by Gary Corby
“The boxes came up with the right weights, but . . .” Karnon gulped, and nodded at his slave, the one who had summoned us. “But Hermes here noticed that one of them had a loose top. That’s not so surprising, because these things are extremely heavy. Do you recall that I said the loose change is in coins, but the long term storage is all precious metal?”
“Yes.”
“Those cases break open quite easily. They’re small, to cope with the weight, but only made of pinewood. It wouldn’t be the first time someone dropped a case and it splintered to pieces. The slaves hauled out the broken case and called me over to witness. Whenever a case is to be opened, I must be present. It’s an absolute rule, the breaking of which is punishable by death. You can imagine why.”
“The guards were present too?” I asked.
“Of course. Also the village carpenter, to repair the casing. He makes most of the cases, by the way, using imported wood.” Karnon paused. He looked like he was gasping for air. “When we opened the lid we found . . . lead.” He almost sobbed at that word. “I immediately ordered all the boxes opened. There are two others with missing money.”
“Did you call for Anaxinos?” Diotima asked.
“Not yet, but he’ll know at any moment, of course. There are too many talkative people who know the truth. What I want to avoid, if at all possible, is for Pericles to find out before we know where the money is.”
“Yes,” I said with feeling. “Believe me, Karnon, I know exactly what it’s like to incur Pericles’s wrath.”
“How much is missing?” Diotima asked.
“As near as I can make out, it’s on the order of thirty talents,” Karnon said grimly.
That number sounded oddly familiar. Where had I heard that recently?
When I remembered, the pit of my stomach felt like it had fallen through the floor. Thirty talents was the amount that Geros had demanded from Pericles, to hand over the treasure.
I said, “Uh, Karnon, how long has this money been missing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bring the torch over here,” Diotima said. She was inspecting the cases of gold bars. “Have you noticed everything on Delos is very dusty?” she said, then added quickly, “Except for your home, Karnon, which is immaculate—”
“That is Marika’s fine work,” Karnon said. “She comments all the time about how hard it is to keep the grit outside, especially with the boys.”
“Right,” Diotima said. “Apollo’s Rest is clean too. Everything else on this island is caked in dust. Even in this apparently enclosed temple.”
She wiped her finger across one of the undisturbed boxes. The dust was thick indeed. “I imagine it gets in through the gaps between the roof and the walls. Now look here.” She pointed out the tops of the three cases that the slaves had opened.
“This one’s dusty.” Diotima swiped a finger. There was dust, though not as much as on the tops of the other cases. Diotima took the torch from Karnon and held it close to the second case.
“This one has some dust, but look, you can see where there are the remains of hand prints.”
You could indeed.
“This case was disturbed long enough ago that dust has settled over, but not as much,” Diotima said. “Now this one . . .” She moved to the third. “This one has large swipes across it that are still clear.”
“What does this mean?” Karnon asked.
“It means we’re looking at three thefts, not one,” Diotima said. “The same person has been here three times, taken treasure, replaced it with lead so you wouldn’t notice the difference, and then departed.”
“Why take such a risk three times?” Karnon asked.
“How much do these cases weigh?” I asked.
“Lift one,” said Karnon.
The cases were much alike, unsurprisingly, since Karnon had said the same carpenter made them. There were rope handles at both ends. I took the handles and lifted. The case was heavy, but not so heavy that I couldn’t raise it. I put down the box, with a slight clang of the gold bars within, then lifted two boxes, one on top of the other. That was an effort. I could manage three, but not comfortably.
“You are strong,” Karnon commented.
“My father is a sculptor,” I explained. “I’ve been carrying marble blocks for him since I was young.”
“Most men could only carry two at a time,” he said. “Even then they’d be struggling. It’s not the sort of thing you can sneak out underneath your clothing.”
On the face of it, this seemed impossible. Nobody could carry away one of these cases in the light of day without being quite obvious about it. At night, the thieves would be risking all sorts of accidents. I said as much to Karnon and Diotima. Neither could suggest an answer.
“Who has access to the temple?” Diotima asked.
“It varies with the treasury,” Karnon said. “Only I have a key to the Porinos Naos. All the other temples are open to the public day and night. Anaxinos and Geros have keys to the other treasuries, I think, but I don’t know, it’s not my business . . .” Karnon shrugged.
“But someone else could have stolen a key,” I said. “Everyone on Delos leaves their houses unlocked.”
“I like to think the guards would have stopped anyone else who turned up with a key,” Karnon said, with a great deal of practicality.
“That’s a very good point,” I said. “What about the guards?”
“Obviously they’re standing here day and night. But they don’t have a key.”
Diotima said quietly, “They might not have a key, but they’re the only two men who could have carried off treasure without being noticed.”
We all three instinctively looked to the door. It was firmly shut, and Diotima had spoken softly. I didn’t think they had heard us. But the guards could hardly have failed to realize that something was wrong. If they were the thieves then we would be in the greatest danger when we exited the temple.
