by Gary Corby
I had to agree. Mercenaries who’ve failed their job don’t hang around.
“Thanks, Alekto. Listen, we’ll tell your son that you died a hero in battle.”
“I wanted to see my son grow up.” I thought he was about to sob, but he managed to hold it in. “I guess this means that’s it. For me I mean. There’s no way I can recover from a broken back.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said gently. “How would you like me to do this?”
“I dunno.”
“I thought you hardened mercenaries always thought about how you wanted to go, if it came to that.”
“Standard campfire talk. Tough guys talk about it all the time, but I never could make up my mind.”
Terrific.
“I used to think maybe being decapitated would be best,” he offered. “Real fast, you know?”
I rubbed my chin while I thought about it. “I can probably find an axe around here somewhere,” I said.
“But then I decided it’d be terrible,” he finished.
“Oh.”
“Think of the mess.”
“I know what you mean. How about I stab you in the heart? That’d be quick.”
“But then I’d see the knife go in. Besides, what if you missed? I’ve seen guys writhe around for ages with a dagger stuck in them.”
“All right. How about I choke you to death.”
“Gods no. Imagine struggling to breathe.”
“Then I could hit you on the head with a club?”
“And have all my brains squelch out? No thanks.”
“Drowning? I could carry you to the river.”
“I couldn’t bear to feel the water flooding my lungs. Besides, I can’t swim.”
I decided not to argue the logic of that.
“Poison?” I suggested in desperation.
“I’d have to swallow it, knowing it was going to kill me. No thanks.”
“Dear Gods,” I said in exasperation. “There must be some way of dying that you’re happy with.”
“Look, mate, I seen a lot of men die in a lot of ways, and you know what? Not a single one of ’em looked happy.” He paused, then added, looking at Maxyates’s body, “Except for your friend here. He took it real well.”
“Then be like Maxyates,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not coated bright red, either. And I’m no philosopher.”
“Then I don’t know what to do, Alekto,” I said, now very irritated. “Unless you want us to let you lie here while you waste away. It’ll probably take a couple of days and you’ll hate every moment, but that’s your choice. I’m doing you a favor here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m having trouble getting used to this. In a moment I’ll be dead. I never expected to die.”
“Most people do, you know. Die, I mean.”
“But do they ever think about it? Do you?”
“Sure I have. In my business, you’ve got to think about what could go wrong.”
“You don’t believe it though, do you? If you did, you wouldn’t be cracking jokes. No one ever thinks they might actually die. I know I didn’t, until this moment.” A tear trickled down his cheek. “I’m scared.”
“There’s no need to be scared.” It was Diotima. She’d walked up behind me and I’d never noticed. “You’ll pass from this life to the next.” She knelt beside Alekto and held his hand to comfort him, then realized he couldn’t feel a thing and put it down again. “Do you know what they drink in Hades?”
“Yeah. Dust.”
Diotima shook her head. “They drink good wine in a beautiful meadow called the Elysian Fields. It’s a peaceful place of fine, warm weather. Believe me, I know. I’m a priestess.”
Her words calmed him.
Alekto said, in a quiet but clear voice, “All right, I’ve decided. I think a sword might be best.” He thought about it some more. “Yes, definitely a sword. That’s the best way to go. Straight in the heart.”
I said, “I don’t have a sword.” But I knew someone who did. “Hold on, I’ve got it! Wait here,” I said, and then realized what a stupid thing that was to say to a man with a broken back.
I ran to the other dead soldiers. I snatched a sword from a hand and ran back. I stood above Alekto with sword in hand and said, “This ought to do the trick!”
I gripped the handle in both hands and raised it, point down, ready to plunge into him.
“Not with that!” Alekto shouted in horror.
I lowered the sword. “What’s wrong now?”
“We got that gear from the White Fort. It’s a Persian sword. I don’t want to be killed with a Persian sword,” Alekto said. “I want to be killed with a proper Hellene weapon.” He paused. “Well, to be honest, I don’t want to die.” Now he began to cry. “My son . . . I have a son. I want to see my son.”
Beyond his head, where he couldn’t see it, Diotima had quietly drawn her priestess knife, which she always kept in a pouch about her. It was the knife she used to make sacrifices. The blade was short but very, very sharp.
She looked me in the eye and I looked back and gave the smallest nod.
Djanet saw our plan. She said, “Close your eyes, Alekto, and tell me about your son.”
Alekto closed his eyes and managed to stop his sobbing, but he said nothing. He was silent for so long that I thought he might have gone unconscious, but then he said, “We got a place near the beach. I take him on the sand to play. He likes to run on the sand. Runs into the water and out again and I chase him around.” He smiled. “Best times of my life, on that beach, with my son.”
His eyes still shut, the tears gone, he smiled at the memory.
With one swift motion Diotima leant over and cut his throat.
The blood spurted into my face.
Alekto opened his eyes and gave me an aggrieved look for the briefest moment. Then his eyes dimmed and rolled up into his face and he was gone.
