Soldier of the Mist

CHAPTER XXIII-In the Village

I am writing this in the courtyard of the inn. Eutaktos had been so eager to leave Thought that he did not buy provisions for the return to Redface Island. I think perhaps he believed also that he could get them more cheaply away from the city, and in that I suppose he was right. Anyway, we have halted here, and Eutaktos and some others are bargaining for food in the market. I am writing because I have not yet forgotten what took place last night, though I do not remember how I came to be among these Rope Makers.

The Milesian came to me when we halted here and said, "Let's find a wineshop. I'll repay you for what you gave me last night." I pretended to have forgotten, but he pressed me to go anyway, saying, "Basias can come with us. Then they can't say we were trying to get away."

Soon the Milesian, Basias, Io, and I were sitting very comfortably at a table in the shade; there was a jar of old wine and one of cold well water in the center of the table, and each of us had a cup before him. "You will recall that we were discussing the Triple Goddess last evening," the Milesian said to me. "At least, I hope you will. That hasn't gone yet, has it?"

I shook my head. "I can remember our camping outside this village late last night, and everything that came after that."

Io asked, "Where are we, anyway? Is this far from Advent?"

"This is Acharnae," the Milesian told her. "We're about fifty stades from Advent, which will be our next stop. It would have been a little shorter along the Sacred Way, but I suppose Eutaktos felt there was too much danger of incurring a charge of impiety." He looked at Basias for confirmation, but the Rope Maker only shrugged and put his cup to his lips.

"I've been to Advent before," Io told the Milesian. "With Latro and Pindaros and Hilaeira. Latro slept in the temple."

"Really? And did he learn anything?"

"That the goddess would soon restore him to his friends."

I asked Io to tell me about that.

"I don't know much, because you didn't tell me much. I think you told Pindaros more than me, and you probably wrote more than you told Pindaros. All you said to me was that you saw the goddess, and she gave you a flower and promised you'd see your friends soon. We were your friends, Hilaeira and Pindaros and me, but I don't think she meant us. I think she meant the friends you lost when you were hurt."

Basias was looking at me narrowly. "She gave you a flower in a dream?"

I said, "I don't know."

Io told him. "He just said she gave him one."

The Milesian spun an owl on the table as if hoping for an omen. "You can never tell about goddesses. Or gods either. Possibly a dream with a goddess in it is more real than a day without one. The goddess makes it so. That's what I'd like to be."

I was surprised. "A goddess?"

"Or a god. Whatever. Find some little place, impress the people with my powers, and make them build me a temple."

Basias told him, "You'd better put more water in that."

The Milesian smiled. "Perhaps you're right."

"Drinking unmixed wine will drive a man mad-everybody knows that. The Sons of Scoloti do it, and they're all as mad as crabs."

"Yet I've heard there are little villages along your coast where the people worship sea gods who've been forgotten everywhere else in the world."

Basias drank again. "Who cares what slaves do? Or who their slave gods are?"

Io said, "We had four Sons of Scoloti on Hypereides's ship with us, Latro. But then one left the night the sailor died and never came back."

Basias nodded. "What did I tell you?"

The Milesian spun his coin again. "Not all of them are Sons of Scoloti. Some are Neurians; there was a Neurian in the city."

"Who are they? I never heard of them."

"They live east of the Sons of Scoloti and have much the same manners and customs. At least, when we see them."

Basias poured himself more wine. "Then who cares?"

"Except that they can change themselves into wolves. Or anyway they change into wolves. Some people say they can't control it." The Milesian lowered his voice. "Latro, you don't remember how I raised a woman in the city, but one of them had opened her grave. I had planned, you see, just to produce a ghost; but when I saw that broken coffin-well, the opportunity was too good to miss."

The innkeeper, who had been lounging against the wall not far away, sauntered over to join the conversation. "I couldn't help but hear what you said about men who change to wolves. You know, we had somethin' a bit odd happen just last night, right here in Acharnae. Family sleepin' peacefully in their beds, when just like a thunderclap the place was full of I don't know what you call 'em. People talk about Sabaktes and Mormo and all that, kind of like they was a joke. These wasn't, though they didn't write their names on the walls." The Milesian said, "They vanished at dawn, I assume. I wish I might stay here another day, so I might exorcise them for those good people; my fame in that line outreaches the known world, though I hesitate to say it. But I fear the noble Eutaktos means for us to march again after the first meal."

"They're gone already," the innkeeper said. "I haven't talked to the family myself, but I know them that have, and they say a man come to the door just as they was runnin' out. He said to give him a skin of wine and he'd fix things. So they did, and he set up the figure of the three goddesses that had been knocked down and poured out a bit to each goddess. Soon as he did that, they was gone." The innkeeper paused, looking from face to face. "He was a real tall man, they said, with a scar on his head."

The Milesian yawned. "What happened to the wine? I don't suppose he poured it all out."

"Oh, he kept that. Some people are say in' he probably whistled up those whatever-they-weres just to get it. I say that for a man who could do that, he was satisfied awful cheap."

"And so would I," the Milesian drawled when the innkeeper had left. He spun the owl on the table as before. "But then, it all depends on just whom the wonder's worked for, doesn't it? When I raised the dead woman in the city, I had sense enough to take her around to some wealthy patrons before cockcrow. Most of them weren't my patrons before they saw her, to be sure. But they were afterward. Some people despise wealth, however. I do myself."

