Marathon

by Christian Cameron

  pious fool, or a hypocrite.’

  ‘Neither, my lord.’ We were alone in the dark.

  ‘You need to be gone – before your wagon arrives with the

  corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again.

  corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again.

  I wil try to find your girl. But this murder is a stain, and you must

  be clean before you come back here. It may be that some god

  led you to it – because you do need to be gone, and tonight is

  better than tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘They wil kil you if they

  cannot convict you.’

  ‘I don’t fear them,’ I said, but I wasn’t teling the truth.

  ‘In a year, the balance wil change. Right now, you cannot be

  here. Even Plataea might prove dangerous for you. Go to Delos,

  and do as the god bids you.’ He held out his hand. ‘I do not fear

  polution so much that I would not clasp your hand.’

  And then I was walking in the dark, down the rocky road to

  Sounion.

  3

  I managed to find a ship at Sounion, practicaly on the steps of

  the Temple of Poseidon. He was a Phoenician bound for Delos

  with a cargo of slaves from Italy and Iberia. I didn’t think very

  highly of slavers and I dislike Phoenicians on principle, even

  though they are great sailors, but I took it as a test from the gods

  and I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut.

  Al the slaves were Iberians, big men with heavy moustaches,

  tattoos and the deep anger of the recently enslaved. They eyed

  my weapons and I kept my distance. They al looked like fighting

  men.

  The navarch, a man with a beard trimmed the Aegyptian way,

  curling like a talon from his chin, made them row in shifts

  between his professional rowers. He was training them so that

  he’d get a better price. He planned to sel the best of them at

  Delos and the rest at Tyre or Ephesus.

  Delos and the rest at Tyre or Ephesus.

  ‘Ephesus?’ I asked. Ephesus always interested me.

  ‘The satrap of Phrygia has an army laying siege to Miletus,’

  he said. ‘His fleet is based at Ephesus.’

  That was news to me. ‘Already?’ I asked. The fal of Miletus

  – the most powerful city in the Greek world, or so we thought –

  would be the end of the Ionian Revolt.

  Once again, I have to leave my tale to explain. In those days,

  most of the cities of Ionia – and there were dozens, from

  beautiful Heraklea on the Euxine, down along the coast of Asia

  to mighty Miletus, then to Ephesus, the city of my youth, richer

  than Athens by a factor of five times – across the Cyprian Sea to

  Cyprus and Crete – more Greeks lived in Ionia than lived in

  Greece. Except that most of those Greeks lived under the rule of

  the King of Kings – the Great King of the Persians.

  While I was growing to manhood in the house of Hipponax, I

  lived under Persian rule. The Persians ruled wel, thugater. Never

  believe the crap men say today about how they were a nation of

  slaves. They were warriors, and men of honour – in most cases,

  more honour than we Greeks. Artaphernes – the satrap of

  Phrygia – was the friend and foe of my youth. He was a great

  man.

  In those days – in my youth – the Greeks of Ionia rose up to

  throw off the shackles of Persian slavery. Hah! Now, there’s a

  load of cow shit. Selfish men seeking power for themselves

  cozened the citizens of many Ionian cities to trade the safety and

  stability of the world’s greatest empire for ‘freedom’. To most

  stability of the world’s greatest empire for ‘freedom’. To most

  Ionians, that freedom was the freedom to be kiled by a Persian.

  None of the Ionians trusted each other, and every one of them

  wanted power over the others. The Persians had a unified

  command, briliant generals and excelent supplies. And money.

  The Ionian Revolt had lasted for ten years, but it was never

  much of a success. And when this story starts, as I was sailing as

  a passenger on a slave ship, it was entering its final phase,

  although we didn’t know it. The Persians had seemed at the

  edge of triumph before, and each time, the revolt had been

  rescued – usualy by Athens, or by Athenians acting as

  surrogates for their mother city, like Miltiades.

  But Athens had its own problems – the near civil war I

  described. Persian gold was pouring into the city, inflating the

  power of the aristocratic party and the Alcmaeonids, and the

  Pisistratids were backed by Persia to restore the tyranny – not

  that I knew that then. Persian gold was paralysing Athens, and

  the Persian axe was poised over Miletus.

  To the navarch of this slave ship, al this meant that he could

  make a handsome profit seling half-trained rowers to the Persian

  fleet anchored on the beaches around Ephesus, supporting the

  siege of Miletus.

  I listened and managed not to speak.

  We were fifteen days making a three-day voyage, and I

  hated that ship by the time we landed. His long, black hul was

  swift and clean, and for a light trireme he was the very acme of

  perfection – yet this Phoenician cur sailed him like a pig. The

  Phoenician was afraid of every cup of wind, and he stayed on a

  Phoenician was afraid of every cup of wind, and he stayed on a

  coast to the very end of a headland and crossed open water with

  visible reluctance. I’ve never loved the Phoenicians, but most of

  them were briliant sailors. Every pack has a cur.

