Chapter 2

When Lysander woke up a second time, he could tell he was indoors without opening his eyes. He knew he must be in some primitive shack – he could feel a hard stone floor under him. He lay on his side, and fought the urge to look around him. Where was he, and why had he been brought to this place?

The small house was full of people – he could hear the voices of old men arguing, and occasionally he heard a female voice. Strange to hear a woman involved in such things. It slowly dawned on Lysander that they were arguing about him.

"He's a cursed soldier from Hyperion's army, look at his face! It is said Hyperion's bulls scar men this way and then give them masks to wear – we have to kill him, or he'll lead the rest of the army here, and this time no-one will survive the slaughter!"

This sounded like an elderly man who'd seen too much sorrow. Lysander couldn't help but agree with him – and he'd wanted to die. He still did. Didn't he?

But another voice interrupted his thoughts – a woman, this time.
"He's a young man, strong despite his current state, and we need him. You won't allow the younger women to fish and you can't do this on your own anymore."

"I have heard that Hyperion's army was defeated-" a different voice, yet another old man. "Our young men will return and take up their nets-"
But he wasn't allowed to finish.

"No." Another man, this time. Lysander thought he sounded older, too, but he couldn't be sure. How had they all escaped Hyperion's army? His cheeks burned as he remembered his own village, where no-one had been left after he'd led the tyrant's men there.

"Those who weren't killed outright by the monstrous King died in his battle. I hear that the gods themselves joined the lists and struck him down, as well as any who fought by his side. At least," and here Lysander imagined the man shrugged, for his next words were more rueful and down to earth, "that's what Kephalos, the pot seller, told me yesterday."

The discussion dissolved into a hubbub of yelled arguments between those who thought Kephalos the pot seller was an old windbag pickled in wine, and those who scoffed at the thought of the gods taking a direct interest in the suffering of mortals. No-one scoffed at the gods, though, Lysander noticed. There was a lot of reverence here, and not a little fear too. Lysander guessed that, living on the bounty of the sea as they did, they couldn't afford to alienate any gods who might be listening. Lysander himself didn't know what he felt about the gods – he'd always joined in the rituals, and made sacrifices without really thinking about it. He remembered being very young and hearing stories about the gods disguising themselves as mortals to walk among them, but he was fairly sure he'd never seen a god. Sure, he'd heard the mountain come down behind him, but he'd never actually seen how it happened. Who's to say it wasn't a conveniently timed . . . event. Of some kind. A comet, maybe. They'd said Theseus had been directly helped by the gods, though. This rumour had circulated at camp despite the amount of people Hyperion had killed to try and quash it.

A high-pitched voice interrupted his thoughts. A woman, then. Young, by the sound of it. Things must be dire in this village if they allowed young women into their councils.

"We can't let him stay here, he will ravage us . . . I've heard stories . . ."
She sounded terrified. The older woman answered, reassuringly.
"My dear, he is incapable. The barbaric King Hyperion made sure that very few men besides himself would father children on the women of Greece."
Lysander shuddered. He was still wearing his ragged old chiton, [1] but they must have . . . what? Examined him? He sensed that the men in the room were shuffling around uncomfortably at such talk, and wished he could too.

"He will stay with me." This was a new voice, another old man, of which the village seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. "I will teach him to fish and we will not starve, or have to eat all our goats to survive."

"He will refuse – why else would he have joined that damned army if not to escape honest labour?"

"Why not ask him? He's been awake for a while now."

Lysander flushed, sensing that everyone in the room was staring at him now. He opened his eyes, cringing slightly at the attention. Now that he could look around him, he saw that he was in a small room which seemed to be bursting with people. He recognized the three old fishermen who had found him on the beach where he woke up – they looked very much like one would expect elderly fishermen to look: white, thinning hair, faces nut-brown, eyes surrounded by a mass of wrinkles from squinting into the sun all day. The older woman he had heard speak drew herself up, regally, and nodded to him. Her long brown hair was shot with streaks of grey and pulled back into a knot, while her chiton and himation,2 worn and faded, were nevertheless clean. He didn't know why he was staring at her, except maybe she reminded him of his mother. He deliberately didn't try to look at the younger woman he'd heard speak – the last thing he needed was for these men, who seemed to hate him on principle, to think he had any designs on their younger women.

This can't have been a poor village, before Hyperion came, he thought. Now, well. Some of them considered his arrival to be a sign of hope. Things must truly be desperate, then. Lysander tried to get up, only for one of the old men to plant his staff in his chest, forcing him back down.

"How can we trust him? How do we know he's not just scouting for his master?" The last word was said with a sneer.

