Hieron smiled. He snapped his fingers and started into the courtyard. Marcus' guards escorted him after the king, and the officers trailed behind, scarlet cloaks flapping and gilded armor gleaming.
The king mounted his white charger, and with a blast of trumpets the gates of the Euryalus were thrown open. Hieron rode out first, followed by the officers in a spearhead formation, and Marcus found himself walking between his guards behind the royal horse, enclosed by the bright splendor of the mounted officers. After him came the Syracusan battalion, marching in close formation to the sweet call of the flute, the points of the long spears on their shoulders glittering in the sun, their shields a moving wall emblazoned endlessly with the sigmas that denoted their city.
Behind a horse and between two stocky guards, Marcus could not at first make out much of the scene before him, but as they descended from the heights, the road bent and gave him a clear line of sight, and he saw that the Roman army had indeed returned to Syracuse. A new camp had been laid out in the flat fertile land to the south of the plateau: a neat rectangle fortified by a ditch, bank, and palisade. A patch of crimson and gold before it caught his eye, and then a horseman only a little way down the hill. Then they rounded the bend, and the view was obscured by the sleek rump of Hieron's horse.
A few moments later the horseman he'd noticed trotted up the hill and fell in beside the king. Marcus saw that he was a herald, his status marked out by the gilded staff he was carrying across his knees, its length carved with intertwined serpents. Heralds were under the protection of the gods, and it was sacrilege to harm one. They could pass freely between hostile armies. This one must have been sent out earlier to arrange the parley.
'He was reluctant,' the herald told Hieron, his voice almost drowned by the sound of the march.
'But he agreed?' asked the king.
'He could hardly refuse,' replied the herald. 'That's him, down at the front there. But he asks that you be brief.'
'Lord,' said one of the officers, driving his horse closer to the king's, 'is it wise to ride right up to them?'
The king turned to him with a look of gentle reproof. 'They don't break truces,' he said. 'That's one of their good points. Claudius may burn to kill me on the spot, but he's well aware that if he did, his own people would punish him for disgracing the Roman name and for offending the gods. They're very superstitious. We're quite safe as long as we keep the truce ourselves.' He rode on at an easy walk.
Marcus followed, now feeling distinctly frightened. Appius Claudius, consul of Rome, was reluctantly and impatiently waiting for Hieron just down the hill. Marcus had always resisted any inclination to be impressed by rank, but a consul was the embodiment of the majesty of Rome, which he had been brought up to honor above all else. Being impressed by Claudius left him ashamed of himself. He glanced down at his tunic of unbleached linen, which had not been clean even before he wore it for a continuous week in prison, at his dusty legs and worn sandals. Stubbled from prison and in chains, he was going to interpret for a king before a consul. He looked up at Hieron's purple-cloaked back again, and realized that the king had probably chosen to have him looking as he did, chosen it to humiliate Rome. I am king of Syracuse. Here is a Roman citizen. He should never have forgotten the king's subtlety. Still- something was owed for mercy.
They came down from the hills, and there on the road before them were the horses of the opposing party. Behind the gold and crimson of the consul's party blazed the standards of the legions, and perhaps ten maniples stood behind them, drawn up in neat squares, one behind another as far as the wall of the palisade, which itself was lined with onlookers. The herald lifted his staff and trotted ahead, and the king's party rode unhurriedly after him, drawing rein at last when they were at a normal speaking distance. Hieron gestured for Marcus' guards to bring him forward, and from the king's side Marcus looked up shamefacedly at Syracuse's enemy and his own ruler.
Claudius, like Hieron, rode upon a white charger and wore a purple cloak. His breastplate and helmet were gilded and shone in the sun. To either side of him stood the lictors appointed to carry out his every order, red- cloaked and holding the bunch of rods and axes that symbolized his power to punish or to kill, and behind him on their own mounts sat the tribunes of his legions, cloaked in Phoenician crimson and armored in gold. Marcus gazed at them with a dry mouth. They seemed to him faceless, entirely defined by their own majesty.
