whose hands the blood of all of them would lie. And yet I’m not a bad man,
Phryzeutzis, I’ve never been more than careless or insensitive, never evil or
malicious; and everything I did in Olbia I did for the best.)
Things were getting lively now. I didn’t have a torch of my own, so I held my
shield over one of the men who did. There were people running in every
direction, bundling out of the houses as we set fire to them, bumping into us
and jostling us out of the way as they ran in terror from the flames, or
crashing into our shields as they blundered out, their arms full of their
precious possessions. Most of them acted as if we weren’t even there, as if they
had far too much on their plate already to be bothered with us; but there was
one old man, white-haired and stark naked, who jumped at me with a big wooden
spade and started smacking my shield with it, making a deep booming noise, like
a drum. After he’d done this five or six times I tried to prod him off with the
butt of my spear; but he either stumbled or charged forward at just the wrong
time, and the butt-spike slid into his groin like a wooden spoon going into the
whey. He dropped down when I pulled the spear out, and I didn’t hang around to
see what became of him.
The fire was doing our job for us, which was just as well, since we’d got
completely out of line and were wandering aimlessly about, like visitors who’ve
come to Athens on a grain-boat and want to see the sights. There were no arrows,
no fighting; all we were doing was gently pushing people down the street towards
the side gate, like shepherds driving a flock down a wide road. I gather that
the encircling party took their duties rather more seriously than we were doing.
Quite soon the fire started to spread of its own accord, which made the village
a bad place to be. I heard Marsamleptes shouting to us to withdraw, but only
because he was standing quite close to me; you can’t hear much at the best of
times when you’ve got a thick, well-padded helmet down over your ears, and there
was so much noise inside the village that I was lucky to have heard him at all.
The only casualties we suffered that night, in fact, were four men who didn’t
hear and got caught too far inside the village when the fire got completely out
of hand.
Sorry, there were five. Right at the last moment, as he was ushering us out of
the main gate, counting under his breath to make sure we were all there,
Marsamleptes was hit in the face with an arrow, probably the only one shot that
night. He’d taken his helmet off so we could see who it was and hear his orders
better, and the arrow hit him on the lower rim of the eye-socket on the
left-hand side. He dropped down without a word or a movement.
When the encircling group heard from the mobile reserve that the enemy had
killed Marsamleptes, they got very angry. The Illyrians loved and trusted him —
they’re quite an emotional people, when you get to know them — and even the
Founders had come to respect him over the last dozen years. All in all, killing
him was the worst possible thing the villagers could have done just then, and
they paid the price of their ineptitude. When the killing stopped at dawn (I
don’t know why it stopped then, but it did) both of the side gateways were
pretty well bunged up with bodies, and because of the blockage, a whole bunch of
people hadn’t been able to get out of the way when the main granary went up,
right in close to the stockade. We didn’t bother raking through the ashes so I
can’t put a figure on it, but to judge from the noise they made there were quite
a few of them.
We didn’t kill them all, of course; nothing like. We grabbed a few of the
survivors at random, and left the rest standing around staring at the carnage
and the mess. I was out of it by then; I’d breathed in rather too much smoke,
and spent a long time while the action was at its most intense doubled up just
outside the main gate, coughing my lungs up; so yes, I suppose I was looking the
other way once more, as I always seem to be. Just for once, though, I wasn’t
particularly sorry to have missed the main event.
I was free to go. I’d done what I’d undertaken to do, and there was nothing to
keep me in Antolbia. Just for once, I’d managed to see something through to the
end, to a successful result. Maybe it would have been nicer if it had been
something a bit more positive than genocide, but losers can’t be choosers, as we
philosophers say.
The news that I was going back to Athens spread quickly enough, and wasn’t well
received. I suppose it was a bad time to make an announcement like that,
immediately after the death of Marsamleptes. Of the two of us, there was no
question who was the greater loss; he’d been an efficient and competent soldier
and the effective spokesman of the Illyrian majority, in which capacity he’d
shown a modest flair for diplomacy and what for the want of a better word I
think I’m going to have to call statesmanship. Besides which, people liked him.
I’d liked him. What was there not to like?
‘You aren’t liked and respected the way he was, obviously,’ Tyrsenius tried to
explain. ‘People could — I don’t know, people reckoned he understood what they
were thinking and feeling, that he was one of them. You’ve always been the
oecist, however much effort you’ve put into that man-of-the-people persona of
yours. But that’s not the point. You’re the Founder. You’re the man who founded
the city, it’s your name on all the inscriptions and records, your name in all
the laws: “Euxenus the oecist and the people decided that...
