The Blood Star Page 16

  In Saba I was warned that if we traveled to Egypt, the wisest course was to go with a caravan up the spice trail north to the Hebrew city of Gaza, where we could take a ship to the mouth of the Nile and then south to Memphis. The water route up the Red Sea—so they called it—to the Egyptian city of Myos Hormos was hazardous because of storms and also the presence of pirates, renegade Arabs and Egyptians who honored no law but that of their own cruel purposes. I conveyed this advice to Kephalos, who received it without enthusiasm.

  “It is a fearful thing to risk drowning or murder,” he said, clutching a wine jar to his bosom as he sat on a corner of his bed—it was perhaps time for us to leave, for the alternating spells of privation and luxury imposed by our journey through the Arab lands seemed to be having a bad effect on him. “Yet these are merely risks. I feel morally certain that another such trek as we have experienced would mean my death, and no very pleasant one at that. Camels and I share a mortal antipathy for one another. I have only to be in their presence and I grow quite sick and doubtless they feel the same, for you will recall how last time that great gray brute tried to bite off my ear. If you wish to kill me, then by all means let us go by land, for you are my master and I obey you in all things; but consulting only my own pleasure, I would prefer to have my throat cut by a pirate, since it would at least be quicker.”

  . . . . .

  The ship on which we booked passage was called the Bootah, which means “duck,” and carried a cargo wrapped in bales of wool—I never knew what it was. She was a small craft, some thirty paces from end to end, and did not inspire confidence. This impression was increased as soon as we left port, when master and crew assembled on deck to sever a goat’s jugular vein with a sword, drain the blood into the water, and then throw both sword and goat overboard. Almost at once the sea on that side appeared to boil, and I could see quite clearly that a school of fishes, some of them as long as a man, were swarming over the carcass, tearing it to pieces as the red stain spread out in the water. Kephalos watched for only a moment and then retreated to his cabin.

  “Sharks,” the master told me, grinning as if my servant’s distress amused him. “They can smell blood—it puts them into a frenzy. See? That goat is nothing but fragments now, but they will churn about in the bloody water for another hour. Now that her children are fed, the sea will give us fair passage to Myos Hormos.”

  But she did not, and ours was an unlucky voyage. Two days out of port we were becalmed—the wind simply vanished; we could not even catch the land breezes to stir our sails. Our ship floated in the water like a basking turtle, and there was nothing for us to do except to lie about on her decks and watch the sun. This lasted for six days.

  And then, as suddenly as it had disappeared, the winds returned. We sailed up along the western coast, sometimes coming within sight of men with glistening black bodies in boats made from hollow logs, fishermen paddling through the surf, but for the most part our journey was past shorelines that looked as if their sands had never known the impress of a human foot.

  “Is that Egypt?” I asked.

  “No, that is not Egypt. That is nothing.” The sailor shook his head, as if the sight of the blank, dun-colored bluffs made him sad. “Egypt, though, is not much different—such of Egypt as can be looked at from the sea. Egypt is the Nile River, and a strip of green on either bank no wider than a man could walk across in two hours. The rest is desert, just like that.”

  “And the port of Myos Hormos?”

  “An oasis, of sorts. A few date palms, a well with fresh water, a scattering of mud buildings. Then the road through the desert to Keus on the Nile. I traveled it once when our ship foundered. The Nile is a sweet place. A man could stay by her banks all his life and die content.”

  So passed eight long, pleasant days, each followed by a night of sleeping under the winking stars, listening to the water as it lapped against the wooden hull.

  On the ninth, even while the morning air was still gray and full of sleep, the wind began to rise in a steady moan, as if lamenting the world’s old age.

  “A storm, the first of the season—and early by half a month!” The captain seemed delighted, although I think his excitement had its source in something else. “Have no fear, however. We will let it carry us, and the sea is wide here. It will blow itself out before it runs us aground.”

  They ran up their sails and the wind bore us east, away from the shores of Egypt—for we had reached Egypt by then—out into the empty sea. The sky never lightened, so that for two days we seemed trapped in perpetual night, and no man slept or rested while we bailed the deck and tried to keep the ship straight and running with the wind.

  I had no idea where we might be, for the sun was always hidden, and Kephalos, who alternately execrated his gods and begged them for mercy, did not care where he was but only where he could have been had we taken the spice trail like decent men who cared for their lives.

  “I am a coward and a weakling and have been all my life—this is your fault, Lord, for listening to my entreaties, and may it be a just punishment for you that we shall both drown like cats. One who was almost a king should have known better than to hearken to the snivelings of a bondsman.”

  But we did not drown. At last the storm blew itself out, just as the master had said it would, and we found ourselves once more becalmed within sight of land.

  When the sun set that night it set over the land, which was thus west of us. Yet the land was not Egypt, for the fierce wind had carried us east, away from Egypt, for two days and two nights.

  The master, when approached on the subject, expressed himself with surprising hostility, as one might who feels himself hedged about by enemies.

  “It is a wedge of rock,” he said, “jutting out into the sea, pushing itself between Egypt and Arabia. It is empty. It has no name. Not even the jinnah would consent to live there.”

