The drum gives me Now,
and its silence Then
Keep the beat and
my soul will mend.

My father was a smith. We lived behind the forge in a little workshop-house in a cluster of olive trees in tiny Dodona.

I was part of our little menagerie of chickens, goat, and small donkey, entrusted with their feeding. At age five, when my little sister was old enough to walk, I cared for her too, showing her how to find the hens’ eggs, and how to milk the goat. Momma was weak and getting big with another baby.

A few days after I turned twelve, my father woke me, shaking my foot as he sometimes did. “Get dressed."

My dream suddenly interrupted, I clothed myself and found he and my mother talking in muffled tones. Her eyes leapt to meet mine, her lips twisted in pain.

“Momma?" I cried out, in fear for her.

“You’ll be leaving us, Costas." Costas? Father always called me Yios! Son!

“Daddy?"

No warning. No anger. No tears. Just: “There’s not food enough for us all. Find your way now; you’re a man’s age. Your mother says goodbye." His big hand clamped onto my shoulder and forced me to the door.

His grotesque shadow followed me out the door. I found my bag and cloak lying on the threshold. The loaf of bread and bit of cheese on top of the cloak were the last food in the house.

Concealed in a nearby copse of woods, in my play shelter of happier times, I craved to see my mother emerge from the house. When she fed the animals with my little sister, I inwardly protested that I ate no more than the donkey. My father stoked the forge with the precious coal. That had been my job. Broken-hearted, I wrapped myself in my sheepskin and alternately cried and slept for three days.

Father made a living selling pins, hasps, and latches for a few lepta each. He had taught me how to repair the broken tools that every household required and brought to him. Nothing could be wasted. Craning past his massive arm, I would watch him steadily beat the ripple pattern of circles on a copper sheet until it became a shapely pot worthy of his skill and of the smithing God, whose hammer icon hung in the forge. Hephaestus and his disciples, the metal shapers, were revered throughout Hellas.

Father's master had been a Guild smith who died before his eager apprentice could be Journeyed, so father’s craft sprang from glimpses of techniques he was never fully taught, leveraged into what he needed to know.

Our family lived with the beat of hammer and anvil, and the longer pulse of heating and cooling. Poor, we embraced the rhythms of starving a while until we were no longer as hungry, collapsing exhausted, until we were merely tired. My mother foraged meals from thin air, and I worked at the fire from a tender age.

The tall oar planted alongside our path near the road belonged to the grandfather I never met. He had sailed as a freeman on the galleys. One long absence had become his last. Father wouldn’t talk about Grandpa or the sea, referring only to those 'hard and bloody salt-water times.’ I dreamed him up and rode on his shoulders through the oaks and ate dates from his bag and traced his white scars with my pink finger.

The fourth day after father dismissed me, I trekked to the marketplace of Ambracia in southern Epirus, where we had sold jewelry. I carried loads, unpacked donkeys, and stacked produce for handouts of fish, olives, or bread. No one glanced at an apparent orphan in a town of poor fishing families, farmers, and expatriates.

The loss of my family was a dark lake at the center of my heart, and I was without boat or raft to sail it. Weeks of loneliness went by.

A wave's trough invites the crest to
pause, A mated pair, outbound from
birth. Flat? No choice? Then no exciting
cause, Only placid lack of pain or mirth.

I got impatient and caught the same day. Sick of scraps and, being a metal-smith’s son, I devised a ring that allowed a small blade to protrude inward from my fingers, something that would cut a cord when I closed my hand around it and pulled the blade towards me. Swallowing my fear, I walked the bustling market with my ring knife. I rejected the spice merchant as too wary, like a mother bird. The melon farmer hadn’t enough money to be worth the risk. Finally, after midday, I settled on the gourd-nosed leather peddler and tried to separate him from his coin bag. He surprised me with a very long blade at my throat. He was alert and quick for a big man.

The court could have exiled me or taken off my hand.

Instead, a merchant bought the rights to me. He had forty trading ships with oar and sail in constant motion from the cold seas north of the Tin Isles to Tomi and the waters east of Thasos. Free sailors on those voyages could make a profit based on the success of the trip, if they survived. As a debt-slave, I had to work to pay a hundred drachmae debt. Ten thousand lepta!

I would learn to row on a galley with thirty-five other trainees who had been everywhere, if you added them up, two or three boys from every region in Thessaly, one from Thrace, four from the Peloponnese, others from far away Illyris, Arabia and the southern shores. Some smelled of curry, some of cloves. We were dwarves and giants, brown and black. Cassil was from my hometown. We had been clever and full of life. Now we were trapped on an island jail in the mouth of Pagasae harbor, as spiritless as oxen hitched to a wagon, no fences required.

