When we asked if we could meet this Sclerus (who was out when we called, visiting a family of admirers in the city), the princes smiled and said, Of course; but if we were thinking of trying to lure him out to our games, we'd be disappointed. For all his wonderful prowess, they explained, Sclerus hadn't even been to the Argive games. He'd told them the reason why - he didn't want to run into any acquaintances from his younger days, he said, who might recognise him and mock him for his afflictions or (even worse) pity him. After all, he who had once been a prince was now nothing but a wandering hireling, and it would shame him almost to death to be seen in such a state by someone he'd once presumed to call his equal.
While we were listening to this load of old rubbish, trying to keep our faces straight, I kept glancing sideways at our new friend Pentheus; but he sat there perfectly still, with an expression on his face like it'd been flayed off the bone, stuffed with basil and juniper berries and put up in the rafters to mature.
Well, we still had a few days to go before it was time to leave for Argos; and the Princes of Asine apparently weren't sick to death of the sight of us yet; so we decided to accept their invitation to hang around and go with them to Argos. That suited me; we were reasonably safe from Pentheus' enemies while we were in the palace, we were on hand in case Alastor and Tachys showed up, and (best of all, as far as I was concerned) there was a chance that this obvious rogue Sclerus might serve, as it were, as a mirror in which my dear sister might see a true image of young Pentheus. Also, the food, though plain, was reasonable and I'd had enough of walking to last me. Just sitting down was nice.
I can only assume that Sclerus found out that there were strangers staying at the palace, because he sent word that he'd been invited to stay a day or so with his friends in the city. I may have smirked to myself when I heard that, but of course I kept my face properly shut. Not for me to go making trouble for someone who'd never done me any harm. But Pentheus, of all people, seemed to have contracted a burning desire to meet this Sclerus, and nothing would do except that Demodocus, one of our hosts, should take him to the house where Sclerus was staying, so he could see him.
I frowned when I heard that; but again, none of my business. Where Pentheus went, of course, Dusa had to go too, as nurse and guardian; and where my sister went in her unstable state of mind and heart, I was going. Cleander didn't want to be left in the house with nobody but the older prince, Aristippus, to talk to (Aristippus was large and solid and knew at least two words, 'yes' and 'no'), and Sarpedon came along - well, I don't know, maybe he thought there was a better chance of getting into a fight in the city than in the palace. Anyway, he joined us, and off we went.
We found this Sclerus holding court - no other word for it - on the threshing-floor of a large farm just outside the walls. There was a crowd there all right; the family, the farmhands, a mob of kids of various sizes, and a quite disproportionate number of young women. They were watching Sclerus practising the long jump, and quite a performance he was making of it, too. He had a pair of stone jumping-weights - the kind you hold in your hands and swing in front of you to add momentum to your jump - and for a few minutes all he did was wave these solemnly backwards and forwards through the air, a manoeuvre that seemed to me to have little therapeutic effect, but which did show off the muscles of his chest and shoulders to great advantage. He had a piper playing to help him with his rhythm, a young lad with rather more enthusiasm than skill.
When he'd finally done flexing, he actually condescended to make a jump.
You know how it's done; you start off by squatting down, as if sitting on a chair that isn't really there; then you swing the weights back as you topple forwards; then, just as you're about to lose your balance and go down smack on your nose, you swish the weights forward and up, kick with your legs like a frog to boost yourself up in the air, push your feet out in front, let go of the weights and land on your toes. If you've got it all right, you make a nice clean mark in the dirt with your heels. If you've got it wrong, you either flump down on your bum hard enough to jar your spine out of your ear, or you topple forwards and smash your chin.
Sclerus was - well, competent. He didn't fall over or damage himself, and he cleared seven paces, which isn't bad. But neither is it astoundingly brilliant, especially if you're using the big weights. Certainly it wasn't good enough to warrant the rapturous applause of his audience. Anyway; I was bored, and I'd seen enough. I looked round for Demodocus, to suggest we go back to the palace.
