Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  That's the odd thing about my sister. Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, she was nothing but a pest, a tomboy, an unmarried sister with nothing much to do except annoy anybody ill-advised enough to get within range. The one remaining day, she'd suddenly get serious about something - no way of knowing what it was likely to be, it could be anything from whether we ought to go to war with the Triphylians, the fact that we were wasting the last few apples of last season's crop because we weren't laying them up right in the store, the fate of a three-legged dog or a poor man being bullied off his land by a rich and powerful neighbour. Whatever it might be, once Dusa got serious about something, the best thing to do was either agree with her or catch a ship to Egypt. She wouldn't give up; she was like a young dog with a rat. Persuasive? Why the god should choose to put such good words in her mouth, I don't know - if he wanted the point made, why not put them in the mouth of someone people would listen to, rather than some girl? But maybe that's something gods do to show off, or to make things challengingly difficult for themselves (or think of how Apollo put the truth in the heart of Cassandra, and then made it so nobody would ever believe her; a way of giving fair warning to people he wanted to destroy. Strange people, gods; I'm glad that generally speaking we don't have much to do with them).

  Anyway; I'd known Dusa long enough to understand that once she got that look in her eye, there wasn't much point arguing. She'd win the argument, no question about that, and it's embarrassing for a man to be worsted in argument by a woman in front of his kin. It's like seeing a great prince shot by some peasant with a bow - you know that he was the better man, and if they'd have come to blows he'd have won; but somehow the lesser has overcome the greater, and although his death can have no meaning he's still dead.

  And besides, it wasn't just a matter of persistence, or even just a knack of being able to win arguments. There were times when Dusa was genuinely right.

  And you can all take that look off your faces, thank you. Let me try to explain it to you, before you put me down as a lunatic. Now, as is tolerably well known, the god made women's minds separately from those of men, and different in many ways. Men's minds are like the river or the deep water; the current runs slow and steady under the surface, guiding him firmly and straight along the right course. Women's minds are like the wind, swift but blowing from many directions, as likely to send them off course as to take them where they're meant to go; they puff out the sails of the ship until you'd think they were full to bursting, but if you look there's nothing in them except air. There are times when the god puts a quick, sharp, clever thought into a woman's mind - they call it intuition - and as many times when he fills her mind with mist and salt spray, whereas the thoughts he puts in a man's mind are long and deep, and perhaps it may take him many years and a lot of bad experiences to understand what they really mean.

  But just occasionally, the god seems to make a mistake, like a drunken herald; and he puts a woman's thought into a man's mind or the other way round; which is why some men sometimes do stupid, ill-considered things, and some women occasionally come out with wise, sensible advice. I don't know why, but Dusa seemed to get more than her fair share of these misdirected thoughts - possibly the top of her head looked like a man's when seen from directly above, it's as good an explanation as any - and always when she was in that serious mood of hers. Our father had an uneasy feeling that at times the god chose to speak through her, or maybe whisked her off asleep into the clouds and took her shape, as the gods are known to do (which explains why people sometimes appear to do things that are entirely out of character; but of course, it's not them but the god. A man's character is one of the few fixed and unchangeable things in the world). Anyway, he was the sort of man who doesn't take chances, so whenever Dusa gave him that grim look and told him to do something, he invariably did it, on the off chance that it was a god talking, not his little girl.

  Anyway; if there's a point to this digression, it's that you should always try to listen to what's said to you, no matter who says it. Listen to the actual words themselves. Women, day labourers, foreigners, children, it doesn't matter, you've got to pay attention, just in case.

  'All right,' I said, leaning back against the tree and closing my eyes.

  'Uncle, what do you reckon?'

  Sarpedon clicked his tongue. 'I think we ought to go home now,' he said, 'before we come to harm and make fools of ourselves. On the other hand, I've always wanted to go to Argos.'

  (And that's a case in point, because if ever there was a woman's thought in a man's mind - but nobody else noticed. Dusa just nodded, and Cleander said, 'Well, there you are, then.' They weren't listening, you see.)

