'My father made that, sir,' I said, pointing at the helmet.
He took it off. 'You're a son of Technes, the smith of Plataea who fell in Euboea?' he asked.
'I am, sir.' I bowed.
He returned my bow, although he was a child of the gods, the son of the greatest family in Athens. 'I am Aristides,' he said, 'of the Antiochae.'
I nodded. 'I am Arimnestos of the Corvaxae,' I said, 'of green Plataea where Leitos has his shrine.'
He grinned. He liked that I could play the game. Then he put his helmet back on and I pulled mine down, and we faced off.
The Chians cheered us, because we were both foreigners. Aristides was probably the best-known man in the fleet, while I had just won the athletics, and that made it a good-natured match with lots of cheering. I could hear Melaina's clear soprano and her brother's bass.
And then they all went away, and I was alone on the sand with a deadly opponent. He moved the way a woman dances, and I admired him even as I tracked his motion.
As far as I was concerned, he was beautiful, but he put too much energy into it. That is, he looked wonderful – and he was good, very good, a true killer. But he also played to the crowd.
He had not, on the other hand, run several stades and wrestled.
Early on, he came at me with his kill shot. All swordsmen have one – a simple combination they have mastered, that can get the fight over in a hurry. Listen – if you live past a man's kill shot, it's a whole different fight. But most men go down, in sport or play or on a blood-spattered deck. Calchas taught me that, and every sword-fighter in Ephesus said the same.
I didn't buy the feint to my head and my shield caught his blow to my thigh, then I cut back at his arm and my blade ticked against his arm guard.
He nodded at me as we drew apart – acknowledgement that I'd hit him. Then we circled for a long, long time, until the crowd was silent. I wasn't going after him. He was better than me. And he wasn't in a hurry. And, frankly, I knew he was the best man I'd ever faced – better than Cyrus or Pharnakes, even.
Twice, we went in. The first time, he came forward gracefully – and fooled me, his swaying approach a trick as he darted to the right and his blade shot out in a cut to my right hip, of all unlikely targets.
I parried the blow on my blade and hammered my aspis into his. I cleared my weapon and tried to reach under his shield, but he didn't allow it, and we were kneeling in the sand, shield to shield, pushing. The crowd roared but the judges separated us.
The second time, I saw him stumble. It was dark now; the fires gave unsteady light and the helmets didn't help. But before my attack was even fully developed, he had his feet under him. He cut low and then high, and our blades rang together, and we both punched with our shields, leaning our shoulders into the push, and our blades licked out and we both rolled left and broke apart. The ocean cold of his blade had passed across my sword arm and my blade had ticked against his thigh armour.
I raised my blade for a halt. 'He touched me,' I said. I can be an honourable man.
But his blade had been flat on, and Athena was by me, and when the judges looked, there was no blood.
Stephanos gave me a drink of wine while the judges looked at my opponent. Archi pointed at him.
'Back of his knees, brother,' he said. He'd never called me brother before, and it was the warmest praise of the day.
'Cleisthenes hurt his last man,' Stephanos said. 'He'll face the winner here but his grandfather is mad as fury. The man he cut is bad.'
Cleisthenes came and started to catcall. He was a rude fuck, and while other men cheered, he jeered. My blood started to rise.
I decided to go for the Athenian's knee. Archi was dead right – when you're in the fight you don't always see. He was a tall man and the back of his knee was the best unarmoured target on him.
He went for his kill shot again. I think he felt that he hadn't got it off perfectly the first time. But as soon as he started, I knew the combination. I knelt, ignoring the head feint, and snapped my wrist in a long cut against the back of his left knee while his sword cracked on to my shield and bounced up on to my helmet – I'd knelt too low. The blow was hard – not as well pulled as his first, and I fell sideways with a bump on my scalp where my helmet turned the blow but not all of it.
He gave me a hand up and apologized.
I pointed my heavy blade at the black line of blood running down the back of his greaves.
'By Athena!' he said. 'Well cut, Plataean.'
