Only the Stones Survive: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

what we needed. What we did not have we did not want. Preferring the steady glow of serenity to the destructive tarnish of commerce, whereby everything was bought and sold and nothing was ever enough, we had long since developed ways of avoiding traders.
    Unfortunately, the fleet from the south penetrated our usual defenses. This had happened before; my people were not alarmed. They habitually greeted any unwelcome visitors with courtesy and sent them on their way with confused impressions designed to discourage further contact.
    This time would be different.

FOUR
    S HORTLY AFTER SUNRISE, Éremón thought he saw land. An irregular shape floated on the horizon, startlingly green against the blue of the sea. The husky Gaelic warrior had been keeping watch in the prow of his galley for most of the night with two of his hunting hounds at his feet while he alternately strained to see something that was not there and struggled to stay awake in case it ever appeared.
    Then there it was.
    Éremón blinked. The vision vanished. He blinked again. The miracle he sought glowed like a green jewel in the light of the rising sun.
    Kicking one of his hounds aside, Éremón turned toward a thin, swarthy man awkwardly draped across a pile of rope. “Get up quick, Sakkar! Look where I’m pointing. Is that Ierne out there?”
    With a groan the Phoenician dragged himself to his feet. He had hoped to eke out a few more moments of rest before the work of the day began. Every part of his body ached. He was no longer young, and coils of rope were no substitute for a comfortable bed. It could be a long time before he enjoyed a bed again. “I may see something,” he conceded. “Perhaps…” He shrugged his left shoulder. “At this distance it could be anything or nothing. You’ll have to go closer.”
    Éremón glowered at the smaller man. “I have to go closer, Sakkar? And risk running aground? Need I remind you that I am responsible for the future of the Míl’s entire tribe? All these lives depend on me !”
    Éremón was the youngest son of Mílesios—respectfully titled the Míl—the recently deceased overlord of a large Celtic tribe in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. The clans comprising the tribe were known collectively as Gaelicians, or the Gael. The dominant clan preferred to be called the Mílesians after their chieftain. The fleet was laden with iron implements and weaponry and carried all six of the Míl’s princely sons—even though one of them was mad.
    As Sakkar was aware, Éremón was claiming a prerogative that was not his alone.
    The Phoenician would not dream of contradicting him.
    Sakkar had been an orphan, one of the countless ragged little beggars who thronged the crooked streets and malodorous alleyways of the ancient seaport of Tyre, on the Middle Sea. A scrawny child with dark, almond-shaped eyes and nimble fingers that could slip a coin from a purse without being discovered.
    Deference to authority had been beaten into Sakkar from an early age, but from some unknown ancestor he also had inherited a stubborn pride. He refused to spend the rest of his life begging—or stealing.
    As soon as he was big enough, he had apprenticed himself to a Tyrian shipbuilder. “I’ll do anything,” he insisted. His new employer promptly assigned him to carry timber that weighed almost as much as he did.
    Sakkar was short but wiry, with iron muscles and boundless stamina. In the beginning, nothing more was required of him. The work was exhausting, yet he thrived on it. For the first time in his miserable life, he was sure of a meal at the end of the day and a dry place to sleep at night. He took great pride in being able to earn his living.
    After a few months he began to look for other jobs around the shipyard. On his own, he taught himself to straighten bent nails, to braid rope, even tried his hand at patching sails. Such skills came easily to him. Before long, his efforts were observed—and approved. The