All of us were to train for thirty days under a Rowing-Whip, a company Drummer, and a Supplicant, our sea-going Priest. A day’s training earned us ten lepta paid into our accounts. Lodging, however, cost three lepta each night, food two lepta per meal, and water one lepton. If the weather was too foul to venture out, the day deepened our debt. If we needed sandals, a tunic, or a doctor, we owed the Owner. Most of us would die in chains, still in debt; the game was rigged.

The first days on our training galley, Cormorant, were grueling. Marsyas, our Rowing Whip, pushed us until our arms felt like logs. He cursed us to work together’. Far from being a cohesive crew, we did not 'click’, did not make friends. We were a pile of rock's, not a wall.

“Oars high!" Marsyas shouted. It was our seventh straight day of training.

Docking, we banged the Cormorant into the training float in front of our barracks. On the same bench with two other sweating, panting boys, our ankles shackled and raw, we forced the thick pole down with our remaining strength. When it thunked on the deck, we shoved it forward under the oar-keep. We released our grips, relieved.

“No! Free your oars by the count!" screamed Marsyas. “Not when you feel like it! Again! Around the course, twice, without mistakes, or we’ll do this all night!" His peeling bald head and scarred cheek frightened me.

“Together, you garbage eaters! Pull! Dip! Feather! Drop! It’s a four-count! … Cadence!" Marsyas

yelled, and the drum began its beat from the foredeck. Marsyas demanded silence from us.

Stavros of Thessaly, one of my oar-mates, talked like a rushing stream when he first arrived. He had pumped my hand and said: “I’m glad to meet you, Costas. Shaking hands reminds me of milking goats. I’ve milked them since before I was born, since there were so many goats and it was either help or go hungry, and I got so sick of sleeping with goats and waking up in the dark and milking those steaming goats that my brother and I decided to lie about our age and join the army rather than face another day of it, and, of course, right away we had to walk for days to Thessalonica, which wasn’t so bad itself because at least it wasn’t snowing when we went through the mountains -- and on he went. Marsyas stripped language from Stavros like skin off a rabbit.

Our Drummer was thin, sunbaked, and long past drumming on war galleys. Even his drum sounded old, mmph, mmph, mmph, as he beat time sleepily, as though just for his pension.

Mornings on the Cormorant started with a sacrifice to the Cabeirii, protectors of sailors. Our hooded hollow-faced Supplicant held a pigeon over his head and spoke to heaven, but what he said was unintelligible. We assumed that he asked for calm seas and safe return in the gods’ language. When he lowered his arms, he drew an ornamental blade from its sheath and made swift cuts that destroyed the bird, adding to the stains of the deck. He dripped blood in the water and tossed the carcass onto a charcoal brazier that hissed in gratitude. When he took his accustomed seat, he wasn't to be addressed at all.

“Don’t look at him! Don’t talk to him!" bellowed Marsyas.

Day after day under the grueling sun we stirred the waters of the bay. Our joints and muscles strained, backs ached, and blisters formed on our palms and buttocks.

On a return trip from Oreus, Vallus lost the grip of his oar. Marsyas was alongside him instantly.

“Clumsy fool!" He struck Vallus’ head with the knob of the lash. “Incompetent - waste - of - space - on - this - boat!" Marsyas spat out each word and struck the groaning trainee with every breath.

Vallus lay motionless over his own knees. Vallus’ oar-mates kept time with us, though they almost died.

That night, after a somber meal, I crawled into the thatch of straw that was my bed. Aching and slightly dizzy, I closed my eyes and invited unconsciousness. Instead, memories of my old Dodona home vied for attention.

Hanging off my father’s strong outstretched arm like a little monkey.

Watching my tall mother, regal as an egret, slicing cucumber at our eating table.

I saw their bed through the doorway and heard their murmured voices. My bed was gone from the hallway. The eating table was set for two. My parents smiled at each other. I was missing from their lives and they had adjusted.

My stomach twisted into a fist.

My family was lost to me.

The long nights were unbearable; rowing was only hard.

Let my fellow captives grieve. In my pain, I wanted to see my father slapped in rowing irons.

