The fisherman laughed and rowed away down the beach to where poorer men waited in lines for a turn in the temple.
No waiting for kings, of course, even those not on official visits.
Satyrus sat in the anteroom to the oracle, trying to put his mind in a state receptive to the god. He had wrestled with Anaxagoras before crossing, and the bout was very much in his mind — Anaxagoras had thrown him with an outstretched arm and what had seemed the gentlest nudge to his hip, and Satyrus found in the move a whole new expression of balance in combat. It filled his mind, kept him from the meditative state.
With apologies to the two men waiting with him — an Athenian from one of the priestly families and a Corinthian — he stepped out onto the porch of the temple and took up a fighting stance and began to rotate his foot at odd angles.
The hierophant was watching him when he stopped. ‘I have seen a woman offer her dancing to the god, but never a man offer his footwork at the pankration. Nonetheless, yours is fine.’ He grinned — not the grave, dignified high priest at all, just for a moment, but a Greek man with an appreciation for a fine sport and a fine body.
Satyrus was abashed — a very rare feeling for him. ‘My apologies, I meant no disrespect. I have been practising the lyre …’ He trailed off, feeling like a teenage boy caught nuzzling a slave girl.
The hierophant cackled. ‘Your lyre work will probably never match your fighting skills, my lord. Will you come with me?’
‘It is not my turn,’ Satyrus said.
‘I gave you my turn,’ the Athenian priest said, inclining his head. ‘I am here for my city on a very minor matter of religious law.’ He smiled. ‘Had I known that I would see a famous pankrationist, I’d have come sooner.’
The Athenian priest was plainly dressed, and yet clearly a man of enormous worth. He also had a fine physique — barrel-chested and tall.
Satyrus smiled at the compliment and inclined his head in return. ‘Sir, I am on my way to Athens, where, I, too, am a citizen. Perhaps we might have a bout at the Lyceum?’
‘Polycrates, son of Lysander,’ the Athenian said, and they clasped hands. ‘We are keeping the hierophant waiting.’
The hierophant nodded. ‘It seems to me that this meeting was the reason the god brought you here. This may have been the only moment that the god required.’ He nodded at their confusion. ‘It is often thus. Brasidas met the King of the Thracians here. He was coming to ask, “By what means may I defeat the Athenians in Thrace?” I understand that he never even had to ask the question.’
He led Satyrus by the hand to the sacred lake, and prayed aloud to Apollo — a very old prayer in the old Ionian style, with his arms spread wide. Satyrus assumed the same pose and waited.
‘Ask your question,’ the high priest said.
‘Do not go to Athens! ’ called a hoarse, low voice in the distance. And there was laughter. Satyrus turned his head and saw a group of retainers — possibly Polycrates’ men — playing by the side of the temple.
The omen was clear to Satyrus. He looked at the priest, who looked back at him, arms outstretched. ‘Were you contemplating a trip to Athens?’ he asked mildly enough.
‘I have a fleet of grain ships, fully laden, en route to Athens. The woman … that is, my best friend is a hostage there. My grain ships are the guarantee of my good behaviour. I must go to Athens.’
The priest nodded curtly. ‘I wish that I had a drachma for every time a supplicant has received a direct order from the god and then informed me, and my lord Apollo, that he cannot possibly obey,’ he said. ‘I would be a rich man.’
Satyrus had meant to ask something grand — to ask how he might best serve his people, or something equally vague. Delos was, he thought, best at vague questions. But now he went with the divine inspiration. ‘Lord Apollo, Lord of the Silver Bow, God of the Lyre, what must I do to survive Athens?’
The hoarse voice down in the temple yard floated across the temple lake: ‘Guest … friendship is still sacred… even in Athens.’ as clear as if the priest had spoken it himself. In the distance, men laughed. Many conversations merged into the voice of the god.
Satyrus considered running outside to find the men — to ask what they were discussing, what joke was being told, what ribald story gave rise to these pronouncements, so like the voice of the god. But only to see the mechanism of the god’s breath. For Satyrus was as sure as anything he’d ever known that he’d heard the voice of the god floating over the sacred lake.
‘You are very close to the gods,’ the hierophant said.
Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘I have been told so,’ he said.
‘I know men who would kill for an answer as clear as that,’ he said. ‘Come.’
Together they walked back to the anteroom on the temple porch. The Athenian was moving his feet in just the way that Satyrus had been. He grinned, also like a much younger man caught in some secret sin.
‘I see it,’ he said. ‘A very small movement of the hips can be as powerful as a much larger movement.’
Satyrus shrugged. ‘Perhaps not as powerful,’ he said. ‘But good enough in a confined space, or a real fight.’
Polycrates nodded. ‘May I hold you to our bout at the Lyceum?’
Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘Allow me to go one better, sir. Let us swear a guest friendship here, and I’ll give you a ride back to Athens. We can fight on every beach from here to there.’
Polycrates’ eyes sparkled. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ he said. ‘The more especially as it would allow me to dispense with a particularly annoying pup of a trierarch who has made my life a misery. Now I can send him on his way to Corinth. You are no friend to Demetrios, as I remember?’
Satyrus bowed. ‘We are not at war, he and I,’ he answered carefully.
Polycrates nodded. ‘Well — best you know — I am his friend. Perhaps his greatest supporter in Athens. Will you still carry me home?’
Satyrus extended his hand.
Polycrates took it. ‘Let us go before the god.’
Arm in arm, with the hierophant behind them, obviously pleased, they walked into the divine presence, where the flame burned. They made their gestures to the god, and then, with the hierophant leading them, they swore guest friendship. Satyrus undertook it as King of the Bosporus, with full solemnity, and Polycrates answered him in kind, as high priest of Herakles in Athens.
When they were done, Satyrus nodded to his new friend. ‘So you are the priest of Herakles,’ he said.
‘And you are his descendant, are you not?’ asked Polycrates. ‘As are we — Heraklidae all.’
The grain fleet might have made Athens in two long, hard days, but Satyrus allowed three — he was suddenly in less of a hurry, and more determined to know Polycrates, and to gather what news he could from fishermen. The most likely threat came from Demetrios — it seemed obvious, when he thought of it, lying on the sand at Syros watching the wheel of the stars over his head, that Demetrios meant to take him and hold him. No surer way of preventing his re-entering the war when the truce sworn at the end of the siege of Rhodes expired.
Besides, Polycrates was a wonderful close-in fighter, and Satyrus found that the man had things to teach him. He had a technique for fighting from the ground — a technique that Satyrus had seen Theron use, but had never been taught. Polycrates could lever himself up on his shoulders and neck and grasp with his legs like a pair of blacksmith’s tongs, seizing his opponent and pulling him to a ground grapple which Polycrates, built like a large rock, would inevitably win.
Charmides was annoyed by the technique. ‘What is to keep me from walking away as soon as you go to ground?’ he asked the older Athenian.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘We do not always fight by choice, Charmides. What if circumstance or Tyche places you on the ground? What if you are attacked after being knocked down? We do not always fight from a position of advantage.’