But while I was looking the other way (don't you hate it when that happens?) Pentheus must've slipped past me, through the crowd and on to the floor. First I knew of it was when this sort of buzz went round the crowd; I looked, and saw Pentheus blithely picking up the discarded weights. He'd pulled off his tunic and sandals and was heading for the mark.
Then Dusa was tugging at my arm. 'You can't let him,' she said loudly, 'he's not well enough, he'll hurt himself.' Well, I don't think any other argument could have persuaded me, but she'd hit the spot, like a first-class archer.
'Nonsense,' I said. 'If he wants to try his luck, let him.'
Don't suppose I could have stopped him anyway; the crowd wouldn't have stood for it. They were gawping with happy, happy faces, which was more than could be said for Sclerus (he was shooting mustard at Pentheus as if he could burn him to death by sheer malevolent glaring). Anyway, after a couple of desultory wafts of the weights, Pentheus jumped.
It was very quiet after he'd landed. Even I was impressed; the jump was a shade under nine full paces, which is longer than I've ever seen, that's for sure. A moment or so later, the silence turned into frantic cheering and yelling, and Pentheus had to scramble up a ladder into the hayloft to keep from being pulled to bits by all those ecstatic girls. The poor thing.
'So?' I muttered, to myself more than anybody else. 'The boy can jump. So can a frog.' But it wasn't over, not by the length of a good furrow.
Once Sclerus had quit breathing fire, he stomped over to the ladder, climbed up a couple of rungs and challenged Pentheus to a wrestling match. Pentheus poked his head down out of the loft, agreed and came down the ladder. The crowd pulled back. Someone darted forward with a rake to level out the dirt. Dusa was babbling away about opening up half-healed wounds and how could I just stand there when a man's life was in danger? Fortunately, the noise from the crowd was so loud I could legitimately pretend I couldn't hear her.
It's a cold fact that most really high-class wrestling matches are extremely boring to watch, since for most of the time the two opponents dance round each other in circles looking for an opening, and even when they stop prancing about, nobody gets snapped in half or thrown through the air - if they're good wrestlers, they're too good to lay themselves open to anything like that. No, they just grab each other round the waist and heave until one of them gives in or falls over. That's upright wrestling, of course. Ground wrestling is for kids and dogs.
I have a confession to make at this point. It's not something I'm proud of. But they say that shame is like a dead rat under the floorboards; you keep it stashed away in your heart for long enough, it'll smell the place out. So please, don't make matters worse by laughing or jeering, because I think I've punished myself enough for this already.
Very well, then, when I was young - too young to know any better - I was a bit of a games-player myself. To be precise, I dabbled in wrestling and heavy wrestling for a year or so. In fact, to be cruelly accurate, it's all Cleander's fault. You see, when we were kids, he was much bigger and stronger than me, and naturally enough tended to use me the way a dedicated swordsman uses his stout oak post bound with straw; he used to bash the shit out of me as a way of honing his martial skills. This is, of course, the way of things, as ordained by our ancestors and by Nature herself, so I had no right to complain; nevertheless, there were times when, as I picked myself up out of the dust only to be kicked back down again, I wondered if there might not be another way.
I found it in the teachings of
an old man who came to visit us once. He was a prince and a famous warrior, so what he was doing wasting his time on a snot-nosed kid I don't know. But he sat watching one day as Cleander worked me over - he just sat there, on the tailgate of a cart, as if we were putting on a show for his benefit -and as I limped away, all dusty and snivelly, he beckoned me over and asked if I fancied learning how to wrestle. Now, at that age - I was, what, eleven? - the word 'learn' had unfortunate connotations of boredom and irrelevance; but then this old man, whose name's leaked out of my mind many years since, explained that not all learning is a waste of time, some of it can be used to inflict salutory pain on elder brothers. That got me interested; and for the next few days I suffered at the old man's hands instead of Cleander's.