  I sat alone in the bow, sang the hymn to Apolo as we sing it

  in Plataea – I have Apolo’s raven on my shield – and prepared

  myself to meet the god of the lyre and the plague. I tried not to

  think of how easily I could take this ship. Those days were gone.

  Or so I thought.

  The last night at sea, I had a dream – such a dream that I can

  remember wisps of it even today. Ravens came to me and

  carried my good knife away, and one of them set a lyre in my

  hand as a replacement. I didn’t need a priest to tel me what that

  meant.

  The most dangerous of the Iberians – you could see it in his

  eyes – had a raven tattooed on his hand and another on his

  sword arm. When the slaver’s stern was set in the deep sand of

  a Delian beach and his people were moving cargo, I dropped my

  heavy knife into the blackness under the Iberian’s bench, while

  he lay watching me, exhausted from rowing.

  Our eyes met. I nodded. His face was completely blank. I

  wasn’t even sure he’d seen the knife, and I went ashore, poorer

  by a good blade.

  Priests are priests the world around – I’ve noted a certain

  similarity from Olympia to Memphis in Aegypt. Many of them

  are good men and women; a few are remarkable, genuinely

  blessed. The rest are a sorry lot – people who probably, in my

  blessed. The rest are a sorry lot – people who probably, in my

  opinion, couldn’t make a living any other way, except as beggars

  or farm labour.

  The man who met me as I kissed the rock by the stern of t
he

  slave ship was one of the latter. His hands were soft and his

  hand-clasp was limp and unpleasant, and his soft voice wished

  me a speedy encounter with the god in a voice that seemed al

  too ready to wheedle and plead.

  ‘You are Arimnestos of Plataea,’ he said.

  Wel, that took me aback. I was naive then, and didn’t know

  the effort to which the great priesthoods went to be informed.

  Nor did I suspect how carefuly engineered this might be.

  ‘Yes,’ I alowed.

  ‘Brought here by the god to hear your penance for murder,’

  he said in the same voice that a man might tease a girl into his

  blanket rol. I didn’t like him. But he had me, I can tel you.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘The god has spoken to us of you,’ he said. He leaned his

  chin on the head of his staff. ‘What have you brought as

  offering?’

  Just like that. My feet were stil in the sand of the beach and

  the priests of Apolo wanted their fees.

  I sighed. ‘I have served Apolo and Hephaestus al my life,’ I

  said. ‘I revere al the gods, and I serve at the shrine of the hero

  Leitos of Plataea.’ This by way of my religious credentials, so to

  speak.

  He said nothing. His eyes flickered to the purse in my hand.

  ‘I have twenty drachmas, less the one I owe as passage to

  ‘I have twenty drachmas, less the one I owe as passage to

  that slave trader.’ Need I mention that the priests of Apolo

  played an active role in the trade?

  ‘Nineteen silver owls? That is al the duty you pay to the god,

  you who are caled the Spear of the Greeks?’ He shook his

  head. ‘I think not. Go back and return when you intend to give

  the god his due.’

  Now, lest you young people miss the accounting, nineteen

  silver owls was the value of a farm’s produce for a year. But of

  course, it was as nothing next to the profits a man might make

  trading – or as a pirate.

  I didn’t know what to say. I had more respect for priests in

  those days – even venal creatures like this one. ‘These nineteen

  drachmas are al I have,’ I protested.

  He laughed. ‘Then Lord Apolo wil give you nineteen

  drachmas’ worth of prophecy – I can feel his words in my heart.

  Go – and come back when you have learned enough wisdom to

  pay your tithe.’

  Perhaps at eighteen, I’d have obeyed.

  But I was older. ‘Out of my way,’ I said. ‘I need to find a

  priest.’

  He oozed insult. ‘I am the priest the god has assigned.’

  I shrugged and pushed past him. ‘I suspect the god can do

  better.’

  He folowed me up the rock and his voice became

  increasingly shril as he demanded that I speak to him, but I

  continued up the steps to the temple complex. At the gate, he

  continued up the steps to the temple complex. At the gate, he

  was stil shouting at me as I asked the porter to find me a priest.

  The porter grunted and I gave him a drachma, and he sent a

  boy.

  ‘Arimnestos of Plataea!’ the priest from the beach persisted.

  ‘This is not the way a gentleman behaves!’

  ‘Only eighteen drachmas left,’ I said. ‘And by the time I get a

  new guide to the altar, there wil be none.’

  ‘Your arrogance wil be your death,’ he said. ‘You seek to

  cheat the god!’

  ‘I do not,’ I said. ‘I am a farmer in Boeotia, not a pirate in the

  Chersonese. These coins are a fair share of my fortune in the last

  year.’