Lysander opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a croak – he dimly recalled retching what seemed like half the ocean and his throat was on fire. The older woman walked over to him, and held a cup to his mouth. Just water. They wouldn't be wasting any wine on him.

"Slowly, now, or you'll be sick again."

The old man was impatient.

"Well? Why did you come here? Speak, eunuch!"

Lysander flushed again, this time in anger, though he held on to it, with difficulty. He could hardly deny it. He was a eunuch. That was what he was, now.

"I walked away from the final battle." Lysander spoke carefully and with some difficulty – his voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar to his own ears. He ignored the various mutterings of coward, and see? I told you-. "I never intended to come here. I wanted to find the sea. I-"

Lysander trailed off, not wanting to admit he'd actually thought of suicide. Not that they would have disapproved – might have even given him a hand.

"Maybe he wanted to make sacrifice to the god," the young woman said timidly, before blushing at the sudden attention, and drawing her veil across her face.

Lysander didn't need to ask which god she meant. This was a fishing village, after all.

"And the god rejected him, threw him back! It's a sign!"
This was the old man with the staff, who was using it now to prod Lysander and slap him a few times on the thigh.

The man who'd said Lysander could stay with him shook his head.
"No, it's a gift. The god hears our prayers and gives us someone to help us in our work."

Lysander could see various people drawing deep breaths to speak, probably to protest that a half-starved eunuch wasn't much of a gift, and then stopping abruptly, no doubt realising the danger of loudly questioning the god's answer to their prayers.

"My name is Hipparchus," the old man said, helping Lysander up. "What is yours?"

Lysander opened his mouth, and closed it again. He was seized with a sudden hatred for himself, combined with pity for a village so poor that it saw his arrival as a blessing from the gods.

"Aischrion," he answered.

Hipparchus looked puzzled, while the other old man, the one with the staff, barked out a laugh. "The name suits," he said, and seemed to want to add more, but the older woman stopped him with a look.

She looked at Lysander with pity in her eyes, and for a moment he hated her for that.

"I hardly think your mother gave you the name 'Ugly', not with that lovely golden hair," she said, gently.

Lysander shrugged, not trusting himself to answer.

The meeting was breaking up, but the curmudgeonly old man still found time to mutter, on his way out, that the golden hair was probably the reason Poseidon spared Lysander's life, and now they were stuck with a eunuch just because the god wanted some mortal eromenos to warm his bed. The young woman covered her mouth in delighted horror, and the other men just shook their heads. Evidently they were used to such salty talk.

"Come," said Hipparchus. "You need a bath, and a change of clothing." He sniffed, meaningfully, and Lysander cringed. He couldn't smell himself anymore, which was probably just as well. He wondered if taking a bath here meant dunking himself in the stream he could hear in the distance, but, following Hipparchus out of the small house they'd been in, he realised they were going to the centre of the village.

He looked around, curiously. It was late afternoon, light enough to see a rather small village, with a handful of small houses set back from a rocky coastline. He could just see a small inlet with a few fishing boats moored. In one of the natural depressions he found what he'd been looking for: a statue of Poseidon with his trident, made of marble, he was surprised to see. But then, it wasn't a huge statue – it was bigger than a tall man, but not much bigger.

The houses too were economically built – made of stone or brick, not big, but sufficient, and all of them neatly made and clean. No, this hadn't been a rich town before Hyperion came, but it must have been happy. Now, all the young men were gone, he could see. There were some children playing – in a village this small they wouldn't have been cooped up in the women's quarters, if they even had such a thing here. Lysander was glad a few children had escaped Hyperion's hands.

While he was lost in his thoughts, they had arrived at the village's small bath-house – he managed to stop himself from being surprised that a village so small even had such a thing. Still, he almost embarrassed himself when he saw Hipparchus light the fire under the stones. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask where the slave was, but he bit back his words. Was that all it took, a few hours among civilised people, and he forgot where he'd spent the last weeks, living in his own filth among murderers and torturers, having become one of them?

Hipparchus had got the fire going and grabbed a ladle for the olive oil – he gestured towards Lysander with it.
"Do you want me to-"
"No! I mean, thank you, I'll do myself."

Lysander was about to pull the chiton over his head before the usual oiling that went before a steam bath, but then he hesitated. Though why was he hesitating? Hipparchus already knew everything about him, and so he pulled the tunic off with a sudden burst of defiance, only to see that the old man had already turned his back. Lysander wasn't sure if Hipparchus was trying to spare his feelings or not. Either way, he was grateful. And angry, and hurt, and humiliated, which is why the next words which burst out of him were:

"I betrayed my village, you know. I killed my fellow soldiers and led Hyperion's army there."

