“No, please! I told you I’m vowed to silence. If the priest asks questions, and I refuse to answer, and he insists—wouldn’t the Earthshaker be angered?”
“Well, but—”
“See here,” Everard proposed, hoping he came across as both forceful and friendly, “I have a purse of money left. Once I’ve gotten my sign from the god, I mean to make a substantial donation. A gold stater.” It was the rough equivalent of a thousand 1980’s U.S. dollars, insofar as comparisons of purchasing power between different milieus meant anything. “I should think that would let you—the temple buy what you need from the Syrians for a long time to come.”
Dolon hesitated.
“It’s the god’s will at work,” Everard pursued. “You wouldn’t thwart his will, I’m sure. He helps me, I help you. All I ask is to wait in peace till the miracle happens. Call me a fugitive. See.” He reached down, opened the purse, took forth several drachmas. “Plenty of money, if nothing else. Let me give you this for yourself. You deserve it. For me, it’s a deed of piety.”
Dolon trembled a moment more, reached decision, and held out his hands. “Very well, very well, pilgrim. The gods do move in mysterious ways.”
Everard paid him. “Let me go inside now, to pray and to drink of the god’s bounty, become his guest in truth. Afterward I’ll sit quietly out here and bother nobody.”
The cool dimness kissed sweaty, dusty skin and dry lips. The spring bubbled up at the center, out of a slope on which the foundation rested. It partly filled a hole in the floor, then drained through a pipe inside the masonry, which must lead under the temenos wall to a rivulet in its natural channel. Behind was a rough stone block, the ancient altar. The image of Poseidon stood painted on the rear wall, barely discernible in this light. Elsewhere on the floor lay a clutter of offerings, mostly crude clay models of houses, beasts, or human organs that the god was thought to have aided. No doubt priest Nicomachus took whatever was perishable or valuable back with him when he returned to town from his visits.
Your simple faith hasn’t availed you much, folks, has it? Everard thought sadly.
Dolon made reverence. Everard followed suit as best he was able, about as well as you would expect of a Thracian. Kneeling, the caretaker dipped a cup of water and gave it to the suppliant. In Everard’s present state, the icy tang was more welcome than a beer. His prayer of thanks came close to sincerity.
“I will leave you alone with the god for a while,” Dolon said. “You may fill yonder jug for yourself and, duly grateful, carry it out.” Bowing to the icon, he left.
I’d better not take long, the Patrolman realized. However, a little comfort and privacy, a chance to think—
His plans were vague. The objective was to get into the Syrian camp and find the military surgeon Caletor of Oinoparas, known at home as Hyman Birnbaum and, like Everard, long since given a regenerative procedure enabling him to live among pagans without drawing comment. Maybe they could invent some excuse to go off together, maybe Birnbaum could arrange for Everard’s unhindered departure. What counted was to take a transceiver sufficiently many miles away that the Exaltationist instruments wouldn’t detect a call, above the faint intermittent background of communication between unheeding time travelers elsewhere in the world. Let the Patrol know what Everard had learned, so it could prepare a trap.
Though judging by what I’ve discovered about their precautions, the likelihood of our bagging all four is very small Damn. God damn.
Never mind. The immediate need was to reach Birnbaum, with enemy troops apt to skewer a stranger on sight. He might deter them by shouting that he bore a vital message, but then he’d be haled before officers who’d want to know what it was, and if he named Caletor, the surgeon would surely be examined too—under torture, when it turned out neither man had anything convincing to say.
He’d come to the temple in hopes of finding somebody in charge with more authority than the slave, an under-priest or acolyte or whatever. From such a person he might have gotten religious tokens, an escort, or the like, passing him through the Syrian pickets tomorrow. If he demonstrated his flashlight and said Poseidon had personally given it to him in the night—Of course, that must wait till Nicomachus-Draganizu had met with Polydorus-Buleni and both had left again. Everard had considered not arriving here before then; but skulking about this countryside meanwhile was at least as dangerous as sitting unobtrusively in the court, and he just might observe something useful—
The scheme had been precarious at best. Now it looked ridiculous. Well, maybe a fresh notion will occur. He grinned, largely a snarl. An action too unsubtle for them, same as yesterday only more so.
He went out into sunlight that briefly overwhelmed vision. “I think already I felt the god’s nearness, strengthening me,” he said weightily. “I believe I am doing what he wants, and you are, Dolon. Let’s not go astray.”
“No, no.” In a hasty mutter, the caretaker cautioned him against defiling the temenos—there was a privy on the far side of the grove—and hobbled back to shelter.
Everard sought the corner where the women sat. Fear no longer stared up at him. Instead he saw grief dulled by fatigue and despair. He couldn’t bring himself to greet them with “Rejoice.”
“May I join you?” he asked.
“We can’t forbid you,” mumbled the old woman (forty years of life behind her?).
He lowered himself to the ground beside the young one. She had been good-looking a day or two ago, before her spirit was shattered. “I too await the will of the god,” he said.
“We only wait,” she answered tonelessly.
“Uh, my name is Androcles, a pilgrim. You live hereabouts?”
“We did.”
The crone stirred. For a minute, a bitter vitality flickered. “Our home was downstream, so far that we didn’t get warning till late,” she told him. “My son said we must load an oxcart full of what we could take off the farm, or we’d be beggars in the city. Horsemen caught us on the road. They killed him and the boys. They ravished his wife. At least they didn’t kill us also. We found the gates shut. We thought the Earthshaker might give us refuge.”
“I wish they had killed us,” the young woman said in her dead voice. The infant began to cry. Mechanically, she bared a breast and gave suck. Her free hand stretched a fold of sleeve across to screen against the sun and the flies.
“I’m sorry” was all Everard could think of. That’s war for you, the thing that governments do best. “I’ll name you in my prayers to him.”
They didn’t reply. Well, numbness was a mercy of sorts. He raised his hood and leaned back. Poplars gave scant shade. The heat in the wall baked through his cloak.
Hours passed. As often before during a long and uncertain wait—though oftenest in future centuries—he withdrew into memories. Occasionally he drank some lukewarm water, occasionally he catnapped. The sun trudged up the sky and started down.
—clouds racing on the wind, light stabbing between them to blaze off the waves, cordage a-thrum, chill salt spray as the ship plunges through seas that thunder green, gray, white-maned, and “Ha!” Bjarni Herjulfsson shouts at the steering oar. “A gull,” promise of the new land ahead—
The end came slowly at first, then in a rush. Everard heard noises grow, hoofbeats, voices, clatter. His flesh tingled. Instantly alert, he pulled the hood further forward to shadow his face, lifted his knees, and slumped his shoulders to look as apathetic as the women still were.
Respecting sanctity, the Syrians dismounted outside the grove. Six of them, armed and armored, followed a man into the temenos. Like them, he went in mail and greaves, sword at side, but a horsehair plume stood tall on his helmet, a red mantle hung from his shoulders, an ivory baton was in his hand, held like a swagger stick, and he overtopped his followers by inches. The features within the iron were as if carved by Praxiteles in alabaster.