The Son of Rome

We moved with purpose through the dock city. It was a good day for sailing, as far as I could tell - though admittedly I was far from an expert. The abundance of blue-backed tuna, mackerel, and vibrant dorado on display spoke to good fishing if nothing else. I even spotted a few mongers a bit further down the beach hauling swordfish as large as their torsos. The sight alone was enough to provoke my hunger, evoking vivid memories of the roasted filets Griffon had served at the Kronia.

I debated my next impulse within myself for a moment, but hunger won out in the end. Selene had done her best to smuggle me a few things here and there while I was in the Gadfly’s tender care, minding my health when my mentor would not. There was no substitute for fresh meat, though.

“How much for that one?” I demanded of the next fishmonger that tried to pass me with his haul. He hesitated, glancing around to see if I was talking to anyone else.

“Try a civilized tongue,” Griffon suggested.

The fishmonger fidgeting in front of me could have been from any of the free city-states, as far as I knew, or he could have been from somewhere else entirely. His features were squat and unassuming, just the wrong side of ugly, and his skin was wrinkled and leather-tanned by the nature of his work. He didn’t look any younger than thirty, but his soul was still dormant.

The shard of nameless stone from Babylon had left its mark on me in a vague and profound way. I had no way of knowing what Greek dialect or other far-flung tongue he spoke, yet when I called upon the memory of reading the foundational myths off that shard, my pneuma sprang forth from the back of my throat and coated my tongue.

“How much for the swordfish?” I asked the monger again, the words Latin and every other language at once. The monger blinked and held up his catch.

“As is, sir?”

My hunger reared up.

“From your hands to mine.”

The monger gave Griffon and I a once over, lingering on the battered bronze breastplate Socrates had lent me, as well as Griffon‘s sheathed sword and cult attire. He seemed to come to a decision within himself, shoulder slumping just slightly, and rattled off a nonsense sum of a currency I only vaguely recognized.

“I have no money,” I said flatly. The monger swallowed down his first response to that, casting around for an ally in the seaside markets and finding none that would meet his eyes.

“Don’t have much either, myself. Pardon me for saying it, but I’ve got a family to feed-”

“I’ll work for it.”

Griffon snorted. The monger regarded me with polite disbelief, strained to the limits of courtesy. It was an expression I had seen on more than one centurion’s face in my early days as a tribune.

“You’ll work for it,” he repeated, squinting as if the sun’s glare might have distorted his view of me. “Ain’t you a cultivator?”

“Solus!” Scythas called again, close enough now for even the mongers to see the Heroic flames burning behind his eyes.

“You’re with the Hero?” he asked, aghast.

“The Hero is with us,” Griffon corrected him lightly. The monger inhaled a shaking breath.

“Right. Alright. Then, if it pleases the wise men, I’ll trade for a word of advice.”

My eyebrows drew down. “You’ll what?”

“The monger wants to hear a thinking man’s opinion,” Griffon explained for my benefit. “Fortunately, it seems he’s willing to settle for yours instead.”

“I offered to work for it,” I clarified, ignoring my Greek companion now that he was back to himself. “I’m quick on my feet and strong enough. Point me to a task and I’ll see it done.”

“I didn’t take you for a haggler,” Griffon mused. I gave him an ugly look.

“I’m just telling him to take his money’s worth.”

“Hn. You don’t seem to understand, so I’ll enlighten you,” the former Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn said, throwing his arm across my shoulders. “The monger is trying to get his money’s worth out of you. A Greek philosopher’s word is worth more than any sailor’s labor. It isn’t unheard of for even a small morsel of wisdom to awaken a man to his place in the world, depending on the question asked and how well the philosopher articulates his answer.”

Awaken a man to his place in the world. There was only one thing that could mean in this context - the birth of a cultivator. But that hardly made any sense at all.

“That’s all it takes?”

“At times,” Griffon confirmed.

“But that’s so…” I struggled to find a word that wasn’t disparaging. “Soft.” I failed.

Griffon snickered. Mottled color darkened the monger’s face, flushing at the curious looks his fellow sailors were sending his way.

