Halo

by Zizou Corder

  She was riding forward, controlling the horse with her knees as Akinakes had taught her, her bow and arrow in her hands, bowstring by her ear, ground thundering along beneath her – many was the time she had fallen off just trying to ride without hands – listening and feeling the rhythm of her steed’s movement – judging her moment, thudderder-NOW thudderderNOW thudderderNOW and on the fourth NOW she unloosed her shot – she missed her target by a stadion, but at least she was getting the moment right now. She was satisfied – for the time being.

  Jumping down to collect her arrows, Halo noticed the people on the road. Many more than usual – a slow, ever-increasing trickle of creaking wagons and musty donkeys and heavy-laden people ambling in from the countryside. She stared at them and felt a pang of pity. She knew how it felt to leave your home, and she could understand why they were bringing everything they could carry – pots and pans, tools and looms, food supplies, beds, chickens, wooden doorposts and fireplaces even, clanking on the backs of their wagons. The only thing they didn’t bring were their animals – all the farm livestock, she knew, was being sent to the big island of Euboea, for safety.

  Halo had had to leave with nothing. Suddenly she remembered the soft cloth she had been wrapped in as a baby. She wondered if Chariklo had been able to take it with her when they left Zakynthos. Of course not, she told herself. She had quite enough to worry about…

  Halo hadn’t realized there were so many people living on the plain. They kept coming, hundreds, thousands of them. Every day more would arrive, and the early arrivals would bless their luck for getting there first, for where was everyone to go? Those who had relatives in town went to their houses; those who didn’t camped out. Gradually, bit by bit, the open spaces of the city filled up with people, with temporary roofs, with little shacks, with country wagons and country wives, country habits and country dogs, country slaves and country dialects. Some people built bivouacs up against the Long Walls, some slept in glades and parks and the agora even, some in temple grounds or even the temples themselves. Soon, everywhere Halo went she was tripping over some country children, or a pile of bedding. Many of the farmer families had never been to Athens before. The Athenians stared at them.

  The country people were not happy. It was spring; their vines were sprouting and their olive trees flourishing, their grain was nearly ripe, and they weren’t there to protect and tend and harvest their crops. And Archidamus with his army still sat outside Oenoe, near the border, waiting there, expecting Athens to send heralds to declare battle in response to the outrage.

  But the Spartans heard nothing.

  Athens made no move at all.

  People gathered in the street to laugh. Poor old Archidamus, what a fool! Waiting and waiting, giving the Athenians plenty of time to bring everything inside the city. Stuck out there with all his soldiers, wanting a fight, and no one to fight with! It was unheard of! No city – let alone a mighty empire like Athens – would let an army invade its countryside and just ignore it! Pericles went daily to the agora to hear what people had to say, and there among the stalls and the shops and the shady benches and the yapping of the dogs everyone told him his idea was brilliant, and he was brilliant, and Athens was brilliant, though it was a bit damn crowded.

  He reassured them. ‘The Spartans are trying to provoke Athens, not destroy it,’ he said. ‘They want to strike fear into us, so that we come out and fight, or come to terms. They are using our land as a hostage, but they will not harm it much. Your vines will grow again; olive trees are strong.’

  The farmers from around Oenoe were the most doubtful, knowing that it was their farms being trampled by Spartan feet; their vines being cut, their olive trees with fires being built around the base.

  But Athens held firm. Small parties went out to harass the ravagers, but no grand battle was declared.

  At midsummer, when the corn was ripe, Archidamus moved on. Clearly he felt he must provoke Athens more, and harder, in order to get the response he wanted. The Spartan army moved through to Eleusis, camped there and started to ravage the land thereabouts.

  When Halo and Arko went down to train with the Skythians as usual, Captain Arimaspou said to them, ‘No more, my children. We are busy. We have Spartans to harry and though each of you could pierce them easily and from a long distance, in Athens they do not send children to fight. Do not come again.’

  Halo didn’t like it, but there was no point protesting. Arimaspou was not a persuadable man.

