15
I never saw Byzantium that trip. The storm hit us four days out of Cyprus with a hull full of copper. We ran before it, because we were crossing the deep blue between Cyprus and Crete and we had nowhere to land and we didn’t dare show the low sides of our trireme to the wind.
It hadn’t been a good trip. We’d had weather out of Ephesus, weather all the way to Cyprus, weather while we collected copper and weather while we rowed – all rowing, no sailing – to Crete.
Men looked at me. I was the foreigner, and the gods of the sea were angry. Well they might. I was an oath-breaker, fleeing from my oath to Hipponax, and the sea had no love for me.
I took turns with Herk at the steering oars. We’d been trained well, Archi and I, when we made the runs up to the Euxine and across the wine-dark sea to Italy. I could handle a ship, even a long killer like Herk’s light trireme. I marvelled at the Athenian build style. They really were pirates – the hulls were thin as papyrus, and the ship itself was narrower and lighter, and the rowers were packed even closer than rowers in Ephesian ships – free men every one, with a sword and a couple of javelins, the richer men with a spolas or a thorax.
South and east of Crete, the weather seemed to abate and we made a good landfall, and the first night that we slept on a beach, every man kissed the sand. I speak no blasphemy when I say that the furies must have had a lot of law-breaking and oath-breaking to pursue. Perhaps some other bastard took up their attention.
Cretans aren’t like other Greeks. The men of Crete are war-worshippers, and they have aristocrats and serfs – most of the farmers are not free men at all, but something like slaves. Only the aristocrats fight, and some of them still use chariots. I didn’t think much of their primitive agriculture. It is a curse of youth that you cannot keep your mouth shut and so, on our third night in the ‘great hall’ of the local lord, Sarpedon of Aenis, I found myself arguing with local men about how best to grow wheat and barley. I used an unfortunate phrase in the heat of my anger at the fool’s intransigence – we don’t call them Cretans for nothing – and this fool called me out, demanding blood.
‘You must be joking?’ I asked. I’d had some wine.
He slapped me like a woman. ‘Coward,’ he said. ‘Woman.’
Idomeneus came and told me that I had to fight or be ashamed. I laughed. I wasn’t ashamed and I had little interest in fighting. But the lord glowered and the other men hooted at my apparent cowardice.
His name was Goras, and I killed him. He was a good fighter, but half drunk and no match for me. The only danger was from the darkness and the drink – I vowed never to fight under such conditions again. His first blows were wild and thus dangerous, but I set my feet and put my spear into his throat and down he went, and the hall fell silent. Herk shook his head. He gathered me with his other men, paid an indemnity and took us away. In the morning we sailed, heading west along the south coast of Crete.
‘That cost me the whole value of my trading there,’ he said to me in the morning. ‘Can’t you keep that sword in its sheath?’
I wasn’t surly. In those days, killing often brought me a black cloud – I would sit alone and mope. But I heard his words, and they were just words.
We had good weather as we coasted Crete, and we sold our Athenian olive oil and beautiful red-figured and black-figured vases at enormous profit in the market of Hierapytna, and the mood of the crew improved. But not for long.
Herk took me aside after we were invited to the lord’s hall. ‘Could you refrain from killing anyone until our business here is done?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Silent as the grave.’
But of course, I wasn’t.
In truth, there’s little I could have done about it. Word of my fight up the coast had made it here. And word of the Ionian Revolt was everywhere, and men behaved like men – like warriors. As they had taken no part, they had to belittle those who had. As we had lost, we were to be humbled.
I have watched this pattern play out too many times. More wine, here.
We were in the lord’s hall, and Herk had sent Idomeneus to watch over me. I was quiet, listening and not talking, striving to be the sort of man – well, the sort of man that Eualcidas had been, silent and cheerful. Grown men always tell you that this is the way of excellence, but they neglect to tell you that it is easier to be silent and dignified and cheerful when you are forty and have won ten battles. It’s like getting women – much easier when you are too old to enjoy them.
Hah, I’m a foul old man. Too true.
