by Gene Wolfe
I said, "But if the key is in the chest, who can unlock it? I'm going into the city with Drakaina."
"Master, the Maiden sent you here. You don't remember, but I do. She said you'd find your friends here. If you go inside, it might not work. Besides, I'll have to come with you. I belong to you, and I have to remember things for you."
Drakaina hissed, "Certainly not!"
"I agree. I won't risk her life like that. Io, I'll bring you to me later if I can."
Io pointed, no doubt to distract me. "There's a lake!"
"No," Drakaina told her. "That's the strait."
In a few moments we were there. As Io had indicated, the strait was no wider than a small lake-we could watch men working on the wharves of the city on the opposite shore-and though it joined the horizon to the northeast, to the southwest we saw what appeared to be its termination. As we looked over the water, a trireme appeared there as if born of the rocky coast and, beating six white wings, seemed to fly along the waves as it came to join the others blockading Sestos.
Io said, "If this goes to the sea, I'm surprised they don't land the supplies here. It would be a lot safer."
I said, "It would be a great deal more dangerous, if that coast to the east still acknowledges the rule of the Great King."
Pasicrates had been studying the scene in silence. Now he said, "It was here, little Io, that the brave Leander swam from shore to shore to visit his beloved. I see you know the story."
Io nodded. "But he drowned one night, and she threw herself from the top of the tower. Only I didn't know this was the place."
Pasicrates favored her with his bitter smile. "I'm sure that if you were to go into the city, they'd point out the precise tower-her bloodstains in the street too, very likely."
"It doesn't look so far. I bet I could swim it."
I cautioned her, "Don't try. Haven't you noticed how fast that ship's coming? There must be a strong current."
Drakaina added, "You may try for all I care, Io; but your master's correct, and there are frequent storms as well. Pasicrates, you too were thinking that where one swam, another may swim, weren't you?"
The Rope Maker nodded slowly.
"But swimmers could carry only daggers. A dozen shieldmen would be more than a match for a hundred of them."
"I wasn't thinking of storming the city with swimmers," Pasicrates told her. "I was wondering how Xanthippos gets his information." He turned on his heel and started back the way we had come.
Drakaina said, "The lovely Helle drowned here too, giving her name to the place, when she fell from the back of the Golden Ram. These are dangerous waters, you see." She smiled at Io as a stoat might smile at a starling, though I sensed she was trying to seem kind.
"I don't know that story," Io said. "Would you tell me about the Golden Ram, please?"
"With pleasure. It belongs to the Warrior, and it lives in the sky between the Bull and the Fish. Remind me on some clear night, and I'll point it out to you. Once, long ago, it came to earth to interfere in the matter of two children, Phrixos and Helle, who had become a burden to their stepmother, Ino. No doubt the Warrior had planned to make Phrixos a hero, or something of that kind. Ino's called the White Goddess now, by the way, and she's an aspect of the Triple Goddess. Anyway, the Ram was determined to frustrate her, so it got itself a golden coat and joined the children as they were playing in a meadow, promising them a ride on its back. As soon as they were on, it sprang into the air, and at the highest point of its leap, right here, Helle fell off and drowned as I told you."
Io asked, "What happened to her brother?"
"The Ram carried him to Aea, at the east end of the Euxine, thinking he'd be safe there. After putting in a good word for him with the king, it hung its golden coat in a tree and returned to the sky. I was a princess in Aea-"
"Wait a minute! I thought this was hundreds and hundreds of years ago."
"We live many different lives," Drakaina told Io, "in many different bodies. Or at least some of us do. I was a princess in Aea, and a priestess of Enodia just as I am now. I told my father quite truthfully that the goddess said he would be killed by a stranger. Since Phrixos was the only stranger around, that did for him. And I set my pet python to guard the golden fleece. Then-"
We had caught up with Pasicrates, who had stopped to examine one of the ramps the men from Thought were building. It was of earth, with logs laid in crisscross layers to reinforce it. "Childish," he said.