  Then, one hot hot evening, while she was doing her homework for Hippias (1: learn the different kinds of pus that could come out of a wound, and whether they were good or bad; and 2: learn the names of the surgical implements in the leather roll Hippias had given her), Tiki told her that a detachment of the Athenian cavalry, out harassing the ravagers, had been put to flight at Eleusis. Some of the Skythians had gone down to give support. There had been fighting.

  Halo stuffed her homework into the fold of her chiton, and raced down to the compound. Banned or not, she wanted to check if the Skythians were all right. The more she learned from Hippias, the less she trusted their doctor, Taures.

  Their horses came thundering in in the dusk, overtaking her and almost knocking her down, just as she arrived. ‘Stretcher!’ someone shouted, the voice hoarse and breathless. ‘Two dead, Arimaspou is bringing them. Ando and Lotess, the Gods rest them.’

  She heard a deadened thud.

  A handsome black mare, Ivy – Gyges’s mare – was skittering nervously in the yard, her hooves dancing about. In her shadow, a body lay splayed in the dust. A long, cruel arrowshaft was sticking out of his leg. Blood showed on his leather boot, dark and fearful.

  The sight of the blood had always affected Halo. It didn’t make her want to be sick, or faint, as it would some people. It made her want to clean it up, and put things right. It was a very strong urge. Without even thinking about what she was saying, she looked Akinakes in the eye – amazed at her own boldness – and said, ‘Two dead, and Gyges is wounded. Taures might need an assistant.’

  ‘The Captain said you were to stay away,’Akinakes replied, wheeling his own horse round, trying to calm it. He was sweating, and dust-smeared from the fight and the road.

  Gyges moaned softly.

  ‘That’s true,’ Halo said, ‘but – is Taures here?’

  The weary, blood-smeared Skythians, reining in their horses, glanced at each other. Akinakes coughed, and took a swig from a water flask. ‘He’s drunk,’ he said at last. ‘He’s drunk in a ditch in Kerameikos. His manhood has deserted him.’

  Halo could see how it hurt him to say the words.

  ‘Then why don’t I use my skills?’ she said gently. ‘Before he loses consciousness…’ She was tense with impatience.

  Akinakes and the others were still reluctant – nervous, even. But helpless.

  ‘I can wait for the Captain to return,’ she offered. ‘Just let me clean the wound. Please. I studied with Centaurs and also I know some Spartan ways. And I am learning the new ways from my teacher Hippias of Cos… but if there’s any special way you want me to do it I can try…’ She kept talking, as she approached the wounded rider. ‘Come, let’s lift him, at least, and get him comfortable. We must raise his foot to stop the bleeding…’

  Nephiles and another lifted Gyges, and laid him on a rope-cot in the yard.

  Akinakes looked Halo in the eye, nodded, and turned away.

  The arrow had pierced right through the boot, and into the flesh of Gyges’s calf. The arrow-shaft was sticking right out, bouncing slightly as they moved him. It was nasty.

  Carefully, Halo untied the boot and cut it away, peeling the blood-soaked leather back. ‘I need hot water and cold water,’ she said, ‘and give him strong wine to drink.’

  She wondered if Hippias had chosen surgery as her first topic on purpose, knowing than the war would need surgeons. She hadn’t planned on using her new skills on her own quite so soon.

  ‘How did he get the wound?’ she ask
ed, just to steady her own nerves as she washed her hands and took out her probing tools from the roll. She looked for the first time at the wound, and felt gently around it. She could feel the arrowhead – still attached to the shaft, good. Not stuck into the bone, very good. The bleeding had slowed. Good.

  I’m going to do this, she thought. Dear Asclepius, I’m going to take out this arrow. I can do it.

  It was as if she couldn’t stop herself.

  She washed away the worst of the encrusted blood, then she took the medium probe – she didn’t know its name, she hadn’t done her homework yet – and gently slid it into the wound.

  Gyges gasped. Don’t go into spasm, she prayed. If your muscles seize up in pain they will lock around the arrowhead and I won’t be able to get it out.

  ‘It was a Cretan mercenary,’ said Akinakes. ‘The arrowheads were big, but not barbed, don’t worry.’

