Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) Read Online Free Page A

Diwoméde was to be sold the following morning. Mirurí was to see to it at dawn.
    Yes, this morning Satmarítu would announce to his daughter that her favorite plaything was gone. She might droop slightly, perhaps pout a little, until the maas had enough of it. Then he would threaten violence and she would retire to the women’s quarters to sulk. But, in a day or two, she would find someone or something else to torment. Within a phase of the moon, no doubt, she would have forgotten that he ever existed. At least he would be rid of them all, Diwoméde told himself. No more would he be Satmarítu’s minstrel or Náfriti’s pet. Even the hard work of plowing fields seemed more appealing. But no, he reflected, the last crop of barley had withered before it ripened, in this scorched land. If it had not been for the supplies carried in by donkey caravan and by ship, the maas could not have sustained his trading post and his solid Mízriyan house. Drought and famine had long since driven most of the native Libúwans eastward to the fertile, black land of the Great King of Mízriya.
    It had been four years since he had left his fortress in Ak’áiwiya, Diwoméde realized with a shock. Four cycles of sowing and reaping had passed, away from Ak’áiwiya’s peninsulas and islands. A wave of homesickness swept over him as he thought of the high-walled citadel that he had once commanded in the kingdom of Argo. It seemed almost a dream, that he had once occupied a place of honor and respect. But it was true. He had spent many a day seated upon a hard throne of gypsum, looking out over a great room, long and wide, with rows of plastered benches lining the walls. There had been paintings on those walls of lightweight chariots drawn by big, Ak’áyan horses, of warriors marching forth wearing helmets made of boars’ tusks. In the center of that mégaron lay the great hearth, four bronze-plated pillars rising from its corners, supporting the roof with its smoke-hole. He wondered whether the fortress still stood. Or had it been taken by raiders from the se, its timber roofs and pillared halls sent up in flames, its storerooms plundered? Were his Argives still waiting for his return? Or had his serving men all been slaughtered, his serving women carried off into slavery in another land?
    A thought came to him in that moment, one that cut him more deeply than all the rest. He thought of Dáuniya, the woman who had shared his bed ever since the Ak’áyans had sacked the city of Tróya over a decade before. That war, his first, seemed so long ago. It might as well have been a story he had heard as a child, a mere fantasy. Still, he remembered as clearly as if it had been yesterday the column of smoke rising over the stone walls of that fallen citadel, the defeated enemy of Ak’áiwiya. The keening lamentations of the captive Tróyan women still rang in his ears. The sight of them had long haunted his sleep, their long, filthy skirts, their hair disheveled, scraping their cheeks with their fingernails until the blood came, tearing at their bare breasts. Dáuniya had originally been among them, a thing of some value that he had purchased with two bronze helmets. Reflecting on that now, he found himself wondering, had she trembled there in Tróya, seeing some of her companions raped and others killed? Had she once felt as humiliated and despondent as he did now?
    At that time, long ago, Diwoméde had taken her to his bed without a thought, never questioning his right to do so. In just the same way, some of the victorious warriors took the younger male prisoners, as if they had been women. His spirit now quailed at the memory. Had his Dáuniya felt used and toyed with, lying with him, as he had with Náfriti? It occurred to him, too, that he had often rested his feet in her lap and thought nothing of it. Had this made her cheeks burn with shame, as his had when his master had forced him to be used as a footstool? She had never said as much,