At the end of it, though, I discovered that for some perverse reason the god had hidden away in the dark rafters of my heart a knack for wrestling; and once I'd paid back Cleander, capital and the debtor's sixth (for which I got into deep and painful trouble, thereby learning a lesson about justice as well as wrestling), I decided to carry on and practice a little more, since at last I'd found something I was actually good at. In the end I grew out of it, along with a number of other nasty adolescent habits; but (and here's the point of the story) even now I can remember enough to know a good wrestler from a lucky one, and to spot who the winner of a fight will be before the first grip's taken or the first tooth loosened.
There's two kinds of wrestler - strong and skilful. Sclerus was strong, no doubt about that. Whether there'd be enough of Pentheus left to fill a small jar depended entirely on his level of skill. I couldn't wait to see the outcome.
First came the oil-bath; then, when both men were properly shiny and sticky, they solemnly rolled over three times in the dust, to give each other something to grip on (one of my strongest memories of wrestling matches was the awful embarrassment of having to roll over in the dirt in front of a crowd of people I'd have to talk to afterwards). As they got up, I noticed Sclerus surreptitiously wiping his oily hands down his waist and thigh - this is, of course, cheating, since it makes it harder for the other man to get a grip; but of course I didn't say anything, and I don't suppose anybody else there knew enough about the game to understand what he was up to.
Sclerus, being bigger and stronger, immediately went for the heave. He ducked his head down low, butted Pentheus in the stomach and tried to grab him round the thighs to lift him off the ground. To his credit, though, Pentheus was ready for that; he brought his knee up under Sclerus' chin before he had a chance to get a grip, there was an aesthetically satisfying crunch, and Sclerus wriggled out of the heave in a hurry. There was blood at the corner of his mouth, which suggested that he'd bitten his own tongue.
To my surprise, Pentheus immediately tried the same manoeuvre on Sclerus - a shrewd move, since it was the last thing Sclerus was expecting. It was all very good in theory - Pentheus got a good grip, his head nuzzled well into Sclerus' groin to stop him using the same tactic he'd just used on Sclerus, but he just didn't have the strength for the lift itself (not that all that illegal oil made it any easier). Sclerus, meanwhile, had got his arms round Pentheus' neck - you lay yourself open to that, no matter how good you are - and was proceeding to pull his head off at his leisure.
That wasn't doing Pentheus any good; so he let go and grabbed for Sclerus' right leg, taking hold around the inside of the knee. That made it easy enough for him to lift Sclerus' right leg off the ground, at which point he rolled sideways, puffing them both down. It was an elegant way out of an awkward situation, but it hadn't got him anywhere, and it was plain enough for anybody to see that Sclerus had given him a hard time with the neck grip.
I was just starting to feel quietly confident when Pentheus pulled off a manoeuvre I'd only ever heard about, and never expected to see in real life. It took me entirely by surprise, so you can imagine the effect it had on the crowd, not to mention Sclerus.
In theory, it goes like this. You face off against the other man, then crouch down, actually turning your back on him. The tricky part is grabbing hold of his wrist with both your hands as you make the turn - get that wrong and the next thing you'll see is the Ferryman's boat nudging towards you through the reeds. But if you manage to catch hold and hang on, you then use your own crouching-and-turning movement to pull the other man over your shoulder and through the air, slinging him off you like a big, heavy sack. It's called the Flying Mare, and I never dared try it myself, so I'm going purely on what other people have told me.
I guess that's what Pentheus did to Sclerus; I'm guessing, because they were turned sideways on and away from me, and it was all too quick anyway. All I saw was Pentheus apparently cringing away, followed by Sclerus sailing gracefully through the air, crashing head-first into a fence-rail and flopping like a dropped cloak.
Damn, I thought. That certainly seemed to be that; Sclerus wasn't moving, and Pentheus was slowly getting to his feet with a big, happy smile on his face. My fond dream of taking Pentheus' shattered and mangled corpse somewhere quiet and dumping it in a ditch thinned and faded like the smoke from a fire. Even so; it was the first Flying Mare I'd ever seen, and even if I wasn't impressed, my heart was. I suppose it's part of being human, you can't help feeling good when you see the little man make a fool out of the big man, even if you happen to be the big man's mother.
But if I thought Sclerus was through, I misjudged him; credit where it's due, either stamina or cold, blind fury got him back on his feet again, and after a stagger or two he managed to stay there.
