Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.62 [Stavros Aetos]

Youngest of the Convocation

“Found you,” Damon declared with bone deep satisfaction, and my heart started hammering.

“Freedmen! Maintain the pace!” Gyro stood abruptly up from his bench, snuffing out the unburning flames of virtue that had been coating his oar. Damon was already at the tip of the Eos, one arm draped over the figurehead’s shoulders and the other braced against the rail, both man and wood-carved woman staring out into the abyss.

I threw down my oar and reached into my cult attire - The next statement is true. The previous statement is false. - and pulled from it my spear. Fotios did the same beside me, dispelling the illuminating light clinging to his own oar so he could grab for his trident. In a moment all the lights were gone. What remained was provided by the stars above, the moon rising up to join them -

And the message from Olympia, still pinned to the mast by Damon’s manifested pneuma. Every letter glowing with the rosy light of dawn.

I realized all at once the error in my thinking.

I had accepted as a matter of course that Olympia would have good reason to know a tragedy had taken place, along with where it had taken place. Pirates were working men like any other, if easier to hate. It only made sense that if they had acquired precious cargo they would seek to sell it to the highest bidder. Reaving was a pirate’s virtue and ransom was their path. They would have sent word not just to Olympia, but any of the wealthier prospects in the free Mediterranean and beyond.

Our dock had been empty for days, but there were other ways to send a message. Virtuous beasts that obeyed a man’s will were in high demand no matter where you stood among heaven and earth, but even mundane birds could be trained to carry a message with the proper upbringing. If the barbarians in Rome could manage it with their eagles, it was surely within the capabilities of even the lowest Greek reaver. That Olympia could muster the same resources in delivering their call for aid went without saying.

But that only made sense under the assumption that it had been men that waylaid the ship from Olympia. Otherwise, how could they have known what happened? How else could a message have been sent to notify the Raging Heaven?

“If they had something prepared in advance,” Fotios muttered, leaning over the ship’s rail and brandishing his trident warily at the coal black flames. “A pre-written message in case of the worst…” I realized we had been thinking the exact same thing.

“It wouldn’t have mentioned their location,” I muttered, tensing as a particularly loud wave broke against the hull. “They would have had to amend it at that moment.”

“Not impossible,” my twin reasoned. He didn’t sound convinced.

“Not likely.” I rounded on my elder brothers, pacing up the deck while three freedmen and a slave did their best to make up for the loss in rowing hands. “I have a question.”

“I have an answer,” Damon responded without looking back.

Another agonized scream split the Ionian in two.

“How did Olympia find out about this?”

“The same way we did.”

“That being?”

“Yesterday, just after dawn,” said a winded man behind me. I turned to the freedman that Damon had brought. “The kyrios received a roll of papyrus from a raven made of liquid shadow.”

“Just call it a raven,” I said in irritation. “Not like there are any light ravens left.”

“He wasn’t being artful,” Gyro said idly, rhythmically easing his sword from its sheath before dropping it back into place as he leaned against the rail. A bad habit of his. He only fiddled with his blade like that when he intended to use it.

“A bird made out of shadows?” Fotios queried from across the deck. “Did it talk as well?” His tone was deliberately light, an affectation to combat the tension in the air.

“Yes.”

I stared down at Damon’s man.

“My mentor often tells me that the Tyrants across the Ionian are a different breed than what we’ve come to know.” In the low light of the endless shadowed waves, the rings in Damon’s eyes seemed to glow like whirling sun rays. “The kyrios of the Raging Heaven is another level above even that. And when a man is half a step from heaven, who’s to say he can’t reach into his shadow and pull out a bird to deliver a message for him?”

“What did it say, then?” I asked the freedman, before shaking my head and rounding on my brother. “Damon, what did it say? Enough games - your slave’s obviously already told you.”

“He’s not a slave anymore.”

“I am going to throw you into the sea,” I threatened him. “You’re worse than Aristotle.”

