by Laura Gill
Perhaps the man had a wife and children, and aged parents waiting for him at home. Perhaps he had been a decent man who always remembered to honor the gods, and whose neighbors liked him. What would they think when he did not come home?
I did not even know his name.
I did this, I thought. I sent this man down to Hades. His blood is on my hands. It was nothing like the stories; it was a sick and empty and sad feeling. I glanced away from his shattered skull. Never in a thousand years had I expected to feel sorry for an enemy I had killed.
My gaze settled upon a leather wallet protruding from the dust and debris. Pebbles and loose dirt scudded down behind me; Timon was trying to negotiate the path without his walking stick. I hurried over to help him.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
“Yes.” I did my best to hide my emotions.
Together, we searched the corpse. Aside from his weapons, the man had been carrying dried fruit and meat, a whetstone and flint, and two gold rings he must have received as payment. I showed them to Timon. “We don’t have to walk across the Isthmus now. This will get us across the Gulf of Corinth.”
Once we finished stripping the corpse, we dragged it behind some rocks and covered it with loose dirt and brush; it was not a proper burial, but far better than simply leaving his corpse lying out in the open where someone else might find it.
By then, it was getting toward late afternoon. I gathered kindling for a small fire and helped Timon climb back up to the lookout, which was as good a place as any to make camp for the night.
“Let us pour a libation for the dead man’s shade,” he said. “Otherwise, he might follow us.”
I agreed wholeheartedly with the idea; it was the correct thing to do. Even in war, Philaretos had said, opposing sides always called a truce after battle to collect the dead, and allow the proper rituals to be observed, because all men feared the restless dead. Only, again, neither of us knew the dead man’s name. I performed the rite, anyway, substituting water from the skin for wine, and invoked Hermes, guide of the dead, to spirit the man’s shade away to the hither shore of the Styx. Then we shared some food from the wallet, and watched the fire in silence.
Timon said nothing about my having shed a man’s blood. I wished he would have asked and given me the chance to confess my mixed feelings. But to come out and admit it outright, when he had not broached the subject, would have shaken his confidence in me.
Chapter Nineteen
The next day, we left the hill country, heading northwest through the lowlands toward the Corinthian coast. Travelers were thick in this region. Some of them were itinerant merchants, others men returning from the war, but most were pilgrims journeying between the sanctuaries of Nemea, Eleusis, or Delphi.
Anyone else headed for Phocis would have fallen in among the pilgrims traveling to Delphi. That was the expected thing to do, and therefore it made me uneasy. If Aegisthus had trackers in the hills, he must have realized that we were headed north rather than south. An astute tracker would search first among the pilgrims. So whenever possible, we continued to travel alone, and in time grew comfortable with the solitude.
A fortnight after setting out, we came to a shady, well-watered place a day’s journey from Sikyon. As the day was pleasantly warm, we bathed in the stream, then washed our clothes and the fleeces. Timon spread everything out to dry in the sun. I built a fire, then, clad only in my loincloth and sandals, I took the dead tracker’s bow and went hunting.
Artemis sent a hare to meet my arrow. I thanked the goddess for my good fortune, and carried the carcass back to camp to skin it and offer her the thigh bones and succulent fat. Tonight, Timon and I would enjoy a hot meal.
I was not expecting what awaited me by the stream.
Timon lay doubled over on his side, clutching his stomach. A man stood over him with a sword. What was this? I let the hare slide to the ground, stealthily drew an arrow from my quiver, and fitted it to the bowstring. No common brigand was going to rob and murder a companion of mine!
Then the man bent down to Timon, prodded him with the sword, and barked, “Where is the brat?”
He was looking for me! I took in his sword and ox-hide shield. A tracker. I aimed the arrow at his unprotected back and drew the string.
The creak of greased horn and wood alerted him—he had trained his ears for the sound--because he moved faster than my arrow could lodge in his spine. With the shield slung on his left arm, he pivoted and deflected the missile, which stuck fast in the ox-hide. “There you are, boy!”
