Authors: Gene Wolfe
This town is called Pactye; it is on Helle's Sea. When I was unrolling my old book—because I wished to find how I came to own a slave—I found a passage recounting an oracle of the Shining God in which he told me:
But you must cross the narrow sea.
A short time ago I asked Lyson (he is one of the sailors) whether Helle's Sea was narrow. He says it is very narrow. I asked then if there was a sea narrower still somewhere, but he does not think so. He said also that we have never crossed it, but only sailed up its western coast. He says that the eastern shore is governed by a satrap of the Great King's, and we would be captured or killed if we crossed.
Nevertheless, I think that this is the sea I must cross if I am to be healed as the Shining God seems to have promised me. Here is something else I wrote (I know the hand is mine) in that book:
Look under the sun if you would see!
Since I am not blind and have no wish to be a mantis like Hegesistratus, it must mean to see the past. That is the thing I cannot do; yesterday and all the days behind it seem wrapped in mist. I asked Io whether she, too, was blinded by mist when she tried to look back. She said that the mist was there only when she tried to remember the years when she was small; that seems strange to me, for they are the only ones I have not lost.
Hegesistratus the mantis is forty or a little younger; he limps and has a curly beard. His wife, Elata, is very lovely—wanton, too, I think. He never leaves her unless he must, and then my slave watches her for him. Since I have no need of her now, I have no reason to object.
It was Io who told me most of the things I know about these people. She is my slave, of eleven or twelve, I would guess. I should ask her how old she is; surely she must know. I think she must be somewhat tall for her age, and her little face is lovely; her long brown hair looks almost black.
There is a black man, too. He is my friend, I think, but I have not seen him since we tied up. He spoke with Hegesistratus in a foreign tongue and went to the market with the others. But when Hegesistratus returned, with Elata and Io, this man was not with them. He is tall and strong, his hair curls more even than Hegesistratus's beard, and his teeth are large and very white; he is about my own age, I would say.
Our trierarch is Hypereides. He is a hand's breadth below my height, bald (as I said), and exceedingly lively, talking and hurrying here and there. I polished his armor before we docked, and he wore it when we landed. It is very good armor, if I am any judge; and perhaps possesses a spirit, for when I polished it, it seemed a tall woman with a shining face stood behind me, though when I looked, she was not there.
I should mention also that I have a sword. Hypereides had me wear her when we went ashore. I did not know where she was, but Io showed me this chest (I am sitting on it) and my sword was in it. She is a fine one with a leather grip and a bronze guard, and hangs from a bronze belt such as men wear. FALCATA is written on her blade in the characters I use. It was while I was getting her that I found my old scroll in this chest.
Hypereides told us the Apsinthians' land lies north and west of the Chersonese. That is good, because it is farther from the Empire; but bad, too, since we cannot reach it in our ship without sailing back down Helle's Sea in the direction we have come and rounding the tip of the peninsula.
Little Io wanted to know what Oeobazus was doing among the barbarians. Hegesistratus shrugged and said, "He may not have gone there freely. If you force me to guess, my guess is that he was captured and carried there—the barbarians in this part of the world are forever fighting, raiding, and murdering each other, and robbing and enslaving anyone who ventures too near their territory without an army the size of the Great King's. But all I actually know is that I came across a barbarian who swears that another barbarian—a man he knows well and trusts—told him the Apsinthians have such a captive."
Our captain pushed away his greasy trencher. "But you can learn more, can't you? Can't you consult the gods?"
"I can consult the gods indeed," the mantis acknowledged. "How much the gods will tell me..." He completed his sentence with another shrug.
"Just the same, we shouldn't make any definite plans until you do. What'll you require?"
While they talked about that, Elata showed me the bracelet that Hegesistratus had bought her. It is Thracian work, or so she said. The gold is crudely yet cleverly shaped into bunches of grapes and grape leaves, from which peep two eyes with blue stones at their centers; and the whole is bound together by the twining grape tendrils. Io says it reminds her of the big tree half-smothered under wild vines at the place where Hegesistratus found Elata, though I could not remember the place even when I studied the bracelet.
