The Sacred Land

“All right. All right.” Teleutas dipped his head with obvious impatience. “But what is going on?”

“We can’t buy any food till after sundown,” Sostratos answered. “They have a day of rest every seventh day, and they take it seriously. We can get water from the well, though, as long as we do it ourselves.”

“A day of rest? That’s pretty stupid,” Teleutas said, which was exactly Sostratos’ opinion. The sailor went on, “What happens if they’re in a war and they have to fight a battle on this special day of theirs? Do they let the enemy kill them because they’re not supposed to fight back?”

“I don’t know.” That intrigued Sostratos, so he turned it into Aramaic, as best he could, for Ezer.

“Yes, we would die,” the Ioudaian answered. “Better to die than to break the law of the one god.”

Sostratos didn’t try to argue with him. Ezer sounded as passionate as a man who was busy wasting his inheritance on a hetaira and didn’t care if he ruined himself on her behalf. A man who wasted his inheritance on a hetaira at least had the pleasure of her embraces to recall. What did a man who wasted his life on devotion to a foolish god have left? Nothing Sostratos could see. Such mad devotion might even cost a worshiper life itself.

He didn’t care to point that out to Ezer son of Shobal. The Ioudaian had made it plain he could see it for himself. He’d also made it plain he was willing to take the consequences. How could a man’s devotion to a god be greater than his devotion to life itself? Sostratos shrugged. No, it made no rational sense.

The Rhodian did find a rational question to ask: “My master, where is the well? We are hot and thirsty.”

“Go past this house here”-Ezer pointed-”and you will see it.”

“Thank you.” Sostratos bowed. Ezer returned the gesture. However mad he might be in matters pertaining to his god, he was polite enough when dealing man to man. Sostratos went back to Greek to tell the sailors with him where the well was.

“I’d sooner have wine,” Teleutas said.

That wasn’t quite pure complaint, or it might not have been pure complaint, anyhow. Aristeidas dipped his head, saying, “So would I. Drinking water in foreign parts can give you a flux of the bowels.”

He was right, of course, but Sostratos said, “Sometimes it can’t be helped. We are in foreign parts, and we have to drink water by itself now and again. The country isn’t swampy or marshy. That makes the water likelier to be good.”

“I don’t care how good it is. I don’t care if it’s water from the Khoaspes, the river the Persian kings used to drink from,” Teleutas said. “I’d still sooner have wine.” He hadn’t cared about his health, then-only about his palate and the way wine would make him feel. Why am I not surprised? Sostratos thought.

As Hellenes often did, the Ioudaioi had circled the well with rocks to the height of a cubit or so, to keep animals and children from falling in. They’d also put a wooden cover over the top of the well. When the sailors took it off, they found a stout branch lying across the opening, with a rope attached to it.

“Let’s haul up the pail,” Sostratos said.

The men got to work, taking turns at it. Teleutas groaned and grumbled as he hauled on the line; he might almost have been sentenced to torture. From everything Sostratos had seen, Teleutas reckoned work the equivalent of torture. Then again, hauling up a large, full bucket wasn’t easy. Sostratos wondered if there were some easier way to raise a bucket of water than yanking it up one pull at a time. If so, it didn’t occur to him.

“Here we are,” Aristeidas said at last. Moskhion reached out and grabbed the dripping wooden pail. He raised it to his lips; took a long, blissful pull; and then poured some over his head. Sostratos said not a word when Teleutas and Aristeidas took their turns before passing him the pail. By bringing it up from the bottom of the deep well, they’d earned the right.

“Water seems good enough,” Aristeidas said. “It’s nice and cool, and it tastes sweet. I hope it’s all right.”

“It should be.” Sostratos drank. “Ahh!” As his men had, he poured water over his head, too. “Ahh!” he said again. It felt wonderful ru

Every now and then, he spied a face staring from the windows of the stone and mud-brick houses. No one but Ezer son of Shobal came out, though. In fact, Sostratos waved the first time he saw one of those curious faces. All that did was make it disappear in a hurry.

Aristeidas noticed the same thing. “These people are fu

“I should say not,” Teleutas agreed. “They’d try to steal anything we hadn’t nailed down, too, and they’d try to pry up the nails.”

Sostratos raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t that Teleutas was wrong. The sailor was, without a doubt, right-Hellenes would act like that. But the notion of thievery seemed to occur to him very quickly. Not for the first time, Sostratos wondered what that meant.

He could have pushed on from Hadid, but he did want to buy food, and Ezer had made it very plain he couldn’t do that till after sunset. He and the sailors rested by the well. After a while, they refilled the bucket and hauled it up again. They drank deep and poured the rest over themselves.

As he might have done in Hellas, Teleutas started to pull off his tunic and go naked. Sostratos held up a hand. “I already told you once, don’t do that.”

“It’d be cooler,” Teleutas said.

“People here don’t like showing off their bodies.”

“So what?”

“So what? I’ll tell you so what, O marvelous one.” Sostratos waved a hand. “There probably aren’t any other Hellenes closer to this place than a day’s journey. If we get people here up in arms against us, what can we do? If they start throwing rocks, say, what can we do? I don’t think we can do anything. Do you?”

“No, I guess not,” Teleutas said sulkily. He left the chiton on.

After the sun went down, the locals emerged from their houses. Sostratos bought wine and cheese and olives and bread and oil (he tried not to think about all the oil Damonax had made him carry on the Aphrodite, and he hoped Menedemos was having some luck getting rid of it). Some people did ask questions about who he was, where he was from, and what he was doing in Ioudaia. He answered as best he could in his halting Aramaic. As twilight deepened, mosquitoes began to whine through the air. He slapped a couple of times, but still got bitten.

A few of his questioners were women. Though they robed themselves from head to foot like the local men, they didn’t wear veils, as respectable Hellenes would have. Sostratos had noticed that back in Sidon, too. To him, seeing a woman’s naked face in public came close to being as indecent as seeing his-or Teleutas’-naked body would have been for the Ioudaioi.

He wished he could ask them more about their customs and beliefs. It wasn’t so much that his Aramaic wasn’t up to the job. But, as he hadn’t wanted Teleutas to offend them, he didn’t want to do so himself. He sighed and wondered how long it would be till his curiosity got the better of his common sense.