Men of Bronze by Scott Oden

Author:Scott Oden [Oden, Scott]
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781932815856
Publisher: Independent Pub Group

Jauharah watched the exchange between Phoenician and Greek from her perch in the stern of the Atum. An awning and partition of linen kept the glare off - both from the sun and the lecherous sailors. Since boarding she had overheard snatches of jokes and rude comments as she went about the daily chores she set for herself of fetching water and cooking Barca's meals - though he ordered her to stop serving him as a slave would a master. Most of the crew thought the Phoenician had brought his concubine with him. Others simply stared at her with a possessive hunger that made her skin crawl.

Barca kept telling her she was free. Pharaoh's gift. Free to choose where to go, where to stay. She had been a slave for so long, though, that the idea of freedom terrified her. Every night, she prayed she would wake in Memphis, in the villa of master Idu, rested and ready for a day of baking bread, making beer, and serving the needs of the family. Every morning, she woke to find her prayers unanswered.

Barca twitched the partition aside. "We'll make landfall soon," he said, moving to where Jauharah had laid out his panoplia. He glanced sidewise at her. She sat cross-legged on the deck polishing his bronze breastplate. With a soft cloth she applied a thin coating of oil to the ridges of sculpted muscle, to the lapis, ivory and gold uadjet inlaid in the chest. The oil would stave off the caustic effects of the salt air. Barca exhaled. "You are the most stubborn woman I have ever known. A thousand times have I told you to stop that, and I'll hazard a guess that it will take a thousand times more before it penetrates that thick skull of yours."

"If that's your way of thanking me for making sure you don't leave this ship looking like a tousle-headed rube in corroded armor, you're welcome."

"The gods have mercy on the man who takes you to wife," Barca said, grinning.

"Your Greek friend does not care for me, I think."

"Callisthenes? Oh, he's a good man, for a Greek." Barca knelt and fitted bronze greaves over his ox-hide sandals. The natural flex of the metal kept the greaves snug about his calf. Next he drew on a linen corselet, padded to absorb the weight of his cuirass. Barca stopped in mid-gesture and laughed. Jauharah stared at him, questioning.

"I used to hate his people," he said, "hate them with a passion known only to madmen. If someone had told me then that I would come to call a Hellene friend, to defend him to another, I would have cursed him as a lying wretch and split his skull to the teeth. Strange, these little ironies of life."

"Not all Greeks are like Polydices," Jauharah said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Barca's head snapped up, a frown knitting his brow. An unreasoning wave of anger washed over him, a need to strike out and destroy something. Pharaoh's command rushed back into his mind: Banish your rage.

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