'Good health to you, consul of the Romans!' said Hieron. 'And to you also, men of Rome. I asked to speak with you this morning concerning those of your people whom we have taken prisoner.' He touched Marcus' shoulder with his foot and added softly, 'Translate!'
Marcus started, then hurriedly interpreted the king's words, shouting so that they would carry as far as possible.
Claudius' face darkened, and Marcus noticed for the first time what the consul actually looked like- a large man, with a heavy-jowled, fleshy face; only the nose stood out from it, a knife edge of bone. 'What's this?' demanded the consul, in Greek, glaring directly at Marcus.
'One of those prisoners,' said Hieron. 'He speaks fluent Greek, and I have brought him to interpret for me, so that your officers may all understand what I say as well as you do yourself, O consul of the Romans. I have noticed in the past that their grasp of our language does not often equal your own.' Again his foot touched Marcus' shoulder.
Marcus began to translate, but Claudius at once bellowed, in Latin, 'Halt!' Marcus stopped, and Claudius glared at him for a moment, then said to Hieron, 'He is not needed.'
'Do you not want your men to understand me?' asked Hieron, in a tone of mild surprise. 'Surely you do not wish to keep from them news of their friends and comrades?'
Marcus glanced at the faces behind the consul, and saw there a look of uneasiness and dissatisfaction: the Roman officers might not speak Greek as well as the consul, but they understood enough, and they were not happy that Claudius wanted to keep the fate of the prisoners a secret from the common soldiers. Claudius must have realized, because he scowled, then said, 'I have nothing to keep from my loyal followers. Have the man interpret, if that is what you want, Tyrant. But he is not needed.'
Hieron smiled. Marcus was all at once certain that Claudius had just made a bad mistake.
Hieron began speaking quickly and clearly, pausing after every phrase to allow Marcus to shout out his translation. 'When Fate delivered some of your people into my hands, O Romans, it was my intention to return them to you quickly. I waited for you to send a herald to ask me what ransom I required, but you sent none. Indeed, you left Syracuse during the night, and left your people in my hands. Do you not care for them, O Consul?'
Claudius drew himself straight and glared at Hieron. 'When Romans make war, Tyrant of Syracuse,' he declared in Latin, 'they accept the risk of death, and meet it bravely. Those who do not are no true men, and are not worth ransoming. However, as you may have heard, we have besieged and sacked the city of Echetla, your ally, and if you wish we will exchange the women of Echetla for our own people. The men we have killed.'
'What does he say?' Hieron asked Marcus. Marcus hurriedly translated, wondering about Echetla. It lay to the northwest of Syracuse, and was indeed a Syracusan dependency, though to call it a city was to exaggerate the scale of the action: it was a fortified market town, no more, and had had no chance against a large Roman army. The Romans had undoubtedly been angry when they attacked it, furious over their losses before Syracuse and in no mood either to negotiate or to show mercy. He imagined the desperate defense, and the massacre of all the men able to bear arms, and felt sick.
'I had intended to ask no ransom for your people, Consul of the Romans,' said Hieron reproachfully. 'Like Pyrrhus of Epirus, at whose side I once fought, I would have returned them without fee. Like him, I honor the courage of the Roman people.'
As Marcus translated this, for the first time a ripple of whispers spread out through the Roman ranks: men who'd heard what he said were repeating it to those who stood farther back. The mention of King Pyrrhus, Marcus thought, was well made: the Romans respected him more than any other enemy they had faced.
'Then return them, Tyrant, without so much talk!' snapped Claudius. 'And we will keep the Echetlans as our slaves.'
Hieron paused so that his next words would not be obscured, then replied, 'As for the Echetlans, I will ransom them, O Consul, if you will name a price. But as for your own people, your answer has made me hesitate. I have treated my prisoners with all the respect due to brave enemies. They have been well fed and housed, and my own doctor has tended their wounds. Before you left here, though, I saw that you obliged their surviving comrades to pitch their tents outside your camp, and now it seems that you place little value upon the men I hold, since you reckon them equal to slaves. How have they offended you?'
'They lack courage,' replied the consul harshly. 'They surrendered. We Romans are not like you Greeks. When
