"Silence!" I shouted, trying to listen.
By bellowing and cursing I quieted them. Then came another chorus of shouts: "I hear it!" "Over yonder!" "Come on!"
They dashed off, crashing through shrubs and pushing through the branches of willows and poplars. Hearing a growl, I ran after.
I came to the edge of a small open space as several men threw javelins at the lion—or lioness, as it turned out to be. The animal had dropped Irtastouna's body and was trotting off into denser growth when the volley of spears fell about her. One struck her. She sprang out of sight with a snarl.
I shouted: "Keep together! Dinna go off by yoursels!" Though I have never hunted lion, I had heard enough to convince me that a dense thicket is no place to go poking after a wounded lion by oneself.
But, in their excitement, the men paid me little heed. Several dashed after the lioness, and I ran after them.
I overtook this group as Charinos, burning with grief, plunged to the front. With a roar, the lioness bounded into sight again and sprang.
Charinos brought up his spear and braced himself. The javelin caught the lioness' hide somewhere, and Charinos was bowled over. The lioness landed on top of and a little beyond him. As he started to wriggle out from under her hindlegs, she whirled and opened her mouth to seize him.
Thyestes, coming up, thrust his javelin into her open mouth. The point came out through her lower jaw. Roaring, she reared up and, with a stroke of her paw, knocked the shaft whirling away.
Now Kanadas came up on the other side. He swung his great sword in both hands and smote the lioness across the back. Her hindlegs gave way. As she fell, a score of spears, including mine, were buried in her vitals.
We buried Irtastouna, bound up Charinos' scratches, and consoled him as best we could. We skinned the lioness, albeit the skin had too many holes to be of much worth.
Along the way, several other changes had betided amongst the women and children. Two of the concubines had run away, and three new women had been added to our train. One more child had been born, and one had died. So, one might say, we were just about holding our own in point of numbers.
Now the Eulaios joined another river, the Pasitigris. A couple of leagues below this confluence, a town called Soustara stands atop a cliff and watches the river sweep through a gorge below it. Here the survivors from the Persian caravan left us, as we were now in more or less law-abiding lands.
We shopped in Soustara. I found that most of the people spoke, not Persian, but Syrian, then the common tongue of travelers and traders all over the western half of the former Persian Empire. As I knew nought of that tongue, I had to trust Elisas for the chaffering.
During a round of the market place, Elisas and I found some freshly butchered sheep, hanging in the stall of a flesher. I said:
"Let's buy one of these for the lads' dinner. If we get a live sheep, that ninny of a cook will haggle it all up in butchering it."
Elisas then had a long bargaining session with the flesher. At last he said to me: "The best price I can get is eighteen and three quarter drachmai."
"That's outrageous!" I said. "Ere I left home, a good sheep brought no more nor twelve. And this a sheep-raising land, too!"
There seemed to be no help for it, however. We had remarked before on the rise of all prices. I paid. But, as I turned away, the flesher spoke to his helper in Persian:
"Set five drachmai aside for the sutler, as I promised."
The flesher, seeing an obvious Hellene before him, took it for granted that I could not understand Persian. On the other hand, Elisas, hearing the flesher speak Syrian, had assumed that the tradesman did not speak Persian either. I sprang forward, caught Elisas by the arm, whirled him around, and dealt him a buffet that sent him sprawling and the sheep rolling in the dirt. Then I leapt upon the flesher and gripped the front of his tunic.
"Auramasdas smite you, offspring of a frog and a viper!" I roared in Persian. "Give me those five drachmai, dog-face, or I will wreck your shop!"
Trembling, the flesher handed over the money. I looked around for Elisas, but he had disappeared. This was wise of him, for in my rage I might have knocked all his teeth down his throat. I suffered him to collect a commission of one part in ten on our purchases, but here the abandoned wretch had tried, by taking advantage of my ignorance of languages, to get more than one part in four!
I carried the sheep back to camp myself. We ate without Elisas. I never expected to see the little rascal again and was casting about for means of filling his place. I could not do all the buying, because I had other duties and because it would not be dignified for the hip-parch to spend all his time thus. Vardanas was a fool about money; Thyestes was testy with foreigners and, moreover, spoke little besides Thessalian Greek ...
I was gnawing a mutton chop and thinking when Skounchas the Daha came in with a piece of old leather on which Elisas had scrawled a note in execrable Greek:
ELISAS OF CHALYBON GREET NOBLE TROOP LEADER LEION
I sorry you catching me taking big commission. Was too much temptation. My head still buzz from blow. If yon wanting me work for you, I promises not do again. You forget commission, I forget buffet. Do that please?
'Where is he?" I asked Skounchas, but the Daha had an attack of inability to understand me, doubtless from fear for Elisas' skin. At last I wrote on the other side of the sheet:
Come back. Your sin is forgiven if not forgotten. Next time you plan to cheat me, let me know beforehand what you wish done with your body.
When Elisas returned, I commanded him to teach me Syrian. I found it, however, far more difficult than Persian, unless indeed Elisas made it hard for me on purpose, as he was in one of his sullen moods for days thereafter.
Persian, you see, has inflections much like those of Greek, and many of the words are even alike. Thus "father" and "mother"*(* patēr kai matēr.) are pitar and matar. But Syrian I found entirely different from Greek, in grammar and words alike. Forbye, where Greek gets along with four guttural sounds, the gamma, kappa, chi, and rough breathing, Syrian has twice as many: a battery of gasping, coughing, retching, and gargling noises. One day I was practicing them when Thyestes rode up and began to pound my back, thinking that I was choking.
We rode through the fertile fields of Sousiana, where bountiful crops were breaking the soil. On some of the farms, enormous horses stood in paddocks. Vardanas said:
"Mithras smite me if those be not from the royal Median herds! What do they here, so far from the plain of Nisaia?"
I said: "I should guess that as soon as the Persian government fell, every horse thief within a hundred leagues of Nisaia hastened thither to seize as many horses as he could, ere Alexander could stop him."
"Alas! What wickedness have I lived to see!"
"I would not say so," I said. "While 'tis fine for the king to have thousands of giant horses, other folk as well can put the breed to good use. Could I fetch a herd of yon beasties to Hellas, my fortune were made."
Vardanas laughed. "You should have been a trader, Leon. I see the mercenary gleam in your eye whenever you see a chance to squeeze an obolos out of a deal."
"What's wrong with trading?"
"I thought your philosophers viewed it as ungentlemanly, as do men of my own class among the Persians."
Pyrron, who had been whispering to himself, cleared his throat. "Some do, Vardanas. But I, though a philosopher, regard such attitudes as mere prejudices, effected by time and place and circumstance. I sneer at no honest occupation. My sister's a midwife, and I have no shame about assisting her with chores. Those whose property supports them in idleness are wont to aggrandize themselves by contemning the labors of all those less fortunate than they. But why heed them?"