The other ships twisted against their binds, threatening to follow the royal trireme into the muddy valley separating the island from the mainland.

  Hanno ran to assist the sentries, grabbing ropes and anchors fast as they could. A team of roused marines set their feet against the tug of the falling ships, pulling with all their might. Ropes snapped and Hanno grabbed a bind and wrapped it around a hearty tree.

  “Pull them further ashore!” Hanno shouted. “Libyphoenicians, awake!”

  Artemisia came running. She detached anchor after anchor and retied them to the trees while barking commands.

  More oarsman joined the marines on the ropes, pulling the falling triremes ashore where they smashed into several vacant huts.

  The sun fully rose before the ships were secured. Aba corralled the terrified colonists in the island’s middle while Artemisia and Hanno assembled the crews to survey their situation.

  The king led them to his sunken ship. It had settled into the mud, and several marines slipped and slid to join the vessel at the bottom. They slowly approached, careful with each silt-digging step, and finally reached the ropes.

  But no matter how hard they pulled, no matter how many marines and oarsmen they put on the ropes, they could not dislodge the royal trireme from its silty grounding.

  “Enough!” Artemisia called out when another of the many ropes snapped, sending the marines tumbling over each other. “Tie it to the trees.”

  “What will that accomplish?” Bostar asked.

  “I don’t know what pulled the water away in the first place, but I don’t want it pulling anything more with it if it comes back — now tie down the ships!”

  The crews set to work while Bostar, Artemisia, and Liva stood with Hanno facing the vacant river.

  “What has happened?” Hanno asked.

  “The ocean’s beating against the bay’s outer edges,” Bostar noted.

  “Probably why this was such a good harbor to begin with,” Artemisia shared.

  “So this is not the first time our island became a hill,” Hanno realized.

  The helmsman pointed to the shore. “Those ferns and trees are tilted the same direction as the river. But they’re tilted both directions. I didn’t see it yesterday. Of course, I’ve never seen the like before.”

  “The water comes and goes then?”

  Artemisia shrugged. “Theoretically.”

  “That is some tide,” Bostar said.

  “It can’t be tide. The ocean would come and go as well. This is from the river,” Hanno reasoned.

  “Rivers don’t appear and disappear, not unless there was a drought, and they don’t just dry up like this — it takes weeks,” Liva explained.

  Snapped tree trunks littered the muddy basin between the island and where the riverbed ended at the mainland, along with a thick layer of ruined vegetation.

  “That didn’t take weeks,” Hanno stated.

  He examined the island’s shoreline, and realized how little undergrowth existed around what had been the beach. The trees looked thick and tilted inward at the sand’s edge, though they grew lush and wild further inland.

  “We need to get everyone to the hill,” Hanno said.

  “That’s… not a bad idea,” Artemisia agreed, and rushed to warn her crews with Bostar racing behind her.

  “What sort of god or spell is causing this? A river spirit like that of the ocean?” Hanno asked Liva.

  “There are many who worship river spirits. Perhaps this island is a holy place?” Liva suggested.

  “Holy to whom?”

  Liva shrugged.

  “Then let them voice their discontent,” Hanno said.

  “Is this land not already discontented?” Liva wondered.

  “This is cyclical. It must happen whether we are here or not.”

  “Fair point.”

  A great roar shook the trees along the shore. Birds took flight, and the wind disappeared.

  “Let’s be quick about this,” Hanno suggested.

  They hurried to assist moving the settlers to the tower-capped hill. The granary was emptied and the triremes were secured as best as could be.

  When the sun drew high overhead and nearly all the Libyphoenicians were moved inland, a great roar came from the empty riverbed on the mainland.

  Mist rose like a strip of dense fog, heralding the arrival of a wall of mud-laden water.

  It rushed through the riverbank, flooding over the sides before cascading into the basin surrounding Cerne.

  “Secure the ropes!” Hanno ordered. “Brace the triremes!”

  The water filled the basin, and while the marines held the beached triremes ready, a torrent ripped free one of the ropes anchoring Hanno’s trireme.

  “The water’s coming too quick. The trireme will be smashed to bits,” Hanno realized.

  “Cut the ties!” Artemisia instructed. The men took axes to the binds securing Hanno’s trireme, but the ship tilted on its side in the loosened mud.

  “Bostar, if you dare,” the king said, and slid down the wetted hill. He reached his trireme just as the water lifted its stern. He cut one of the anchors twisting the ship on its side while Bostar slid to a stop beside him.

  Liva scurried down the hill and climbed aboard as well.

  “Oarsmen, pull!” Hanno shouted.

  Those still on the island tugged the ship upright, but the rising water lurched the ship and yanked it out of their arms.

  The water lashed at Hanno’s waist, and Liva tossed a rope over the railing.

  “Get up here!” she told the king and Bostar.

  They climbed out of the silty water and hurried to the stern.

  “Bostar, port!” Hanno ordered.