  She felt around gently, the probe inside the wound and her careful fingers outside. Akinakes was right: no barbs to catch and do more damage if you pull the arrow out.

  Which method of arrowhead removal should she use? She ran through the options to reassure herself. Ektome, cutting the arrowhead out? Or ephelkysmos, pulling it out, back the way it went in? Or diosmos, cutting a new wound on the other side and pushing the arrowhead through? Well, ephelkysmos, of course, she thought. Pull it out the way it went in. The shaft is still attached, and the arrowhead isn’t too deep in the flesh.

  Halo removed her probe. She wasn’t scared. She knew she could do it. As long as the arrowhead didn’t come off the shaft. Arimaspou had told her how some tribes designed their arrows specially to fall apart – to make the wound harder to heal, and to stop the enemy from reusing the arrows.

  ‘One-fingered archers,’ she said. ‘Centaurs use three.’

  ‘We all do in the north-east,’ said Akinakes, watching her quietly. ‘Centaurs, Skythians, Saurians, Thracians, Amazons…’ Halo smiled at the mention of Amazons. She had heard about the legendary tribe of women warriors.

  ‘But Amazons aren’t real,’ she said. She took her pot of pitch cerate – waxy ointment made antiseptic with pine resin – and smeared a dollop on to a cloth compress. She put that to one side, then cleaned her little pincers. Might the arrow be poisoned? Perhaps I should give Gyges some peplis or galbanum just in case.

  ‘Nor are Centaurs,’ said Akinakes drily.

  ‘True, true,’ she said, ‘though Arko might disagree… Do Cretans use poison on their arrows?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He was watching her closely.

  I think I can do this without cutting the wound open more… and she whispered, ‘Hold on, Gyges.’

  She took a sharp breath. She held his flesh firm and the wound wide with one hand. With the other, she neatly and swiftly tucked her pincers into the wound, either side of the wooden shaft. Blood flowed faster. She dug deep, quickly, and grabbed the arrowhead. She couldn’t risk pulling by the shaft, and having the head come off inside. She had to catch it first time – he had already bled enough.

  It felt solid between the prongs of the tool, slippery with blood.

  She pulled. She yanked it out.

  Gyges made no sound – just a tiny silent gasp. She poured clean water over the wound, then warm wine, then she patted it dry, and firmly held the sides of the wound together, pressing on the ends of the blood vessels. No large one had been severed. Good. The bleeding slowed. Good.

  ‘Needle and thread,’ she requested, and Akinakes passed them to her. Swiftly, she stitched up the wound – only three little stitches. It was like sewing soft soft leather. Still Gyges didn’t cry or moan. How very brave they are. She tied up the thread, oiled the wound, and put the soft compress of pitch cerate over it. Asclepius, please heal this wound, she breathed. Please make me a good surgeon and don’t let his blood be poisoned and don’t make the Skythians hate me by letting him die…

  ‘There you go,’ she cried. ‘Keep the foot up high, Gyges.’ She had done it! She felt fantastic. She felt like the doctor Homer talked of: ‘A man worth many others, for cutting out arrows and applying soothing remedies…’

  Gyges, his breathing shallow, reached out his hand, and touched hers. She smiled. Akinakes inclined his head to her. Someone passed her a jar of wine. She fed it to her patient.

  Thank you, Asclepius.

  Now, he just had to heal.

  She went back the following evening. This time Captain Arimaspou was there. He stared at her and she stared at him, and she was very nervous as she asked, ‘How is Gyges?’

  Arimaspou was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  Horrible images ran through her mind: Gyges, writhing in agony; Gyges’s wound pouring out all the different types of pus the names and badnesses of which she couldn’t remember; Gyges, poisoned or sick; Gyges dead.

  But Gyges was well and comfortable. He lay back on a cot in the cool shade of the barrackhouse. He had his foot up, resting on a stool. He was drinking a cup of the tea she had left.

  She changed the dressing. The wound was raw and red and ugly and the stitching rough, but there was no pus. Gyges thanked her.

  ‘If you like,’ she said to Arimaspou, ‘I could ask Hippias my teacher to come and tend to your wounded…’

  ‘No,’ said Arimaspou. ‘You are our doctor now.’