  'All right,' I said, 'we'll go to Argos, try our luck there. If it's no better, we'll call it a day and go home. Agreed?'

  'Interesting place, Argos,' said Sarpedon, 'so I've heard.'

  'Really?' I sat up a little. 'What's so interesting about Argos?'

  'I don't know,' Sarpedon replied, 'I haven't been there yet.'

  So off we went. Since Tegea was directly on our way to Argos, we decided we had nothing to lose by going there first; Tegea had not one but three games-players, brothers, all chariot-racers (they have plenty of space for horses and chariot-races in the flat plains of Arcadia). There was a chance that we might be able to persuade one of them to listen to us, even if the other two were dead set against.

  When we got there, we were amazed. In fact, we wondered if we were in the wrong place.

  'This can't be right,' Sarpedon muttered as we walked under a splendid high-arched gateway and up a wide street towards what was obviously a rather fine palace. 'I know about these people, I've fought wars against them. They're nobody. Are you sure this isn't Argos?'

  At some stage, apparently without mentioning it to anybody, the Tegeans had found prosperity. Not to mention extreme wealth. The street was paved with lots of identical flat stone slabs, with a gutter running down each side. Many of the houses couldn't have been more than ten years old; on some of them the whole of the thatch was still golden yellow. As for people, the place was full of them.

  'Where did they all come from?' Sarpedon demanded, of nobody in particular.

  Now, although we knew there were three chariot-racing brothers, we only knew the name of one of them: Thoas, which coincidentally was also the name of the previous king, against whom Sarpedon had fought his war. It took us some time and no little embarrassment before we finally figured out that all three princes were called Thoas, just as every male child in the royal family had been for the last nine generations (named, someone later explained, in honour of their ancestor, the celebrated hero Thoas. Before you ask, I haven't got a clue who the celebrated hero Thoas was, either). Anyway,

  Cleander and I exchanged quick don't-ask glances and tried to act as if this was all perfectly normal; I guess the Thoases were used to it, in any event, because they didn't seem to take offence.

  To the point; yes, they'd be delighted to come and race chariots, under any pretext whatsoever. It so happened, they told us while shovelling fine white bread and roast mutton into our faces, that a couple of very strange men from up our way had passed through Tegea only a day or so before, strongly urging them not to go chariot-racing in Elis. They'd been so very passionate and persuasive about it, they said, that all three brothers had at once made up their minds to find out if there were going to be any chariot-races at Elis in the near future, and go to them; wasn't it lucky, they went on, that we should drop in and give them the information they needed?

  As gifts, we gave the Thoas brothers one embossed bronze cup, one silver-hilted dagger and one magnificent but slightly damaged grasshopper brooch. They were very pleased with the presents -'You just don't see old things like this any more,' Thoas assured us, beaming - and in return gave us a whole bunch of stuff, a lot of it so good that I'd have kept some of it if only that had been possible -genuine imported Assyrian and Egyptian metalwork, a harp, a couple of gold collars, and other things j
ust as good. Perhaps we were too enthusiastic to be tactful, and they guessed from our reaction that we'd been expecting junk; anyhow, Thoas nudged Thoas in the ribs and said, 'Why don't we tell them the story,' and Thoas nodded and said, 'Yes, why not.' Thoas didn't seem to object, so they told us.

  All this stuff, they said, and a whole lot more, including some they'd used to finance the improvements to the palace and the city, was part of a ransom they'd been paid by some mad foreigners. The weird thing about it was, they said, that the ransom wasn't for a living man, or even for the body of someone killed in a recent war; it was for a jarful of old bones that someone had dug up under his floor. They were not, Thoas put in, ordinary bones; they were enormous, and at first the man hadn't thought they were real bones at all. He'd thought they were a carving of some sort, because they were set in stone, like the comb in set honey. Maybe they were a carving, Thoas went on, for all he cared they could be a carving, or just some old, very long bones. Didn't matter a damn. Anyway, the man who found them slung them out behind the house along with the rest of the spoil, where they were noticed by this madman. He almost foamed at the mouth, he was so excited; he scurried away and came back a few days later with some other madmen, and nothing would do but they had to have these bones. The man who found them was all set to let them take the nasty, heavy things away and save him a job; but Thoas here got to hear of it and had the foreigners brought in, just to see if they were as crazy as everybody made out. Well, no sooner had the foreigners realised who we were than they started talking about gold and ransoms. We thought they thought we were going to hold them to ransom, but luckily, before we could say, No, we don't do things like that in Tegea, Thoas realised that they were actually talking about ransoming the bones.