Damon smirked. “It’s the oldest brother’s duty to irritate his younger brothers.”

“A truth worth advancing for,” Gyro chimed in.

I brandished my spear.

The Young Aristocrat raised his hands in surrender, mirth coloring his next words.

“In an act of political mercy, the raven told our uncle what the kyrios of the Raging Heaven had omitted from his letter. The message was brief - ‘Lend me every heroic soul you have to see this done, or I’ll tear your ancestral tree out by the roots.’”

As if in response, another scream came seething out of the sea spray. Closer now, but how far until we reached it? I glanced around the Eos. At four philosophers, three citizens, and a bonded slave.

“Seems we’re ill equipped.”

“Take heart, brother.” Gyro threw an arm over my shoulder. His blue eyes were bright. “So long as we’re together, we have everything we’ll ever need.”

The Eos dipped.

I staggered, a childhood of sailing and Gyro’s arm around my shoulder preventing me from tumbling over the rail entirely. I heard Fotios curse at the stern and heard Dymas and Thon cry out in alarm as the rowing benches slid out from under them. The sudden roar of rushing water was too loud to be believed. Even in pitch dark I should have noticed it before this moment. I should have heard it. Gyro reached out with his other hand and caught his freedman by the hair as he fell past us

“What is this!?” Fotios shouted.

Damon’s freedman stumbled back towards the stern, walking up an incline as the Eos dipped further down. The man had no sea legs to speak of, but he moved with purpose nonetheless. The Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn stood at the front of the ship, arms crossed and perfectly balanced even as it dipped so low that the woman serving as the ship’s figurehead was fully submerged in the Ionian.

Wait. I squinted. No, she should have been beneath the surface of the waves by this point. But she wasn’t. Because the Ionian was dipping to match her. We weren’t sinking. We were sloping down.

“Lord Aetos,” Damon’s freedman called from the back of the ship, a parcel of unadorned leather in his arms. He tossed it down the deck and Damon caught it without looking. From it, he pulled a bow and a quiver of arrows.

“That’s uncle’s bow.” Somehow, it was all I could think to say.

“He’s going to shatter your ego when we get back,” Fotios called from the stern, hysterical mirth in his voice.

“He’s going to try,” Damon said, and nocked an arrow to the bow string. The Tyrant’s weapon, carved from ancient ash and as broad end-to-end as some men were tall, creaked ominously as he drew it back. I felt the same mad excitement as my twin bubble up in my virtuous heart. Gyro had understood the full scope of Damon‘s plan from the beginning, but it was the nature of older brothers to keep their younger siblings in the dark.

Damon spread wide the wings of his influence and the string of the Tyrant’s bow erupted in scarlet flame. It spread to the arrow, the intensity of the light doubling and re-doubling in the distance between two heartbeats. He leaned back, angling the arrow up to the heavens.

[The dawn breaks]

Thwang.

The arrow shot up into the night sky, illuminating the Ionian for leagues all around us. Behind us there was nothing but the same churning waves we’d been rowing through all day, stretching through the far horizon. But ahead…

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“Free men, to arms!” Gyro’s voice rose. He clapped me on the back and turned to climb back up the ship, dragging his freedman along by his hair. He slapped Dymas over the head and pulled Thon from the rail that he was clutching for dear life. “Up with you, rise! You may not be my brothers, and you may not be my juniors, but you’re members of my crew and that’s more than most men can say!

“Stand like you belong on this ship. Rise and fight with us, show us we were right to free you from your chains!” From a fold in his cult attire our brother pulled three swords, each of them a work of art that he had long discarded - blades that hadn’t lasted long in Anargyros Aetos’ hands. “I only have these scraps to offer you now, but once the work is done we’ll find you each a weapon worth wearing on your belt.”

The freedmen caught the blades he tossed their way with varying degrees of poise, but the reverence in their eyes was equal across all three of them. As it should have been. What Gyro called scraps, swords weakened and worn beyond his ability to repair them, were priceless artifacts by the standard of any common philosopher- let alone a citizen that had gone to bed the previous night a slave. I watched those blades alone give each man strength, courage in the face of what lay ahead.

