“Argos. My name is Poletes. And you?”

“Orion.”

“Ah! Named after the Hunter.”

I nodded, a faint echo of memory tingling the hairs at the back of my neck. The Hunter. Yes, I was a hunter. Once. Long ago. Or — was it a long time from now? Future and past were all mixed together in my mind. I remembered…

“And where are you from, Orion?” asked Poletes, shattering the fragile images half-forming in my mind.

“Oh,” I gestured vaguely, “west of Argos. Far west.”

“Farther than Ithaca?”

“Beyond the sea,” I answered, not knowing why, but feeling instinctively that it was as honest a reply as I could give.

“And how came you here?”

I shrugged. “I’m a wanderer. And you?”

Edging closer to me, Poletes wrinkled his brow and scratched at his thinning pate. “No wanderer I. I’m a storyteller, and happy was I to spend my days in the agora, spinning tales and watching the faces of the people as I talked. Especially the children, with their big eyes. But this war put an end to my storytelling.”

“How so?”

He wiped at 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 a slave. Far worse,” Poletes grumbled. He gestured to the exhausted men sprawled around the dying fire. “Look at us! Homeless and hopeless. At least a slave has a master to depend on. A slave belongs to someone; he is a member of a household. A thes belongs to no one and nothing; he is landless, homeless, cut off from everything except sorrow and hunger.”

“But you were a member of a household in Argos, weren’t you?”

He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut, as if to block out a painful memory.

“A household, yes,” he said, his voice 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.”