  The king and the bowman took the rudder oars and shoved them against the mud, righting the ship just as Liva glanced over the stern and shouted, “Wave coming in!”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The torrent lifted the trireme and would have smashed the bow against the harbor-enclosing rocks had Hanno not shoved hard against the starboard rudder.

  The ship turned, fighting the swirling current.

  Liva kept watch over the coming water while Bostar and Hanno fought to keep the rudders straight. Together, they weaved through the rush between shore and island, until the river’s flow eased.

  The water rose slower, finally cresting the harbor walls and inviting the ocean waves. Only then did the harbor settle, flattening to its ice sheet smoothness like it had never been depleted.

  The three-person crew guided Hanno’s trireme back to the beach, where Bostar tossed a rope to one of the applauding marines.

  The king stopped Liva from exiting the ship.

  “We’re not departing yet,” he said.

  “Are we evacuating the island?” Liva asked.

  Hanno shook his head, and looked at the reformed waters. “We’re going upriver.”

  The people cheered their king’s feat, but the king raised his hands for silence.

  “I need volunteers!” Hanno called out from his freshly beached trireme’s bow.

  “What sort of deity have you angered this time, Hanno?” one of the helmsmen asked.

  “Bite your tongue, you faithless dog, we have Melqart on our side!” Aba snapped.

  “Then where is he?”

  The marines and crews gathered at the beach while the settlers trickled back. Their huts had been destroyed in the receding tidal wave, the coals from their fires dragged into the bay.

  “We have named this island Cerne, and it will remain so,” Hanno called out. “Prepare the settlements further up the hill for now, and secure the triremes as far inland as can be.”

  “Speak to the gods, and praise Baal Hammon!” Aba shouted.

  “Whatever god or force or even man is doing this, we shall learn its source. We shall journey upriver and secure this lush island of Cerne. And so I ask again for volunteers from my vessel’s crew! I will not force this journey upon any unwilling to follow their king.”

  Liva put her hand on Hanno’s shoulder.

  “Whatever the source of this water, it should prove interesting,” she said.

  Bostar remained on the ship without needing to say a word.

  “Mapen, Jabnit, come with me,” Aba said, and stepped forward.

  Fierel poked his head out from below deck and said, “I’m coming too!”

  “Fierel, where have you been?”

  “In here.”

  The rest of the marines and oarsmen stepped forward. Not a man or woman of Hanno’s original crew held back, all save Artemisia.

  “What say you, Greek?” Hanno asked.

  Artemisia crossed her arms, and examined the shore.

  “Island can take a tidal wave or two. Should be fine. And the way to the ocean’s open,” she said.

  “Security is not enough. Cerne must thrive, not merely live. We shall discover the source of this ebb and flow,” Hanno announced.

  “And then what? We going home after that?”

  Hanno glanced at Liva, then forced his gaze back to the helmsman.

  “We came to settle people. They’re settled. People live with floods along the Nile, why not here?” Artemisia pressed.

  Liva leaned over the railing and asked, “Aren’t you curious where it comes from?”

  “No.”

  All eyes lingered on Hanno.

  “The mission is not yet done,” he said.

  “And you’ll tell me when it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “It will be when I say it is. Now board this vessel if you wish or linger with your wine.”

  “I might just do that.”

  “No you won’t. Because then you’ll have to return your fees.”

  “I thought you were asking for volunteers.”

  “Of my people. I’d rather you come willingly, but remember, your time, I have paid for.”

  Artemisia grumbled and spat, then climbed aboard.

  “You don’t pay me enough,” she muttered, and shouted, “Oars extend! Turn about!”

  The trireme pushed off the beach, and the oars guided them toward the river’s mouth.

  “I’m glad you’re coming,” Liva told Artemisia when they stood at positions on the stern.

  “Be glad my time is valued nowhere else but the edge of the world,” the helmsman said. She looked at Hanno. “We might get caught in another wave.”

  “I have full confidence in your skills,” Hanno said. “Take us in.”

  The Greek nodded, and shouted, “Row!”

  Into the river went the trireme. Marines stood at the ready on the shield-emblazoned rails, eyeing the shore as the waters settled into their banks. The sail remained furled. The wind offered no support, but the rowers overpowered the current.

  The trees thickened as they drew further inland. Wide-leafed ferns and dark green vines snaked along the irrigated shore. Purged in such a daily manner of its silty bottom, the trireme found plenty of depth in the river’s middle.

  All stayed quiet, waiting for the water to disappear.

  “What name do we give this river?” Hanno asked, breaking the silence from his position on the stern.

  “There is no word for a river that comes and goes every day,” Liva noted.

  “Name it after yourself then, Hanno,” Artemisia suggested.

  “Perhaps. The Hanno River it may be, if we find it worthy,” Hanno said.

  “Or if Hanno finds himself worthy.”

  “Yes, that has yet to be proven.”

