have started to die. Remember, I had men who were a few days out of desperate bondage. A third of my rowers were strong enough, but as thin as young trees.
But the knucklebones were cast, the sail was brailed, the helm set and we ran north, and the sun set in the Outer Ocean like an evil eye into an alien sea of blood, and we could all but hear the hiss as it plunged red-hot into the sea. It had an evil look, and by the gods, we were all afraid.
Dawn, and I was still at the steering oars. I sucked on a piece of old bread to get saliva into my mouth. Men drank more questionable things: water from the bilge, urine mixed with seawater. Next to loss of breath, thirst is the fastest way to bring a man to desperation. Try it sometime. See how long you can go without water. You can go a day, but after a few hours, it becomes the sole focus of your thoughts.
The worst was that the sun found us alone. When you run at night without lights, it is easy to lose your consorts. There were no landmarks — no rocks, no coast. In fact, the very worst of it was that once we lost sight of the coast of Gaul, we didn’t even know which way north was.
That’s right. Think about it, friends. What magical device would give us direction? All I knew was that the helm was the same way I’d left it, and that the sun rose in the east, give or take a few degrees. But a few degrees at sea can be a great distance.
Alone, on the Outer Ocean. No sails, no land, a few gulls.
On and on we rode at a breakneck pace on a freshening wind.
‘How far?’ I asked Behon.
He rubbed sleep from his eyes. ‘How would I know?’ he said through Sittonax, who naturally was very happy to be awakened to translate.
‘You used to sail here, remember?’ I asked.
Behon shook his head. ‘No one but a fool comes out on the Great Blue,’ he said. ‘I never leave the coast.’
He drew lines on the deck with a charred stick, showing me how the coast of Alba ran east to west, with the coast of Gaul like the hypotenuse of a shallow triangle, so that he would sail east into the rising sun across the south coast of Alba and then touch on Gaul — far, far from where we were. If we were anywhere. If his chart was accurate — the drawing of an ignorant man who measured distance in vague notions of time — then we were south of Alba, west of Gaul. And more than a hundred stades from any land.
It would have been more terrifying, if I hadn’t been so thirsty.
We ran north, and north. One of our Africans sprang off his bench at about noon, took his oar in hand, ran to the side and jumped.
He was gone in a few moments.
The sun was relentless, for autumn in the north.
I tried to sleep. Tried to daydream. Tried to imagine sex — Briseis, Lydia — or combat. Anything that would lift me and take me from water. But a dream of Lydia’s lips became my tongue questing her mouth for water, and a daydream of fighting Persians became a picture of drinking their blood.
About noon, Doola and a pair of our fishermen rigged the charcoal fire amidships and began to boil seawater. They took the biggest cauldron they had and got it boiling, and the vapour that rose off the boiling water they collected in a tent made of Doola’s bronze breastplate. They collected it as rapidly as they could, and in an hour’s work they got about two cups of drinkable water.
They accomplished very little, except that they made everyone feel better. And the water was passed around. One man — one of the Greeks — tried to drink the whole cup, and when one of the Albans pulled it away, he spilled it.
Alexandros drew his sword and refused to let the oarsmen gut the Greek. The young man was becoming an officer.
Doola went back to boiling water.
The coast of Alba resolutely refused to appear.
On and on we ran north, and I lost my ability to tell time. Time passed. Eventually, the sun set again. Towards last light, I thought I saw sails in the south, but I had sparkles in my eyes and I had already spoken twice to Heracles by that time. I don’t think these were true visions, but merely phantasms of my waterless brain.
And then came the night.
Had I been in my right mind, I would have been afraid of running on a rock-bound coast, but perhaps I no longer believed in the coast of Alba. Yet I could think of nothing but water, and if I slept, it was fitful, and if I woke, I was not fully in the world. I think that at some point in the night a sea monster, or just a whale, broached near us and vented, and I was not even scared, but merely curious with the lethargy of the dying.
I could go on, but I shan’t. Eventually, the sun rose.
And revealed the coast of Alba. Rock girt and grey, even on a bright day, Alba rose from the sea like my monster, and my heart with it.
I don’t remember saying anything to anyone, but in moments, the deck was astir and everyone was awake. Behon staggered aft and stood with me, and muttered — whispered — things. Sittonax came aft after him.
‘He says you’ll make a fine landfall,’ Sittonax whispered.
Behon pointed a little east of north. ‘The island of Vecti, he says. Foreign ships come there.’
I put the bow at Vecti and we ran on.
By the time the sun was clear of the eastern horizon, the island was obvious, set away from the coast, and I could make out the eastern headland.
‘I assume the beach is on the landward side?’ I asked.
Behon shrugged. ‘Never been there,’ he said, through Sittonax.
And then the last hour. Two men were dead — slumped at their benches, gone in their sleep. We put them over the side, and the deck crew went to their stations as if they, too, were dead.
I was going to have to turn west into the channel between Vecti and the mainland of Alba, and then land stern-first on what I hoped was a beach. I would need the rowers to row.
We made the turn, and the mainsail came down in a rush and tangled the rowers, and for minutes we rose and fell on the swell, unmoving, crippled by our own fatigue and our timing. And then, as slowly as a snail on a log, we got the sail clear and the rowers began to row, like small boys trying to row for the first time in a fishing boat.
Pitiful.
An hour passed.
Another.
Now I could see the beach, and there seemed to be people gathered there.
Slowly, like raw beginners, we turned the ship, got the bow to the channel and backed her onto the beach, catching crabs with every stroke.
If the people on the beach hadn’t rushed to our aid, we might have lost the trireme at the every last. The port-side oars failed — men simply stopped rowing. Perhaps they thought we were home and safe. And the tide and waves caught us and threatened to throw the hull up the beach and break us.
But Albans waded out, grabbed our ropes and got our stern aground. Behon called out to them, and Tempo, and they waved.
And water came aboard, in skin, in light wooden buckets and big bronze beakers and shallow bowls — every man, woman and child on the beach suddenly had water, and I had the discipline to watch as men drank, and then I couldn’t stop myself. A light-eyed man gave me a tin pail, and I drank and drank. And paused, and drank again.
And drank and drank.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about thirst is how very quickly you recover. All that is required is water. In moments, your head is clear; the lassitude falls away.
If you have been without water too long, there may be cramps.
I had cramps.
I slumped to the deck and looked at the tin bucket, and what I realized after a few breaths was that I was looking at a bucket, a household bucket, perhaps for feeding cows, and that it was made entirely of tin.
