People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze)

CHAPTER ONE

MUKENAI

As the first hint of dawn lightened the sky over the eastern hills, the man awoke.  He could not yet see the rim of the sun, but the pale pinks and yellows foreshadowing the orb's coming formed a bright triangle before his eyes, as the light came through the half-open flap of his tent.  A light wind breathed through the dark interior of the tent, a welcome coolness on the man's sweating, fevered skin.

He pushed off his sheepskin coverings, grimy fleeces that were infested with lice and fleas.  Groaning, he rolled to his left side and pushed himself up, keeping his right arm close to his side.  He rose only to a reclining position and stopped, leaning heavily on his left arm, panting from the effort.  It was some time before his head cleared and he could drag himself to a sitting position.  Dark, curly hair fell over his face in a tangled mass as he sat with his head drooping.  A few long locks remained in the back, hanging just past his shoulders.  The rest was of various lengths, unevenly cut, the various locks sticking out at all angles.  On his chin was the light beard of a young man, not quite twenty.  But the harsh angles of his face made him appear older.  He was dirty, the sweat washing light rivulets from his forehead and down the sides of his face.  He rubbed his right shoulder with a hand blackened with grime, and inspected the dark scab of a recent wound, just below the joint.  Gingerly he moved the arm up and down, wincing as he worked out the morning stiffness.

He ran his hands lightly over other such half-healed marks.  Scars, scabs, and recent cuts crisscrossed his well-muscled arms and chest and his whole body ached.  The triangle of sky visible from where he sat grew lighter.  From outside came the sounds of men's voices and of movement.  The young man's head began to clear.  He pushed the dirty sheepskins from his legs that were as sun-browned and strong as his arms, though less marked.  A linen wrapping, stained with blood and pus, encased his left foot.  He moved the injured limb slowly, with great care.  With heavy groans, he stood, keeping his weight on the uninjured leg.  For a moment, he fought the dizziness that buzzed in his ears and he swayed, touching the toe of his wounded foot to the ground to keep his balance.  When his vision cleared of dancing lights, he glanced down at his only clothing.  The linen kilt lay rumpled on the earthen floor, its original blue and yellow stripes faded, and stained with dried blood, dirt, and soot.  He bent down to get the garment, carefully keeping his injured foot off the ground, and nearly fell.  He caught hold of the roughly hewn pole holding up the center of his tent.  The rough linen structure shuddered and the wind whistled through the open flap.  He shivered.

"T'érsite!" the young man called out, his voice hoarse and low-pitched.  He coughed several times and rested his aching head on the tent pole.  With the hem of his kilt, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.  "T'érsite, you worthless sack of wine, where are you?"

An older man bustled into the tent, throwing wide the opening flaps.  He moved with such energy that the threadbare linen tore.  He crowed, "Ai, Diwoméde, I thought you were going to sleep all day!"  This man was shorter than the other, and stockier.  But his skin was as tanned, his hair and heavy beard as dark and disheveled.  All his limbs, his ribs and his back, were traced with white scars and more recent scratches, scrapes, and cuts.  He wore a kilt as dirty as the young man's, its hem raveled into an uneven fringe above scraped knees.  The garment was held at his waist by a knotted cord which he constantly readjusted as he looked the young man up and down.   He grinned at what he saw, revealing a gap where two front teeth had once been.

Diwoméde forced himself to stand straight, releasing the tent pole.  He stared at the other man as he wrapped his kilt around his waist.  "When did you lose your teeth?"

T'érsite looked around and squatted, searching under the sheepskins.  He rose with a strip of leather in one hand, the other at the small of his back.  "Owái," he moaned dramatically, ignoring the question, "I am stiff today."  He handed the strap to Diwoméde.

As the younger man tied the belt around his middle, he asked, "Did a Tróyan woman kick your teeth in, last night?"  He put an arm over the older man's shoulder.

T'érsite grinned still more widely, supporting Diwoméde with an arm around the younger man's waist.  "No, but you are not far wrong.  It was a Tróyan donkey."

