Gods and Warriors (34 page)

Right up to the moment when he and the girl had found the scrap of bloodstained tunic on the shore, he’d kept hoping that Hylas was alive. Even afterward, he’d found it impossible to believe. Hylas dead? Never coming back?

The fire crackled and spat as it devoured the oil-soaked driftwood and started on the body.

After yesterday’s cloudburst, the sky was clear, the
Sea as smooth as milk. Telamon stood blinking in the sunlight. He felt the greasy smell of burning flesh steal down his throat. Turning his head, he watched the wavelets sucking sadly at the pebbles. He thought of Hylas’ body lying somewhere out to Sea, with no rites to help his spirit on its way.

Scooping up a handful of hot ash, he smeared it on his face. It stung, but he needed that. He needed to punish himself. Everything was his fault. If he hadn’t met Hylas at the wreck, Kratos would still be alive. And so would Hylas.

From a distance, the men were watching him with new respect. They’d seen him prize the dagger of Koronos from his uncle’s cold, dead fingers, and now they saw him smearing ash on his face. They approved. This was how it should be: the young kinsman taking over from the dead.

Telamon knew he should be proud. After all, he’d regained the dagger, the heirloom of his House. Instead, he felt ashamed.

It didn’t help that until they reached Lykonia, he was supposedly in charge. He knew he wasn’t up to it, and he suspected that the men did too. A boy of thirteen summers, leading warriors twice his age?

Yesterday Ilarkos, his uncle’s second in command, had asked if they should burn Kratos’ body according to the rites he’d followed, or take it back to Lykonia for burial in the usual way, at the Place of Ancestors. Telamon hadn’t known what to do. He hated the idea of burning a corpse, just as he hated the rites his uncle had practiced; but he
daren’t say so, and in the end, Ilarkos had made the decision for him.

“So now you’re a hero,” said a sneering voice behind him.

Telamon bristled.

The Keftian girl looked like a bedraggled little hawk. She was filthy. Although she’d been overjoyed to see the Egyptian slave whom her mother had sent with them to look after her, she’d refused his offer of a clean tunic; and she’d scraped back her hair, as if to draw attention to the scar that scythed across her cheek like a new moon.

“Go away,” snarled Telamon.

“How does it feel?” she said sweetly. “You’ve got your precious dagger back, and Hylas is dead. Are you proud of yourself?”

“Proud?”
He glanced around to check that no one could hear. “He was my best friend!”

The pyre collapsed in a flurry of sparks. The girl regarded him with narrowed eyes. “I suppose you know that your kinsmen burned a whole valley?”

“Shut
up
!”

“I sent my slave to take a look. He says it’s already turning green. Soon it’ll be as if they’d never made their sacrifice.”

Telamon strode off down the shore, but to his fury, she followed. “What’s going to happen to me?” she said.

“We’ll take you back to Lykonia,” he muttered. “That’s where your mother is, she can deal with you.”

“No, I mean—”

“I know what you mean. I don’t care if she did strike a bargain with my father, I’m not mating with you.” Pointedly, he stared at her scar. “You’re too ugly.”

She barked a laugh. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

He picked up a stone and hurled it at the Sea.

Near the ship, Ilarkos was sacrificing a pig to the Earthshaker, in the hopes of gaining a safe crossing to Lykonia. It put Telamon in mind of the first sacrifice he’d ever seen. He’d been four summers old, and astonished by the jet of blood spurting from the ram’s fleecy throat. “Will it work?” he’d asked his father, and Thestor had squeezed his hand and said, “That’s for the gods to decide.”

Now, as Telamon watched the greasy black smoke twisting skyward, that struck him with the force of a revelation. Of
course,
he thought.
Everything
is the will of the gods. Why didn’t I see that before? It’s because of
them
that I’ve been torn between Hylas and my kin.
They
decreed what I did. I had no choice.

No choice, he thought. He felt a little better. It meant that none of this was his fault.

He made a promise in his head. Soon as I get home, I’m going to the meeting rock on the Mountain. I’m going to sacrifice a calf for Hylas and Issi.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s the right thing to do.”

He’d spoken aloud, and he braced himself for another sneer from the girl; but she wasn’t listening. She was shading her eyes and pointing at the shallows, where the ship lay at anchor.

“Look,” she murmured. “The dolphin’s back.”

Ilarkos came up, with some of the men. “It’s the same one that came for the Outsider,” he told Telamon. “We don’t know what it means.”

“I’ll find out,” the girl said coolly.

Telamon snorted. “No, you won’t! If I let you anywhere near the Sea, you’ll try to escape—”

“Then tie me up,” she snapped. “Tie me to that tree on the point and set sentries to watch from the ship, if you’re scared I’ll get away.”

He flushed. “I’m not scared. I just don’t trust you.”

She drew herself up: a scrawny girl in a filthy tunic, but with an authority that made the men stare.

“You can’t stop me talking to a creature of the Goddess,” she told Telamon. “I’m Keftian. We know the dolphin speech.”

When Telamon didn’t reply, she addressed the men. “If you don’t let me talk to that dolphin—
alone
—the Goddess will be displeased. And then you’ll never get home.”

