The Blood Star Read online

  As we traveled farther south we began to enter the territories of other tribes. Everyone recognized the war boat of the Lord Sesku, and many seemed to know Kelshahir by sight, so everywhere we chose to stop we were received with the greatest shows of hospitality. In populated areas we would pass two or three little villages every day, and always the same dialogue would take place:

  “Peace be with you, Lord Kelshahir,” someone would shout from the shore. “Come and feed with us.”

  “Thank you. We have fed already, may the gods be praised.”

  “Then may the gods protect you on your journey, My Lord.”

  If it was near dark we would stop to dine and spend the night in the local chief’s mudhif. Kephalos and the oarsmen would be given their food and then largely ignored. Kelshahir would be received with cringing respect, and then he and the village elders would hold a long parley—these being, I suspect, the real reason he had been sent along with us, although I never had any inkling what these conferences were about.

  At last we began to leave the marshes behind. The main canal grew steadily wider and acquired a noticeable current, which meant that we had once more found the Euphrates. Kelshahir took the empty skins from the bottom of the boat and filled them with water—a useful precaution, as I saw soon enough. One morning, after we had been underway about three hours, he touched me on the shoulder and grinned.

  “Taste,” he said, dipping his fingers into the river.

  I leaned over and scooped up a handful of the water—sure enough, it was brackish.

  “Before this day is finished, we will reach the Bitter River.”

  It was true. That night we built our campfire on its hard, muddy shores, and for the first time in my life I heard the crashing of waves against the land’s edge. The paddlers lifted our boat up onto their shoulders and carried it perhaps a hundred paces, to the shadow of a reed-covered bluff, before setting it down. When I asked Kelshahir the reason, he smiled, as if I had made a joke, and pointed back toward the water.

  “It will rise,” he said.

  “Why should it rise? The season of flooding is past.”

  “It rises every morning, and every night—of its own. Its god is mighty, caring nothing for the rivers and swallowing their floods as if they held no more than an old man’s bladder. It cares nothing for seasons. You will see.”

  I did. By the time our fire had died down to embers the water was less than twenty paces away.

  “Will it not come up the rest of the way and drown us?” I asked.

  “No. It only reaches all the way to the bluffs in the spring, before the floods come. Now it stops and goes back, leaving the upper shore dry. I think the hot weather makes it lazy.”

  Thus I first learned of tides, which the Greeks say are caused not by a god but by the pull of the moon. Yet I was taught that the moon is the face of the Divine Sin, patron of Ur, whom the Babylonians call Nannar—different races use different names, yet the moon is still a god for all that—so I think it comes to no more than which god one chooses to invoke. Thus Kelshahir’s explanation seems to me no less probable than that of which the Greeks are so vain.

  The next day and the next we traveled east, following the coast but staying well offshore where the swells did not make paddling so difficult. On the morning of the third day we turned our boat away from the land and straight out into the Bitter River. I thought perhaps Kelshahir had gone mad, but shortly before noon we sighted a distant haze of land.

  “Is that the farther shore?” I asked.

  “No. That is merely an island, called Afesh. There is no farther shore.”

  This announcement filled me with dread, confirming as it did what I had already begun to suspect: that the Bitter River, which seemed to have no detectable current, was not a river at all but some sort of vast sea stretching possibly to the limits of the world.

  Thus it was with some relief that I saw, as we came closer, that there were many fine ships, the smallest of them larger even than the great war galleys of the Urartians, anchored along the shore.

  “This is a trading post,” Kelshahir volunteered, even as I was about to phrase the question. “It is convenient to the river traffic through Elam, so the Arabs maintain it as a permanent settlement and as a stop-off along the routes to the Eastern Lands.”

  “Will these Arabs give us passage to Egypt?”

  “An Arab will do anything if you pay him enough.”

  I caught Kephalos’ eye and he looked pleased, for greed was a language he understood. In his medicine box and on his person he carried some eight talents of gold, enough to keep us like rich men for the rest of our lives—enough to get us to Egypt certainly, even if we had to buy the ship that carried us.