You’re like a statue in the market square, or the figurehead of a ship; people
need to see you there. And if you deliberately decide to leave —just think how
that makes people feel.’
Not for the first time, I wondered how Tyrsenius had ever managed to sell
anything to anybody. ‘It’s really sweet of you to say all these nice things
about me,’ I said, ‘but my mind’s made up. I just don’t want to live here any
more. It’s different for you, for most of them in fact. All they expected from
the place was somewhere to live, some land to farm. It was always supposed to be
more for me.’
‘The perfect society,’ Tyrsenius said. ‘Quite. Actually, I don’t see what the
problem is there. Look at us; we’ve got no faction fighting, no oligarchic
tendency slugging it out with the mob, no military dictator screwing everybody
for taxes. We’ve got Greeks and Illyrians living quite happily side by side;
we’ve even got Budini. Isn’t that your perfect society, Mister Philosopher?’
I shook my head. ‘Tyrsenius, the only reason we haven’t got those sorts of
problems is that we’re too small. Everybody knows everybody else, we’ve all got
roughly the same amount of land, we’ve just fought a war against a foreign
enemy; obviously we’re all united and filled with brotherly love now, you’d
hardly expect anything else. And I’m not leaving because the experiment’s
failed. I’m leaving because it’s over. Do you understand?’
He nodded. ‘I think s
o,’ he said. ‘I think you were never part of this community
to start with. You came here to study, to see what it’d be like. You’ve done
that, and now you’re off to study something else. You know what? I think you
really are a philosopher after all.’ He frowned. ‘And to think I reckoned you
were an honest charlatan, a genuine confidence man with a snake in a jar to
prove it.’
‘What’s wrong with being a philosopher?’ I asked.
‘If you don’t know, I don’t think I’m up to explaining it to you,’ he said.
‘Just take it from me, there’s a place in decent society for snake-in-a-jar
operators. Philosophers; well...’
I thought he was making a joke, but he wasn’t. And when I thought about it, I
could see his point.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one who was ready to leave. Agenor the
stonemason asked if he could share the journey home with me; he’d always fancied
trying his luck in Athens , he said, where people really appreciated fine
sculpture and works of art.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But what’s the matter? I thought you were nicely settled here.’
He looked at me as if I’d said something offensive. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he
replied. ‘You know what I’ve been doing virtually since the moment I got off the
ship? I’ve been building houses, and barns, and city walls, and wells, and gods
only know what else. As soon as I’ve finished one building job, someone comes up
to me and more or less demands I come and build something for him. And I hate
building work, Euxenus; it’s hard, dirty, boring, degrading work and I’ve had
enough of it.’
‘But think what you’ve achieved,’ I said. We were standing in the market square;
I pointed, and swung round in a circle. ‘You see all this? You did all that,
Agenor. What you didn’t build with your own hands you designed or supervised; if
anybody deserves to be remembered as the Father of the City, it’s you. Don’t you
feel good about that?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s crude, ugly, makeshift stuff. The materials are rubbish,
I’m ashamed of some of the techniques I used, it’s a miracle most of it’s still
standing. Just look at that,’ he went on, pointing at our little temple. ‘See
those proportions? All wrong. Height’s all wrong for the length, which means the
pillars had to be too close together, and too thick. If I had my way, we’d pull
the whole lot down and start over.’
I was shocked. ‘I didn’t know you felt like this, Agenor,’ I said. ‘And I can’t
see anything wrong with it. I think it’s beautiful.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘So does everyone else. That’s why I’m finally leaving.
Twelve years of living with your own sloppy work is bad enough; knowing it’ll
probably never be put right is just too much. I want to go somewhere they’d pull
something like that down tomorrow.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say. After all, his complaint was more or less
the same as mine. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but why now? If you hated it so much,
why did you stay so long?’
He shrugged. ‘Laziness,’ he said. ‘Tried to kid myself into thinking that I was
doing a good job. You probably noticed, I’ve always been the one who’s tried to
help, got involved wherever I thought I could make myself useful; I tried,
Euxenus, I really did. But this war — I didn’t like that. I’m not saying it was
wrong,’ he went on, before I could interrupt. ‘On the contrary, it had to be
done or we’d never have had a moment’s peace. But my apprentice; you remember,
he lost a hand in that raid? He was going to be a good builder, he had the
knack; he’d have been able to do good work with this lousy crumbly stone and all
the little annoying things that I could never see how to get round. Now he’s as
good as dead and I don’t want to train anybody else.’ He breathed out and looked
around. ‘I just don’t like living here any more,’ he said. ‘I suppose you could
say that if I’ve got to live in an imperfect city, I’d rather it was one that
someone else has cocked up, not me.’
