The New Achilles

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Trust me,’ Lysistrata said. ‘You do not want to get involved. It’s petty beyond all comprehension. I thought I’d seen it all on the Acropolis, but this isn’t even about money or power. It’s …’

  Leon nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. Alexanor, to the best of our ability, we should do what each asks, and be silent.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘Send the sheep to Kos. They asked. And twenty sheep seems a fair trade for four new priests.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Lysistrata said. But she smiled, and Alexanor already liked her.

  The arrival of the priestesses changed many things. Suddenly, the local aristocrats were happy to send their daughters to the sanctuary to serve, and a host of women pilgrims appeared looking for health. Some of the older priests muttered about ‘women’s complaints’ but Lysistrata and her partner, Antigone, leapt into the work.

  They taught the latest developments in medicine: Antigone had attended a long series of lectures in Alexandria, and so had one of the new priests from Kos, Diodoros. The barracks was full, and the priests’ table every night was a rapid-fire symposium on blood vessels and heart rate, hair growth and fingernails, hygiene and trauma.

  Diodoros had witnessed the dissection of a criminal at Alexandria. Midway through his exposition, using almonds and peaches to lay out body parts on the communal dinner table, Alexanor pushed his bowl of lamb stew away.

  ‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘Or I misheard you. You suggested this man was … alive.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Diodoros said.

  Antigone nodded. ‘It’s true. I was there, although I was … disguised.’ Diodoros looked at her, as if to ask, you were?

  But then he turned back. ‘Yes, the king gives the philosophers hardened criminals – rapists and murderers. The philosophers dissect them alive. They are given heavy drugs.’

  ‘Gods,’ Leon said, pushing his bowl away.

  ‘They are terrible men,’ Antigone said. ‘Who commit terrible crimes.’

  ‘And we learn so much,’ Diodoros said. ‘I have seen a heart beating inside a man’s chest.’

  ‘But what if the men are not guilty?’ Alexanor said.

  ‘Even if they are, this is hubris of the most outrageous kind,’ Leon said.

  Lysistrata nodded. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you, but I’m old-fashioned. The world is changing. People care only for what works, now, immediately. No one cares for a more measured pace and respect for tradition.’

  ‘And yet, with the knowledge we gain from these criminals, we can heal wounds and save people,’ Diodoros said.

  Theophilus nodded. ‘I agree, sir. Is it not our duty to heal the sick?’

  ‘Our first duty is to the gods,’ Alexanor said, and he felt both pompous and hypocritical.

  ‘Don’t you find a little power awakens the petty tyrant in all of us?’ Alexanor asked.

  He was sitting opposite Philopoemen in the older man’s favourite wine shop, a small taverna high on the slopes of the acropolis of Gortyna with a stunning view, good wine and excellent olive oil. Spring was a riot of colour beyond the walls, and Alexanor had just led the procession by which Apollo and Demeter welcomed the new growth, winding through all the streets of the upper town, blessing the doors and promising fertility. It was the first time he’d been invited to take part.

  Philopoemen smiled. That spring, he seemed to smile all the time. Antiphatas had just been elected Archon by the Assembly, and Philopoemen had been elected strategos: a public office which merely confirmed the role he had played the year before. Aristaenos, not Dinaeos, had been chosen as the Cretan League’s hipparchos. Aristaenos had politicked hard, explaining as if ruefully that as he was the Achaean League officer, not Dinaeos, he needed to be in command of the Achaean League forces. It had been the sole moment of dissension that spring – a little introduction of faction in an otherwise unified front.

  ‘My petty tyrant is a dangerous animal at all times,’ Philopoemen conceded. ‘Once you allow yourself to believe that you know better than your fellow man about anything, there is no limit.’

  ‘And yet—’

  ‘And yet a fair number of them are utter fools,’ Philopoemen said. ‘Listen, brother. Is it true that you have priestesses now? Are they also healers?’

  ‘Yes. Remarkably well-trained. For the moment they will only practise on women, though. I find Cretans even more … hmm … traditionally minded … than I am.’ Alexanor shrugged. Phila had changed him.

  Philopoemen nodded. ‘I am the revolutionary here, and yet, there are things that I hear that make me wonder … Never mind. I hope that one of your priestesses will attend Cyrena. She is pregnant, and she is so thin I fear …’

  ‘Every husband since Priam fears for his wife,’ Alexanor said, his bedside manner long practised. ‘But you will like Lysistrata. A fine woman from one of the oldest families in Athens. Probably a better doctor than I am myself.’

