Memnon

by Oden, Scott

  “What, indeed,” he said, reaching for her.

  Thalia stiffened as a sound drifted through the door, the squeak of a floor plank. Memnon frowned. A soft knock brought him to his feet. He drew his knife and crossed to the door. “What do you want?”

  “Open the door, you damned pup!”

  Though muffled, Memnon recognized the voice. He lifted the bar. Patron stood in the narrow hall, his attitude one of wariness. He wore a mariner’s leather cuirass, reinforced with disks of bronze pitted from the sea air and waxy with verdigris. A curved sword hung from a baldric over his left shoulder.

  “You risk life and limb going abroad alone on a night like this, Patron,” Memnon said, stepping aside to allow Circe’s captain entrance. “What goes?”

  “Still eager to be gone from Rhodes?” Patron glanced sidewise at Thalia, who stretched catlike.

  Memnon followed his gaze. “I am.”

  “We’re leaving at dawn instead of week’s end,” Patron said, keeping his voice low. He walked to the window and inched the shutter open. Acrid smoke drifted in on the night breeze. “I’ve seen cities under siege, I’ve seen them sacked and burnt, I’ve even seen them decimated by plague, but I’ve never seen a city tear itself apart. Men who were neighbors at breakfast are sworn enemies at supper. All of this because of what, an ideal?”

  “There’s a point in time,” Memnon said, “when the inhabitants of a region or an island come together as one to form a polis. Philosophers call this synoikismos. Father likened it to the way embers can be raked into a pile and a fire built from them. These flames of political unity burn in different ways, but they all need fodder—new ideas, new obstacles, new challenges. Without such nourishment, the polis will consume itself, destroying the very embers that gave it life. Yet, even then hope is not lost. Consider the bird of Ethiopia, the phoenix, whose young rise from the ashes of its elder. If a polis destroys itself, invariably the survivors will band together and a new polis will emerge.” Memnon gestured out the window. “This looks chaotic to our eyes, but in reality it’s part of the life cycle of a city. Rhodes will be reborn, hopefully stronger and wiser.”

  Patron smiled and clapped Memnon on the shoulder. “You are your father’s son, Memnon. It gladdens me to see you well after your adventure in the Assembly.”

  “You heard?”

  “It’s on everyone’s lips.”

  Memnon’s eyes clouded as he leaned his shoulder against the window frame. “What are they saying? Are the democrats cursing me for saving Philolaus’s life? Had I done nothing, perhaps all of this,” his gesture encompassed Rhodes, “would not have come to pass. The democrats would still be in control.”

  “The gods marvel at your arrogance, Memnon,” Patron said. “Even if you’d let Philolaus die, civil war would have been inevitable. Rhodes has chafed for years under Athens’s thumb. The democrats, your father included, are little more than Athenian puppets even as the oligarchs serve the wishes of Mausolus of Caria. Civil war is the culmination of a long chain of events that has little to do with you.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Memnon said.

  “Of course I am. Come, though, make your farewells brief. Some of the others await me out—” Patron stopped as the sounds of a commotion floated up from below, a babble of voices. He and Memnon glanced at one another, then went to the door. One of Circe’s crew had just gained the head of the stairs, his face pale, his brow beaded with sweat. Patron frowned. “What is it, Zaleucas?”

  “It’s t-the mob! T-They’ve murdered Diogenes!”

  MEMNON’S WEAPONS GLITTERED IN THE LAMPLIGHT—A SWORD, A KNIFE, A pair of javelins—their polished iron edges less cold and unyielding than the eyes watching his preparation. At his back, Patron paced like a caged wolf; Thalia sat on a divan in icy silence. Despite his inexperience in the arena of war, Memnon handled his weapons like a veteran, checking balance, heft, and haft. Satisfied, he placed them on the bed and lifted an oilskin bag off the floor. From it, he pulled a leather corselet.

  “Dammit, Memnon! Use your head!” Patron said. “No man can predict the actions of a mob! They’re like a pack of feral hounds, driven mad by the stench of blood. There’s no reason to their movements.”

  “I am using my head! This mob is guided, Patron! The oligarchs are using them to dispose of their enemies! Who do you think they’ll go after next?” The supple corselet, reinforced in the chest and abdomen with bronze studs, slid easily over Memnon’s head. He tied off the thongs that laced down his left side. “Diogenes was one of my father’s staunchest allies. Logic dictates their next victim.”

