I started out along the coast road again at sunrise, my makeshift spear on my shoulder. Before long I came upon a fork; one branch continued along the coast, the other cut inland, up into the hills. I started up the hill road, thinking that it must lead somewhere. Yet for most of the day I saw no one else at all. Strange, I thought. Long ages of use had pounded the road hard and almost smooth, except for the ruts worn into it from the wheels of carts and wagons. Still I saw no one at all until well past noon.
Then I saw why no one else was using the road. In the distance, crowning a steep hill off to one side of the road, a walled city sat beneath the hot high sun. And what looked like a small army was camped outside its wall. It reminded me of Troy, except that this city was inland and the besiegers were not camped among their boats on the shore.
For long moments I hesitated, but finally I decided to follow the road to that camp. There must be some purpose for my being here, I reasoned. Perhaps this little war was it.
The discipline at the camp was extraordinarily lax, even compared to the unhappy camp of Philip’s army before Perinthos. Men milled about, all of them armed but none of them in anything I could describe as a uniform. Most of them wore leather corselets. Their swords were bronze. They seemed to have no discipline at all.
Then a soldier in bronze breastplate spotted me. “You there! Stand fast! Who are you and what are you doing here?”
He was young enough so that his beard was nothing more than a few wisps. His shoulders were wide, though, and his eyes as black as onyx.
“I am a stranger in these parts,” I replied. “My name is Orion.”
A few of the other men-at-arms gathered around us, eyeing me casually. I had to admit that I was not much to look at.
“Where’d you get that spear?” one of them asked, grinning. “Hephaistos make it for you?”
Their accent was much different from the Macedonians. It was an older variant of the tongue.
“I can just see the Lame One forging that mighty weapon up on Olympos!”
They all broke into laughter.
“Zeus must be jealous of him!”
“Naw, he probably stole it from Zeus!”
I stood there like a bumpkin and let them slap their thighs and roar with laughter. The young officer, though, barely cracked a smile.
“You are not from these parts?” he asked me.
“No. I come from far away,” I said.
“Your name—you call yourself Orion?”
“Yes.”
“Who was your father?”
I had to think fast. “I don’t know. I have no memory of my childhood.”
“Doesn’t know who his father is.” One of the men nudged his nearest companion in the ribs.
“I am a warrior,” I said, realizing that there was no word for soldier in their dialect.
“A warrior, no less!” The men found that uproarious. Even the young officer smiled. Others were gathering around us, making something of a crowd.
I dropped my spear to the ground and pointed to the one who was making all the remarks. “A better fighter than you, windbag,” I challenged.
His laughter turned to a hard smile. He pulled the bronze sword from the scabbard at his hip and said, “Pray to whatever gods you worship, stranger. You’re about to die.”
I faced him empty-handed. Not a man offered me a weapon or made any objection. The windbag was an experienced fighter, I could see. His sword arm was scarred, his eyes focused hard on me. I simply stood before him, hands at my sides. But I could feel my body going into overdrive, slowing down the world around me.
The flex of the muscles in his thighs gave him away. He began to lunge at me, a simple straight thrust to my belly. I saw it coming, sidestepped, and grasped his wrist with both my hands. I flipped him over my hip and twisted the sword out of his hand in the same motion. He landed on his back with a thud like a sack of wet laundry dropped from a height.