The Sacred Land sam-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Try as he would, though, he couldn’t make the longshoreman believe him. “By Apollo Hylates, I’ve met folk like you aforetimes,” the fellow said. “Always ready with a tall tale, the which no man hereabouts may check. Go to, I say again! You’ll not catch me crediting such nonsense and moonshine.”

  Sostratos wanted to insist he was telling the truth. He wanted to, but he didn’t bother. He knew he would only waste his time and end up out of temper. People who often clung to the most absurd local superstitions wouldn’t trust a foreigner to tell them the truth about a distant land. The Cypriot had asked him for a strange story and then refused to believe it once he got it.

  Moskhion came up onto the poop deck. “Don’t worry about it, young sir,” he said. “Some people are just natural-born fools, and you can’t do a thing about it.”

  “I know,” Sostratos said. “Arguing with somebody like that is nothing but a waste of breath. He wouldn’t have believed you and Teleutas, either.”

  “That’s why I kept quiet,” Moskhion said, dipping his head. “I didn’t see any point in quarreling, that’s all. It wasn’t on account of I wouldn’t back you.”

  “Of course not,” Sostratos said. “I’d never think such a thing, not when we fought side by side there in the rocks north of Gamzo. We owe each other our lives. We’re not going to split apart over a foolish argument with somebody who’s probably never gone fifty stadia from Kourion in his life.”

  Menedemos said, “We still have a little while before sunset. Shall we go into the agora and see what they’re selling there?”

  “Well, why not?” Sostratos answered. “You never can tell. I wouldn’t bet on finding anything worth buying, but I might be wrong. And walking around in any market square will remind me I’m back among Hellenes.”

  His cousin dipped his head. “Yes, I had the same thought.” He ran the gangplank from the poop deck to the quay. “Let’s go.”

  Kourion wasn’t a big city, but it was an old one. Even its larger streets meandered in every direction. One of these days, Sostratos supposed, someone might rebuild the place with a neat Hippodamian grid of avenues, such as Rhodes and Kos and other newer foundations enjoyed. Meanwhile, the locals knew their way around, while strangers had to do their best. Eventually, he and Menedemos did find the agora.

  Men wandered from stall to stall, examining produce and pots and leather goods and nets and carved wood and cloth and a hundred other things. Sellers praised their goods; buyers sneered. Men with trays ambled through the square, selling figs and wine and fried prawns and pastries sweetened with honey. Knots of men gathered here and there, arguing and gesticulating. It was the most ordinary scene imaginable, in any town full of Hellenes along the Inner Sea.

  Tears stung Sostratos’ eyes. “By the gods, I never dreamt I could miss this so much.”

  “Neither did I,” Menedemos agreed. “Let’s see what they’ve got, eh?”

  “Of course, my dear,” Sostratos said. “You never know what we might find.” They strolled the agora together. Sostratos knew what he hoped to find: another gryphon’s skull. That one was most unlikely to turn up in this out-of-the way little polis bothered him not at all. He had his hopes, and would keep on having them as long as he lived.

  He saw no sign of any such wonder in Kourion, though. He saw no sign of any wonders in the market square. The agora was almost staggeringly dull, at least for someone looking for cargo for a merchant galley. A local miller or farmer would surely have found it delightful.

  As soon as he realized he wouldn’t see anything much he wanted to buy, he started listening to the talk in the agora. Talk, after all, was the other main reason men came to the market square. Thanks to the Cypriot dialect, he had to listen harder than he would have back in Rhodes. The more he listened, though, the more easily he followed it.

  People kept talking about a gamble or a risk. They all knew what it was, and they wisely discussed this fellow’s chance of bringing it off, or that one’s, or someone else’s. They also talked about the price of failure, without saying what that was, either.

  Finally, Sostratos’ curiosity got the better of him. He walked up to a local and said, “Excuse me, O best one, but may I ask you a question?”

  The man from Kourion dipped his head. “Certes, stranger. Say on.”

  “Thank you kindly.” As had happened before on Cyprus, the accent here made Sostratos acutely conscious of his own Doric dialect, which came out more than usual. He persisted even so: “What is this gamble I hear you all talking about?”

