The ship could not start before there was adequate light to steer by. But it took that long to gather crew and supplies anyway. The food came from their homes, water from the public cisterns, by Reid’s command; he didn’t dare try dealing with officialdom. As was, be sweated while his boys hastened down the streets—torch in one hand, since the moon had descended behind the western hills, streaming like a red comet’s tail; bucket or bundle in the other, or tucked beneath the arm or slung across the shoulder—and thudded up the gangplank. Their families began to appear on the docks, an eddying of bodies in the gloom, an uneasy rustle of voices which rose and rose as questions received a grisly answer. This brought other, nearby house-holders forth. But most doors stayed shut. Folk slept well between their days of revelry.
Some decided to evacuate immediately. No few boats left, even before the galley did. Dagonas’ parents were not included. They meant to carry the news from home to home till the corrida started and later ask that a public announcement be made. The assault on Velas, when news of that got about, wouldn’t help; nor would offended lords spiritual and temporal who had not been consulted. But maybe the example of the hundred or so persons who were already afloat would inspire—maybe, maybe—
We’ve done what we can here, Reid thought. We’ll keep trying elsewhere. Sixty miles or thereabouts, to cross, and we average three or four knots. The boat from Athens that we’re towing for insurance cuts that down a bit, but no matter. because we’ll arrive by night in any case and have to lie out till dawn.
The east was paling. The ship’s crew cast off and stood to their posts. The sight of Dagonas’ father and mother, holding hands and waving, stayed with Reid until the thought came: In twenty-four hours, I’ll see Erissa.
She did not seek him until well after sunrise. He stood in the bows of the upper deck. The morning lay around them, infinitely blue: cloudless overhead, surging beneath in fluid sapphires, cobalts, amethysts, turquoises and in snowy lacework. A favoring wind heeled the ship over a little; the planks moved like the back of a galloping animal. Bow waves hissed, rigging creaked and whistled. The sun was shaded off by the bellying genoa; but elsewhere made sparks and shimmers and called forth the first pungency of tar. A pair of dolphins played tag with the hull. Their torpedo bodies would rush in until it seemed a collision was certain, then veer off, graceful as a bull dancer. Gulls mewed above the masts.
Forward, a barely visible haziness betokened Crete. Aft, the cone of Pillar Mountain was a black blot on the horizon, the last glimpse of Atlantis.
“Duncan.”
He turned, Like him, she had resumed Cretan garb. Her hair rippled in the breeze that felt cool on his own bare breast. Suddenly the crew, taking their ease on the thwarts below, and the helmsman and the two lookouts above, were far away.
“May I be here with you?” she asked.
“O gods, Erissa.” He pulled her close. They didn’t kiss. but she laid her cheek against his.
“I’ve wanted you so,” she whispered.
He had no answer.
She released him. They stood side by side at the rail. “Eldritch to ride again on this ship,” she said “After all the years. I do not know if it is the ghost or I am.”
“Reaching Knossos will be hard for you,” he said, look-ing out to sea.
“Yes. My parents; their household ... we had a pet monkey I called Mischief.... Well, it must be. And I will have been given to meet my dead once more. A-a-am I not favored?” She rubbed her eyes.
“Yourself,” he said.
“That!" She caught his arm in both hands and leaned close to him, “Duncan, do you believe ... can you imagine I’m jealous? I feared what you would think of me, old me. But to lie awake in my father’s house, knowing that then,, then I am having the dearest hours of my life—”
The mountain sundered.
XVII
Reid’s first warning was a yell from a lookout. He snapped his head around. The cone no longer thrust out of the sea. In its place, monstrously swelling, was a wall of night.
An instant later the first shock wave struck. A fist hit Reid’s whole body and smashed him down on the deck. The, ship staggered, bow shoved into the water, which cataracted aboard. The roaring was so huge that it ceased to be sound, it became the universe, and the universe was a hammer.
The galley righted itself but reeled. Still the blackness grew. It, filled half the circle of the world. It spread swiftly across the sky; for a while, the sun shone ember-red, then went out. Through and through the murk flared lightning, immense jags and sheets of it, hellish blue-white. Their thunders rolled amidst the steady bone-rattling bellow from Atlantis.
Reid glimpsed a stone, larger than the ship, glow as it fell from heaven. Blindly, he clutched the rail with one hand, Erissa with the other. The boulder struck half a mile off. Water reached for the zenith. White across black, lightning-lit, it did not splash under that impact, it shattered. A rising wind rived glasslike shards off it. It tumbled, and the sea was aboil. Reid saw the front wave rush upon them. Higher than the mastheads, fanged with spume, it made a noise of its own, a freight train rumble. He shouted, “Head ‘er into that! Bow on or we’re done!”
The roaring, booming, whining, skirling gulped his voice and spat it back. For an idiotic instant he knew that he had cried in English.
But the quartermaster understood. He put the helm down and the galley, rocking, sluggish from bilges full, came around in time. Barely in time. Water torrented. Blind, beaten, Reid clung while the billow went over him. He had a moment to think: If we’re not swept away, we’ll drown here. I’m out of air, my ribs are being crushed—The galley wallowed. A mast lay in wreckage. The next wave took the next mast.
Lesser blocks were striking everywhere around. They made the sea explode in gouts of steam. One smote the deck and went bouncing down the length of the hull, leaving char marks where it touched. The boy at the helm screamed—he could not be heard, but lightning brought him out of the night, mouth open, eyelids stretched, free hand lifted in defense or appeal—until it reached him. He exploded too. Another wave washed the place clean where he had been.
The lookouts were likewise gone. Reid let go his hold and crawled aft. Somebody had to take the rudder. Erissa vaulted to the rowers’ level, where they hung on and wailed. He glimpsed her, waist deep, slapping, scratching, forcing them to take oars and bailing buckets. But he didn’t see much more; the tiller fought so crazily.
A second volcanic burst smote the air. A third. He was too stunned to count them, to know anything except that he must keep the prow into the waves. A couple of crewmen reached the deck, bearing axes. They cleared the broken masts away. Oars out, the galley had some power now to save itself; and the heaviness departed as the hull was emptied.
The seas ran black under the black sky, save when lightning turned them into brass. Then each drop flung off their crests stood livid, as if frozen in flight. Thunder banged through the ongoing growl and rush and shriek, and blindness clapped back down again. The air reeked of brimstone and poison.
Ash began to fall. Rain followed, driven by the wind till it hit like spears; but it was not clean water, it was gritty, lacerating mud. A new bang and drumfire betokened a new eruption. They were fainter this time than the storm noises.
Erissa returned, chinning herself to the upper deck since the ladders were smashed. Reid couldn’t see her till she was close; he could see almost nothing through the ashen acid rain; the bows were invisible, he steered by feel and by the occasional glimpse when some fulguration was fierce enough to penetrate the darkness and flog his eardrums with its thunder. She had lost her skirt, shed her sandals. was nude except for the hair and dust plastered to her skin. She laid her hand over his on the tiller, her lips to his ear. He could barely hear her: “Let me help you.”