Five more days they journeyed across the desert shore. Each morning they gathered together and sang the Berber song. Each day the sea remained calm and their nets came up full. The first morning, Hanno awoke to find desert shrubs bearing fruits near their camp. A well was dug and water was struck just on the far side of a high dune.

  It was enough to supply them until the desert began to fade.

  The land’s outward thrust ended, and the fleet turned eastward. A whole day they journeyed toward the rising sun.

  The shore shifted southward once more after they set out the following morning, and by midday Hanno’s ship came upon the pointed crest of a bay.

  A cheer rose from the fleet, for the bay was wide and split by a great river flowing through many trees and green lands. At the recess of the bay, protected on all sides by its wide arms and watered by the river, lay an island of significant size.

  “Are there any people in this bay?” Hanno asked Liva.

  “I believe a land like this would have been sung of if it were,” Liva answered.

  “Wonderful. Artemisia, signal the fleet. We make for that island.”

  The pipes played and the rowers set the oars against the waves. The current subsided and the waters flattened inside the bay, allowing the ships to speed across the glass-smooth surface without need of the sails.

  Hanno leapt off the bow when the ship made land. He kept his sword sheathed, but left his hand on its chipped hilt.

  Bostar landed beside him, along with Liva and a selection of marines. Artemisia made sure the ship was secure, then set out with the king.

  The scent of dirt and figs greeted them. They maintained formation and set out toward the island’s middle, where they found a shallow hill peeking over the treetops. Hanno stood atop this hill and surveyed the island and the fleet landing on its calm shores.

  “There is space enough here for a colony,” Hanno announced. “It is protected. There is land, water, and fields for planting and grazing.”

  “How many colonists we dropping off?” Artemisia asked.

  Hanno smelled the flowery air. “How far from Carthage do you think we are?”

  “Far enough.”

  “I know not the miles, but it’s at least as far from the Pillars of Hercules to here as the Pillars are from Carthage,” Bostar shared.

  “Agreed,” Hanno said. “We’ve journeyed twice as far as our ancestors dared travel. And so we plant this new pillar. I name this colony Cerne. We shall populate it with the remainder of our fleet.”

  “Big colony,” Artemisia said.

  “Big bay,” Bostar added.

  “A pillar to hold up the end of our settlements. This is as far as the fleet will travel. This is Carthage’s new distant home,” Hanno declared. “Have the helmsmen prepare a feast, Artemisia. Our colonies are planted.”

  A tower was constructed on top of the hill. The colonists set a brazier from one of the triremes atop the building and Aba sacrificed one of the Lixitae goats over its flames.

  What tents that could be discarded were repurposed as lean-tos or even drapery for the windows of freshly built homes. A shallow cavern was discovered near the beach. With a temporary curtain of tent-flaps, it formed a suitable granary.

  Hanno presided over the entire affair, assigning ownership of plots of land to various families and ensuring heads of households would properly distribute them to their sons and daughters, husbands and wives. He gave authority over the landward beaches to one of the helmsmen for a harbor to be constructed. He assigned guard duty to another, and gave her the command to form a city watch from marine volunteers.

  At a clearing near the beached triremes, adjacent to where the docks would soon be constructed, Hanno discovered a white stone. He stood upon this, overseeing what he claimed would one day be a great forum that had already been lined with felled trees.

  Soon starlight reflected off the wide bay’s waters, adding to the silver moon’s glow. Hanno silenced the gathered colonists, weary from their long day of construction, while the priestess completed her ceremonies.

  “You have traveled well, people of Carthage,” Hanno called out over the crackle of torches and cook fires. “Let no one say the Libyphoenicians have not done this. Let no one doubt the bravery, skill, and bold undertaking of our great society.”

  The people cheered.

  “We have much to do, and much to build,” Hanno continued. “The foundations of Cerne have only just begun. But this happy brickwork will seem revelry compared to the labors we have endured. Rest then in your new endeavors. The joy of Cerne is now yours!”

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  The people cheered, and Bostar handed Hanno a cup filled with wine. Hanno raised it high, as did all those carrying full horns and bowls and dried seashells cleaned for the feasting.

  “To Cerne!” he shouted.

  “To Cerne!” the people replied, and the great feast began.

  Jabnit played her best while Mapen sang a song hyperbolizing Hanno’s deeds to Herculean heights and Fierel danced and leapt through the trees. Even Artemisia clapped along from her seat near a roasting goat, though she stayed more focused on her private skin of wine.

  Bostar disappeared with one of the marines, while Aba remained at prayer up in the tower.

  Hanno accepted congratulations and thanks from the helmsmen and colonists long into the night. Only after the figs had been eaten and the spits depleted of their remaining fat by gnawing dogs now free to chase each other across the sands, did Hanno finally find peace.

  Liva remained at his side the whole time, watching and eating and accepting praise in equal measure. Few had failed to notice her contributions, and the other Lixitae translators kissed her hands and vowed they’d work with the Libyphoenicians in her honor.