  “Say it’s true, say they’re going after Timocrates, what do you think you’re going to do? Storm into his home and drag him down to the harbor? Zeus Savior! His own people will kill you if you try that! Then there’s the oligarchs … will you hold them off single-handedly? You’ve fought in one skirmish with pirates! One skirmish! You’re not Achilles, boy! Get out there in that mob’s way and they’ll tear you to shreds!”

  “So, help me!” Memnon said through clenched teeth. “Or were all those hours spent listening to you go on about our brotherhood just wasted time?”

  Patron looked away, stung. “I’ve got a ship to think about, a commission to fulfill, and forty-nine other lads who look to me for guidance. I can’t abandon them and I can’t squander them in a street fight. Not now.”

  Memnon tucked his knife into his belt, slipped the baldric of his sheathed sword over his head, and took up the pair of javelins. “And I can’t leave my father here to die,” he said. “I’ve got to get to him, convince him to come with us. Artabazus will offer him asylum, I’m certain. We—”

  Patron caught him by the arm. “Listen to yourself, Memnon! You’re a fool if you think you can pry Timocrates from Rhodes in her time of need! Not the gods, not the Furies, not even the golden hoard of Midas could sway the man! This is what he’s been preparing for! This is his Great Battle, and he’ll not stop till it’s over!”

  Memnon wrenched free of Patron’s grasp. “I won’t leave him to die! How can I face Mentor if I don’t at least try? What will he say to me when he asks for news of our father and I answer ‘I do not know, brother, for I left him to be slaughtered by a mob’? I have to try, Patron!”

  Patron exhaled, recognizing the futility of further argument. “We all have our fates, Memnon. Perhaps this is yours; perhaps it’s your father’s fate to die here. I cannot say. I promise you this, though: I will keep Circe here as long as I can. Grab Timocrates and get him back to the ship, if you can.” The two men clasped hands. Patron let himself out, leaving Memnon alone with Thalia.

  She sat in silence on the divan, her body wrapped in the bedclothes, her fingers knotted together. Tears wetted her cheeks. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled. “You spoke of logic earlier. Does your logic dictate that you throw your life away to save his?”

  “No, but my blood does,” Memnon said. “He’s my father, Thalia. I have a responsibility to him. I don’t expect you would understand, since—”

  “Since I’m a woman?” she snarled.

  Memnon paused, at a loss for the words to make Thalia comprehend the sense of duty a son possessed for his father. This sacred covenant meant that no matter how bitterly he and Timocrates fought they would stand shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy, unite against a common threat, and lay down their lives if the need arose. Memnon sighed, leaned down, and kissed her hair. In a soft voice, he said, “Remember me with kindness, if not love.”

  The sound of her sobbing followed him into the street.

  THE WALLED VILLA OF TIMOCRATES LAY ON THE NORTHERN SLOPES OF THE acropolis, overlooking the least of Rhodes-town’s four harbors. The path Memnon chose carried him through neighborhoods where the violence had come and gone. Shops and homes gutted by the mob were defiled again as scavengers of every stripe picked through the smoldering ruin, oblivious to the survivors who crept from hiding to survey the devastation. Bonfires spewed a pall of s
moke into the air, a shroud that could not be seen in the darkness, only felt; the flames added an unclean orange glow to the oppressive atmosphere.

  Memnon jogged along. With each step, the impression of the mob being led—focused, rather—strengthened in his mind. The destruction was not wholesale, as one would have expected from a rampaging horde; nor did it radiate out from its flashpoint in concentric waves, as though following the whims of capricious looters. No, this mob kept an even course, unwavering, flowing down the street as water through a sluice. At one point, where the avenue narrowed into a natural bottleneck, the democrats had thrown up a barricade of wagons and carts to dam this rage-swollen river of humanity. It proved too flimsy.

  Memnon slowed. Amid the detritus of the splintered barricade, a score of bodies peppered the ground, some slashed and trampled, others pierced by arrow and spear. A man with the dark copper complexion of a sailor sat against the wall of a building, holding glistening loops of intestine in his hands. He looked at Memnon, confusion plain in his glassy eyes, and opened his mouth to speak. Blood gushed down his chin. Memnon turned away, a cold knot forming in his belly as he grew cognizant of the sounds rising around him. Whimpers of fear and pain mixed with keening wails; stammered prayers were lost amid pleas for succor. The stench of blood and bowel tainted the heavy air.

