‘Thank you.’ She reached for her leather cloak, bundled up in a pack, and hastily cut strips from it with her bronze knife.
Qirum, settled over his own oar, waited with reasonable patience until his fledgling crew got settled. ‘Ready, are we? On my count. One — pull! One — pull!’
At first it was a shambles. The boat wallowed, the oars clattered against each other with heavy wooden knocks, and bodies bumped as the rowers tried to find a rhythm. Qirum yelled obscenities in Greek, Trojan, Hatti and Northlander. Deri laughed out loud.
But gradually they settled down, the oars biting into the water more or less together, and the boat slid away into deeper water. Kilushepa hauled on her steering oar, and there was hard work to be done as the boat swung around. At last the prow was pointing out to the open ocean, and the shallow hull skimmed over the water. Qirum even stopped swearing.
Milaqa felt a deep exhilaration as she hauled on her oar. She could feel the way the big muscles of her back and legs made the boat pivot on her blade. The boat itself was an extraordinary craft, quite unlike the oak-frame- and-hide boats of the Northlanders, which were designed for the rigours of the outer oceans. This was a black shadow on the water, sleek and menacing and startlingly fast when the rowers worked their oars properly. She had thrilled at her first sight of it, at the river mouth in southern Gaira. This boat was itself an instrument of war, as much a weapon as the bronze sword Qirum so cherished. And here she was, Milaqa of Etxelur, at its oar!
But as the day wore on, without a glimmer of sunlight, the rowing went on and on too, with only brief breaks for drinks and food and for pissing over the side. The energy in her muscles drained away to be replaced by a dull fatigue, and the joints in her back and neck ached. And still it went on, and she had to make another stroke, and another, and another.
Qirum glanced around, stripped to the waist, his brow beaded with sweat, his slab-like body tensed. ‘Told you so!’ he said. ‘You could be up there peeling apples for the Tawananna. But no, you knew best, and here you are, with your feet in the bilge and your muscles on fire. Told you so!’
She forced a grin. ‘Shame we aren’t in separate boats so I could race you, Trojan.’
He laughed, shaking his head. But then he turned away, and she had still another stroke to pull, and another.
Heading roughly north and east, they crossed a sea quite unlike Northland’s great oceans. This sea was a puddle, so crowded with small islands they were never out of sight of land. Smoke rose up from some of the islands, not from others. Following Qirum’s curt commands, Kilushepa kept them clear of all the islands. Occasionally they would see ships, looming on the horizon. Kilushepa steered well clear of these too, hiding the boat behind the curve of the world.
They made one overnight stop, on a small island that Qirum said had always been uninhabited. By the light of whale-oil lanterns — no moon was visible — they hauled the boat up on a beach of gritty sand, and made a camp in the lee of a bluff of rocks. Further inland the island was thick with trees and bushes, their leaves pallid, oddly tired- looking. Qirum detailed some of his crew to go off into the interior to hunt for game, while others walked the strand looking for shellfish.
Released from the punishment of her oar, Milaqa wanted nothing but to curl up on the sand and sleep. But the kindly local man advised Milaqa to take care of her body first, or she would be as stiff as a plank by the morning. So she ducked around a rocky outcrop to a more secluded part of the beach, stripped down to her loincloth and plunged into the water. It seemed saltier than she remembered of Northland’s seas, and more buoyant, and it was cold, but she swam back and forth, letting the sea replenish her drained body, and feeling her muscles recover as they stretched against the water’s gentle resistance.
That night she slept a dreamless sleep. But the morning found her back at her oar, and the grim slog of completing the journey resumed.
31
The next day they got their first glimpse of the Anatolian shore. It was a thin brown stripe on the horizon, with low, worn hills, and long empty beaches against which waves broke in a skim of white, and not a splash of green anywhere. This was home for Qirum. He showed no pleasure in returning.
They turned, heading north, so they tracked the coast to their east, Milaqa’s left. The rowing got harder. There was a current against them, and a wind blew steadily from the north. Milaqa and the rest laboured, but the landmarks on the shore seemed to crawl by. At last, on the northern horizon, Kilushepa pointed out a smudge of brown hanging over the land: smoke from the fires of Troy itself.
‘There’s a bay,’ Qirum said, panting as he worked his oar. ‘A headland… Once we round the headland and get into the bay we’ll be out of this current, sheltered from the wind, and life will get a lot easier. Not long now, I promise-’
‘ Weapons! ’ Kilushepa’s command was a harsh snap.
Milaqa looked up, confused. The men were already shipping their oars and scrambling for their spears and shields under their benches. Qirum looked over his shoulder, past Milaqa, and he swore, using his filthiest defamation of his Storm God.
And Milaqa looked back, along the length of the boat to the sea. There it was: a black scrap on the horizon that grew as she watched, a square of dark sail above a slim hull.
Qirum began barking instructions. ‘Get ready. Use any weapons you have to hand. You too, ladies! I feared they would strike here, where every boat must round the headland to the bay. And see how they come upon us, riding down the summer winds as we labour against them, they have all the advantages. Of course anticipating trouble doesn’t necessarily mean you can avoid it. They’ll come alongside us, grapple us with hooks and ropes, maybe throw a net. Cut their ropes, slash their net. Don’t let them board! Or you will be rowing another boat across a river of blood before the day is done.’
They quickly got organised, the men with their weapons and shields ready to defend either side of the boat, depending on how the pirates came down on them. Milaqa had no weapons of her own save her bronze dagger. She picked up her oar, and held it before her like a club. Teel looked terrified, Deri and Riban grim. Tibo had an expression of relish. The black ship closed on them silent as smoke over the water. Milaqa could see detail now, rents in that big sail, a glint of metal — bronze swords and spear points.
None of this seemed real. The scene was almost peaceful, as they waited; the sea lapped, the wind sighed in their faces.
‘They’re closing fast,’ Deri said grimly. ‘They’ll pass by fast too. If they judge it wrong they’ll miss us altogether.’
Qirum said, ‘They’re good seamen. Must be, or they wouldn’t have survived. They might foul up. We won’t gamble our lives on it. She’s a big one. A fifty-seater. If she’s fully manned we’re outnumbered many times over.’
‘This is not how it ends for you, Trojan,’ Kilushepa said calmly. ‘You, killed by a stranger for the scrap of food in your pack, the bit of gold in your pocket? You, who is destined to rule the world? You will survive this. So it’s a fifty-seater. What’s your plan?’
He stared at her. Then he laughed out loud. ‘Gods, I am surrounded by monstrous women! But you are right, of course. We must not allow them close enough to use their advantage of numbers.’ He rummaged under his bench for his bow and a leather quiver of arrows. ‘Milaqa. Get me the lantern from Kilushepa at the stern.’ Feverishly he used his knife to saw a bit of cloth from his tunic, and tied it around an arrowhead. ‘Move, girl!’
She worked her away along the boat, between the watchful men, and fetched the lantern. She had to shield it from the wind with her body as Qirum struck a flint to light it. ‘Feed it,’ he snapped at the man behind Milaqa’s bench, the Greek. The man ripped bits of cloth off his own tunic to fuel the flames.
The pirate ship was closing now. Some of its crew dug oars in the water to slow the ship as it bore down. Milaqa thought she heard them chant, a rapid, ugly noise; they were pumped up to fight.
‘Milaqa.’ Qirum dipped one arrowhead, wrapped in cloth, into the flame; it came up burning. ‘Help me. I’ll fire the arrows. And when they close, throw the lamp. Try to hit the sail. Do you understand? You’ll only get one chance.’