  ‘Ha, never say it. Most of the old troopers think you can raise the dead.’

  Philopoemen waved, and Dinaeos joined them, with Lykortas at his heels.

  ‘This season, we’ll have three hundred horse,’ Dinaeos said. ‘And another hundred Thracians if Thodor has found them.’

  ‘What’s the prospect for this season?’ Alexanor asked.

  ‘You tell me,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I just watched you make the sacrifices.’

  ‘Damn it, Strategos!’ Alexanor said. ‘I’m a doctor, not an seer! Come to think of it, you are a priest of Zeus.’

  A young man came in, glanced around, and asked the door slave a question. Alexanor watched the man; he had the too-bright eyes of a man with a disease of the mind. And when he left, he appeared to be talking to himself.

  But his train of thought was wrecked when Cyrena, round in the belly, tall and still a little feral, stalked in. She smiled brilliantly, and indeed, her skin had a flush of health that Alexanor knew was pregnancy, but which suited the African woman. Philopoemen rose and kissed her, one hand on her belly, and she laughed up at him.

  The men rose. Women were not generally seen in wine shops unless they were relatives of the owner, or slaves, or prostitutes.

  Lykortas passed Philopoemen and kissed Cyrena on both cheeks, a very recent innovation in greeting.

  ‘You are bold.’

  ‘I am a retired strumpet. Not the first time I’ve been in a wine shop, though it might be the first time all the patrons stood when I entered. Hello, Alexanor! You looked like one of the gods themselves, giving the sacrifice today.’

  Alexanor flushed and made a sign to avert the revenge of a jealous god.

  ‘You say such things,’ he said. ‘But I’m glad I looked my part.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Ain’t you an odd one, though. I’m not just painting you in honey, love – you are the best priest I know.’ She sat on Philopoemen’s lap, smiling beneficently, like a dark-eyed Aphrodite, but then she leant over, her face severe. ‘Listen, gents. One of the sisters has sent me some news from Knossos.’

  All of the men leant forward, and she spoke quietly. ‘Nabis is assembling his forces. Right now. That is, yesterday about this time. He had all his Illyrians formed in the agora and all his Aetolian cavalry. But they are waiting for something.’

  ‘Waiting for something?’ Philopoemen asked.

  ‘He has quartered his Spartan mercenaries on the merchants and he’s asked the Rhodians to land their marines on his command,’ she said.

  Dinaeos made a face and chewed on his moustache.

  ‘That goes with what I saw,’ he agreed.

  ‘Saw?’ Alexanor asked.

  ‘Dadas and I rode pretty much to the gates of Knossos yesterday,’ Dinaeos said. ‘We saw soldiers, but they were going in the gates.’

  ‘Could Nabis intend to overthrow the oligarchs?’ Lykortas asked. ‘He’d hardly be the first Spartan mercenary to kill off his employers.’

  ‘Maybe that’s it,’ Philopoemen said. ‘Regardless, we should summon our forc
es.’

  Arkas came out of the back with the owner and put a pitcher of wine on the table, and then went back behind the curtain.

  ‘The farmers are sowing,’ Lykortas said.

  ‘I know,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I am a farmer. I even have a farm. It’s a terrible time to summon the phalanx.’ He looked around. ‘But we have our Illyrians, three hundred cavalry, and the archers – that is, we can have them in five days. Less, maybe.’

  ‘Periander …’

  ‘Periander has been offered a great deal more money than we can afford to go and fight for Antiokos,’ Philopoemen said. ‘We can’t count on him. I need to talk to him, man to man, anyway. He owes us something for all the new armour we got him last year.’

  Philopoemen rose. ‘Where is Periander?’ he asked Dinaeos.

  ‘Phaistos,’ Dinaeos said. ‘With Kleostratos, reviewing the fortifications.’

  Philopoemen stepped away from the wine-stained table, and Cyrena rose.

  ‘You can’t just leave, honey,’ she said.

  ‘Lykortas, are you up for a ride?’ Philopoemen asked.

  Lykortas began to rise, and the wild-eyed young man who’d come in and left earlier walked to the doorway, turned, and beckoned at the street.