“I suppose where you come from the journey begins upon enlistment?” He waited for me to snap something back, and when I didn’t he groaned. “Oh, you can’t be serious-”

“Ask your question and give me my fish,” I told the weathered fishmonger. The man visibly gathered his courage, set his shoulders, and looked me in my eyes.

Griffon may have spent his life sparring with words as often as with fists, but I had not. If I had been a better student, perhaps I would have picked up Aristotle‘s easy rhetoric or Gaius’ stirring diction. But I was not, and I had not. Labor I could do. But advice of this kind was beyond me. He would be disappointed, of that I was all but certain.

“I’ve lost the clothes off my back five times since I joined Fat Nelp’s crew,” he said in a rush, flopping the swordfish tail at a group of similarly grimy sailors loitering by a beached fishing skiff and pretending not to listen in. “Those whoresons keep thrashing me at dice and telling me to put my wife on the table when I run out of coin. How do I beat them?”

“I take back what I said before,” Griffon said incredulously. “A scholar of profound mystery stands before you, and you’re asking for tips on dice? Do you have any idea-”

I held up a silencing hand, regarding the fishmonger seriously.

“Listen to me closely.”

“You have a problem.”

“Several,” I agreed. The swordfish wasn’t the largest I had ever seen caught, but it was fresh and the taste of it was sweet enough to remind me why even gods above hunger still ate at times.

“If you were half as passionate about the refinement of your soul as you are about gambling, the Fates wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

I sank my teeth into swordfish well-earned and savored its flavor. Seabirds hopped and fluttered around in our wake, snapping up the undesirable scales and offal as I tossed them aside. I stepped lightly - objectively, the bone dice I had given the fishmonger to punctuate my lecture didn’t weigh enough for me to really notice their absence. But the spirit was another matter entirely. I felt nearly naked without them.

“I could have saved myself days and weeks of effort back then,” Griffon lamented. “If I had only known a handful of carved bone was all it took, I could have made this whole journey a wager and played you in a game for it.”

“You could have.” I pried a thin bone out from between my teeth with my tongue and spat it out into the sea. “But you would have lost every time.”

“I never lose the same game twice.”

“You’ve never played me twice.”

The air between us was tense with future promise when we made it to our Heroic companion and the captain of the vessel he had acquired for us.

“Finally.” Scythas took silent note of the bloodied knuckles of my left hand and Griffon's split lip, satisfaction in his eyes’ golden coals. I supposed that as he saw it, I had sent him off alone so that I could discipline my student properly for his attitude. “It took some time, but I found us a charter that’s willing to sail east. This man’s name is Buccoli - he’ll be the one taking us.”

“Greetings.” The captain offered his hand and I took it. If the swordfish’s blood and oil coating my hand bothered him, he didn’t show it. He was a lean man, dark-haired with a mortal sailor’s complexion and a con man’s easy smile. “The Hero tells me you boys are gearing up for a bit of a journey.”

“Just running a few errands,” I replied, taking one last bite out of my fish and tossing the rest to the birds.

“Is that what it is?” he chuckled. “Suppose it might be for someone of your standing. Lately though, us crude men give the Aegean a bit more respect than that. I imagine that’s why the good Hero made it this far down the beach before he found someone who’d take his money.”

Griffon’s head tilted. “And why is that?”

The weathered captain raised an eyebrow. “The Raging Heaven Cult’s lost their kyrios. I’ve heard of cultivators seeking isolation, but you couldn’t avoid that news if you tried.”

“We know,” I said. “What does that have to do with sailing?”

Buccoli shrugged. “Same thing as a red sun at dawn, if I had to guess. Poor omen. Doesn’t help that most of the ships that were out east when the kyrios passed have yet to make it back.”

Griffon and I shared a look.

“Then why are you risking it?” he asked the obvious question.

Scythas answered in the captain’s place, bouncing a leather pouch in his hand so that the coins inside of it could be heard striking one another.

“I’ve never been able to turn down a good deal,” the captain confessed. “It’s why I have a wife for every major port and a crew that most captains wouldn’t bother pissing on. That’s them over there.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

I raised an eyebrow. “Your crew or your wives?”

