Soldier of Arete (5 page)

My heart told me he was right.

"Io has told me that you see the gods already. So do I, at times."

I confessed I had not known I did.

"Often I would be happier if I could forget what I have seen as quickly as you do." Hegesistratus paused. "Latro, I think it likely that Tisamenus, who hates me, has charmed you. Will you permit me to break his charm, if I can?" He swayed from side to side as he spoke, as a young tree may sway in a breeze that is strong yet gentle. He held up both his hands, their fingers splayed like the petals of two flowers.

Now, though I recall what he asked me, I do not remember my answer. He is gone, and the small knife I brought to sharpen my stylus is smeared with blood.

FIVE

Our Ship

THE
EUROPA
SAILED FROM SESTOS today, when the sun was already halfway down the sky. We could have gone much earlier. Our captain, Hypereides, found one thing wrong, then another, until at last the lame man who seems ill came aboard. Then there was no more such faultfinding.

We rowed out of the harbor. It was hard work, but pleasant, too. Once we were well into Helle's Sea, we hoisted sail; with this blustering wind in the west, there is no need to row. The sailors say the eastern bank is the Great King's, and should the wind blow us too near it we will have to row again. As I began to write this, we passed three ships of the same kind as ours. They were returning to Sestos, or so it appeared, and had to row. With all their oars rising and falling, they seemed six-winged birds flying low over the wintery sea.

Io came to speak with the black man and me. She warned me many times that this scroll will fall to bits if it becomes wet; I promised as many times to put it away in my chest as soon as I have finished writing. I asked about the man with the crutch. She said that his name is Hegesistratus, that the black man and I know him (the black man nodded to this), and that she has been nursing him. They have laid him aft beneath the storming deck, where he is out of the wind—he is asleep now. I asked what his illness is, but she would not tell me.

The kybernetes has been going down the benches talking to the sailors. He is the oldest man aboard, older I think than the lame man or Hypereides, small and spare. Much of his hair is gone; what remains is gray. He came to our bench, smiled at Io, and said that it was good to have her on board again. She told me we once went around Redface Island on this ship, but I do not know where it lies. The kybernetes made the black man and me show him our hands. When he had felt them, he said they were not hard enough. Mine are very hard—I can see I have been doing a lot of manual work—but he said they must be harder than they are before I can row all day. We will have to row more, he said, so that we will be ready for it if ever we must row for our lives. Io told me he is an old sailor who knows more about ships and the sea than Hypereides, although Hypereides knows a great deal. Hypereides paid for this ship (because the Assembly of Thought made him); thus he is our captain. I said he seemed a clever man to me—perhaps too clever. She assured me that he is a very good man, though he knows a great deal about money.

I should say here that the black man and I have the upper bench on the port side. It is an upper bench, Io says, so that we can sit together, and it is near the prow because the best rowers are at the stern, where all the others can see them and take the beat from them. The black man, who sits nearer to the sea, is a thranite—a "bench-man." I am a zygite— a "thwart-man." This is because the black man rows against the parodos, which is like a balcony hung from the side of the ship. I row against the thwart, or rather against a thick peg in it. When the ship is under sail, men can be stationed on the parodos to keep the ship from heeling too much; but when we row, anyone who walks along it must step over the looms of the thranites' oars.

I should say also that the men below us are thalamites. It means "inside-men," I believe. Their oars pass through holes in the side of the ship, and there are greased-leather boots around their looms. One of the sailors was punished earlier (I do not know for what reason). The shield-men bound him to a thalamite bench with his head out the oar hole. He must have felt as if a bucket of cold seawater were being thrown in his face each time he drew breath. He looked repentant enough, and cowed enough, when they untied him.

The black man was gone for a while. When he came back, I asked where he had been, but he would only shake his head. Now he sits staring at the waves. There are leather curtains along the railing to keep out spray, but they do not come as high as our heads.

We came to shore to spend the night here, hauling our ship onto the beach. We built fires to warm ourselves and to cook on—there is plenty of driftwood—and I am writing by the light of one now, while everyone else is asleep. This fire was nearly dead, but I have collected more wood. A moment ago one of the sailors woke, thanked me, and went back to sleep.