I ventured that it looked well constructed to me.
"Yes? How would you continue it when it nears the wall? It must be highest of all there, and the defenders will rain down stones and spears upon your head. Burning pitch too, perhaps."
"I'd assign a shield bearer to each workman," I told him. "A hoplon's big enough to protect two men from stones and spears from above. For that matter a strongly roofed wagon could be used to move the logs, and much of the work could be done from inside it with the floorboards taken out. And I'd station every archer and slinger I had about halfway from here to the wall to make my enemies think twice about showing themselves to throw stones and spears. They could only form a single line along the parapet there, but my archers and slingers would be able to form four or five lines, so that for every missile of theirs we'd return four or five."
Pasicrates stroked his chin and did not answer.
We soon came to just such a roofed wagon as I had spoken of, with a splintered battering ram slung in it; no doubt I had seen it on our way to the strait, and it was the unconscious recollection of it that had made me speak as I did. I stopped and asked the men repairing the battering ram how it had been broken, and one pointed to one of the narrow doors in the base of the wall. "We tried to knock on that, but they've got a log three times as big as this up there. It's hooked to a chain so they can swing it down and pull it back up. When the old ram came out of the barn here, down she swung and snapped it right off in back of the bronze, like you see."
Young though Pasicrates is, he had not seemed boyish to me until then. "Tell them what to do, Latro. I'm sure you know."
I said, "Fundamentally, they have to catch either the log or its chain, holding it with something too heavy for the men on the wall to draw up. This wagon they call the barn seems heavy enough to me; there's a lot of thick wood in the roof, and those wheels are solid oak and as wide as both my legs. The men are putting a stouter timber in the ram already. If I were in command, I'd put spikes on its sides, and on the sides of the wagon too. Then the log would nail itself to one or the other as soon as it struck."
One of the men who had been fitting the new beam into its slings stopped work and stepped over to us. "I'm Ialtos. I'm in charge here, and I thank you for the advice; we'll make use of it. Did I hear the Rope Maker call you Latro?"
I nodded. "That's my name. Or at least, that's what I'm called among your people."
"We've got a captain here-" He pointed. "See that tower on wheels? They're putting leather on the front and sides so it can't be set on fire, and he's superintending the job. He'll talk you deaf, do you know what I mean? But he knows leather and how to get it."
Io shouted, "Hypereides!"
"That's the man-I see you've met him. He goes on sometimes about a slave he used to have called Latro. Sort of a simple-minded fellow according to Hypereides, but you could tell he liked him. He traded him to a hetaera for a series of dinners-mostly, I think, to keep him away from the fighting."
Drakaina said, "I wouldn't call Latro simple-minded, but he forgets from one day to the next." She shot a mocking glance at the Rope Maker. "He's unusual in some other respects too, wouldn't you say, Pasicrates?"
"Even women who speak little talk too much." He took her arm to draw her away from Ialtos.
Io had been studying the tower on wheels. Now she tugged at my cloak. "Look, master! Up on that ladder. It's the black man!"
CHAPTER XL-Among Forgotten Friends
The heart remembers, even when no trace of face or voice rema
ins. The black man came running to us, shouting, his arms in the air; and though I do not know where we met or why I love him (though no doubt those things are written somewhere on this scroll), I could not stop smiling. Without thinking at all about what I should do, I embraced him as a brother.
When we had shouted together and pounded each other on the back and hugged with all our strength like two wrestlers, Pasicrates tried to question him; but he only smiled and shook his head.
Io explained, "He understands-most of it, anyway. But he can't talk, or he won't."
Drakaina said something then in a harsh and rapid way that seemed to me no better than the creaking and grinding of mill stones; and to Io's amazement and my own, the black man answered her at once in the same language. "Your friend speaks the tongue of Aram," Drakaina told Io. "Not as well as the People from Parsa, but nearly as well as I do myself."
Pasicrates said, "Then ask him how he came to learn it."
