Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia
Chapter .9

Sol,

The Raven From Rome

In the end, we didn’t turn the ship around.

There were practical reasons. The whirlpool that had nearly sunk us, for one. I thought I had the trick of navigating it now, having watched the solar barge, but that ship had been moving with the current. Even if Griffon, Selene, and I all added our full strength to the effort, I wasn’t sure the Eos would be able to do it while fighting against the Nile.

Beaching the ship and marching back the way we’d come had its own problems. Leaving a vessel as fine as the Eos unattended was all but begging the Fates to see it stolen. It was too heavy for the men to carry it with us over land - a year from now, with the proper training, maybe. But not as they were. Beyond that, I had seen with my own eyes the sort of beasts that lurked along this river. I wouldn’t leave my men to guard the ship in my stead, not even if all ten of them together stayed back to do it.

Those reasons alone would have been enough for any sensible man, without adding on the fact that Griffon and I remembered nothing of what had taken place between the shores of Alexandria and deep veins of the Nile river. We hadn’t even remembered Alexandria was our intended destination until Selene reminded us of it. Even then, it was only a place in our minds. The motivations to go there were gone.

It was all lost, hidden somewhere beneath the surface of the sea that was our souls. A flower of a phrase, but I hadn’t been able to disagree when Griffon spoke it out loud. The words fit. Selene hadn’t teased him over it either, only peered at him with a strange expression.

We didn’t know where to look, and even if we did, we were too far down the river now to turn back without giving up our ship. All of those things were reason enough, and all of them combined would have been worth less to me than the wooden coin in my pocket if that had been the end of it.

Like him or loathe him, Lync was a part of our crew. The foul-mouthed pirate child was too young to be a legion man, and because of that I hadn’t recruited him the way I recruited the other ten, but he was a part of us. The same way I had been part of my father’s legion, when I first came to them as a boy. If it had to be done, I would swim through the whirlpool myself to see the boy safe. If it had to be done, I would hitch myself to the Eos like a mule, and drag her through the riverbank all the way back to sea - and heaven help whatever creature tried to stop me.

I didn’t need to do those things, though. Because I knew the boy was alive, and I knew he was not alone.

“The eagle cried its dim defiance, and it took the boy up in its talons. It took flight from the crow's nest and fled north. It was followed, but you, Captain, and you, Flame, you two lit up like the dawn, burning, clearing out a way…”

Sorea had saved the boy in my stead, and would stay with him until the danger had passed. I knew it, though I didn’t know how I knew, and in that same way, I knew that Sorea still lived to see it done.

It wasn’t the same certainty that I felt about the men under my command. The night sky might be large enough to take no notice of a single absent star, but I was not nearly so vast. I was as aware of the men of the Fifth Legion as I was the fingers of my hands, and I knew from past experience that I’d feel their absence just as keenly.

What I felt for the eagle that had followed me from Rome was not that. It was more than just my own hopes, but a different shade than pure gut feeling. The only reason I knew it was there at all was that I didn’t feel it for Scythas, nor for Jason, not for Anastasia or the Flame. I did feel it for Atlas, that would-be warhorse I had ridden from the Orphic House. That discovery had led me to ask Griffon if he felt the same awareness of his pure white mare, Kronia. He did.

It was enough to keep me in the boat, if only just. In the hours that followed, I probed that vague awareness like it was a loose tooth stuck in my mouth. Griffon hadn’t known any more than me about the feeling, and he clearly took that as a personal insult. We both knew the virtuous beasts we’d marked as our own were alive and well, but we didn’t know how we knew that. We didn’t know where they were or what connected us to them.

We lacked context. It was a familiar frustration by now.

A good man once told me that uncertainty killed more soldiers than any sword or spear. If there ever was a thing that I didn’t understand, I owed it to my superior officer to ask him about it. If he didn’t know, then he owed it to the man above him to swallow his pride and ask. No matter how many laurels a man wore on his brow, no matter how many triumphs had been celebrated in his name, there wasn’t a soldier under the sun who wouldn’t die if he fell on uncertainty’s blade.

Years later, beneath the canopy of a legion captain's command tent, I had asked that same man what I was to do with my uncertainty, now that there were no men above me left to ask. His answer was succinct.

“You ask your oldest spear, sir.”

So I spoke to my new men of the Fifth. I settled them back onto their benches, put their oars back in their hands, and I spoke to them of myriad things as we flew along the river Nile. I asked them questions. Questions about themselves, about their circumstances, about the places they had come from and the people they had known. I asked them, with some regret, about the terms of their enslavement. I asked them what they knew. I asked them if they would teach me. I asked them questions I would have never dared to ask my father’s men, for fear that I would lose their faith in me as their captain.

I asked, and I listened, and I buried deep my pride. It was the uncertainty that killed a legion.

I spoke to my men, and we sailed, racing against the sun.

