Free Black Ships by Jo Graham Page B

maneuvering. Otherwise the drum is fine, if it’s just going forward in a straight line.”
    I remembered the differing songs, the way they wove in the orders for turns. “I see,” I said. “And how did you become captain?”
    Xandros shifted. “The same man can’t stay at the tiller all day. It’s too tiring. I learned the orders for maneuvers and when to use them, so I took a turn at the tiller so the captain could rest. He was killed.”
    “Getting out of the harbor,” I said, remembering my dream. “He was hit with a fire arrow.”
    “Yes. I took the tiller, and later Neas made me captain.” His voice dropped a little. “I can’t imagine what my father would say, that I’m the captain of a warship. The last resort, of course, if the sons of fishermen captain ships like
Dolphin.
”
    “She’s a beautiful ship,” I said.
    “The most beautiful ship in the fleet,” he said. “One of the newest. She’s alive.”
    “Yes,” I said. Everyone knows that ships have spirits. “Tell me about her,” I said. And he did, until he and I both slept.
    T HE NEXT DAY was hot. We continued southeast along the coast, a little farther out to sea because here the beaches were rocky. By midday the sun was scorching, and the reflection off the water hurt my eyes. There wasn’t a breath of wind. The sailors rigged the sail flat over the forward deck to give the rowers some shade, and the children played listlessly in the shadow of it. Xandros had the rowers alternating benches, so that only half the oars on each side were in the water at once. It cut our speed in half, but half the men could rest at a time. They could not go on, hour on hour, in that heat.
    My black robe seemed to trap the heat. I pulled it up in the belt, so that my legs were half uncovered, and pinned my hair away from my neck, but still the sweat crawled on me.
    Xandros took turns at the tiller with another man, the burly man with a healing cut across his face, whose name was Kos. When Kos took the tiller, he came down and sat in the shade a moment. His shoulders were brown with sun, and like everyone else he reeked. I handed him the dipper for one of the water barrels lashed along the inside of the rail, and he drank thirstily.
    “It’s hot,” I said. This was more than obvious.
    He nodded shortly, the water dripping off his chin. “And we need to stay close in to land, so we can put in if we need to. Neas doesn’t like it either.”
    “Doesn’t like what?” I asked. I had heard the shouted conversations a while ago, but there were always shouts back and forth between the ships when we rode close together like this.
    “The sea,” he said. “Look there.”
    I saw nothing and said so.
    “There is no wind,” he said, “and yet the sea is disturbed and the waves are running a hand span below the oar ports. And there is a haze on the horizon. A storm is building where we cannot see it, and we must be able to put into a good shore before it breaks. See, there is
Seven Sisters
ahead and farthest in shore. Neas is looking for a place. But these beaches are too rocky. We will tear the bottoms out if we run in.”
    He was right. An hour or so later, before the sun had begun to dip, we saw the clouds piling up on the horizon, white and billowing and deceptively far away. Shoreward, cliffs marked the edge of the land.
    Dolphin
was meeting each wave, but the spray was flying up and soaking my feet fully the height of a man above the surface of the sea. The air seemed thick.
    There was a shout ahead from
Hunter,
as far ahead as
Seven Sisters
but to the seaward of her. I squinted, holding up my hand to see what they had seen. White on the sea. Like a gull’s wings.
    Ships. Several at least, some that I knew. I had seen them often in Pylos at the Blessing of Ships. And one in front with her sail set, running toward us on a wind that did not touch us yet, the
Chariot of the Sun.
“Neoptolemos,” I said.
    I turned, yelling as I went. “Xandros!”
    By