"Oh, we shall have to be careful."
"I think perhaps you've hit it," said Bulnes. "Mr. Diksen, how would it be if we hid out here a few days while our beards grow and we practice our Greek? Meanwhile you can hunt up this astronomer fellow."
"Sure. This guy here's Kallingos, and for a Grick innkeeper he's almost honest. I'll drop back down in about a week. If you want to look me up before then, come to the barracks on the Areopagos when I'm off duty." Diksen yawned. "Got to catch up on my sleep. So long!"
Chapter Seven
"... in the indicative mood," said Flin implacably, "the secondary tenses are augmented."
"Why?" asked Bulnes.
"How on earth should I know? They are, that's all. Now this augment may be syllabic, by prefixing epsilon to verbs beginning with a consonant — or temporal, by lengthening an initial short vowel. Thus paideuo, 'I teach,' in the imperfect becomes epaideuon, 'I was teaching' ..."
Flin broke off as Bulnes grasped his wrist, saying, "Did you see that tough-looking party talking to our host?"
"Yes. He's gone out now."
"I didn't like the look he gave us."
Bulnes shifted to his rudimentary Classical Greek. He had found that by throwing in a word of modern Greek when he could not think of the Classical form, he could sometimes make himself understood. "O Kallingos!"
"You called?"
"Mine dear fellow, shall you not — ah — share cup of you — uh — excellent wine at us?"
"What said you?"
Bulnes repeated the offer with even greater care.
"Nai," said the innkeeper, wagging his head and confusing Bulnes until the latter remembered that this meant "yes."
"O Bouleus, you are as polite as a Mede, though not so stupid. Boy! Another cup. You should not, however, call this Attic belly wash 'excellent.' If I could sell you a jar of my Lesbian ..."
"What's he saying?" Bulnes asked Flin, who translated.
Bulnes gathered his mental forces and replied: "Me fear not — no got enough money. Whom — uh — who am — the man er — what's the word, Wiyem?"
"The man with whom you were speaking," said Flin.
"Not the kind of man," replied Kallingos, "you like to talk about."
"What's that, Wiyem? ... Who this man, please?"
Kallingos lowered his voice. "Phaleas the son of Kniphon."
. Bulnes and Flin exchanged glances. The latter said, "Didn't Diksen say something about Phaleas's gang?"
"Could be he." Bulnes turned to Kallingos. "Are him — er — ah — uh ..."
"The noted criminal," put in Flin.
Kallingos looked over his shoulder. "He is. He says two members of his band were slain four nights ago by a pair of barbarians, and he is now looking for these killers to revenge himself. They were huge, powerful men in some hideous Scythian or Persian costume, wearing curious caps upon their heads and tunics and trousers cut and sewn to cling to their bodies closely. Some of the band were enjoying a game of knucklebones when these giants sprang out of the dark, stabbed two to death, and would have done in the rest had they not run away."
Bulnes continued with Flin's linguistic help, "Things have come at such a pass, poor thief cannot — ah — earn dishonest living in Peiraieus without — uh — being rob by more big thief."
"True, ha-ha. That was the same night that the mysterious ship appeared in Zea Harbor."
"What mysteriously ship?"
"Have you not heard? The state galley Paralos was caught by the storm on her way back from Epidauros and rode it out behind Salamis. When the wind fell she made a run for home and was feeling her way into Zea when she struck a strange ship that had taken her usual anchorage. The ship sank near the wharves, and can be dimly seen lying on the bottom even now, with sails of strange cut mounted all awry. There is some talk of sending divers down to fasten ropes to the hull."
"To raise she?" asked Bulnes, concealing his eagerness.
"Zeus, no! What use have we for an outlandish rig like that? They will tow her into deeper water where she will not interfere with navigation. But now barbershops buzz with speculation as to whether there might not be a connection between these two events."
"I see ... O friend Kallingos, I fear we must leaves tomorrow."
"What did you say?"
Bulnes repeated.
"I am sorry. Is there aught you like not?"
There were a lot of things, thought Bulnes, beginning with the bugs in the dormitory. But he said, "No, it are that we am going at Athens."
"What?" cried Flin in English. Bulnes ignored him.
"It is too bad you could not stay over tomorrow."
"Why?" said Bulnes.
"It is the day of the Dionysia," said Kallingos.
"What is being shown?" asked Flin.
"The Aias of Sophokles and two other plays, at our own Dionysiac Theater. As Euripides is not competing this year, the Aias may win." '
"I say!" said Flin. "I shouldn't care to miss ..."
"Shut up, my dear Wiyem," said Bulnes. "Will them play be show again anywhere?"
"Yes, at the regular Dionysia in Athens. Of course, as foreigners, you would have to pay to get in."
"We may see him then. Meanwhile, could you recommend us to a innkeeper in Athens as honest like you?"
Kallingos made a gesture. "To be frank, there is none in Attika so honest as I. Wherever else you go you will be deceived. If you ask for your wine diluted with one part of water, you will get it cut with two. However, you will not be too badly robbed at the inn of Podokles, a few houses east of the Agora."
Bulnes thanked Kallingos, got some advice about prices from him, and went up to the dormitory, where Flin burst out, "What d'you mean by making a plan like that without consulting me? The logical thing is to exhaust the Peiraieus looking for Thalia before we think of moving. We've got a good innkeeper ..."
"But this gang ..." said Bulnes.
Flin, however, though usually timid in the face of physical risk, now showed the unreasonable obstinacy with which weak men sometimes try to assert themselves. Bulnes let him run down and said, "I'm going tomorrow, my dear fellow. You may do as you like."
When the eastern sky began to lighten, Bulnes groaned and forced himself up. He would never get used to the fiendishly early hours of the Athenians. They munched their sops and paid up. Flin said no more about refusing to move to Athens, and Bulnes refrained from taunting him.
Bulnes noted that Kallingos tried to swindle them out of only two or three oboloi — for an Attic innkeeper, he supposed, comparative rectitude. Then, as the sun gilded the brass helmet of Athene Promachos on the Akropolis the two travelers gathered their himatia about them and set out upon the dusty road to Athens, Bulnes muttering the paradigms of irregular verbs.
Flin said, "There should be a road running north of the Long Walls. It would give us a good view of the country, while between the Walls we shan't see anything."
"Anything you say, my dear comrade."
They pushed to northward through the stirring seaport toward the gate adjacent to the junction of the North Long Wall and the Peiraic Wall. After passing through the gate they came upon the muddy Kephisos in full spring spate, not yet shrunken with the summer drouth. The highway crossed the river by a ford.
Bulnes sighed. "Here, my friend, it seems we get wet."
Flin gathered up his himation, growling, "Jolly unfortunate we die n't land in a later century when they'd have had a bridge."
They splashed into the broad calf-deep crossing, climbed out the far side, and trudged up the hard-beaten wagon track across the flat Attic plain. Most of the plain was a waste of new grass and wild flowers, with a few stands of wheat and clumps of gray-green olive trees in the hollows. Other roads, even more rudimentary, joined theirs at intervals. Along these roads, mostly toward Athens, moved a traffic of vegetables, hides, firewood, and similar commodities. This traffic, sometimes on the backs of donkeys and sometimes on those of men, thickened as they neared the city.