"You don't talk like it," Basias told him.

"Do you have any money?"

"I thought this was your treat."

"Oh, it is. I just want to know whether you've got any."

"Couple of obols," Basias admitted.

"Then throw them away. They're no good where we're going, or so people tell me. Toss them into the dirt there. I'm sure that fellow who just left will be happy to pick them up."

Basias darted the Milesian a surly look but said nothing.

"You see, you don't despise money. Nor do I. Wealth is stuffy and stupid and arrogant, and the only good thing about it is that it has money. Money's lovely stuff-just look at this." He held up the owl. "See how it shines? On one side the owl: the male principle. On the other, the Lady of Thought: the female principle." He spun the coin on the table. "Money always gives you something to think about."

Basias asked, "Do you know what Pausanias did after the Battle of Clay?"

The Milesian looked bored, but Io piped, "Tell us!"

"We killed Mardonius and got his baggage. So Pausanias told his cooks to cook a meal just like they would have for him and his staff. He called in all our officers and showed it to them. I wasn't there, but Eutaktos was, and he told me. Pausanias said, 'See the wealth of these people who have come to share our poverty.' "

"It's perfectly true." The Milesian nodded, still spinning his coin. "By our standards, the wealth of the Empire is incalculable. His name wasn't really Mardonius, by the way. It was Marduniya. It means 'the warrior.' "

Basias said, "I couldn't say that without wrenching my mouth."

"You'll have to learn to wrench your mouth, if you hope to get rich while you're liberating the Asian cities with Pausanias."

"Who said I did?"

"Why, no one. I said 'if.' "

"You say too much, Eurykles."

"I know. I know." The Milesian rose. "But now, if you'll excuse me, kind friends, I have to-where does one do it here, anyway? In back, I suppose."

No one spoke for a moment, then Basias said, "I'd like to go with him."

I asked why he did not.

"Because I'm supposed to stay with you. But I'd like to see what he has under all those clothes. Did you ever?"

"See him naked?" I asked. "Not that I remember."

Io said, "Neither have I, and I don't want to. I'm too little for that."

Basias grinned at her. "Anyway, you know it. Half don't. But if you change your mind, I'll show you a way."

I said, "And I will kill you for it."

"You mean you'll try, barbarian."

Io said, "Latro isn't a barbarian. He talks just as good as you do. Better."

"Talk, yes, but can he wrestle?"

"You saw him throw your lochagos."

Basias was grinning again now. "I did, and it set me wondering. Want a bout, barbarian?" He drained his wine.

"Same rules they use in Olympia-no hitting, no kicking, no holds below the waist."

I stood and took off my chiton. Basias laid his sword belt on the table and took off his cuirass, then pulled his own chiton over his head. The innkeeper appeared from nowhere with half a dozen loungers in his train. "Just a friendly bout," Basias told him.

He was shorter than by a hand, but a trifle heavier. When he extended his arm for me, it was like gripping the limb of an oak. In a moment he had me by the waist; and in a moment more, I was flat on my back in the dirt.

"Easy meat," Basias said. "Didn't anybody ever teach you?"

I said, "I don't know."

"Well, that's one fall. Three and you lose. Want to try again?"

I bathed my hands in dust to dry the sweat. This time he lifted me over his head. "Now if I wanted to hurt you, barbarian, I'd throw you into the table. But that would spill the wine."

The inn yard swung dizzily until it was where the sky should be, then slapped me as a man swats a fly.

"Two falls for me. Got anything left?"

My eyes were wet with the tears of shame, and I wiped them on the back of my arm. One of the loungers told the innkeeper, "I'll take my obol now. Why not save the time and trouble?"

Io was saying, "I'll bet you another obol," to the lounger by the time I had my knees under me.

"Bet with a child? Let me see your money. All right, but you'd be a fool if he were Heracles."

The oak limb I had imagined a moment earlier appeared before my eyes. "I can't help you up," the big man who held it rumbled. "It's against the rules. But it's not against them to take your time getting up, and you'd better do it."

I got a foot beneath me but kept one knee on the ground as I wiped my forehead.

"He's beating you by lifting you, like I beat Antaeus. You have to keep hold of him all the time. He can't lift himself."

When Basias offered me his arm again, I closed with him, gripping him under the arms as he gripped me by the waist.

"He'll try to bend you back," the man with the club said. "Twist and squeeze. Every muscle in your arm's a piece of raw hide. They're drying in the sun, pulling up. Hear his ribs creak? Dig into his neck with that sharp chin of yours."

We fell together. When I had climbed off him, Basias said, "You're learning. That's one for you. You've got to give me your arm this time."

I turned him upside down and found that his lower ribs were softer than the upper ones. His arms were no longer as hard as they had been. With one hand on his waist and one at his shoulder, I was able to get him above my head. "You didn't throw me at the table," I told him. "So I won't do it to you either."

The big man with the club pointed to the lounger who had bet with Io.

I said, "All right," and knocked the lounger off his feet with Basias.

The Milesian applauded, rapping the tabletop with his cup.

"Good!" the big man whispered. "Now let him win."