I pushed through the murmuring, jostling pack of men waiting for the market to open, heading for Harkan. He was turned slightly away from me, but his eyes kept searching through the expectant crowd, on the alert for danger. Then he saw me.
His eyes went wide as I came up beside him, but he quickly mastered his surprise.
“Your pilgrimage is over?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’m heading back to Pella. I have responsibilities there.”
He nodded. “You look different.”
“Different?”
“Calmer. More certain of yourself, as if you are sure of what you are doing now.”
I felt a slight surprise at that, but inwardly I realized he was right. There was no turmoil within me now. I did not know exactly what I had to do, but I knew I must return to Pella and do Hera’s bidding, no matter what it might be.
Then I looked squarely into Harkan’s leathery face and realized for the first time that he reminded me of someone I had known. Another soldier, from long ago: Lukka the Hittite. He might have been Harkan’s forebear, they looked so much like one another. In Harkan’s eyes I saw something that I had noticed only once before, when he had spoken of his family. I realized why he was here.
“You are searching for your children,” I said.
“If they haven’t already been sold. I was told the people taken from Gordium were brought to the market here. They won’t let anyone except the wealthiest buyers inspect the cages before the auctioning starts.”
I thought a moment. “You are hoping to buy their freedom?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
He shot a questioning glance at me. “What do you mean?”
“It will be difficult to continue your life as a bandit with an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter to take care of.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I, pilgrim. For now, I’m seeking my children. What happens afterward, I’ll worry about after I’ve found them. First things first.”
I stayed at his side through the whole long miserable afternoon. The slave dealers paraded out their wares, one by one. Young women brought the highest prices; strong healthy-looking men young enough to work in the fields or the mines also made profits for the sellers. There were dozens of children, but they brought very little. Most of them were still not sold when the sun dipped behind the warehouses lining the docks and the auction ended.
Hardly a scattering of buyers was left in the square by then. The children, miserable, dirty, some of them crying, all of them collared by heavy iron rings, were led by their chains back to their pens.
While the slave dealers huddled off behind the auction block, counting their coins, the chief auctioneer climbed down wearily and headed toward the tavern across the square.
“It’s a shame,” said the chief auctioneer as we watched the children being led away. His leather-lunged voice was slightly hoarse from the long day’s work. “We can’t keep feeding those brats forever. They’re eating up any profit we might make on them.”
Falling in beside him, Harkan asked as casually as he could manage, “Where are they from?”
The auctioneer was a lean, balding man with a pot belly and cunning eyes. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Here and there. Phrygia, Anatolia; we got a clutch of them from Rhodes, believe it or not.”
“Have there been any from Gordium?”
He stopped walking and looked sharply at Harkan. We were more than halfway across the square, almost at the door to the tavern. “What is such information worth to you?”
Harkan’s face became a mask of granite. “It is worth a life, auctioneer. Yours.”
The man looked at me, then glanced back over his shoulder where the dealers were still gathered behind the block. A half-dozen armed men stood guard near them.
“You wouldn’t get to utter a single word,” Harkan said, his voice low with menace. “Now just tell me, and tell me truly. Have there been any children from Gordium here?”
“A month ago. Nearly a hundred of them. There were so many that the bidding went down almost to nothing. A bad show, a miserable show.”