Funeral Games

by Christian Cameron

  A blow in her side, but the armour under her robe turned the point, and she spun, but they had already closed around her and they weren’t taking chances. She went down almost to the ground and swung her short sword up under a shield and the man screamed as he went down and she was into his place - a blow against her back, and another, and pain so sharp. She felt her vision tunnel and the strength going from her legs, but the other man was there, and she fell at him. She had lost control of her muscles before her sword slashed across the bridge of his nose and his blood fountained across her back. She saw their feet - some bare and some heavily sandalled.

  ‘Fucking whore!’ the Athenian screamed.

  She smiled, even though dark was coming down and she knew just what that meant.

  The solid sound of an arrow going home in flesh - the complex sound of the head punching through the guard’s white leather thorax - would have made her smile again, except that she was too far down the dark path for that. Ataelus, she thought. Alive, and hence shooting. Save my children, Ataelus.

  Then shouts. Feet pounding. The Athenian cursing, sounding like a man with a bad cold.

  Cold - every part of her cold. Lying awake in her wagon on the sea of grass, naked to invite Kineas to play, but cold - and then the warmth, the reward as he came into her bed, warm and the smell of man and horse and dirty bronze that he wore like perfume.

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ Heron said. ‘I gave her to you. You fucked it up.’

  ‘She cut off my d-d-dose!’ the Athenian groaned.

  ‘Nonsense. Most of it is still there. I’ve sent for my healer. Now, what do you want - her head?’ Heron was impatient. She formulated her curse on him, and spat it out, syllable by syllable, like the last drops of honey dripping from a jar, as the darkness came down. And she could still hear.

  ‘Fuck you.’ The Athenian managed to sound as if he had a spine.

  ‘Any more insults and I’ll tell Lord Cassander you died in the fighting. Am I clear? Good. My healer will see to your nose and then I will attempt to rectify your mistake before it costs me more money and more time.’ Heron sounded as he always did - superior.

  ‘You mbissed the little Scyth and dhow his boat’s got away,’ the Athenian said. The shock of his wound was wearing off. ‘You were the fool who gave us away. Burder mbe and Cassander will come for you!’

  ‘If you are an example of Cassander’s might, I have just backed the wrong horse,’ Heron said. ‘Give my regards to the Lady Olympias. Remember - I am to be king of the Euxine. This was the price. Am I clear?’ A pause. ‘She was supposed to bring the brats. Where the fuck are they? I need them dead.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ the Athenian spat.

  Srayanka was losing interest. The cold was going - she could feel his warm feet against hers, and she could smell the scent of old bronze and oil and horse - and a little male sweat.

  As always, Kineas’s touch relaxed her, and she flowed away.

  PART I

  FORGING

  1

  316 BC

  The sand of the palaestra was cool under his cheek, but the weight of his new trainer crushed the air from his lungs.

  ‘You have a good physique for a boy,’ the athlete said. He rolled off his prospective pupil and offered him a hand. ‘But any time you offer a test of strength to a man, he’ll beat you.’

  The new coach had the shoulders of a bull. He stood a head taller than his twelve-year-old student, and he was wider - deep of chest, and with the sort of muscles that decorated heroic vases. His name was Theron, and he had competed for the laurel at Nemea and at Olympia and lost - narrowly - at both. He had come a long way to be the boy’s coach, and he made it clear that he wanted to see what he was getting.

  What he was getting was a slim figure with the muscles of a boy - an athletic boy, but he had neither weight nor breadth. He was handsome enough, with a shock of dark brown hair and wide-spaced eyes. His body was well enough formed, his nose as yet unbroken, and he had not yet sprouted the hair of adolescence.

  The boy grasped his teacher’s hand and popped to his feet. He gave a petulant smile and rubbed his hip. His shins were decorated with bruises, the brown blotches so regular that his mother said that he looked as if he was wearing Scythian trousers. ‘I’ll have you someday,’ he said. Then he relented and grinned, wondering if that was too brash.

  Theron shook his head. ‘You’ve speed and talent, boy, but that chest of yours will never have the width to put my head in the sand.’