I fumbled to string another arrow, but there was no time to take another shot in the second it took to rush me with the shield. His momentum knocked the bow from my grasp, struck me square on the right, and sent me stumbling. He gave me a feral smile, flashing his yellow teeth, and raised his sword. I regained my balance while drawing my dagger.
He taunted me with false feints, obviously trying to tire me out, to lure me into overreaching and making myself vulnerable. It was exactly how Aegisthus would have fought had he been there.
Lunging in, he scratched my wrist, and with the very same stroke went for my belly. I turned just in time to avoid a fatal blow, but not fast enough to escape his blade; it grazed my right thigh.
My wrist stung where he had scored it, and my thigh. Fluid dribbled down the inside of my leg. Blood. He had gotten me deep enough to draw blood. I dared not tear my gaze away from him to see how bad the wound was.
Laughing, the man feinted right, then switched left so fast that he caught me with his shield, hard enough to send me to the ground. As I stumbled, I lost my balance, and landed on my back; my dagger fell from my grasp, leaving me defenseless. His foot slammed into my left knee to keep me down. Then he tossed aside his shield, and discarded his sword to pick up my dagger.
I tried to punch him. He evaded the blow, and backhanded me in return. Then he pinned me against the ground with his heavier body. Spots appeared before my eyes. I managed to seize his wrist to prevent him from slashing my throat right there, but my strength was already giving out.
I was the son of the High King, and had not gotten this far just so some sadistic tracker with foul breath could cut my throat. It will not end this way! Timon was on his knees a few feet away, heaving and clutching his stomach as though about to retch; he could not help me in this.
As I reached out toward him, my hand brushed against the hearth stones. Ares entered me then, he who ruled over men’s violent impulses, and revels in blood and the screams of the dying. My fingers closed around the stone. I swung it upward, straight into my attacker’s temple. He grunted an obscenity; his dagger point scored my neck as he released me, but it was nothing.
I smashed him again with the stone, even as he raised his arms to deflect me, and again, and again, so the blows cracked his skull like an eggshell, oozing out blood and grayish matter. He slumped over. I hit him until my hand was slick with his gore, and it spattered into my face, and I kept going until there was nothing left of his head to hit, and the god’s presence drained away, leaving me a burnt-out, frightened husk.
He was dead, I was alive, and this time I felt no remorse for having done it. I wept bitter tears, but they were for myself. Timon crawled over to me, pried the bloody stone from my hand, tossed it aside, and held me. “Orestes,” he said, over and over again in a shaking voice. “You are injured.”
“So are you.”
“Just a bit winded and bruised,” he said, “but it is nothing. I am more concerned about you.”
When I finally glanced down at my thigh, I saw why. The tracker’s sword had torn through flesh and muscle. Blood pulsed from the wound. There was so much. I thought I would faint. How much blood could a man possibly lose? “Timon,” I said weakly. “You have to sew it up.” I knew how to suture a wound, yes, but did not trust my hands to remain steady.
Timon could scarcely stand to look at the gash. “Orestes...”
Like it or not, he was going to have to overcome his squ
eamishness. “We need...” My head was spinning. We had no needles or sinew.
Oh, gods. No. Under such circumstances, there was only one other thing a man could do. Philaretos had explained the procedure once, and had even demonstrated using a pig; its terrified squeals now came back to haunt me.
I was a man. I could take this. “Fetch my dagger and some water.”
Timon helped me over to the fire, where he fought his revulsion long enough to pour water over the wound. My arm trembled from the slight exertion of holding the dagger in the fire, and my entire body shook from both blood loss and terror. It was getting harder to remain conscious. Timon could not be trusted to do this. It had to be now, by my hand, or bleed to death. “Hold the edges closed,” I said.
“Orestes...” He kept saying it, as though my name were a prayer to take all this away. But he managed to find the edges and purse the gash closed with his fingers, and hold it that way for what was to come.