There is a tent for Hypereides, the kybernetes, Acetes, and Hegesistratus. If it rains, we will make more from the sail and the battle sail; but now we sleep beside these fires, rolled in our cloaks and huddled together for warmth. When I asked where we were going, Io said to Pactye, where the wall is.

I woke and saw a woman watching our camp. The new moon was high and bright, so that I could see her quite clearly, standing just beyond the shadows of the pines. Two of Acetes's shieldmen were on guard, but they did not see her, or at least did not pay heed to her. I got up and walked toward her, thinking that she would vanish into the shadows when I came too close, but she did not. I cannot have lain with a woman in a long time; there was a tremor in my loins like the shaking of the sail when we tried to steer too near the wind. There are no women on our ship save for Io.

This woman was small and grave and very lovely. I greeted her and asked how I might serve her.

"I am the bride of this tree," she said, and pointed to the tallest pine. "Most who come to my wood sacrifice to me, and I wondered why you—who are so many—did not."

I thought I understood then that she was the priestess of some rural shrine. I explained that I was not the leader of the men she saw sleeping on the beach, but that I supposed they had not sacrificed because we had no victim.

"I need not have a lamb or a kid," she told me. "A cake and a little honey will be sufficient."

I returned to the camp. Tonight the black man, Io, and I ate with the four in the tent, the black man having prepared our food; thus I knew that Hypereides had honey among his stores. I found a pot sealed with beeswax, kneaded some of the honey with meal, water, salt, and sesame, and baked the dough in the embers of the fire. When both sides of the cake were brown, I carried it to her, with the honey and a skin of wine.

She led me to the foot of the pine, where there was a flat stone. I asked her what I should say when I laid our offerings there. She said, "There are rhymes men use, and others favored by their wives and daughters; but all of them have forgotten the true way, which is to present what is offered without speaking a word."

I set the cake on the stone, poured a little honey on it, and set down the pot of honey beside it. Opening the wineskin, I poured some on the ground.

She smiled and sat down before the stone with her back to the bole of the tree, broke off a piece of the cake, dipped it into the honey, and ate it. Bowing, I offered her the skin of wine; she took it from me and drank deeply of the unmixed wine, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and motioned for me to sit across from her.

I did, believing I knew what would soon come, but unsure how I might bring it about, since the altar stone lay between us. She returned the skin to me, and I swallowed the hot wine.

"You may speak now," she said. "What is it you wish?"

A moment before I had known; now I knew only confusion.

"Fertility for your fields?" She smiled again.

"Have I fields?" I asked her. "I do not know."

"Rest, perhaps? We give that as well. And cool shade, but you will not want that now."

I shook my head and tried to speak.

"I cannot take you to your fields," she told me, "that lies beyond my power. But I can show them to you, if you like."

I nodded and sprang up, extending my hand to her. She rose, too, the wineskin upon her shoulder, and took it.

At once bright sunshine covered the world. The trees, the beach, the ship, and the sleeping men all vanished. We walked over furrows of new-turned earth in which the worms yet writhed. Before us went a man with grizzled hair, one hand on the plow, an ox goad in the other. Over his bent back, I saw a garden, a vineyard, and a low white house. "You may speak to him if you like," the young woman said, "but he will not hear you." She took another swallow from the skin.

"Then I will not speak." I wanted to ask her then whether these fields were indeed mine, and if so why the old man plowed them; yet I knew they were, and that the garden, vineyard, and house were mine as well. I even guessed that it was my father who plowed.

"It will be a good harvest," she told me. "Because I am here."

I asked her, "How did you do this? Why can't I stay?"

She pointed to the sun, and I saw that it was almost at the horizon; already the shadows were long. "Do you wish to see the house?"

I nodded and we went there, passing through the vineyard on the way. She plucked some grapes and ate them, putting one into my mouth. It tasted sweeter than I had thought any grape could, and I told her so, adding that the sweetness must have come from her fingers.

