We had Scythian guards. Now that I know the Sakje better, I suspect that few, if any, were actually Sakje. They were probably a rabble of Persian bastards, half-Medes, half-Sakje and Bactrians. Scum. But armed scum, soldiers with bows.
They didn't do a lot, except prevent escape and punish us if we hurt each other too much. After all, we were worth money. But they watched us with the lazy, amused contempt of the better man for the worse. All free people know they are better than slaves. Slaves have no honour, no beauty, no dignity, nothing that makes them worth knowing. Why? It's all taken from them with their freedom, that's why. The ones who might have had dignity kill themselves.
They watched us for entertainment. They loved it when we fought, and they would wager money on their favourites.
One old fellow had wagered money that I would live. I figured it out from listening to him argue – he felt that I'd already beaten the odds. So the first day that I decided to eat, when I grabbed bread from the trough and stuck it in my mouth, and when a bigger man hit me with his fist, I kept eating.
I took a blow to the head, and my nose broke, and blood sprayed.
I kept eating.
Then the cage opened and the old Sakje waddled in and kicked my tormentor in the head.
I ate his food, too. While he lay unconscious, I ate it all.
The next morning, he was groggy. I ate his food again. His partner, one of the boys who had pissed on me, hit me in the face, where my nose had been broken, and I vomited from the pain. Then I picked up my bread and ate it. Disgusted yet?
In the evening, I felt better, despite the inflammation of my whole face. I got to the food trough and waited.
When the bread loaves began to fall into the trough, I waited for the food melee to begin and then I punched the biggest boy in the ear. Down he went. Once he was down, I kicked him in the head and took his bread. While I ate, I kicked him again and hurt my foot.
The next morning, the other slaves gave me space at the trough. My guard laughed when he saw me. Later I heard him demand payment, but the other soldier told him I would be dead before the end of the day. He said this in Ionian Greek, a variant on our language – well, you know, honey. And this fellow you brought with you grew up with it, so I won't bore you with how it still sounds alien to me now.
It didn't take long to realize that my two tormentors were planning to kill me. Murder was not so infrequent in the slave pens. I watched them from under my hair – my lank, filthy hair, full of bugs – and saw they were together. I had united them. Or perhaps they were allies before my coming, although, as I say, such alliances are rare for slaves.
Of course, they were waiting for my Scythian to go off duty.
I watched them, and I waited, and I tried to plan. But I was still wounded, and I was still weak, and they were bigger and tougher and there were two of them.
I was beginning to think of attacking them – if only to get it over with while my Scythian was on duty – when the cage opened and a priest came in. He was fat, and clean, and his eyes were sharper than Deer Killer.
Six of the archers came in behind him. He began to gesture with his staff, and the men and boys he pointed out were taken.
I was the last to be chosen.
Someone was purchasing a packet of slaves – ten or twelve in a single lot. I was being used to make weight, which meant that somebody was getting swindled. I was as likely to die as live.
Slave traders. The very lowest form of life, eh?
We were fettered together by the necks and wrists and marched off up the road. I had no idea where I was, and no idea where I was going, and I didn't care. I had already surrendered. I might not have broken yet, but I was breaking, because I had no one to talk to and no one to care about. I plodded along behind another man, as close as if we were file-mates in the phalanx, and I didn't know his name.
On the other hand, neither of the boys who had wanted me dead were in the purchase. I was going to live, if I could just get through the walk to wherever we were going.
I had thought that the trip over Parnes was the hardest thing I would ever do, marching with all the weight of my brother's armour, but this was far tougher, although the pace was gentle enough. I was touched with the whip only once – for falling – and otherwise we were fairly treated.
We walked some stades. Perhaps my fever was still on me, but I scarcely remember a moment of it. I knew we were by the sea, or perhaps a great river. I assumed we were in Euboea.
For the first time, I wondered how I had come to be a slave, when none of the other men were Plataeans or even Athenians. And as far as I could remember, we were winning the battle when I fell. But that made no sense.
The farther I walked up a long river valley in the brilliant noon sun, the more unlikely it was that I was in Euboea. For one thing, except for the old bridge, Euboea is an island. It has neither great mountains nor a huge river. I was walking along a great river, deep enough to carry a warship with three tiers of oars. It flowed out of a pair of mighty mountains in the purple distance, or so it seemed when I raised my head and looked around.
When we stopped at a well and the guards paid silver for water, the people were small and brown. Not much browner than I was myself, but brown with that flawless skin that marks Lydians and Phrygians – not that I knew that then. And of course our guards were Scythians. I'd seen Scythians in pictures, and Pater had fought some, and Miltiades had fought thousands and run away from others – a story he loved to tell.
As we walked, and my thigh throbbed, I saw that there were trees I didn't know, and the goats were different.
I kept walking. What could I do?
We walked up that valley for a day. I've ridden the distance in an hour – the guards must have had orders to go easy on us – but I never expected to live.
We had a meal of gruel and bread in a village on the flank of a mountain, still above the beautiful river. I squatted next to the safest-looking male.
'Are we in Asia?' I asked.
He looked startled when I spoke. He chewed bread, and his eyes flicked around as he considered his answer. Finally, he nodded. 'Yes,' he said. He pointed up the valley, where something winked like fire. 'Ephesus,' he said.
I was such a bumpkin that I had never heard of Ephesus. 'What's Ephesus?' I asked.
'You are a fool,' he said. And turned his back.
We walked on in the cool of the evening, and before true night fell, we were in the streets of a city more beautiful than anything I had ever seen in Boeotia or Attika. The streets were paved in grey stone. There was a temple that rose from the peak of the acropolis over the town, and it was made of marble. It looked like a house of the gods, and the roof was gold – that was the 'fire' I had seen ten stades away. The houses were brick and stone, every one of them bigger than anything at home. Water flowed from springs through fountains.
It was like a mortal going to Olympus. I had never seen anything like it, and I gaped like the barbarian I was.
The people were tall and handsome, and they looked like Greeks – dark hair, straight noses, fine-breasted women and strong men, with a proportion with fairer skin and red and blond hair. They were taller and more handsome than Boeotians, but not a different race.
I felt even dirtier.
The guards moved us carefully from square to square so that we didn't offend the citizens as they strolled through the cool evening air. But several men and at least one woman stopped to look at us.
Women in Boeotia seldom leave their own farms. I was not used to seeing a half-clothed woman in her prime gawping at slaves and mocking the guards. I stared at her.
She turned and stared back, and then her hand moved and she tried to strike me. I moved my head.
The man with her stopped. He was examining the older man who had called me a fool. Now he turned and looked at me. He was even taller than the other tall men, with the muscles of an athlete and the chiton of a very rich man.
He looked at me for a moment and then threw something at me.
