“How the boy training is going? We are going to leave in less then a month and I would like to know about his chance.”

Adastros has a angry expression in his face, not that I blame him. We thought that we could sell everything that we had in a couple of months and get a nice sum for our retirement. But when people realized what we were doing, they all started to make really bad offers for our possessions.

Thinking that we were desperate to sell everything to leave and would accept anything. Like we would do something that stupid! Nevertheless, when word got around that we were leaving, the whole city refused to give us a fair price for anything.

What was supposed to take two, maybe three months to leave, have become a ordain of six months. The one-month deadline that he gave is a joke, the house, our biggest asset in the city dosen’t have a single good offer! The best one that we received is about half of the market price. We are going to need a few more months to sell everything.

But the boy needs to leave in a couple of weeks if he wants to arrive to start his training in this year class. Skiritai school only accepts new students once a year and the training take 3 years.

We could wait one more year, but that would be stupid. The school prefer younger children, because they are easy to manipulate and mold. Every year that passes the teachers will give him less privileges and consequently his chances of survive will decrease.

As usual, Pyrros our secretary looks like is about to explode from all his fat. I remember the day that we bought him and he looked like the twin brother of Adastros, just skin and bones. But a few decades of good food and a office job made him look like a whale.

“I still think that we are wasting a good talent by sending him to his death. He needs to learn a lot to be a good secretary, but the boy has a lot of potential on him. In a couple of decades he could possible do my job. Even now half trained he is of great help!”

Couple of decades? From what I heard he is already doing all your job. Not that I blame him from down casting the boy contribution to protect his own job. I would do the same in his position.

But I must admit that I was surprised when I heard that the boy is good in both math and literature. You would think that in such small island we would find someone like him? Only Skiritai officers are expected to be literate and just the basic, so they can do inventory and receive written orders.

Normally I would agree with him and keep the boy as a house slave and send other slaves in his place. But since everyone knows that we are going back to Argos, they refuse to sell slave boys to us at a reasonable price.

We could buy one or two, but if we paid the price that they asked, people would be sure that we are desperate, making all the other negotiations a lot harder. Even if we were willing to buy a slave for a exorbitant price, with senators and people like us trying to give them as gift, they are not many in the market.

“Pyrros you already told us that. We need the boy to be a soldier. I will try to find a literate slave for you later, but I make no promises. And you, how the physical training is going? Will he survive?”

Helios scratches his chin with his right hand while considering the question.

“Even if he was a citizen, he would never win any competition. He can do all the exercises in a competent matter, but he is not exceptional in any, at best he would be a very mediocre athlete, but as a soldier? He would fit right in, a soldier dosen’t need to be the best in everything, just good enough to survive and he is that.”

He stops to drink some wine before continuing.

“- And he is vicious and fearless, I can see in his eyes whenever we fight. No fear of death or mercy there. Normally that would make him a bad soldier, since suicide people tend to put their colleagues in danger when they break the phalanx to kill the enemy. You guys know how easy is for a line of heavy infantry to break when something unexpected happen, most of the citizens are terrified of going to battle and needs to be held by hand to stay and fight. But as a light infantry who needs to search and destroy the enemy? He is perfect, he was the right mentality and is not scary of getting the job done when necessary.”

“-And how do you know that he will not run in a serious fight? You only did some exercises with him!”

Pyrros needs to be a dick whenever someone that is not him is given a report, to make him look good in comparison, but he is right today. Training is training, it can’t be compared to the real thing.

“-Trust me, the boy is a killer, he may need some time to realized that, but I know a killer when I see one.”

-“Sounds bullshit to me. Even if you’re right, he can still die in his first battle by a arrow or stone without having the opportunity to slay a single enemy.”

“-Maybe, but I think he will at least survive and thrive during training and that’s what matters to us.”

And this is another reason why we don’t want to keep the boy, knowing his letters make him office material, plus the fact that he is aggressive, the trainers in the school will thank the Gods for sending him and make a small shrine for him.

The death rate is high but that dosen’t mean the trainers are stupid, if they see someone with potential, they will try to make him survive. If he manages to not only survive but thrive, we will win a lot. Not only our patron will own us for given him, but I think that are some business prospects in the future if we play the right cards.

“-That’s high praise, I want him ready to depart in 2 weeks, whatever you guys want to teach him, make sure to do as soon as possible. You can leave now.”

Helios needs to help Pyrros to leave his chair, but in a few moments, both leave the office. Adastros turns to me.

“-We got luck for finding a kid like him. As long as he lives, I think he will graduate without problem.”

I put some wine for me and him and eat a biscuit before answering him.

“That’s the problem, as long as he lives, he may catch a fever and die, three years is a long time. But you are right, we got more luck than I thought it was possible with him.

He laughs.

“A optimist as usual. Besides us and Pyrros, he is probably the best fed person in this household. That will make him strong against any fever, It’s worries me the fact that he baths ever day. Everybody knows that too many baths weaken the body. Maybe we should order him to stop?”

“-You are right, no need to run unnecessary risks. I will make sure that he stops, one bath per week is more than enough. Changing the subject, we need to do something about Thales.

He grunts and drinks his wine in one gulp, can’t blame him for that.

