'But for nothing I will tell you they are picked men, taking their instructions directly from the regent.'
'I knew that as soon as young Hippagretas told me you had said the regent's aide was aboard.'
I asked whether Nausicaa would be taken on the slip today. 'Ah!' Corustas winked. 'You can talk after all. But you know nothing about all this.'
'No,' I said. 'Nothing.'
'You think a woman can get more and is less likely to be tortured. You're wrong on both counts. To answer your question, whether the ship crosses the isthmus today or never depends on the message I send our slipmaster. That in turn depends on what we say here.' He looked back to Drakaina. 'Five owls for the true destination.'
'One word only.'
'Agreed, but no tricks.'
'Sestos.'
For a moment I thought the strategist had fallen asleep. His eyes closed and his chin dropped to his chest. Then he opened his eyes again and straightened up.
'Yes, isn't it?' Drakaina said.
'And a dream told him to do it?'
Drakaina rose, knotting the six silver owls into her robe. 'We really should go. The child wants to see your city from the summit.'
'One more for the dream.'
'Come, Io. Latro.'
'Three.'
Drakaina did not sit down again. 'The dream-'
'Who was it? The Huntress?'
'The Queen Below. Had it been the Huntress, I wouldn't be telling you these things. She promised him that the fortress would fall soon after the young men arrived, and the regent believes her implicitly. Now you know all I do.'
As Corustas counted out three more owls, he asked, 'Why the Queen Below? It should have been the Warrior, or perhaps even the Sun.'
Drakaina smiled. 'A strategist, and you've never seen the fall of a city? Believe me, there's little enough drill or light then, but a great deal of death.'
Outside, she asked the bearers whether the lochagos had paid them, and when they said he had, ordered them to carry us to the temple at the summit. They protested that they had been paid only to bring us up from the city and return us to the place where they had found us. Drakaina said, 'Don't trouble me with your impudence. We've been conferring with Strategist Corustas, and if you won't earn your money like honest men, he'll have you whipped in the marketplace.' After that they did as she told them.
The temple was small but every bit as lovely as it had looked from below, with slender marble pillars and elaborate capitals; its pediment showed a youth offering an apple to three maids.
When the bearers were out of earshot, Io whispered, 'You didn't tell him about Latro. I thought you were going to.'
'Certainly not. Suppose Corustas had decided to keep him here? Do you think the regent wouldn't have guessed someone talked? And that it was you or me? Now have a look at the view; I told Corustas you were going to.'
Io did and so did I, feeling the sea breeze would never be so pure again as it was today, nor the sun so bright. The white city of Tower Hill spread in two terraces below us. Its gulf, stretching away to the west like a great blue road, promised all the untouched riches of the thinly peopled western lands, and I felt a sudden longing to go there.
'By all the Twelve, that's Nausicaa!' Io exclaimed. 'See, Latro? Not on the skid, but waiting to get on. Notice her cutter bow?'
Drakaina smiled. 'Quite the little sailor.'
'The kybernetes taught me when we sailed with Hypereides. And I talk to our sailors too, instead of holding my nose in the air.'
A jeweled and scented woman with golden bells in her hair passed us, jingling as she turned her head to smile at Drakaina; she carried two live hares by the ears.
CHAPTER XXXVI-To Reach the Hot Gates
A ship can follow either of two courses, as our captain explained. He is a white-haired old man, fat, and stiff in all his joints, but very knowing of the sea. When he saw I did not understand, he sat on a coil of rope and drew the coast on the deck for me with a bit of chalk.
'Here's the skid where we went across.' He drew as he spoke. 'And here's Water and Peace.'
Io asked, 'Does that name [Salamis (Gk.???????). Latro translates the Phoenician root. -G.W.] really mean 'peace'? That's what Latro says. It seems like there's been so much fighting there.'
The captain looked far away, out over the dancing waves. 'Because in the old times it was agreed with the Crimson Men there'd be no raiding on the island. In the old times-my grandfather's times-everybody took what he could, and there was no shame to it. A ship came to a city, and if her skipper thought his crew could take it, he tried. If you met a ship that could beat yours, you ran, and if you didn't run fast enough, you lost it. A man knew where he stood. Now maybe it's peace, and maybe it's war, and you don't know and neither does he. Last year the Crimson Men were the best in the Great King's navy. I mean the best sailors-the Riverlanders were the best sea fighters. And the Crimson Men would have fought on Peace if they could have landed. The old promises don't count, and the new aren't lived up to.
'Kings used to look for places where both wanted the same. Then they'd make an honest bargain and keep it, and if they didn't, they'd be disgraced, and punished by the gods, and their people too. Now it's all trying to get the advantage by tricks. What's the use of a bargain, when the other man's not going to keep it as soon as he sees it's a trick?'
Io pointed. 'Thought must be right about here.'
'That's Tieup. Thought's up here on the hill. I don't go there much any more. We're way past all that anyhow. Here's where we are.' He continued the coast to the north, then made a long mark beside it. 'That's Goodcattle Island, a great place for sheep. With a regular crew, we'd be going wide of it; there's a narrow channel, and the wind's from the north, mostly. But with all these stout lads to pull the sweeps, there's no reason to, as the noble Pasicrates says. We'll spend the night at the Hot Gates, and he can make his sacrifice. There's nothing like a fair wind, but the ash wind blows whichever way you want.'
By 'the ash wind' he meant the sweeps, long oars that one or two pull standing up. There are twenty on each side, and I took my turn at one with the men of Rope. It is hard work, and it blisters the hands; but it is made easier by singing, and it strengthens the whole body. My head cannot remember for long, but my arms, back, and legs do not forget. They told me they had been wasting in idleness and desired to strive with the blue giant; so I did, and laughed to see men (who so often make poor beasts serve their will) rowing the bawling bullock tied to our mainmast across the sea.
None of these things are of much importance, perhaps, but they are the first I remember; thus I write them, having waked from my dream.
Only eighty could be used at the sweeps, and we have more than four hundred, with Pasicrates and myself and the crew, a number that let all of us rest far longer than we rowed. When the sun was halfway to the hills on our left, a wind rose behind us. The crew hoisted both sails, and we ported our sweeps.
Pasicrates proposed wrestling matches, there not being room enough on the deck for any sport but wrestling or boxing. A lovely woman called Drakaina came to watch, taking a place close beside me. She has a purple gown and many jewels, and the Rope Makers moved aside for her very readily; she must be a person of importance.
Sniffing the wind, she said, 'I smell the river-that air has crocodiles in it. Do you know what they are,