“If they think we know, they could cut us to pieces the moment we exit,” Karnon said as softly as Diotima.
“I wonder what the odds are of getting to Philipos?” I whispered.
“Why?” Diotima whispered back.
“Because he could bring soldiers from the fleet.”
“The only way out is through that door.” Karnon nodded at the double doors through which we’d entered, on the other side of which were two armed and armored soldiers who were almost certainly expecting trouble, and who knew they faced execution if they were captured.
I fingered my knife. It was all I had.
Diotima grabbed my arm. “Nico, be careful,” she said.
Be careful? When I was about to face down two trained hoplites in full armor?
I pulled my dagger.
“I’m going with you,” Karnon said.
“No, you’re not.”
He could not have been less than forty, he was an accountant who had probably last served in the army twenty years ago, and though he’d kept himself fit he wouldn’t last a heartbeat.
Diotima at least had the sense not to say she was going to fight. In times past she would have raced me to the door, but now she had our baby to protect.
“Karnon, I need you to protect Diotima. Once I’m through, get her clear of here, and get help. The Athenian fleet has plenty of force.”
It was so frustrating. Pericles had turned up with enough men to destroy a small army, and we couldn’t use a single one of them until we had won the fight for which we needed them. My plan was the only way: to keep the two guards busy while the other two went for help.
Karnon nodded, reluctantly.
“Be careful, Nico,” Diotima repeated.
“Of course I will,” I reassured her. Then I wondered how I was supposed to be careful while attacking two armed guards.
Diotima and Kar
non took a door handle each, ready to fling open the double doors. I stood behind, my weapon at the ready. I decided I would roll out, to duck under any spears that were thrust my way, then come up and with luck, attack them from behind.
I reached down my leg to take my second fighting blade. Diotima’s father was chief of the city guard of Athens. On my very first commission, many years ago, he had torn strips off me for not carrying a backup. Now I always had a second blade strapped to my right ankle. It had saved me more than once.
I looked to Diotima and Karnon and nodded. Diotima silently mouthed, “One, two, three—”
They flung open the doors.
I instantly dived through. I landed in a somersault that I executed perfectly, rolled out of it into a jump during which I turned, ready to stab.
“Yaaahhhh!” I screamed to scare them and pushed the dagger in a blind thrust to catch the first attacker.
My feet touched the ground after my jump. My fighting stance ready to kill.
But nothing happened.
There was no one there. The guards had disappeared.
There were plenty of passersby in the sanctuary grounds though. Every one of them had stopped what they were doing and stared at me as if I were some sort of maniac. One woman was so scared she dropped her bundle of laundry and ran away. Several other women screamed and priests moved to protect them. From me.
I lowered my hands.
Diotima and Karnon appeared at the doorway.
“Where did they go?” Karnon asked the air and anyone who might hear.
“Do you mean the temple guards?” one of the nearby priests said. He edged away from me while warily keeping his eyes on my blade.
“They took off a moment ago. I thought you must have sent them on an urgent mission, Karnon.”
“Which way did they go?” Karnon asked.
“That way.” The priest pointed down the Sacred Way.
We all looked. In the distance, two men were running away. As we watched they both tossed their spears to the right and their shields to the left, the better to run. They tore off their helmets and flung them aside too.
“After them!”
I started running. The guards had a good head start. If this were open country I wouldn’t have even bothered trying, but on tiny Delos they were going to run out of land very quickly, and then I would have them.
I was sadly out of condition. Married life and no recent hard work had seen to that. I was soon puffing hard. But I was gaining on my targets, which meant they’d been living an even softer life than me. I supposed that being a guard on Delos meant having nothing to do but stand around all day.
The soldiers didn’t deviate from the path. That was sensible. They were faster on the road, and they didn’t risk a fall on the stony ground. It made my job easier. I settled into a steady pace. The worst thing I could do would be to run out of breath when I caught up with two criminals. Though they were two stadia ahead, I knew this could only end one way.
By now we were passing the outlying houses of the New Village. These were the ones in which the priests lived—I hoped that someone would walk out a door and blunder into the guards’ path, but no one did. Soon we were past those first homes, into the village proper, and about to enter the agora.
I wondered if they would turn left or right when we reached the agora. Either way we would end up following the rough track that circled Delos. I had a ridiculous vision of the three of us running in loops around the island until we were all too exhausted to move. If nothing else it would entertain the onlookers.
We entered the agora. Moira walked out of Apollo’s Rest and was bowled over by the man in the lead. She fell backward, he stumbled, the other man took the lead and they kept on going straight ahead into the sea.
No, not the sea. They diverted at the last instant onto the narrow dock where the fishing boats moored. All the boats but two were out at sea, fishing. Damon was on one of the moored boats, doing the same repairs we’d seen him at the other day. At the other boat was a man unloading catch, and another on the pier accepting the baskets of fish.