  The boy bowed, a natural movement devoid of servility. ‘As you say,’ he said. He didn’t mean it, and his attitude came out clearly in his delivery. In fact, there was a tinge of mockery to the sentence. He glanced at his tutor, another big man, who reclined under the stoa of pillars.

  The athlete’s resentment showed in his suddenly red face.

  The boy’s sister, perched in the cool arch under the colonnade, laughed.

  The new coach - the prospective coach - spun. ‘Girl!’ he said. ‘You are not allowed in the palaestra.’ He inclined his head. ‘Young mistress.’ He moved a hand to cover his privates.

  The males were both naked.

  The ‘young mistress’ rose from her concealment. ‘I disagree,’ she said. She was wearing a man’s chiton over her slim hips and long legs. She was also twelve years old, with the first sign of her mother’s deep breasts and with large and adult eyes of no particular colour. ‘My mother will insist, if you like. I, too, wish to learn to fight the Greek way.’

  Theron, a born athlete who had travelled three thousand stades across the Euxine to take a contract that would make him a wealthy man in Corinth for the rest of his life, stood his ground. ‘It is unseemly for women to take part in athletics,’ he began.

  ‘Spartan women take part in all the games,’ the girl said. ‘My tutor tells me so.’ Her eyes flicked to the big man reclining under the colonnade.

  ‘When he’s sober,’ her brother added. He picked up a strigil and began to scrape the sand off his backside. ‘And he says women run at Nemea. You competed at Nemea, did you not, Theron?’

  Theron looked from one to another, and a slow smile caught at the corners of his mouth. But while the boy was watching the smile, he reached out one hand at the end of a giant arm and grabbed the boy, rotated him and tripped him over an extended foot, pinning him in the sand. ‘In the palaestra, I am master,’ he said. ‘Your sister should not be here. When she returns from making her treaty, I will speak to your lady mother about the women’s events - I would be happy to teach a child with such long limbs to run. But not pankration. Pankration is for men. It is for killing.’

  The girl nodded. It was clear from her posture that she was nodding from courtesy, not in agreement. ‘My mother has killed fifty men,’ the girl said. ‘You?’ She nodded before he could answer. ‘I’ll expect a daily lesson from you, then,’ she said to the recumbent form of her twin brother. ‘It will be good for you to teach me. You’ll have every lesson twice.’

  ‘Master, may I get up now?’ the boy asked.

  Theron leaped to his feet and again extended his arm. ‘Of course.’ He turned his back on the girl and confronted his new pupil. ‘Does your sister watch you train?’ he asked.

  The boy laughed. ‘She trains with me,’ he said. ‘Master.’

  Theron shook his head. ‘Not until I have spoken to your lady mother. Young mistress, please leave the palaestra.’

  The girl nodded again, a slow gesture that was identical to her brother’s nod. ‘We will speak of this again,’ she said. She rose to her feet with muscled grace, showing none of the coltishness of her age, and walked out of the arches, heading to the baths. She paused at the archway. ‘You should call us by our names,’ she said. ‘That is the policy of my mother, and it is a good one. I am not the mistress here, any more than you are master. I am Melitta. My brother there is Satyrus. We are the children of Kineas of Athens and the Lady Srayanka. Our family fought at Marathon against the Medes and on the sea of gras
s against Darius. My father was descended from Herakles, and my mother from Artemis.’ She bowed her head. ‘The only mistress here is my mother, and she has no master.’

  Theron didn’t know many twelve-year-old girls in Corinth who could stare him down. She hadn’t blinked since she had begun to talk. ‘I understand that your father is dead,’ he said.

  The girl - Melitta - gave him a long look. ‘We will speak of this again,’ she said, and went into the baths.

  Theron turned back to his proper charge - Satyrus. ‘I said three falls,’ he said. He glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure that the girl was gone.

  ‘Was that one fall, or two?’ the boy asked. There was no wickedness to his question. He meant it just as he asked it. ‘Master?’ he added, a little late. Have to watch that if I want to keep him, Satyrus thought to himself.