  “What tongue do these men speak?”

  Kelshahir shrugged his shoulders, suggesting that he held no very high opinion of this race of merchants.

  “The same,” he said. “If a water ox could speak Chaldean, he would pass for an Arab.”

  He was able to laugh very hard at his own joke. He translated it for the benefit of the oarsmen, and they laughed too.

  We landed shortly before the setting sun spilled a trail of blood into the blue salt water, tying up along a pier anchored in the mud with massive wood pilings—an uncommon enough sight in that treeless part of the world. We climbed up the heavy plank stairway to the dock and in a few steps passed from the solitude of the empty sea to the busy world of men, for this was a port as crowded with life as any I have seen in a lifetime of travels.

  “I will arrange your passage at once,” Kelshahir said, looking around him with some uneasiness. “I will not stay but must return to the mainland tonight. My men are afraid to leave the boat for fear someone will steal it.”

  Before I had a chance to answer, he had disappeared into the shouldering mob. There was nothing to do except to wait, and to look about us in wonder.

  For a man could well fill his eyes with all that was to be seen on that dockside at Afesh. I might have imagined myself to have blundered into a congregation of princes, since never in my life, not even in Nineveh, had I witnessed such evidence of wealth among common people, nor so great a variety of costumes and races. Surely these had been gathered here from corners of the world of which my fathers had never even dreamed.

  I saw men with faces the complexion of bronze or dark wood or freshly hammered iron, some wearing nothing but a loincloth and some dressed in long robes of a material that glittered in the light like colored fire. One wore a great green stone in a hole cut in the lobe of his ear, and the nostrils of many were pierced with silver and gold pins. I saw but few with the full plaited beard in fashion among the men who dwell between the rivers, and these, from their dress, were clearly Elamites.

  And such a confusion of tongues! By this time I had learned some two or three hundred words of Chaldean, and I recognized its cadence and forms well enough, but along with this there was such a clattering of speech of which not a single syllable that came into my ear was familiar, and among so many voices hardly any two seemed to speak as to be understood by the other.

  Yet business was being done here, that was obvious. All along the docks there were booths selling cloth, weapons, precious stones and jewelry of copper, gold and silver, fruits and vegetables, most of which I had never seen before, wines, cooked meats, live chickens and even eels pulled out of a water jug with a hook, carved wood and ivory, mirrors, combs for women’s hair, sandals, powders of red, yellow, white and green, some so precious they were purchased in little folded scraps of leather. I saw scribes busy writing on clay tablets and Egyptian papyrus. Old women were reading fortunes in the palms of young ones. Barbers and surgeons were plying their trades in the shade of stall awnings. Within a few hundred paces of where we stood, there seemed nothing that was not for sale.

  “Dread Lord, do you smell it?” Kephalos put his hand on my arm and shook it as if to wake me from a trance. “Can it be food, or is it incense from a temple? By the gods, I a
m starving! I think my belly has shriveled down to nothing since we have been among these savages. As soon as they can be prevailed upon to leave, I will drink a bucket of wine to toast their departure.”

  “Then you will not have long to wait. Kelshahir tarries only to arrange a ship for us. He says he is afraid to leave his boat overnight for fear it may be stolen.”

  “Nonsense. He is merely ashamed. Look about us. Who among all this multitude would condescend to steal a reed boat? He may be the king’s successor among the Chaldeans, but here he is no more than a ragged beggar. He wishes to creep back to his marshes where he can still believe himself a mighty man.”

  Yet Kelshahir did return to us quickly enough to suggest a certain anxiety to be gone. He brought with him a short, plump little man dressed in a green-and-white linen tunic that would not have embarrassed my friend the worthy physician in the days of his splendor but whose hand, when he offered it to me, was as hard and callused as a carpenter’s.

