The ship sailed on, heading west, making for the Sea of the Arabs. The crew toiled to repair the storm damage. Pyxeas grumpily put his notes in order and rewrote those that had been spoiled by water from the leaks. The weather, for now, was calm.
Then the pirates struck.
Avatak and the scholar were immersed in a deep technical discussion on the absorption of fixed air by a given unit area of farmland, and its production by the burning of the same unit area of forest. ‘Once men hunted the worldwide forests,’ Pyxeas said. ‘Now they farm — not in Northland and its hinterland, but elsewhere, they farm. It must make a difference. It must! I nearly have it, Avatak — I nearly have it-’
Bayan burst into the cabin, and slammed the door shut behind him.
Pyxeas glared. ‘What’s this? I left clear instructions not to be disturbed.’
‘Pirates,’ said the boy. His eyes were wide, he was bathed in sweat, and Avatak saw that his shirt was stained red with blood. ‘Yes-yes-yes. Hide me!’ He dived at the floor, into the heaps of scrolls and books, and burrowed in like a rat into garbage.
‘Get out of there!’ Pyxeas ineffectually pawed at the papers.
‘I’ve never seen pirates like these. Monsters. Killers! Yes-yes-yes!’
Avatak was bemused. Pirates? ‘Bayan, come on. Al-Quds has beaten off pirates and nestspills before-’
‘They killed al-Quds! Slit his throat with a single swipe — near enough clean took his head off — they killed him, yes-yes-yes, the first heartbeat they were aboard! Oh, they’re coming, they’re coming. .’
Avatak heard it now, heavy footsteps, shouting, the scrape of steel — screams. He tried to think. ‘Maybe we can block the door — maybe if we hide-’
It was too late. The door crashed open, smashing off its iron hinges, sending Avatak tumbling back into the little cabin, landing on top of Bayan in a mess of scrolls and parchments.
Pyxeas stood and faced the intruders. ‘You have no business here-’
A gloved fist slammed into the scholar’s mouth, and Avatak heard the crunch of breaking teeth. Pyxeas fell back, landing against the outer wall with a thump, his mouth a bloody mess.
Two men pushed through the door. They seemed huge, their arms and necks bare, their trousers blood-soaked leather, their hair tied back. They had weapons at their waists, cruel-looking swords and axes. Each had his face covered in intricate tattoos, like a tracery of black-walled veins. Avatak scrambled back against the bunks and reached for his own weapon, a blade hidden in his mattress. Before he got there one of the pirates grabbed him by the shirt front, raised him with one unbelievably strong arm, and drove his fist into Avatak’s belly. Avatak fell back, doubled up, hollowed out by pain.
Bayan took his chance. The little Mongol scurried on all fours through the men’s legs and out of the cabin.
As Avatak and Pyxeas lay helplessly, one pirate brutally rummaged through the cabin, lifting the bunks, ripping through heaps of paper, shaking out bundles of clothes. Uzzia’s coat, with the jewels sewn into the quilting, hung unnoticed on the back of the sagging door.
The other man, who had punched Avatak, grabbed him again. ‘You! The old man’s bum boy, are you?’ He spoke a guttural Persian. With his free hand he roughly frisked Avatak, soon finding his pouches of coins. ‘That what you are? Bum boy?’
‘Take it,’ Avatak said, his voice a mumble.
‘What? What’s that?’
‘It’s all we have-’
The pirate slapped Avatak. ‘All? Where’s the rest of it? An old man like this, a ship like this — where’s the rest of his treasure, boy? Up your arse? Because if it is I’ll slit you open to get it.’
‘Not rich. He’s a scholar.’ He had used the Northlander word. He tried again, in Cathay, Mongol. He didn’t know the Persian. Maybe he could make them understand. Make them spare the old man, even if only through pity. ‘Not rich. His treasure is what he knows.’
The pirate slapped him again, almost routinely. ‘What treasure?’
‘Inside. It’s inside him-’
But the pirate grinned, and threw him down, and Avatak realised he had made a horrible mistake. ‘Ha! That old trick.’ The pirate called over his shoulder. Avatak recognised the words ‘tamarind’ and ‘brine’.
A third man came, carrying a filthy, heavy sack. Avatak’s captor threw this over to the man with Pyxeas.
The scholar lay unmoving on a heap of bloodied manuscripts. The pirate cradled Pyxeas’ neck and raised his shoulders, so that his head was tipped backward. Then he forced open the scholar’s injured mouth with his fingers, making Pyxeas moan with renewed pain, and held Pyxeas’ nose, and he poured a thick crimson liquid from the sack into the scholar’s mouth. Pyxeas gagged, choked and struggled feebly, but the pirate held him firmly — almost skilfully, Avatak saw, wondering, almost like a mother in a winter house with a wilful infant — and Pyxeas had no choice but to swallow, to take in great mouthfuls of the stuff. Then he convulsed and doubled over. With a bark he vomited out a mass of crimson fluid laced with half-chewed ship’s biscuits, a foul-smelling pool that spread out over the mess of papers under him. The pirate laughed and stood back from the pool, making a show of trying to keep his feet dry. Now there was a fouler smell, and the pirates laughed again. The man dragged at the old man’s breeches, pulling them down with a casual rip, and Avatak saw shit dribbling from between the scholar’s skinny buttocks. Soon both men were rummaging in the vomit and shit with their bare hands — looking for Pyxeas’ treasure, which they thought he had swallowed because of Avatak’s own foolish words. And, he saw, they would keep on doing this in their frustration until they had squeezed the old man dry of every drop of fluid in his body, and perhaps finish the job by slitting him open. All because of Avatak’s mistake.
He had one pouch the pirates hadn’t found, sewn into his shirt, under an armpit. In here he kept one of Uzzia’s gems — just one. When both pirates were distracted, their backs turned contemptuously to him, he dug his fingers into the pouch, pulled out the jewel and swallowed it. Then he called out, ‘Me. Not him. In me. He made me swallow it.’
Immediately the pirates were on him. One of them punched him again, as if in greeting. ‘Swallow what?’
‘His gem,’ Avatak gasped. ‘The family treasure. He made me swear-’
But he got no further. While one man held him down, the other forced the sack of liquid to his mouth, pinching his nose hard. He could taste Pyxeas’ vomit on the bag. Now the fluid was coursing down his throat, thick and fibrous and rank-tasting. He was gagging almost before he’d swallowed.
They found the jewel easily, but they kept on until he was spewing and shitting as helplessly as the old man.
At last they decided he had no more to give. On the way out one of them kicked him in the head, almost casually.
He woke with a kind of tunnel of pain passing through his body from throat to arse, and a foul taste in his mouth, and a fouler stench in his nostrils. He was lying face down with his cheek resting in some cooling liquid. His own vomit, probably. He rolled on his back, to more pain from his tortured gut. Pyxeas’ work was scattered around the cabin, soaked in blood and vomit and shit. But the quilted coat still hung from the door, apparently undisturbed.
And he saw Pyxeas, on hands and knees, crawling towards him. His mouth was a ruin, his lower front teeth smashed out. But, unaccountably, he was smiling. His speech a slur, he whispered, ‘I have it, Avatak. The secret — the link — the mechanism of the world. I have it!’
At that moment Avatak knew that Pyxeas was mad, that his quest for learning had made him so. Though Avatak would always cherish the old man for that deep wound of grief in his heart, a grief that encompassed the whole suffering world, he would have no more to do with the scholar’s numbers.
That was how it was for the remainder of the voyage, all the way to Carthage.