I listened to them demean the Ephesians and the Athenians, and I said nothing. I said nothing when they laughed at Aristides’ youth. But I suspect my attempts at dignity weren’t much better than stubborn glowering. I was easy meat. Finally, an older man, a leader, came over to where I stood, and he grinned.
I grinned back – glad that someone, at least, was interested in being my friend.
‘I heard that you killed a man down the coast,’ he said. ‘But I have to assume you stabbed him in the back. I mean – look at you. No intestines. No reply to the insults we heap on you. Or are you some sort of woman?’ He laughed, showing all his teeth.
I sputtered. This is where heroes are supposed to make a good speech, but I was taken by surprise and I failed. Blood rushed to my head and when Idomeneus tried to hold my arm, I punched him in the mouth. Then I turned.
‘You want to die?’ I asked. I don’t remember what else I said – just that.
He laughed. And threw a punch, a fast punch, right through my defences, and knocked me flat, dislocated my jaw.
I lay there in a rage of pain, and he laughed again.
‘This is their great killer?’ he asked his friends. When I got to my feet, he didn’t even take a stance. He feinted, and then I was on my back again, and my right temple felt as if his knuckle had gone through it.
They all laughed – all except the Athenians. They didn’t laugh – but they did nothing to help. My friends – the men I’d fought beside – they weren’t all on Herk’s ship. And Herk himself shifted uneasily, but he stayed put.
Not cowardice. Just being practical men of business.
I got to my feet slowly. I wasn’t thinking too well. And I was filled – suffused – with the purest spirit of Ares. Ares, the hateful god. I was glowing with hate. I felt betrayed.
I was young.
My tormentor came forward again and I stumbled towards him, and he laughed. They all laughed. That’s what I remember best – the laughter.
The rage and the hate were all through me, and with them came a plan, and I followed my plan.
I let him chase me around the hall. I fell over benches. I accepted the humiliation, backing, always backing – running, even. Oh, yes. I was the coward he thought me, step by step, and men roared with laughter to see my antics.
Except Herk. He knew me, and his eyes grew big, and when I was close to him he yelled something at me, pleading.
Then my head cleared. Two heavy blows to the head do not leave you with much, in a fight. But if you are used to taking blows – and I was – you can get your own back, if you stay alive and keep your blood pumping. I’d run around the hall for five minutes by then, and I’d taken blows – to my abdomen, but it was thick with muscle, and to my thighs, where the other tormentors rained their fists on me as I hopped past.
When my head was clear, I jumped a bench and a kline in one bound and stood in the open space in the middle of all the men. He came at me, and he was still laughing.
He threw his punch, and I caught his fist in the air and broke his arm. The sound of his arm breaking was like a limb snapping from a good, old olive tree.
Then I broke his neck.
And they all stopped laughing. I said nothing. I watched them lie on their couches frozen in the act of fondling their boys.
Now they had the rage and I was calm. I watched the rage flow out of me and into them. He’d been someone they liked – someone they fancied. Now he was meat.
>
They were warriors. They had elaborate codes of honour, and they did not rush me like a pack.
Herk shook his head and all the Athenians gathered together. Knives began to appear around the hall, and swords.
I let my eyes rove over the Cretans, looking for a leader. I’d like to say I was like a ravening wolf, or a lion who had just killed a bull – but I was shaken by the killing. I had broken his arm – had I always meant to break his neck, too?
Yes.
‘He attacked me,’ I said to the room. ‘And insulted me. How would you have me respond?’
Herk touched my shoulder and I flinched, not from fear, but because I was tense, waiting for them to rush me.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Before they kill you.’
They let us walk away. I still wonder about it – I didn’t see fear in them, only rage – the same engulfing redness I had felt.
We were not welcome after that. No mess – the Cretans live in messes of warriors, like the Spartans – no mess would have us to dinner, and no man would trade with us. My fellow oarsmen looked at me with fear and I heard them whisper behind my naked back as we rowed the long ship west along the south coast of Crete. That was a black time.
