farmhouses that feed us each year.'
Pindaros shook his head. 'We're on our way to Lebadeia, and we must put a good many stades behind us today if we're to reach the sacred cavern tomorrow.'
Hilaeira's violet eyes flashed. 'You're on a pilgrimage?'
'Yes, we've been ordered to go by the oracle of the Poet God. Or rather,' Pindaros added, 'Latro has, and a committee of our citizens has chosen me to guide him.'
'May I go with you? I don't know what's happened-you certainly don't want to hear about my personal life- but I've been feeling very religious lately, much closer to the gods and everything than I ever did before. That's why I attended the bacchanal.'
'Certainly,' Pindaros told her. 'Why, it would be the worst sort of beginning if we were to deny a devotee our protection on the road.'
'Wonderful!' She sprang erect and brushed his lips with hers. 'I'll get my things.'
I put on this chiton and these back and breast plates, and took up the crooked sword and the bronze belt I found with them. Io says the sword is Falcata, and that name is indeed written on the blade. There is a painted mask too; Io says the priest gave it to me yesterday, when I was a satyr. I have hung it about my neck by the cord.
We have stopped at this house to eat cakes, salt olives, and cheese, and to drink wine. There is a seat here where I can spread this scroll across my knee in the proper way, and I am making use of it to write all these things down. But Pindaros said a moment ago that we must soon go.
Now there are swarthy men with javelins and long knives coming over the hill. CHAPTER V-Among the Slaves of the Rope Makers
It is the custom to beat and abuse captives. Pindaros says this is because the Rope Makers despise their slaves but count us as equals, or at least as near to equals as anyone who is not a Rope Maker can be.
Me they beat more than Pindaros or the black man until we found the old man sleeping. Now they do not beat me. They do not beat Hilaeira or her child much, either; but both weep, and they have done something to the child's legs so that she can scarcely walk. When my hands were freed, I carried her until we halted here.
A moment ago a sentry took this scroll from me. I watched him, and when he left the camp to relieve himself I spoke to the serpent woman. She followed him and soon returned with my scroll in her mouth. Her teeth are long and hollow. She says she draws life through them, and she has drunk her fill. Now I must write of the earliest things I remember from this day, before they too are lost in the mist: the brightness of the sun and the billows of soft dust that lifted with each step to gray my feet and my legs too, as far as my knees. The black man walked before me. Once I turned to look back and saw Pindaros behind me, and my shadow, black as the black man's, stretched upon the road. I was beaten with a javelin shaft for that. The black man called out, I think telling them not to strike me, and they beat him also. Our hands were bound behind us. I feared they would strike my head because I could not protect it, but they did not.
When the beating was over and we had walked a few steps more, I saw an old black man asleep near the road, and I asked Pindaros (for I knew his name) if they would bind him like the black man with us. Pindaros asked what man I meant. I pointed with my chin as the black man does, but Pindaros could not see him, because he lay half-concealed in the purple shade of a vineyard.
One of the slaves of the Rope Makers asked me what man it was I spoke of. I told him, but he said, 'No, that is only the shadow of the vines.' I said I would show him the sleeping man if he would allow me to leave the road. I spoke as I did because I thought that if the old black man awakened he would wish to aid the black man with us and might tell someone of our capture.
'Go ahead,' the slave who had spoken to me said. 'You show me, but if you run, you'll join our friends. And if there's nobody there, you'll pay for them again.'
I left the road and knelt beside the sleeping man. 'Father,' I whispered. 'Father, wake up and help us.' Because my hands were tied, I could not shake him, but I dropped to one knee and nudged him with the other as I spoke.
He opened his eyes and sat up. He was bald, and the curling beard that hung to his belly was as white as frost.
'By all the twelve, he's right!' the slave who had come with me called to the rest.
'What is it, my boy?' the old man asked thickly. 'What's the trouble here?'
'I don't know,' I told him. 'I'm afraid they're going to kill us.'
'Oh, no.' He was looking at the mask that hung about my neck. 'Why, you're a friend of my pupil's. They can't do that.' He rose, swaying, and I could see that he had fallen asleep beside the vineyard because he had drunk as much as he could hold. The black man gleams with sweat, but this fat old man shone more, so that it seemed there was a light behind him.
To the slave who had come with me, he said, 'I lost a flute and my cup. Find them for me, will you, my son? I've no desire to bend down at the moment.'
The flute was a plain one of polished wood, the cup of wood also; it lay upon its side in the grass not far from the flute.
Several of the slaves of the Rope Makers crowded around staring. I believe the black man was the first such they had ever seen, and now they had seen two. One said, 'If you want to keep your flute and cup, old man, you'd better tell us who you are.'
'Why, I do.' The old man belched softly. 'I do very much indeed. I am the King of Nysa.'
At that the little girl piped, 'Are you the Kid? This morning a priest said the Kid was the King of Nysa.'
'No, no, no!' The old man shook his head and sipped twilight-hued wine from his cup. 'I'm sure he did not, child. You must learn'-he belched again-'to listen more carefully. Otherwise you will never acquire wisdom. I'm sure he said my pupil was the King from Nysa. King of Nysa, King from Nysa. You see, he was put into my hands when he was yet very young. I tutored him myself, and he has rewarded me'-he belched a third time-'as you behold.'
One of the slaves laughed. 'By giving you all the wine you wanted. Good enough! I wish my own master would reward me like that.'
'Exactly!' the old man exclaimed. 'Precisely so! You're a most penetrating young fellow, I must say.' It was then I noticed that Pindaros stood with head bowed. The oldest slave said, 'That's a nice flute you have, old man. Now hear my judgment, for I command here. You must play for us. If you do it well, you can keep it, for it offends the gods to take a good musician's instrument. If you don't play well, you'll lose it, and get a drubbing besides. And if you won't play at all, you've had your last carouse.' Several of the others shouted their agreement.
'Gladly, my son. Most gladly. But I won't flute without someone to sing to my music. What about this poor boy with the broken head? Since he found me, may he sing to my fluting?'
The leader of the slaves nodded. 'With the same laws. He'd better sing well, or he'll screech a lively tune when we thwack him.'
The old man smiled at me, his teeth whiter even than his beard. 'Your throat will be clogged with the dust of the road, my boy. You'll need a swallow of this to clear it.' He held his cup to my lips, and I filled my mouth with the wine. There is no describing how it tasted-as earth, rain, and sun must taste to the vine, I think. Or perhaps as the vine to them.
Then the old man began to flute.
And I to sing. I cannot write the words here, because they were in no tongue I know. Yet I understood as I sang them, and they told of the morning of the world, when the slaves of the Rope Makers had been free men serving their own king and the Earth Mother.
They told too of the King from Nysa and his majesty, and how he had given the King of Nysa to the Earth Mother to be her foster son, and to the Boundary Stone.
The slaves of the Rope Makers danced as I sang, waving their weapons and skipping and hopping like lambs in the field, and the black man and Pindaros, and the woman and the child danced with them, because the knots that had bound them had been only such as little children tie, knots that loosen at a shaking.
At last the song died at my lips. There was no more music.
Pindaros sat with me for a time beside this fire, while the rest slept. He said, 'Two of the lines of the prophecy were fulfilled today. Did you remember?'
I could only shake my head.
