1.99

The Son of Rome

There and back again in just under two weeks. All told, it was one of the faster expeditions I’d been a part of.

It had taken us three days to sail around the southern tip of the Peloponnesian landmass where Olympia resided, and north up the full length of the Aegean Sea to the unmarked lands of Thracia. It had taken us four more days and four more nights of horseback riding and chthonic wandering to find our infernal drink and return to the Eos with golden cup in hand. We’d made good time sailing back thus far, despite the added weight of our cargo and the brief complication of Griffon breaking all the oars. By the dawn of our third day back at sea, the coast was on the ship’s starboard side once more.

Our last and maddest night in the land of indefinite boundaries had cut the four of us deeply, but time and the steady lapping of the waves had worn the edge of our mania away as surely as a seaside cliff. By the second night, I was able to sleep.

As the rosy dawn broke over our third morning back at sea, Selene revealed to us that Griffon wasn’t the only one on board with a sweet singing voice.

“Whenever Bakkhos comes, I lay my cares to rest,” she sang, swinging her legs idly over the deep blue waves of the Ionian. She spoke with a cultivator’s universal tongue, conveying the meaning of the words to every sailor’s ear. The men of the Eos belted out the following verse with bawdy enthusiasm.

“Bring me the cup, boy! Oh, bring me the cup!”

“I dream I’m rich as Croesus, and it makes me want to sing.” If Griffon’s voice was wine-dark deep and rolling smoke, then Selene’s was light like honeycombs and falling snow. More than charming enough to put a smile on every sailor’s face.

“Bring me the cup, boy! I said bring me that cup!”

Griffon and Scythas sat beside the horses at the rear edge of the deck, speaking more cordially than I had ever seen them before. It likely helped that half the Hero’s attention was committed to the mare, Kronia. I’d noticed back when he was buying the beasts that Scythas had an eye for horses born of passion.

That passion was on full display now, the Hero’s admiration for the white-haired beast of virtue clear to see. Kronia hadn’t allowed him to touch her at first, perhaps remembering what had happened to the last two horses he’d ridden, but Griffon had convinced her with some cajoling words and a vigorous massage with thirty formless hands. They both poked and prodded at the mare while they discussed the finer mechanics of beast cultivation, searching for changes in her body that had come from the consumption of a higher power.

Scythas hadn’t even bothered with Atlas. It was likely for the best.

“Ivy-garlanded I lie, but through my heart I walk the world.”

“Bring me the cup, boy! Boy, bring me the cup!”

For my part, I had taken to passing the time in my usual way.

Dice carved from a sea bream’s bones clattered and rolled across the deck. Eight dice in all, every one an octahedron with various number carved into each of their eight faces. They weren’t the prettiest, but I’d been working with substandard materials from the start.

And they looked pretty enough when they landed with the numbers I desired.

“I win!” a wiry pirate boy with vibrant red hair declared gleefully, already groping for the small pile of berries on the deck between us.

My hand came down, covering the mound of fruit before he could snatch it away. The boy’s grin immediately turned to a scowl. He scrabbled at my fingers, heaved with all his strength at my hand, but no matter what he did he could not lift my hand from the pile.

“Cheater!” he accused me. “You said the highest number gets the prize!”

“I did.”

“And I won!”

“Did you?”

The pirate child looked at me like I was simple. “Thirty-one beats thirty.”

“It does,” I agreed. “But thirty beats twenty-nine.”

“Wha-?”

I counted off the values of his dice, adding them as I went. “Five, seven, eight, sixteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-nine.”

“Thirty-one!” the boy protested, jabbing a grimy finger at the last of the bone dice. “That’s a six! The I goes after the-” He blinked, abruptly realizing his mistake.

“The I goes before the V,” I corrected him, tapping the die in question. “If you look at it so that the I comes after, the V will be upside down. It’s a four, not a six. You lose.”

The boy slumped, his forehead thumping against the deck.

“I’m hungry,” he said pitifully. I hummed.

“Unfortunate.” I popped a raspberry into my mouth and savored its tang. The little pirate spat an oath and pounded his fists against the planks.

“Get it ready and I’ll drink: bring me the cup, boy!” Selene cheered, and the oarsmen brought the song home.

“Bring me the cup, boy! Now bring me that cup!”