We rowed along the coast and the next night we camped on a beach. I tried to sleep by myself, but instead I sat awake, watching the stars. Then Herk came, and Cleon, the man who had held my back when we sacked Sardis.
They shuffled, and I shuffled. Hard to explain how men who can fight and kill in the phalanx can’t tackle, oh, many things, like talking to a friend who’s doing wrong, or getting a girl you really like to look at you. So many ways to be a coward. So we sat a while, looking at the stars.
‘I can’t keep you aboard,’ Herk said, suddenly.
There it was. We’d all known what he had to say. I had hoped for something different, but I knew – I knew from the heavy silence. Nor had I forgiven them – for letting me down. Nor had they forgiven themselves – so they held it against me. See? Nothing is simple.
So I watched the stars a while longer. But my rage mostly died with the man whose neck I broke, so after a longer pause than anyone wanted, I said, ‘I know.’ I shrugged, I think. But I was bitter, and young.
‘Tomorrow we will come to Gortyn,’ Herk said. ‘The richest kingdom on Crete. The king is always hiring mercenaries. I’ll do my best for you – I promise. By Hermes, lord of trades. But you – my friend, you are under a curse, and it burns black over your head, a sign for every man who can see. And your curse kills. The men – they should love you. You are a hero. Instead, they’re afraid of you. And so am I. I can’t risk taking you across the blue water to Piraeus. Someone will put a knife in you, and feed you to Poseidon. One storm – that’s all it would take. They’d gut you.’
I nodded. ‘I just want to go home!’ I said suddenly.
Herk looked away.
Cleon put an arm around my shoulders. I’ve never forgotten that. Cleon stood by me. Later, I stood by him, and if you keep listening, you’ll hear. But he said, ‘Herk is right. And you can get a ship to Piraeus – in the spring. Stay here a while. Make some money. Go to a priest – find out what you’ve done. Purify yourself.’ The arm tightened. ‘Stop killing.’
Aye, I think I wept.
Herk was as good as his word, too. Better.
Gortyn sits in the mountains above the sea – a strong place, if not a beautiful one, and it rests on the bones of an older castle, and that rests on stones placed by giants and titans – the past is all around you, at Gortyn, so that when you stand in their Temple of Poseidon Earth-Shaker, you can look down through a hole in the floor at the stones placed by the gods, a thousand lives of men ago or more.
The port town is called Levin. The lord of Gortyn owns all the towns on that stretch of coast, and nowhere have I been in a place where the divide between low and high was so deep. As deep as the sea – as high as the grey-white mountains that rise from them.
Herk sold me, in effect, bragging about my fighting skills and my learning to the king and his leading warriors in the king’s mess. The king had a palace but he spent no time there – instead, he lived with nine other rich aristocrats in a fine marble building on the street that ended with the ancient Temple of Poseidon. The building was new-built, but in the fashion of an old-style megaron. The ten men had their couches arrayed around the hearth, and there were more slaves than you could shake a stick at.
I stood silently while Herk talked me up.
‘He’s a killer,’ one of the aristocrats said. ‘He killed Laenis down at Hierapytna – that’s what we hear. What happened? You – lad, tell it yourself?’
I shook my head. ‘Men mocked me,’ I said. ‘Mocked my friends, mocked the men I stood with in battle. I became angry.’
The king’s name was Achilles. He was old enough that his hair was mostly grey – all grey on his chest and back, although he had muscles on his chest like a statue. He nodded.
‘My son needs to learn from a killer. But not if the killer can’t control himself.’ He got up. ‘Let us hunt a boar tomorrow, gentlemen.’
They all nodded. Hunting is an excellent way to take a man’s measure, and they were going to take mine.
I remember that I slept badly – not from worry, but from shame. Or rather, fear. Was I mad? Had the war god taken my wits?
Tired and red-eyed, I walked out of the guest megaron as the sun rose, found a spring on the hillside and washed. For the first time in many days – perhaps longer – I prayed. I prayed to Heracles my ancestor, and to Athena, because she was the enemy of Ares and I wanted no more from Ares. Then I walked down the hill to where forty or fifty men were gathered with spears. Naked. On Crete, men always hunt naked. The highest fashion is to have a perfect body. And having put in the work to have one, no one wanted to cover that work with cloth.
