EIGHT

After walking east for half a mile below the ridgeline, Chusor and Ji arrived at the Cave of Nymphs. Chusor looked for signs of other men, but he couldn’t see anyone. As they approached the mouth of the grotto, the pigeon that had delivered Chusor the message flew out and alighted on his shoulder, cooing in his ear.

“She’s waiting for you,” said Ji, and came to a stop. He bowed slightly and made a sweeping gesture for Chusor to enter.

Chusor squinted into the blackness, but he couldn’t see anyone. Only a fire burning far back in the cave. He wondered if Ji had betrayed him. If this was an elaborate trap set up by Barka. But Ji could have easily murdered him on the walk here if he had desired to do so.

“Come to the fire,” said a woman’s commanding voice from the blackness behind the fire. She, too, spoke in Phoenician, but without an accent, for the language was her native tongue.

Chusor obeyed and set his staff on the ground along with his pack.

“Now strip.”

He took the pigeon off his shoulder and set it on a rock. Then he pulled off his climbing boots, slipped off his belt and tunic, and stood facing the flames. In the firelight his muscular torso seemed to be carved from bronze-colored marble. The dozens of puckered scars on his body reflected the light like the edges of silver coins.

A naked woman appeared from the shadows on the other side of the fire. Her physique was a perfect female counterpart to Chusor’s. She was freakishly tall for her sex, with an ample chest, powerful legs, and broad shoulders. She would dwarf nearly any other man besides Chusor. Her black hair—shining like obsidian—grew all the way down to her waist in two thick plaits.

Chusor noticed she wore no ornaments except for earrings of beaten gold that hung nearly to her shoulders. They were in the shape of miniature triremes dangling from hoops. Chusor had fashioned them with his own hands—hammered them out in the hold of a ship using a spare anchor as an anvil—and he was pleased to see she still owned them.

She was not considered a ravishing beauty by the standards of the day, in any port. But she wasn’t manly or unlovely. Her face was just too strong—as if a sculptor had roughed out her features and had not yet made the delicate refinements. There was something about her, however, that aroused Chusor’s animal nature like few other women had. She was confident and happy in her own skin. She loved pleasure as well as pleasing him. And those qualities made her very appealing.

Her big sleepy eyes looked him up and down with a languorous gaze. She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them together in a beguiling way. Zana—the daughter of a deposed Phoenician king who’d become a pirate queen and captain of a band of cheerful cutthroats.

“What did you do to your exquisite hair?” she asked wistfully.

“I grew tired of it,” explained Chusor. “Where is your ship, by the way? Your crew?”

“The ship is lost,” she said with a tiny shrug, as if she had misplaced a trinket and not the fastest pirate ship on the seas. She stared at his smooth pate and chewed the inside of her cheek petulantly. “I don’t like your bald head.”

“I’m happy to leave you in peace,” he said. But the way he gazed hungrily at her body said otherwise.

She looked at his loins, grinned, and said, “Spears ho!” imitating the battle cry of Phoenician mariners.

“Is there someplace soft for us to lay ourselves down, Zana?” asked Chusor with a world-weary voice.

Ever so slowly Zana stepped back into the shadows, but her hand remained in the firelight. Beckoning … beckoning.…

After an hour of reacquainting themselves with each other’s bodies, Zana fell asleep sprawled on Chusor’s chest, snoring softly. He recalled his first glimpse of her seven years ago. She had been dressed as a man, brandishing an axe over his neck. “Why shouldn’t I kill you, stowaway? You stinking bilge rat!” she had demanded.

“Zana,” Chusor said now, gently stirring her awake. “How did you find me?”

“It was Barka,” she said in a drowsy voice. “He was sure you were here. Then I remembered that story you used to tell about the legend of the gold hidden under Plataea, and I knew Barka was right. That you’d come here. We arrived only yesterday. The bird found you.”

“Her name is Jezebel,” said Chusor. He glanced over and saw the pigeon nestled in his clothes, sleeping contentedly with one eye half opened. He realized the animal must be ten years old by now. He wondered how long a pigeon could possibly live. “Who else is left of your crew?” he asked.

“All gone except for Ji,” said Zana. “We were at port in Tyre when a fleet of Persians came into the harbor unexpectedly. The ship was seized. Ji and I weren’t on board at the time. We fled to Italia. That was where we eventually ran into Barka. Or rather where he found us.” She put one elbow into his chest and rested her head on her palm, looking him in the eyes. “When you left me I swore that I would find you and kill you one day.”

“Because you loved me?” asked Chusor sarcastically.

“Because you took two of my best men,” came Zana’s reply.

“And gold as well,” added Chusor.

“The gold was your fair share,” she replied. “But not the men. They were loyal to me—would have killed themselves for me—before they met you.”

Chusor sighed. “I didn’t ask them to come with me.”

“That makes it worse,” said Zana.

“I grew tired of marauding and murder,” said Chusor.

She traced a finger across his lips and looked at him coldly. “I should murder you now.”

Chusor felt the hairs on his forearms rise. He knew she wasn’t making idle threats. “You already killed me today,” he said and closed his eyes. “Put me in a funeral jar. I’m dead.”