  The river swept round a bend, and the trireme tilted to overcome the light rapids.

  The waters narrowed, and the oars strained. Broad branches stretched from shore to shore, threatening to canopy the ship. The forest lay still, though, uttering not a sound save the occasional chatter of a bird. No insects, no reptiles. Only overgrown soil unpopulated of movement.

  Jabnit slowed her piping beat when a wind brought a chill through the channel. The breeze-split branches opened to a wide lake.

  Glistening waters spread so far and wide that it might have been a silver plate for the gods had the trireme’s ripples not violated its surface. The sun’s reflection glimmered bright enough the crew shielded their eyes from the glare.

  “There’s enough wind for the sails,” Hanno announced.

  “Is there?” Liva asked.

  “Unfurl!” Artemisia ordered.

  Though the crosswind added to the ship’s speed, it made no impact on the heavy waters. No waves or sloshes marred the lake’s surface. Despite their unhindered rowing, the trireme went no faster than it had in the fast-flowing current of the narrow river.

  “Do you see the end of the lake, Bostar?” Hanno asked.

  “Hard to see further than the glare of the sun off the bow,” Bostar complained.

  While the lake stretched no wider than the main harbor of Carthage on its sides, it continued beyond the eastern horizon.

  “Can’t see the bottom. Depthfinder!” Artemisia ordered.

  Bostar collected the weighted rope and dropped it into the water. It descended several knots before flying out of the bowman’s hands. He stepped away from the railing, examining his reddened fingers.

  “It’s deep,” Bostar noted.

  “Did something grab it?” Liva asked.

  “It just… kept going. Fast.”

  “So long as it’s deep enough. We still going ahead?” Artemisia asked Hanno.

  “I don’t think anyone had plans to swim across the lake, so I see no need for worry as of yet,” Hanno said.

  The waters shifted from silver to onyx black with the purple twilight. Artemisia didn’t dare progress too close to the shore, but the oars had already slowed and the wind had settled with the cooling air.

  “We’ll need to find a landing spot soon,” Artemisia noted.

  “Do we trust the shores?” Hanno asked Liva.

  “May not need the shore, look!” Liva said.

  With the sun dipping behind the trees at their back, three islands appeared out of the fading glare. They formed the sides of a triangle in the heart of the lake, each larger than Cerne.

  The first was covered in gray stone, like a monolith of rock jutting out of the water. The second was hard and jagged as obsidian. The third a bare sheet of sand.

  Not so much as a bush grew upon any of them, not from shore to round, jagged shore.

  “The sand island. We make camp there,” Hanno ordered.

  “I don’t know if such an island is a natural occurrence,” Bostar warned.

  “We’re surrounded by the unnatural,” Liva noted.

  “And we can at least see everything around us,” Artemisia added.

  “We lack much choice anyway. To the sand,” Hanno commanded.

  They beached upon the low, wide island and pulled the trireme a further hundred yards inland. The ship made the progress easily, though the anchors held firm when they were hammered into the ground.

  The crew laid out bedrolls and tents, and if it wasn’t for the mirror-black waters around them some might have felt as if they’d encamped upon a desert hill.

  Hanno and Liva stood as close to the shore as they dared while meals were prepared. With torches held high, they watched the water slowly trickle away.

  “Whatever sorcery causes this… should I be more afraid of it?” Liva asked.

  Bostar whistled for Hanno to come further up the beach.

  “Hanno,” he said, and raised his torch. “Come look at this.”

  Several more marines raised their torches. A sheet of gold shimmered in the dark, vacant lake. It stretched ropelike from the island to the shore, a line of precious metal dripping in the open air. Where it connected, they couldn’t see, but it draped all the way to the black bottom.

  “It’s a net,” Liva realized. “A golden net.”

  The light reflected off more gold on the far side of the flat island, and they saw it reach to the islands of black and gray stone.

  “What sort of catch requires a net of gold?” Hanno wondered aloud.

  “Not just gold. Big,” Liva added.

  “Don’t show this to Aba.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’ll have all sorts of prayers and musings. They might not be favorable.”

  “The priestess may have good things to say about this much gold in one place,” Bostar guessed.

  “It’s a net of gold in an emptying lake. I can think of no other purpose than it being a trap for some sort of god,” Hanno explained.

  “Or a cage,” Liva proposed.

  “Perhaps it’s just ceremonial. A work of art? The flooding might be for irrigation purposes, like the Nile,” Bostar suggested.

  “Then we definitely want to keep Aba from prophesying about it.”

  Hanno gestured toward the marines.

  “You two. Make sure no one approaches the shore,” Hanno ordered.

  “I think I’m going to have trouble sleeping tonight,” Liva said.

  The sound of beasts and birds chortling on the distant shores echoed through the vacant depths. The soft sand would have pillowed the king’s head, but Hanno and the rest of the crew fought the dread their camp’s comfort failed to hide.