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Your travel for the rest of the day is unremarkable, as you sit within the donkey-cart (although now pulled by Argive stallions) and thread your way into the Arcadian wilds. You release Arion’s line, and trust him to keep pace – he seems to relish in his freedom, trotting briskly through the grasses and fields alongside the trail north. On one or two occasions, you lose him in the underbrush, but each time, he returns to you with a mouth dripping with river-water. The few pedestrians on the roads are all men of common descent – they stare at you, Arion, and your donkey-cart with great curiosity as they pass, but to a man, they do not tarry to make conversation with you. Even without your bronze, you clearly a man of great physical capability; not a stranger to trifle with. They greet you politely (“Hail, Lord!” and “Zeus favor you, Lord!”) and speed on down the path.
Behind you, the hostage barely stirs within her binds; perhaps, she has lost all hope of escape. That evening, you make camp within a shadowed glen where you, your cart, Arion and the Argive steeds can comfortably rest. You water the Tegean noblewoman after you’ve made camp that evening, and she drinks greedily - but she makes no attempt to speak with you, either, her face set grimly. It is admirable of her – and constant squawking on her part would irritate you, so you are grateful for her resolve. You don your bronze and prepare to sleep upright, sitting against a great cypress tree, with your spear-in-hand – sleeping under any circumstances is a soldier’s trick you learned long ago, and having been awake for nearly two whole days, you are certain that Ὑπνος, lord over all mortal men and all gods, will grant you rest without delay.
You eyes slide close beneath your helm –
And you startle awake, hearing rustling amongst the underbrush. It seems that no time at all has passed, but the stiffness in your limbs tells you that hours have slipped by; a glance at the sky tells you that it is near-midnight. You hear the scrabbling draw closer, and standing, heft your spear. A small animal, perhaps, but you prepare to strike - your right arm awakening. The creature tumbles out of the nearest shrub and you move to strike!
But the animal cries out:
“Wait, wait!”
Peering in the gloom, you see that the creature is a small man – barely more than a boy, in truth, in ragged and filthy linothorax, hair strewn with leaves. His eyes are frantic and wild, his face covered in mud and streaked with sweat; the results of a panicked dash of a man with no tradecraft amongst the wilderness. He is obviously unarmed – and as he takes your person in, he kneels at once, bowing his head and spreading his hands wide in supplication. You see at once that his left arm once held a bucker – two clean stripes on his arm where the leather straps held it in place. He is still pleading, a high-pitched and babbling stream, his words slurred by terror:
>cont
