"Hey you!" some burly guy in a sweat-stained tunic yelled from the deck of a ship. "Catch the line!"
"Throw it!" I perked up.
Now this was entertainment!
I caught the rope and handed it to the guys who ran up to the ship.
Some girl was hollering in the hold, weird. What did she want?
I remember father giving me a bunch of smacks when I tried yelling like that. I was totally clueless back then.
"You can't do that, Aeneas!" father had said. "You're a man! You're a warrior! Conduct yourself with dignity!"
The guy jumped off the ship onto the pier light as a cat and slapped me on the shoulder.
"I'm Timothy from Athens, son of Milon! Where can you get some fresh bread to eat around here? My belly's cramping up from all this barley porridge."
Interesting guy.
Looked about seventeen or eighteen, solid, wrapped in powerful muscles. He was lean and flexible, with the movements of a skilled fighter.
And his gaze was pleasant, open, just too harsh for his age. That's how it was with people who'd been through war and seen death.
Dark brown hair cut unevenly across his forehead in bangs and falling freely onto his shoulders in wavy locks.
"I'm Aeneas from Dardanus, son of Anchises. There's a tavern in the harbor," I pointed. "So why's your girl screaming?"
"Probably needs to take a leak," he shrugged his broad shoulders indifferently.
"We picked her up on Lesbos. Rapanu, the boss's son, lured her with a piece of flatbread and led her away from her home village. I mean, tell me she's not an idiot?"
"She sure is!" I agreed readily. "Who goes off with a stranger away from home! Gonna sell her now?"
"Obviously," Timothy nodded and sighed.
"The girl's so gorgeous it makes your heart ache. And other parts too. But we weren't allowed to mess with her—you can sell her for way more if she's untouched."
"There you are!"
Another kid jumped off the ship's deck, looked about fifteen, and studied me carefully.
His tunic was fancier, made of Egyptian linen and cinched with a colored belt. Silver bracelets jingled on his wrists, and some elaborate fish-shaped amulet dangled around his neck.
"I'm Rapanu from Ugarit, son of Uertenu, the royal merchant," the kid said smugly.
"This oaf is treating. He lost a bet to me, said I couldn't sweet-talk that girl. So, we going?"
"Yeah, let's go," Timothy grimaced—clearly didn't like losing. "I already asked about the tavern. Lead on, Aeneas!"
"She's beautiful, really!"
I actually froze, checking out the girl in a shabby, faded tunic they'd brought out of the hold and untied.
A simple piece of cloth with a hole for the head didn't hide her shapely figure, and through the side slit you kept catching glimpses of a slender, tanned thigh.
The girl rubbed her arms, stretched her flexible body, then without the slightest embarrassment hiked up her tunic and squatted on the edge of the deck.
I whistled sharply and waved at her.
"Hey gorgeous, what's your name? Will you marry me?" I shouted, my heart pounding as I took in her slender figure, thick mane of pitch-black hair, and lovely face.
She didn't answer me, just stuck out her pink tongue.
"Her name's Theano," said the royal merchant's son.
He turned out to be a stocky, curly-haired kid with a round face like a cat's.
An almost physically tangible aura of wealth surrounded this boy, and he acted accordingly, looking at the harbor bustle with slight contempt.
Sailors usually weren't dressed as fancy as him. On their sun-scorched bodies they wore just loincloths and cheap amulets.
The merchant's son's lips looked unusually small on his well-fed face, and it seemed like he was puckering them into a tube, like he wanted to whistle.
The southerner's dark, almost black eyes were darting around curiously, taking in everything.
"Her father's a blacksmith," he continued, "and the Achaeans stole her mother when she was little. She told me everything. Let's go already!"
"Why's she smiling?" I was surprised. "She's being sold into slavery."
"Well, at least they fed her here," Rapanu snorted.
"And nobody laid a finger on her. My father looked her over good and said he'd sell her to a rich household. So now she's happy. Back on their island they'd already stripped the bark off the trees and eaten it."
We made our way through the crowded harbor, which was incredibly packed.
At the stone piers, maybe thirty or forty ships were bobbing on the waves at the same time.
Acoetes, king of our Dardanus, would give his right arm for something like this. He hardly got any tariffs—everyone stopped here.
The harbor tavern was basically an awning with tables next to a blazing hot oven.
The smell of fresh bread was absolutely intoxicating, insistently climbing into my nostrils and making my mouth water.
I hadn't eaten lunch either—I'd had a piece of flatbread in the morning, that's all.
But I had nothing to pay with. I didn't have anything at all.
"My treat!" Timothy correctly interpreted my silence.
He unwound a bracelet of silver wire, broke off a piece and tossed it on the table. "Three of us. Feed us, good sir."
"Add that much again," said a skinny guy with tangled hair in a tunic burned through in several spots by sparks, shaking his head.
"What's this all of a sudden?" Timothy raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I gave you a fair price."
"That was a fair price a year ago. Food's gotten way more expensive now," the tavern keeper replied.
"There's even famine starting in the east. Peasants are rioting around Hattusa. They're demanding grain for taxes, but they've got almost none of that grain. The great king sent soldiers to set the peasants straight, but what's the use! Just because they crucified a dozen troublemakers doesn't mean there's more barley in the granaries."
"How do you know?" Timothy bristled.
"People talk," the tavern keeper shrugged. "I see lots of people, hear lots of things. Bad times have come! Oh, bad times!"
"Wow!" Rapanu was unpleasantly surprised. "My father and I were planning to head from here to Hattusa."
"That's your business," the tavern keeper shrugged indifferently.
"I'm telling you, it's unstable there. The Kaska tribes who live by the sea are acting up too. Even the water's gone from their wells. They're fighting to the death over every strip of land by a puny stream."