“Cultivators are truly cruel,” Buccoli said ruefully.

“Them?” Griffon asked. “The ones loitering by the decrepit skiff?” Scythas winced as the former Young Aristocrat stalked past, and I nearly did the same when I saw it for myself.

“Was the ship a bargain, too?”

“Might as well have been free,” he said proudly.

Scythas and I joined Griffon at the stern of the beach ship. The crew scattered, likely as much due to the look on Griffon’s face as the orders Buccoli started hollering at them. We examined the vessel in silence. I walked a slow circle around it while Griffon pressed and prodded at it with pankration hands.

“It’s the best we’re going to find,” Scythas finally said, unable to bear our silent judgment. “For now, at least. Once we make it to the port at Krokos we can charter something sturdier.”

“If we make it,” Griffon murmured.

Scythas scowled. “You’re free to walk this beach yourself if you think you’ll find something better.”

“Far from a high hurdle. We might be better off swimming.”

“We could walk,” I muttered, considering the paths available. “If we skirted Macedonia…”

“We’d be at this for years,” Griffon said, waving the suggestion off. “Three months is already a steep enough task without trying to march it.”

Behind us, the captain Buccoli‘s voice rose in anger. Arguing with someone further up the shore about prices. Some market dispute or another. I ran my hand along the ship’s keel. It felt nothing at all like the Eos had, and looked nearly rotten by comparison. The ship’s sail was tied up, but I could still see patchwork colors that differed from the rest in its folds. Tears that had been mended.

“You have some experience with sailing,” I said quietly. Scythas grimaced and nodded once. “Is this vessel capable of the kind of sailing we may need it for?”

Could it outrun a real ship? We could add ourselves to the crew’s efforts, but past a certain point the ship would have to do the work. To say that I was a novice seafarer would have been an understatement. I couldn’t tell one way or another if this would be enough. The ship inspired little confidence in me, but if Scythas said it would suffice then I would take him at his word.

The Hero of the Scything Squall gripped the starboard rail. “I don’t know.”

“I do,” Griffon declared, pacing around the ship to our side. “I know it won’t. And so does this one.”

A ragged young man followed close behind the former Young Aristocrat, an eager smile stretching his chapped lips. Rail-thin with a former slave’s brutally misshapen posture, he nonetheless thrust out an unchained hand and gripped my forearm as tight as a mortal man could when I returned the gesture. His forearm was so thin that the tips of my thumb and middle finger touched when I gripped it.

“Terrible ship, sir,” was his cheerful greeting. “I wouldn’t sail it through a bathhouse.” He was missing three teeth in the top row and two in the bottom, grouped in such a way that I knew they had been knocked out rather than rotten.

“Where did this man come from?” I asked Griffon, confused.

“I was trying to get Buccoli’s attention so I could have him address some concerns,” the leonine cultivator explained, his disgust clear, “but he was too preoccupied haggling with this one’s friend to pay me any mind. This wretch did see me, fortunately, and ran over to confirm my suspicions.”

Scythas looked ready to spit blood. “You’re taking his word for it?”

“Why not? This sorry ship reeks of fish and has more nets than rowing benches. Who would know a fishing vessel better than a monger?”

“I’m no fishmonger, sir.” The young man was as unbothered by the assumption of his occupation as he was the name Griffon had called him. He raised both arms and flexed, and to his credit what little flesh he had was pure muscle and enduring sinew. His eyes crinkled, brown and vibrant as he declared, “I’m a mercenary!”

“Ho? And what sort of rate does a mercenary charge with a body like yours? Show me your weapon of choice.”

He was no cultivator, that much was clear. He didn’t have a cloth to cover his emaciated torso, let alone arms and armor of any sort. To call him a wretch was unkind - but it wasn’t a lie.

“Not that type of mercenary, sir. Rather than a soldier for hire, think of me as an ethically ambiguous ferryman.” He slapped one of the decrepit ship’s oars. “This right here is the only weapon I need to do my work.”