Men cheered, but Cleisthenes jeered again, calling us pansies. And then he insisted on fighting, right there.
'I want this,' he said. 'Unless you're afraid.' And closer up, 'I'm going to hurt you.'
His grandfather tried to stop it. But the other judges said there was enough light, and I was an arse, and simply insisted I'd fight.
'You're a fucking slave,' he said, and he grinned. 'I own you already. Slaves always fear men like me – real men. Do you feel the fear, boy?'
The thing I hated was that of course I did feel the fear. I did fear men like him – big, brutal men who wanted to inflict pain. And my fear made me hate him, and the daimon came.
Suddenly I was as cool as if I had bathed in the sea. When we came together, I already knew how I would fight, and what I would do. The daimon was in me, and I give no quarter then. And truly, I have done shameful things, but this was hardly one of them. He was an evil bastard, and he earned his way to Tartarus all the way.
But I regret – some of it.
As soon as his grandfather gave the word, he came at me, his sword high, and smashed it into my shield.
He cut at the top, his tactic simple. He would cut the bronze band that held the rim in five or ten strokes, and then start chopping the shield until he broke my arm or cut my shield arm. It was a brutal technique, and he was a brutal man.
I ducked and dodged. I wanted him contemptuous and hurried.
He was easy.
He laughed and spat and chased me, landing a blow or two on the shield face. He finally stopped.
'Fucking coward, stand and fight!' he yelled.
I laughed. 'Come and catch me, arse cunt.'
Some men heard me. Others didn't. He heard me, and he should have paused to consider that if I had the breath to insult him, I wasn't afraid. But he was a fool.
But his grandfather had heard him and threw down his staff. 'Stop!' he roared.
He picked up his staff and prodded his grandson in the stomach. 'Boys talk like that,' he said. 'Men respect their opponents. One more jibe and I will throw you from the lists.'
Cleisthenes didn't even pretend to obey. He did not fear the gods, and they knew him for what he was.
Before Lord Pelagius gave the word, he came at me again, and he almost caught me, because, in fact, he cheated. His sword hammered my shield and we were shield to shield. The sword went back and he cut at my head. His blow clipped the rim of my shield and then my helmet, and it hurt.
'I'm going to kill you,' he crowed.
I could tell you that the pain of his blow made me do what I did, but I promised not to lie much when I told these tales. I knew from the moment we crossed swords. I always meant to kill him. Honey, I'm a killer. A little more wine. Your friend is blushing.
I danced away and he came after me, sure that he had me. And I let him come. He came in to hammer my shield, and I cut his sword hand off his arm as easy as making your friend blush.
See, he'd over-extended a little more with each cut, trying to get the biggest part of his blade into my shield rim. I just led him by the nose until I had his arm where I wanted it. And I could have simply given him a cut to remember.
He fell to his knees. He couldn't get the shield off his shield arm and he couldn't get a hand on his wrist to staunch the blood, and it was pumping out, almost like a neck wound.
If he'd had a friend in that circle, perhaps that man would have stepped up and stopped the blood. Or maybe not. What's a man worth with no right hand, lik
e a criminal?
His grandfather stepped forward – and then paused.
That was the awful part. His own grandfather let him bleed out. And the other men in the circle – a conspiracy of two hundred.
He was gone quickly, but his eyes went to mine near the end, and suddenly he wasn't a bad man, a rapist, a tax-taker, a bully. He was a deer under my spear, and he didn't understand the darkness that was coming, or why it had to come to him. And in his eyes I saw the reflection of that god who comes to every man and every woman, and I also saw myself – the killer.
I didn't look away. I held his eye until he fell forward and everything was gone.
But as his soul left his body, I think something of me went with it.
I killed him because I didn't like him.
And when my eyes met Aristides', I could see that other men knew it as well as I did.
I won't go on and on about this, friends, but before I killed Cleisthenes, I was one man. Briefly, I was a victor, a man men admired. That might have been my life, however brief.
But the fates, the gods and my own daimon said otherwise. And when Cleisthenes fell face forward into the sand black with his own blood, I was another man. Some men admired me.