The heartland of Aegyptus had been an arid desert, once. The Republic's oldest records spoke of a corpse kingdom long past its prime, the land’s shifting dunes and sun-baked stones its tomb. Greek civilization had been old long before Rome staked its claim on the seat of Seven Hills, but the golden age of god-blooded pharaohs had been a distant memory long before the first Greek Hero was born. What remained of the great nation could hardly be called an echo.

Perhaps it had been that way, back in the earliest days of the Republic, but at some point things had changed. I had seen it with my own eyes, marching down the golden road that Gaius paved for all his legions on campaign. Four years ago, I had come to Egypt expecting a desert waste, and instead I had found a thriving wonder. We flew through it now, on the Eagle River’s wings. Lush green jungles as far as the eye could see.

The river ran rapid through the heartlands of Aegyptus, both the channel and the veins. Wherever a thread of Nile water flowed, the green growth was doubled. More than one legion man had remarked with dark humor that there were almost as many beasts of virtue on the Nile banks as there were in a legion brothel. The creatures were all twice and twice again too large, too dauntless, too hungry.

Every serpent carried a bit of dragon in its blood, and every stork a bit of golden eagle. The thicker the river vein, the stronger the wildlife grew. A hippopotamus was dangerous enough on its own, but the hulking bulls that swam about the Nile’s heart veins could break a war elephant's spine with their teeth, or simply drown the beast in shallow waters.

And then there were the crocodiles.

The men were still too tense to appreciate the sights, and that was a shame, but that meant they were also too tense to worry about what we shared the river with. It was better that way. Let them dedicate their bodies to rowing and their minds to answering my questions. Let the outside world wait until we’d escaped to a thinner river vein. The Nile was a winding river, and I knew from my time on campaign that it had as many offshoots as the Black Forest had roots.

Griffon and Selene were not nearly as preoccupied. I found them both equally enthralled when I finished my rounds and rejoined them at the front of the ship. An idle thought struck me as I watched them drink in the sight of something they’d only heard stories of before - the Titan Flame had been lazy when he molded these two from clay. Born of different fathers, I had seen identical twins that didn't look as similar as they did in their wonder.

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"It makes sense," Selene was insisting when I approached, leaning with her arms crossed on the ship's rail, next to the wood-carved figurehead of a curious woman. "In fact, it makes more sense than all of your ideas - all of them put together, maybe!"

"Ho? Then where is the foam, sister?"

The only sign of her consternation was a faint flush of red.

"Scattered, I should think."

"You should think, and yet here you are instead-"

While they jabbed at one another as siblings did, I pulled an ivory lie in the shape of a bench from the dark place where ravens kept their baubles. I set the bench down just behind them, angled to catch the setting sun. It cast no shadow of its own, frail fiction that it was, but I did. At the angle I'd placed it, my shadow covered the entire bench. And when I sat down on it, the bench held me - sturdy, like it had been carved from horn. I let them bicker on a moment longer while I settled myself, pulling a mermaid bone and a celestial bronze spear from my raven's place. I'd kept half an ear on every conversation on deck while I made my rounds, so I knew what they were arguing about.

"Four years ago, in the spring, I marched down that riverbank with Gaius’ Fifth Legion." I finally spoke up, and pointed. "During that time, the river flowed as all rivers do - into the sea. When we left Cairo and marched back west, two seasons had passed, and the river had started to flow in reverse.”

“Why?” Selene asked, eagerly. Griffon looked on with clear interest.

They wanted a concrete answer, but I only had hearsay and a sickly gut instinct. “None of the natives could tell us for certain what had caused it, but they weren’t surprised it had happened. It was a phenomena they’d seen before. A good omen, they said.”

“Praise to him whose throne is Right and Truth. Repent and give your thanks, soldier of the west. The new Pharoah will be strong!”

“Barbarians and their superstition,” Griffon mused, cheek propped up on a closed fist. The disdain was still there, but there was a thoughtful undertone to it.

“One scholar’s superstition is another’s mystery faith,” Selene said, tilting her chin up smugly. Scarlet hands of Griffon’s violent intent dipped down into the Nile and returned dripping wet, flicking cool river water at her from all sides. She only stood taller, basking in the spray. “Be not afraid, ancient brother. I won’t force you to say the words. At your age, I understand it’s difficult to concede a point.”

“A bold tongue indeed, for a girl I could fit in my pocket.”

The color at the tips of Selene’s ears flushed a bit deeper. She hadn’t been pleased with me for shoving her into my raven space - though I couldn’t remember doing it, or why I had - for many reasons, but one that Griffon had guessed with shocking accuracy was that it had made her feel small. I’d done my best to explain the nature of the raven’s shadow, but the more I talked the brighter Griffon’s grin had grown, and the more embarrassed Selene had become.

She managed to brush it off, this time, and maintained her haughty posture.

“Envy is a foul look on an old man’s face.”

“You hear that, Sol?” Griffon asked sardonically. “My sister thinks I’m ancient. What do you suppose that makes you?”