  “It’s not for the squeamish,” he heard his brother’s voice resonate in his skull. Years ago, he had asked Mentor what his first battle was like, how it differed from the poesy of Homer. The elder son of Timocrates answered him with unaccustomed gravity. “Forget fancy tactics and paeans to the gods. To kill a man, you must face him eye to eye and plant your spear in his guts before he does the same to you. When the blade goes in, you’ll see his eyes change—anger, fear, pain, grief—a whole range of emotions that would do Euripides proud. You’ll hear him scream, an animal sound like nothing you’ve ever heard, and you’ll feel hot blood spurt out over your hands. Then, as the stink hits you, you realize the worst of it.” What could be worse than that? Memnon muttered, his face pale. Mentor draped his arm around his young brother’s shoulder and gave him a gruff hug. “What’s worse is realizing it could have been you.”

  “What would you do tonight, brother?” Memnon said aloud. He crossed through the breach in the barricade. More bodies lay on the other side, victims of a barrage of rocks and hunting arrows, though only one caught his eye. Memnon stopped. In the lee of an overturned produce cart, a white-haired old man lay supine, his face a mask of blood from where a lead sling bullet had sheared through his forehead. For the span of a heartbeat, the icy talons of Deimos clawed at Memnon’s lungs, freezing the very breath in his chest. Is that you, Father? Shaken, he stumbled to his knees. With a strip of cloth torn from the old man’s robe, Memnon wiped away the blood obscuring the corpse’s visage, peered closer, and gave an explosive sigh of relief. The face of an old soldier stared back at him, his oft-broken nose and gaping eye socket the trophies of long-ago campaigns. Memnon closed his eyes, his shoulders bowed as relief turned to sadness, then guilt.

  “I’m sorry, old one,” he whispered. “Be at peace.”

  A commotion caught Memnon’s attention. He glanced up as a half-dozen men barreled through the now useless barricade. A pair of them held torches aloft; the rest carried makeshift weapons—oar shafts fixed with iron spikes, harpoons, and sickles of hammered bronze. Seeing Memnon crouched over a corpse, they took him to be one of their own. One of them lingered, a toothless jackal stinking of piss and rotten onions.

  “Hurry!” he said. “Hurry, before we’re too late!”

  “Too late for what?” Memnon rose.

  “Have you not heard? A bounty’s been offered: ten drachmas for the right hand of every democrat, a hundred for the head of the man who leads them! Hurry,” he said. “They’re about to break through!”

  Memnon ground his jaw in fury, but followed in their wake. Others, too, joined their cortege as it gained momentum. Excited, they brandished their hammers and cleavers and chattered in low voices. As they crested a final ridge, Memnon saw their destination. He slowed, letting the others jostle past him. Zeus Savior! Father!

  From this distance, Timocrates’ home resembled a besieged fortress rather than a villa. An army of scavengers and riffraff clogged the street, each man hoping to claim the bounty the oligarchs had placed on Timocrates. Torches flared, casting bizarre shadows across the makeshift siege lines. Lining the walls, a handful of loyal democrats sent flight after flight of arrows down into the press of bodies clamoring at the gate. In response, slingers rose from the mob, their lead bullets punching into the heads and chests of the defenders.

  Nothing he had read in the past—not Homer or Herodotus or Thucydides—offered even the slightest amount of insight into what his next move should be. Patron was right. This was a fool’s errand. Still … still …

  Memnon left the street, crouching just inside the portico of a nymphaeum, and watched the chaos swirling around his father’s house. He studied the mob, noting how they formed up and charged the gates, how they fell back and regrouped into their ragged platoons, their resolve fueled by the promise of gold. For his theory to be correct, Memnon knew there had to be a rhythm to their actions, a sign that, despite having a hundred heads, this Hydra possessed a single controlling intellect. If he could identify it, he could strike at it. Slay the brain and perhaps the Hydra’s heads would turn on each other, providing enough of a respite for his father to be spirited away.