But aside from a few, the rest feared me.
12
I was wearing my new armour the next morning as we began to load the ships. Armour is a silly thing to wear for work, but by the gods it was good to look like a nobleman, and I was young and arrogant. My shoulder still hurt from the pounding of my shield against it in the fight and the race.
I noted that men were careful how they spoke to me.
Stephanos was closer, if anything. He wasn't afraid of me, and he was overjoyed that Cleisthenes was dead. In fact, I earned his friendship with that blow. And when I was maudlin that first night, Melaina told me stories of Cleisthenes and the local girls until I felt like a public benefactor.
I felt like less of a benefactor as the ships were loaded. There I stood, sparkling in a scale corslet worth a farm, a good helmet and a fine aspis. Other men were loading the ships – we had no discipline, and so every ship loaded at its own speed – and we were so late leaving the beach that we saw Lord Pelagius and the women of his household with the body, building a pyre. And the older woman, whose tears seemed pulled from her as you'd pull the guts from a dead boar, she must have been his mother.
Only then did I find fully what it is to be a killer of men. When you kill, you take a man's life. You take it. He can never have it back. When the darkness comes to his eyes and he clutches his guts, he is done. And you don't rob just him but his parents and his family, his sisters and brothers, his wife and children, his lovers, his debtors, his master and his slave – all robbed.
Cleisthenes was a bad man, I have no doubt, but all his people were on that beach, and it was like a scene in a play in Athens – not that they came at me like furies, just that they were all there: his horses and hounds, his women, his slaves, his son. All there in one place, for me to see.
I killed him because I didn't like him. Let's not lie. So – I stood there, coming to terms with the consequences. Most killers are dull men. I truly think they never see the funeral pyre. They never think. I walked down the beach, and every one of them saw me, and they looked at me as if I was some kind of beast.
I think too much. So I drink. Here – you. Blush for me and make me happy. There – ahh! My world is brighter for your presence, lady.
I never promised you a happy story. We landed in Ephesus and all the lords of the fleet met with the lords of the city, but I stayed on our ship. I was afraid of being taken. Afraid of being a slave again. Afraid of what I'd done with Briseis. Afraid that she had already forgotten me.
And I dreamed of Cleisthenes and his funeral pyre. I still do. He's the only one. I've killed enough men to make a phalanx, and he's the only one who haunts me.
Archi was distant when he went ashore, but he came straight back to the ship with word that Diomedes' father had sent his son to a farm in the country to recover, and nothing had been said.
Typical. The things you most fear never come to pass. Diomedes and his father might seek revenge, but they had not gone to law.
I left the ship and entered the house as a free man, wearing armour. I felt odd – everything was odd. Food tasted wrong, and I longed to go and eat in the kitchen, but I didn't, just as I wanted one of the slaves to tell me how bold I looked in my magnificent shirt of scale armour, but none of them even met my eye.
Not even Penelope, who threw her arms around Archi when we returned and didn't even look at me.
Briseis looked at me, an enigmatic half-smile at the corner of her mouth. I found that I couldn't really breathe. I felt as if I'd been gone ten years, and I found that I'd forgotten what she looked like. She stood in the courtyard to welcome us because her mother never left her room any more and Briseis was, in effect, the lady of the house.
'Well,' she said. That was all.
I didn't see her again for days. I took baths and thought guiltily of our love-making – if that's what it was. And I found that I thought of Melaina – which seemed like treason, except that she was more my speed, if you take my meaning. I wondered why I hadn't even tried to kiss her.
Archi went to the conferences, and met with men like Aristides and Aristagoras, plotting a campaign against the Medes for the freedom of Ionia.
I found myself a lonely man in a city that had been my playground. I couldn't exactly go and sit by the Fountain of Pollio, could I?
I met my Thracian girl in the back alley, almost by accident, and tried to get her to go for a walk with me, but she ran. That hurt.
So after two days of failing to be the returning hero, I went up the hill to the Temple of Artemis. And there I found boys sitting in front of Heraclitus. I wasn't a boy, but I sat at his feet.
