Thereafter he bore south between the Aegean islands, pausing here and there to admire some temple crowning a high ridge, until he saw pirate-haunted Crete. Beyond lay open sea, but it was not excessively far to the Nile's mouths.
The Pharaoh of Egypt, who was a Macedonian by ancestry, received the captain from Pontus, who was half Persian and half Anatolian, graciously. Like all cultivated people, they spoke together in Attic Greek. During his stay Arpad found himself much in demand among the learned class; this city swarmed with as many philosophers and geographers as it did with gods and prostitutes. Pontus itself was exotic enough for several evenings' discussion—Graeco-Persian-Asiatic on the Black Sea coast, a source of timber, minerals and the fantastically lovely murrhine glass. And one had heard of its king, the great Mithradates, enthroned in his twelfth year, forced to flee the usurping schemes of mother and brother, living for years a hunter in the mountains, until he returned to wrest back his heritage. But this Mithradates Eupator had not been satisfied with one throne—no, it seemed he must have all the Orient. He skirmished and intrigued among the Cappadocians, Galatians, Armenians, until no neighbor king sat easy. He fought his way up the eastern coast and took Colchis of the Golden Fleece for his own. He hurled back the wild Scythians in the north so that the Greeks of the Cimmerian Bosporus acknowledged their rescuer as their overlord. That kingdom lay near the dark edge of the world, on a peninsula thrusting past Lake Maeotis or the Azov Sea or whatever it was called. Northward was only barbarism till you reached the night and glaciers of Ultima Thule! What could the excellent Captain Arpad tell us of his lord's Tauric provinces? Did Colchis hold any relics of Jason's visit? Did he think war with Rome, which now held much of Asia's Aegean coast and looked greedily east, would be to the death; or would it be a civilized war where boundaries were adjusted and prisoners taken for the slave market?
Thus Arpad's stay became delightful, and he left with regret. But it was now early summer, and soon the etesian winds would make eastward sea traffic all but impossible.
By some quirk—by the ill wind of Ahriman, mumbled his sailors—they encountered a powerful west wind, a veritable gale. It blew steadily, hour upon hour and day upon day; as they wallowed north on bare poles and oars, striving to hold course and not be blown clear to Syria, the skies turned to an unseasonable overcast with chill gusts of rain. When at last he recognized the island of Rhodes, smoky blue through the squalls, Arpad decided to put in and wait out this weather.
Beating through rain and spindrift, he saw another galley. It had a sail up, recklessly, no oars out at all, the ports shuttered.... Arpad steered closer. That fool of a captain would smash himself on the beach!
Something about the stranger's unruly course told him it was badly undermanned. It had an Italian look, not much of a galley, an old trading scow but even so—Arpad sent a man up to speak with the lookout in the crow's-nest. Only three crewfolk were seen on the other deck. Two of them fought their yardarm, trying to pull it about so they would not be blown so directly toward the island. The third stood by a lashed steering oar. The ship was sluggish, low in the water, now and then a wave breaking over the side; it was slowly foundering.
Arpad considered various matters, such as the rescue of distressed mariners and the salvage rights on their vessel. "Stand by to board!" he called.
Even in these high seas, a naval crew had small trouble laying alongside and grappling fast. An armed party surrounded the three and conducted them aboard the Pontine galley. Arpad had them led to his cabin, where they stood dripping on a carpet while he removed his own wet cloak. Only then did he regard them closely.
They stood with a sort of exhausted defiance between four drawn swords. The lamp, swinging from its chains, revealed them clad in rags. But they were no ordinary sailors. There was a burly redbearded fellow, his broad battered face speaking of Sarmatian plains. There was a young woman whose figure would have been good, in the skinny Greek manner, had she not lost so much weight; her hair was cut like a boy's and her hands were bloodied from ropes and levers. The strangest was a barbarian with yellow hair dyed a fading black and a sun symbol etched on his brow. He looked like a wild king, and yet he stood gloomily withdrawn as any desert eremite, showing no interest in who had taken him or what his fate would be.
The backs of both men had been whipped; the red one bore permanent manacle scars. Slaves, then. And doubtless the woman was, too. Their captured weapons had been laid at Arpad's feet—a rusty longsword, an ax and an iron-headed maul.