I got my spears and stood with them. The king emerged from his mess with his officers, and they shook hands with or embraced most of the men there, and then the dog-handlers came, and we were off – up the hillside, past my spring.
The day went on and on, the sun rising hotter and hotter on us. The dogs flushed two pigs – and both evaded us, so that the men began to talk of nets. But the king would have nothing to do with them. I heard one voice, shriller and angrier, demanding nets, and I could see the resemblance. This was his son. He had enough spots to be a fawn.
The third pig that the hounds eventually flushed for us was a little bigger than a dog and not very dangerous. But she was smart enough to keep the dogs off her and fast enough to make us run to keep up, and before long, I was the only man still pacing the front coursers. Those men were all in top shape, but I’d been at war – and at an oar – all summer, and I was half their age. I ran up the mountain and I began to catch the dogs. It was so steep that I knew that if I stumbled I’d have to stop and climb – but for the moment, momentum and pride kept me going, and I could see the pig.
I had no idea about the etiquette of Cretan hunting and no desire to annoy the king. In any case, Lord Achilles had bandy legs and a broad chest and ran slowly, but he was strong as an ox and had the open friendliness that only big men seem to have. Despite his ugly body, men liked him. He was a powerful lord. And he was next behind me on the mountain – the others were way behind us. Slow he might have been – but he wasn’t to be stopped. And there I was, love-sick and fury-hounded, sprinting along beside the lead hound, wondering what Artemis would have me do.
The pig lost her nerve when she saw a stand of oak. We were well up the mountain and the ground was rough with stone. The oaks were scrubby things, nothing like the trees of Cithaeron, but I knew what she meant to do. I put on a burst of speed and threw one of my heavy spears – missing the pig, but turning her away from the trees and back towards the hunters.
She lacked the experience of hunting to know what to do. She turned and I stooped, picked up a jagged rock and threw it just beyond her. She turned again and the pack closed in on her.
Achilles came up with his officers and their lovers and there were ten spears in the pig within a few heartbeats. I got my spear wet in her blood out of habit. In some circles, a hunter who does not wet his spear is a coward, or not a man – different hunters have different habits.
Old Achilles – he seemed old to me, although he was ten years younger than I am today – took me by the shoulder. ‘Well done. You are a man of courtesy – like a warrior of the old times.’
Achilles’ eldest son – I had pegged him correctly – was introduced. He was just a year or two younger than me, a lout named Nearchos, all pimples and straggly black hair and youthful anger. He glowered at me and then turned away, affecting boredom.
‘My son is a rude fool. Nearchos! This foreigner is a man. He has killed in duels and in war. Look at him! No need to run a little pig down and kill it when he could share the kill with the rest of us – he doesn’t need that little glory for himself, see?’ Achilles squeezed my shoulder. ‘He needs a man to take him in hand and show him the path.’ He winked at me.
Nearchos looked at me from under his eyelashes and then blushed and turned his back, more like a maiden at the well than was quite right.
As we walked back to the hall, Idomeneus took my spears. ‘They want you to be his – well, his lover. His erastes. To teach him the ways of the world.’ Idomeneus batted his eyelashes at me.
I rolled my eyes. Boys will be boys, and what happens after a hunt is not for a maiden’s ears, but I’ve never understood the peculiar mating of boys and men that some practise, and even if I did appreciate such stuff, Nearchos’s face would not have launched a single scow, where Helen’s launched a thousand ships.
On the other hand, I was flattered to be treated as a hero in a foreign land. Back at the hall, the pig grew in size with every retelling, and my act of generosity was magnified to near legendary status.
Herk took me aside. ‘They love you,’ he said. ‘I thought they might. Will you stay?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ I asked.
Herk shrugged. ‘Don’t be a prick. I’m doing my best for you.’ And he was.
Killer of Men Page 33