Two days later, during a rest, as we ate some bland slop and tossed a skin of water back and forth, my heart was light with distraction. As I watched the water skin dance above the heads of the crew, I smiled at our game: the unwary would catch the goat skin in the side of the head. Across his meal of soft bread and small fish, I noticed our Drummer looking at me. The old man’s eyes glanced from my eyes to my feet and back He had apparently noticed my feet tapping a song that had been running through my head, a song of childhood. He smiled.

Whap!

My head jerked, stinging, to one side, even as my hands caught the re-bounding water skin. I flung it behind me over my head, but my eyes never left my Drummer.

He was the first adult to pay attention to me since my father cut me adrift. His drumbeats permeated my dreams, took over my waking hours, synched with my heartbeat, the cycle of my breath. I sensed a message beyond the rhythm; I couldn’t think it into the open. I sensed a purpose in it.

We had heard about the Red Galley, the flagship of the merchant’s fleet, and its oarsmen, the Red Serpents. The strength of their synchronized strokes and unity were legendary. I longed to connect with my fellows like that.

Each Red sailor was handpicked, proud and strong, ready to prove his dominance over a village idiot, if that were the only target.

The first time we saw them, we were Half-Stroking out of the harbor toward the second point to the north.

Marsyas suddenly shouted: “Oars high! Backwater! Double Stroke!" in such a rush that Flavus’ entire bench tumbled to the deck. Many of us lost our grips, and flailing oar handles knocked some of us silly. A blood red hull with flashing red oars slid past our starboard bow to a double-time beat. Marsyas shouted a curse at the passing Red Rowing Whip.

His stare silenced Marsyas, who shrank like a shopkeeper. He didn’t berate us at all while we completed our round to the second point.

A week after our almost-clash with the Red Galley, we were idle in our morning seats in the Cormorant, waiting unusually long.

Cassil whispered: “I just heard Supplicant tell the Drummer that Marsyas is gone."

“What do you mean gone?" I asked. “Whips don’t just disappear."

Atua leaned in. “Last night, I saw a boat come in the dark. A bunch of men got off."

“What kind of boat?" asked Tito, interested now.

“I couldn’t see much, bent when I heard it scraping on the beach, I looked out. They headed straight up to Marsyas’ hut." Atua squared his big shoulders back with the importance of his contribution.

“Did they start fighting?" we all asked at once.

“I didn’t hear any." Atua looked at our faces to draw more questions.

“Next time, wake me up," said Tito, leaning back and looking at the sky.

“I hope they kill him, whoever they are," muttered Vallus.

I was stunned that Marsyas was vulnerable.

And now I was adrift again, scared, since Marsyas was the only certainty I had had.

He was apparently nowhere on the island.

As next in authority, the Drummer directed us out of the harbor at Three-Quarter Stroke, south toward the Cyclades. Behind the third point along Euboea, he started a torturous arm exercise that had us raise our oars off the water, gently slap the oar behind us, then the one in front of us, and then knife back into the water for a pull stroke. Though we thought ourselves toughened by relentless days of open water rowing, a couple of hours of this new stroke made our arms burn.

The Drummer announced: “Oars high! That style is called 'Scudo’s Wings’. It’s usually reserved for the royal galleys!" That got a laugh.

“Some morning, you’ll see that your lives are still yours, still waiting to be lived. You have a chance to learn to row like men! For mastery. To reclaim your lives." He paused. “Oars ready. Now let’s go home." And he began the familiar monotone beat of Standard Stroke.

We thrashed a bit, but different. We were learning to row for this Drummer and ourselves.

Marsyas was discovered the next morning, naked and witless, on the rocks by the harbor mouth. His treatment was a reminder to the whole fleet of the Red Galley dominance. A black shadow fell over our training. We were Whip-less, while Marsyas recovered on shore. We shivered silently in the breeze until the Drummer took us out. We took pride in perfecting Scudo’s Wings, the oar-clapping royal Stroke. Sometimes we cajoled him into beating it for us with calls of “Scudo, Scudo, Scudo" until he gave in. Other codes we developed were Danae, a sudden stop, and Lanaea, back by Half.

We craved new maneuvers. Our arms and backs were soon as strong and tireless as legs of infantrymen, quick and snappish as rabbit snares. Our mentor directed us to channels and bays that it seemed no man had ever seen and so distant from harbor that he steered us home by the stars.

After one twilight return, as I was leaving the boat with our shuffling, grunting group, I passed our Drummer, adjusting his sandal. I dropped back, hoping he would talk to me.

Without even a hello, he said, “Count to one hundred steadily and without speaking, keep the rhythm, start with me: One, two, three" and nodding for me to continue, he went silent.