“H
ylas!” whispered Pirra. “Are you there?”

Leaning out over the rocks as far as her tether would allow, she watched Spirit swim past. A short distance away, the guard on the ship was watching too, fingering his amulet and muttering a charm. She gave him a cold stare and turned her back.

Below her, on the side of the point that the guard couldn’t see, a fair head emerged from a clump of junipers. She sagged with relief. “You
are
alive! I found a pebble with a mark on it, and I guessed that you’d left it as a sign, but I wasn’t sure. Are you all right?”

“Are you? They’ve tied you to a tree!”

“That’s just to stop me trying to escape.”

He made to climb up, but she warded him back. “Stay where you are, they’re watching from the ship.”

“They won’t see me, I can—”

“I mean it! It’s not worth the risk.”

He scowled. He was bare-chested; what was left of his tunic was tied around his hips. He looked exhausted. Pirra wondered what had happened with Kratos on the
wreck, and whether Hylas would tell her if she asked.

They exchanged glances, and she felt the constraint between them. It was as if everything they’d been through together hadn’t really happened.

I’m back where I started, she thought bitterly. An object to be pushed about by my mother, like a piece on a gaming board.

Would Hylas understand if she told him, or would he growl at her to be glad that she had enough to eat? Suddenly he seemed a stranger: a sharp-eyed Lykonian, only out for himself.

“Were you alone when you found the pebble?” he asked.

“No.” She told him about her and Telamon finding the bloodstained scrap of tunic, and her guessing that Hylas had left it on purpose; then spotting the pebble nearby, with its spiky scratched-on mark. “You took a chance that I’d know it was a hedgehog,” she said.

“Did Telamon see it?”

“No. I made sure of that.”

“So he thinks I’m dead.”

She nodded. “When he saw the tunic he sat down and cried. The odd thing is, I think he meant it.”

Hylas’ scowl deepened. Then he said, “It was you who woke the Earthshaker. Wasn’t it?”

She hesitated. “I couldn’t think how that triton shell had gotten all the way from the caves. Then I realized. It must have been Spirit.”

They watched the dolphin swim past them again,
then veer toward the ship, where men were leaning over the side, dangling offerings of fish. Pirra remembered the day when she’d taken hold of Spirit’s fin and flown with him through the Sea. All over now, she thought. She felt sick.

“They’ve got their dagger back,” said Hylas between his teeth.

“But they didn’t get you. While you live, you’re a threat. The Oracle—”

“I don’t care about the Oracle. All I care about is finding Issi.”

“It’s the words of the Goddess, Hylas, it means something. It all comes back to Her. She sent you here—”

“For
what?
” he burst out with such violence that she hissed at him to be quiet; but the guards were busy watching Spirit snapping up mackerel.

“For
what?
” Hylas whispered fiercely. “I’m back where I started—no sister, no friend, no
nothing
! Even if I can get off the island, what then? I’ll be alone on a raft in the middle of the Sea, just like before!”

Pirra twisted off her last gold bracelet and tossed it down to him. “There,” she said crossly. “If a ship comes by, you can pay for your passage with that—and then you won’t need your wretched raft.”

Doubtfully, he turned the bracelet in his fingers. “But would it get me as far as Lykonia?”

“Hylas, it’s
gold,
it’ll take you all the way to
Egypt
if you want, and you’d still have enough left to buy the whole
ship! Chop it in pieces. A scrap the size of an olive will get you to Lykonia.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” she said shortly. What good was gold? It couldn’t buy freedom. A wave of dejection swept over her.

Two warriors were starting toward her across the rocks. With them was Userref, who’d just seen that she’d been tied up, and was looking outraged.

“They’re coming for me,” said Pirra. “You’d better hide.”

“What will you do?” asked Hylas.

She swallowed. “Try to avoid whatever my mother’s planned for me. Try to escape. Again. What about you?”

“Find a way back to Lykonia. Find Issi. Find someplace where we can be free of the Crows.”

“That’s a lot of finding,” said Pirra.

He gave a lopsided smile. “For you too.”

“Hide,”
she urged.

But instead of hiding, he started climbing toward her. “I just remembered, I found this. Quick, take it!”

Straining at her tether, she reached down and snatched it: a small slate-colored feather, banded with bluish gray.

“It’s a falcon’s,” he said. “I found it in an inlet. I thought it’d make a good amulet.”

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever had,” she mumbled. “And I’ve got nothing for you.”

He flashed her a grin. “Pirra, you’ve just given me a lump of gold!”

“No, I mean an amulet.” The awful thing was, she did have one for him, but she’d left it in the camp. Userref had brought back one of the lion’s claws from the burned valley, and she’d been planning to give it to Hylas; but now it was too late.

She glanced down to find him watching her through his tangled fair hair. “You escaped once,” he said. “You’ll do it again.”

She tried to reply, but her throat had closed.

“You’re brave and you don’t give up. You’ll do it, Pirra.”

She forced a smile. “Good luck, Hylas.”

“Good luck.”

She wanted to ask if he thought they’d ever meet again, but Userref and the warriors had almost reached her; and when it was safe to look back, Hylas had gone.