It should be said that the Persians not only kept their promise but did so with remarkable thoroughness. They led the Greeks to a fertile land, where farmland stretched densely around and a dozen or so prosperous villages dotted the area. Two whole settlements were cleared specifically for the Greeks to use as garrison camps, and an abundance of fine food was prepared.
After days of exhaustion and hunger, the soldiers ate and drank their fill.
The next day, Davos woke feeling completely refreshed, his fatigue gone. Thinking back on what the Persians had done, he felt a twinge of confusion: If this was a strategy to make the enemy complacent, was such a great sacrifice really necessary? Or could it be that this was truly a country that bullied the weak and feared the strong, much like the Northern Song in Chinese history?
He strained to recall what the university professor invited to lecture at the party school in his previous life had said about the decline of great powers, specifically regarding the imperial system of the ancient Persians: The Persians had risen while the dominant powers of Mesopotamia—Media and Assyria—were in decline. Because Cyrus adopted a highly tolerant policy toward the cultures and religions of various peoples, wherever his army went, the local tribes surrendered one after another, and the empire grew like a snowball rolling downhill.
With such vast territory, how was it managed? First, the heartland—Persepolis—was the capital, held directly under the king's command. The Mesopotamian basin, the richest region, was directly ruled as well. Other areas were governed by satraps. The subject peoples were largely self-governing on the condition of paying regular taxes... Wait. Mesopotamia was under the direct rule of the Persian king!
A flash of insight struck Davos. In his memory: when the mercenaries passed through Cilicia, Cyrus the Younger had allowed the Greeks to plunder freely. But as soon as they crossed the Tapsakos River and entered Mesopotamia, discipline became much stricter. Even buying goods required paying the proper price. Could it be... could it be...?
“Davos! Come with me quickly to see Asistes!” A large hand yanked Davos up, interrupting his thoughts.
“Who?” Davos asked Heilos, still a bit dazed.
“Asistes is Antonios’s nephew. Yesterday, when he was crossing the wooden bridge, it suddenly broke. He fell into the river, and a piece of debris gashed a big wound in his thigh. This morning, he’s burning with fever, unconscious, babbling strange things. The doctor can't do anything about it. Antonios wants you to come and take a look!” Heilos said anxiously.
“Babbling strange things?! That means he’s already in Hades and run into Rhadamanthus. Probably no hope left.” Olivus saw Heilos glare at him and quickly changed his tone: “Of course, with you here, Davos—you, the 'God-Touched One' of Hades—how could he not come back to life!”
Davos’s face showed reluctance: “I’d like to help, but I don’t know how to heal people.”
Heilos reassured him: “Antonios understands that. It’s just that when someone is about to lose a loved one, they’ll try even the slimmest hope.”
Facing Heilos’s pleading eyes, Davos fell silent. The tension in his heart slowly eased: Even if he couldn’t save Asistes, could that erase the help he had given everyone these past two days? Apart from playing the mystic, couldn’t he earn their trust through his own abilities? If he shed this nickname, maybe he could also defuse some of Menon’s jealousy toward him.
With that thought, he nodded and said, “All right. I’ll go with you.”
“I’m coming too.” Georgios, who was in the room, also stood up.
...
They entered a room with doors and windows tightly shut, shadows flickering inside.
“Davos is here!” The word spread quickly, and people made way for him.
Davos approached the bed and saw a young man in his twenties lying on it, eyes closed, lips dry and cracked, his entire body flushed red. Near the knee on his left thigh was a wedge-shaped wound about six centimeters long, surrounded by swelling the size of a fist. He was muttering deliriously, his limbs twitching, but several people held him down tightly.
Davos first pressed his palm to the patient’s forehead—it was burning hot. Then he gently pressed the swollen area, and greenish pus oozed from the wound. He felt a slight stickiness on his fingers and a faint, unpleasant sweetness in the air.
At that moment, the man holding the patient looked up and said, “I applied a grape-leaf boiled oil to the wound, hoping to calm him, but it doesn’t seem to have worked.”
“His name is Helpus, our camp doctor,” Heilos said in a low voice, noticing Davos’s confusion.
A man so sturdy being a doctor?! Davos studied him and blurted out, “Why not use bloodletting?”
“Is bloodletting really necessary? I considered it, but if I let blood, Asistes would take a long time to recover—and we’re on our way home!” Helpus explained. “I’ve even used the last of my ‘marjoram incense,’ but the aromatic therapy doesn’t seem to help at all.” He looked somewhat dejected.
