People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze) Read Free Page B

up the ramp more slowly.  Women bearing water jars and baskets of earth on their heads moved less quickly.  The overseers' voices coarsened from shouting.
     
    At last, the foremen gave the signal that all longed for, the call to rest.  The men dropped their ropes and levers wherever they were and found places to sit or lie down.  They sought flat areas below the wall, on the dry grass beyond the margins of the road.  The women laid their baskets down on the unfinished ramp and made their way back to the supply wagons.  From the sturdy carts, with their wicker sides and solid wheels, the women took up wineskins.  Throwing these over their shoulders, they carried the refreshment to the workmen.  Before the women, the men knelt in turn, their heads tilted back, to receive their wine portions in their open mouths.  Each woman made a spout, untying the leather cord at one end of the bag.  She controlled the flow of the liquid by pressing the leather between her thumb and forefinger.  The women pressed the spouts closed and raised them many times, as the men's thirsty lips closed around the last, red drops.  Only after all the men had been given their rations did the women sip their own.  Under the ever-suspicious eyes of the overseers, the women tied the bags closed again and returned them to the carts.  Then they, too, rested.
     
    The women's foreman wandered over to join the men's overseer, calling, "Ai, Ark'esílawo, how long do you think it will be before we finish the wall?"
     
    The men's foreman scratched his beard and fingered his clean-shaven upper lip before answering.  "That depends on the weather, of course.  If it does not rain, I expect we will finish before the winter solstice.  What do you think, Poluqónta?"
     
    Both men looked up at the sky, shading their dark eyes with their hands.  Poluqónta growled in annoyance as the wind tore the black cloak from his body and tossed it to the ground behind him.  He recovered the garment, shaking it to remove the clinging dried grass, and wrapped himself once again.  "By Diwiyána, this wind has chilled me to my bones," he complained, shivering.
     
    Ark'esílawo laughed.  "You talk like an old man.  It is not that cold."
     
    The two foremen sat cross-legged on the yellowed grass beside the road, gazing over the eastern sea.  The water was dark and restless, with many white-capped waves.  "I have seen no hint of the ships," Poluqónta sighed.  "Do you think that wánaks Agamémnon will be back in Argo before the winter storms begin?"
     
    "Why ask me?" Ark'esílawo grunted with another anxious glance out over the empty sea.  "I thought he would be home by the end of the summer and here it is the middle of autumn."
     
    Poluqónta nodded gloomily.  "Yes, no one expected him to be gone long, not with that great army.  With so many soldiers and chariots, he should have been able to sack every city on the coast of Assúwa.  Ai gar, perhaps that is why he is so late.  He burned so many towns and took so much plunder, his warriors can hardly row the ships back across the Inner Sea."
     
    Ark'esílawo put a dry blade of grass in his mouth and chewed, squinting again at the clear sky.  "Or it may be that the Assúwans prevailed and burned his ships.  It is just as likely that he is in bondage across the sea, held for ransom.  After all, his was not the greatest army in the world.  People say that the Náshiyan emperor has ten hundred chariots and ten times as many men."
     
    Now it was Poluqónta who laughed.  "People tell many unbelievable stories, my friend.  I do not know what force Agamémnon met in Assúwa.  But I saw how many he took with him and Ak'áiwiya has never fielded a greater army."
     
    His companion nodded, but his face was grim.  "Yes, it was large.  But what does that mean?  Half the men were not professional soldiers, just shepherds and carpenters, potters and farmers.  Who can say how such men will fight?  What