at
every sweep of the oars, and I clung to the forward rail for balance. Racing
through the fog at this shipwreck speed, a cliff lurking unseen somewhere off to
port, seemed like six kinds of madness, and I wondered again what could be so
dangerous that this was the safer choice.

“Look there! Who saw that?” A shout made me turn. Through the fog I could just
make out a figure on the forward rowing bench. It was Ury, his finger stabbing
at the fog to port.

“Out there!” he was shouting angrily. “Curse the gods, it’s out there!” Peering
into the fog, I expected to catch sight of the cliff, but could see only mist.
As I stared, there was a sudden sharp crack of wood on wood and a curse from the
rowing bench just beyond Ury’s. At this high speed the oarsmen needed perfect
timing, and two of their oars must have fouled. An extended wooden clatter and a
series of oaths ripped from the fog as the remaining port-side oars, their
rhythm interrupted, crashed into one another in a wave. The ship’s headway
slowed immediately and it slewed sharply to the left.

“All rowers! Break stroke!” Lopex shouted. The starboard rowers halted and the
Pelagios
drifted to a standstill in the mist. Striding down the
benches toward the stern, Lopex shouted again. “Phidios! Restart us
now
!”

Ury was peering suspiciously out to sea as Phidios shouted from the rear deck
to turn the ship and restart the rowing sequence, Lopex relaying his commands
forward from the centre bench. The ship slowly began to move again, and Lopex
came past me and disappeared into the grey haze as he returned
to the bow, spears in hand.

There was no warning. Directly above Demetrios, a huge, green-scaled head
lunged down out of the mist, its jaws gaping to engulf his head and shoulders
before snatching him up into the air. Demetrios disappeared upward into the fog,
legs still kicking. The most terrifying thing about it had been the complete
silence—he hadn’t had time to utter a sound.

I leapt to pull his oar out of the way, opening my mouth to shout a warning,
but caught myself. If the rowers were distracted, the oars would foul again, and
it was suddenly clear what Lopex meant—we had to escape this channel as quickly
as possible. I unlaced the oar quickly and heaved it up onto the foredeck,
hoping the worst was over.

It wasn’t. As I leapt back onto the foredeck there was another commotion
amidships and a muffled shriek, instantly cut off. Then another, further back,
and still another. “Keep rowing! Get those oars clear!” Lopex had returned from
the forward rail and his bark cut through the fog like an axe. Already rowing
their utmost, the men found new strength in their terror. There was a crack from
the fog as an oar snapped under the strain. “Ship the stub!” shouted Lopex.
“Maintain your stroke! Pull! Pull!” Backing away in terror, I felt a cold
sensation and turned forward.

Nearly beside me on the foredeck, another huge head had appeared silently out
of the mist over the starboard bow rail directly between Lopex and me. Hanging
above the deck, it
slipped past me, turning from side to side,
its mouth gaping open, its narrow tongue flickering as it tasted the mist.
Lopex, his back to the bow as he pointed his spear into the fog over the rowers,
hadn’t spotted it.

I opened my mouth to shout a warning but terror had gripped my throat and all
that came out was a strangled croak. The head whipped around at the sound and
came at me, jaws horribly wide, huge fangs above and below curved inward to
pierce and hold. I scrambled backward across the deck and found myself holding
the oar before me like a spar. Without thinking, I swung one end around to smash
the side of the creature’s head. It snapped at it reflexively but released it as
it tasted the wood and turned back toward me.

Backing up, I was stopped by the port bow rail as that huge mouth continued to
approach. Deep in the thing’s oily red maw, ropy muscles lining the throat
stretched and rippled, preparing to swallow. Impelled by terror, I levelled the
oar at the creature like a spear and thrust the blade of the oar between the
fangs and as far down its throat as I could.

The creature stopped its advance instantly, shaking its head to dislodge the
oar but it was caught fast, powerful contractions already drawing the oar deeper
into its throat. The gods had never designed it to deal with unwanted food
leaping into its mouth. Twitching spastically, the head withdrew into the fog
and vanished.

There was a sudden gust of wind, and the fog cleared for a moment. We were less
than two oar-lengths from a sheer cliff
that came down to the
water’s edge. I scrambled to my feet and looked up to see six snake-like heads
dangling down the cliff on impossibly long necks, now withdrawing into a cave
high above the port side. Five of them held men, wriggling like fish impaled on
hooks. With the mist gone, their muffled screams assaulted our ears.

“Lopex! Sweet gods, please save us! Gods, please!” The sixth head whipped
frantically back and forth as it tried to shake loose the oar already drawn
halfway down its throat.

The men in the boat stared up in horror. “Sweet Athene, look!” someone shouted.
“Lopex! Do something! Name of the gods, save them!”

