Desert God (51 page)

When at last Zaras clambered on board the deck of the
Outrage
he came to me immediately and went down on one knee before me. ‘I disobeyed you, my lord,’ he confessed. ‘I defied your orders in front of the men. You would be fully justified if you reduced me to the ranks and dismissed me from your command.’

‘You did what you knew was right,’ I replied. ‘No man can ever do better than that. Take command of the ship and set sail for Krimad.’

He rose to his feet. ‘Thank you, Taita. I will never disappoint you again.’

A
s the sun sagged wearily to the western horizon I climbed to the masthead of the
Outrage
, from where I made one last survey of the sea behind us to be absolutely certain that there was no sign of pursuit by a Hyksos squadron. All was clear. The north coast of Egypt was merely a thin strip of blue above the darker blue of the sea. Our flotilla was closed up with stern lanterns lit to enable our navigators to maintain their precise stations in the formation through the hours of darkness.

The leadsman in the bows called, ‘No bottom with this line!’

We were in deep water and on course for Crete. I was in my preferred position at the masthead. I heard Zaras dismiss the watch below. The rowers shipped their oars and curled up on the deck to sleep. The wind was fresh on our quarter and all our sails were spread.

Suddenly I was weary to the very depths of my body and soul. The fighting had been gruelling, and my confrontation with Zaras even more so. I considered descending the mast and retiring to my narrow bunk in the stern cabin, but the following breeze was warm and still redolent of the odours of my beloved Egypt. The gentle oscillation of the mainmast lulled me. My body ached dully with the bruises and nicks that I had received in the battle of Zin Bay. My cabin seemed far away. I made certain that the line around my waist was secured to the mast against which my back was pressed, before I closed my eyes and let my chin sag on to my chest.

When I woke again the moon had reached its zenith and its reflection on the surface of the sea was keeping pace with us, casting a pathway of glittering silver over the wavelets. The smell of Africa had been replaced by the salty tingle of the ocean. The only sounds were the susurration of the water under our hull, the regular creaking of the mast in its boot and the whisper of the wind in our rigging.

My aches had dissipated, and my weariness with them. I felt vigorous and alert once more. I was filled with that strange sense of elation which I had come to recognize as a sure sign that the goddess Inana was close. I looked for her eagerly, and felt no surprise when I saw her gliding along the pathway of moonlight to meet our ship. The hood of her mantle was thrown back, and the moonlight played on her face. She was lovely past imagining.

When she came abreast of the
Outrage
she stepped from the surface of the sea on to our deck and looked up at me.

Her expression changed and so did my mood. I was suddenly filled with a sense of dread and foreboding. I knew that Inana had not come to commend me for my victory on the plains of Zin.

She did not speak, but nonetheless I heard her voice echoing softly in my head.

‘The god is angry. Cronus demands the ultimate sacrifice.’

‘I do not understand.’ I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat.

‘Go to them. They are in mortal danger.’ Her voice was silent, but I heard the warning clearly above the sound of the wind and water.

I tried to stir myself to go down to her, but I was unable to move. I wanted her to explain her enigmatic message, but I could not speak.

Then the dark shadows of sleep fell over me like a net, and she was gone. I struggled to retain my senses. I tried to cry out in the darkness: ‘Don’t go, Inana! Wait for me! I don’t understand.’ But the darkness overwhelmed me.

I don’t know how long I slept the second time, but when I did manage to struggle back out of the darkness the dawn was breaking and the black-winged gulls were dipping and diving across our wake.

I looked down and the deck below me was bustling with activity. The first watch of oarsmen were filing down the companionway to take their turns on the rowing benches.

I untied the rope that secured me to the mast and slid down the backstay to the upper deck. As my feet hit the boards Zaras hurried to meet me. He was smiling and shaking his head.

‘My lord, you didn’t sleep in the rigging again, did you? Does your bunk no longer please you?’ Then he saw my expression and his own smile faded. ‘What is it …?’

‘Jettison all our chariots immediately,’ I ordered. ‘Transfer all our horses to the other ships of the squadron.’