  “This is Ishmahel, the master of the Jinnah,” he said, pointing back toward a great, black-sided ship about halfway down the docks—Ishmahel, hearing his name pronounced, smiled and made several quick bows, addressing himself to me in a few muttered words of which I understood not one. “He has promised to carry you as far as the great cities of the south, from which it is possible to travel wherever your will takes you. This he undertakes to accomplish for a price of one hundred shekels of silver or five of gold, which I tell you now because, like all Arabs, he is a thief and will try to cheat you later. The ship sails with the dawn winds, so you had best be aboard before sunrise. Have I done well, My Lord Tiglath Ashur?”

  “You have done very well, my friend, and I thank you.”

  “Then I will say farewell to you now, for I would be gone before the darkness comes.”

  He touched his forehead in salute and walked away even before I had a chance to thank him once more. I do not know what became of him after that, for I never saw him again.

  And thus we were alone on the dock with only Ishmahel, master of the Jinnah, for company.

  “At dawn then, My Lord?” I asked, turning to him with what I hoped was a confident smile. “We leave at dawn?”

  He made another little speech, as incomprehensible as his last, and bowed a few more times, pointing frequently back towards his ship. This exchange of courtesies went on for several minutes.

  At last he left us, having apparently satisfied his sense of the proprieties and made sure of his hundred silver pieces, and, as the sun sank into the western sea, Kephalos and I were left with nothing to consult except our own inclinations.

  It is astonishing how well one can make oneself understood with only fifty words and enough coins in one’s purse to assure an audience for them. Within a quarter of an hour we had purchased new garments, more in keeping with our position as wealthy travelers than the rags in which we had arrived. The old woman who sold them to us, and who seemed to understand that the men of all nations ultimately wish to spend their riches on the same things, kindly directed us to a wineshop in the next street, indicating with a really astonishing vocabulary of gestures the delights we could expect to find there. She did not deceive us, for upon our arrival, and by the simple expedient of Kephalos’ holding up a pair of gold shekels for the proprietor’s scrutiny, we were shown into an upstairs chamber, provided with hot water for bathing, also with food, wine, and an ample choice of naked women to minister to our comforts—and these in such a variety of shapes, ages and colors as to appeal to almost every possible taste. To avoid any impression of either bravado or effeminate weakness, we settled on three.

  “Ahhhh,” sighed the worthy physician, lying on a clean mat after he had cheered himself with hot food and an excess of wine. “My Lord, never forget that drunkenness is the first blessing of civilization, for it murders shame and allows one to enjoy without embarrassment having one’s limbs scrubbed clean by pretty women. Look at this one, will you? She has hardly more fuzz on her cleft than you could find on a ripe peach. Do you suppose she could be a maid?”

  “I doubt it, not unless she found employment here this morning.”

  “Are you a maid?” he continued, addressing the girl now, quite as if he had not heard me. “It would be a great inconvenience if you were, My Delight. Perhaps we should just see. . .”

  The girl, a pretty little creature, slight as a boy, with laughing black eyes and skin the color of wood smoke, giggled as he slid his hand in between her thighs—doubtless she had had this highly diverting trick played on her before.

  “No, Lord, you were quite right. She is still tight, but most definitely not a maid. I think, unless of course you fancy her for yourself, I will entertain myself with this one, since a man must begin somewhere. She will make such a change after the Lady Hjadkir.”

  “I wish you every joy of her, since I see she prefers you mightily.”

  “Ah, the wise child. Come, my little dark flower.”

  Kephalos sat up and then, with his arm over the girl’s narrow shoulders, rose to his feet and staggered off behind a screen with her. Within a few moments I could hear laughter and then the moans of feigned passion and then, at last, the gentle sound of snoring. It seemed probable he would both begin and end with just this one.