It was one thing to cast off your chains and take an unfettered breath for the first time in years. It was one thing to sail alongside young philosophers of the aristoi, one thing to call them by their given names as if you were equals. But all of that was within the scope of a slave’s life, and a lack of iron chains did not necessarily make a man free. What was entirely another thing was to stand and fight beside those philosophers that had once been your masters, entirely another thing to wield a cultivator’s blade and not just whatever was at hand.

I laughed harder as the Eos rode down into the currents of a whirlpool large enough to swallow the Scarlet City whole. Pulling us all, unerringly, towards a central point that could just barely be seen in the distance. Damon’s shining arrow illuminated the island at its center briefly as it flew overhead, along with the ships gutted and shattered on its shore.

“Fine then!” I slammed the butt of my spear to the deck, and beneath the deck the ship’s bones lit up at my pneuma’s touch. The light spilled up through the seams of the deck, bathing me in the glow of my conviction.

“You want to teach me a lesson!?” I demanded of my brothers as the Eos fell into the sea. “This lowly sophist awaits your wisdom!”

Infuriating bastards. They had let me put on such a show before, not once interrupting to give me the greater context of what was to come. Philosophers could exchange discourse without a Citizen ever being the wiser - it wasn’t consideration for the freedmen that had held their tongues. No, I knew better than to think so favorably of them.

“I have no idea what you mean, brother,” Damon said, pulling another arrow from his quiver.

“Even if we did, does this really strike you as the proper time?” Gyro added, scolding words betrayed by the creasing of his eyes.

Damon and Anargyros Aetos were as identical in spirit as Fotios and I were in flesh. Wherever they went and whatever it was they were doing, neither could be satisfied unless they were putting on a show. Any playwright worth their title knew that even the cleverest comedy went to waste if there was no one there to laugh - even the most gut-wrenching tragedy was worthless if there was no one there to weep for it. Unfortunately for Fotios and I, that meant we were the audience. We called it our fraternal tribulation. Our earned consequence for having the audacity to be born so beautiful not just once, but twice.

Regardless. They had set me up, and I had fallen into it. Nothing for it now but to take account of it.

“Yes,” I declared. “This strikes me as exactly the right time.”

Thon hissed in helpless frustration while the vast whirlpools currents wrenched us sideways, sending him staggering. He reached for the ship’s rail but stopped himself at the last moment. Gyro had told him to stand, and so he stood. He looked like half a corpse already, the only one of us that had been forced to row through the day and into the night without the bracing vitality of a cultivator’s breath. He didn’t take his eyes off his unsteady feet even as I stepped up to him and loomed, so absorbed in maintaining his balance.

He did look up when I placed a hand on his heaving chest and shoved him off his feet.

“What- Lord Aetos?”

“I told you to call me Stavros,” I said, invoking another fold in logic and pulling a fine leather pouch from my cult attire.

“But,” he hesitated, visibly thrown. The whites of his eyes stood out starkly as he took in our current situation. We were deep enough into the whirlpool now that the Ionian seemed to rise up around us like the mountain ranges around the Scarlet City.

“But?” I prompted him sharply, rapping my spear against the deck.

“It isn’t Kronia anymore!” he blurted. “I’m just a slave again!”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said, and dumped the leather purse out into his lap. Golden drachma and other coins of silver and bronze, dozens of them, rained down into his hastily cupped palms until they spilled over the sides. Thon stared at the riches in his hands, more wealth than he had held in the entirety of his life up until now.

“What is this?” he asked, a hitch in his voice.

“Helping me find the best timber for my ship on the one day of the year you didn’t have to was a kindness,” I told him. “But it fell within the boundaries of a favor. Dragging you onto this ship and telling you to match my pace was a cruelty, but one within the scope of a slave’s duties.”

