Page 37 of Minas (Dying Gods #4)

Lykos

When I wake before dawn, it’s to the feeling of my seed coating my thighs and the inside of my sleeping tunic.

“Poseidon’s balls,” I hiss, frowning down at the mess beneath the covers. Though, it’s difficult to be truly angry when Sira is curved around my spine, the sound of her steady breathing filling the shelter.

“Quiet,” Britomartis grumbles sleepily, turning beneath the blankets from Sira’s other side, and pulling the blankets off me in the process. “You will wake her.”

I scowl into the darkness.

It’s Britomartis’ fault that I finished in my sleeping tunic like a youth. She was the one who told me to make Sira come on my tongue, rather than my cock, even though Sira had been pleading with me to ‘barb her’. And then, when Sira had promptly fallen asleep with exhaustion—for what else could be expected after coming three times—Britomartis forbade me from taking myself in hand.

“I will not sit here and watch you tug that thing like some unblooded youth,” she had hissed, looking both amused and disgusted as I’d palmed my aching cock beneath my sleeping tunic. “Go outside to do it, but take care not to wake your minas.”

I had not gone outside.

I was not going to be the Achean standing on deck in the middle of the night, stroking his cock while everyone slept. That would be inappropriate, I am certain.

Which means now I will need to be the Achean diving into the water at dawn to go for a bath.

I sigh before rolling carefully out of Sira’s sleepy hold. She releases me with a mumbled protest and a frown, but doesn’t wake. I pull the covers over her, casting Britomartis one more glare in the darkness and slip silently out of the shelter.

I dive in wearing my sleeping tunic—the fabric will be salty when it dries, but at least it won’t be stained with my release—then gasp at the cold.

I had been told the water was warmer this far south. That in this part of the great sea, a man could lay back and relax as if he was in the finest of baths.

Clearly, whichever old seafarer told that tale had never been to Crete in winter.

“Poseidon’s balls,” I squeak, my own balls seeking shelter in the warmth of my body. “That’s cold!”

There’re a few deep chuckles from above deck—the men on the morning watch, no doubt—and I turn to give them my most winning smile, despite my teeth chattering with cold. “Good morning, brothers,” I call to them. “Lovely morning for a swim.”

Their expressions turn guarded when they see it is me. One dips his head in a polite, if curt bow. The other looks away, as if there is suddenly something interesting at the far side of the deck. Disappointment weighs heavy in my stomach, but I am not surprised. These Keptui men have made little secret of their dislike for me. Or, rather, their distaste at having an Achean pledged to their minas.

Where were you when she was locked away in Potina’s temple? I want to shout at them. If you had wanted her so badly, you had only to take her.

After all, that is what I did.

But, that is the way with men, Keptui or Achean. They would rather stare in envy at their neighbor’s harvest than reach out and pick their own fruit.

I give them my back and focus on scrubbing my body and sleeping tunic as I tread water, my gaze fixed pointedly on the distant horizon. It’s early enough that the line that separates Zeus’ realm from Poseidon’s realm is still inky black. Though, of course, the Keptui and Therans would argue that it is Asterion and Poteiden resting side-by-side, waiting for Appaliuna to join them and chase away Asterion’s darkness.

I frown at that dark line, watching as the sun turns the waves silver and then gold as it peeks above the horizon. I had never given it much thought before leaving Mycenae this autumn. I had made sacrifices to the gods and cast a careless prayer to them when it suited me, but I had never thought of them as more than some vague whisper.

That was before a bird brought me a message in the dead of night and changed the course of my destiny.

An icy current drifts up from the depths, sending a frisson of fear racing down my spine, making me want to draw up my knees to my chest.

Before, I would have just thought it was a current. Now, I can’t help but feel that it is something more—the teasing of some god, perhaps, who sees me as a piece in a greater game.

Because I know that is what I must be.

I am not like Sira. I am not the offspring of a god. I am not even like Britomartis, who has spent her whole life serving these people’s most terrifying but revered goddess.

No, I am just the fifth son, a bastard begotten on a shepherd’s daughter. I am like the nameless soldiers my brother would have sent to face our enemies first, on foot, with nothing but spear and shield and hope to ensure their survival.

“I will not die today,” I whisper to the listening sea as I squint into the rising sun. “You will not take me from her.”

Said out loud, I almost feel as if the words could be true. As if I really do have the power to stop death itself, out of sheer force of will. As if the bond growing between me and Sira is enough to stay even Potina’s great axe.

But of course, it isn’t.