She spoke to him again, and when he had replied she said, "He says, 'For three years I was with the army. We marched from Nysa to Riverland, from Riverland over the desert to the Crimson Country, then through many other countries.' He also says, 'My king is not subject to the Great King; but the Great King gave him gold and many fine things, and swore there would be peace between our lands forever if he would send a thousand men. I walked before a hundred and twenty, all young men from my own district, and I learned to talk in this way that I might know the wishes of the Lords of Parsa.' " Drakaina added, "I'm shortening this a little."
Io demanded, "Ask how he met Latro."
" 'I saw a god had touched him. Such people are holy; someone must care for them.' "
Io started to ask where Hypereides was, but Pasicrates silenced her. "Does he want to go back to his own country?"
Before Drakaina spoke, the black man nodded and began to speak. She said, "Yes, very much. He says, 'My father and mother are there, both my wives, and my son, who is very small.' "
Pasicrates nodded. "Are there any of the other men from his country in the city?"
"He says he doesn't know, but he doesn't think so. He thinks they may have gone south with the army. He says, 'If they were here, they would show themselves to me on the walls.' And I suppose he's right-he was in plain view working on that tower; hundreds of people in the city must have seen him."
"Tell him I require him to carry a message into the city for me."
Io protested. "He belongs to Hypereides!" I think she did not want to lose sight of the black man again so soon after we had found him.
"Who will surely consent for the good of our cause. No doubt he will be compensated by his city."
"He says Latro and this child must come with him." I smiled and Io giggled, darting a glance at Pasicrates. He ignored her. "And why is that?"
Now the black man spoke at length, touching his chest and pointing with his chin to Io and me, and toward Sestos, and once pretending to draw a bow.
Drakaina told Pasicrates, "He says he won't do what you ask as a slave, that a slave remains a slave only as long as he's watched. If he goes back to the People from Parsa, he will be a soldier again, and as a soldier he won't do what you ask unless you free Latro, and Io too. He says you can force him to go to the city, but that once there he won't deliver your message-only tell lies."
Even Pasicrates smiled at that.
"For myself," Drakaina added, "I remind you that I am the person sent by your regent to the barbarians-not this black man. Not even you."
"Yet another messenger may be useful, particularly one who speaks their tongue. His price is too high, but I imagine it can be lowered."
I said I was willing to go into Sestos if he wished me to.
Pasicrates shook his head. "If you were lost permanently, how could I explain to the regent? No, you must stay with me until the city capitulates and we return home."
Catching my eye, the black man motioned toward the tower, then spoke to Drakaina.
She said, "He desires to show you what he has been building."
I said, "And I want to see it. Come along, Io." Though I did not say so, I suspected the black man wished to put himself under the protection of the man called Hypereides. I do not remember him, but Io seemed to like him, and it appeared likely the black man was right in thinking he would fare better with him than with the Rope Maker.
"You know everything about siegecraft," Pasicrates said as we came near the tower. "Explain this to me."
I told him that since he could see it himself, there was very little to explain. It was a tower on wheels, built of wood. The back was left open to reduce its weight, but the front and sides were covered with planks to keep out arrows, and with leather to prevent the planks from being set ablaze. Before the tower was pushed against the wall, the leather would be soaked with water by men using rag swabs on long poles. In addition, leather buckets of water would be hung in the tower, to be used by the men inside.
He said, "Our enemies will put their finest troops opposite this tower."
I answered, "Yes, but good fighters will be put in the tower too."
The black man had gone around it as we spoke. Now he reappeared, bringing with him a bald man in a leather cuirass. The bald man seemed astonished to see us, then smiled broadly. "Latro and little Io, by the Standing Stone! I didn't think I'd be setting eyes on you again till we got back to Thought. How did you get here? Is that fellow Pindaros with you?"
He patted Io's head, and she embraced him and seemed for a moment too moved to speak.
"I don't suppose you remember Pindaros the poet, do you, Latro? Or his wench Hilaeira either."