  “Why, to touch the altar of Apollo Hylates unbeknownst to the priests serving the god, of course,” the man from Kourion replied.

  Sostratos stared. “But isn’t it death to touch that altar? Don’t they throw you off the cliffs?” He pointed westward.

  “In good sooth, sir, ‘tis indeed. An a man be caught, he suffereth infallibly that very fate. ‘Tis the price of failure,” the local said.

  Menedemos said, “In that case, why on earth would anybody be crazy enough to want to do it?”

  Shrugging, the man from Kourion replied, “It hath of late become amongst the youth of this our city a passion, a sport, to make their way to yon temple by twos and threes-the odd young men being witness to him who dareth-to lay hold of the altar, and then to get hence with all the haste in ‘em.”

  “Why?” Sostratos asked, as Menedemos had before him. Again, the local only shrugged. When he saw the Rhodians had no more questions for him, he politely dipped his head again and went on his way.

  Sostratos kept scratching his own head and worrying at the question like a man with a bit of squid tentacle stuck between his teeth. At last, he said, “I think I understand.”

  “More than I can say,” Menedemos replied.

  “Look at Athens more than a hundred years ago, when Alkibiades and some of his friends profaned the mysteries of Eleusis and mutilated the Herms in front of people’s houses,” Sostratos said. “They probably didn’t mean any real harm. They were drunk and having a good time and playing foolish games. That’s what the young men are doing here, I suppose.”

  “It’s not a foolish game if the priests catch you,” Menedemos pointed out.

  “I wonder what sort of watch they keep,” Sostratos said. “If it is only a game, they might look the other way most of the time… though Alkibiades came to grief when people who should have kept their mouths shut didn’t.”

  “We’ll be out of here tomorrow,” Menedemos said. “We’ll never know.”

  “I wish you hadn’t put it like that,” Sostratos said. “Now it will keep on bothering me for the rest of my days.”

  “Not if you don’t let it,” Menedemos said. “What bothers me are the goods in this agora. I can’t see a single thing I’d want to take away from here.” He snapped his fingers. “No, I take that back-there was one very pretty boy.”

  “Oh, go howl!” Sostratos told him. Boys’ beauty drew his eyes, but in the same way as a fine horse’s beauty might have. He admired without wanting to possess. When he thought about such things, he wondered if that was because he’d been so completely ignored while he was a youth. Maybe the sting of that humiliation remained with him yet.

  Menedemos, by contrast, had had his name and the usual epithets- MENEDEMOS IS BEAUTIFUL or MENEDEMOS IS BEST or THE BOY MENEDEMOS IS MOST LOVELY-scrawled on walls all over Rhodes. He knew Sostratos hadn’t-he hardly could help knowing. Most of the time, as now, he was tactful: “Well, my dear, I did happen to notice him. But he’s probably got no honor-just another little wretch with a wide arsehole.”

  Perversely, that made Sostratos want to defend the boy. “You don’t know the first thing about him,” he said.

  “No, but I know the type,” Menedemos answered. “Some people go through their beauty like that”-he snapped his fingers again-”because they’ve nothing else to spend.”

  “Heh,” Sostratos said.

  “What? Do you think I’m joking?” Menedemos asked.

&nb
sp; “No, my dear, not at all,” Sostratos answered. When they were both youths, when Menedemos was swimming in attention while he had none, Sostratos had told himself his cousin had only beauty to go through and would be worthless by the time he grew up. He’d been wrong, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t consoled himself so.

  They walked back to the Aphrodite . One of those enormous bats flew overhead. Menedemos said, “It’s got a pointy nose, just like the pretty boy I saw. Do you suppose bats call one another beautiful?”

  Sostratos contemplated that, then tossed his head. “What I suppose is, you’re very peculiar, to come up with a question like that.”

  “Why, thank you!” Menedemos said, as if Sostratos had praised him. They both laughed.

  Some of the sailors went into Kourion to get drunk. Diokles had no trouble rounding them up, though. “I didn’t figure I would,” he said when the job was done. “Nobody wants to get stuck in a miserable little place like this.”

  That perfectly summarized Sostratos’ view of Kourion. He was glad when the merchant galley left the town early the next morning. Of course, she would stop for the night at some other small Cypriot city, perhaps one even less prepossessing than Kourion, but he chose not to dwell on that.

