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“Such things I will tell your High King.”
    “Ah. Of course. No sense blabbing to a
thes
.”
    That word I did not know. “Where are you from?” I asked.
    “Argos. And I wish I were there now, instead of toiling like a dog here in this doomed place.”
    “What brought you here?”
    He looked up at me and scratched his bald pate. “Not what. Who. Agamemnon’s haughty wife, that’s who. Clytemnestra, who is even more faithless than her sister, Helen.”
    It must have been obvious to him that I did not understand, but he went right on, hardly drawing a breath.
    “A storyteller am I, and happy I was to spend my days in the agora, spinning tales of gods and heroes and watching the faces of the people as I talked. Especially the children, with their big eyes. But this war has put an end to my storytelling.”
    “How so?”
    He wiped his mouth with the back of his grimy hand. “My lord Agamemnon may need more warriors, but his faithless wife wants
thetes
.”
    “Slaves?”
    “Hah! Worse off than slaves. Far worse,” Poletes grumbled. He jerked a thumb back toward the men we had left; I could still hear the distant chunking of their axes. “Look at us! Homeless and hopeless. At least a slave has a master to depend upon. A slave belongs to someone; he is a member of a house hold. A
thes
belongs to no one and nothing; he is landless, homeless, cut off from everything except sorrow and hunger.”
    “But weren’t you a member of a house hold in Argos?” I asked.
    He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut as if to block out a painful memory.
    “ A house hold, yes,” he said, his voice dropping low. “Until Queen Clytemnestra’s men booted me out of the city for repeating what every stray dog and alley cat in Argos was saying— that the queen has taken a lover while her royal husband is here fighting at Troy’s walls.”
    I raised my hand to stop our march. Even though the sun was setting, the day was still broiling hot and the river looked cool and inviting. I sat down on the grassy bank and, leaning far over, scooped up a helmetful of clear water. The men did the same. A few even splashed into the river, laughing and thrashing about like boys.
    I drank my fill while Poletes slid down the slippery grass into the water and cupped his hands to drink. Watching the brown filth eddying from his legs, I was glad that I had filled my helmet first.
    “Well,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow, “at least the queen’s men didn’t kill you.”
    “Better if they had,” Poletes replied grimly. “I would be dead and in Hades and that would be the end of it. Instead I’m here, toiling like a jackass, working for wages.”
    “That’s something, anyway,” I said.
    His frog’s eyes snapped at me. Still standing shanks-deep in the river, he grabbed at the soiled little purse tied to his waist and opened its mouth enough for me to peer in. A handful of dried lentils.
    “My wages,” he said bitterly.
    “That is your payment?”
    “For the day’s work. Show me a
thes
with coin in his purse and I’ll show you a sneak thief.”
    I shook my head, then got to my feet and motioned my men to do the same.
    “Lower than a slave, that’s what I am,” Poletes grumbled as I lent him my arm and hauled him out of the water. “Vermin under their feet. They treat their dogs better. They’ll work me to death and let my bones rot where I fall.”

7

    Muttering and complaining all the way, Poletes led us across a ford in the river and toward the camp of the Achaians, which stretched along the sandy shore of the restless sea. It was protected by an earthen rampart twice the height of a grown man running parallel to the shoreline. I saw sharpened stakes planted here and there along its summit. In front of the rampart was a deep ditch, with more stakes studding its bottom. There was a packed sandy rampway that led up to an opening in the rampart, which was protected by a wooden gate that stood wide open, defended by a handful