When the moment came, I did not hesitate, because hesitation bred fear, and fear meant death, and there was no time left for either. I snatched the red-hot bronze from the fire and clamped it against the seam of the wound. Every nerve in my body shrieked with pain. My gorge rose at the sizzle and stench of burning flesh. I bit back a scream and kept going, drawing the brand along the wound until it was completely cauterized.
Then it was done.
I let the dagger slip from my fingers and fainted.
*~*~*~*
Wounded men often took fever, even when everything was done right. Philaretos once said wound weakness and ague were the gods’ way of ensuring a man did not move about and make his condition worse.
Timon stripped the tracker’s body and dragged it as far from camp as he could manage, and even poured a libation to prevent the man’s spirit from haunting us. He bathed me with water from the stream, and changed my bandage, and must have gutted and cooked the hare, because when I stirred he tried to press the meat upon me.
Horrors visited my sleep. Sap oozed from the bark of the tree under which we had made our camp. Then the trunk became a naked man, his brown skin knotted with years and pitted with old scars, and the man was Father, and the sap was his life’s blood pouring from a dozen gashes, down, down to soak the earth, and the soughing of the air among the leaves was his last, sighing breath. Orestes, avenge...
I’m here, Father. I’m here! Once again, he was leaving me, and I was helpless to stop him. Flames swallowed the tree and the murdered man inside; his flesh blackened and roasted, and peeled away to show the meat underneath. I was burning with him, except my fire blazed from within, from under the skin, hot and then cold, and then hot again. The gods were laughing, laughing, while I cried.
A dog’s barking stabbed like a thousand knives through my skull. It was night now. Cerberus roamed the earth, he had broken loose from his chains. He was coming for Father’s shade, and the dead trackers, and me, because we had died with nothing, and could not find our way below. And there was Charon the ferryman, his two-legged companion: tattered, lean, and dark, who leaned over me to run his cold, skeletal fingers over my burning skin.
Cerberus truly had three heads. I had not expected him to be so friendly. Each head sniffed at me. His three noses were wet and cold, though, and his charnel breath made me choke. Did Hades know his hound was here? Three tongues licked my skin.
“Please, take him with you,” Timon said. “I will follow.”
Charon lifted me in his arms, gathered me against his own darkness and tatters to spirit me away to the netherworld. It was too soon to die, too soon, when I had not even lived.
*~*~*~*
I woke under a thatched roof, naked amid clean fleeces. The air smelled like baking bread and herbs, and stale sweat. An old woman sat spinning wool by the hearth. She was wizened like a dried apple, with gray hair and small hands that twisted the fleece into thread. I did not recognize her, or know what this place was.
At my slight movement, her head turned and she glanced over. She set down her spinning when she saw me awake, and hobbled over to touch a weathered brown hand to my forehead. “Ah! Much better.”
She smelled like dough and fleece, and comfortable homely things. “Where am I?” My mouth was dry and tasted like old vomit.
“Wait.” She went out, and came back several moments later with an old man. He was tall and lean, with weathered skin and white hair, and dressed in simple homespun.
“Fever’s broken,” she told him.
I felt weak and shaky, and not at all certain what to say.
Timon entered just behind the old man; he had washed and was wearing clean clothes. “Alastor,” he said, “you are awake.”
Alastor. Was he addressing me? I had had a friend named Alastor, but... It took me a few more seconds to realize he was using the pseudonym we had agreed I would use among strangers. “Where are we?” I asked.
Timon sat down next to me, as the old woman went to fetch some water. “We are in a little village called Chalkion.”
Chalkion. I had never heard of it. “Is it safe?”
“Safe enough from brigands like the one that got you,” answered the old man. “You’re lucky. I’d never have found you without Hermes.”
The harder I tried to think, the more the effort exhausted me. “Hermes?”
A black and white shepherd dog appeared, wagging his tail. He nosed his way between the two old men. I stretched out my hand to let him lick my fingers. There had been a dream about Cerberus, but this dog had only one head.