“You’re trying to poach our business,” I realized. Up the beach, Buccoli’s crew were meandering their way through stalls over to their captain and the man he was heatedly arguing with. The mercenary ferry’s companion didn’t look much more promising than him, but the man’s running mouth didn’t once falter even as they surrounded him.

“We’re bound for Thracia, you understand that?” Scythas said.

“We’ll have you there and back before you know it!”

“And what will it cost us?” Griffon asked, as if he was the one paying.

The mercenary opened his mouth.

“Free!?” Buccoli exploded, and the mercenary nodded happily while we all turned to look. The captain Scythas had secured shoved the mercenary‘s companion back, nearly throwing the similarly emaciated man clear off his feet. “You’ll take my charter and you’ll do it for free? What do you think you’re playing at!?”

“That is a bargain,” Griffon mused. “What’s your name, ferryman?”

“Hoiple, should it please you!”

“I think it might.”

“You’d be fool enough trying a scam like that on mortal men, let alone two cultivators and a Hero,” Buccoli berated the mercenary’s companion while we approached. The captain’s collection of layabouts and drunks pressed in, forming a ring around them. “If I was a righteous man I’d let you try it and reap your earned reward. But I’m not, and I’m being paid far too much to let you do as you wish.”

“The only deceitful man here is you,” the mercenary's companion fired back without hesitation. “Naming obscene rates like you’re the Hero and not the one transporting him.”

“The supplier names the rate!” Buccoli thundered. “The client decides whether it’s fair to pay - that’s how clean business is done!”

“Your rate is too high!”

“Right, of course! I should drag my men from their families and brave the bleak Aegean for nothing at all, just like you.” Buccoli rounded on us, his men parting to allow us into the circle. “Is this your doing? Lather me up and let me name my price, then send in your proxy to threaten me with an undercut?”

“Please,” Griffon scoffed. “If I cared enough to haggle I’d have done it myself.”

Buccoli looked at me.

My eyes rolled. “If this was my doing, he’d have at least started off with a believable number.”

“We’re here of our own accord,” Hoiple asserted, standing between Griffon and I.

“And you can be gone of my accord.” The captain hacked and spat phlegm on the mercenary‘s bare chest. “Fuck off.”

The man in the middle of the sailor ring lunged forward and punched Buccoli in the jaw.

A short while and some venomous cursing later, I dumped both mercenaries in the sand behind me. Griffon hummed an absent tune, a pankration hand holding each sailor up off the ground while another pankration hand each lazily smacked their faces. Scythas, for his part, held the captain back while he howled for blood.

I crossed my arms. “You wanted our attention? You have it. What’s your real price?”

“Could be a labor of love. Perhaps they admire the great Hero and his pretty lips,” Griffon suggested, returning Scythas’ ugly look with a smile.

“That’s twice you’ve mentioned his lips today,” I pointed out. Griffon snorted. Returning to the supposed mercenaries, I rolled my wrist. “Speak.”

“Lae and I are new hires, sir,” Hoiple explained. “The boys picked us up a few weeks back and told us to keep an eye out for a gold-haired cultivator in fancy red silks. Said he’d probably have a mean looking bastard with him for company. Begging your pardon, sir, but Lae and I figured that was you.”

“You figured right,” Griffon assured them, his pankration limbs abruptly flinging Buccoli’s crew out into the Ionian. He sidled up beside me and looked curiously down on the two mercenaries. “So then. Who is it that’s been looking for me, and why are they offering to do my work for free?”

“Not for free, sir,” Lae said. He was every bit as emaciated as Hoiple, but his bushy eyebrows and his dark, heavy beard gave him an illusion of greater fortitude. “The boys charge a king’s fortune for their services. It’s just that you two paid up front.”

“Here they come now,” Hoiple said, rising up and waving cheerily at the distant serpentine lane of the breakwater.

“This is a joke,” Buccoli said furiously. “Worse than that, it’s a waste of my -” Scythas tossed him down face first, eyes wide as he looked out over the Ionian.

“Is that-?” he breathed.

Griffon hummed. “Well now. There’s a sight for sore eyes.”

“Thank you, but we’ll be taking their offer instead,” I informed the sputtering captain.

Griffon and I set off with Scythas in tow to greet the Eos.