  Theron swung his arms. ‘That was one fall,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

  The boy took up his stance. He was confident in his postures - his tutor knew the pankration well enough to teach a boy. Theron stood without moving, and Satyrus held his stance for as long as it took him to draw twenty breaths and release them slowly. He held it well, his hands high, weight well distributed, left foot forward and ready to kick. Theron began to circle and Satyrus circled with him, carefully keeping his distance. He had misjudged Theron’s immense reach the last time. Now he was careful.

  Theron lunged in, moving from his left foot to his right and reaching with his arms. The boy blocked one of his reaching arms and kicked hard at his knee, but Theron moved a fraction and took the kick on the side of his leg. He grunted.

  ‘Good kick,’ he said as he backed away.

  Satyrus flashed a grin and moved in to attack, spun on his front foot and kicked again.

  Theron grabbed for the leg - he had expected another kick - and grasped air. The second kick was a feint.

  Satyrus whipped the kicking foot around, spinning his centre of gravity. He closed, grabbing Theron’s extended hand with both of his own and throwing his weight to rotate the arm.

  Theron’s other arm shot out and grappled the boy’s shoulders, pulling at him, grasping for a hold to turn the boy’s body and take the weight off his arm.

  Satyrus was too small to resist that grapple long. Desperate, he bit the older man’s left bicep, drawing blood.

  Theron shouted and punched him in the head and Satyrus’s whole body moved with the strength of the blow, but he set his jaw and tried to hold his grip on the sweat-slick muscles of his opponent’s arm. Pressed almost ear to chest, he could hear Theron’s heartbeat racing as he sank to one knee under the pressure of the boy’s attack on his shoulder joint.

  Theron’s second blow to his head broke his hold, and Satyrus fell bonelessly to the sand. It wasn’t that he decided to relinquish his hold - the strength just flowed away from his limbs. He wondered if he was going to die, as men did in the Iliad when the strength left their limbs. His vision tunnelled and the palaestra began to go away. But he could still hear. He heard the big Corinthian get to his feet, his hands brushing away the sand. He heard the sound of someone clapping.

  ‘Good thing that you won,’ came the voice of his tutor. He sounded drunk and sarcastic. ‘Embarrassing to lose to a new pupil. Knocking him unconscious will probably teach him a lesson, too.’

  The new coach sounded upset when he replied. ‘I never meant to hit him so hard,’ he said. ‘Apollo - I’m bleeding like a sacrifice.’ He shifted his weight. Satyrus could hear everything. He could hear the sound of the man breathing. ‘I regret that,’ he said.

  The tutor rose unsteadily, his feet scraping loose sand on the marble floor as he stumbled, every grain giving its own sound to Satyrus’s ears. Then he crossed the sand. Satyrus heard the uneven sound of his footsteps, even on the sand, heard him fetch a canteen from the far wall and felt the cold water hit his face as he sprinkled the contents liberally. Satyrus felt his eyelids flutter of their own volition, and light came to his eyes like a bolt of pain.

  ‘Ugh,’ Satyrus said.

  He tried to sit up, and after a few heartbeats he managed the trick, only to fall on all fours and vomit up his barley porridge. He still had some of Theron’s blood on his mouth.

  Theron knelt at his side. ‘Can you understand me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus replied. ‘Master.’

  Theron nodded. ‘You scared me,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘I applaud you. That any boy could scare me like that is, in itself, a kind of victory. I will take you seriously. Now promise me that you will not bite or gouge in a contest. It is against the rules.’

  ‘Not in Sparta,’ said the tutor. He wiped the boy’s mouth with his chiton.

  Theron sat back on his heels, his puzzlement plain on his face. It was clear from his expression that he couldn’t decide if the tutor was a peer or a slave. He had a paunch and his hair was thinning on top, and he was clearly drunk - functional, the way many hard-drinking slaves went through life, but drunk nonetheless.

  The room was spinning around Satyrus, and he was in no mood to help the new man. Besides, if he couldn’t see that the pins of his tutor’s chiton were gold, he was a fool.

  The drunkard leaned forward. ‘You going to live, boy?’ he asked. The smell of sour wine washed over Satyrus, and he retched again. When he was done, he extended a hand to his tutor.