Damon let fly another shining arrow, lighting up the night and showing us just how far we had fallen into the tide. The island at the center of it all still seemed impossibly far away, and yet the waves around us kept growing higher. Fotios hollered down approximate distances, having climbed the mast for a better viewpoint.

“If we were chasing pirates, I wouldn’t give you a single lepton for your troubles,” I told him frankly. “But it’s clear to me now that this isn’t slave work. And if that’s the case, I have no choice but to pay you for your services.”

“I… I don’t…” Thon couldn’t seem to decide what was more pressing. The ravenous whirlpool, the cultivators taking up arms all across the ship as if to fight the Ionian itself, or- “I don’t have a place to put all this.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled a slow breath. On the other side of the deck, Gyro tried and failed to muffle a snort. It wasn’t his fault. This once, in these circumstances, I would let it go.

“That is a problem,” I agreed, opening my eyes to regard the ugly slave with the often broken nose. “Why don’t I hold onto it for you? Better yet, I can sell you something for it.” Common sense finally overcame panicked vertigo, and his hope bloomed once again. Thon cleared his throat, salvaging what pride he could.

“My freedom?”

“If you’d like. Seems you have just enough to cover it.”

Thon counted out every last coin while we wound a hurtling path down to the bleak rocks of the central island. Once the last golden drachma dropped into my leather pouch, I tucked it back into my cult attire and took his manacles in hand. The dawn burned through them, weakened them until even a mortal man could tear them off. Thon did just that.

The ugly freedman took his first unfettered breath, and Gyro promptly tossed him his fourth and final spare. Thon rose on steadier feet than before, his grip on the sword unfamiliar but strong.

“Stavros,” he greeted me as an equal. Met my eyes as a free man. I scoffed and punched his shoulder.

“Thon. Let’s see if you’re worth the money.”

“You know, I think you were right after all,” Gyro exclaimed, smiling brightly even as the Eos rolled and nearly capsized us. “This is the perfect time for a lesson.”

“Let’s hear it then!” Fotios hollered down from the top of the mast. “I might as well die wise!”

The rush of air that accompanied every use of the Tyrant’s bow was almost a blow by itself, a swift boxing of the ears. Damon watched the third arrow blaze a trail through the sky and just barely clear the lip of the whirlpool above.

“What is a hero?” he asked.

I braced myself with my spear in hand, pneuma rising. “You’re about to tell us.”

Damon pulled the fourth arrow from its quiver and nocked it to our uncle’s stolen bow, leaning so far back that the arrowhead was pointed nearly straight up. At this point, it was all but impossible that it would clear the rim. We were too far down.

“A hero is a breaker of chains,” Gyro said, drawing his sword fully from its sheath and planting his right foot up on the rail. “A liberator of men.”

The string of the Tyrant’s bow and the arrow knocked to it ignited in scarlet flame. Damon let it build, let it overflow, until it had banished every shadow on the ship. Thon set his feet beside me, his shoulder pressed to mine. Dymas stood beneath the sail and watched my twin, ready to catch him if he fell. Our older brothers’ additions to the crew flanked them on either side.

“What else?” I asked, though I already knew. I inhaled deeply and drew my principles around me like a cloak - like armor.

“A hero,” Damon said with heavy intent, “is a slayer of monsters.”

He turned abruptly, taking aim at the sea and loosing his nova arrow. The shaft of riotous light punched through the waves in an explosion of steam and boiling water, and it continued on without dying out. An unmistakable guiding light piercing down, down, into the dark-

And finding its mark.

The light slammed through flesh within the depths and went out. A woman’s shrill, agonized shriek bubbled up out of the waves.

“Come, then,” the Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn commanded, his pneuma blanketing the Eos. His lips drew back from his teeth, his voice rising to match a sudden wild grin. “Rise!” he shouted, and we, his brothers, roared along with him.

“Rise and greet the dawn!”

The monster did just that, scales of shifting silver exploding up out of the sea.