We all three stood up and silently walked away from the corpse. None of us could bear to be near it.
“Was it true what you said?” I asked Diotima. “About the Elysian Fields?”
“Yes, it’s in Homer, but the Elysian Fields are only for the favored of Zeus. I have a feeling that doesn’t include Alekto. I lied to him.”
To call us exhausted would have been a wild understatement. It was barely mid-morning, and already we had fought off mercenaries, survived a crocodile attack, and given our friend Maxyates the gift of death. We lay in the shade of a date tree and ate the dates.
Too many good men had been lost in this struggle for Egypt. I was becoming almost afraid to talk to anyone, for fear it marked them for an early demise. I was furious with Pericles for putting me in this situation.
There was one subject however that had to be addressed as soon as possible.
“Herodotus, you told me you’re a Persian agent.”
“It’s true,” he said. “Well, sort of. It’s a family tradition. We’ve always been happy to find out things and let people know, including the Persians. My father says that’s why I’m so obsessed by history. It’s really very similar to spy work!” Herodotus prattled on, blithely unaware of our shock. “It all began with my Great Uncle Phanes—”
That name was familiar. I struggled to recall where I had heard it before. Then I remembered that the man who had betrayed Egypt to the Persians all those years ago had been called Phanes. Phanes of Halicarnassus. That was what the Blind General had called him when he told us the tale. Phanes had gone over to Persia, and in revenge the Pharaoh had murdered the sons of Phanes.
Phanes of Halicarnassus.
I was lying next to Herodotus of Halicarnassus.
Diotima made the connection at the same time I did.
“Do you mean to say that the man who betrayed the last Pharaoh of Egypt to the Persians was your uncle?
” Diotima said, aghast.
“Er . . . yes,” said Herodotus. “That is to say, he was my great uncle.” Herodotus was a stickler for getting his facts right, even when it made him look bad.
“The Persians have been friends of my family ever since,” he said. Into our cold silence he added, defensively, “My family is as Hellene as you are! It’s only that we can also see the Persian side of things. I try to be balanced about loyalties—”
“Are you reporting to them now?” I asked.
“No.”
“Is that the truth?”
“If I had access to the Great King’s court, do you think I’d be lying under this tree surrounded by corpses?”
It was a fair point.
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” I demanded.
“It was irrelevant until you told me we were looking for the crook and flail. I came here as a tourist, remember? Then, when the Blind General told his story, it didn’t seem the best moment to mention that Phanes was my grandfather’s brother.”
Diotima ignored this argument and instead said, “Until now, there were only two men with a connection back to those days: the Blind General and Tutu. They both died for their knowledge. Now there’s a third man. You, Herodotus.”
Herodotus said, “You think that I am—”
“Marked for death,” Diotima said. “Yes. I wonder if the Public Service knows about you?”
“They must,” I said.
“The Public Service keeps records about everything,” Djanet said. “It’s what they do.”
“That, and arrange assassinations,” I added.
“No, they’re terrible at that,” Djanet said seriously. “Look how many attempts they’ve made, and you’re still alive. Typical Public Service inefficiency. They should have hired a private individual.”
“But I know nothing that anyone would want to kill me for,” Herodotus said.
“Hmm. What can you tell us about your Great Uncle?”
“He returned from Egypt a bitter and disappointed man. Of course I knew his sons, my second cousins, had died here. He never spoke of the manner of their death. I must say I was horrified when I heard what the Blind General had to say.”
“Did he talk of anything else? Such as for example the crook and flail?”
“If he had, I would have mentioned it before now! It’s a terrible thing, what age does. Here was a man who was a mover and shaker in the world. His acts decided the fate of nations. Yet his own sons died and he was reduced to bitterness.”
He had also betrayed Egypt. I glanced over at Djanet to see what effect these words had upon her, but she seemed to take the story with equanimity.
Herodotus spoke on. “As an old man, Phanes would sit on his own in the agora at Halicarnassus—there was an inn that kept a table out front, just for him—and he would watch the people go by. He would talk about things, but I’m ashamed to say that as a young boy I didn’t listen.”
As the day wore on, Herodotus and Djanet slept. Diotima and I stepped away to prepare the bier for Maxyates. Living wood is no good for fuel, especially not for a funeral pyre. But the Nile was lined with many palms, and the dead ones had quickly dried out in the intense heat. Not far away was a grove that must have been standing for many years, because half the trees were leafless and lifeless, but still standing. I had pointed them out to Djanet. “Will those burn?”
She looked and said, “Yes. They’re called Doom Palms.”
The name wasn’t encouraging, but they would do for what we needed. Diotima and I went to collect some. The dead palms proved to have only shallow roots. By pushing on one side I was able to get each trunk onto a tilt, after which I could bring it down by climbing the other side and letting my weight do the work.
“This news clears up a lot of questions,” I said as another palm hit the ground. “We think the Public Service knows about Herodotus. What about Barzanes?”
“He must,” Diotima said, as she stooped to collect branches that had fallen from a nearby sycamore. They would make fine tinder. “It was his own side that employed Great Uncle Phanes.”
