With a roar of laughter, the pirates frog-marched the boys across the beach to a serpentine path that wound its way up to the top of the island and the pinnacles of rock, to Poseidon’s Trident.
They reached the peak and stumbled out onto a plateau. The boys looked down to the east side of the island where the Samian corsairs’ ship lay at anchor, its scarlet sails furled. The evil eye on its boar’s head prow stared out as a warning to others. Xanthos, seeing the rows of oars lining both sides of the red ship, all manned by slaves, reached for his brother’s trembling hand. Even he was not big or strong enough to survive that fate.
He turned his gaze from the red ship to the center of the plateau, where several men—some of them clearly Lydian foreigners—were looking down into a dark cavity at the base of the centermost pinnacle rock of Poseidon’s Trident. One, wearing a purple tunic of shimmering silk that barely concealed his protruding chest and belly, seemed to be directing two Samians using a wooden hoist and pulley to lower an amphora into a cavern. He looked squarely at them. “What have we here, Drakon?”
The man with the boar’s head tattoo said, “Lampros tells me they were sleeping in a boat in the small cove.”
The exquisitely dressed foreigner approached, looking them over, then focused on Xanthos. “What are you doing on this island?”
Xanthos, who’d never seen anyone wearing silken trousers, wondered if the man was sent there by the gods to punish them for trespassing on sacred land.
“Speak up!” the tattooed man ordered. “The honorable Pactyes asked what you are doing here.”
“Fishing.” Even as Xanthos said it, he knew how absurd it sounded. They’d been sleeping long past sunup. True fishermen would’ve been on their way home by then. “But we were blown off course last night,” he added, hoping that would account for their presence.
The foreigner turned his gaze on Agathos. “And what say you?”
Agathos, near tears, looked at Xanthos, then back. “I—I just wanted to whisper in Poseidon’s ear. To send our father home.”
“Whisper in Poseidon’s ear?” Pactyes looked to Drakon for clarification.
He nodded to the cliff’s edge. “A shallow cave in the rocks at sea level. Some of the islanders believe if they whisper into it, Poseidon will hear their prayers.”
Pactyes scrutinized him for several long seconds, then turned back to the boys. “Perhaps Poseidon would be appeased by a sacrifice?” He nodded to one of the Lydians. “Kill them.”
Xanthos tried to throw himself over Agathos to protect him, but one of Pactyes’s men caught him and grabbed the back of his tunic, then drew a long knife, pressing the blade against the boy’s neck.
Drakon’s hand shot out, catching the Lydian by his wrist. “The island is sacred.”
“Pactyes is the only one I answer to.” He raised his knife.
Heart pounding, Xanthos held his breath, waiting for the death blow. Drakon knocked Xanthos to the ground, drew his xiphos from the scabbard under his left shoulder, and brought it crashing down on the pirate’s neck.
The man in the shimmering robes halted in his tracks, his piggish eyes taking in first the dead man, then Drakon. “You dare defy my order?”
“To prevent the wrath of Poseidon?” Drakon said. “Yes.”
“And yet you killed Alyattes on sacred ground. What difference will two more bodies make? Three if we count yours.”
“I will not let you desecrate sacred ground.” Drakon held his short sword at the ready, then sidestepped so that he stood between the boys and Pactyes.
“Who would be so simple to believe the island is sacred?”
“You might. Considering that the Persian Cyrus has placed a bounty on your head. You may well need all the help that Poseidon can give.”
“Korax,” Pactyes said. “Kill him as well.”
The mercenaries looked at each other, then split into two factions, those with Drakon, those with Korax. Xanthos, realizing that they’d been momentarily forgotten, looked for a way out. The path to the boat was blocked by the pirates. The only other way down was over the cliff, far too steep for either of them to live. Then he spied the mouth of the cave, giving him hope that they might hide there. Signaling to his brother, he pointed.
As he and Agathos edged toward it, Korax lunged. Drakon blocked him, the boar on his shoulder bristling with the movement of his muscles. The two men circled each other, each feinting, testing each other’s mettle. Korax attacked again, his sword clashing with Drakon’s. Drakon moved in, but Korax shifted, deflected the blow, then swung his sword against Drakon’s upper arm. The silver blade sliced open the tattooed boar’s head. The Lydians cheered. Drakon glanced at the blood dripping down his arm, then charged, as did the men behind him. Swords clashed, the metal ringing.
Xanthos peered in the cavern, grateful to see that it wasn’t the almost vertical drop that he’d feared. It angled down. The shouts and screams of those fighting echoed into the cave as Xanthos helped Agathos over the edge. They started to climb down, when the earth shook so hard, Xanthos fell back against his brother.
The fighting stopped as the men looked around, fear and confusion on their faces. “Poseidon!” one of them yelled.
As if in answer, a low rumble emanated from deep within the cave, frightening the boys as the earth came alive beneath them. The walls convulsed and Agathos lost his brother’s hand, sliding downward in a hail of gravel. “Xanthos!”
Xanthos reached for his younger brother as the earth thundered around them. But when the sunlight beaming into the cave quickly disappeared, he looked up to see one of the towering spires of Poseidon’s Trident toppling forward. He scrambled down to his brother, holding tight as the giant rock crashed against the cave’s mouth, the echo deafening, the dark near absolute but for a sliver of light high over their heads. As the boys slid to the bottom of the cave, landing on the pirates’ bounty of amphorae, rock and dust rained down. They could barely breathe as the air turned to dust.
They clung to each other, their heartbeats pounding in their chests. Slowly silence, then above them, someone shouted, “A ship! A black ship!”
“The Persians.” Drakon roared and gave a deep belly laugh. “Perhaps you should have heeded my warning about angering Poseidon. Take him.”
“Let go of me,” Pactyes called out. “What are you doing?”
“Since the gold is lost, we’ll collect the bounty.”
“It’s not lost. It’s all in the amphorae down there. You saw them!”
“And Poseidon took them with his very own trident. You’ll not find a man among us that would dare go against such a powerful god, even if we had a way to lift that stone. To the ship, men.”