The guards charged into the man on the dock. He flew backwards, straight into the water, then came up spluttering and cursing, his arms flopping wildly backwards in total surprise at the dunking. The guards jumped into the fisher boat. They landed on either side of the remaining fisherman, picked him up by an arm each, and tossed him over the side to join his friend in the water.
That fishing boat was still perfectly set for sailing. The guards ignored the curses of their victims while they set the sail. One took the tiller. The other rowed to get them started.
By then I had reached the dock, but they were already too far from shore for me to stop them.
I jumped onto the other boat; the one that Damon was in. He had watched the fracas with total surprise. Now he stared at me.
I pointed at the two escaping guards. “Follow that boat!”
Damon looked to the struggling fishermen in the water. He saw that they were hauling their soaked bodies back onto land. He looked at the stolen boat, now beginning to catch wind, and then he looked at the fishing boat we were in.
In a trice Damon hauled up the sail from below the shallow deck and was threading rope through holes in the sail.
“Quick, Nico, tie two cringles for the spar!” he ordered me. “I’ll manage the clews.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Right,” he said, perceiving the problem. “You don’t have a clew, do you? Do you know how to row?”
“Sure.”
“You better start then.” He nodded in the destination of our receding quarry. “Those two are getting away.”
I grabbed the oars from where they had been stored on each side. I pushed them over the side and began to pull.
As I did, Damon got the sail up single-handed. He stepped on me repeatedly as he did, but I couldn’t complain.
I had barely made any distance by the time Damon was settled at the steering oar. He nudged it one way, seemed to consider for a moment, then pushed the other way. The wind suddenly filled the sail and we had speed.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“I feel the wind on the back of my neck,” he said. “I’ve sailed here for so long that I can predict where it’ll come next.”
That was one advantage we had. Damon knew the winds and the guards didn’t.
Damon asked the question I’d been expecting. “Who are they?” He hadn’t recognized the guards beneath the armor, not with so many Athenians on the island too.
I told Damon what had happened at the Porinos Naos. He was shocked. He eyed the other boat with a calculating stare. “They’re about to turn to port,” he said.
That made sense, because if they turned right they would round the point into fifty Athenian triremes. But Damon had obviously seen something I hadn’t. I asked, “How can you tell?”
“From the way they’re wobbling, and look, they’ve both moved to port side too soon.”
Sure enough the other boat seemed to stall for a moment. Then it went still as the sail turned dead to wind.
“Now we have them!” I exulted.
“Not unless they’re fools,” Damon said. “Watch.”
We were getting closer as they struggled, until I could see the two of them clearly. The one that had been rowing at the start pushed the oars out once more. He turned the boat by paddling. But the boat was pointing head into the wind, and the wildly flapping sail prevented them from turning any more. The other man had stood up, somewhat shakily. He manually pushed the sail to one side and held it there by main strength. The sail filled with wind, pushed the boat backwards in a curve, which completed the turn, and suddenly they were under way.
“He didn’t use the ropes. That’s cheating,” I complained.
“Yeah, but it works,” D
amon said.
The stolen boat picked up speed again. Damon with his practiced eye turned our steering oar just a nudge, and our boat began a wide sweep that was faster than the other boat.
We continued in this way for some time, making ground. I knew from past experience that sea chases needed patience: things always seemed to move slowly, but the distance fell away before you knew it. I looked behind, to see that we were far from Delos.
I considered how we would capture those two guards when we reached them, which now we were sure to do. Damon would be a good man in a fight, and I had my daggers. In the sort of dirty fighting that was certain to follow, I with my real-world experience of desperate struggles in back alleys would have the advantage over two common soldiers.
“You know, it’s a funny thing, Nico,” Damon said breaking in on my thoughts.
“What is?” I asked.
“The other day, when you came by with Diotima, and we had the picnic, you didn’t ask me what’s wrong with this boat,” he said.
“All right, I’ll ask. What’s wrong with this boat?”
“It’s got a leak.”
I looked down. Now that he mentioned it, the water in the bottom did seem to be filling.
“Looks like the plug didn’t quite work,” Damon said with his usual irritatingly happy voice. I was beginning to understand why nothing ever seemed to work on Delos; the doors that never quite fit, the hinges that squeaked. If Damon fixed it, it wasn’t likely to stay fixed.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“I think we need another boat,” he replied.
I understood what he meant. Our only hope of survival was to take that other boat from the criminals. If we didn’t, we would drown.
“Can we reach them in time?” I asked.
Damon shook his head.
The plug failed totally. The wooden stopper popped into the air. I grabbed it in midflight. I immediately tried to push the plug back in, but the pressure of the water that now gushed in was far too strong. That meant the boat was about to sink and we would drown. I reflected this had not been one of my better days.
Our boat rapidly filled with seawater. As it did, the hull began to sway alarmingly with the wash of the sea. The hull sunk until it was below water, which was now up to my waist height. The sway caused the canvas sail to become so wet that it was too heavy to remain upright.