  ‘Yes, master,’ Satyrus replied. He had no trouble calling the drunkard ‘master’.

  But Theron had obviously not risen to be a champion by underestimating his opponents. ‘You are a Spartan,’ he said to the tutor.

  The other man nodded. ‘I was a Spartan,’ he said. ‘Now I am a gentleman of Tanais.’ The Spartan’s wit dripped with self-mockery.

  ‘Theron of Corinth,’ the athlete said, extending his hand.

  ‘Philokles,’ the other man said, accepting Theron’s hand. Theron made a face suggesting that the Spartan had quite a grip for a drunk.

  The two big men watched each other for a few heartbeats. Theron grinned. Philokles smiled slightly.

  ‘Can I get up now?’ the boy asked. He rubbed his temple. ‘Everything is moving around,’ he said.

  Theron pressed with his thumb at the impact point, his heart pounding, and he showed his relief with a sigh when he found nothing moving under the pressure while the boy tried to hold his head still against the pain. ‘No more fighting today,’ he said. ‘And no afternoon nap. Sleeping after a heavy blow is dangerous.’

  Philokles nodded at the Corinthian. ‘You’ve read the Hermetics?’

  Theron nodded. He raised an eyebrow at the tutor, whose smile broadened.

  ‘I feel better,’ the boy said. Lies. But the lies of virtue. ‘Let’s have a third fall.’

  ‘No,’ Theron said.

  ‘Let’s go fishing,’ Philokles said. ‘A pleasant way to spend a spring day. Aesop would approve, and Xenophon wrote a book on it.’ The Spartan rose to his feet. ‘I’ll find some lines and some wine. Meet me at the stables before the sun is at the zenith.’

  He bowed.

  Satyrus returned the bow, a little unsteady. He went across the sand under his own power and headed for the baths.

  ‘Do you fish?’ he heard Philokles say. His ears were ringing and it was all he could do to walk without putting his hands on the columns for support, but he had done other things as hard.

  ‘My father was a fisherman,’ Theron said.

  ‘I’ll take that to mean no,’ he heard Philokles say, and then he was safe within the steamy warmth of the archway.

  The town of Tanais was the same age as the twins, the newest town on the Euxine Sea, far up the Bay of Salmon. The new settlements spread up the north bank for almost a parasang, with Greek farms interspersed with the heavy stone buildings of the Maeotae farmers native to the valley where the wheat grew like a carpet of gold. Much of the mouth of the river was covered in small wooden wharves and hurdles for drying fish - the famous produce of the Bay of Salmon, the foundation of the fish sauce
that every Athenian gourmand craved.

  Between the salmon and the wheat, the town was already rich.

  The town itself was a small affair centred on a temple to Nike and the accompanying baths and palaestra of a much grander town, built in wood on stone foundations and decorated in the latest fashion. The ivory and gilt statue of the goddess was the dedication of two of the town’s most prominent founders: Diodorus, a soldier of fortune currently far to the south in service to Eumenes the Cardian, and Leon the Numidian, one of the Euxine’s principal merchants. Their names appeared on the founding stones of the temple and the palaestra, on the stone stele to the dead of the town and on the marble plinth at the corner of the new law court. Leon owned the warehouses at the edge of the water, and the stone wharves, and his contributions had dredged the harbour and raised the breakwater that had turned a chain of tiny islands into an impregnable defence against the Euxine’s occasional winter storms.

  The Lady Srayanka, the mother of the twins, was not a Greek woman. Her name appeared on no dedications. No founding stone had her initials, and none of her weapons were dedicated at the altar of Nike, but her hand was visible all along the river. As ruler - queen, some said - of all the Eastern Assagatje, it was her word that kept the settlement free from the predations of the tribes of the sea of grass, and her warriors that made the town independent of the labyrinthine politics of the nascent kingdom of the Bosporus to the west. In her name, the Sindi and the Maeotae farmers lived in safety along the river valley. Her horsemen and the hippeis of the town kept the bandits away from the high ground between the Tanais and the distant Rha, so that merchants like Leon could bring their precious cargoes from the Hyrkanian Sea far to the east - and farther, from Seres itself, and Qin.