What’s this game? seven eight. He’s slipped his anchor! Does he think that I’m sixteen seventeen four? nineteen twenty A has-been drummer playing children’s counting games? twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty- nine You should tell me salty stories of sailors saving virgins, ladies cheering thirty-eight soldiers forty merchants sharing booty, owners choosing peasant partners. Everything is fifty nifty fifty-two but all that ever changes is whose foot is on my neck, and I seem to always miss a trick or sixty-five two. sixty-seven Come on, drummer man, don’t let me down! What are we doing? seventy-seven seventy-eight I know you planned this little meeting. What on earth for? eighty-six What do you say? ninety I’ve played your game! ninety-five Now you come across!

“One hundred," I said, decisively.

The older man shook his head minimally. “One hundred one." He watched me like a statue of himself. I thought I’d lost some game that might have bridged a gap to God- knows-what human contact. There was nothing I could say.

“Not bad," he said with a half-smile. He tossed me something, a dark, ripe fig. “Now catch up with the others." As I turned to go, he smiled and touched my elbow. “I’m Lucius," he said.

My stomach flipped like a fish on a hook. Had I made a friend?

He left into shadows, and I stared after him, the fig sticky in my fingers, and the warm evening breeze on my face.

That night after the torches were extinguished, I told Cassil about counting with Lucius. “Don’t let him get you alone to count." He rolled his eyes. “Next thing, he’ll want to see if you can count bending over."

My smile somehow slid to my throat.

Pull!
Pull!
Be blind.
Be deaf.
Be fire.
Be blade.
Beat back doubt.
Don’t die.
Push down pain.
Face fear.
Don’t flinch.
Row bold.
Go fast.
Pull!
Pull!

Several days rushed by, each one filled with greater distances, more speed, more bone-weariness than the one before.

Pulling up to our beach one night after a long zig-zag course through strong winds and heavy chop on the water, Lucius had us stay on our benches after our chains had been removed.

He stood alongside his drum, silent, while the Supplicant gathered his robes, sat on the rail, swung his legs over, then dropped like a load of laundry onto the gravel beach.

“Men of the Cormorant." Lucius’ focused on each trainee as though memorizing his face, recalling that boy’s time on the boat.

“You will shortly be apportioned to other galleys," he continued. “Your training is almost over."

Too soon! Someone started a cheer and was met with a barrage of curses and Idiot! and Shut Up! Some protested to Lucius: “No!" “We aren’t ready!"

“You have courage. You have strength. You have determination. Those are qualities you keep, to take with you. Use them." And he stepped to the rail and leapt lightly to shore.

Divided. More aloneness. I felt cold, small.

Too soon, as well, Marsyas came back as our Whip, damaged. He was skinny now, more angular.

His blue tattooed skin hung loosely like bad drapery. The jerky puppet movements of his limbs initially aroused our sympathy. Then, he opened his mouth. “In two more days, you will be rowing alongside free men whose livelihoods and very lives will depend on how you perform. There you will follow orders or die. Cadence!

The drum sounded our cruising beat, and we soon left the harbor mouth. Marsyas had narrow habits and planned a Double Stroke to the third point and back, probably grueling for most trainees.

Tito, our natural spokesman, shouted: “Hydra!" We switched flawlessly to stroking on the upbeat, every man. Lucius allowed himself a miniscule smile. The Whip spun to look at Tito. Without a word and while we were still at cruising speed, the Whip went to Tito’s bench and unlocked his ankle shackle. One by one, Tito’s oar-mates and others of us raggedly stopped rowing, though the beat kept on.

Dom, Dom, Dom. Only a few benches were rowing now.

Dom, Dom, continued the drum.

Twisting Tito’s ear, Marsyas forced him to the bow rail near the Supplicant, who stared forward blankly.
“New leader, are you?" said Marsyas. “Climb up!" he ordered, sticking the point of a short sword into Tito’s ribs. Tito didn’t seem to comprehend. “Onto the rail," said the Whip.

As Tito started to comply, the drum said Da-DOM and stopped. Every man looked at Lucius.

“If these boys are going to challenge the Red Galley tomorrow, we will need every oarsman," said Lucius.

“What challenge?" asked the Whip.

“Tomorrow, the Red Galley leaves for Tunis. We will leave the island, as they approach us, and beat them to the third point."

“Impossible," spat the Whip.

“I am Lucius, son of Scudo," said the Drummer. “I’ll wager my freedom these boys can beat the Red Serpent from harbor to the third point. It will happen."