  A voice bawled orders; a fresh assault wave hustled toward the gate, this time preceded by men bearing improvised body shields. Memnon traced the voice to its source, spotting a burly figure standing outside the house neighboring his fathers, surrounded by a cadre of his peers. Most were oligarchs, but a few moved with the confidence of trained soldiers. Mercenaries, Carians probably, brought over by Philolaus to enforce the edicts of his new regime. The son of Timocrates proffered a thin, grim smile. There was his target.

  He would need to get closer.

  Leaving his perch in front of the nymphaeum, Memnon used the confusion in the street as camouflage to circle around to his father’s house—and to the men overseeing this piecemeal offensive. The villa adjacent to Timocrates’ estate belonged to a man called Brygus, a political dilettante, and the youngest son of the renowned shipwright Chaeremon. An amiable man, Brygus nevertheless preferred the company of his roses to that of other people. His trellises, with their satiny red and yellow blooms, dwarfed those of his neighbors and were a constant source of pride for a man otherwise unremarkable. Memnon vaulted the low wall bounding Brygus’s property and crept through the labyrinthine garden, past garland-wreathed statues of Demeter and Persephone; a haze of smoke drifted in the air, sweetened with attar of roses. The springy turf muffled Memnon’s footsteps.

  At the corner of the house, Memnon stopped. He heard voices ahead, harsh grumbles distorted by the thudding of axes on wood. “Shame we can’t get in there before the others and claim the bounty ourselves. Are you sure there’s no other gate?”

  Another voice: “What about it, Brygus?”

  Inching to the corner, Memnon peered around. Illuminated by the light of distant fires, two men alternated hacking at the base of an ancient olive tree. Both men paused and turned toward the figure cowering behind them. Brygus knelt in the grass, a slight man clad in a torn and grimy chiton, blood staining his face and beard as he watched the destruction of his property through swollen eyes.

  “You’ve been his neighbor for a dozen years, is there another way in?”

  Brygus shook his head. “Only t-the front gate.”

  One of the men spat. “And we need a battering ram for that. You’re a useless bag of shit, Brygus. You know that? We should take one of these axes to your hand and use the money for a skin of wine. How about it, Sacadas? You hold him; I’ll whack off his hand.”

  The man called Sacadas shrugged, scratching at a scabby beard that couldn’t hide the scars of a childhood pox. “Do what y
ou will, Dyskolos, but kill him first. I don’t want to hear the little shit-bag screaming all night long.”

  Brygus scrambled away from them. “Y-You can’t!”

  Dyskolos hefted his axe, grinning as he stalked the smaller man. “Who’ll know? I should have thought of this sooner, Sacadas. Could have saved ourselves—” Dyskolos never finished. He saw a flicker of movement seconds before Memnon’s javelin tore through the base of his throat, its blade nearly taking his head off. Brygus screamed. As Dyskolos toppled, Memnon stepped out into the light, his arm drawn back, his second javelin poised to throw. To his dismay, Sacadas reacted faster.

  Time slowed. His senses sharpened by adrenalin and fear, Memnon watched Sacadas lunge, his arm snapping forward, his axe whirling end over end. The clumsy tool missed him by inches, but its proximity caused Memnon to recoil and, from reflex, to throw his javelin. Too soon! He knew the second it left his hand that his cast had gone awry. Memnon stared as it soared off into the darkness; when he returned his gaze to Sacadas, the larger man had wrenched the javelin from Dyskolos’s corpse and was in motion.

  Memnon fumbled for the hilt of his sword. He’d half-drawn the blade when Sacadas smashed into him, driving the butt of the javelin into his midsection. The young Rhodian’s breath whooshed from his lungs; his body catapulted into the air. He struck the ground amid flashes of color and slid across the grass, struggling for breath. Sacadas straddled his fallen body. Memnon caught the javelin shaft with one hand as the mercenary drove it lengthwise across his throat.

  Sacadas fought in silence, without taunts or curses, his lips fixed in a businesslike snarl. Memnon’s free hand flailed about for a weapon—a rock, a branch, anything. His sword lay beneath him, its hilt grinding painfully into his back. Memnon’s fingers brushed the handle of his knife. In one motion he dragged it free of its sheath and buried it in Sacadas’s side. It had no effect. The mercenary bore down harder on the javelin shaft, forcing Memnon’s own knuckles into his windpipe and cutting off his air. Memnon gasped, his eyes bulging. Again and again he plunged his knife into his attacker’s flesh. Blood sprayed over his hand.