She came back down the boat to see. ‘I can’t read your script. But yes, I see the differences. And this faded writing must be the oldest.’
‘It’s a kind of description of the coast. Of landmarks, dangers like shoals and shallows — and dangers of a human kind. You see, there are little sketches to help you understand. Good ports, safe places to beach, the prevailing winds. Look at this.’ He ravelled the scroll back. ‘Here is an old description of how it was to come upon Troy, before the Greeks burned the place. A sketch that shows how it might have looked from the sea.’
She studied the picture solemnly. ‘You have crossed it through.’
‘I hadn’t the heart to erase it.’
‘This little scroll is shared wisdom. You treasure it, don’t you? A sailor would have to be desperate indeed to sell such a thing. How would you feel if you had to part with it?’
‘I hope I never have to.’
Her gaze was steady. ‘You hope to have a son, don’t you? A family. You don’t want to be doing this all your life, fighting all day, whoring and drinking all night… You want a legacy. A son to have your periplus, when you’re done with the sea.’
Praxo, at his oar, was staring at the two of them.
Qirum felt unaccountably embarrassed. ‘That’s all for the future.’
‘You aren’t wrong to dream,’ she said, her voice like a rustle of linen. ‘I saw that in you when I met you.’
Praxo guffawed. ‘And did you see his father the rapist?’
Qirum threw a water jug at him. He ducked, it hit the man behind him, and Praxo laughed.
By mid-morning they had picked up a breeze blowing offshore. Under Praxo’s brisk instructions the men shipped their oars, fixed the mast to its socket, and unfolded the leather sail. Soon the sail billowed out, and they were driven east with a creak of wood and leather. This was another new experience for Kilushepa. As the rowers stretched and took food and water, she sat in the prow, letting the wind ruffle hair that was growing back after its brutal shaving by the Hatti soldiers.
Praxo came to sit beside Qirum in the stern. They shared a leather flask of wine mixed with water. ‘This is a stupid plan,’ Praxo said. ‘To meet up with Hatti traders and officials in Northland?’
‘She sent letters to arrange it.’
‘But the Hatti threw the woman out, remember! Why will they accept her now?’
Qirum shrugged. ‘She says it will work.’ Hattusa itself was a big place, Kilushepa had said, and the reach of the Hatti kings stretched much further. Traders out on the edge of the world might not even know Kilushepa’s name, let alone know of the intrigues in court that had deposed her. If she simply claimed to be back in power, even if they suspected her, how could they prove her wrong?
‘Get rid of her,’ Praxo said bluntly. ‘I mean it. She’s trouble. She’s getting into your head.’
‘We wouldn’t even be making this voyage if not for her,’ Qirum said. ‘At least she has a plan. Face it — before we met her we were sailing in circles, going nowhere, you and I. She’s given me a direction, Praxo.’
‘She’s given you a hard-on, that’s all. Well, that’s my advice, and you can take it or ignore it, I’m past caring. Now I’m going to get some sleep before the wind dies.’ He handed Qirum the wine flask and slumped down with arms folded over his belly, his old felt cap pulled down over his eyes.
If Kilushepa had heard any of this conversation, she showed no sign of it.
13
In another boat, crossing another ocean, it was Caxa who was the first to glimpse Kirike’s Land.
‘Smoke!’ she cried.
Tibo, buried in a heap of furs, thought he was dreaming. ‘Hmm? What?’
The Jaguar girl nudged his ribs.
They were side by side in the stern of the boat, like two fat seals in their layers of furs, under a sky that was deep blue but streaked with pink cloud to the east, the sign of the coming dawn. There was the usual morning stink of greasy human flesh, farts, fish guts, and the stale brine of the bilge water. Around them the men were waking, more bundles of fur from which peered human faces, thick with beards and smeared with fat to keep out the night cold. On Caxa’s other side the priest Xivu lay curled up, still asleep. Caxa was the only female in the boat, and these men had been away from home for a long time; Deri had made sure that whenever they slept the girl was walled in by Xivu on one side, Tibo on the other.
Tibo was falling asleep again. She nudged him. ‘Smoke. Smoke!’
He struggled to sit up. ‘No. Not smoke.’ In the course of the long voyage he had been trying to teach her the rudiments of the Etxelur tongue. She was a slow learner, or an incurious one. ‘We didn’t light the boat’s fire last night, remember? It was raining.’ Another night of salted fish, wet furs and cold. ‘There can’t be any smoke. Do you mean “clouds”?’
‘Not clouds.’ This time the nudge was hard enough to hurt, despite the thickness of the furs. ‘Know clouds, know smoke. Smoke!’ She thrust out an arm and pointed beyond the boat’s prow.
He peered to see in the dim light. And he made out a black column that rose up from the north-east horizon, billowing, spreading into a layer at the top, flat and tenuous. He thought he saw a flicker of light in the column — like lightning, like a storm.
The men saw it; they stirred and muttered. Deri was already awake, sitting up, one hand loosely holding a rope rowlock. He was watching the smoke too.
‘What is it, father?’
‘Home. That’s Kirike’s Land. We’re due to come on it today, tomorrow at latest.’
‘And what’s that smoke? Fires?’
‘Not that. A different kind of smoke. I saw it once before, years ago — before you were born. It might mean nothing. And, see the way it’s climbing straight up? Not a breath of wind. No point unfurling the sail this morning. Come on, lads, time to get moving, this boat won’t row itself.’
The men, seven of them plus Tibo and Deri, stirred, grumbling. The boat rocked gently as one after another knelt up to piss over the side, or to bare his arse and dump his soil. Deri got to work dragging up the sea anchor.
And a noise like thunder came rumbling over the sea, from the north-east, from the direction of Kirike’s Land.
‘Told you,’ Caxa said, her thin face almost ghostly in the dawn light.
They came upon Kirike’s Land after noon, approaching from the south. Snow-capped mountains and glaciers, bone-white, showed first above the horizon, and then the green of the lower lands, the meadows and birch woods. The men grew animated at the sight of home, and they pointed out landmarks to each other, massifs, cliffs and headlands.
The southern coast was long and with few harbours, and as soon as Deri got his bearings he directed the crew to row west, towards the big bay called the Ice Giant’s Cupped Palm. There was a touch of breeze now, blessedly coming from the east, and the men gratefully hoisted their leather sail and let the little mother of the sky guide them home through these last stages. They passed through the usual fleet of fishing boats, and were greeted with hails and waves and obscene cries. One fast little boat raced ahead of them to the Cupped Palm, so a welcome would be made ready for them. Caxa stared out curiously as the island’s shore slid past — gaunt, rocky, yet with birch forest lapping down almost to the sea in some places, and the flanks of mountains beyond striped with ice. It was late spring. The winter always lay heavily on this land.
And that smoke pillar towered over the island. When the wind shifted it brought a smell of ash and sulphur. Deri said it seemed to be coming from a mountain called the Hood, in the south of the island.
Xivu was uneasy. ‘We have such mountains at home,’ he said in his stilted Northlander.
‘Here, the land often stirs,’ Deri said evenly. ‘We believe the little mother of the earth comes to this island to sleep beneath the ground when she flushes with heat, as many old women do. There is rarely any harm in it.’