  Diokles was clanging out a slow, lazy stroke for the men at the oars- there was no breeze to speak of-when a sailor pointed toward the shore a few plethra away and said, “What are they doing there?”

  Sostratos looked in the direction of the bluffs west of Kourion. A procession marched along the heights. No-not everybody marched, for one man, bound, went stiffly and unwillingly, dragged toward the cliff-edge. Ice ran through Sostratos. His voice shook when he called, “Do you see, Menedemos?”

  His cousin dipped his head. “I see.” He sounded thoroughly grim, continuing, “Well, now we know how seriously the priests of Apollo Hylates take the game of touching their altar.”

  “Yes. Don’t we?” Sostratos watched-couldn’t stop watching, much as he wanted to turn away-the procession reach the place where land gave way to air. The akatos lay far enough out to sea that everything on the shore happened not only in miniature but also in eerie silence. Only the sound of waves slapping against the ship’s hull and the regular splash of oars going into and out of the water came to Sostratos’ ears.

  What were they saying, there at the top of the bluffs? Were they cursing the bound man for profaning the god’s altar? Or were they-worse- commiserating with him, saying it was too bad he’d got caught, but now he had to pay the price? As with Thoukydides, who’d written down speeches he hadn’t heard, Sostratos had to decide what was most plausible, most appropriate to the occasion.

  Then, suddenly, without Sostratos’ quite seeing how it happened, the bound man went over the cliff. For a heartbeat, the scene there ashore wasn’t silent any more. The man’s shriek of terror and despair reached the Aphrodite across a stadion of seawater. It cut off with horrid abruptness. At the foot of the cliffs, his broken body lay as still as if it had never held life. Pleased with a job well done, the men of Kourion who’d put him to death went back toward the temple to attend to whatever other important business they had that day.

  Sailors muttered among themselves. Even if some of them thought the man had brought it on himself by profaning the god’s altar, watching him die wasn’t easy and couldn’t possibly have been a good omen. Diokles fingered the amulet of Herakles Alexikakos he wore to turn aside evil.

  Sostratos walked back to the stern and up onto the poop deck. In a low voice, he said, “I’m glad we didn’t buy anything in the agora at Kourion,”

  Menedemos had to look back over his shoulder now to see the corpse lying there under the bluffs, close by the sea. After a moment, his gaze swung toward Sostratos once more. He slowly dipped his head. “Yes,” he said. “So am I.”

  Ahead of the Aphrodite , the Anatolian mainland slowly rose above the horizon. Behind her, Cyprus sank into the sea. Between the one and the other, she was alone in the midst of immensity. Menedemos had sailed for the mainland from Paphos, on the west coast of the island. That made for a longer journey over the open sea than if he’d crawled up to the north coast of Cyprus, but it also shaved several days off the journey back to Rhodes.

  “Euge,” Sostratos told him. “Everything seems to be going well.” “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Menedemos said. “But I can already hear my father complaining I took a chance going this way.” He sighed. Now that they were well on the way to Rhodes, the things of home crowded forward in his mind once more. He didn’t look forward to dealing with his father. Part of him didn’t look forward to dealing with his father’s second wife, either. But part of him was eager, ever so eager, to see Baukis again. And he knew exactly which part that was, too.

  Sostratos came up onto the poop deck. He pointed dead ahead. “Nicely sailed,” he said. “With the headland of Lykia there, you’ve skipped a lot of the waters that pirates haunt.”

  “I wish I could have skipped them all,” Menedemos answered. “If I thought I could have got away with sailing straight across the sea from Cyprus to Rhodes, I’d have done it. Then we wouldn’t have had to worry about pirates at all.”

  “Maybe not,” Sostratos said. “But if you were able to cross the open sea like that, easy as you please, don’t you think pirates would be, too?”

  Menedemos hadn’t thought of that. He wished his cousin hadn’t thought of it, either. “There are times, my dear, when you make seeing both sides of the picture seem a vice, not a virtue.”

  “What is the world coming to, when I can’t even tell a plain truth without getting carping criticism back?” Sostratos looked up to the heavens, as if expecting Zeus or Athena to descend and declare that he was right.