  It was just such, as I would discover for myself.

  For the sea was not as empty as the land. The next morning we sighted a ship and I watched how all hands cursed heaven and prayed for wind, as if the storm were on them again, more terrible than before. Suddenly I understood everything.

  The ship was long and narrow, sleek as a fish, and painted black. It ran without a sail but was propelled by oarsmen, which over short distances gave it the advantages of speed and also maneuverability in these shallow, calm waters. I had seen such ships, called galleys, manned by the Urartians upon the Shaking Sea—they were warships, not merchantmen. This was a pirate craft.

  Glancing down at the water, I saw a black fin cut the surface like a knife through fine linen. Could they smell the blood already? I wondered.

  The master issued his crew with weapons, short swords, almost like daggers, and pikes with copper points to repel boarders, but I could see by the way they handled them that these were not men much practiced in the use of arms. He gave swords to Kephalos and me as well, but Kephalos instantly let his fall to the wooden deck, as if its touch had burned his hand.

  “I am no soldier,” he shouted, panic-stricken. “I have no skill with weapons. Does the fool think I will encourage them to cut my throat?”

  And he was right. We were but eight men—two passengers, the master, and a crew of five—and even at this distance I could count at least fifteen oars on either side of the pirate ship, dipping into the water and then rising up again, as regular as the pulse in a man’s veins. To resist was to invite death.

  “The poor wretches who man those benches are slaves,” the master stated in a calm voice as he reached over to pick up the sword Kephalos had let drop. “Men taken from plundered ships, chained to an oar and forced to pull it until their lungs begin to bleed and they are thrown to the sharks. Each must do as he thinks best, but I for one would prefer having my throat cut here and now to such a lingering death.”

  Yes. This too was no less than the truth. And the master was a brave man thus to stare it in the face.

  We had nothing to do except to
wait. The pirate ship came ever closer—in an hour, no more, it would be upon us. There was not a breath of wind, so nothing except the faint tidal currents moved us and these dragged us ever closer to shore, where we were sure to founder. The sun glared down upon us like the god’s burning eye, and we could only stand silently in its light and hope to die like men.

  The pirate ship had archers crouched in her prow, and these let fly at us with arrows dipped in burning pitch. Two sailors were killed in the first volley and the rigging caught fire. In the second, the captain was hit in the belly so that he screamed like a devil. I did not blame him, for I would have done the same. Three men dead and the sail blazing like a torch. It seemed enough—perhaps they were shorthanded on their rowing benches and looked to take us alive. They did not loose their arrows upon us again.

  We waited by the ship’s rail, my former slave and I, while the three sailors who were left scrambled to pull the sail down and get it over the side—it seemed to burn as quickly as if it had been woven of straw, and tattered fragments, winking like fireflies, drifted in the stale, still air. This would be our last chance for a word. It was time to say good-bye.

  “I am in debt to you for my life, Kephalos, more times than I can number, and there is nothing you can do for me. You are no fighter, and they will gut you in the first rush—or spare you for a time, a short time, to pull an oar. When I tell you to, jump. Swim for shore. I will hold them here while I can. If you reach the land, you may have a chance.”

  “The water is full of sharks, Lord! By the gods, have you not seen them? I feel their teeth in my flesh already! Kill me yourself if you must, but—“

  For the first time in all the years we had been together, I struck Kephalos. Hard, full in the face. He was so surprised he forgot even to be afraid.

  “Do not be such a coward as to open your arms to death, fool! If your belly is ripped open by a shark or by a sword, mine or another’s, it comes to the same thing. When I tell you, jump!”

  There were tears in his eyes. He looked so bewildered I knew not what he would do, but I owed him this one chance. Even if he did not choose to take it.

  I turned away from him, for the pirate ship was closing on us fast. I went to join the sailors and found them arguing among themselves over the wisdom of surrender. It seemed to be two against one in favor.

  “The worst life is better than the best death,” one of them said, even as he threw his sword in the water.

  Another, a narrow-shouldered man with pale eyes, said “yes, yes” several times. He seemed excited almost to the pitch of madness.

  “Perhaps they will let us join them, but in any case a slave always lives in hope of escape.”

  “Escape to where? To that?”

  This, followed by a gesture toward the shore, full of contempt and hopelessness—what had I done but to condemn Kephalos to a slow death by drought and hunger?

  “There is only the desert, the sea, the pirates—or death,” he went on. It was the sailor who had spoken of Egypt, where a man might die content. “I choose death. It comes to the same.”

  “Then choose death. Now!”

  The pale-eyed man stabbed him, pushing his point in under the rib cage. His victim cried out and clutched at the sword that pierced his belly, so that his hands were cut through to the bone when the pale-eyed man pulled it loose. Thus he died.

  Why? I wondered. Perhaps he did not even know himself. Men do strange and bitter things when fear seizes them.

  I too was afraid, and suddenly full of rage. The pale-eyed man turned to me—the gods alone will ever know what was in his heart—and I raised my arm and struck, so that my blade bit halfway through his neck and he fell at my feet, twitching wildly and spraying blood everywhere.

  Good. Let him die, I thought. I have done him a service.