He nodded to me. He was laying out the rules of triangles. There were three new boys. I had been gone just two months, and even that world had changed. But I listened, and my mind went down the paths of numbers and figures in the sand, instead of death and war and sex, and I took a little healing, as I always have from the wise.
When he was done with the other boys, he came and sat next to me.
'What you did to Diomedes was cruel,' he said.
'The logos speaks through strife,' I said, quoting him.
'Don't give me that shit,' he said. His gaze met mine and ground mine down like stone against iron. 'You hurt that boy.'
I shrugged. 'He had it coming.'
Heraclitus sat and leaned on his staff. I can't remember another time that he sat with me. Finally he looked at me. 'I have so many things I want to say to you. You can all but see the logos – and yet you are so far from true understanding, aren't you? You understand me when I talk, and yet you can hurt a boy like that – for a child's reasons.'
I blinked tears. I had been blinking tears since he sat with me. Hah! I feel them in my eyes even now. No one else had cared, except Stephanos and Archi. He sat there, and listened.
'I did it because he broke his engagement with Briseis,' I said. 'He hurt her. I did the right thing!'
Heraclitus's eyes rested on me, and you could almost see the sparks as his gaze ground away at mine.
Finally, I hung my head. 'No, I did not.'
'No,' he said. 'Tell the truth, at least to yourself. I knew the truth as soon as I heard that the boy had been hurt. You hurt him. Cruelly. Is that who you are? A man who hurts for his own satisfaction?'
I couldn't meet his eyes. And I began to weep. I sat on the steps and told him the tale of Cleisthenes. He shuddered when I cut off the hand. But he smiled when I told him, through my own tears, of the funeral pyre.
'It is the pity of the world that we must come to wisdom through fire,' he said. 'Why can no man learn wisdom from another?'
I couldn't answer him. Perhaps no one can. After a while he went on, 'You have discovered one of the secrets of the world of men.'
'W
hat's that?' I asked. Those boys – most of them knew me – were wondering why the teacher was sitting with me, and why I was pouring tears the way a mended pot leaks water.
'The secret is that men are easy to kill. That if you are brave and have a steady hand and a cold heart, you can have whatever you desire.' He looked away. 'This city is about to go to war with Persia, and then it will learn a lesson that I think you already know. War is the king and father of all, my son. Some men it makes lords, and others it makes slaves. Do you understand?'
'No,' I said.
'Ah!' he said, and laughed – at himself. 'The strife I preach – some men master it without knowing why, and use it for themselves, without a thought to consequence. War makes them lords and kings. But they are not good men. The killer lies in every man – closer to the surface in some than others, I think. I saw the killer in your eyes when first your master led you up the steps.' He nodded. 'If you would master the killer in you, you must accept that you are not truly free. You must submit to the mastery of the laws of men and gods.'
'Men fight wars!' I protested.
'And men return from them, confused as to what the laws of men and gods ask of them.' He looked at a raptor, climbing in the distance over the mountains. 'That bird can kill twenty times a day and never be the agent of evil – merely change. But men are not animals. What they mate and what they kill becomes who they are.' He looked at me. 'You are a warrior. You must find yourself a path that keeps you among men and not among animals. Avoid the confusion. Law is better than chaos.'
It doesn't sound like a helpful speech, although I think I can remember every word. And yes, that line about strife and war – he said it all the time, and it's in his book. Don't think I was the first to hear it, either. But it stuck.
Listen, all of you. There are men and women – you're old enough to know – who discover what their nether parts are for and go mad with it. It is the same with killing. Turns out that killing is easy. Inflicting pain is easy. Cleisthenes learned that. And when I gave him the other half of the lesson, he never got to benefit from it. Perhaps if he'd had a teacher like my teacher… For weeks the ships came up the river and dropped soldiers – Greeks – on our shores, and we gathered a mighty army. At least, we thought it was an army. Aristagoras promised us an easy fight. He said that the Persians had short spears and no shields and that their riches were there for us to take.
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