  Alexanor was still drinking his wine. He looked up when Cyrena shoved Philopoemen hard into the table, the force of it moving the table towards Alexanor, pinning him against the wall.

  Alexanor was sprayed with blood, and he still didn’t know what was happening. He tried to kick the table back, but Philopoemen was lying on it and blood was pouring out of him; his weight held the table against Alexanor’s gut.

  ‘Finish him!’ roared a voice.

  A man with a kopis charged into the group. Dinaeos was pinned with Alexanor. Lykortas had his xiphos clear of the scabbard and had buried it in another man. Dadas was wrestling with a third attacker.

  Cyrena threw herself on the kopis wielder. He cut at her, his weapon chopping two fingers into her skull; but she clung to him, holding him, and he fell backwards with the pregnant woman atop him.

  Blood was everywhere – blood and spilt wine.

  Alexanor and Dinaeos managed to overturn the table. Dinaeos exploded from behind it. He was as big as a Titan, and Alexanor was not much smaller. Alexanor had no weapon but the razor-sharp knife he wore on a cord around his neck – more of a scientific instrument than a weapon. He nonetheless used it like a dewclaw, opening Dadas’ assailant’s thigh to the groin, severing both of the main blood vessels.

  Dinaeos caught Cyrena’s assailant as he rose from the floor and broke his neck.

  ‘Ware!’ Lykortas called.

  There was a man in the doorway, enveloped in a charcoal-coloured himation like a caul of smoke.

  Alexanor turned.

  The man had a gastraphetes, the heavy crossbow that snipers used in sieges. He raised it.

  Cyrena, blood from her head wound running down her face, pushed herself to her feet. The crossbow bolt caught her in the chest, between her breasts. She didn’t fall backwards; she simply subsided to the floor like an upper-class woman in a faint, with dignity.

  Philopoemen, on the floor, had another such bolt in his gut. He was screaming in pain.

  Dinaeos ran into the street, chasing the archer and bellowing for help.

  Alexanor knelt by Philopoemen. Then he looked at Dadas, who had a bad cut right to the bone in one hand, where he’d caught a sword; the cut had almost severed his left thumb. Lykortas had lost an ear.

  ‘Apollo!’ Lykortas said. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘She is,’ Dadas said. ‘Gods, why?’

  Alarms were sounding through the town.

  ‘Arkas!’ Alexanor roared.

  Philopoemen’s groom appeared a minute later, with hot water and linens.

  ‘Is he …?’ Arkas was white as parchment. ‘Oh, gods,’ he said.

  Cyrena was obviously dead, lying in a pool of her own blood. Flies were already gathering. Lykortas, with some foresight, sat by the door with his sword across his lap, watching every passer-by, blood streaming down his face.

  Alexanor went to Cyrena. She was dead, as he feared, and his first examination showed that her baby could not be saved; too young, too soon. Moving without apparent volition, he cleaned and bandaged Dadas before turning to Lykortas.

  ‘Save him,’ Lykortas said.

  ‘I cannot,’ Alexanor said. ‘It would require a miracle, the very will of the gods.’

  He bandaged Lykortas’ head, and then went to Philopoemen. The Achaean was on the floor, curled around the crossbow bolt in his gut, but he had managed to crawl the half a pace to Cyrena, coating the left side of his body in blood from the floor. He had her outflung hand in his.

  ‘Save her,’ he croaked to Alexanor.

  Her staring eyes were beyond saving.

  ‘She tried to save you,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘Oh, the gods …’

  Philopoemen lay still, his chest rising and falling too rapidly. His pulse was rapid, but scattered. Suddenly he stiffened, as if in pain. His eyes opened, hot with intelligence.

  His bloody hands grabbed Alexanor’s head.

  ‘Listen to me!’ he spat through gritted teeth. ‘Thissss! This is … Nabis!’ He groaned aloud. Thrashed in pain, and curled up tight, like a child with a tummy ache. Then again: ‘Listen! This is what they are waiting for!’

  ‘You heard that?’ Alexanor asked Lykortas. Philopoemen’s bloody hands were still clenched on his head, as if he were the Spartan enemy.

  Lykortas stood. ‘That makes sense. Who else would do this?’

  Alexanor felt Philopoemen go. The body passed from rigidity to a flaccid relaxation.

