Page 18 of The Hymn to Dionysus

I’d know he was all right.

I crossed the courtyard, past Herakles, through the officers’ mess, to the shrine for Apollo just beyond. The shrine was a beautiful place, an altar under an archway all filigreed in silver, and a bell above so the god would hear you. The priest, dressed in indigo like all the Apollo acolytes, was tending the altar fire, feeding it the bones of something small to keep the sacrifice going.

“Sir,” I said, not sure how to phrase what I wanted to say. “I’d like to make a sacrifice, but I don’t know the name of the god. What do you do, when you don’t know?”

Despite the heat and his heavy robes, he didn’t look annoyed. I’d always liked priests of Apollo. They were so calm it was catching: you always feel better if you sit with one of them for a while. “Why don’t you know, knight?”

“I met him once but he didn’t say his name.”

“How did you know he was a god?”

I’d never told anyone what had happened. Partly it was because saying it aloud would have made me sound insane and everyone would think I’d drunk seawater, but only partly. The bigger reason was that the memory of the ship turning was all I had of the boy on the shore. It was precious and I couldn’t just hand it over to anyone who asked for it.

“He was.”

“Well, Apollo will know,” the priest said reasonably.

I gave him the egg, and he smiled. He must have been tired of killing animals on the altar. It was sticky work.

“What prayer would you like to make?”

“I can write,” I said.

“Of course,” he said, and showed me the slips of prayer papyrus and the ink. Tactfully, he drifted away to water the god’s holy tree, an ancient olive that must have been old when Herakles was born.

Slowly, and carefully, because papyrus is only for holy things and the ink was worth more than I was, I wrote down the prayer. It wasn’t really a prayer.

I hope you come soon. Then I hesitated, because you have to say your name, but it felt strange to write my name on something a god would read. Phaidros from the ship.

I waited for the ink to dry, then held the papyrus slip in the fire. The flame caught and the paper burned fast, and the smoke rose up into the sky like a distress signal.

7

The black banners of the House of Kadmus snapped above the parade ground as the garrison formed up into its units. I herded the young ones into their ranks at the front, reminding them to do ordinary things they would have done without thinking if they hadn’t been tired already: straighten cloak pins, buckle greaves up properly, tie their hair up again if they’d pulled it loose when they came home earlier. The hot wind rippled our cloaks and zithered dust across the open space in front of us.

The Bull Ceremony was a last resort. To sacrifice one bull is a significant thing—they were from the Queen’s own herd, the bulls, and each one was worth more than my house. We were about to sacrifice twelve, to all twelve of the gods, because we still didn’t know which one we had offended, and which had made the drought. Anyone who was anything to do with the Kadmeia would witness it—knights, Guards, civil servants—along with a thousand citizens in the public stands. It was a desperate, once in a generation ceremony, one I hoped I’d never see again. If it didn’t rain after this, then there was nothing left to do but raid.

Up on the balcony of the Palace’s royal apartments stood the Queen, the prince, and some tall people in vivid white who might have been Egyptian, all beneath a beautiful moss-green canopy. I kept my eyes on the ground so I wouldn’t stare at the Queen. I could almost remember what Helios looked like, if I watched her for long enough. But knights can’t go around staring at the Queen.

In the public stands, people had brought scraps of cloth to dip into the blood of the bulls who would be sacrificed today. It was lucky, although probably not lucky enough. It hadn’t rained now for ninety-seven days.

The order came for the serving units to march. We would just be watching; the little knights had taken their oath, but they wouldn’t be full members of the garrison until they had been in battle.

Ahead of us, the priestesses from the Temple of Athena were dancing the Bull Dance. I’d heard it was so difficult that it took them ten years to learn. Each step had to be a particular distance, each finger had to stay at a particular angle; it was military precision. It was slow, in time with the drums, but I didn’t envy them at all. Even our full-armour drills were probably less wearying. At least you did that fast and then it was over. At least you didn’t have to hold your arm at an exact forty-five-degree angle above your head for half an hour.

The Hymn to Apollo rolled out across the parade. It’s the anthem of Thebes.

Holy archer, lord of marvels

Bless this day and all who call you here.

Drums the size of humans were keeping the rhythm, marching pace. It was beautiful, the sterile and rigid order of it. There’s joy in perfect unity.

But a little part of me, the part of me that had loved seeing the hull of the ship turn back into trees even though I’d been drowning when I saw it, thought: There’s something dead about all this. Maybe the drought has gone on so long because the gods don’t know we’re still alive.

As I was scanning the young knights and helping with the last few buckles and pins, there was an interested stir and gazes started slipping past my shoulders, and I looked round and went heavily down on one knee, because the prince was right behind me. Kneeling burned, because my greaves had already heated up. Behind me, the rest of the unit did the same with a thunk of armour.

The prince’s name was Pentheus. It means “sorrow.” The gods like to take away children whose parents brag, so Theban tradition is to give them sad names by way of saying nobody was very happy at all, nothing to see here, smite some other bastard in Athens, thank you. But the name suited the boy. He was slight, with a painfully stiff bearing and too many lines on his face for the age he was. He was perhaps eighteen, but it was a glassy, spidery eighteen; some of the youngest girls behind me were broader and stronger.