Claudius was silent for a long minute, while the whispers spread through his army, the translation almost obscured by the buzz of angry discussion. Then, in a choked voice, the consul said, "Yes. Return them."
"You will receive them with honor?"
"Since you say that they fought bravely, they will be received as brave men," grated the consul.
Hieron inclined his head graciously. "And the women of Echetlawhat price do you want for them?"
"None!" a voice from among the legions shouted suddenly. Claudius spun toward it, but already a dozen other voices had joined it, "Honor to those who honor the Roman people! Return the Echetlans without ransom!" There was a thunder of spears against the ground, and then a full-throated roar: "Honor to the Roman people!"
Claudius looked back at Hieron. Marcus had never seen such a look of bleak vindictiveness. "You shall have them without ransom," he muttered.
"I will have your men brought from their prison and delivered to you here," said Hieron. "It will take perhaps four hours. I take it this truce holds until then?"
Claudius nodded, then, not trusting himself to say more, turned his horse away.
Hieron snapped his fingers, and the Syracusan aulist struck up his marching tune again. The files divided, leaving a space for the king to ride through them. Marcus followed between his two guards; behind him the Syracusan battalion turned about and marched back up the hill.
When the gates of the Euryalus had closed behind them, the king drew rein and looked down at Marcus thoughtfully. "What did you say to the consul?" he asked.
"That what you'd said was true," replied Marcus shortly.
Hieron sighed. "That was unwise."
"It was true."
"It is not usually a good idea to speak truth to kings- or to consuls. I am going to have to return you anyway. If I keep you, Claudius will say that you were really a Greek in disguise, and it will be easier for him to convince his army that he was right after all."
Marcus nodded. Hieron looked at him a moment longer, then sighed again. "You are a true Roman, aren't you? You accept the penalty for your own actions- whether it's justified or not. What's that you have in your belt?"
Marcus' face went hot. "A flute," he said. "My mas- Archimedes gave it to me. He thought I would have time in prison to learn it."
"I pray that the gods grant you a life long enough to become as skilled on it as he is himself!" Hieron snapped his fingers and said to the guards, "Take the chains off him, and put him somewhere shady to wait for the others. Give him something to eat and drink- it's a long walk over here, and interpreting is thirsty work."
The guards led Marcus to a room in one of the towers, a catapult platform with no catapult in it. They took off his chains and fetched him some bread and wine. "With goodwill," said one of the guards, offering the wine. "I should have believed Apollodoros when he said you were philhellene."
Marcus drank the watered wine thirstily, but had no appetite for the bread. He kept remembering the way Claudius had looked at Hieron. The consul would happily have cooked his enemy alive, in or out of a bronze bull. Hieron would be out of his reach behind the walls of Syracuse, but Marcus was going to have to face him again in about four hours.
He wished that he had volunteered nothing, that he had been content to translate Hieron's words and leave it at that. It was not as though Hieron had needed any help. The parley that morning now appeared to him as a wrestling match in which Claudius had been comprehensively beaten. Claudius was clearly a man who liked to find scapegoats for his own failures, and in Marcus he would find in ideal one: a disloyal Hellenizer, a coward who had escaped the penalty due to him by accepting slavery. Claudius could try to discredit the truth by disgracing and executing the man who had spoken it.
But perhaps the consul would prefer to forget about Marcus. A vindictive punishment would only confirm the reputation for callous arrogance which Hieron had just draped him in. Marcus would just have to hope that the consul was intelligent enough to realize that.
Time passed. The guards left him in the tower room, and he waited alone, watching the Roman camp through the artillery port. He could see a drab-colored mass of people assembled by the gate: the women of Echetla, no doubt. He supposed that there had been no way to save Echetla. By the time Hieron's scouts found out that the Romans had gone there, it would have been too late to send help to it. He was still sorry for Echetla.
Four hours, Hieron had said. That would be about right: a rider had to be sent to the quarry to tell the guards to take all the prisoners to the gates, and then there would be preparations- leg irons to be taken off, escorts to be assembled, stretchers found for those men still unable to walk- and then the whole party had to make the long walk up to the Euryalus. Four hours. It seemed to Marcus that four years passed before the sun dipped from the height of noon.
He took out the aulos and began to practice it, as something to do. He had practiced every day since first being given it, and could now play very simple tunes, very, very slowly. He picked his way laboriously through a Nile boat song, then, stirred by an ache for vanished safety, found himself struggling for the notes of a lullaby he remembered his mother singing by the fire at home.
"I don't know that one," said Hieron. "Is it Roman?"
Marcus set the aulos down and got to his feet. He had not heard the door open. The king was alone, and dust on his cloak proclaimed that he'd been riding hard.
"Yes," said Marcus in a low voice. "It's Roman, lord."
"Odd," remarked Hieron. "One doesn't think of your people producing anything gentle. Is there anything left in that flask?"
There was a little of the wine left. Hieron drained it, then sat down. The small tower room had no furniture, so he sat on the floor, crossing his ankles comfortably, and gestured for Marcus to do likewise. Marcus squatted facing him, watching him warily.
Hieron looked back speculatively. "I wanted to talk to you," he said. "I hoped there would be time. I have one or two things I wanted to say."
"To me?" asked Marcus in confusion.
"Why not? You think I spared you for Archimedes' sake, don't you?"
Marcus said nothing, merely looked back with an impassive slave's face.
"Archimedes had nothing to do with it. Incidentally, his friends in Alexandria called him Alpha, didn't they? Do you know why?"
"Because when anybody set a mathematical problem, he was always the first to find the answer," said Marcus, startled. Then, "How…"
"I thought it might be that," said Hieron. "Alpha. Not a bad nickname, and I need one for him. His proper name doesn't slip off the tongue easily enough. No, I spared you because- you must excuse me- I had a use for you. You're the only Hellenized Roman I've ever encountered."
Marcus stared.
"I know. Greek is the first language your people study, though most of them are very bad at it. Your coins, when you do coin silver, are based on ours. Your pottery, fashions, furniture, and so forth all mimic ours. You hire Greek architects to build Greek-style temples and fill them with Greek statues of the gods- often of Greek gods. You worship Apollo, don't you? But it's all shallow, like a film of water over granite. A bit of gloss on your own nature, which is hard, brutal, and profoundly suspicious of imagination. A Roman gentleman may read our poetry, listen to our music: he would consider it menial to write or play himself. Our philosophy is condemned as atheistic nonsense, our sports as immoral, and our politics- well, tyranny is bad, and democracy unspeakably worse. Am I being unfair?"