  For a moment, he thought the Achaean was dead. But he had only fainted.

  ‘I need to move him. I need my things. Things I have in my travelling kit. He’s dying. I want to extract the arrow. And then …’

  Arkas appeared. In five years, the groom had grown from wiry adolescence to wiry manhood; he could lift his master.

  ‘I’ve got him.’

  A dozen of Telemnastos’ archers walked with them. People came out of their homes; men swore revenge. A dozen men followed them, openly weeping. Antiphatas threw his himation over his head and turned away.

  Lykortas, drawn sword still in his hand, followed.

  ‘Antiphatas!’ he shouted. ‘His last words – this was planned. Planned! Now Knossos will attack.’

  Antiphatas stood still, as if this was more than he could understand.

  Alexanor ignored them. Later, he would remember that walk through the streets of Gortyna as a nightmare – the steep alleys rising above them, the footing treacherous, he, dreading that his friend would die at any moment, unable to put down the body sticky with his blood – and over it all the fear that the dark-cloaked man with the gastraphetes was still out there. Lykortas thought the same; he didn’t stop for a moment but walked, sword in hand, next to the body.

  He operated on Philopoemen on the clean tiles of what had once been the andron of Phila’s rented home. He washed the entry wound as well as he could with the hot water Arkas provided, and then he took his arrow spoon in hand. But after three tries, he couldn’t get any of its three shapes around the head – it was buried deep. He pressed against Philopoemen’s back with his left hand and felt the sharp point of the bolt through his skin.

  ‘Apollo,’ he said aloud.

  He wished he had even one of his novices. Anyone with whom to share the decision.

  Then, as if his hands were guided by someone else, he cut the short bolt close to the entry wound, grasped the shaft of the bolt firmly, and pushed it through the flesh of the lower back. Once engaged, he was like a fighter in combat; he didn’t stop to think, only acted. He cut the unbarbed bolt-head, heard it drop with a clink to the floor, and then, with one steady pull, drew the whole shaft out of the wound.

  He noticed, with grim professionalism, that there was little blood, and the same kind of clear fluid
he’d observed the first time he’d been inside Philopoemen’s abdomen. By some grim irony, the bolt had struck almost exactly on the old scar, penetrating at the same angle.

  He was kneeling on the tile floor. He looked up.

  They were all around him: Lykortas, Antiphatas, Arkas, Aristaenos and Telemnastos, Dinaeos, and a dozen other officers. They had been standing silently, or holding things. He hadn’t even noticed them.

  ‘Any chance at all?’ Dinaeos asked. ‘Give it to us straight.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alexanor said. ‘Yes. One chance in … fifty.’

  ‘Will he awaken?’ Dinaeos asked. ‘I ask, not as a friend, but as his officer. Nabis is marching.’

  Alexanor shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps in an hour – perhaps never.’

  Dinaeos looked at the others. ‘Anyone else want to take command?’

  Antiphatas frowned. ‘I am in command,’ he said.

  Dinaeos looked at the older man. ‘What are your orders, sir?’

  Antiphatas was looking at Philopoemen.

  ‘Do what you think he would have done,’ Antiphatas said.

  ‘Did you get the assassin?’ Alexanor asked.

  Dinaeos shook his head. ‘No.’

  Alexanor felt the man’s pain. ‘He may never wake.’

  Dinaeos nodded. ‘Get me Periander and Kleostratos. And send to Plator over the mountains. Those were his last orders. We’ll stick to them.’

  ‘Gut wounds recover more often at sea,’ Alexanor said to Leon. ‘I read it somewhere.’

  ‘So put him on a ship,’ Leon said.

  ‘My plan exactly,’ Alexanor said bitterly.

  Gortyna’s nearest port was forty stades away over a steep mountain range; travelling over the mountains was a sure death sentence.

  ‘He survived the last time,’ Leon said. ‘And that was after his friends threw him over a horse and rode all night.’

  Alexanor shook his head.

  ‘You saved him …’ Leon said.

  ‘I was young and arrogant, then. I took chances …’

  ‘You are older and just as arrogant now,’ Leon replied. ‘Listen, my friend. If I had a wound in my belly, I’d take you over any other doctor or priest in the world. I brought you some boiled wine and all the Smyrnan honey. What else do you want?’