The Rope Maker stepped forward. "I am Pasicrates, son of Polydectes. I am here as the representative of Prince Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, Victor of Clay and Regent of Rope."
"Hypereides," Hypereides said. "Son of Ion-" Io whispered afterward that he meant he was of the Ionian people and proud of it, and that Pasicrates is a Dorian. "-commander of the Europa, the Eidyia, and the Clytia. Only my ships aren't in the water right now." He jerked his head toward the west. "They're beached, and most of my men are here working on these things."
Pasicrates said, "I'm told you sold this slave to a hetaera in your city."
"That's right, to Kalleos." Hypereides paused, looking from Pasicrates to Drakaina, as though wondering whether either were out to make trouble for him. "Not legally, of course, because women in my city can't hold property. Everything's in the name of a man she calls her nephew. She pays him so much a year for that."
"We are more reasonable in Rope-we don't love lies. Latro and the child are our regent's now, given him by your hetaera."
Io yelped, "He was supposed to pay!"
"Then he will, you may be sure. But in Rope, children who speak out of turn are whipped for it. Remember that." Pasicrates had never taken his eyes from Hypereides. "As the strategist of the Rope Makers here, I'm interested in your tower, Commander. How could you make it so the top was level with the top of the wall, when you couldn't measure the wall?"
Hypereides cleared his throat. "With all due respect, Strategist, neither one of those is exactly true. We want the top higher than the wall, so we can put bowmen there to shoot down on the enemy. And we could measure the wall. We did. Come around to the front here." He led the way and pointed upward. "See that door? It swings down, and it'll be level with the merlons. There's a stair in the back, as you probably saw, so all our men will have to do is run up the steps and step off onto the wall."
"It must have taken a brave man to carry a measuring pole to the base," Pasicrates said, "even late at night."
"Oh, no." Hypereides's mouth twitched with amusement. "I measured it myself, and in broad daylight too. First I had a bowman-there he is. Come here, Oior."
A big, bearded man in loose trousers shambled over. He had a hammer in his hand and there was no bowcase at his back and no quiver at his waist; yet I knew the bald man was correct, for the bearded man had the look of a bowman.
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br /> "We tied a thread to an arrow," Hypereides continued. "Oior shot the arrow so it stuck in the ground at the foot of the wall. Then we cut the thread and pulled the arrow in so we could measure the thread. That gave us the distance from the place where Oior stood to the base of the wall."
Pasicrates said, "Which is not the height of the wall, unless you were very lucky."
"No, certainly not. Then we stuck a sword in the ground so it was exactly a cubit high. When the shadow of the wall touched the place where Oior had stood, we measured the shadow of the sword and divided the length of the thread by the length of the shadow. The answer was the height of the wall: forty-seven cubits."
Oior the bowman smiled at me and touched his forehead in greeting.
When we returned to Pasicrates's tent, he sent Drakaina and Io away, then held out his hand. "I see you're wearing your sword, Latro," he said. "Give it to me."
I unfastened the catch of my belt. "You're welcome to look at it," I said, "as long as you mean me no harm."
"Give it to me," he said again.
The very flatness of his voice told me what he meant to do. "No," I said. I refastened the catch.
He whistled. I suppose he must have decided I required correction before we left to make our circuit of the walls and perhaps even before we called upon Xanthippos, because his slaves appeared at once, one carrying two javelins and the other a whip, a scorpion of three tails. They entered through the back of the tent, and Pasicrates moved to block the front, his hand upon his sword hilt.
"These men may kill me," I told him, "but they will not beat me." I recalled that he had said a woman sold me to the regent. "And if they kill me, what will you tell your master?"
"The truth," Pasicrates murmured. "Sestos did not fall, you were lazy and insolent, I tried to discipline you, and you resisted."
His hoplon leaned against the tent wall near the entrance. With a practiced motion, he slipped his arm through its leather loop and grasped the handle. "Now take off that sword, and your cloak and chiton, like a sensible man."