The sun shone in our eyes over the fierce whiteness of the plains. The Comapnions stood round me.some laughing , some quiet. Six leagues away we could see the thin black line of the Cycladic hoplites coming over the pass from Delphi. Across the Athens road, in the Grove of the Mother, the Crones continued their shuffling dance, ululating despondently. I drained my goblet and cast it to the ground.
   A chariot dragging a plume of dust approached, wheeled and stopped by me. The driver leapt down, saluted me in the Eleusinian manner.his right fist against his left breast, and panted "My Lord, I am Apretion, your new charioteer". I looked at him, eyes narrowed by the fierce sun. He was naked from the waist up,save for gold arm bands in the Phrygian style. He wore the short soft leather kilt of the Oestrogynians, and golden buckled sandals with cross-gartering in leather to just below the knee. he looked me straight in the eye: I, who am Hellene, have the fair hair and blue eyes of the Men of the North, but he seemed one from the Shores, slight but but well-muscled and dark of hair and eye, the colouring of Those Who Came Before Us.
    "The High King bids me serve you as you wish" he said, and brushed a dark ringlet from his eye. He knelt down and buckled on my bronze greaves, his delicate fingers adjusting the lie of leather to my calves. Then,standing behind me he placed over my head the gold-and amethyst embossed cuirass, only to be worn by the Dolphin,heir to the land of Mykonos, and carefully adjusted the cross-trapping across my back, still scarred and smarting from my encounter with the the Sporadic pirates. As he leaned in, arms around my neck,he murmured "Lord, I will be your cuirass",
    I narrowed my eyes: across the broiling plain of Marathon the Cycladic army wound slowly on, but were still five leagues hence. I thought back: the night I took the High Priestess of Minos by force, lying on the bloody lion's pelt I had strangled. I thought of the tavern girl I had bedded yesternight by the quay at Troizen, and scattered gold coins by her in the stinking bed in her hovel.
    "Come, Apretion" I smiled, and smote him on the shoulder, "I have a goatskin of wine cooling in my tent, and it wants an hour till the Sons of the Cycladic Python are upon us". We strode together through the Companions, ignoring the ribald grins of some. I held open the tent flap: he bent to enter, looked up and said "You honour me, my Lord".