“Barzanes never gave anything away,” I said glumly. “But Barzanes being the Eyes and the Ears, he was the one man who knew for sure that his own side hadn’t hired Herodotus. When you and I turned up with the nephew of Phanes, Barzanes automatically assumed that we knew what we were doing.”
“Do you realize that the moment we turned up in this country with Herodotus, we advertised our intentions?” Diotima pointed out.
“I keep feeling that all through this mission, everyone but me has known what was going on.”
“Everyone but us,” Diotima corrected. “I missed it too.”
Diotima was strong enough to carry the thin ends of the trees. We raised a platform by placing pairs of palm trunks crossways until they were just high enough to let a fire burn below. Then we placed a row of palms sideways to make a bed on which Maxyates could lie, then covered this with dried palm leaves. It was the best we could do.
“Do we have a chance here?” I asked my wife. “Should we declare failure and return home?”
“If we do, then Max died for nothing,” Diotima said.
“There is that.” After a pause, I said, “We have to assume Barzanes knows we’re here for the crook and flail, or if not that, then certainly something connected with Inaros.”
“He guessed that all along anyway, I’m sure of it,” Diotima said.
“Yes. I wonder why he let us loose for so long?”
“On the strength of our results so far, I’d say it’s because he had nothing to fear.”
“I’m here to find the crook and flail for Inaros. Barzanes is here to find it for the Great King. Markos is here to make sure Barzanes doesn’t leave Egypt alive. Maybe also Herodotus.”
“I thought we’d decided that Barzanes came to Egypt to investigate his own people: the commanders who were losing the war for Persia.”
“He was,” I agreed. “But as soon as he saw us and Herodotus, he must have changed his mind. Remember he’s the Eyes and Ears. He can make decisions for the Great King.”
“This is guessing, Nico,” my wife said dubiously.
“You’re right,” I said. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? I feel like I know the inside of Barzanes’s head. When he learned that we were after the crook and flail, he realized that the same logic applied to his Great King. If Artaxerxes arrives in Egypt with the crook and flail in hand, he can claim that Psamtik bequeathed them to the Persians. Enough Egyptians will believe it that Inaros won’t be able to unite the people. Barzanes could win a bloodless victory for Persia.”
“What about Markos?” Diotima said.
“I can’t see inside his head,” I said. “I don’t think anyone could.”
“All right then.”
“This changes things again,” I said. “If we can’t have the crook and flail, then we have to make absolutely sure that Barzanes doesn’t get it. That would be the worst of all possible worlds.”
We cremated Max in the evening, after Apollo had left the sky. To my shame I didn’t know anything about Max’s religion. I had never thought to ask him. Nor had Djanet. Nor had Herodotus, despite their long conversations about the nature of religion. But Diotima was an accredited priestess who had once served at the Artemision, the same place where Max had chosen to study, and we decided a Hellene rite would be best.
Herodotus and I carried the body to the pyre, while Diotima sung hymns to Artemis. I placed a coin under Max’s tongue. He would use it to pay Charon the Ferryman to cross the River of Woe, on his journey to Hades. Djanet lit the pyre. It took a little while to catch, but when it did, the fire roared high.
The one thing we did know about him was that Max had been proud of his Trojan heritage. As the flames consumed his body, Herodotus recited from Homer’s Ilia
d. He spoke of the Death of Hector, that valiant hero who had died defending the walls of Troy.
Camel Delight
We discovered the camels next morning, tied up exactly where the mercenary had told us to look.
Djanet was the only one who knew how to ride them.
“It’s not that hard,” she said. “You just have to hate the camel more than he hates you.”
“Sounds easy,” I said.
“Camels can do a lot of hating.”
We also found spare supplies. Lots of them, enough for eight soldiers and more than enough for two men and two women.
The mercenaries had brought flasks of bath oil with them, and a strigil for scraping off the dirt. The two women crowed with delight and made off to give themselves a proper clean.
Best of all, there was wine. Two flasks of real Hellene wine.
“If you drink that all at once we’ll have to sling you over the camel,” Diotima warned.
“No fear of that,” I said, as I liberally watered a cup. “I have to make this last.”
The only thing they didn’t have was paper. Herodotus grumbled about this. He had used up his entire supply in taking notes. I’d never known a man to fill so much paper. But this was Egypt, the home of paper. I was sure we’d find some soon.
That was assuming we ever got the camels moving.
“Do you know what to do once you’re on?” Djanet asked.
“Of course.”
I was an expert horse rider. I figured that a camel was merely a lumpy horse.
Djanet whacked my camel with a stick.
“You’ll hurt it!”
“You can’t hurt a camel. You can only irritate it.”
The camel knelt on its front legs.
“It’s a bit uneven,” I pointed out.
“It’ll even out once you’re on.”
I clambered on.
The camel instantly rose.
“Aaargh!”
I still wore my exomis, standard wear for a working Hellene man, but it didn’t include underwear. That was how I discovered that camel hair is tougher than horse hair.