  The other man, the last of the crew still alive, his sword at the bottom of the sea, fled from me with a cry.

  The pirate craft raised its oars, slowing so that when its prow struck us obliquely there was only a faint shudder. I seemed to be alone in the middle of the ship, holding a blood-stained sword in my hand. I could see the pirates standing along the rail, their arms folded across their chests, almost as if our ship were deserted and harmless, waiting for the grappling hooks to draw us together. A few of them watched me, and grinned.

  “Jump, Kephalos!” I shouted, not looking behind me. “Jump—Now!”

  The pirates were almost ready to board, so I turned my eyes and my swordpoint to them. Perhaps twenty men prepared to leap across from ship to ship. Behind me, I heard some object strike the deck with a heavy, muffled thump and then, surprisingly a loud splash.

  He had done it, after all. That was something at least. Now I could try to purchase him a few moments’ grace so that no one would impale him with a spear as he floundered clear of the ship.

  I glanced back and saw what had made that thump. Kephalos’ purse lay beside the rail. He had abandoned it, fearing perhaps that its weight would sink him. It gave me an idea.

  A few steps and I had it in my hand. Yes—it was heavy enough to carry a man to the bottom like a stone. There were pirates on the deck now and two or three of them thought to rush me, but I slid the point of my sword through the purse strings and swung it out over the side. These thieves understood well enough, and stopped.

  “There is enough gold in here to make ten men rich all the days of their lives,” I shouted in Arabic—who could know what tongue such as these would speak? “A step, a move, and it goes to the fishes. Stay back!”

  What could they do? I had only to let the sword slip from my fingers and the gold was lost in the sea. A pirate should, I thought, be a great respecter of gold. Let them consider the matter carefully.

  There was silence. I could hear splashing in the water behind me—Kephalos was making good his escape. A few minutes and he would be safe from these. The sharks might kill him, or the nameless desert that stretched back from the shore, but not these. I waited.

  “Your life, Lord—for the gold, we give you your life.”

  Did they think I was so foolish as that? I laughed at them—I was not even afraid. Strangely, a man on the point of death hardly ever is.

  The splashing faded. Good. I would keep my implied contract, even if they did not. They could have the gold, and I would show them how Tiglath Ashur, Son of Sennacherib, could die.

  I swung my arm around that they faced the point of my sword. With a twitch, I cut the strings and Kephalos’ purse fell to the deck. The pirates jumped back, as if I had attacked them.

  “Now—come,” I said, quietly, between my teeth. “See how many will make the journey to death with me.”

  The war cry broke from my lips of its own will. I charged the knot of men that stood closest to me, cutting at them as if they were a stand of wheat. One I caught on the arm, and the bright blood poured from his wound. The rest stumbled back, astonished—afraid.

  I laughed. The laughter boiled inside me at these women, who feared death. I laughed—I. . .

  Something happened. I felt a shock—no pain at first, just a shock, as if the earth beneath my feet had all at once shuddered with dread. Nothing more.

  And then the pain came, welling up behind my eyes. I felt suddenly as if I were made of iron. I sagged under the weight of my own body. The light failed—sunset, as the air turned red as blood.

  And then blackness. More than blackness—emptiness. I was falling through the empty black air. And then. . .

  Nothing.

  VIII

  “I still think we should kill him—now, while he is quiet. He is dangerous. He fights like an animal.”

  “You are only cross because he opened you up. Why waste such a man? With those shoulders he will do very well on the oar benches. He might last a year, this one.”

  It was not this, but the sound of screaming that brought me to myself.

  I cannot say precisely how long I was unconscious, but it could not have been more than a few min
utes. I awoke with my face against the deck, my head feeling as if it had been split open. Everything hurt. I did not want to move. My left eye remained resolutely shut, sealed up like the door of a crypt, and I felt little enough inclination to force it open. What would there have been to look at? There was a taste in my mouth as if some small furred creature had crawled inside to die.

  Gradually, as I lay there, as still as a corpse, I became aware that something warm and sticky was trickling over my ear. It was probably blood, I thought. Probably it had crusted over my eye and that was why I couldn’t open it.

  “Look at the mark on his palm!”

  Someone had hold of my right arm. He was pulling back my fingers as if displaying the claws of a dead lion. I wished he would leave me in peace.

  “Yes. That makes a difference.”

  And always, somewhere in the background, there were the screams. Who was screaming? And what were they talking about, these men? Yet it seemed too much trouble to find out. All I wanted was to lie there quietly and think about the pain in my head.

  And then I felt myself being pulled over onto my back. It hurt such that I thought I would be sick.

  “Throw some water in his face—get him on his feet.”

  The water was a blessing. It shocked me back to life, and as I rubbed my face I discovered that my left eye was now willing to open. There was a deep cut in the scalp over my ear and the salt made it burn, but even this had the effect to reducing the pain in my head to something like normal dimensions.

  Getting to my feet was another matter. My captors tried and I tried, but it was hopeless. My knees simply would not lock. Finally we all settled for my sitting up and supporting my head in my hands.

  A wave of nausea passed through me and I started to cough. At last I spat up a black clot of something, about the diameter of a copper shekel, after which I felt better.