“-The bastard needs to learn that we are not his people. We may do a job for him once and a while, but we are not and will never be his people! What right he has to demand that we go back to that damn island to see what happened, and for free ?!”

“- He said that he already paid for the job and we run before finishing.”

He looks angry and I share his feelings, the bastard gave us a job and we completed the task. We would never fight a more numerous and better equipped crew for what he paid us, that would be suicide.

“-I’m not going again there Castos, I don’t care how dangerous he is, we are leaving here anyway. Fuck him, don’t make the face “he is going to try to stab him” I’m not stupid. He is not a Councilor, dosen’t matter the fact that he acts like he is one. He can’t march a army against us and even he did try to attacked us, we have a strong position here and enough soldiers to defend us. Let him try!”

I have a face “he is going to try to stab him”? I wonder what that means about Adastros or my personality. I eat another biscuit, I love these biscuits, such a shame that the baker refuses to sell me the recipe, in Argos I will need to learn to live without or find a substitute.

“-He can’t get us here; I will give you that. But we still need to sell a lot of things, and a bad word or two from him will make impossible. And even our patron will not protect us from that, he will not make waves to protect two people who will leave his domain. Every day that we continue here we are losing coin that we could use in Argos.”

He faces somehow gets even uglier from angry.

“If we go there for free, we are going to lose even more money! Our boat is doing small trips to at least not eat our coin. If we go there for free, soon we will not have a single coin! Forget about retirement, we will need to sell ourselves to pay our debtors!”

He is the best merchant that I ever seen, but when he gets a idea on his head it’s impossible to change his mind. He believes that Thales send us to a trap and since we escaped, he is trying to send us again to finish the job.

I also think the whole expedition was weird, but I don’t think that he was trying to kill us. There are a lot of easy and cheap ways to do that.

“- That may be true, but you know how he likes to work. He may say that he will not pay , to show how strong he is when doing business, meanwhile he will have one of his freedman or clients making us a offer under the table.”

“-What did they offer?”

I can feel the coldness in his voice, but the fact that he is willing to ask is a good thing.

“-He will buy everything that we have, except the house, market price. And he will try to get some male slaves to be trained as soldiers. No promises in the slaves offer.”

I can see he doing some calculus in his head, the offer is good. We have been suffering a lot to sell our proprieties. And most important, the deal is good but is far from be the solution for all our problems.

It will take months to sell the house and he knows that, if he had offered to also buy the house I would know that he was trying very hard to make a offer that we couldn’t resist, to the point that I would know that he must be trying something.

The slave’s offer is nothing but meaningless, he is saying that he will try but not very hard to help us. Maybe he is trying to show that he knows that we are leaving, but that’s public knowledge already. Again, if he had promised the slaves, I would know that something is wrong.

“- It’s a good deal. But we can’t use the money if we are dead.”

“I know the whole island raid was weird. But tell me, why would he bother do that, when a knife in the back would be a lot simpler and cheap? Besides, what we did to him to make him waist so much time and resources to kill us in this manner? We are wealthy, but there is a lot of people with more coin and politic importance then us for him to kill and steal.”

I look him right in the eye, he knows I’m right. Yes, there is something fish in the island raid, but what are the chances for him to hire a boat to wait in the island to kill us? A bigger boat, full of soldiers, the price alone to hire that would be more then enough to hire a small army to attack us in this house!

Every day that the ship had to wait for us, without raiding or trading would cost a fortune! No, there must be some other plot behind.

“- Then tell me, why he paid so much to raid that place? He didn’t want anything from the place. We would keep all the slaves and just had to kill anyone that we couldn’t take. What would be the point of doing all that!”

That have been brothering me too. The other ship must be looking for something, from what Pyrros slave could take from the boy while teaching him language and guiding him. The island didn’t have anything of value, the only did some trade with passing ships.

“I don’t know. The boy said that he knew the ship that raid his village, because it was a regular in the island, always doing some trade. Maybe the island did something that pissed them off and they decided to get some revenge.”

He snares.

“-Like you believe that. There is something wrong with that place and you know that. Something very wrong.”

“-Fine, there is something wrong there. Now what? He offered us a good deal and you know that. We may stay here for another year and loose a lot of our money if we don’t take this deal. I won’t ever mention this again if you give me a better solution!”

He looks to the celling and stay quiet for some time. He is thinking as hard as he can to find a solution, but we both know that he has nothing. After a while he looks at me.

“-We are taking the deal. But everything will be done our way. And we can use this to do some trade to help pay the bills.”

“-That’s a good idea, we can visit the island then go to Argos to delivery the boy and start looking for a new home and store. We can scout the island by sea before getting close or do the same thing that we did the last time and beach on the other side and send a team to look.”

“-Good, good. I will look in the market for something that we can sell for a good price in Argos. I think a friend of my just received some merchandise from Aegyptus, some very expensive jewelry. That will sell well there. Ajax just received some grain from …”

As soon that he starts to talk about selling and buying he is back to his old self. But he is right, if we are going to do this, we need to try to do a lot of planning first. First we need to hire more guards.

It will mean that we will be talking less product, but I think that the extra safety is more important. The problem will be convinced him of that.

He is always saying that dead people can’t use coin when he dosen’t want to get a job. But when he is excited about a trade expedition, the cheap bastard is always trying to save money when hiring guards. The damn hypocrite.