Of Merchants & Heros Read Free Page A

saw what had stopped her.
    The road did not turn, as I had thought; it ended there at the low wall, and beyond was nothing but a sheer drop down the cliff-face.
    She looked, and hesitated. The Libyan, realizing she was trapped, was roaring out what he would do to her. She took one last look at him. Then she turned and stepped into the void, as easily as a person might step over the threshold of a house.
    There was silence.
    The Libyan reached where she had been. He peered down. Then he began to laugh. It was his laughter – chilling, cruel laughter from some foul place in his soul – that finally released the madness in me and made me do what I did.
    Our captors, in their shock, had forgotten to hold us. I broke away, ducking past the nearest of them and running. The Libyan turned, and I slammed into his side with all my strength, in the place where the girl had stabbed him.
    He yelled out in pain, and struck my head with his fist. But I must have caught him off balance, for then he teetered and stumbled backwards. His foot caught on the ledge, his arms went up, and with a look of amazement on his face he toppled over the low wall and was gone. There was a long-drawn-out terror-filled scream as he contemplated his death. The scream broke off, and then there was silence.
    The other pirates came crowding up and gaped over the precipice. Then their eyes slewed round to me.
    I heard my father’s voice cry out in Latin, ‘Go! Find your uncle.
    Caecilius is his name. Remember!’ And then, switching into Greek, he waved his arms and shouted at the pirates, ‘Your friend brought that upon himself, the animal, and his death was gentle compared with what you will suffer when the Romans come.’
    I looked at him. For a moment, before he looked away, our eyes met and locked, and suddenly my mind was sharp and clear, and I understood what he was doing.
    He continued shouting like a madman, calling down the curses of the gods, telling the pirates they were worse than beasts. Then I turned and ran. I ducked through a frameless window and scrambled through the saplings and twisted brambles, running for my life through the ruined interior of a house.
    Twilight was falling fast. There were hurrying footsteps, and somewhere behind me one of the pirates shouted out. But then another said, ‘Let him go. It will soon be dark. The wolves will have the brat before morning.’
    I came out into what had once been the back yard of some grand house. There was the broken basin of a fountain, and a statue grown over with ivy. I scaled a crumbling brick wall at the back, and scrambled up a steep incline beyond it. At the top I came out onto a terrace of overgrown, tangled vines. Ahead was the dense pine forest.
    Only then did I pause and look back.
    Out beyond the plateau the sun had sunk into a dazzling crimson glow across the sea. At first I could see nothing else. But then, in the ruined town below, a torch moved between the buildings, and I saw the pirates and prisoners assembled, and in their midst the blond one they called Dikaiarchos.
    He held a sword in his hand. At his feet, prone in the dirt, lay my father.
    I thought at first it was the twilight shadow, and the glare of the torch, that obscured his head. But then the torch-bearer drew nearer, and I saw what they had done to him.
    A farmer will set light to a field. The field will burn, and afterwards there is nothing. That was how my mind felt. I could conceive of no future. My past seemed no more than a dream. My only reality was pain.
    For days I wandered about the pine-clad ravines, expecting at any moment to be captured, or to be taken by wolves, as the pirates had predicted. For food I ate berries and roots and whatever else I came across, not caring whether or not they were deadly. Eventually I came to a long flat sea-strand, deserted but for an old fisherman who had paused there to sew his nets. He spoke Greek, or a version of it, and agreed to ferry me across the strait to