I was slack jawed. Was this to shift focus from Tito? That had worked. As oarsmen, we were steadily improving, but they were Red Serpents!

“Show me," said Marsyas.

“Cadence!" called Tito, taking his seat without his ankle chains.

Though we flew back to our island, fast even for us, Marsyas neither commented nor grunted, which fed our fears.
The next morning, a falcon flew over, going somewhere in a hurry, as we were being chained to our benches. Our challenge was part foolishness, I decided, but not entirely. The Red Galley was loaded with trade goods and tribute for the noble houses of Tunis. Our training galley was lighter, and we had an additional four oars in the water. The fact that their crew was twice our weight might tip the scales in their favor, of course, but it also made their boat heavier, didn’t it?

We watched another pigeon sizzle on the burner at the bow, anxious for the Supplicant to be done. Marsyas had buttressed our self-respect by trying to diminish it. We were men on the Cormorant, and this was our goodbye. We welcomed this now.

Lucius’ drum sounded our beat, and we were off, Quarter Stroke, a bit of haze on the water. Marsyas stood at the bow.

“There!" he pointed slightly off the stern to port. The Red Galley’s serpent head streaked through the water. Still in the harbor, they were at Full Stroke. They should still have been at Half, at best.

Lucius quickly switched sticks.

Tito yelled: “Marsyas, call it!"

Immediately, Marsyas called “Half Stroke moving to Three Quarter," and after eight beats: “Full Stroke moving to Double Time by Fours!" We had practiced this quick acceleration. Lucius’ drum called us each by name, and we sped across the water like a polished stone.

“My God!" said Marsyas in admiration.

The Red Drum was also audible now and had increased to Double. The Serpent was four lengths ahead to port and an arrowshot away.

Our Drum went to Two-and-a-Half, unbidden. Lucius took us there gently but insistently, leaving us no choice. Then, emerging from the insane cadence of Two-and-a-Half, we heard grace notes, triple beats, staccato rim shots that clacked but counted, beats that said: You are born to row, you were made for this race, for this moment, with these mates! Pull for your lives, not to avoid dying, but to live!

I glanced to port-side. We were two lengths behind and gaining slowly. The Red Drum was still at Double. The Red Whip was striding down the walk, slashing one man after another with his knotted whip.

We pulled within a half-length of the Serpents, so close our sun-bleached oars were almost clashing with their gleaming red ones. Just as our bow was about to match theirs, the Red Whip barked an order. Every starboard oar of the Red Galley snapped upright. Without that starboard power, the massive red hull veered sharply into our port side, shattering our oars like twigs. The force flung some of us against the hull, but others, chained by the ankle to their benches, were snagged like animals, bloody. The side of the Red boat screeched and shuddered down the length of our smaller hull. As the Red Galley swept away, oaths and screams and disbelief filled our world. Many lay groaning and twisted. Skulls lay open where bits of wood had flayed them. Legs had shattered like our oars. Cassil lay crooked and motionless. Blood spurted from Vallus’s thigh. I numbly pulled bits of skin from my shredded ankles.

Was this battle? Would my friends die?

Marsyas surveyed the disaster that was our crew. “The Red Galley has never been beaten," he said with hatred and pity.

Lucius spoke: “They were at Full Stroke, four lengths off the dock."

Marsyas nodded. He turned to the Supplicant. “How did they know about the challenge?" He waited, like a cat, crouched at the mouth of a gopher’s tunnel.

The Supplicant stared in front of him, trembling. My bench mates moaned and cried for help.

“Stand up," said Marsyas.

Involuntarily, the Supplicant rose and said: “You can’t touch…"

With one motion, Marsyas swept forward, gathered fists full of the Supplicant’s robes and hurled him over the rail. The man splashed once like a diving pelican but made no more sound.

“He was lost in the crash," he said, as he unchained Tito and handed him the leather lash. “You call the stroke," he said. “Head back." Marsyas bent to the nearest wounded man.

Only stunned for a moment, Tito spoke to Lucius. Lucius left his post and brought water skins to where Marsyas was binding Atua’s head. The Drummer knelt to help Cassil.

Tito threw the lash aside. “Marsyas, the keys," said Tito.

As though expecting those words, the older man threw him his ring of keys. Tito handed the ring to Petros at first bench. “As soon as you are free, six of you help our men to the stern for treatment, then come back to your benches. The rest of you clear the broken oars overboard and fill benches from amidships forward by pairs until we run out." He skipped half a beat. “Let’s get them home."