  Neither Zeus nor Athena did any such thing. Maybe that proved Sostratos was wrong. Maybe it proved the gods were busy elsewhere, on some business more important than Sostratos’. Or maybe it proved nothing at… Menedemos shied away from that speculation before it fully formed. Still, he wished that just once he would see a god, any god, manifest himself on earth or openly answer a prayer. That would make his own piety, which while sincere didn’t run especially deep, much easier to maintain.

  Still not quite letting that question take shape in his mind, Menedemos asked, “What was the name of the wicked fellow who said priests invented the gods to frighten people into behaving the way they should?”

  “Kritias,” Sostratos answered at once. “He’s ninety years dead now, but you’re right-he was as wicked as they come, and not just on account of that.”

  “He was one of Sokrates’ little pals, wasn’t he?” Menedemos said.

  His cousin flinched. “He did study with Sokrates for a while, yes,” he admitted. “But they broke when he did something shameless and Sokrates called him on it in public.”

  “Oh.” Menedemos hadn’t known that. He enjoyed teasing Sostratos about Sokrates, but the answer he’d just got killed his chances for the time being. He watched Sostratos eyeing him, too. His cousin knew the games he played, which meant he would be wiser not to play this one right now. Half the sport disappeared when the other fellow knew the barbs were coming.

  Menedemos concentrated on sailing the Aphrodite instead. He took his hand off a steering-oar tiller to point, as Sostratos had, at the Lykian highlands that rose so steeply from the sea. “They make a lovely landmark, but I wish they weren’t there.”

  “I should hope so, my dear,” Sostratos replied, understanding him perfectly. “If they weren’t, the Lykians wouldn’t be half so much trouble. Those heights hide bandits the way river mouths and little capes and promontories hide pirate ships.” His face clouded. “I’d never had trouble with bandits before this trip.”

  “That’s because you never did a lot of traveling on land,” Menedemos replied. “Who does, if he can help it?”

  “Travel by sea’s not safe, either,” Sostratos said. “We found that out last year, when the pirates stole the gryphon’s skull.”

 
“They didn’t intend to steal the skull. It just happened to be something they got away with,” Menedemos pointed out. “I know the loss pains you, but it wasn’t what they had in mind. Let me remind you what they did have in mind-stealing our money and our valuables, and killing us or selling us into slavery or holding us for ransom. Losing the gryphon’s skull is a fleabite next to what might have been.”

  His cousin had the grace to look shamefaced. “Yes, that’s true, of course,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever claimed otherwise; if I have, I’m sorry for it. But I will say it’s a fleabite that rankles.”

  “I know you will-you will at any excuse, or none,” Menedemos said. “After a while, hearing about it over and over rankles, too.”

  He wondered if that was too blunt. Sostratos could be sensitive and could also sulk for days after having his feathers ruffled. Now he said, “I’m so sorry, my dear. I won’t bore you with my presence anymore,” and stalked off the poop deck like an indignant Egyptian cat. Menedemos sighed. Sure enough, he’d hit too hard. Now he’d have to figure out a way to jolly Sostratos back into a good mood.

  Meanwhile, he had the ship and the sea and the approaching Lykian coast to worry about, which meant his cousin got short shrift for a while. Sostratos had been right about one thing: just as no army had ever cleared brigands from the Lykian hills, no navy had ever cleared pirates from the coastline. Menedemos wished the Aphrodite were a trihemiolia. Let the Lykians beware then!

  In a merchant galley, though, he was the one who went with caution. By the end of the day, the highlands had bulked their way out of the sea, tall and dark with forest. He might have tried to make a town. He might have, but he didn’t. He had enough food. He’d taken on as much water as the Aphrodite would carry in Paphos. He could afford to spend one more night at sea. He could afford to, and he did.

  Not a sailor grumbled, not off this coast. Maybe the men would have put up with striking straight across from Cyprus to Rhodes after all. If the other choice was running the gauntlet of Lykian pirates… He wondered whether the akatos could have carried enough bread and cheese and olives and wine and water for so long a journey. Maybe. But maybe not. There would be risks. He chuckled under his breath. At sea, there were always risks.