There was nothing more to say, so I walked home. The house was dark and quiet,
and every part of it seemed filled with me; I was sick and tired of having
nothing but my own personality around me all the time. Once I’d had a wife and
son living here with me, only I hadn’t appreciated them for what they were. Most
of the time I tried not to notice them, because who they were and what they
wanted didn’t seem relevant to what I was trying to do. At that moment, I could
cheerfully have lit a torch and set fire to the place.
It comes to something when you can walk away from twelve years of your life with
nothing more than you can carry in a small goatskin bag. In fact, I was hard put
to it to fill the bag. Most of the weight was coined money; I’d sold my armour
and my plough and the tools that were worth having, and some of the furniture
(though most of it wasn’t fit to give away; I’ve never been bothered about
things like that) and Tyrsenius had advanced me the value of my harvest and my
small flock of goats, as well as giving me free passage on his ship as far as
Athens. I had enough money to get home and to live on for a few weeks while I
got my lawsuit under way; I had more money deposited with a bank in Athens to
pay for the rest of the suit, left over from my relative affluence as a
respected teller of fortunes. I wasn’t worried about what I was going to do when
I got home; if necessary I was sure I could go back to my old trade of cheating
gullible businessmen. In fact, I wasn’t worried about anything, because in order
to worry you first have to care.
As well as the money, and of course my lucky snake-jar, I took a comb that had
belonged to Theano (after all, a man needs a comb), a set of knucklebone dice
I’d made for my son (because a man can virtually make a living playing dice on
board a ship, provided he knows which way the dice are going to fall; and my
dice were utterly predictable, because Eupolis always got so upset if he lost),
a knife, a razor and a scraper, and a roll of mostly blank Egyptian paper, on
which I’d started to write the history of Antolbia, back before it was ever
called that. I’d intended it for Aristotle, as a contribution to his vast
database on matters political, and as a smug and offensive lesson in how a
perfect society is perfectly possible, if only you’re prepared to get out there
and do, rather than just sitting on your backside and talking about it.
It was a very long, excruciatingly boring journey. The ship crawled along the
coast from city to city, converting figs into honey at one port of call, honey
into iron ore, iron ore into dried fish, dried fish into olive oil, olive oil
into figs (about thirty per cent more figs than we’d started off with), figs
into hides, hides into grain... There was nothing to do but sit on deck, staring
at the coastline as we sailed by and trying not to get under the feet of the
sailors. At first, Agenor and I talked all the time about a whole range of
things — philosophy, art, religion, history — but I found that talk like that
the chance of a good debate. We decided it would be better if we didn’t talk any
more, and for most of the journey home we sat at opposite ends of the ship, me
staring in one direction, he in another. In the end, he couldn’t face any more
of the tedium and discomfort and left the ship at Scione; he’d see if there was
any work going there, he said, and if not he’d carry on to Athens as originally
planned. As and when he got there, he promised to come and look me up; after
all, in spite of the fact that we’d fallen out on this long, boring sea journey,
we’d still shared a dozen years of important experiences, and were really the
only friends either of us had now, outside Antolbia. As he walked down the
gangplank at Scione we waved to each other; I shouted out, ‘See you in Athens ,’
and he called back, ‘Count on it.’
Needless to say, I never saw or heard of him again.
As soon as we crawled into Piraeus I hurried thankfully up the road to the City
to treat myself to an indulgence I’d been promising myself every day I had to
spend on that grotty, uncomfortable ship: a proper Athenian haircut and shave.
To my delight, my favourite barber’s shop was still there, and it had hardly
changed at all since I’d been away. The barber didn’t recognise me after all
that time, but I recognised him; last time I’d seen him he’d been an
eleven-year-old boy, sweeping up and whetting the razors while his father saw to
the customers. Suddenly I felt overwhelming joy mixed with desperate sorrow;
I’d been away far too long, but I was home.
While I was sitting in the chair, basking in the glory of just being there
again, I listened to the gossip. There was only one topic of conversation. News
had just arrived that the Macedonian colony of Antolbia on the Black Sea coast
had been overrun by the local savages and utterly destroyed. There were, it
seemed, no survivors.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I won my lawsuit. It took me a year and an infinity of patience and effort; I
had to learn the law, for one thing. There’s an awful lot of it, and
surprisingly nobody seems to know what it is; the more closely you study it, the
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 47