“Poimenos is a shepherd,” Timon explained. “His dog found us.”
“He’s a thieving rascal most of the time.” Poimenos bent to scratch Hermes behind the ears. “He’s taken with you, young man.”
Rhene, the shepherd’s wife, made me eat some bread softened in goat’s milk. She refused to let me move except to sit up. “You need your rest, young man. A wound like that takes time to mend.”
“How long?” I asked.
“It’ll be a month, maybe more.”
A month sounded like an eternity. At that rate, we would be fortunate to reach Phocis this year.
A clean bandage covered the wound. I smelled medicinal herbs. “It’ll be all right, won’t it?”
“Oh, it’ll heal, now that your fever’s broken and the ill humors are gone,” she assured me, “but you’ll have a scar.”
Timon described for me our present situation. Chalkion was a small village, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Neighbors had seen Poimenos and a strange old man carrying a redheaded boy from the meadow; they could not help but know about the attack. “They’re a pious and hardworking people,” he explained, to calm my immediate misgivings, “and want no trouble from men or the gods.” The villagers had buried the would-be killer’s corpse and dedicated his gear to Hermes to keep brigands from their doors. As for me and Timon, once they ascertained that we were harmless, they apparently accepted that Zeus and Hermes had sent us to them, and asked no further questions.
Poimenos and Rhene had no children, so Timon and I were the only other occupants of the house. Neighbor women regularly visited with their spinning to gossip with Rhene and fuss over me. Like so many doting grandmothers and aunts, they commented on my pallor and thinness, and plied me with their dreadful home remedies.
As he had assured me earlier, Timon was not injured beyond a few bruises and frayed nerves. The older women flirted with and teased him, and commented on his diction and gentlemanly manners. Watching him try to maneuver around their advances brought a smile to my lips.
Even after my fever abated, though, a persistent lethargy kept me bedridden. Although that was normal after losing so much blood, I thought I would go mad from frustration and boredom. No matter what Timon said, we needed to be gone from Chalkion before someone discovered our true identities and betrayed us. I did not trust his reassurances, for in my experience the world did not contain enough honest people to count on one hand.
*~*~*~*
A week later, a merchant brought news of my father’s death. Poimenos heard the tale first, as herdsmen often did, and carried it back to the village. The villagers picked over the scant, sometimes erroneous details, and shook their heads. Rhene and the neighbor women clucked their tongues disapprovingly, commenting that a man who had so wronged his wife and the gods should not expect a warm welcome home.
I bit back the urge to correct their misinformation and defend my father. Instead, I concentrated on remaining inconspicuous. Whatever facts the merchant might have garbled, he got it right when he reported that the High King’s son was missing along with his elderly pedagogue.
That night, tension filled the cottage. Rhene’s good cheer was abbreviated. Poimenos contemplated the hearth. I knew that the sudden awkwardness had much to do with today’s news.
Poimenos studied me. After several moments, he spoke, “You don’t look like an Alastor.” Yes, he knew who we were. He had guessed at the truth, because it was not that difficult to figure out.
I did not quite know how to respond. Did he even want me to say anything? He was grim, but was he angry, offended that Timon and I had not been forthright with him? I swallowed the impulse to answer lest I blurt out something foolish and ruin everything. Timon did not speak, either.
“Now,” the shepherd mused. “Orestes is a good name for a herdsman’s boy.” Timon started to interject, but Poimenos talked right over him. “I know at least three men called Orestes that live in the hill country. There must be a dozen more near Mycenae.” I held my breath. Poimenos did not sound angry; that must count for something. “That’s what you look like, young man—an Orestes.” He crooked a faint smile. “A redheaded youth from Argolis, such as went missing with his tutor almost a month ago. You even sound like an Argive.” Content with his deductions, Poimenos next turned to my companion. “Are you a scribe, Timon? You look and sound like someone who knows the tallies.”
Even in the flickering firelight, it was obvious that Timon’s face had just gone three shades paler. “Yes, I can read and write,” he admitted shakily.