No wonder there was a strange smell in the air—Davos had thought it was just the body odor of everyone in the room. Wasn’t it true that in the West, before the Renaissance, bloodletting was the go-to treatment? Davos recalled some odd trivia he’d read in his past life about ancient Western medicine.
“Oh, what’s your name? Which camp did Antonios bring you from?” Helpus asked.
Davos hesitated, wondering how to answer. Antonios, waiting anxiously nearby, interjected: “He’s Davos! The ‘God-Touched One’ of Hades!” He ignored Helpus’s sudden change of expression and turned back to Davos urgently: “Asistes... does he still have... any hope?”
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t guarantee anything,” Davos replied cautiously.
“Just do your best! That’s enough!” Antonios’s weary face relaxed a little. “Do we need to prepare an altar and an image of Hades right now?”
“What for?”
“For prayer!”
Davos glanced around the room. Except for Helpus, who watched coldly, everyone else looked at him with expectation and excitement: They were waiting to see some divine manifestation like in the stories!
Davos found it amusing but spoke solemnly: “I won’t pray. I don’t know how. But I do have some other methods of treatment I can try. If you only want the gods to save Asistes, then I’ll just leave!”
“Oh!” Some people let out disappointed sighs.
But Antonios seemed to understand something and said firmly: “Do as you say!”
Davos had spoken that way for two reasons: first, to leave himself an out in case the treatment failed; second, to prevent these people from linking everything he did to the gods.
“Have everyone wait outside!... Open all the doors and windows!... Boil a cauldron of water and put several clean linen cloths into the boiling water! Also find a sharp, rustless knife and put it in the boiling water too!... And bring a few jars of cold water into the room!...” Davos gave orders slowly and clearly, raising his voice.
Antonios, Heilos, and Georgios didn’t question him at all. They began earnestly carrying out his instructions, bustling about.
Helpus had initially thought Davos was a witch doctor and had looked at him with disapproval. But now seeing how methodical his arrangements were, he couldn’t help asking curiously, “Davos, how are you going to treat him?”
“The wound didn’t bleed heavily, so no large blood vessels were damaged. But the wound is red, swollen, and oozing pus, and he has a high fever—clearly an infection causing the fever. So we first need to clean the wound and reduce the fever,” Davos explained in detail. To a modern person, this was merely common sense. But in this ignorant age, people often blamed demons and gods for such things—that was why witch doctors were so popular, and why Helpus had thought Davos was one.
After hearing Davos’s explanation, Helpus’s eyes lit up: “This is similar to what Hippocrates proposed for treating fractures—‘cleaning, traction, and reduction.’”
“Hippocrates of Kos?” Davos was familiar with the name; later ages called Hippocrates the “Father of Western Medicine.”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Not well, but I’ve heard of him.”
“I wanted to visit him when we passed the Aegean, but he wasn’t there. Even though many doctors in mainland Greece don’t agree with him, he has indeed cured many people.”
Seeing the mix of regret and envy in Helpus’s expression, Davos had an idea: “How about you be my assistant? Is that all right?”
“I’d be very grateful!” Helpus said with thanks. In this era, most doctors passed their knowledge from father to son. For an ordinary person to learn medicine, they had to sign a contract, pay a hefty fee, and serve as an unpaid assistant for many years.
###GLOSSARY_SUPPLEMENT###
[{"original": "亚西斯特斯", "translated": "Asistes", "type": "character", "description": "A Greek mercenary soldier, nephew of Antonios, wounded in an accident."}, {"original": "赫尔普斯", "translated": "Helpus", "type": "character", "description": "A Greek doctor in the mercenary camp."}, {"original": "拉达曼托斯", "translated": "Rhadamanthus", "type": "mythological_creature", "description": "In Greek mythology, a judge of the dead in the underworld."}, {"original": "麦厄菜翁香", "translated": "marjoram incense", "type": "object", "description": "An aromatic herb used for medicinal or ritual purposes by the Greeks."}, {"original": "希波克拉底", "translated": "Hippocrates", "type": "character", "description": "Greek physician, known as the 'Father of Western Medicine', from the island of Kos."}, {"original": "科斯岛", "translated": "Kos", "type": "place", "description": "An island in the Aegean Sea, home of Hippocrates."}]
###END_GLOSSARY_SUPPLEMENT###
Salvation?