  Oh, she thought. That’s not quite what I meant… But Arimaspou had already left.

  What had she let herself in for?

  Xαπτερ 25

  The Spartan army crossed the Thriasian plain, ravaging as they went. Bit by bit, they neared Athens.

  As soon as she heard they were in view, Halo, like many other Athenians, raced to the city walls to see them.

  And when she saw them, her heart sank.

  Bronze and crimson and terrifying, calm and determined and unstoppable, they marched across the calm, beautiful, deserted plain of Attica. She remembered the phalanx in training, the boys trying to push down trees, the boys of the Krypteia, on their way back from the Helot lands, how they had just walked lightly over everything, through everything, never hungry, never tired, never scared, always united, perpetually strong…

  This was it. Thousands, tens of thousands of them. So many… a great snaking mass, gleaming, silent, a single creature in the distance, a flat bronze dragon, spreading out across the empty countryside of olives and vines and deserted farms. Aiming for Athens.

  Were they just going to march on the city?

  What would Pericles do if they just came up to the gates, the thousands of them?

  What would she do? What is a kid meant to do when her city is invaded?

  She scrambled down the wall and rushed home. Phobos can unstring your legs, she heard in her mind. She understood now what Leonidas had meant. And that was just at the sight of the army! She was scared. Her lovely new home had been safe for so short a time, and now yet again everything was under threat, and not just her, and her safety, but everyone, the whole of Athens and all the people in it, Pericles and Aspasia, Arko, the Skythians, Tiki and Samis, Philoctetes and Martes and the boys at school, the singers and the actors and the men in the market and the women who never left their houses, the girls in the pompe, the priests, the philosophical wagoner…

  Pericles, unusually, was at home – though he was about to go out. He looked up as she hurtled in. She tried to hide her face. She didn’t want him to see that she had been crying. Boys don’t cry.

  Must she tell him now? Didn’t he have enough on his plate?

  He stopped her with a hand to her shoulder. ‘Halo,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  How cool he was! Thousands of Spartans on his doorstep, and him the General, the head strategos of the city, and he asks what’s the matter? She looked up at him but couldn’t think of a thing to say. If he didn’t think anything was the matter, who was she to worry?

  He was smiling.

  ‘Dear boy,’ he said, and he pulled her to him. ‘Don’t be a
shamed. Fear is natural. Feel it, acknowledge it, then let it go. It doesn’t serve you. Did you see them?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Are you afraid?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What of?’

  ‘If they come into the city…’ she muttered.

  ‘They won’t even try,’ he said. ‘They just want us to come out and fight their famous Hoplites in pitched battle because that is the only way they might be able to beat us. And we won’t do it. That’s all. Come with me now – I am going up to the Acropolis to see how close they’re coming – see how cheeky old Archidamus is prepared to be.’

  Walking up through the mighty Propylaeia gate – built by Pericles; past the beautiful temple of Athena – built by Pericles; and along to the north end of the Acropolis – built by Pericles, with Pericles at her side, Halo no longer felt like a little animal staked out for a vulture to descend on. She began to feel like part of a team that was taking a calculated risk but knew it could win.

  They looked out to the north across the plain. There was the Spartan army, clearly visible, only about ten kilometres away, outside Acharnae. They were making camp.

  ‘They hope to provoke the Acharnaean young men into coming out to fight,’ murmured Pericles. ‘Pray all the Gods that they have sense enough not to do it. Pray all the Gods that they see the whole war, and not just the heated pride of today. Tomorrow, no doubt, the ravaging will start again.’

  With Pericles by her side, Halo found herself thinking differently about the Spartans.

  ‘I wonder who is there,’ she said. ‘Would Melesippus be there?’

  Pericles said yes, he probably would. Halo knew that he knew many of the Spartans personally. Archidamus was a friend of his. That’s why he had made the point about giving up his estate, if Archidamus spared it. He didn’t want anyone making accusations.

  Halo listened, but she was thinking of who might be with Melesippus.

  ‘Did you like them, Halo, when you lived among them?’ Pericles asked.