He gawked at me. ‘Why, Taita?’

‘Do not question my orders. I don’t have time to argue with you again.’ I was so impatient that I seized his shoulder and shook it. ‘Take a full team of oarsmen from every one of the other ships. I want to be able to change rowers every hour.’

‘Every hour?’ Zaras blurted.

‘I want attack speed all the way to Krimad.’

‘Attack speed?’ He looked incredulously at me.

‘Don’t keep repeating everything I say, Seth damn you, Zaras,’ I growled at him. ‘I want to be in Krimad five days from now, or even sooner if possible.’

‘You will kill my men,’ he protested.

‘Better they die, rather than the royal princesses.’

He stared at me aghast. ‘I don’t understand …’

‘Both the princesses are in mortal danger. We may already be too late, but every hour we lose is an hour closer to their certain deaths.’

He spun away from me shouting to the watch officer, ‘Fly the signal for “All Captains”.’

The other ships came alongside us two at a time, one on our port and one on our starboard side. Each of them put twenty of their best oarsmen on board the
Outrage
, with water and rations for five days. In exchange we gave them the slaves and weaklings from amongst our own crew.

We transferred all our horses across to them, hoisting them on the loading pulleys and swinging them across the gap between our vessels. We used the same equipment to lift our chariots and jettison them overboard. I wanted the
Outrage
to be floating high and light. Even five days to Crete was a tall order.

When it was the turn of Hui’s vessel to come alongside, Zaras took him aside and spoke quietly to him, but I read their lips. Hui turned away from him and came striding down the deck to me with a determined expression on his face.

‘Very well, Hui,’ I forestalled his argument, ‘put a good man in command of your ship and come over to us. But be warned you will take your turn on the rowing bench.’

As soon as we had our full complement on board and the first team of rowers in their places on the benches the drummer gave them the beat. He built up gradually from steering speed to attack speed at ten strokes to the minute.

The
Outrage
took wing and we flew through the water. Within the first hour we had left the rest of the flotilla below the horizon behind us.

When I changed teams the men who were relieved fell off their benches, lathered with sweat and choking for breath. Day and night over the next three days our speed never bled off.

Zaras and Hui took their shifts on the benches and even I rowed a full hour in every twelve. When men half my age faltered I never missed the beat. The memory of Inana’s unspoken warning sustained me.

Go to them. They are in mortal danger.

I
t was afternoon on the fourth day. I had just relinquished my place on the rowing bench and, still dripping sweat and panting, I went to the ship’s bows to scan the sea ahead.

I had no way of calculating how far we had still to go before we raised the island. I was not even certain that we were still on course. I had placed my faith in Inana to guide me. However the sea ahead of us was still empty and the horizon was slick and unbroken.

There was no wind. The sky was cloudless, burnished bright and merciless as the blade of an executioner’s axe. The air was heavy and oppressive. It had a faint but unpleasantly sulphurous taste that seared the back of my throat. I coughed and spat over the side, and then I looked back over the stern. The only movement was the undulation of our wake and the stippled whirlpools left by our oar-blades on the polished surface as they rose and fell.

I was about to turn away and go below to try to get a little rest, for I had slept hardly at all since leaving the Bay of Zin, but just then something on the horizon ahead caught my eye. It was a thin undulating dark line. I stood and watched it for a while until I realized that it was a flock of birds flying directly towards us. I am very fond of all the avian species, but I could not recognize these until they came much closer. Then I was astonished to see that they were common crows. The Cretan crow is usually a solitary bird, or paired with a mate. Furthermore, crows always stay close to land. It was for all these reasons that I had not identified them from a distance. This was a flock of several hundred of these birds and they were at least a hundred leagues or probably much more from the nearest land. I watched them pass overhead. They were cawing to each other with an urgency that sounded to me like a distress call or at least a warning cry.

