packhorses and good clothes and enough rest to make good decisions.
‘I’m afraid of the ferry,’ Melitta heard Philokles say to Theron and Coenus. He sent Theron ahead, but Theron came back with the news that, aside from outrageous rates, the ferry was safe.
‘We’ve ridden clear,’ Philokles said. He shrugged. ‘They have so much ground to cover – Eumeles can’t be everywhere.’
Theron bargained with the ferryman the way a slave bargains for fish in the agora, hectoring the man and threatening to swim the river himself on horseback until the man conceded, a copper obol at a time, and finally they were crossing with their whole train for a single silver owl. Coenus watched in silent disapproval, but his fever was so high that he couldn’t contribute much. His face said that they should be above such things.
The rain stopped while they watched the brown Hypanis flow past their broad raft. It took the effort of the ferryman, both his sons and Theron to wrestle the unwieldy thing against the current, and they had to make two trips, because the rush of water prevented the horses from swimming well.
Philokles paid down a second silver owl without being asked, and the ferryman bit it with a knowing smile.
‘You overpaid,’ Theron said.
‘He risked his boat for us,’ Philokles said. ‘And no one will follow us for a day or so.’
Theron pursed his lips. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘The river will go down if the rain stops.’
Coenus roused himself. ‘The river will go up for another day, as the water comes down from the hills.’ He pointed at the loom of the mountains to the east and south, where the foothills of the Caucasus were visible even in the clouds.
‘And I put a cut in the pull rope,’ Philokles said with a shrug. When Theron glared, Philokles shrugged again. ‘I paid for the rope. And he was an arse-cunt.’
They were another day riding to the sea at Gorgippia, a small town that owed allegiance to no one. The town existed to make fish sauce for the Athens market and not much else, and the smell hit them ten stades away. In the harbour, vats of fish guts gave vent to a stench so strong that the twins gagged and breathed through their mouths.
‘Poseidon!’ Melitta swore. ‘I can taste it on my tongue!’
Satyrus was glad to see her make a joke. It had been a quiet ride.
Philokles was on edge from the moment they entered the town, but there were no boats in the harbour except local fishing craft, and after some careful probing in wine shops, he grew more confident.
‘No one has been here,’ he said. He shook his head. ‘Eumeles may have given up.’
Coenus was gasping like a man suffocating. Philokles remounted and supported his friend. ‘He needs cool baths and a doctor,’ he said.
Normally, a party of gentlemen would look for the richest house and try to arrange guest-friendship. Normally, the children of the Lady Srayanka would have had no trouble finding lodging. But Philokles didn’t want to show his hand yet. He took them to the best of the waterfront wine shops and paid a few obols for some beds in a wooden barn behind the drying sheds. The straw was clean, and the smell of animals was refreshing compared to the overpowering odour of rotting fish.
Coenus went to sleep the moment he was off his horse.
‘That is a tough man,’ Theron said.
‘He thinks he’s a pompous aristocrat, though,’ Philokles said. He had a clean, wet linen towel, and he wiped the Megaran’s face. ‘He’s far gone, Theron.’
Theron put his head down on the bigger man’s chest and listened, and then felt this wrists. ‘We need to change his bandages,’ he said. ‘I doubt that there’s much that a doctor can do that we can’t,’ he said to Philokles. Eight days of rain and silent children had caused them to pool their knowledge about many things, and they had each other’s measure.
Coenus didn’t wake up as the two men and the twins rolled him over, sat him up and unwrapped the bandages. The cut that went high across his ribs looked better, with new pink flesh along the dark red line of the scab.
The lower cut that had, as best they knew, not quite penetrated his guts, was infected along its whole length, the skin inflamed above and below the line of the wound and two long tendrils of angry red tissue like the trailing legs of a squid. There was pus at the ends of the wound.
Theron put his head down and smelled the wound, and shook his head. ‘Wet and dry and wet and dry for eight days? It’s a miracle that he lives. Apollo’s arrow is doing him more damage than the original wound – the infection is deeper than when we crossed the ferry. Send the children to make a sacrifice to the golden archer, and let you and I do what we must do.’
Satyrus knew, even as a queen’s son, when he was being dismissed so that adults could do adult things. He bowed and caught his sister’s hand. ‘We’ll find a temple,’ he said.
They walked out of the barn into the first sun they’d seen since the fight at the river. Hand in hand, they walked along the smooth pebbles of the beach that gave the town its existence. If it hadn’t been for the smell of fish, the place would have been pleasant. As it was, it was like Tartarus.
‘The smell will kill him,’ Melitta said. ‘I’ve read it – it is a miasma, and it will choke his lungs.’
‘Let us go and make a sacrifice,’ Satyrus said.
Melitta nodded, head high to hide tears. Then she said, ‘Do you believe in gods, brother?’
Satyrus glanced at her and squeezed her hand. ‘Lita, I know things are bad – but the gods-’
She pulled at his hand. ‘Why would gods be so childish?’ she asked. ‘Satyrus, what if Mama is dead? Have you thought about it? If she is dead – it is all gone. Everything. Our whole lives.’
Satyrus sat on a wooden fish trap. He pulled her down next to him. Then he put his head in his hands. ‘I think about it all the time – round and round inside my head.’
She nodded. ‘I think Mama is dead.’ She looked out to sea. ‘There’s been something missing – something gone-’ She lost her battle with tears and subsided into his shoulder.
Satyrus wept with her, clinging to her. They wept for a few minutes, until the tears had no point, and then they both stopped, as if on cue.
‘Coenus is still alive,’ Satyrus said.
‘Our father’s friend,’ Melitta added. They got up together. Hand in hand, eyes red, they walked up the shingle towards the town, such as it was.
Behind them, a long triangular sail cut the horizon.
They found the Temple of Herakles two stades outside of town, on a small bluff that looked over the bay and seemed free of the smell. It was the only temple that the town had, and the priestess was old and nearly blind, but she had a dozen attendants and a pair of healthy slaves. She received them on the portico of the temple, seated on a heavy wooden chair. Her attendants gathered around her, sitting on the steps.
Satyrus thought that she looked friendly, but she scared him too. It was Melitta who first gathered the courage to speak.
‘We need to make sacrifice for a friend who is sick,’ Melitta said. They were still holding hands, and they bowed together.
‘Come here, child,’ said the crone, raising her head to look at them around her cataracts. ‘Handsome children. Polite. But unclean. You are both unclean. At your age!’ She sniffed.
Satyrus bowed his head. ‘Unclean, despoina?’
She gripped his right hand in hers, and he felt the bite of her nails in his palm. She raised it to her nostrils. ‘I can smell blood even through the fish sauce, boy. You killed. You have not cleaned yourself. And your sister – she too has killed.’ She raised her head again, and smoke from the temple brazier behind her rose in a fantastic curl behind her head like a sign from the god.
Satyrus made the satyr’s head sign with his left hand to avert misfortune. ‘How may I become clean?’ he asked.
She tugged at his hand. ‘You are a gentleman, I can see that. Where are you from?’
He didn’t want to resist her tug. He looked into her eyes, but the cataracts made them hard to read. He felt a rush of fear. ‘We – we come from Tanais,’ he said.
‘Ahh,’ she said, as if satisfied. ‘And how do a pair of children come to me soaked in blood?’
‘Men tried to kill us,’ Melitta said. ‘Bandits. We shot them with bows.’