Hipparchus looked up, mildly. The rocks had heated up and he had started pouring water over them, after which he threw sage and rosemary on the brazier, and soon they were enveloped in clouds of sweet-smelling steam, the scent of which brought a sudden rush of nostalgia to Lysander. Through the steam he couldn't tell what Hipparchus was thinking, but his next words were mild in tone, though the story they told was horrific.

"My son did the same. Or tried to."

Hipparchus's face tightened in pained recollection. "We argued that day. He was angry at everything, at me, at the gods, at life, even. He said he would join that monster's army, to become his soldier, and we'd all see." He smiled, sadly. "I never saw him again. Hypatia, the older woman you met today, had heard stories of what Hyperion's army was doing to the people they encountered, and she managed to convince many of us to hide in the sea caves on the coast. All the old people, many of the young women and children, none of the young men. When we returned, we saw . . ."

The old man closed his eyes, rubbing them. Lysander could imagine what they had seen, but he let Hipparchus continue.

"So many bodies – pregnant women, slaughtered like cattle. Young men, butchered in the street. Though not all of them – the women who were not with child were taken, as well as the some of the men. My son," he paused there, "my son did not die that day. He joined Hyperion's army, so he must have been rewarded for his betrayal . . . or not."

Hipparchus looked at Lysander with sudden comprehension.
"Was this your reward? Your face, and . . . your manhood?" Hipparchus gestured towards Lysander's groin and Lysander wanted to cover himself. "Did my son get the same treatment?"

"I don't know. Hyperion was insane, I . . ." he wanted to reassure the old man, but didn't know how. Knowing Hyperion, he'd done the same thing to Hipparchus's son, but how could he speak of such horrors to the only person who'd shown him any sympathy?

"No matter."
Hipparchus shook his head and gestured at Lysander to stop him from speaking. "It is done. My son is dead, but the village need not die too. We managed to save all the children, and some young women, so maybe young men will come here, in time."

He lay back, soaking in the steam, and Lysander could see that he wasn't as old as he had thought, just prematurely aged through a hard life.

"Will you stay here, and work with us?"

Lysander wanted to say he hadn't known he had a choice, but that would sound churlish. They were going to clothe him and feed him – apparently death wasn't an option if even the sea threw him back, and what else was there for him? He nodded, and Hipparchus must have seen it through the steam, as he clapped him on the shoulder, and urged him up, handing him a strigil.3
"Come, we'd best get going – you need to eat, and sleep. Tomorrow, you learn how to fish. Though, of course, I need to know the name of the man who will be living in my house."

Lysander flushed and looked down, pretending to pay special attention to scraping the back of his leg. He muttered, "Lysander," not willing to continue with the self-hatred that had driven him earlier.

"Good name. Come, come . . ."

Hipparchus rushed him into his filthy chiton, assuring him he'd have clean clothes soon, and chivvied him out of the bath-house – not a moment too soon, because a few of the men from the earlier meeting were casually dropping by, pretending not to be curious about him.

Hipparchus's house was average-sized, with two small areas, one obviously for eating and the other with two low pallets for sleeping – Lysander wondered if he'd left his son's bed ready for him, in case he came back. There was food ready – bread, goats' cheese, olives and wine, which Hipparchus diluted carefully.

Lysander ate only a little, and in small bites – he knew what would happen if he wolfed everything down.

"Now, take that filthy thing off, perhaps the women can get it clean again-"
"Burn it- if you have something else for me to wear," Lysander spat out, dragging the hated thing over his head and shoulders and balling it up in his hands.

Hipparchus nodded at him, seeming to understand the sudden rage which drove Lysander, who flushed again, embarrassed at his spontaneous words. These weren't exactly rich people. But Hipparchus simply opened a chest in the corner and drew out a chiton, which, while not new, was at least clean.

"This belonged to my son. It was his second-best . . ."

Hipparchus was looking at it as he spoke, and drawing his fingers through the folds. He looked up at Lysander, seeming to recollect where he was, and showed it to him.

"You can wear it in the morning. But now, I think you should get some sleep."
Lysander's eyes were already drooping closed. He managed to hold one thought in his head, how strange it was that he was in comparatively good shape after his trek through the desert and his near drowning, but even that disappeared as he let himself fall asleep.

1 chiton: a tunic made up of a rectangle of woolen or linen fabric, fastened at the shoulders by pins, sewing, or buttons. A man's chiton was usually knee-length, while a woman's usually reached the ankles.
2 himation: a cloak.
3 strigil: a small, curved, metal tool used in ancient Greece to scrape dirt and sweat from the body. First perfumed oil was applied to the skin, and then it would be scraped off, along with the dirt.