"It is not so," she told me. "These grapes taste sweet to you because they are your own." In the thick shadows under the vines I could see stars reflected in water.

Something that was neither ape nor bear crouched beside the doorstep, hairy and uncouth, yet possessing an air of friendship and goodwill, like an old dog that greets its master. Its eyes held golden sparks, and when I saw them I remembered (just as I remember now) how I had seen them dance about the room once when I was small. This hairy being did not move as we approached it, though its golden eyes followed us as we passed.

The door stood open, so that we entered without difficulty, though I felt we would have passed through it just as easily if it had been barred. Inside a kettle bubbled on the fire, and an old woman sat with her arms upon an old table and her head upon her arms.

"Mother!" I said. "Oh, Mother!" It seemed to me that the words had been snatched from my throat.

"Lucius!"
She rose at the sound of my voice and embraced me. Her face was aged now, lined, and streaked with tears; yet I would have known it at once anywhere. She clasped me to her, weeping and repeating,
"Lucius, you're back. You're back! We thought you were dead. We thought you were dead!"

And all that time, although my mother held me in her arms as she had when I was a child, I could see across her shoulder that she slept still, her head cradled in her arms.

At last she kissed me and turned to the young woman saying,
"Welcome, my dear! No, you must welcome me if you will, and not me you. This is

my son's house, not mine. Am I—are my husband and I—welcome here?"

The young woman, who had been drinking from the skin while my mother and I embraced, swayed a trifle but nodded and smiled.

My mother rushed to the door, calling,
"He's back! Lucius is home!"

The plowman did not turn, guiding his plow and thrusting at one of his oxen with the long, iron-tipped goad he carried. The sun had touched the muddy fields; I could see our beached ship in the darkness at the bottom of the furrows, so that it seemed that this farm, lit by the dying rays of the sun, hovered over a benighted world that the toe of the plow had reached.

"We're going now," the young woman said thickly. "Aren't we going to make love?"

I shook my head, one arm around my mother and my other hand clutching the frame of the kitchen door. They melted as clotted honey does, warmed in one's mouth.

"Well, I do," she said.

The last glimmer of sunshine faded, and the air grew cold. Through dark boughs I saw the sea, our dying fires, and the ship lying on the beach. The young woman pressed her lips to mine; I felt then that I drank old wine out of a cup of new-turned wood. Together we sank to pine needles and fern.

Twice I lay with her, weeping the first and laughing the second time. We drank more wine. I told her that I loved her while she vowed she would never leave me, each laughing at the other because both knew we lied and that our lies were without harm and without malice. A rabbit blundered into the moonlight, fixed us with one bright eye, exclaimed,
"Elata!"
and fled. I asked if that was her name, and she nodded while drinking deep from the skin, then kissed me again.

Far off at first, then nearer and nearer, I heard the sound of dogs coursing deer. Vaguely I recalled that many who by some ill stroke of fortune have found themselves in the path of such a hunt have been torn to bits by the hounds. I wished then that I had put on my sword before I carried our offering to the tree. Elata was sleeping with her head in my lap, but I rose—nearly falling—with her in my arms, intending to carry her to one of the fires on the beach.

Before I could take a step, there was a crash of splintering limbs. A stag bounded from the shelter of the shadows, saw the fires (or perhaps only winded the smoke), and sprang back, nearly knocking me down. I could hear its labored breathing, like the bellows of a forge, smell its fear.

Elata stirred sleepily in my arms as the stag dashed away, and the baying of the hounds sounded closer than before; I set her on her feet, intending to lead her to the fires. She kissed me and pointed, announcing with drunken solemnity, " 'Nother man coming to see me from your ship."

SIX

The Nymph

ELATA RETURNED A MOMENT AGO, pleading with me to extinguish this fire. I would not, though the rest are only embers. I know she has lain with Hegesistratus, and after that, I believe, with one of Acetes's shieldmen. Now she has washed in the stream where we draw our water; but when I suggested that she dry herself at my fire, she seemed afraid and asked me to put it out, kissing and begging while one hand crept under my chiton.