Lopex dropped his spears and in a single continuous motion plucked his bow from
his shoulder and sent five arrows flying upwards. They sank deep into the chests
of the five men, who stopped wriggling instantly. The heads retreated into the
cave.

He turned back to the men. “I told you to row, gods curse you! That was just a
snack. She’ll be back soon. Put your backs into it!” Terrified, the men unfouled
their oars and began to pull, peering anxiously upward as we passed below the
cave, but the creature’s heads stayed hidden inside.

There was a roaring from the sea off to starboard, a noise that had been
muffled by the mist. I turned to look over the opposite rail and realized why
Lopex had taken our course so close to cliffs. On our other side, the ship was
sliding past the rim of a monstrous whirlpool. Even as I watched, a broken
oar whipped around it to vanish into its dark eye, swirling and
sucking only a stone’s throw to starboard. Its outer lip was lapping at our
hull, while its far edge was up hard against another cliff only a bowshot away.
A thick mist streamed from it like breath, spreading across the water to hide it
again as I watched.

No wonder Lopex had kept us to this side. Any farther from the cliffs and we
would have been drawn into that whirlpool, losing the ship and everyone on
board. At least this way we had lost only a few men. Circe must have warned
him.

Lopex was fingering a spear as he peered up at the portside cliff, the
creature’s cave slipping into the mist behind us. I frowned. Circe had warned
him? I gasped as I realized what that meant. That was why he had been anxious—he
had known that we would lose those men. Even before we set sail,
Lopex had
known
.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT. Under no circumstances will we land here.”
Lopex was staring down Procoros the navigator, who was glaring back at him,
brandishing his sheepskin map. I had poked my head out of the forward hold to
watch. Slipping past us to port was a green, lush island. I’d been on board long
enough now to know what to look for, and even from here I could see a stream
running down into a sheltered beach. With evening coming on, it would make a
good drawing-up point for the night.

Ury stood up, letting go of his oar, which began trailing in the water. As it
fouled the others, the
Pelagios
lost headway
and began to
drift. I ducked back into the hold to avoid a kick in the head as he stepped
past me onto the bow deck.

“Why aren’t we stopping?” he asked Procoros, gesturing angrily to port.
“There’s a watered beach right there!”

The navigator turned to him. “Lopex won’t let us.”

Lopex spoke up. “I have good reasons. Believe me, we will be safer.”

Ury stared back at him. “Safer? Like we were with that sea monster? Who told
you this, anyway?”

Lopex looked impatient. “You know the answer as well as I. It was Circe, the
sorceress. All that she has predicted has come true. And she warned me that
great harm would befall us if we land on that island.”

At the mention of Circe, Ury’s voice took on a tremor. “That witch? You trust
her? She turned your men into pigs!”

The navigator spoke up. “Lopex, my charts don’t show this island, but they
don’t show any others on this course for a day’s sailing either.” He sniffed.
“The breeze is rising and smells of rain. We need to beach.”

Lopex drummed his fingers impatiently on the rail for a moment, then turned
toward the rowing benches. “Men!” he said loudly. “We will stop here for the
night on one condition. Each of you must swear an oath to me, by the six
children of Cronos, that you will do no harm to the cattle that live
here.”

The men stared back. A nervous laugh came from somewhere. “Cattle? You mean
cows? Rrrr-rrrr cows?” someone said, making the odd sound that Greeks thought
cows made.

Lopex looked at him seriously. “Yes, Thersites, cows. We
will
land only if you swear not to harm any cattle you find here.” The men clearly
didn’t find it that serious, but they swore willingly enough and took up their
oars again.

As we rowed in, I was struck by something: the entire island was covered in
gently rolling hills, not a rock or gully to be seen amid the blanket of dark
green grass. Behind me, one of the rowers had noticed the same thing. “Look at
all that grass. You’d think it was pastureland for the gods.”

That evening I was sitting on a log by the soldiers’ fire between Pharos and a
sharp-faced man named Leonidas, one of the men who had come on board after the
disaster with the ship breakers. Part way around the fire, Ury had been drinking
heavily from a looted gold
rhyton
of wine, muttering and shooting angry
glances at me. Draining it in a final swallow, he dropped it and lurched to his
feet. As he passed he launched a vicious kick that was probably aimed at my
head, but caught the edge of my shoulder.

Pharos frowned. “Harm not our healer, cousin. He may heal you someday,
perhaps.” Ury blinked at him and staggered off.

Leonidas turned to look at me, shaking his head. “Just can’t stand the sight of
you, can he?” he asked. “So what did you do, boy?”

I shrugged. “Not much. I told him he stank. Back in Troy.”

Leonidas looked quizzically at me. “That’s
it
? I thought you’d tarred
his beard at least.” Hot tar and wine in a drunkard’s beard was a Greek
favourite. It took days to comb out, and meanwhile the scent drew flies.

