"Sit on his knee, Theo," she commanded in a low voice, "and hold his shin tight. Don't let his foot move." I jumped to the task, eager for something useful to do, and no sooner had I seized the bony shin and calf than she withdrew from behind her back the knife she was holding, which she had brought to a pulsing, red-hot glow in the coals. Kneeling quickly, she pressed the flat of the glowing blade hard against the enormous bite in the flesh of the foot, eliciting a loud sizzling sound from the steaming wound, as of fat dripping from a roasting flank into the fire. The sharp, acrid stench of burning flesh assaulted my nostrils as fiercely as it had when the flaming naphtha had seared the attacking Persians at Cunaxa.

For a moment Nicolaus was silent, perhaps in shock, or during that brief, merciful delay between the touch of burning metal to one's skin and the blinding white explosion of pain that bursts in one's head. Then he erupted into a desperate, sustained howl, a cry of rage and pain that shocked and silenced the rest of the camp, as men for hundreds of yards around stopped what they were doing to listen. His scream died down to a gasping choke as his lungs became depleted, but resumed again as Asteria turned the blade over to the other, still red-hot side and again pressed its sizzling flatness into the now crispened wound. The bleeding ceased almost immediately, and was now reduced to a quiet, insignificant oozing. She gazed at her handiwork in satisfaction. "Almost done, now," she whispered to Nicolaus soothingly, though whatever comfort he may have derived from these words was blotted out when he saw her step back to the fire to plunge her blade again into the coals.

Returning a moment later, she this time gently inserted the red-hot tip into each puncture wound, rotating the searing blade slowly to cauterize all sides of the holes. Nicolaus was passing in and out of consciousness from the excruciating pain, and when lucid, he was reduced to a despairing, breathless whimper.

The ghastly treatment was over as quickly as it had begun, though not soon enough for those of us watching in horrified fascination. Removing a long needle and a length of gut from her kit, she quickly and efficiently sutured the flaps of skin she found hanging freely from around the ankle and instep, and then rummaging again through her bag, found a small ceramic jar sealed with a piece of oiled fabric tied tightly around the top. Opening this up, she dipped in her fingers and swabbed Nicolaus' entire foot, both inside the wounds and out, with a greasy, foul-smelling balm that appeared to give the ashen-faced boy some relief. She then wrapped the entire limb in clean gauze up to the knee, tied it off tightly, and stood up, wiping her hands dry on her hips.

"Theo," she said, in a low voice of authority, "find him some uncut wine to help him sleep. I'll check on him in the morning and change the dressing. If we can stave off fever for three days he'll recover without loss."

I rushed off to take some wine from Xenophon's private store, which he used for libations during the sacrifices, and returned to find Asteria chatting quietly with several of the Rhodian boys, each of whom was asking her about their own wounds and ailments. Asteria patiently answered their queries as best she could, but I could see from her face that she was drained and exhausted, and I gently led her away from the grateful slingers, and sleeping Nicolaus.

Walking quietly back to the camp followers' quarters, we paused near a high hedge to rest. I was deeply impressed with her work on Nicolaus, and told her as much, but she wearily waved off my compliments.

"I learned about treating foot injuries from some notes left at the palace years ago by Democedes of Croton," she said, "but it was your countryman Hippocrates who perfected the cauterizing technique. I never had the courage to try it, until now. The pain is terrible, but short-lived. Thank the gods it was only his foot. It could have been much worse."

"Worse? His foot was in shreds!"

"True, but Hippocrates recommends the technique for treating hemorrhoids."

I recoiled, and she rolled her eyes at my squeamishness. "Theo, please, let us talk of something else. My spirit needs distracting."

I was not sure what she wished to discuss, but my mind immediately ventured to a question that had been gnawing at me for weeks, afraid to hear the answer from her for fear it might cause her to reconsider her own motives.

"Asteria, you had hardly even spoken to me before. What possessed you to steal into my tent in Cunaxa?"

She looked at me in surprise. "Because I am Lydian, of course," she said.

This response failed to penetrate, which she gathered from my silence.

"Of course, I was born in Miletus," she explained, which only confused me further. "Miletus has been under Lydian rule for centuries, but my mother traces her lineage directly from King Croesus, so I consider myself Lydian, even though the Persians insisted on calling me 'the Milesian.'"

I was thoroughly baffled by now, which seemed to flummox her.

"I'm surprised at you," she said, in exasperation.

"Then we're even," I answered. "I've known Lydians all my life-Athens is full of them-but I've never known one to grant me the favors you did, simply because you were born a Lydian!" I winked, but she ignored, or failed to notice, the jesting tone in my voice.

"Have you ever read Archilochus of Paros?" she asked, her eyebrows raised.

Naturally I had read the old Parian, back when Xenophon and I were schoolboys, but I had retained precious little, and indeed I had to confess that I had understood even less at the time I had read him. To me, his lyric poetry was of the densest sort.

"And you call us barbarians," she said dismissively. "Athenians seem to think that unless their history comes spoon-fed in simple prose straight from Herodotus, it can't be worth listening to."

The conversation had now shifted to a topic with which I was familiar. "Herodotus was a great man," I asserted, straightening my back and raising my chin at this rare chance to demonstrate my superior knowledge. "I once even met the master personally, when I was a young boy and he a very old man-though you can't imagine a crustier old gaffer than he was, and one less likely to attract the favors of a Lydian wench." I pinched her playfully on the haunches but she swatted my hand away.

"Well, since you are such a cultured Athenian," she retorted sarcastically, "you certainly know Herodotus' chronicle of King Candaules of Lydia."

"Of course, but I still dispute your characterization of Herodotus…"

"Would you care for me to recite Archilochus' verse form of the tale? Then you may be better capable of judging the prose of your own leaden-tongued hero."

Ignoring her dismissal of the education and culture I had struggled so hard to acquire at Xenophon's side, I took the bait and happily agreed to the recitation. She launched effortlessly into the polished iambic trimeter that Archilochus employed only for his most salacious verse, though from her lips it sounded as pure as a prayer. I would be wholly incapable of transcribing here her perfectly modulated pitch and crystalline vocalizing-it is impossible for a mediocre intellect to accurately render the speech of a superior one, especially fifty years into one's dotage. I will therefore limit myself to recalling it to the best of my ability in the thick Attic prose Asteria so disdained, but with which my pedestrian Muses have cursed me.

"You know, of course, that Candaules was madly, passionately in love with his wife," she began. "He was a very fortunate man, for if the gods ordain both that a man fall in love, which happens often, and that he love the very person with whom they ordain he is to spend the rest of his life, which happens only rarely, then that man is indeed blessed. And Candaules was thrice blessed, in that he also believed that his wife was the most beautiful woman in the world. It is just such an overabundance of fortune that leads the gods to take notice, and to pound in the nail whose head extends higher than the rest."