  Well, we all stuck wise-owl expressions on our faces and said that it wasn't really on; these were, after all, extremely long bones, and a good long bone is hard to find in this degenerate age. The foreigners went berserk; they all started yammering at once and offering us gold and nice things by the cartload. Thoas and I were all set to have them gently slung out - after all, fun is fun, but not when it gets out of hand - when one of the maniacs mentioned something about having brought the first instalment with them, just in case; so we humoured him and let him go to fetch it, and back he came with - sure enough - an ox-cart stuffed tailgate to box with the most wonderful stuff you ever saw. Thoas nearly burst into tears, but we managed to keep our faces straight and said, All right, three more like that and you can have the bones; at which the loons grinned at each other as if they'd just tricked us rotten, and we parted the best of friends. Sure enough, the ox-carts came rolling up full of goodies, and left full of bones. And that's the end of the story- 'What are you grinning at?' Cratus said. 'It's not that funny.'

  The Phoenician tidied his expression up a little. 'Sorry,' he said.

  'But you don't know, do you?'

  'Don't know what?'

  'About Tegea.' The Phoenician sat up straight. 'Which, incidentally, isn't there any more. Well, it is, but you wouldn't recognise it now. It's just a village; no walls or palaces, certainly no princes called Thoas. The Spartans captured it, you see; they wanted some of the Tegeans' land. But every time they tried to take it by force, the Tegeans gave them a damn good hiding and sent them home again.'

  'I'm not surprised,' Cleander put in. 'Like my brother says, it's a big city.'

  'Was a big city,' the Phoenician replied. 'Anyway, the Spartans sent a message to the Oracle, asking why it was that they always lost against the Tegeans; and the Oracle said that so long as the Tegeans kept hold of the bones of - well, some hero or other, I can't recall the name offhand - so long as they had these bones, the hero himself would defend them and nobody would ever defeat them. Then, about twenty-odd years later - and this is what I was told - a Spartan prince sneaked into Tegea, stole the bones (which were of monstrous size) and took them home with him to Sparta; whereupon the Spartans knew they were going to win and led out their entire army for a full-scale assault on Tegea. They won, hands down, and that was the end of that. Now the Spartans have become terribly brave, without the Tegeans to beat them up at regular intervals, and have started conquering cities all over the place.'

  There was a brief silence.

  'Oh,' said Cleander.

  'That's a pity,' Cratus said. 'It was a fine city, and they were very kind to us when we needed it most.'

  The Phoenician, who'd been grinning like a dog, bit his lip and mumbled something. After a while, Cratus carried on with his story.

  We left Tegea (Cratus said) feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves - I wish you hadn't told me that, about the Spartans; I liked them too, you know - and headed north, towards Argos. We hadn't gone more than a day's march when we came across a most distressing sight: a man lying in the road, covered with blood, apparently dead.

  'He's still alive,' Dusa said, after taking a closer look.

  'Oh,' I said. 'Well, that's all right, then.'

  Dusa gave me yet another of those looks. I pretended I hadn't seen it.

  'Cratus,' she said. 'We've got to do something.'

  At this point Uncle Sarpedon bent down and looked too. 'We could take his boots,' he said. 'There's plenty of wear left in them.'

  'Uncle!'

  Well, there wasn't any point in arguing. I could have told her, no good ever comes of picking up strays on the road, making yourself responsible for someone who could turn out to be nothing but trouble, somebody's enemy, that's how innocent men get caught up in blood-feuds; but that would only have wasted still more time. At least the bastard wasn't wearing only one sandal- 'Huh?' said the Phoenician.

  'Oh good, you are paying attention.' Cratus smiled indulgently.