“Costas," he said to me. “You beat cadence at my word. Half Stroke until we sort ourselves out." He turned to the others: “Any man without an oar, help Marsyas."

The Whip’s eyes met Tito’s briefly. Marsyas nodded curtly.

I stood motionless.

“Drummer," said Tito, quietly.

I leapt to the bow and gathered Lucius’ sticks off the deck. Though I felt doomed to produce chaos, I watched Tito with excitement.
“Cadence," yelled Tito.

As one man, the trainees of the Cormorant, the unseen and worthless, plunged their oars into the water. Dom! Dom! Dom! Dom! came my beat, and we gained speed. “Three-Quarter Stroke," Tito called, obviously pleased. We were moving past the first point with a long row ahead of us.

It struck me then: they had left us unshackled. If we went back to port, we replaced our own ankle irons. We had the entire sea to choose from, free lives to be lived.

“Physicians are on land," Tito spoke just to me. “Let’s fly!"

“Full Stroke!" called Tito. Dom, Dom, Dom, sounded my drum, a rich sound, worth much. I caught a glimpse of Lucius’ face; a warm smile directly at me. I grinned back at him like an unabashed child. I thought my heart would burst from my chest with joy.

At the mouth of the harbor, I shouted: “Scudo!"¿ and allowed eight beats to prepare the stroke. The rowers shifted to Scudo’s Wings with a galley-wide shout. Oar slapped oar, then cut the water, slap, slap, plunge, rise, and even the wounded cheered as we raced toward land.

We sailed past our island to the dock of the merchant’s Red Galley. Our stroke had been observed, and a cluster of the curious waited for us to make shore.

“Three-Quarter Stroke, going to Half!" yelled Tito. Eight beats later: “Quarter Stroke" and the cadence slowed. “Back Stroke," then: “Oars high!" signaled Tito.

We released our oars by the four-count and our wooden prow kissed the Red dock. Ropes quickly snared our galley before a crowd of Greeks, sailors, and cargo handlers on the dock.

The Owner of us all, a short pale man in a rich white tunic stepped, out of the gathering. He looked at Lucius across the gunwale of our shallow boat.

“Drummer," said the merchant. “They tell me you bet your freedom on victory."

Lucius stood quietly in the open bow, surrounded by our battered shipmates.

“Fortunately, no one accepted your offer, the merchant smiled. He looked at our sweating, bloody group. “A formidable crew," he said to us. “Well done."
"
As he left, he nodded to a tall, bronzed older sailor, calm as a cloud. I knew instantly it was Scudo that now stepped forward, our Drummer’s famous father, not just a legend, but the Drummer of Drummers for kings and heroes, up to that very day.

A pang of envy shot through me. Such a father! To have been the tail of such a comet would be to have bypassed the chains I wore, the abuse I’d taken, and the pain I carried. He looked noble in his sea-colored tunic.
My father wore the skin of a goat. And he smelled like one. I made father even uglier by growing imaginary horns on him to disguise how much I wanted him to be on this dock. To be proud of me.
Scudo stepped to the edge. Marsyas clambered awkwardly to his level and whispered to him.

Scudo gave orders over his shoulder and several men jumped into our boat and began lifting the least injured onto the dock. Others ran for litters.

“Your most dramatic class yet,£he said to Lucius, with a half-smile that reminded me of the Drummer himself.

“Best I’ve ever seen," said Lucius.

“Oarsmen!" said the older man. “My name is Scudo. I began following your progress when you lost your Rowing-Whip after just a week. Lucius has given me details about all of you, and I have an announcement. Your training is complete."

No one moved. Separation. New strange galleys. Hazed by horny sailors and attacked by pirates? Shackled for the rest of our lives with no Tito, no Lucius, no hope.

We were suddenly silent. Empty. What now?

As the sea floor exposed before a tidal wave, our ebullient camaraderie had disappeared. Our fear and hopelessness flopped on the seabed.

Had my heart stopped? I was holding my breath.

“All of you will have two days of recovery, with pay." He paused for the cheering. “Four of you are being invited to apprentice as drummers at my School, at Lucius’ specific recommendation." Scudo called out: “Tito! Drax! Cassil!" An attendant spoke in his ear. “Cassil can join us after recovery from his injuries. And Costas," he said, looking at me. My knees went soft. The boat rocked.

We ring with growth
Who seem to only age.
Our scars of crisis
Balanced lives presage.

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