be our blood, the Chiefs, then?’
He looked at her softly, with those smiling, bright eyes of his. And she looked away, because if she had met them and smiled back, she could not have gone on keeping secrets; she would have told him everything, put herself into his hands, into his mercy and love, done anything he bade her, been a good wife to him, niece to Yersha. Oh, if she could start life again! ‘I can’t think so far ahead,’ she said huskily, through stiffened lips. ‘I hate the time when I shall be dead! I hate countries I shall never see! I hate stars! I hate things that men have no power over!’
She threw herself down on the floor and hit her head with her knuckles; Tarrik went on speaking from somewhere above her: ‘But time is our own making, Erif. Even time so far off. I wonder if there will be any Marob then, or any Hellas. Athens has been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, but I think she is almost dead. And the other cities of Hellas too. Nobody knows how long Marob has been here; people don’t think about that; I don’t often. And I don’t really care much what’s going to happen, either. Erif, do you love me?’
‘Yes,’ said Erif. Oh, anything not to have to talk just now!
‘I never minded if the others did or didn’t,’ he said. ‘I expect they did. I always got what I wanted and no one was any the worse. It helped the Corn. In five months it will be Plowing Eve again. I wish I knew what happened at Harvest; I cannot remember it better than a dream, and yet I was not even drunk. At Plowing Eve my head will stay clear, though. Will you help me, Erif?’
She answered ‘No,’ but with her face on the floor, so muffled that he did not hear or heed.
‘Ever since I was a man, I have known that I was truly Corn King,’ he said. ‘It is a queer thing to have power. But you have power too. So has Berris, but differently. The Greeks used to have power, but it is lost now. Yellow Bull thinks he has power. So does the Council. I am seeing without a cloud now; Erif, why is that?’
But before she could make up an answer, something had happened to drive it out of both their heads. The Captain of the Chief’s Guard came running in. ‘Chief!’ he shouted, ‘there’s a big ship blowing in north of the harbour—her mast’s gone and she’s nearly on to the shingle!’ They both jumped and ran, Tarrik giving orders as he went. At the door he turned and shouted to her: ‘Erif, stay here!’ But that was the last thing Erif Der was going to do.
The night was quite different now. A yellowish full moon had risen out of the sea and torn through the clouds to the north-east; even when their jagged edges streamed across it, the puzzling, diffused light went on. Over the hissing and grinding of the waves came other noises; men’s voices at top pitch, and sometimes on the back of the gale heart-tearing sounds of timber breaking up, the screech and crash of the strained wood, and sharp improbable sounds there was no time to guess at; and crackling of the bonfires they had lighted high up the beach, and neighing of the sea and fire-maddened horses, and women crying to one another behind; and again and always, the sea. There was no chance of launching a boat, but the men were wading out with ropes tied round their belts, legs braced against the surf; things were passed from man to man, inshore and up to the bonfires, to be helped back to life if they had breath in them at all. Erif sent a dozen women off to the Chief’s house for wine and warm clothes; she could do that, anyhow! Tarrik was nowhere to be seen, and for a time she was so hard at work among the half-drowned sailors that she did not think of him; he would be somewhere. They seemed to be half Scythian and half Greek, perishing with cold and wet and four days of storm and desperate struggle against it before the sides began to strain and gape hopelessly, and at last the mast snapped and killed three of them. They had a hold full of corn from Olbia, the last of the season; and they had left it too long. They gulped down hot wine and huddled themselves in the dry clothes, calling each other by name as man after man was passed up, and asking where they were, thankful to have come on a town and friends and food and rest after that terrible four days, and the storm ending too late to save them.
Tarrik was down in the sea, stripped to the waist and covered with oil for warmth; he was head of one line, as far out as he could keep his footing on the battered shingle. The light from the bonfires on the shore lay out on the surface beyond him as far as the third or fourth wave, so that he got some warning of anything coming in and had a moment to brace himself and take it. Sometimes a man clinging to a plank or swimming weakly in the trough of a wave, sometimes a cask or chest or bit of a mast, once a horrible, heavy strip of torn sail that tangled round his legs and pulled him over into the surf. Further out, between him and the moon, he could see the black, jagged outline of the wrecked ship, heaving and pitching as she broke up.
For more than an hour, though it scarcely seemed five minutes, he had been extremely efficient and enjoying every moment; he was shouting at the top of his voice and using every inch of his strength and skill; his side stung vividly where a splintered plank had grazed the skin; his eyes were used to seeing quickly in the half-lit dark, his arms and shoulders to heaving weights; he had beaten the sea! But now no living thing had come in for nearly ten minutes; he began to feel the cold at last. One more look out to the wreck before he turned. And there was a man moving on the black against the sky. He yelled out, though he knew it was no use against this wind. But the man had disappeared. For a minute or two he held himself hard against the battling waves, peering out ahead, then at last saw the black smudge on a tearing water crest that meant something coming in. He moved to the right, shouting back to the man behind to be ready, leaning against the weight and struggle of the sea. Then over the top of one great blinding wave the swimmer came at him head foremost, and both were rolled over and over and into the next on the line, one of the guards; he stood firm and held Tarrik, who heaved himself up, choking and cursing, one arm round the man from the ship. ‘Are you the last?’ shouted Tarrik, as soon as he got his breath. The man gasped yes, clinging to Tarrik’s bare, slippery shoulder. He was small and light, soaked and streaming like a bunch of seaweed; an open cut on his temple was bleeding steadily, smearing his face with pale blood. Between them, Tarrik and the guard helped him in through the fierce shove and suck of the shallow water, and up to the bonfires. And so Sphaeros the Stoic came to Marob.
Erif Der had clothes and hot wine and food for them all; she saw to the graze on Tarrik’s side, and odd cuts on his arms and hand; furtively, she kissed his cold back as she helped him on with a shirt. Yellow Bull came up, wetter and wilder looking than one would have thought possible; he had been head of another line of rescuers. ‘That was fine, Chief!’ he shouted, and then suddenly caught sight of Erif and remembered and checked and buried his face in a huge cup of wine. But Tarrik was far too excited and happy to notice the change in Yellow Bull, or even see that, for the moment at least, every one was round him again, talking and cheering, forgetting that he had ever been unlucky.
But Yellow Bull drew his sister aside out of the glare of the fires. ‘What have you been doing?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t this your time?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose so. I forgot. It was so exciting. I’m sorry, Yellow Bull.’
‘Father will be angry.’
‘I know. But—you can tell him there’s going to be another chance, quite soon, at the bullfighting.’
‘He’s going to try that, is he?’
‘Yes. So you see, then—It will all work out. Yellow Bull, let tonight alone.’
In the meantime Tarrik was giving out the rescued sailors to the chief men in his town, to keep for the moment, anyhow. Time enough tomorrow to see what should be done with them. Nearly all had been saved, not much hurt, including the captain, who kept on talking to anyone who would listen about his insurance. When they had been allotted, all the other things, barrels, rafts, bedding, and whatnot that had been washed up, were heaped at one side and left under guard. Tarrik found the little man he had saved last sitting quietly by the fire,