A shadow dims the glare of the sun on the distant horizon. I blink, my feet kicking beneath me as I attempt to surge up to see over the rolling waves, and lift one hand to shade my eyes. Is that… can it be…

“Ships,” I call out, my voice ringing out above the lapping of the water against the hull. I turn back to the ship, hands and feet slipping against the rope ladder, knees hitting against the decking as I throw myself over the rail.

“The ships have arrived!”

Women and men sit up from their sleeping areas, some rubbing their eyes blearily, others on their feet and reaching for their weapons. I ignore them, the entirety of my focus on the sleeping shelter where Sira and Britomartis still lie.

“The ships are here,” I tell them, throwing back the flap, letting in the first rays of sunlight. “They are coming. Just on the horizon, their sails full. They are coming. The minases—your allies—they are here.”

Amnisos glitters like the scales of a sleeping snake in the midday sun, bright and deadly. We are close enough that I can see the women—and a few men—standing on the rooftops, their arms raised as they shield their eyes against the glare of the sea. None raise weapons. Why would they, when it is the ships of their allies coming into port? But that doesn’t mean they don’t have them.

Twenty-eight ships.

I smirk at the thought of all that power behind me. At the thousands of blades ready to fight should we ask them.

It had not taken long to convince the minases to put that strength behind Sira. Most of them were ready to ally themselves with her the moment they saw her, her hair expertly coiffed, her face painted, her breasts bare, expensive linen skirt billowing around her, gold thread and jewels and pearls glinting with every move she made. She looked more goddess than minas. As if the starry god had forged her from starlight instead of flesh and blood.

Britomartis knew her craft, I had to admit.

If any of the minases had doubts, one look at the blade Sira held would have been enough to silence them.

“And this Achean has pledged himself to you?” the Minas Zakros had asked, her gaze sharp as a lioness that watches its prey. “Do you have the support of Mycenae too, then?”

“I have five ships,” I had told her proudly. “And my men will bleed and die for the Minas Crete if I ask them.” I had glanced at Sira then, at the proud curve of her lips and the soft watchfulness of her eyes and that deadly blade gripped in her delicate hands. “As will I,” I had added with a whisper, an oath meant only for her.

And I meant it.

But I will not die today.

My own ships bob in the harbor, the skeleton crew I’d ordered on board watching us approach. I raise my hand in silent greeting as we draw near and smile—a smile that quickly fades at the sound of their answering calls.

“Look, it’s Lykos!”

“Congratulations!”

“How is your first taste of kysthos? ”

This one is accompanied by an obscene and somewhat confusing gesture, as if the speaker is holding onto the hips of someone and thrusting forward, with his tongue outstretched at the same time.

“Have you ploughed the Keptui meadow?” another calls, and, “The pup finally learned to wet his spur.”

“These are your men?” Britomartis asks drily, surveying the five ships of hooting Acheans with disdain. “These are the men you bring with your pledge?”

“At least I won them fairly,” I retort, my cheeks heating, “And didn’t have to steal them in the dead of night.”

“Enough,” old Kinusi grumbles. The navigator shakes his head at me and Britomartis. “This is not the time to fight like children over some prize. Do not you know that the minases watch your every move?” He turns to glare at the ships full of unruly Acheans. “Is there no way to silence those fools?”

The minases .

My spine stiffens at the reminder of the ships clustered around us, following us into the harbor until all that can be seen from one end to the other is wood and flags and full sails. Twenty-eight ships. Thirty-four ships, with my five ships and this one.

I climb onto the rail, my feet wide as I brace myself with one hand on the rigging, and draw my sword. “Thank you, brothers,” I call out, speaking in our mother tongue, my voice carrying over the waves. My men fall silent, as they would have for my brother.

But he is dead, his body left to Diktynna’s wild animals.

They know this, just as they know the heir of Knossos is my bride.

‘Tell them that Atreus has been left to the crows,’ I had told Galenos. ‘Tell them the princess of Crete is now my bride. Tell them we will be dining on the rooftop of Knossos by the time the moon is full.’

“I will fill your cups and toast to each of you before the sun has set. But first, patience. And respect.” My smile fades, and I fix those on the ship nearest our own with a severe glare. “I cut my own brother down for speaking ill of my lady. Do not think I will hesitate when it comes to any of you.”

The men murmur, but dip their heads in acquiescence.

“Now, we have hundreds of beautiful Keptui and Theran women on board these ships,” I announce, grinning as the men on my ship eye our deck with the desperate avarice that only men who have been stuck at sea will know. “Visitors come to pay their respects to the Minas Crete. Which one of you men would like the honor of rowing them to shore?”