“Archaic,” I replied, whittling away at my mermaid bones. These dice would be the finest I’d ever rolled once they were done. The materials were sublime, and Prometheus’ golden ichor had made my fingers nimble as any master carver.

“There’s more to age than years alone,” Selene assured me, a touch hurriedly. She was oddly considerate of me at times. No doubt a product of the days she’d spent in the Oracle’s temple, tending to her elders when they should have been tending her. “My brother’s personality is rotten beyond his years, that’s all.” Griffon pressed his right hand and three more of rosy light to his chest, wounded.

“Besides,” she continued, nodding to herself, “Donna always told me it was a man’s soul that told you how old he really was.”

“In that case,” I said, “Primordial.” Griffon snorted.

“What brings you to our humble corner of the deck, primeval one?” He nodded towards the men-at-oars, raising an eyebrow. “Is it our turn to tell you our favorite foods? Or perhaps you’ve come to seek our guidance. I could teach you how to sing, I suppose.”

“You’re welcome to try,” I said. “If Orpheus could teach a stone to dance, anything is possible.” From the way he smirked, I knew he planned to hold me to that. “But it’s Selene I need to speak to first.”

Selene blinked. “Me?”

“You,” I agreed. “I have far too many things to learn, and far too little time to learn them. Olympia showed me that, and this new torment set it in stone. I can’t afford to wait for men like Aristotle and Socrates to parcel out their wisdom, always on their own time. Not anymore. I need you, Selene.”

“You want me to teach you?” she asked, fingertips pressing lightly to her collarbone. She sounded flustered, but she knew just as well as I did that there was a vast gulf of experience separating the two of us. I may have been the better killer, but I needed more than violence if I was going to keep my men alive and replace my legions lost.

“I mean to wring you out like wet cloth.” I set aside my spear and reached down into my raven space, searching for the sack of coin. I had to pay the men before I paid myself, but the mermaid’s scales would take care of that once we got a bit further downriver. Hiring a mentor required prompt and proper payment.

My fingers brushed against a draw string, and pulled the purse out. It was heavier than I remembered it being. Softer, too. Almost…

I stared at the fat leather bursa sitting in my palm, bulging at its finely woven seams. It was a fine thing, embossed with a trumpeting bull elephant, and sturdy enough to take on any campaign. When I untied the knot and pried it open, the sun caught the pile of golden aurei and made them shine. I’d seen their kind minted, during the Gallic Wars. I picked up a coin wonderingly, twisting it one way, then the other. Caesar’s stern profile on one side, a skewered elephant on the other.

“So you were holding out on me,” Griffon said quietly.

I shook my head. “No.”

Yet another thing I couldn’t explain. Another thing that couldn’t wait, but would have to even so. I flipped the single coin back into my shadow, then cinched the leather bursa shut and tossed it on the deck at Selene’s feet.

“My overture,” I said, and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “Room and board and all other necessities included as well, naturally - your needs met before mine. If I only have one tent and a day’s rations left, I’ll sleep hungry under the stars.”

“Wait, Solus,” Selene protested, nudging the bursa with her foot like it was an ornery snake. “This is already too much. You have to pay your men, and anyway, I’d do it for free-”

“Absolutely not,” I said firmly. “I’m not asking you for advice. I’m asking you to be mine, until I’ve learned every scrap that you can teach me. It will take time. Now what do you want?”

“What about Socrates?” she said quickly. “He taught you, and you didn’t pay him!”

“The Gadfly was my master’s master,” I patiently explained. “It was his prerogative to step in if he felt his student was erring as a mentor. If he had demanded payment I would have told him, with the full respect a master is due from their student, to lick the underside of my boot and take it up with Aristotle.”

“A shame he didn’t ask,” Griffon chimed in, amused.

“Socrates taught me a few things too, you know.” Selene shifted slightly from foot to foot. Hardly noticeable, but for a Heroine it was a loud gesture. “And I do outrank a Philosopher, so surely, it would also be my prerogative-”

“That was that,” I said, waving the sentiment away. “This is this. What do you want, Selene?”

She sighed, shifting her veil aside. “So stubborn. Very well. I want a souvenir for every city we visit, and a tour of their most noteworthy places.”

“Denied,” Griffon said at once. The daughter of the Oracle whirled on him, scarlet eyes flashing.

“Decrepit things should stay silent in their tombs!”

“No, he’s right.”

Selene whirled back around on me, stricken.

“What? Why!?”

“Foolish you may be, but you’re still a Heroine. More importantly, you’re my sister,” Griffon said, jabbing a finger at his chest and another one of violent intent at hers. She slapped it away, but he only jabbed her with a dozen more up and down her sides. “I won’t let you undervalue yourself. Not even if you beg!”

“A horse, then!” she cried out, batting at the poking pankration fingers. “I want a horse! A nice one, like yours!”

I considered that. A horse was nothing, but a horse like mine was another matter. A virtuous beast, on par with Atlas’ stock… I hummed.

“Done,” I said. She slumped against the ship’s rail in relief. “What else?”

Selene groaned.