Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

The bronze sword he hung at his waist was from Aegeus, leaf-shaped, well-balanced, lovely and deadly. He could not fault the royal pair for stinginess.

He found Theseus waiting in the hall. Except for slaves tidying up, it, felt cavernously empty and still after last evening’s carousal. (Torch-flare; fire roaring on a central hearthstone less loudly than the chants, footstampings, lyres and syrinxes and drums, shouts and brags that filled the smoky air; dogs snapping after bones flung them off trestle tables; servants scurrying to keep the winecups filled; and through it all, Theseus seated impassive, quietly questioning the strangers.) “Rejoice, my lord,” Reid greeted.

“Rejoice.” The prince lifted a muscle-corded arm. “I thought you might like to be shown our countryside”

“You are most kind, my lord. Ah ... my friends—?”

“My captain Diores is taking the warriors Uldin and Oleg to his estate. He’s promised them horses, and they in turn have promised to show the use of that saddle with footrests which Uldin brought.”

And he’ll pump them, Reid reflected, and he’ll try to split them off from Erissa and me.... Stirrups weren’t invented till millennia after this, were they? I read that somewhere. They were what made heavy cavalry possible. Suppose they catch on, here and now—what then?

Can time be changed? Does Erissa’s Thalassocracy have to die? Must I really leave her, in an eerie kind of incest, for her younger self?

If not ... will the future grow into a different shape from what I knew? Will my Pamela ever be born? Will I?

He tried to summon his wife’s image and found that harder to do than it should have, been, these few days after he was lost from her.

Theseus said, “Come,” and led the way outside. He was broad in proportion to his height, but he walked lightly. Fair-skinned, tawny of hair and beard, his blunt-nosed, full-lipped features were handsome. The eyes were remarkable, set well apart and of an amber hue, leonine eyes. For the outing he had exchanged his gaudily embroidered festive garments for plain gray wool. He kept his golden head-band, though, the golden brooch at his throat and bracelet on his thick wrist.

While the wind was brisk outdoors, it was not yet an autumn gale, and the clouds it sent scudding were white. Their shadows swept over a huge landscape, mountains to north and northwest, the Saronic Gulf to the south and west. Across those few miles, against blue-green white-caps, Reid made out a cluster he could recognize as boat-houses and beached ships at the Piraeus. A dirt road from there to here cut a brown streak through stubblefields and dusty-green olive orchards. The whole Attic plain was similarly dappled with agriculture. At a distance he noticed two large houses and their outbuildings that must belong to wealthy men, and numerous smallholder cottages. Groves of oak or poplar usually surrounded them. The mountains were densely forested. This was not his Greece.

He noticed how full of birds the sky was. Most he couldn’t name except in general terms, different kinds of thrush, dove, duck, heron, hawk, swan, crow. Thus far men hadn’t ruined nature. Sparrows hopped among the: courtyard cobblestones. Besides dogs, the animals were absent that would have wandered around a farm, swine, donkeys, sheep, goats, cows, chickens, geese. But workers bustled among the buildings which defined the enclosure. A household this big required plenty of labor, cleaning, cooking, milling, baking, brewing, spinning, weaving, endlessly. Most of the staff were women, and most had young children near their bare feet or clinging to their worn shifts: the next generation of slaves. However, several industries were carried on by men. Through open shed doors, Reid glimpsed in action a smithy, a ropewalk, a tannery, a potter’s wheel, a carpenter shop.

“Are these all slaves, my lord?” he asked.

“Not all,” Theseus said. “Particularly, it’s not wise to keep many unfree males about. We hire them, mostly Athenians, a few skilled foreigners?’ He grinned, his grin that never seemed to reach deeper than his teeth. “They’re encouraged to breed brats on our bondwomen. Thus everyone’s happy.”

Except maybe the bondwomen, Reid thought, the more so when their boys are sold away.

Theseus scowled. “We have to keep a Cretan clerk. No need; we’ve men who can write, aye, men whose forebears taught the Cretans to write! But the Minos requires it of us.”

To keep track of income and outgo, Reid deduced, partly for purposes of assessing tribute, partly for indications of what the Athenians may be up to. Say, what’s this about the Achaeans being literate before the Minoans were? That doesn’t make sense.

Theseus halted his complaint before he should grow in-discreet. “I thought we’d drive out to my own farmstead,” he suggested. “You can see a good bit on the way, and for myself I want to make sure the threshing and storing are well in hand.”

“I’d enjoy that, my lord.”

The stable was the sole stone building, no doubt because horses were too valuable and loved to risk to fire. Note as big as their twentieth-century counterparts, they nevertheless were mettlesome animals which whickered softly and nuzzled Theseus’ palm when he stroked them. “Hitch Stamper and Longtail to the everyday chariot,” he ordered the head groom. “No, don’t summon a driver. I’ll take ’em.”

Two men could stand on the flat bed of the car, behind a bronze front and sides decorated with bas-reliefs. In war Theseus, armored, would have kept his place’ behind a near-naked youth who had the reins, himself wielding spear and sword against enemy infantry. Reid decided that was a skill which could only be acquired by training from babyhood. He had everything he could ‘do just hanging on in the unsprung conveyance.

Theseus flicked whip over the horses and they clattered out. The twin wheels squeaked and rumbled. Even lacking ball bearings, it didn’t seem like much of a load for a pair of animals to draw. Then Reid noticed the choking chest-strap harness. What if Oleg made a horse collar?

Athens clustered nearly to the top of steep, rocky Acropolis Hill. It was a fair-sized city by present-day standards; Reid guessed at twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, though a floating population from the hinterland and foreign parts might raise that figure. (He asked Theseus and got a quizzical stare. The Achaeans kept close track of many things, but counting people had not occurred to them.) Much of the settled area lay outside the defensive walls, indicating rapid growth. Buildings were adobe, flat-roofed, often three or four stories high, jammed along narrow, unpaved, crazily twisting streets. In those lanes Reid did see hogs, competing with mongrels; mice, roaches, and clouds of flies for the offal tossed from houses.

“Make way!” Theseus trumpeted. “Make way!”

They parted for him, the warriors, craftsmen, merchants, mariners, innkeepers, shopkeepers, scribes, laborers, prostitutes, housewives, children, hierophants, and Lord knew what whose movement and babble brought the city to life. Glimpses remained with Reid: A woman, one hand supporting a water jug on her head, one lifting her skirts above the muck. A gaunt donkey, overburdened with faggots, lashed forward by its countryman owner. A booth where a sandalmaker sat crying his wares. Another booth where a typically intricate bargain had just been struck, payment to be made partly in kind and partly in an agreed-on weight of metal. A coppersmith at work, shutting the whole world out of his head except for his hammer and the adze he was forging. An open winehouse door and a drunken sailor telling lengthy lies about the perils he had survived. Two little boys, naked, playing what looked remarkably like hopscotch. A portly burgher, apprentices around him to protect him from jostling. A squat, dark, bearded man in robe and high-crowned brimless hat who must be from Asia Minor ... no, here they simply called it Asia....