the other side. Europe-Europa. Europa-Hypereides. So who're you going to buy your leather from when the war's over?'
'You, sir, I promise.' But I was looking at the ships and thinking I could never have seen anything made by men half so lovely, though they smelled of tar and lay on their sides like three beached logs. I said, 'If Europa the woman was as slender and graceful as your ships, it's no wonder the Thunderer ran away with her. Any man would want to.' I did not want him to guess I could not remember who the Thunderer might be.
Hypereides had put his helmet on, pushed back so the visor seemed the bill of a cap. Now he took it off again to rub his head. 'I've always thought she must have been on the weighty side, myself,' he said. 'I mean, what sort of woman would a god want to turn himself into a bull for? Besides, he carried her on his back, and his choosing a bull's shape for that makes it appear cargo was a consideration.'
He laid his arm across my shoulders. 'It's quite wrong, my boy, to think that for a woman to give you pleasure she has to be as lissome as a lad from the palaestra. When we get back home, I'll introduce you to a hetaera called Kalleos. Then you'll see. Besides, a girl with some flesh on her is easier to catch; when you get to be my age you'll appreciate the importance of that.'
While we stood looking at the ships from a distance, the black man had run down to them and poked about. As Hypereides spoke of the hetaera, he came leaping back to squat before us, pointing with his chin to the ships and the sparkling sea and making many little marks in the sand with his fingers.
'Look there,' Hypereides said. 'This fellow's seen the barbarian navy. Both of you must have, because you were with their army, and their ships followed it clear around the Water.'
'Were there really so many?' I asked him.
'More than a thousand, and that's not counting the traders that carried food for the troops, or the special ships the Great King had built for his cavalry horses. Why, in the Strait of Peace you couldn't see the water for blood and wreckage.'
He squatted beside the black man. 'Here's the Long Coast. Right here's Tieup, where my old warehouse stood before they burned it; Megareos, my manager, is captain of Eidyia now. The man I had on Ceos has Clytia.
'Tieup's where our navy was before it went up to Artemisium. Here's the island of Peace over here, and here's Peace. We only had about three hundred ships, and we beached 'em in these three bays on the island the night before. Mine were in this bay here-all our city's were. You can keep a trader at sea half a month, my boy, but a warship has to touch land nearly every night, because there's so many aboard you can't carry enough water for 'em.'
I said, 'I see.'
'Themistocles was with the navy, and he had a slave of his swim the channel and demand an audience with the Great King. This slave said Themistocles had sent him, which was true enough, and Themistocles wanted to be satrap of the Long Coast. Then he warned the Great King that our navy was going to slip off the next day to reinforce Tower Hill.' Hypereides chuckled. 'And the Great King believed it, too. He sent all the ships from Riverland around to the other end of the bay to cut us off.
'Then the strategists-mostly Themistocles and Eurybiades the Rope Maker, from what I've heard-sent the ships from Tower Hill to make sure the Riverlanders, over there, didn't come up behind us. A lot of people in the city still think the ships from Tower Hill deserted, and you can see why: the rumor the slave started, and then their leaving the rest of the fleet.'
The black man pointed with his chin, and I saw a sailor striding up the beach toward us. Hypereides conferred with him for a moment, then told us to return to this tent. 'I'm putting you on your honor,' he said. 'I don't want to have to keep you two chained like the others, but if you try to leave, I'll have to do it. Understand?'
I told him I did.
'But you'll forget-I forgot that.' He turned to the sailor and said, 'Stay with them until I send somebody to relieve you. I don't think you'll have any trouble; just don't let them wander away.'
He is with us now; his name is Lyson. He asked whether Hypereides had told me about the Battle of Peace. I said he had begun but had been called away, and I was eager to hear the rest.
Lyson grinned at that and said Hypereides had taken us to see his ships the day before as well and had recounted the events of the battle while we looked at them. Lyson had been whittling pegs then and had heard most of it. 'He took you to see the other prisoners too, because he wanted to ask them questions about you. The little girl gave you that book, and Hypereides let you keep it; and he let that fellow have a knife like mine because he showed he wanted to whittle.'
I asked why these other prisoners were kept chained when we were not.
'Because they're from Cowland, of course. But you, you're Hypereides's ideal audience, one he can tell his stories to over and over.' Lyson laughed.
I said, 'I suppose the crews of all three ships are making fun of me.'
'Oh, no. We've got too much to do for that. Anyway, we're mostly laughing at Hypereides, not at you. And we wouldn't laugh at him if we didn't like him.'
'Is he a good commander?'
'He worries too much,' Lyson said. 'But yes, he is. He knows a lot about winds and currents, and it's good to have somebody on a ship who worries too much. He's an able merchant too-that's why we were sent here-and so he gets good food for us cheap and doesn't stint as much as most of them.'
'It seems strange to have a merchant commanding warships,' I said. 'I'd think a horseman would do it.'
'Is that how it would be in your own country?'
'I don't know. Perhaps.'
'In Thought we keep the horsemen on their horses where they belong. But listen here, if you weren't lying to Hypereides and you really don't know where you're from, you've only to look for a city where a horseman would be put in charge of warships. It's someplace in the Empire, I suppose.'
I asked where that lay.
'To the east. Who'd you think we were fighting in the Strait of Peace, anyway?'
'The Great King, so Hypereides said.'
'And the Great King rules the Empire. You were in his army. We've got your sword and pot-lids now. How'd you think you got that wound?'
I shook my head and somewhere found the memory that had once been painful to do so, though it was no longer. 'In a battle. Other than that, I don't know.'
'Of course not, poor stick. Somebody ought to look at it for you, though. Those bandages are dirty enough to beach on.'
The black man had been listening to us, and though he did not speak, he seemed to understand what he heard. Now he said by signs that if he were allowed to, he would take off my bandages, wash them (vividly pantomiming how he would scrub them on a stone and beat them with another), dry them in the sun, and replace them.
'Ah,' Lyson said, 'but if I go with you, this one'll wander off.'
The black man denied it, clasping my hand and saying by signs that he would not leave me, nor I him.
'He'll forget.'
The black man cocked his head to show he did not understand the word.
Lyson pointed to his own head and traced the ground with his finger as though writing or drawing, then smoothed the imaginary scratches away.
The black man nodded and pretended to draw too, then with his finger indicated the course of the sun across the vault of heaven, and when it had set rubbed the drawing out. 'Ah, it takes all day.'
The black man nodded again and unwound my bandages, and the two of them went off together, fast becoming friends.
As for me, I finished the reading of this scroll I had earlier begun. Now they have returned, and I write but feel I know less than ever. So many strange things-events I cannot credit-are described here. So many people are mentioned whom I have forgotten. Surely Io was the little girl who gave me this yesterday; but where are Pindaros, Hilaeira, and Cerdon? Where is the serpent woman, and how did the black man and I come to be where