When they were gone I looked again to the north and I saw more birds in flight approaching. Some of these were also crows but there were many other species as well. Ibis and herons, kestrels and eagles and other raptors passed over us. Then came the smaller birds: robins and larks, sparrows and doves and shrikes. The sky was filled with birds. Their numbers almost darkened the sun. Their cries were a strident cacophony that was almost deafening. There was a sense of desperation in this feathered exodus.

A tiny yellow canary dropped from the sky and landed on my shoulder. It was clearly exhausted. Its whole body was trembling and it piped pathetically when I took it in my hand and stroked its head.

I looked up again in wonder and still the flocks passed over us in their multitudes. Hui and Zaras came and stood with me, both with their heads thrown back and their faces turned upwards.

‘What is happening, Taita?’ Hui demanded.

‘It seems to be a mass migration. But I have never seen anything quite like it before.’

‘It looks more as though they are fleeing from some deadly threat,’ Hui suggested.

‘Wild animals and especially birds have an instinct for danger,’ Zaras agreed, and then looked to me for confirmation. ‘Is that not so, my lord?’ I ignored the question, not because I did not know the answer but rather because at that moment there was a splash alongside the bows of our ship which was made by some heavy body.

I looked over the side, and the surface of the sea was boiling with life. Great shimmering bodies were tearing under our hull. Another mighty shoal of tuna was following the same direction as the flocks of birds that filled the sky above us. I looked ahead and saw that this shoal stretched out to the northern horizon.

Their silver shapes streamed past us endlessly, and then there were other creatures mingled with them. Glossy black porpoises ripped through the surface with their dagger-sharp dorsal fins, throwing up rooster tails of spray behind them. Whales which were almost as long as our ship blew clouds of steam through the vents atop their heads as they surfaced to breathe. Sharks striped like tigers and with evilly grinning mouths lined with jagged teeth dashed past us, heading southwards.

It seemed that all of creation was in panicked flight from some terrible cataclysm taking place beyond the northern horizon.

As the hours passed so this great agglomeration of flying and swimming creatures gradually thinned out, until there were no more of them.

We were alone in a deserted world; we few mortals and the tiny yellow canary which had stayed with me, sitting on my shoulder and trilling sweetly in my ear.

N
ight fell over us, and we rowed on doggedly through the darkness with only the stars to light our way. With the rise of the sun I saw that the sky and the sea were still devoid of all life. The silence and the loneliness seemed ever more ominous and oppressive.

The only sounds seemed to be the creaking of the oars in the rowlocks thrusting us onwards towards Crete, the whisper of the water along our hull and the boom of the drum tolling the beat. None of the men spoke or laughed.

Even my yellow canary had fallen silent, and just before noon he slipped off my shoulder and flopped to the deck. He was dead when I picked him up. I took him to the stern and committed his tiny body to the care of Artemis, the goddess of the birds. I dropped him into the ship’s wake. Then I climbed to my station at the masthead.

I scanned the horizon eagerly, but it was empty and my disappointment was difficult to bear. I sat in my perch for an hour and then another; watching and hoping.

The merciless sunlight hurt my eyes and after a while I began to see things that did not exist: phantom ships and illusory islands. I closed my eyes to rest them.

When I opened them again I was astonished to find that my hallucinations had intensified. The watery horizon ahead of our little ship was rising up towards the sky like a range of mountains: solid rather than liquid. Every moment these mighty oceanic Alps grew taller and more menacing. Now they were capped with glistening foam, white as freshly fallen snow.

Then I heard the babble of voices coming up from the deck below. I glanced down and saw that Zaras and Hui and the other deck officers had hurried forward into the bows of the ship. They were huddled there, pointing ahead and arguing with each other. The men on the upper deck benches had ceased rowing and were standing and peering ahead. The ship was losing way and drifting to a halt.

I jumped to the backstay and slid down it to the deck. When I reached it I ran forward, shouting to the men to take up their oars and get the ship under way once more.

The officers in the bows heard my voice and turned to me. Zaras ran back to meet me.

‘What is happening? Is the world turning upside down?’ He pointed over his shoulder. ‘The sea is rising to fill the sky.’ He was close to panicking.