It was only a brief reprieve. We distracted ourselves with pleasant things, got to know the men that had kept the Eos safe in our absence and amused ourselves with dice and fishing and idle talk. But though the passing days had dulled its edge, we still felt the echoes of that night spent in the Orphic House. It haunted each of us in its own way.

Griffon had insisted at the beginning of this Thracian venture that we keep going until the ingredients were gathered, but that had been before we’d seen for ourselves what one reagent alone required. If we had any hope at all of finding more, we’d need a light to guide us at the very least. Or, failing that, an old man’s wisdom.

It came to us unexpectedly – hours before the Eos would have reached Olympia’s southernmost dock.

A welcome cry from above heralded the return of my eagle, Sorea’s grand wingspan blotting out the sunlight briefly as he wheeled overhead. Selene jumped off her seat at the starboard rail and waved excitedly up at the bird, calling out his name.

I held out an arm and the messenger beast landed gracefully on it, curling his talons around my forearm and squeezing just tight enough not to cut through skin. His form of greeting, I supposed. I offered him a berry from my pile.

“I was wondering when you’d make it back. How was your-“

Atlas groaned and rose up, the muscles beneath his dark flank clenching and spasming around the wounds the gatekeepers and I had given him. His golden eyes glared daggers at the bird. After a long beat of silence, unbroken by the sailors that rightfully feared the devastation they could bring down upon a ship, he snorted threateningly. Despite the fact that we were far from the frozen lands of Thracia now, the air still left the charger’s nostrils as steam.

Scythas watched the stallion warily, ready to bolt out from his immediate reach if necessary. Griffon continued to stroke his mare’s head, glancing between the eagle and the stallion with naked curiosity. Selene, for her part, was too busy rummaging through barrels for scraps to feed Sorea to care.

Sorea cocked his head at the grandstanding horse and slowly, with deliberation, lifted his wings. Somehow, I felt like I could almost understand their silent exchange.

Atlas screamed a challenge. The oarsmen nearest to him shouted and scrambled away.

Disgusting, ugly pheasant! Who gave you permission to lay talons on my Roman?

Sorea shrieked his own reply.

Junior, you dare? He was mine long before he was yours!

Atlas dragged a hoof against the deck, carving furrows into the wood.

The little morsel is tempting the Fates. Apologize to this stallion a thousand-thousand times and I’ll consider breaking your neck before I eat you.

Why did I imagine both of them speaking with Griffon’s voice?

Wretched ass, you have much to learn of heaven and earth. Come, let’s exchange discou- ow, fuck!

Griffon flinched and recoiled from Selene’s penumbral spear, stabbed cleanly through his shadow. His shaded silhouette withdrew from mine, and the voices of ‘Sorea’ and ‘Atlas’ abruptly vanished from my mind.

I really should have known better.

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Virtuous beasts were a natural phenomena well known to any cultivator, though what was known of them was dangerously vague. It was an issue in many ways similar to the delineation of cultivators – it was easy enough to differentiate the Legate from the Consul, the Consul from the Censor, just as it was to separate Philosophers from Heroes, and Heroes from Tyrants. But though it was the case that Caesar and Antony had reigned as Consuls together for a year’s time, they were far from the same political animal.

We had stories to roughly outline the scope of what a given animal was capable of becoming – tales of the Champion and his beastly labors most prominent among them. But the Nemean Lion was not the rule when it came to a lion with an awakened soul. It was only the standard, just as the Champion himself was the standard for a Heroic cultivator. Not every lion was the Nemean Lion. Not every Hero was the Champion. That variance made them unpredictable. It made them dangerous, in a way a mundane beast was not.

A war elephant was a terrifying sight, but it was a force that could be opposed. Through struggle and through wit, with the knowledge that countless men before us had suffered to accrue, they could be put down. They were terrifying. But they were a known quantity.

A war elephant that had woken its sleeping soul, though? That was an unknown terror. Somehow more primal, in spite of its refinement.

I had seen for myself what a virtuous beast was capable of, more than once in the course of my years. I knew that they were capable of incredible things.

They were still animals.

“Play nice,” I said, exasperated, and flicked the underside of Sorea’s beak mid-shriek. It snapped shut, choking off the beast’s impressive war cry. His talons dug into the flesh of my arm, threatening to draw blood. I didn’t need Griffon narrating in my head to know that he was offended.