  'Sorry, Sons-of-the-Achaeans joke. In our rich and colourful heritage of myth and story, a stranger encountered on the road who's only wearing one sandal is going to turn out to be the exiled prince out to avenge his dead father, sure as flies in summer. And what does the usurper who killed said father do, on encountering a one-sandalled man on the road? Have him killed on the spot? No fear. No, he invites him home, plies him with food and drink, tells him all about the one weak spot in the magic spell that makes him otherwise completely invulnerable, gives him detailed instructions for finding the magic sword that's the only weapon capable of killing the hundred-headed dragon who guards the royal treasury, practically orders him to seduce his beautiful daughter - well, anyway, you can bet next year's vintage that by the time the story grinds to a halt, the evil but naïvely warm-hearted usurper's head will be hanging from a hook in the city square, and the one-sandaled man will be in the palace, commissioning new tapestries for the upstairs room. I guess that the germ of truth these stories are intended to pass down from one generation to another is, if you find a one-sandaled man lying in the road, jump on his head with heavy boots on.'

  'Ah,' the Phoenician said. 'Actually, we have remarkably similar stories where I come from, except that with us, it's babies found floating down rivers in wicker baskets.'

  'We have some of them, too,' Palamedes interrupted. 'Though generally speaking, babies found abandoned on hillsides are more usual.'

  'Indeed,' Cratus said gravely. 'And that, my friend, raises a rather interesting point. We've all agreed, I think, that the only way a mortal man can hope to cheat death is by being remembered for his great deeds and wonderful adventures; and we remember Perseus and Bellerophon and Theseus and Jason and a score of other one-sandaled foundlings, so that they may never wholly die, but will live for all time in the Happy Islands. But if you stop for a moment and think just how remarkably similar all these stories are, how many common ingredients they share, doesn't it raise just the tiniest blemish of doubt in your mind that maybe the stories aren't true? That maybe there never was such a person as Perseus or Bellerophon or Jason? That somebody made them up, just for the sake of the story? And if that's possible, if you can't believe in the truth of tales of ancient valour - well, the whole principle come
s crashing to the ground like a tower built on a sand-pit.'

  'But who would do such a thing?' Palamedes asked. 'Who'd deliberately make up a story he knew wasn't true? And more to the point, who'd want to listen to a story they knew wasn't true? It'd be a waste of time, surely. Not to mention dangerous for the man who made it up; if people realised what he was doing, they'd be bound to get very angry.'

  Cratus shrugged. 'Very true,' he said. 'But people do the strangest things.'

  The Phoenician noticed that the blind man, Cleander, was getting up. 'It's all right,' he announced, 'my dear brother hasn't mortally offended me. But I've got cramp in both legs, and unless I walk it off I'll be in agony. You carry on the story without me. I know it all already; I was there, after all.'

  'Take care,' Palamedes said. 'You there, move the trestles so he can get through. Do you want me to send anybody with you?'

  Cleander laughed. 'Palamedes, I've been blind longer than most of the people here have been alive; and I've known this house longer than you have. I can find my way twice round the orchard and back without breaking my neck, I promise.'

  Anyway (Cratus went on), there we were looking at this mess we'd found lying in the road. And if you've all done with interrupting me for a while, perhaps I can get on and tell you what happened next.

  We were standing there, like I said; and suddenly we heard thudding hooves and jingling harness, and there was a chariot coming up behind us, alarmingly fast. Of course, I jumped clear, since I've never had all that much confidence in other people's ability to control horses; Cleander did the same, displaying an unusual level of common sense. Dusa, though, took one horrified look at the chariot and started dragging at this stranger's arm, trying to pull him off the road before the chariot ran him over.

  It was one of those moments when the god empties your mind of calm, rational thoughts and fills it with a buzzing swarm of panic and instincts. Instinct told me to grab hold of Dusa and get her out of the way, but Panic had pegged my feet to the ground, making any impulsive notions I may have been harbouring somewhat irrelevant; in other words, I stood as still as a tree with my mouth wide open, watching to see what would happen.