  When the night grew long and spirits drew the colonists to their tents, Hanno made his goodnights to the few remaining near the ships, and set across the beach. He strode in silence, listening to the waves against the natural harbor walls and watching the moon fall over the endless ocean.

  The king sat upon a wet stone, and stared at the black waters.

  After some time, Liva approached with a torch in hand.

  “I saw you wander off,” she said. “Is it safe for the king to cross the beach on his own with no torch?”

  “We scouted the island. There are no beasts save birds and turtles, and no sign man has ever touched this land,” Hanno said without shifting his gaze.

  “Pity. It is a great land.”

  Hanno nodded.

  “Will you stay here?” Liva asked.

  “My place is with my kingdom,” Hanno stated.

  “What is this then?”

  “Part of it. Cerne will thrive on its own, we have seen to that. But it is part of Carthage, and I must return there to lead my people.”

  “They must be an honorable kingdom to send their king on such an expedition.”

  Hanno turned away from the torchlight so Liva could not see his soured face.

  “Will you bring more? Will Carthage send more settlers?” Liva asked.

  “We will send trade ships. We will buy and sell along this coast like we do all others,” Hanno said.

  “And they will go at Hanno’s command?”

  “Yes. I have removed the barrier to my rule and will return able to counter my enemies.”

  “Mapen always sings of the walls of Carthage, of its port and temples. He never sings of your enemies.”

  “They are many.”

  “A king’s enemy only has a right to oppose him when the king fails his people,” Liva stated.

  “I made no failures,” Hanno said, and stood. “Have you seen what Hanno has done?”

  “Have your people?”

  Hanno frowned.

  “They see the failures of my father. He led an army and died in battle trying to take land for these people,” Hanno explained. “I have succeeded where he failed.”

  Hanno returned to his seat.

  “Your people must have loved your father at one point,” Liva offered.

  “My father was a fool and a coward,” Hanno snapped.

  “And your people hate you for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s the only reason?”

  “Yes.”

  Liva raised the torch to better look at Hanno.

  “I’ve heard many songs of kings dying in battle. The failures are often the ones sung most often and remembered best,” Liva explained. “I know of a nomadic people who sing of a leader who fought a neighboring tribe singlehandedly, and was killed before he reached the assembled lines. I know of a queen who led her people into a lush forest and was overwhelmed by beasts. These are not songs mocking fools.”

  “They don’t sing songs of my father,” Hanno said.

  “But what do they say of Hanno at Carthage? Surely not simply that he is the son of a man who tried and failed.”

  Hanno stared at the falling moon.

  “They say Hanno loves a Libyan,” the king whispered.

  “Your wife?” Liva asked.

  Hanno nodded.

  “I am sorry,” Liva said.

  “My father let an army collapse around him, and I wed a native woman of Libya,” the king explained. “The higher houses of Carthage, and the Elder Council think this deems me unfit to rule.”

  “Because you married a Libyan?”

  “Because I didn’t marry a Phoenician! Because I blinded myself with foolish lust just like my father blinded himself with desperation. How can such a blind family lead Carthage, so says the Council. But how blind are they that they cannot see Hanno!”

  Hanno shouted at the sea, “Do you see Hanno now! Do you hear his name? I have come, and I have done what was deemed impossible by Hercules himself!”

  The king returned to his seat. He felt the wet sand beneath his sandals, the beach still save for the trickle of water lapping against the shore.

  “If I had a son, maybe they would hear him. Elissa, oh Elissa,” Hanno muttered.

  Liva frowned.

  “She died the night they tried to steal my crown,” Hanno shared. “Blind Hanno, overcome with boldness and passion, and I couldn’t see those who opposed me, couldn’t see her illness until it was too late.”

  Hanno buried his face in his hands.

  Liva sat beside him.

  “I’ll return to Carthage now,” Hanno said. He swallowed hard. “I will reclaim my authority. And I will marry one of their pathetic Phoenician noblewomen. Then perhaps they’ll know me.”

  “And if they don’t?” Liva asked.

  The sound of the waves ceased.

  The beach appeared unchanged, but no more did they hear the sea kissing the island’s edges, nor its rocky harbor.

  Hanno took the torch out of Liva’s hand and stood with it high over his head.

  He saw only black sand.

  “What—” Liva tried to say.

  Hanno ran across the beach. He reached the east-facing side of the island where the festival fires smoldered beside tents and huts.

  The coming gray of dawn cast a dull light upon the shore, and Hanno stepped deep into the mud.

  The water had gone.

  All around the island, what had been a wide harbor transformed into a basin of wetted sand and silt. The coming sunrise loomed over the river, or what had once been a river. The golden ball rose over a barren trench that wound into the wooded inland.

  “What magic is this, Liva?” Hanno asked.

  The translator gaped at everything around her and said, “I have no song or tale to describe what I’m seeing.”

  “It becomes apparent now why no one settled here.”

  A cry came from the sentries.

  A shout from the tower at the top of the hill.

  Crackling wood and hissing sand heralded the fall of the king’s trireme. It slipped free of its anchors and fell to the bottom of the slickened hill now surrounding the island.