  But there had been no Lady Hjadkir to make demands of my strength, and I had not spent my seed in many months. Of the two remaining women—and I decided there was nothing that forced me to a choice between them—one was pale-skinned with small, firm breasts and eyes like a cat, and the other, who had by this time brought me to a fine hardness by the gentle, dexterous employment of her tongue, was possessed of a belly as burnished and smooth as the outside of a copper cooking pot. I went into her first, requiring but two or three quick thrusts to achieve my climax. After a few minutes’ rest and a cup of wine I climbed between the other’s thighs and, if the flush that came into her face and throat were any indication, managed to please her as well as myself before going as limp as water.

  I do not think I had been asleep more than a few hours when Kephalos woke me by pulling on my foot. We were alone. He had paid off the women and sent them away. The only light was from an oil lamp resting on the floor.

  “How long until dawn, do you think?” I asked, simply to prove to myself that I had truly come awake. Kephalos shook his head.

  “Not long I think, Lord. I hear people moving about on the streets, which in a seaport town means that the ships are being made ready. Perhaps two hours, but no more.”

  “Two hours is an eternity. Time enough, at least, to get drunk again, if nothing more.”

  We laughed at this and—the god be blessed for his mercy—found after a short search that there was indeed one last jar of wine that had survived with its seal intact.

  “Do you think this one is a maid?” I asked, and we laughed once more as Kephalos broke through the clay stopper with the hilt of his knife. The first gray light of morning found us fuddled as owls, our arms over each other’s shoulders to keep from falling as we walked toward the docks, singing the Greek version of an obscene song about a harlot and her soldier lover I had first heard when a boy in the Nineveh barracks.

  The Jinnah was waiting for us, and with it the world beyond.

  . . . . .

  Even after the lapse of so many years, it gives me pleasure to recall that first sea journey aboard the Jinnah. Yet I will not dwell on what, at the time, seemed the supreme adventure, since all which gave it such novelty for me is so monotonously familiar to every Greek born within sight of the curling, wine-dark waves, that my grandchildren and their children after them will think their aged sire who wrote this chronicle of his life must have been a tedious old fool to have found excitement in memories of the smell of the salt wind and the sun’s dance upon the water. So I will let it all pass and content myself with stating that our voyage was without incident and carried us within a month and a half to the city of Cana in the kingdom of Hadramaut, one of several nations that div
ide among themselves the southern coast of the land called Arabia.

  From Cana we traveled with a spice caravan to Maudi in the kingdom of Saba. These caravans of Arabia have been wearing away the stones over the same tracks of desert for a thousand years. The paths they follow were laid down by necessity, for to the north is the Rub’ al Khali, the “Place of Emptiness,” a waste of sand and rock at once vast and unforgiving, where no man wanders long if he hopes to live. Even in time of war there is truce along the caravan routes, since all depend on them and no one can do battle at once against both man and the desert.

  The journey from Cana to Maudi was some hundred and twenty beru long and lasted for thirty-two days, the heat being such that men and camels rested from an hour before noon until three hours after, leaving only seven or eight good hours for the march. The Arabs would not travel at night for fear of demons, called—like Lord Ishmahel’s ship—jinnah. It did not seem an empty fear, for the land was such as evil spirits might love.

  Kephalos and I walked, as did the caravan drivers, who saved the camels for beasts of burden. At least, we walked for the first few days. Finally Kephalos, whose mode of life had not prepared him against such hardships, could go on no more, so when we met another caravan traveling in the opposite direction he purchased two of their camels and we attempted to ride these.

  It was an interesting experience. A camel’s hump, padded out with blankets, is not an uncomfortable place, but the animals walk in such a way that one is pitched about as if one were aboard a small boat in a storm. One can, I suppose, become accustomed to it, but I soon decided that I preferred to walk. Kephalos, whose knees would no longer support him and whose feet were raw with broken blisters, had not that option. He merely hung on as best he could, green in the face, so sick he was unable even to eat until we had stopped each night. Never have I seen a man so wretched. The caravan drivers could not be persuaded to halt for a few days, and in this they were probably wise—the desert makes little enough provision for human weakness—but the thought did sometimes cross my mind that Kephalos might find his simtu out there.