She smiled, showing her pearly teeth, and moved her hand down to stroke him between his legs. “And that’s why I always liked you the best, Chusor. Because you were never afraid of me or death. When my men found you hiding on my ship—a miserable stowaway, reeking of filth, fleeing the wrath of the Tyrant of Syrakuse—I asked you why I should spare your life, and you made some stupid joke.” She grabbed his balls quickly and squeezed.

Chusor clenched his teeth and said, “Life is a stupid joke.”

She smiled and relaxed her grip, stroking him sensuously again.

Chusor thought back to his days in Syrakuse where he’d studied with the inventor Naxos and learned the secrets of the sticking fire. The city-state of Syrakuse was a flimsy democracy—one firmly under the reins of an oligarchy. And Chusor had made a mistake of monumental proportions: he had seduced the wife of a wealthy man named General Pantares. The leader was so powerful in Syrakuse that he was known far and wide as “the Tyrant.” Chusor had escaped the general’s henchmen by jumping into a pipe that carried waste into the bay. Fortunately Zana’s ship was nearby.

“Have you found the treasure?” asked Zana, moving on top of him and grinding her hips. “Ummmm,” she groaned softly.

“No,” he replied.

“Are you telling me … uhhhh … the truth?”

“I wouldn’t still be here if I’d found it, Zana.”

“Is it … uhhhh … there?”

“I think so,” he said. As they made love again he told her about the night of the Theban invasion and how they’d found the secret tunnel entrance under the Temple of Zeus. “It fits with the legend. We haven’t had time to explore the place. But I’ve created a map of the entire citadel. I’ve brought it with me. I’ll show you—”

“Stop talking.” Zana grunted. She obviously hadn’t been listening to him for some time. She was touching herself now as she moved faster and faster. She put one hand on the back of his head and guided his mouth to her left breast. Chusor cupped her dark areola with his generous lips, biting her nipple gently with his incisors. She sucked in through her teeth and he pushed himself deep inside her, again and again.

At last she breathed, “I’m almost there.” He lashed her breast with his tongue and she let forth a cry of pleasure as her body jerked uncontrollably. She brought both hands to the sides of his face and leaned down, meeting his lips with her own.

“Stop thrusting,” she said between kisses.

He did as he was told. She gave a sultry smile and adjusted her body. Then her muscles clenched and unclenched rapidly on the crown of his manhood as though she were stroking and squeezing it with a hidden hand.

“Gods!” he bellowed, his legs going rigid. It felt as though Zeus’s bolt had just shot from his loins … as though he had melted inside her.

He fell back, staring at the ceiling of the cave. She laughed softly, toying with him awhile longer, taking her own pleasure while he was still firm. When she was satisfied she pulled away from him and draped herself across his broad chest, stretching like a cat, and purring like one, too, with her hair completely covering her face.

“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked hoarsely.

“Perhaps I always had that skill,” said Zana coyly. “I was just saving it for a special occasion.”

“You should have done that sooner,” he replied. “I might never have left you.”

“I have you again,” she said softly. “At least one of my treasures is found.”

“So good to see old friends reunited,” cooed a honeyed voice from the darkness.

The sound of that voice, like a chill wind on bare flesh, made Chusor shiver.

“What are you doing, lurking there?” asked Zana, sitting up and glaring. “How long have you been watching us, you little owl?”

Barka crawled into the light and sat at their feet. The eunuch’s black, limpid eyes regarded Chusor with a placidity that unsettled him to the core.

“Hello, Barka,” Chusor said to the creature he’d hoped he would never lay eyes on again. Barka the Sooth—a walking oracle who could look into a man’s eyes and tell him his past as well as predict his death.

“Chusor,” said Barka, “I had a funny dream about you. I think you’ll laugh. You were in a ship laden with treasure … but the hold was slowly filling with water. And you were far from shore.”

“I don’t find that dream amusing,” said Chusor, moving away from Zana and covering himself with his tunic.

Barka pulled a map from his sleeve and dangled it by two fingers. “This is quite interesting.”

Chusor’s skin crawled. Barka had managed to find the map in the secret compartment in his staff. He forced himself to smile back at the feminine, feline face—the pretty face of a Phoenician girl on a boy’s body. “I’ll look forward to hearing about your dream,” he said at length, trying not to betray his unease. “And maybe you can use your skills to see if the treasure exists.”

“Oh, it is there,” said Barka, nodding his head confidently. “I’ve already seen it. Enough gold to buy a fleet of ships.”

Zana sat up straight and her eyes shone in the firelight. Chusor could tell she was already standing on the deck of a new ship, sailing into the unknown.

“Now!” said Barka, setting aside the map and clapping his hands together. “Since Chusor-the-Cunning has already revealed that my darling Diokles is still with him, may we know what happened to our other friend who ran away with you?” The eunuch snickered. “I don’t need the sooth-sight to see what Ezekiel is doing right now: drinking himself into a stupor. But I dreamt that he’d set up the sign of his skull in…” He closed his eyes, shifted his head back and forth, then popped open his lids. “Athens? Am I right? Ezekiel the Babylonian is living in Athens now?”

Chusor did not need to answer, for Barka was smiling confidently. The eunuch knew that his guess was right.

“Ezekiel will meet your young friend,” said Barka in an offhand manner. “Whether good or ill will come of the meeting, I cannot say.”