1.3

The Young Griffon

Twenty arms of pankration intent pulled me from the sea, a crawling mass of grasping hands heaving me up and over the bow of the encroaching ship. I spat sea water and raked a hand through my soaked hair, surveying the deck.

The galley was a shallow thing, hardly fit for trade – a proper trireme would have dwarfed it. Even the Eos was a bit larger. It was a vessel built for speed and agility over deep waters and shallow coastlines both. A beautiful racing girl, despite her ragged sails and sparse oars. Her keel had been lashed by rough strokes of white and blue paints, and up at the front I could see her figurehead. No woman or beast. Just a single grasping hand.

A shout went up and down the deck as my presence was noticed. There were ten men at the oars, five on each side, and all of them twisted and jerked on their benches at the sight of me. There was a pitiful mix of terror and hope on their grubby faces as they tried to get away. They couldn’t move far, unfortunately. They’d been shackled to their oars.

The slavers in charge of the vessel pounded down the deck towards me. I leapt fully onto it, rolling my neck and striding forward to meet them. The wings of my pneuma unfurled, blanketing the vessel.

The Eos was still a distant blot on the horizon. It was only just barely possible to make out the silhouette of a man crouching on the ship’s figurehead.

The Eos dipped sharply, rocking in the water, and the man was gone.

“Well now, this is hardly fair,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “I don’t even have a blade!” Indeed, my late uncle’s sword was still in its sheath back on my cousin’s ship. I was utterly defenseless before these sea thieves.

The pirate that had been closest when I boarded the vessel growled a curse in a language not my own, a curved kopis in his right hand and a braided lash in his left. He cracked the whip in an effort to disorient me, the edge of the cord kissing my nose, and swept in with his sword.

The backs of twenty palms struck his cheek at one moment, throwing him spinning into the ocean.

“Have any of you been to Olympia recently?” I asked, continuing forward while the rest of the pirates staggered to a stop. They eyed me warily. “I’m on my way to visit and I want to make the most of it. Any suggestions?”

Unfortunately for me, they didn’t get a chance to respond. A shadow passed over the ship in that instant, and two of the pirates looked up just in time to be smashed flat against the deck by a falling Roman. The slave galley rocked as Sol discharged his virtuous technique at the point of impact, arresting his momentum and driving the two hapless pirates cleanly through the wood. He stood, rolling his shoulders.

“My uncle said that two things were universal when it came to pirates,” Sol said, holding out an empty hand. His virtue called and a blade leapt to his palm, courtesy of one of the thieves he’d just flattened. “They cheat at dice no matter what, and hunger endlessly above their station. One is a symptom of the other. The punishment for both is the same.”

“You kill people for cheating at dice?” I asked, confused.

“No. We crucify them.”

The deck groaned and cracked beneath the weight of a gravity that had not been there before. The remaining slavers, seven strong and armed to the teeth, fell to their knees. The slaves slumped over their oars, unable to bring any pneuma to bear in defense against the Roman’s virtue. Their eyes rolled wildly in their heads.

“You crucify people,” I repeated. “For cheating at dice.”

One of the pirates spoke furiously, struggling to raise his head.

Sol frowned. “What did he say?”

“Just bring your own dice and they can’t cheat,” I reasoned.

“They said that?”

“No, I said-”

Hngh.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I looked down, surprised, at the bolt protruding from my stomach. Where had that come from? I touched it experimentally, wincing at the sharp stab of pain it invoked. It was real. I heard seven slavers roar and lurch across the deck at Sol, hoping to overwhelm the lone cultivator while I was stunned. I squinted at the bolt. It had entered through my back.

Behind me, a loose plank slid near soundlessly back into place. I inhaled, eyes rolling back into my head. Ow. Twenty hands of pankration intent smashed through the deck of the ship, pulling a thrashing young boy from underneath. He wiggled like a fish, fruitlessly trying to kick and bite the arms of my soul. He was small, around Myron’s age if I had to guess, and he was clutching the most bizarre bow I’d ever seen.