On deck, the brisk wind and hint of rain warned of an impending storm. Trapped among the other ships as they were, the storm would toss them about and crack the hull like a walnut shell. He went below, to the slave hold, and peered at the miserable wretches. They whined and begged until he would just as soon have opened the scuttle cocks and let them swim away. Perhaps freedom would remind them what it was to be a man.
“I will free you. And you will work,” he said. “Work harder than you ever have. We sail for Athens.”
“Free us!”
“I have no need of slaves. I need a crew. Have any of you worked rigging before?” He saw a hand tentatively raised. “You are my first officer. The rest of you will listen and learn from him. His word is as mine. Go against either of us and I will feed your entrails to the sharks. Obey and you will be free once we reach Piraeus.”
There was some muttering among the caged slaves, but the one he had designated as his first officer rose to the challenge and spoke for the rest. “We will be free?”
“On my life, you will,” Kratos promised.
“Then let us out. The way this ship is wallowing about, a storm is rising.”
“What’s your name, First Officer?”
“Coeus.”
“Get them on deck and at their stations, Coeus. You were right about a storm brewing.”
With cuffs and kicks to the hind side, Kratos helped along the slaves who were strangely reluctant to leave their cage. When the last had made his way to the deck, the wind whipped along fiercely and sent tiny bullets of raindrops hammering into them.
“To the rigging. Get the sails lowered. There’s no other way out of this damnable watery graveyard,” Kratos bellowed. “We must run ahead of the storm or we are lost.”
He saw that Coeus knew the rudiments of unfurling the sails and lashing them securely for running, but trying to teach each of the crew aloft was impossible in the wind. One screamed and tumbled from the cross spar. Kratos watched the man vanish beneath the waves. He never surfaced.
Kratos felt the ship lurch, as a horse reluctant to race might give a false start. Coeus did what he could. Kratos had to find a steersman to tend the flopping rudder. He grabbed a slave by the arm and dragged him along up to the poop deck and the tiller.
“Take this. Move it left or right as I command.” The slave did as he was told, clinging to the beam as if his life depended on it. Which it did.
Once the man wrapped his arms around the tiller and began experimenting with the yield and resistance, Kratos went forward again. He stopped beside Athena’s statue. It remained dead, inert, unmoving, and unseeing.
“We are on our way,” he said softly into the teeth of the wind. Then he strained to lift the sea anchor that fixed them in place. His back ached with the strain, and veins stood out like cords of rope on his arms as he drew the heavy anchor up bit by bit. Once the huge iron hook had cleared the sea, the ship surged, free and floating.
“To the left, hard to the left!” His bellowed command was swallowed by the rising wind, but the novice steersman saw him gesturing and leaned into the tiller. Experiencing more resistance than he’d expected, the steersman redoubled his effort. And again.
Kratos let out a howl when the ship hove to and filled its sails with the heavy wind. Timbers creaked and the ship’s keel reverberated as it struck underwater debris. Once, a huge wave rose before Kratos and broke over his head. He lost his balance and was washed along the deck until a strong hand grabbed him. He looked up to see Coeus grinning like a fool.
“Watch yer step, Cap’n,” the first mate said. Then he shouted to those in the rigging above to lash down the sails more firmly.
Kratos got to his feet, thanking Athena for sending him one tried-and-true seaman to assist him. A huge gust of wind seemed to lift the ship from the water and sent it skimming the surface at the speed of thought. The prow touched every lifting wave and skipped forward, hardly descending into the deep troughs of the waves.
“Ware the sails,” Kratos yelled. His words were gobbled by the hungry wind. The corners of the canvas sails began to shred from the constant whipping. “Lash them down!”
“We need more men aloft,” Coeus shouted almost in his ear. “We’re lost if we don’t furl the sails. The wind’s too high.”
“Leave the sails as they be,” Kratos shouted back. The ship crashed into one piece of wreckage after another in the Grave of Ships.
“The mast will break. The storm will destroy us!”
“Full sail and ahead,” Kratos ordered. Coeus began to argue, but Kratos cut him off. The steersman valiantly clung to the tiller, but it kicked back too strongly for one man to restrain. Kratos pushed past Coeus and rushed to aid the steersman. As he crossed the quarterdeck, he grabbed a slave and dragged him along.
“No, don’t, let me be. We’re going to die. We cannot survive the storm. Poseidon will see us all in his watery graveyard!”
“Help the steersman keep the rudder straight ahead.”
“We’re going to die!” The slave fell to his knees. “By the gods, save us. I beseech you, gods of Olympus. Save us!”
“Help or get out of the way!” Kratos batted the man aside. The slave’s arms rose above his head, then the gusty wind captured his body and, like a gull, he became airborne. Kratos took no notice. The man had had his chance.
“You going to heave me overboard, Cap’n? Don’t think I got the strength left to fight the tiller.” The steersman sagged under the strain of holding the ship on a steady course in the fierce gale.
“Only if you fail.”
The tiller bucked like a thing alive, lifting the man off his feet. He clung fiercely to it, struggling for purchase. Kratos lent his strength to the task. The pair of them forced the rudder straight. Timbers creaked, and for a time Kratos thought the ship would tear itself apart.
When Zeus began sending his bolts dancing across the sky, Kratos saw gauzy lights of many colors sizzling on the spars, working up and down the mast and across the canvas, and he knew he had been given a reprieve. Athena protected him and the ship against the worst of the weather. The small globes of burning fire that did not sear were her message to him.
After what seemed to stretch to an eternity, the ship cleared the last of the hulks in the Grave of Ships and skated across open sea.
The wind remained steady, but the rain died away. Arms aching, back feeling as if it had been broken, Kratos sank to the deck.
“The sun, Captain Kratos, the sun’s shining!”
“Praise Apollo,” Kratos said. “Praise Athena.” He felt that at least three of the gods dwelling on Mount Olympus favored him now. Poseidon had thanked him and given him special powers-and had not claimed the ship and crew for his own watery realm. For the first time since boarding this ship, Kratos knew that he would once more step onto solid land. When he did so next, it would be in service to the goddess Athena.
“Steady course,” Kratos ordered.
“Even if I have to lash myself to the rudder, a straight course it’ll be, Capt’n,” the steersman declared. “I have a yearning for the countryside once more. The sooner we put into harbor, the sooner I can roll in the tall grass.”
Kratos left the man and once more descended to Lora and Zora’s cabin. He went into the cabin and closed the door behind him.
“Master,” they both cried.
He was tired to the point of exhaustion, but he could only gape at the pair.
“You disobeyed me,” he said. “You did not find suitable clothing.” Both wore only tunics and no skirts or pants.
“We must make amends then, master,” they said. “Will you punish us? Please?”
Though he did not find much rest in the bed he shared with the twins, the journey to the Harbor of Zea proved pleasant; their tender ministrations helped keep his nightmares at bay. But a full day before the great city topped the horizon, a vast column of black and swirling smoke warned him of the danger ahead.