I got a cushion for the woman and a long one for Io and me. As I put them down before the regent, I could hear Basias talking to the sentries outside.
'You too, Pasicrates,' the regent said, and his messenger seated himself upon a cushion at his right hand.
'Eurykles, tell me why you gave Artabazus that advice.'
'Because it was the best I could give,' the woman said. She paused to gather her thoughts. 'War is only the last recourse of politics; it has no sure victories, or so I think. A king who fights when he might gain his ends by a cupful of wisdom and a handful of gold is a fool.'
The regent smiled. 'You believe your Great King a fool?'
'The Great King was gone. Mardonius was a good soldier but a stupid man. If Artabazus had been in command… '
'If Artabazus had been in command, what then? What of the Hellenes? You're one, as you just reminded us.'
'You'd be ruled by men of our race, just as you are now, and as our cities in the lesser Asia are. What difference would there be? Why should ten myriads die?'
'You know of others who think as you do? In Thought?'
'I'm certain such men exist.'
'You're careful. So am I.' The regent glanced at Io and me. 'Let me suggest to all three of you something you may not have noticed. Perhaps I should say let us suggest it, because I've talked to Pasicrates and he feels as I do.'
The woman leaned toward him, her fingers playing upon her cheek. 'Yes, Highness?'
'We are four men whose interests run so close they're indistinguishable. Let me speak of Rope and this whole country first. We Rope Makers are the finest soldiers in the world, and the Great King knows that now. But men who know war know it's no game; a wise man dodges it if he can, just as you said. As for glory, my uncle Leonidas won enough at the Gates to the Hot Springs to last our family till Tantalus drinks-I say nothing of my own battle. An honorable peace, then, is our only desire.'
The woman called Eurykles gave the slightest of nods, her eyes fixed upon the regent as a serpent transfixes a bird.
'Our country is divided into so many warring cities no one can count them all, or no one has bothered. Every clutter of huts on the mountainside makes its own laws, issues its own currency, and fields its tiny army to crush its tiny neighbor. Clearly, what we need is union under the noblest of our cities, which by a happy coincidence happens to be my own.'
'By a coincidence even happier,' the woman said, 'I have before me a member of the elder royal house of that city, who is in addition its most renowned living leader.'
'Thank you.' The regent nodded graciously. 'Unfortunately, our city is not strong enough to unite all the rest. More, it is not rich enough. I have often thought that if only we had found the silver, instead of Thought, or if we had seized the treasury of Croesus… ' He shrugged and let the words trail away. 'But suppose we had the help-or at least the threat-of additional troops. Cavalry, let us say, because there's so little here. With that threat and gold enough to make gifts to farsighted men, a great deal might be done.'
The woman nodded. 'It might indeed.'
Pasicrates murmured, 'Highness, do you think you should speak in this way before the child?'
'Speak in what way? Say that I seek an honorable peace with the Great King and a position for Rope commensurate with its virtues? She may repeat that to anyone she may meet.'
Io said, 'I won't repeat anything. I don't do that, except for telling Latro. But you said all our interests went together.'
'Your master is fortunate in his slave; I've seen that already. As for our interests, let's take Eurykles here first. We'll get to you in a moment. Eurykles serves the Great King, as he admitted a moment ago. More directly, he serves Artabazus. He wishes to be rewarded for his work, like any other man. The Great King wants to recover the prestige he lost here and to add to his glory. Peace and union under a leader grateful to him-'
The woman said, 'Would be all he could desire, Highness, I'm sure. Someone who has the king's ear would have to be consulted, naturally.'
'Naturally. Now as to you, child. Your city is allied with the Great King already, and as your friend Pindaros told you, it would have been destroyed but for my own city and my acts in its behalf. Isn't it clear that anything that helps your strongest friends helps you?'
Io shook her head. 'To tell the truth, I don't care about my city. I care about Latro.'
I said, 'Who is a soldier of the Great King's. You think I'm an idiot because I forget, Prince Pausanias, and perhaps I am. But I've always known that, even when I did not know my name.'
CHAPTER XXVIII-Mycale
A place of which most, I think, had never heard before is now on everyone's lips. The combined fleets of Thought and the Rope Makers have given the barbarians another terrible defeat there. Some say this was on the same day as the great battle in which I was wounded, others that it must surely have been after it, for it could not have taken so long for the news to reach us. To this the first reply that a ship may be delayed for any time one chooses by storms and contrary winds, and that the news came first to Thought, and only subsequently to us from there.
Io said, 'Oh, I hope the black man's all right. I know you don't remember the black man, Latro, but he was your friend even before Pindaros and me. When they brought you to the temple, he was with you.'
I asked her, 'Do you think he was in that battle?'
'I hope not, but he probably was. When Hypereides sold you to Kalleos, he kept the black man. And Hypereides was going to take his ships back to the fleet.'
'Then I hope the black man is safe, and Hypereides dead.'
'You shouldn't be like that, master. Hypereides wasn't a bad man. He got us out of that dungeon in Tower Hill, just by talking, and he let Pindaros and Hilaeira go when the law said he should.'
But before I write of these recent matters, I should write of earlier things, which may soon be lost to me in the mist I cannot drive from the back of my thoughts. The regent has put us in the care of his messenger, who sent his slaves to bring our possessions and Basias's tent. He showed us where his own stood, near the regent's, and told us to put up Basias's beside it. I did not think I recalled how a tent should be erected; but when I had spread everything upon the ground, the steps came to me each in turn. Io crawled beneath the oiled linen and held up the poles, and she enjoyed that so much I took three times longer about the whole business than I should.
A sword Io says is mine was with Basias's clothing in a scabbard hung from a belt of manhood. I put it on and felt better at once; a man without weapons is a slave. Io says Kalleos let me wear it when I was hers, and perhaps that is why I did not feel resentful toward her, as Io swears I did not.
Then Basias's slaves came, cowering because they thought themselves to be beaten. They had been gathering firewood when Pasicrates's slaves had come, and they had discovered what had befallen their master's baggage with great difficulty. I explained that their master was ill and ordered them to have such food as sick men eat ready for him.
That was wise, because slaves soon brought Basias in a litter. With them was an old man who told us he was Kichesippos the Messenian, but who speaks as the Rope Makers and their slaves do, making the ox long. Basias's arm was swollen and black, and it seemed to me that he was in a dream, sometimes hearing what we said, sometimes deaf to it, sometimes seeing what we could not see. Perhaps that is how I seem to others; I do not know.
Kichesippos told Basias's slaves, 'Your master has been bitten by a viper, and from the breadth between its fangs and the severity of his reaction, by a larger one than I have ever seen. I have cut his wounds and drawn forth the poison as well as it can be done. Do not attempt to do that a second time; after the first, it is useless. Let him rest, see that he is warm, feed him if he will eat. Give him all he wants to eat and drink. By the favor of the
