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plain wood furni­ture remained. We found some wooden ploughs, hayforks and the like still littering the outhouses.
    Goatmen don't use chairs and tables, nor do they till the land.
    After posting a sentry on the gate tower Diores returned yawning to the Hall and stretched himself on a fleece-covered cot his slaves had found. The rotten twine fragmented and thumped his rump on the floor. He swore like a Hero, snuggled into a cloak and lay beside the hearth.
    'Tomorrow,' he said sleepily, 'we start putting Rhipe to rights!'
     
    * * *
    At the first whisper of dawn Diores and I rode out to explore the demesne; freemen appointed as bailiffs followed the horses on foot. Diores allocated fields to be ploughed for the sowing of barley and wheat, selected cattle pastures, hillside grazing for sheep and, on the higher slopes where trees began, foraging grounds for swine. He defined an extensive tract as common land where peasants would grow subsistence for themselves and the slaves and craftsmen - bronzesmiths, weavers, carpen­ters, potters and fullers - who must help make Rhipe self- sufficient.
    It took us all day to ride the whole perimeter. Back at the manor I found Gelon, using a goose quill dipped in ink distilled from charcoal, scratching mysterious marks on a sheet of the paper Egyptians make from reeds. 'I'm working out the daily ration scales for our workmen,' he told Diores, 'in the pro­portion of five to two to one for men, women and children respectively.' (A babble of brats accompanied the slaves, and some of the freemen had brought their families.) 'Do you approve, my lord?'
    'Whatever you think best,' said Diores. 'I've no head for figures. Tally the supplies we've brought and fix your calcu­lations to make them last till harvest, four moons hence. Then, if The Lady is kind, we'll start living on what we produce.'
    'Very well.' Gelon compressed his lips. 'I warn you, my lord, we shall have to live frugally through the summer.' Intrigued by my first acquaintance with scribal skills, and remembering Atreus' injunction, I craned over Gelon's figuring although, like anyone not a Scribe, I had no slightest know­ledge of writing and considered the art to be something ap­proaching magic. Scratching and squiggling busily, tongue be­tween teeth, Gelon assured me the calculations were simple: he applied to Rhipe in miniature a system which prevailed throughout the realm. 'Every person below noble rank re­ceives a fixed allocation of barley, wheat and oil based on the kingdom's total resources divided by the population count. Achaea, densely peopled, can't grow the food she needs; hence corn is shipped from Sicily and Crete.'
    'I had no idea,' I said in wonder. 'Surely, on a country-wide scale, a most complicated business?'
    'It is. That's what Scribes are for. Without us the economy would collapse.'
    Gelon uttered a simple truth. Scribes are ubiquitous; a coterie exists in every city and town. They control administration and regulate the economy; every ruler depends on a senior Scribe's advice - I remembered King Eurystheus' Curator at Mycenae. Their power resides in knowledge of writing, a jealously guarded monopoly whose mysteries outsiders are never al­lowed to learn. (Not that Heroes nurse any desire to master an art so horridly cabbalistic.)
    It is commonly averred that the Scribes' origins are Cretan, although in appearance and characteristics they are very un­like that good-looking, easy-going race. The distinguishing mark of a Scribe, besides the long grey robe he always wears, is a hooked nose dominating swarthy features. They forbid mar­riage outside the sect, and worship a private god whose name, so far as I can pronounce the throat-stopping syllables - Gelon told me this - is something like Jahwah. Which worries nobody: all sorts of obscure divinities are honoured in rustic Achaea. In urban neighbourhoods the Daughters, not sur­prisingly, severely discourage unorthodox cults: on The Lady's pre-eminence