Diwoméde laughed, but the laugh quickly turned to a grunt of pain as he stepped forward.  With T'érsite's help, he limped from the tent and into the open air.  The brisk wind hit his bare skin and he swayed.  The two stood in place a moment.  "Get me a walking stick," Diwoméde ordered, releasing his hold on the older man.

As T'érsite left him, Diwoméde looked around.  Before his tent, a circle of stones surrounded a burnt pile of logs.  Near the cooling embers, men lay sleeping.  A few had warm sheepskins above or beneath them.  Some were only wrapped in moth-eaten cloaks.  Others made do with nothing but round shields of stiff ox-hide.  Further away lay other men, snoring about other dying fires, before a large cluster of tents, some of linen, some of leather, all as dilapidated as Diwoméde's.  Spears, their butt ends planted in the ground, stood here and there in small groves of ash wood with bronze points.  Scattered among the men and tents were heaps of other weapons, as well.  There were battered and bent swords of the yellow metal, shattered spear shafts with their leaf-shaped points, and innumerable arrows with their smaller bronze heads.  Flies buzzed everywhere, alighting on the darkly stained weapons and on the men, making them twitch in their sleep.

Beyond the camp, a row of long, low sailing vessels rested close to the nearby shore.  The ships' hulls rose high at prow and stern, black with the pitch that made them watertight.  No masts or sails were visible above the rowing benches, no oars projecting from the oar-locks along the sides.  Smaller boats lay on the seashore, their hulls turned upward, vessels that would carry the men to the longboats anchored in the harbor.

As Diwoméde stood surveying the quiet scene, T'érsite found a spear shaft, broken at shoulder height, and brought it to the younger man.  With this staff in his uninjured hand and T'érsite's support on the other side, Diwoméde made his way through camp and past the row of ships to the beach.  His progress was slow and he groaned at each step, waking sleepers with every move.  Some of the men rose slowly, achingly, feeling of bruised and battered limbs.  Others woke with a start, reaching for their swords.  They glanced with wide eyes to either side before relaxing again.

The wind was chilly under a dark gray sky, the clouds low and threatening.  "Not a good day for sailing," T'érsite remarked quietly, all the mirth gone from his face.

Diwoméde agreed.  "Meneláwo will have to change his mind now.  He cannot set out under these conditions."

Nevertheless, several boats had been righted and now rested in the shallow waters of the nearby sea.  Their oars were fastened backward in the oarlocks, with leather straps and oak pins, handles used for pushing the little vessels out to sea.  Bare-skinned men were busily carrying goods from the land, loading down these waiting boats and ferrying their contents to the anchored longboats.  Beneath the rowing benches of the bigger ships, the workers put thistle and brush, to cushion the hull.  On this they placed jars and sacks, containers of wine and oil, grain and lentils, provisions for the journey.  With these went smaller jars, borne more gently on battered shoulders, handed from the water to the ships with reverent care.  When these containers were out of sight, the men knee-deep in the salt water made anxious gestures toward the ships' hulls.  They extended their hands, with their thumbs, forefingers, and small fingers pointed to the longboats, their ring and middle fingers pressed into their palms.

"Lord Díwo, do not turn your Evil Eye on us," they whispered, uneasily glancing west, toward the watery horizon.

Women climbed into the black vessels then, to squat beneath the rowing benches among the jars and sacks.  Their hair was unevenly shorn about their faces, like the men's, though still waist-length in back.  Their long skirts were as dirty and faded as the short kilts of the men.  Helped into the ships with the same gentle care accorded the storage jars, the women turned scratched faces toward the land they were leaving.  They struck their bare, scab-lined breasts and hurled curses back toward the shore.

"Lady Préswa curse them all!" shouted one woman.

"To 'Aidé with all Tróyans!" another cried out.  Each spat on the beach as she left it.

Diwoméde leaned heavily on his companion, watching the scene without pleasure.  "I almost wish I were going with them," he told T'érsite.  "I am tired of bloodshed.  The women's lamentations make my head ache."

