By the time I had climbed down from the boulder he had dismounted and was walking up to me, leading his horse with one hand.
We clasped forearms.
“I brought some biscuits and cheese,” Harkan said. “I thought you might be hungry.”
“Good. Let’s have breakfast. It might look suspicious if you brought me in too early in the day.”
He made a small smile and went to the pack his horse carried. There was a skin of wine in the pack, too. And a handful of figs. The sun was getting high in the morning sky by the time we finished. I stood up, wiping my hands on the hem of my chiton, and saw that rain clouds were building up in the east.
“Maybe we should get to the city before the storm arrives,” I said.
Harkan nodded glumly. Then he held out his hand. “Your dagger, Orion. Pausanias knows you have a dagger. I’d better take it.”
I felt a bit uneasy about that, but I slid my dagger from its sheath on my thigh and handed it to Harkan, hilt first.
“Thank you,” he said. And that was all he said as we mounted up and began the ride downhill to the road and then up the road to hilltop Aigai. Harkan’s silence bothered me; it was as if something was troubling him.
“What’s the news?” I asked as we rode side by side.
“Nothing much,” he said, not turning to look at me.
“Have you found your children?”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “They’re in Aigai; they belong to the king now.”
“Philip will give them back to you,” I said. “Or sell them to you, at least.”
“You think so?”
“Once you tell him that you’re their father, he’ll probably release them to you without payment.”
“He likes silver and gold, they say.”
“Even so, he knows what it is to be a father. He won’t keep them from you.”
Harkan nodded grimly, like a man heading toward battle.
“Pausanias was surprised that I broke out of my cell, was he?”
“Surprised is hardly the word, Orion. He’s been in a frenzy. He wants your head on a spear and he’s promised a great reward for whoever brings you to him.”
“You’re going to get the reward, then.”
“Yes,” he said, without enthusiasm.
We rode for a long, silent time. Something was obviously gnawing at Harkan. His children? The fact that he was turning me over to Pausanias?
I asked, “Where’s Batu? Why isn’t he with you?”
He did not reply at once. At length, though, Harkan said, “I thought it would look too obvious if the two of us brought you back. Too suspicious. Batu’s riding through the hills on the other side of the road, with a full company of the guard. Searching for you.”
I nodded and he fell back into silence once more.
Within a quarter-hour of our reaching the road, a whole contingent of guards galloped up to us.
“You’ve got him!” exclaimed their leader. “Good!”
He waved to a pair of riders at the end of his column and they trotted up to us. Chains jingled from the packs on their horses’ rumps.
The guard leader gave me a rueful look. “Sorry, Orion. Pausanias’ orders. You’re to be manacled and fettered. He’s taking no chances on your getting away again.”
Harkan would not look at me, and the other guards seemed shame-faced to see one of their erstwhile comrades chained by the wrists and ankles. Even the two smiths who fastened the cuffs to me were almost apologetic as they drove home the rivets.
So I arrived at Aigai with my hands cuffed behind my back, my ankles chained together, tossed across the back of my horse with my head dragging down in the dust, trussed like a sacrificial offering. Which, I realized, Pausanias meant me to be. My only hope was to see the king before Pausanias killed me.
I got an upside-down worm’s-eye view of Aigai’s massive main gate and its thick wall, its dirt streets winding upward to the citadel at the very crown of the hill, and the even sturdier wall and gate of the castle proper.