He puffed himself up. “That, resplendent master, was what his servant required. I hied myself down to the docks and started gadding about. Lo!”
A billow passed through Everard. “What did you find?” he nearly yelled.
“What,” Pum declaimed, “but a man who lived through the shipwreck and onslaught of demons?”
Gisgo appeared to be in his mid-forties, short but wiry, his weathered nutcracker face full of life. Over the years, he had risen from deckhand to coxswain, a skilled and well-rewarded post. Over the years, too, his cronies had tired of hearing about his remarkable experience. They took it for just another tall tale, anyway.
Everard appreciated what a fantastic piece of detective work Pum had done, tracing the man down by getting sailors in wineshops to talk about who told what kind of yarns. He himself could never have managed it; they’d have been too leery of such an outsider, who moreover was a royal guest. Like sensible people throughout history, the average Phoenician wanted as little to do with his government as possible.
It had been a lucky break that Gisgo was home in voyaging season. However, he had attained enough seniority and saved enough wealth that he need no more join long expeditions, hazardous and uncomfortable. His ship was on the Egypt run, and took layovers between passages.
In his neat fifth-floor apartment, his two wives brought refreshments while he lolled back and spouted at his guests. A window gave on a court between tenements. The view was of clay walls and laundry strung on lines between. Yet sunlight came in alongside an eddy of breeze, to touch souvenirs of many a trip – a miniature Babylonian cherub, a syrinx from Greece, a faience hippopotamus from the Nile, an Iberian juju, a leaf-shaped bronze dagger from the North…. Everard had made a substantial golden gift, and the mariner waxed expansive.
“Aye,” Gisgo said, “that was an eldritch journey, ’twas. Bad time of year, equinox drawing nigh, and those there Sinim from who knows where, carrying misfortune in their bones for aught we knew. But we were young, the whole crew of us, from the captain on down; we reckoned on wintering in Cyprus, where the wines are strong and the girls are sweet; those Sinim, they’d pay well, they would. For that kind of metal, we were ready to give the fig to death and hell. I’ve since grown wiser, but won’t claim I’m gladder, no, no. I’m still spry, but I feel the teeth gnawing, and believe me, my friends, it was better to be young.”
He signed himself. “The poor lads who went down, may their shades rest peaceful.” With a glance at Pum: “One of them looked like you, younker. Gave me a start, you did, when first we met. Adiyaton, was that his name? Aye, I think so. Maybe he was your grandsire?”
The boy gestured ignorance. He had no way of knowing.
“I’ve made my offerings for the lot of them, I have,” Gisgo went on, “as well as in thanks for my own deliverance. Always stand by your friends and pay your debts, then the gods will help you in your need. They surely helped me.
“The Cyprus run is tricky at best. Can’t make camp; it’s overnight on the open sea, sometimes for days on end if the wind’s foul. This time – ah, this time! Scarce were we beyond sight of land when the gale struck, and little did it avail us to spread oil on those waters. Out oars and keep her head to the waves, it was, till breath failed and sinews cracked but we must row regardless. Black as a pig’s bowels, it was, and howling and lashing and rolling and pitching while the salt crusted my eyes and stung the cracks in my lips – and how to keep stroke when we couldn’t hear the cox’s drum through the wind?
“But on the midships catwalk I saw the chief of the Sinim, cloak flapping about him, faced straight into the blast, and laughing, laughing!
“I don’t know whether he was bold, or landlubber-ignorant of the danger, or wiser than I then was in the ways of the sea. Afterward I’ve harked back, in the light of much hard-won knowledge, and decided that with any luck we could have ridden out the storm. That was a well-found ship, and her officers knew their trade. However, the gods, or the demons, would have it otherwise.