Hypereides said, "Go with them, Latro. Do as Hegesistratus tells you."
I was surprised, not having paid a great deal of attention to their talk; but I stood up when Hegesistratus did. Smiling as she drained her wine, Elata asked, "Are we to come, too?"
Hegesistratus nodded. "There is a sacred grove near the city; we will use that." To Hypereides he added, "Are you sure you do not want to be present?"
"I wish I could—not that I'd be of much help, but because I'd like to know as much as possible as soon as I can. But if we're going to sail around Cape Mastursia, there's a lot I have to attend to first."
"Your absence may affect the result," the mantis warned him.
Hypereides rose. "All right, I'll join you later if I can. A sacred grove, you said? Who's it sacred to?"
"Itys," Hegesistratus told him.
As we left the cookshop for the wet streets of Pactye, Io asked, "What did you and Hypereides do, master?" I described our morning (we had visited officials and haggled with chandlers, mostly, and on several occasions I had run back to the ship with messages), and asked about hers. She told me she and Elata had gone shopping while Hegesistratus talked with various barbarians around the marketplace. "There are Crimson Men here," she said, "the first ones I've seen since we left the Great King's army. Hegesistratus says they're waiting for the ships from Thought to leave Helle's Sea so they can sail home." Her bright black eyes discovered an open door, and she pointed. "There's some right there. See them?"
I did, four swarthy men in embroidered caps and beautifully dyed crimson robes arguing with a cobbler. One of them noticed that I was looking at him and waved.
"Babut!"
I answered,
"Uhuya!"
and waved in return.
"What did you say to him?" Io asked.
"My brother,"
I told her. "It's just a friendly greeting you give someone you're on good terms with, particularly if you're in the same trade, or both foreigners in the same place."
She looked up at me intently. "Master, can you speak the language of the Crimson Men?"
Hegesistratus halted momentarily and glanced back at us.
I told Io that I did not know.
"Well, think about it. Pretend I'm a Crimson Man—one of their daughters."
"All right," I said.
"Over there, see that big animal? What is it?"
I told her,
"Sisuw."
"Sisuw."
Io was delighted. "And—and him back there. What do they call him, master?"
"The boy in the colored cloak?
Bun
or—let's see—
nucir."
Io shook her head. "No, I meant the old man. I didn't even see the boy. Where is he?"
"He's seen that we see him," I explained. "But he's still watching us around the corner of that cart. He's probably just curious."
"I think that you really can talk the way the Crimson Men do, master. At least a little bit, and maybe pretty well. I know you can't remember, but one time you told me that
Salamis
means
peace."
I confirmed that it does.
"So I ought to have known already from that," Io said, "and it's something I'm going to have to find out a lot more about." Despite what she said, she has not asked me any more questions concerning that language; nor did she even speak again, I think, while the four of us walked the ten stades or so to the sacred grove, contenting herself with silently chewing a lock of her hair and often looking behind her.
At the city gate Hegesistratus bought a little wine and a pair of pigeons in a wicker cage, remarking that they would make us a good meal after our sacrifice. I asked him how one read the entrails of such birds. He explained that it is really not much different from reading the corresponding organs of a heifer or a lamb, save that the shoulder bones are not consulted; but that he did not intend to divine in that fashion today. I then asked how he would question the gods, and he said that I would do it for him. After that I asked nothing more, because the girl who sold us the pigeons was still near enough to overhear us.
The leaves of the grove have turned to gold, and most have fallen. It must be a lovely spot in spring, but today it seemed forlorn. Nor do I think that Itys receives frequent sacrifices from the people of Pactye— surely they would build him a temple, if he did. When I poked among the ashes of the last fire before his altar, I found them soaked to mud by the autumn rains.
"But we must have fire," Hegesistratus declared. He gave me a coin and sent me to a house from which smoke rose to buy a torch.
"Don't many people come between now and the good weather," the untidy old woman I found cooking there declared as she tied a double handful of dirty straw around a long stick of kindling for me. "And mostly them that does come wants me to give their fire to them for nothing."
