Read Online Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) by Diana Gainer - Free Book Online Page A

giving commands.”
    Ainyáh clambered down from his ship into the boat, rocking it. That set off Diwoméde’s troubled stomach anew. A rower cursed as the foul liquid splashed over his feet. The oarsman grasped the back of Diwoméde’s neck and leaned him over the edge of the boat to finish heaving into the water. “No, Peirít’owo,” Ainyáh insisted, in a cold voice. “I will deal with this peristerá myself. Askán will oversee the grain distribution. You must stay with the ship and keep your thieving countrymen out of my stores of trade goods.”
    “I would hardly call the ox-drivers my countrymen,” the younger Kep’túriyan groused, but he obediently returned to the ship, climbing up one of the anchor-ropes until he could hoist himself over the side.
    His insides quiescent for the moment, Diwoméde curled up in the bottom of the boat. His head was swimming and he was too weak and sick to move. Around him, bare-skinned, sun-bronzed men pressed their oars into service. They laughed and sang as they rowed, happy now that they were so close to land. Ainyáh, alone, remained as grim as before. He stepped out of the boat as soon as it approached the rocky shore and pulled Diwoméde after him. The slave flailed his arms and legs frantically at first, not realizing that he was in shallow water. The explosion of laughter from the others in the boat brought him to his senses, as did the coolness of the water on his skin. He did not resist when Anyáh hauled him to his feet.
    “Come on,” the Kanaqániyan ordered gruffly. He gestured toward the village by the shore, a small collection of flat-roofed, white-washed houses.
    Diwoméde obeyed, stumbling in his efforts to keep pace with the other man. As they drew closer to the dwellings, Diwoméde could see that most had been abandoned. Many of the timbered roofs had fallen in. The walls of plastered planks were cracked, most of the doors gone. Even the mangy dogs that usually prowled among such houses of low-born men were not to be seen. Past the empty houses, the Kanaqániyan mercenary led his prisoner, marching steadily up a low rise. They continued into a grove of sickly trees, all of them drooping in the rising heat. The place looked worse than the village he had left on the opposite shore of the sun-baked sea. The men soon left the remains of the village behind. In the harsh temperature of midday, no birds sang. Even the incessant droning of cicadas was faint. A sudden, sharp sound in the dry underbrush by their feet made both men start, fearing snakebite. Ainyáh had maintained his grip on the younger man’s forearm until then. But, at the sound, Ainyáh released the slave and reached for the long, curved knife that was hanging in the scabbard at his side.
    Without thinking, Diwoméde took advantage of the momentary distraction and leaped away from his captor, into the trees. The vegetation was brown and dry from the summer’s deadly heat, and the slave’s skin was soon scratched and torn with every step he took. Limping and stumbling because of his battered foot, he rushed on blindly, caring nothing about the minor scrapes. Sometimes he moved on two feet, sometimes on all fours, gasping as he exerted all his meager strength to get away from Ainyáh. With a furious shout, the Kanaqániyan sprang after the escaped prisoner, cursing and striking out angrily at the twigs and brush that slowed his pursuit. Dressed in only a faded, blue kilt and time-worn sandals, he had little more protection than did the naked slave.
    Diwoméde came upon a small clearing and hurtled into it, heedless of where he was going. He tripped over a stone and fell, sprawling, face down in the yellowed grass. Before him stood a child, a little girl about two years old. She was naked, with sun-darkened skin and an unruly crop of dark curls on her small head. She opened her eyes wide at the sight of the naked man leaping out at her. All around the big, black pupils, the whites of her eyes