immensities of sallow grass. Sheepflocks afar were lost in loneliness. The Greeks marched briskly, leading the pack ponies they had gotten in Dumnonia. They would not return to the hill fort but push on. One winter was scant time to range this land. Come spring, Pytheas must be back with his ships.
The sight waxed slowly before him. At first it seemed little, and he supposed people made much of it only because they knew nothing better. As he neared, the sense of its mass grew and grew. Within a time-worn earthen rampart loomed a triple ring of standing stones, perhaps seventy cubits wide, the tallest of them well-nigh three man-heights, slabs almost as huge joining them on top, gray, lichenous, weathered, powerful beyond his understanding.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“You’ve seen megalithic works in the South, haven’t you?” Hanno’s voice was less calm than his words, hushed beneath the wind.
“Yes, but nothing like—Ask!”
Hanno turned to Segovax. Keltic lilted between them.
“He says giants built it in the morning of the world,” Hanno told Pytheas.
“Then his people are as ignorant as we,” the Greek said low, “We’ll camp here, overnight at least. Maybe we can learn something.” It was more a prayer than a hope.
Throughout the rest of the day he devoted himself to his eyes and his instruments. Hanno could give scant help and Segovax hardly any information. Once Pytheas spent a long time finding the exact center of the complex and sighting from there. “I think,” he said as he pointed, “that yonder stone outside—the sun will be seen to rise over it on Midsummer’s Day, But I cannot be sure, and we cannot wait to find out, can we?”
Night approached. The soldiers, who had snatched the chance to idle, started a fire, cooked food, made ready. Their talk and occasional laughter rattled meaningless. They had no reason to fear attack by mortal men, nor to wonder what ghosts might linger here.
The weather had cleared, and after full darkness Pytheas left the camp to observe, which he did at every opportunity. Hanno came along, bearing a wax tablet and stylus to record the measurements. He had the Phoenician trick of writing without light. Pytheas could use ridges and grooves to read instruments by his fingertips, measurements less close than he wished but preferable to none at all. When a stone had blocked view of flames, they were alone in the ring with the sky.
Titan blacknesses walled them in. Stars flickered between, as if trapped. Overhead curved the Galaxy, a river of mist across which winged the Swan. The Lyre hung silent. The Dragon coiled halfway around a pole strangely high hi heaven. Cold deepened with the hours, the vast wheel turned, frost formed hoar on the stones.
“Hadn’t we better get some sleep?” Hanno asked at last. “I’m forgetting what warmth feels like.”
“I suppose so.” Pytheas’ answer dragged. “I’ve learned as much as I can.” Abruptly, harshly: “It isn’t enough! It never will be. Our lives are a million years too short,”
5
After the long voyage north, past land that grew ever more rugged, ever more girded with holms and reefs, the coast finally bent eastward. These were waters as rough as the ground on which their surf crashed; the ships stood well out and cast anchor at sunset. It was better to huddle tireless than dare those unknown approaches. On the fourth day there appeared above haze the red and yellow heights of an island. Pytheas decided to pass between it and the main shore. His vessels battled their way on until dark.
Men saw no dawn, for air had thickened further. Aft of them a whiteness towered from edge to unseen edge of the world. They had a light breeze and visibility of about a dozen Athenian stadia, so they hoisted dripping sails. The sheer island began to fall behind them, and ahead, to starboard, they spied a murk that ought to be a lesser one. Noise of breakers loudened, an undergroundish thunder.
Then the white wall rolled over them, and they were blind. The breeze died and they lay helpless.
Never had they known or heard of a fog such as this. A man amidships saw neither bow nor stern; vision lost itself in smothering, eddying gray. Over the side he could barely make out turbulence streaked with foam. Water settled on cordage and fell off in a wicked little ram. The deck sheened with it. Wetness weighted hair, clothes, breath, while cold gnawed inward to the bone, as if he were already drowning. The formlessness was full of noise. Seas grew heavier, timbers groaned, the hull swayed crazily. Billows rushed and rumbled, surf roared. Horns hooted, crew wailed themselves hoarse, ship called desperately to unseen ship.
Pytheas, aft by the helm, shook his head. “What makes the waves rise when we have no wind?” he asked through the tumult.
The steersman gripped his useless tiller and shuddered. “Things out o’ the deeps,” he rasped, “or the gods o’ these waters, angry that we trouble them.”
“Launch the boats,” Hanno advised Pytheas. “They’ll give some warning if we’re about to drift onto a rock, and maybe they can pull us clear.”
The steersman bared teeth. “Oh, no, you don’t!” he cried. “You’ll not send men down to the demon-beasts. They won’t go.”
“I won’t send them,” Hanno retorted. “I’ll lead them.”
“Or I,” Pytheas said.
It became the Phoenician who shook his head. “We can’t risk you. Who else could have brought us this far, or can bring us home? Without you we’re all dead. Come help me put spirit into the crew.”
He got his men, because Pytheas’ calm words damped the terror in them. They unlashed a boat, dragged it to the side, shoved it over a rail when the deck canted and white-maned waves galloped just beneath. Hanno sprang down, braced calves between two thwarts, took an oar a sailor handed him, fended off while his rowers followed one by one. They fought free at the end of a towline and the next boat came after.
“I do hope the other skippers—“ began Hanno. A dash of brine choked off what nobody heard anyhow.
The ship was gone into wet smoke. The boat climbed a comber that was tike a moving hillside, hovered on the crest, plunged into a trough where men looked up the heights of water around them. Noise rolled empty of direction. Hanno, at the rudder, could only try to keep the hawser unfouled behind him. “Stroke!” he bawled. “Stroke, stroke, stroke!” Men gasped at oars and bailing buckets. The sea lapped around their ankles.
A monstrous grip seized them. They whirled. A cataract leaped out of the fog. It burst over their heads. When they could see again, the ship was upon them. The boat smashed into her hull. The water ground it against the strakes. Wood broke, tore free of nails, shrieked. The boat fell asunder.
Pytheas beheld it. A man flailed arms and legs. The sea dashed him at the ship. His skull split open. Brains, blood, body went under.
“Lines out!” Pytheas shouted. He himself didn’t stop to uncoil any from a bollard. He drew his knife and slashed a sheet free of the slack mainsail. When he cast the end overboard, it disappeared in fog and foam. None of the swimmers he glimpsed, lost, glimpsed again had noticed it.
He signalled for another length. The cut sheet still cleated and in his left hand, he slid over the rail. Feet planted on the hull, arm straining to hold the cordage taut and himself in place, he leaned straight out. With his right hand he swung the second line like a whip.
Now he was visible to those he would save, except when the vessel rose onto that side and a wave fountained across him. A man swung past. Pytheas flicked the loose line at his face. The man caught it. Sailors on deck hauled him aboard.
The third whom Pytheas rescued was Hanno, clinging to an oar. After that, his strength was spent. He got back with the help of two mariners and fell in a heap beside the Phoenician. No others attempted his feat; but no more waifs came to sight in the rage around.
Hanno stirred. “To the cabin, you and me and these two,” he said through clattering teeth. “Else the cold will kill us. We wouldn’t have lived ten minutes in that water.”
In the shelter, men stripped, toweled till blood awoke to stinging life, pulled blankets tightly about themselves. “You were magnificent, my friend,” Hanno said. “I wouldn’t have supposed you, a scholar—tough, but a scholar—could do it.”
“Nor would I have.” Exhaustion flattened Pytheas’ voice.