T'érsite grunted his agreement.  "It would be good to sleep under a wooden roof and to eat until I am full."

Diwoméde sighed as the last of the women settled beneath the rowing benches, out of sight.  "At least we have avenged them.  The Tróyans have paid for killing our men and taking our women captive."

"Ai gar, that is true enough.  Now we have killed their men and taken their women and children for slaves."  T'érsite spoke without triumph.

The younger man looked at him with some surprise.  "To hear you talk, we are the same as the Tróyans!  But it was Ak'áiwiya that first suffered the depredations of their prince, Paqúr.  He is the one who did wrong.  Our actions are just."

T'érsite shrugged.  "So we say.  But the Tróyans raided Ak'áiwiya because of what an Ak'áyan prince did a generation ago.  Maybe when our children are grown, Assúwa will send an avenging army against us in return."

Diwoméde was shaken.  "Do you think so?  I assumed our victory put an end to the matter."

The older man laughed mirthlessly.  "That is the way children always think.  To the young, time is a straight line, a road that leads from here to there.  But time is really a circle, going around and around.  There was no beginning.  Wherever you begin a tale, there was always something before.  And there is no end.  Time continues forever.  I tell you, Tróya will seek revenge, if not in our lifetime, then in our sons'."

Both men found themselves looking in the direction of the women's curses, as T'érsite spoke.  A gently rolling plain stretched before them to the north, its fields barren of vegetation.  Only a few brown shrubs rose in protected places from the hard, cracked earth.  More numerous than the plants were the shattered hubs of chariot wheels, some still attached to bits of their broken carts.  The shafts of numberless arrows were strewn over that plain, among broken spear shafts, and scraps of leather from shields and chest protectors.  A few still bodies lay here and there as well, stripped naked, painted with black blood.  A few well-fed dogs sniffed at the corpses, causing dark-winged birds to take flight and leave their meal of eyes and flesh.

In the distance a steep hill rose, capped by a fortress that dominated the plain.  The walls were of massive limestone blocks below, splashed with dark stains.  Baked bricks of a yellow hue rose above the stone.  The heights were unmanned.  A scatter of masonry littered the citadel's perimeter, here and there, but no archers stood watch, even where large quantities of brick were gone.  Nor did any helmeted heads appear in the narrow windows of the towers that dominated the five gates.  Above it all was a pillar of black smoke, rising over the crimson-dyed stone and the heaped brick rubble alike, as the buildings within the citadel burned.

A second encampment of ragged tents and rudely built huts lay close to the massive walls.  Unlike the quiet camp by the sea, the smaller one near the city was bustling with activity.  A steady stream of bearded men in short tunics came and went through the western gateway, a narrow, crooked entrance without a door.  Into the city the men went with hurried steps, bearing out armfuls of smoke-blackened objects, pottery of all sizes, bits of metal.  And they carried out stiff, blackened bodies, heaping them well away from the city walls.

Women in long robes toiled on that plain at the same time.  They collected wood from the field, bearing shattered wheels and headless spear shafts to add to the pile of corpses.  As they came upon dead men on the ground, they chased away carrion birds and dogs and dragged the bodies to the heap.  As each new body was added, the women raised a brief and weary lament.  They raked their fingernails over already scratched cheeks and took turns shearing locks of hair to lay on the growing pile.  Before the fiery wheel of the sun's chariot had risen above the eastern hills, the stack of bodies and wood had become a pyre, lit with burning timbers from the city.

By that time, the last vessels in the shallow water were ready to leave, the men in their places on the rowing benches, turning their oars around to drop the paddles in the water.  As they fastened their oars once more in the oarlocks, Diwoméde called out to another man, standing apart from the rest, leaning on a blackened spear.  The lone warrior had directed the workers from before dawn without allowing them to rest.  He limped heavily into the water, toward the largest of the ships.  "Meneláwo," called the young man on the beach, brow furrowed. "Wánaks, there is still time to reconsider."