'All right,' he said, mumbling past a thick lip. 'Heavy wrestling. What do you say?'
Pentheus shrugged. 'All right,' he said.
Dusa, who'd been hopping up and down with bloodthirsty joy, froze open-mouthed, then shrieked 'No!' at the top of her voice. The reaction of the rest of the crowd, however, showed that she was in a minority of one.
Do you know what heavy wrestling is, as opposed to upright wrestling? No? Well, that's fair enough. After all, you're from a much more refined and advanced nation, as you've been at pains to point out. It figures you don't go in for heavy wrestling; and all credit to you, it's a decidedly uncouth practice, not to mention crude and dangerous. I guess that's why we Sons of the Achaeans like it so much.
Heavy wrestling isn't really wrestling at all; well, you can wrestle if you like, but you can also punch, kick, bite (in theory you're not meant to, but I've never seen a games-player penalised for it) -pretty well anything that can cause pain or injury without the use of tools. Skill helps, to a certain extent; but heavy wrestling is mostly for very big, strong, nasty men who like to break bones.
It didn't take an expert to predict how Sclerus planned to fight. He had longer arms and longer legs; he'd rely on kicks and punches. Pentheus, on the other hand, would want to get m close and grapple.
Now usually, a contrast of styles like that makes for a long, boring match - the big man launches his blows, the little man stays out of his way, and nothing happens until someone makes a mistake or trips over, after which the contest is short and very one-sided.
Sclerus did just as I'd expected. He came out 'jabbing and grabbing' as the saying goes, trying to land a punch or get a grip on wrist or forearm, so he could pull Pentheus in close for a knee to the groin. Pentheus danced out of the way all right, but he danced round, not away; instead of trying to keep his distance, he was constantly trying to get in closer. It was a good tactic and he carried it out well, but Sclerus had the wit to see what he was doing and after a few passes managed to anticipate; he feinted with his fist and lashed out with his knee at where he reckoned Pentheus was going. He wasn't far out, either. Needless to say, Pentheus doubled up -but the god put it into his mind to take advantage of his misfortune by grabbing Sclerus' ankle before he could get his foot back on the ground. Sclerus wobbled as Pentheus shifted his grip to the foot itself, got both hands to it and twisted it sideways, like a man killing a chicken.
That's a truly horrible noise, a joint g
rinding and tearing. Sclerus looked more astonished than agonised; he was still upright, pivoting on his one good foot, and he clubbed his two fists down hard on the back of Pentheus' neck. Pentheus felt that all right; he straightened up, trying to push Sclerus over as he went; failed, and made a quick grab for Sclerus' left hand. He only got hold of one finger, but that was all he needed. The sound the bone made as it broke was a sharp click, like a well-made lock turning.
This time Sclerus screamed; but instead of falling over, he grabbed Pentheus round the shoulder with his right arm, for support as much as any hope of damaging him. It was almost as if that was what Pentheus had been playing for all along; he let his feet go, taking Sclerus down with him, then rolled on to his back, got his foot right into the pit of Sclerus' stomach and kicked for all he was worth. Sclerus shot through the air, landed on his belly, skimmed a yard or so through the dust like a flat stone on water and then lay completely, definitively still. Not hard to see why, once you'd noticed the angle of his head on his shoulders.
It was so quiet, you could have heard a rat scratching itself. I don't think Pentheus realised he'd killed Sclerus until he'd slowly and awkwardly hauled himself back up on his feet. I imagine he was wondering why everybody was so quiet after he'd just pulled off a flawless Eagle-and-Fox throw (starting, I may add, from a very difficult and unorthodox position). Must've thought we were a miserable lot, or we'd all wandered off somewhere during the fight.
Then he saw the body. He looked at it curiously, as if he'd seen something similar once upon a time, but couldn't quite place what it was. Then, in what I can only describe as a thoroughgoing breach of good taste, he walked slowly over and prodded it with his toe. Finally, he smiled - though it wasn't one of your regular smiles, having little to do with happiness.
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 22