I assured her that she would be rewarded by the gods for such a pious act, and mentioned that having given her money, I expected my straw to be well doused with oil.
"You mean lamp oil?" The old woman stared at me as though it were a foreign commodity practically unheard of in this part of the Chersonese. "No use wasting
lamp oil
on this—why, I've got you some nice grease here that will burn every bit as good. Well, I don't give away much fire for nothing, I might as well tell you. Not unless they're kin to me." She paused, brushing back her straggling gray hair. "Once I did last year, though, because of how the poor mother was all by herself and crying so. Are you the one that's lost your child, young man? How old was it?"
I shook my head and told her that I did not think any of us was missing a son or daughter.
"That's what everybody comes for, mostly—children strayed or dead. Dead, mostly, I suppose. When there's lots of people, they get their fire from each other, naturally."
Her grease was old enough to stink, but it took fire with a roar when she thrust the end of the torch into the flames under her pot. I inquired about Itys, whose name was not familiar to me, and she told me that he had been eaten by his father.
The sailors are talking excitedly among themselves—-I am going over to ask them what has happened.
EIGHT
The Europa Sails at Dawn
THE KYBERNETES TOLD ALL THE sailors that he will cast off as soon as it is light enough to see, and Hypereides sent Acetes and his shieldmen into Pactye to collect those who have not yet returned. When the ship puts out, I do not think that Io and I will be aboard—or the black man, either. I should ask about that when I have finished writing.
The sailors say the Crimson Men's ship has slipped out of the harbor. Earlier this year Pactye was ruled by the Empire, and Crimson Men traded here freely, they having been subdued in the same fashion. Now the Great King's armies have withdrawn, and the citizens of Pactye do not know whether their city is to be independent (as it once was), or subject to Parsa or another place. When Hypereides and I conferred with the councillors, they warned us that there must be no fighting with any of the people of the Empire while we were here, for fear Pactye would suffer for it later. Hypereides promised there would not be; but now that the Crimson Men have left the harbor, they are fair game; and since they spent the summer trading around the First Sea and the Euxine, they should be carrying a rich cargo. The sailors say that if the Crimson Men merely cross Helle's Sea to some port still in the hands of the Great King (Paesus being the most probable place), we can do nothing. But if they try to run down Helle's Sea and along the coast to return to their homes in Byblos, there is a good chance that the
Europa
will catch them. A trading vessel such as theirs can sail by night as well as by day, while
Europa
will have to anchor almost every evening to take on fresh water. But a trireme like
Europa
is a much faster sailer; and when a fair wind is lacking, it can be rowed faster than any trader can sail.
Now I must write about the boy. Hegesistratus, Elata, and Io had laid a small fire while I was gone, using the driest wood they could find. I lit it, and as soon as it was burning well Hegesistratus told us the legend of Itys, son of Tereus, who was a king of Thrace.
This King Tereus was a son of the War God and an enemy of Hill. Thus when Hill went to war with Thought in his time, he came with an army to the support of Thought. There he wooed and won Princess Procne, the daughter of King Pandion. When the war was over and her husband returned to Thrace, she accompanied him and there bore him Prince Itys. All went well until her sister, Princess Philomela, visited the court; Tereus fell madly in love with her and, after picking a quarrel with Queen Procne, banished her to a remote part of his kingdom.
When Princess Philomela resisted his advances, he arranged that it should be reported that Queen Procne had lost her life during an incursion by a neighboring tribe. Believing that she would become his queen, Philomela submitted; but in the morning Tereus cut out her tongue to prevent her from revealing what had taken place, for he did not wish the succession of Prince Itys, whom he loved as dearly as a bad man can love a son who bears his face, endangered by a son borne by Philomela.
The maimed princess was then sent home to her native city. Although this occurred before the age of letters, it does not seem to me that the loss of speech alone can have kept her from telling others what had been done to her, for such things might readily have been communicated by gestures, as the black man talks with me; and surely her father and many others must have wondered to find she could no longer speak. But how many women who have tongues, similarly wronged, have held their peace from shame! Doubtless Philomela, cruelly forced to silence, felt as they did.