Beside me, Pharos let out a long, smoked-fish belch. “More, I
think. Our healer lives, where young brother of Ury died. Now Ury seeks Trojan
blood for his brother’s.”

I kept my mouth shut with an effort. It wasn’t my fault— the Greeks had invaded
us! I hadn’t killed his stupid brother, but I’d been just behind him on the
steps when my sister had, stabbing him as he hauled her out. In the darkness,
the Greeks had thought the person on the steps had done it. Thank the gods they
didn’t know it was me.

I shook my head. “Pharos?” I blurted, anxious to change the topic. “How did the
Greeks get into Troy, that night?” I half hoped he wouldn’t answer, but he
turned a slow eye toward me, the dying firelight making his face ruddy. “The
giant horse. The horse of Troy.” His face clouded. “An unholy ruse. Mocking the
gods.”

Sitting cross-legged on a square of sailcloth nearby, Deklah was drinking wine
from a double-handled bowl. He put it down unsteadily, splashing a red stain
across the cloth. “Maybe,” he grunted, his accent strong tonight. “I’m not
proud of it. But if we hadn’t, it might have been your bones outside Troy now,
Pharos. Have you forgotten we were starving?”

We hadn’t exactly been eating turtle eggs and sweet pork inside the walls
either. My mouth twisted at the memory of stringy, half-burnt seagull.

Pharos had grunted something and Deklah was glaring back at him. “You know
nothing, Pharos! “he snarled. “You think we volunteered? I never wanted anything
to do with it! May the name curse that horse!”

The soldier beside Pharos had caught Deklah’s last few words.
“The horse! Tell us about the horse!” he roared, his face red with wine. Others
around the fire picked it up and began chanting, beating time on their knees.
“Heroes of the horse! Heroes of the horse!”

Deklah looked at them. “Heroes? You think we were
heroes
? It was nothing
like that.” He spat. “
Nothing
.” He glared around the circle of firelight
but the chanting just got louder. Eventually he held up his hands. “Enough! I’ll
tell you. But I promise, you won’t like it.”

He picked up his wine to walk over to a tangle of driftwood stacked near the
fire, and stared into his drinking bowl for a long moment. The men hushed one
another as he looked up. “First of all, whatever you’ve heard, we weren’t
volunteers. We were tricked.

“You remember when King Agamemnon announced that there was no shame being
defeated by gods, so after ten years it was time to go home? He was a liar. It
was part of a plan that he and Lopex thought up. Why we believed him, I don’t
know. But we couldn’t load our boats and sail for home fast enough. Remember how
we even burnt out our camp? We were fools.”

He shook his head. “Think about it. When we left Troy that day, why did we set
sail so late in the afternoon? I’ll tell you. To make sure we’d stop at Tenedos
for the night. Nice and close,” he added bitterly. “King Ag, Lopex, the other
local commanders—they knew we were going back.

“Look around. Do you see Lopex here?” Deklah gestured
around
the camp. “Even now, he’s too proud to eat with us. So that night on Tenedos
when he offered a few of us some wine that he’d hidden away, I thought he was
trying to say sorry. For keeping us from home for ten years. For losing the
war.”

He grimaced and drained his wine bowl. “I don’t know what he put in that wine
but I woke up in the early morning with eleven other men and a howling
headache.” There was a stir around the campfire. Deklah had been wrong. If there
was one story the Greeks liked better than heroism, it was betrayal. Skewers of
dried fish sat in the men’s hands or lay forgotten on the sand.

A guffaw came from the darkness just beyond the firelight. “Couldn’t hold your
grapes, heretic?” Ury staggered into the light, a wineskin perched on his
shoulder, the bunghole beside his mouth. “Try praying to that
name
of
yours, see if that helps.”

He lurched to a stop in front of Deklah. “Heretic!” he slurred, nearly toppling
backward into the fire. “Did you hear me? I said, pray—”

Pharos came up quickly behind Ury and dragged him firmly away by the shoulder.
“Silence, cousin. Not to look foolish.”

Deklah sighed. “So there I am. Around me the other men are just waking up,” he
went on. “I figure out I’m straddling some kind of long beam, men on it just
ahead and behind me. It sounds like we’re packed into a small wooden room,
perhaps ten or twelve of us.

“Then I hear Lopex behind me. ‘Agamemnon’s carpenters spent six
months building this, out on the island of Tenedos where the Trojans wouldn’t
see, ’ he says. ‘It’s a wooden statue. A horse. When the Trojans spot it at
dawn, they’ll bring it inside the walls. Tomorrow night, the fleet will return.
We will climb out and open the gates of Troy to them.’”

