Snarls of agreement rose from the soldiers and sailors. Herakleides licked his lips again. He must have known recalling Alkibiades wouldn’t be easy before the Salaminia sailed. Had he known it would be this hard? Alkibiades had his doubts. With something like a sigh, Herakleides said, “At the motion of Thettalos son of Kimon, it has seemed good to the people of Athens to summon you home. Will you obey the democratic will of the Assembly, or will you not?”
Alkibiades grimaced. He had no use for the democracy of Athens, and had never bothered hiding that. As a result, the demagogues who loved to hear themselves talk in the Assembly hated him. He said, “I have no hope of getting a fair hearing in Athens. My enemies have poisoned the people of the polis against me.”
Herakleides frowned portentously. “Would you refuse the Assembly’s summons?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do right now.” Alkibiades clenched his fists. What he wanted to do was pound the smugness out of the plump, prosperous fool in front of him. But no. It would not do. Here, though, even he, normally so quick and decisive, had trouble figuring out what would do. “Let me have time to think, O marvelous one,” he said, and watched Herakleides redden at the sarcasm. “I will give you my answer tomorrow.”
“Do you want to be declared a rebel against the people of Athens?” Herakleides’ frown got deeper and darker.
“No, but I don’t care to go home and be ordered to guzzle hemlock no matter what I say or do, either,” Alkibiades answered. “Were it your life, Herakleides, such as that is, would you not want time to plan out what to do?”
That such as that is made the man just come from Athens redden again. But soldiers and sailors jostled forward, getting louder by the minute in support of their general. Herakleides yielded with such grace as he could: “Let it be as you say, most noble one.” He turned the title of respect into one of reproach. “I will hear your answer tomorrow. For now…hail.” He turned and walked back toward the Salaminia. The sun glinted dazzlingly off his gold wreath.
Sokrates stood in line to get his evening rations. Talk of Alkibiades and the herms and the profanation of the sacred mysteries was on everyone’s lips. Some men thought he’d done what he was accused of doing. Others insisted the charges against him were invented to discredit him.
“Wait,” Sokrates told a man who’d been talking about unholy deeds and how the gods despised them. “Say that again, Euthyphron, if you please. I don’t follow your thought, which is surely much too wise for a simple fellow like me.”
“I’d be glad to, Sokrates,” the other hoplite said, and he did.
“I’m sorry, best one. I really must be dense,” Sokrates said when he’d finished. “I still do not quite see. Do you say deeds are unholy because the gods hate them, or do you say the gods hate them because they are unholy?”
“I certainly do,” Euthyphron answered.
“No, wait. I see what Sokrates means,” another soldier broke in. “You can’t have that both ways. It’s one or the other. Which do you say it is?”
Euthyphron tried to have it both ways. Sokrates’ questions wouldn’t let him. Some of the other Athenians jeered at him. Others showed more sympathy for him, even in his confusion, than they did for Sokrates. “Do you have to be a gadfly all the time?” a hoplite asked him after Euthyphron, very red in the face, bolted out of the line without getting his supper.
“I can only be what I am,” Sokrates answered. “Am I wrong for trying to find the truth in everything I do?”
The other man shrugged. “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong. What I do know is, you’re cursed annoying.”
When Sokrates blinked his big round eyes in surprise, he looked uncommonly like a frog. “Why should the search for truth be annoying? Would you not think preventing that search to be a greater annoyance for mankind?”
But the hoplite threw up his hands. “Oh, no, you don’t. I won’t play. You’re not going to twist me up in knots, the way you did with poor Euthyphron.”
“Euthyphron’s thinking was not straight before I ever said a word to him. All I did was show him his inconsistencies. Now maybe he will try to root them out.”
The other soldier tossed his head. But he still refused to argue. Sighing, Sokrates snaked forward with the rest of the line. A bored-looking cook handed him a small loaf of dark bread, a chunk of cheese, and an onion. The man filled his cup with watered wine and poured olive oil for the bread into a little cruet he held out.
“I thank you,” Sokrates said. The cook looked surprised. Soldiers and sailors were likelier to grumble about the fare than thank him for it.
Men clustered in little knots of friends to eat and to go on hashing over the coming of the Salaminia and what it was liable to mean. Sokrates had no usual group to join. Part of the reason there was that he was at least twenty years older than most of the other Athenians who’d traveled west to Sicily. But his age was only part of the reason, and he knew it. He sighed. He didn’t want to make people uncomfortable. He didn’t want to, but he’d never been able to avoid it.
He walked back to his tent to eat his supper. When he was done, he went outside and stared up at Mount Aetna. Why, he wondered, did it stay cold enough for snow to linger on the mountain’s upper slopes even on this sweltering midsummer evening?
He was no closer to finding the answer when someone called his name. He got the idea this wasn’t the first time the man had called. Sure enough, when he turned, there stood Alkibiades with a sardonic grin on his face. “Hail, O wisest of all,” the younger man said. “Good to see you with us again.”
“If I am wisest-which I doubt, no matter what the gods may say-it is because I know how ignorant I am, where other men are ignorant even of that,” Sokrates replied.
Alkibiades’ grin grew impudent. “Other men don’t know how ignorant you are?” he suggested slyly. Sokrates laughed. But Alkibiades’ grin slipped. “Ignorant or not, will you walk with me?”
“If you like,” Sokrates said. “You know I never could resist your beauty.” He imitated the little lisp for which Alkibiades was famous, and sighed like a lover gazing upon his beloved.
“Oh, go howl!” Alkibiades said. “Even when we slept under the same blanket, we only slept. You did your best to ruin my reputation.”
“I cannot ruin your reputation.” Sokrates’ voice grew sharp. “Only you can do that.”
Alkibiades made a face at him. “Come along, best one, if you’d be so kind.” They walked away from the Athenian encampment on a winding dirt track that led up toward Aetna. Alkibiades wore a chiton with purple edging and shoes with golden clasps. Sokrates’ tunic was threadbare and raggedy; he went barefoot the way he usually did, as if he were a sailor.
The sight of the most and least elegant men in the Athenian expedition walking along together would have been plenty to draw eyes even if the Salaminia hadn’t just come to Katane. As things were, they had to tramp along for several stadia before shaking off the last of the curious. Sokrates ignored the men who followed hoping to eavesdrop. Alkibiades glowered at them till they finally gave up.
“Vultures,” he muttered. “Now I know how Prometheus must have felt.” He put a hand over his liver.
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” Sokrates asked.
“You know what I want to talk about. You were there when those idiots in gold wreaths summoned me back to Athens,” Alkibiades answered. Sokrates looked over at him, his face showing nothing but gentle interest. Alkibiades snorted. “And don’t pretend you don’t, either, if you please. I haven’t the time for it.”
“I am only the most ignorant of men-” Sokrates began. Alkibiades cursed him, as vilely as he knew how. Sokrates gave back a mild smile in return. That made Alkibiades curse harder yet. Sokrates went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “So you will have to tell me what it is you want, I fear.”