My head jerked up. Gods, please let Deklah be lying. Troy was never taken by
something this obvious. King Priam was a little past it, but a giant statue
should have made a five-year-old suspicious.

“For a moment I didn’t understand,” Deklah continued. “Climb out? Then I
realized what he meant:
that’s
what we were in: a wooden statue! ‘It will
be light soon, ’ Lopex said, ‘and the Trojans will send scouts. If they hear us
inside, they’ll burn us alive. One more thing: the hatch is nailed shut from the
outside. The only way out now is to get into Troy, where my spy will open
it.’”

If I’d still had any hope that Deklah was making this up, it vanished at that
moment. Sealing everyone inside with him— so that his plan was their only hope
of survival—was the sort of brilliant, dangerous strategy that only Lopex could
come up with.

“I could not believe what I was hearing,” Deklah was saying. “I tried to turn
around, but with the bracebeams left and right it was too cramped. Right behind
me, Askrion starts shouting. ‘What in
kopros
kind of honourless plan is
that? Do you think the Trojans are stupid? What if the fleet doesn’t
come, or someone farts and the Trojans hear us? That’s not a
plan; it’s suicide!’

“Just behind him, Lopex’s voice goes all cold. ‘It’s like this, ’ he says. ‘If
we fail today, we die. The entire Greek fleet can’t save us if the Trojans find
us.’ Then he adds, so soft I can hardly hear him, ‘The gods have forced this war
upon me. We will win it or die. But challenge me again and you’ll never
know.’

“Askrion was from Pylos or he would have known better. He shouted something and
went to turn around. I heard a knife. Something hot splashed my shoulders, and
that bubbling sound, you know, sucking through a slashed throat, and I could
smell blood.

“‘If we win, nobody will care how we got in.’ Right behind me, Askrion is
jerking and clutching at me as he slides down. I try to turn and hold him up,
but Lopex just keeps talking. ‘If we lose, nobody will remember.’ Askrion slips
out of my grip and slides off the beam behind me. ‘The Trojans will come for us
soon. From this point on, I will kill the man who speaks without
permission.’

“I bit my tongue so hard it bled. We didn’t ask for this. I couldn’t think of
anything except killing Lopex. Even so, at some point I must have drifted
off.

“What woke me was a thump. It must have been morning because there was sunlight
getting in the cracks. And there were voices outside. Not Greek. The Trojans had
found us.

“Lopex hadn’t bothered to bring anyone who spoke their
language, but we knew what they were arguing about. Meanwhile it’s getting
hotter and hotter, sitting in there on the beach as the sun rises. By this time
it’s gone mid-morning but the sweat-stink is already so bad I can hardly
breathe. Nobody bothered building in a place to take a leak, either, so Lopex
won’t let us drink, only small sips.

“Outside, I can hear a crowd gathering. There’s a thump, then some more.
They’re throwing rocks at us. It’s like being chained up inside a drum! Some of
the men ahead are moaning in fear. Of course the Trojans aren’t going to bring
us in. They’re going to burn us alive. They’re not fools. Then the thumps stop.
At first we’re relieved. Suddenly there’s this huge lurch that throws us against
the side—they’re trying to knock us over! We brace ourselves as each sway takes
us farther. Someone ahead of me throws up, and the smell nearly covers up the
sweat and blood.

“Then we hear another voice outside. Greek! The rocking stops. Someone with a
Trojan accent starts asking questions. I recognize the Greek voice, it’s that
little weasel, Sinon. Remember him? The one who was always around when someone’s
gambling dice or knife disappeared? I guess he stayed behind when we sailed. I
can’t believe what he’s telling them out there. He’s saying that Agamemnon tried
to sacrifice him for a good sailing wind, but he got away.” Deklah
sniffed.

“Filthy little liar. That nasty nose-voice of his always made me sick. Next he
says that an oracle told the Greeks to build this statue as penance for
attacking Troy. The gods would let
them sail home if they made
it big enough. From the sound of the crowd, they’re believing him.

“Finally he says it will protect their city for a thousand years, if they bring
it inside.” Deklah paused as an owl hooted somewhere inland.

“Pharos, you were right. This was not the warrior’s way. Creeping and lying our
way in? I wanted to warn them myself. Sinon could never have invented lies like
this. It had to be Lopex,” Deklah added.

Lopex again. My stomach curled around itself once more.

“Maybe a hand later there’s a set of jerks as though we’re being levered onto a
cart. They turn us around and start pulling us up the hill toward the city
gates. The craftsmen who built that thing didn’t design it to last, it was just
a thin shell. The whole torso is flexing like a child’s bow; the stress is
pulling it apart. All around me I can hear joints creaking, dowels working
loose. I don’t even know if it will last long enough to reach the gates. Finally
we stop. We must be at the city wall now because I can hear a crowd coming
out.