  I said so – but I began to be afraid. Those coins were, as you

  know, taken from the corpses of men who tried to kil me.

  Perhaps the coins were poluted. But essentialy my words were

  true ones. The eighteen coins in my purse were more than a tenth

  of al the coins I had in the world.

  ‘Why have you requested a second guide?’ a hard voice

  asked. This priest was older, dressed in a simple wool garment

  that had seen better days. ‘Thrasybulus? Why have I been

  summoned?’

  ‘You may go back to your cel,’ the oily man behind me

  answered. ‘This arrogant Boeotian is attempting to bargain with

  god.’

  ‘I wish to be washed by the god for a murder committed in

  Athens,’ I said. ‘If the god has words for me to hear, I would

  laugh with delight to hear them. But this man asks me for money

  laugh with delight to hear them. But this man asks me for money

  I do not have.’ I pointed at the younger priest.

  The older man rubbed his beard. ‘What price have you

  offered?’ he asked.

  ‘He is—’

  ‘Silence, Thrasybulus.’ The older priest seemed a different

  kind of man.

  ‘I have offered eighteen drachmas,’ I said. ‘It is al I have.’

  ‘The cost of three new buls?’ He looked at me.

  ‘He can do better. Much better.’ Thrasybulus pointed at the

  metalwork on my empty scabbard.

  The older man sighed. ‘This is unseemly. The priesthood of

  Apolo does not bargain like fishwives on the beach.’

  The porter’s laugh suggested that this statement was not

  entirely true.

  ‘I am Dion of Delos,’ the older man said. ‘I am principaly a

  scholar, and I seldom lead men to the gates – but Thrasybulus

  has, I fear, earned your displeasure.’ The older man glared at the

  younger. ‘You wil need silver for food – and passage home, as

  wel. Wil you not?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Give me twelve drachmas for your sacrifices, and I wil lead

  you to the god,’ he said.

  Thrasybulus spat. ‘You are a liar before the god,’ he said,

  pointing at me.

  Not an auspicious start to my time on the island of Apolo.

  That evening, I made the first of my three sacrifices – this one on

  That evening, I made the first of my three sacrifices – this one on

  the so-caled altar of ash. I sacrificed a black lamb, a symbol of

  my crime, and I told the god and al the other men waiting to

  sacrifice how I had come to kil the thug in Athens and what my

  sin was – the sin of hubris, in feeling that I was as fit to decide his

  fate as the gods.

  Other men sacrificed for other crimes. One, from Crete, had

  kiled his son with a javelin – an error, a grievous miscast while

  hunting. Another had slept with a foreign woman during her

  courses and felt unclean. I almost laughed, but everyone else

  seemed to feel this was a serious thing. Several men were

  soldiers – mercenaries – who had come to atone for kiling other

  Greeks – over dice, or in battle. Two men were guilty of gross

  impiety.

  My sacrifice was refused. I took the animal to the altar and

  kiled it, but the fire would not accept the beast. I saw it myself.

  The same happened to one of the men guilty of impiety, and

  the man who had kiled his son.

  My priest – Dion – led the three of us from the altar. He took

  us to a hut made of brush on the cliff high above the beach. ‘You

  wil remain here for a week, eating clean food and drinking only


  water. Consider how you became unclean. Consider your life. I

  wil return for you.’

  That was a long week.

  The Cretan was caled Heracles. He was tal and strong,

  noble in his carriage, and so broken by grief that it was hard to

  speak to him. He felt the guilt that I did not feel. He felt that he

  had kiled his son and deserved the wrath of the god, while I felt

  had kiled his son and deserved the wrath of the god, while I felt

  that I had acted hastily – selfishly – but that I had now learned

  my lesson and did not deserve the wrath of Apolo. Yet I had

  enough sense to see that I had far more culpability than this

  Cretan lord.

  In fact, he was mistaking sorrow for guilt. I sat with him, night

  after night, held his hand and spoke to him of hunting, and of

  Crete, a place I knew wel. I could get him to listen, and I could

  make him smile, and then some chance of speech would cast him

  back into the pit.

  ‘I am cursed,’ he said. ‘I have kiled my son, and now my

  wife is barren.’

  ‘Take a concubine,’ I said, with al the arrogance of youth.

  ‘I cannot replace eighteen years of my life and his, just by

  making another squawking babe,’ he shot back – with more

  spirit than I’d seen so far.

  ‘Lord, you can. And then you must toil for as many years

  again, until he comes to manhood, so that your patronage is

  secure.’ I spoke carefuly, for I felt I might be speaking wisdom.

  He sighed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘You are young. When you

  have seen fifty winters, tel me how you feel about lasting through

  another fifteen seasons of war and the hunt. My joints hurt just

  lying here.’

  The other man was a blasphemer. I could tel this because he

  swore by various gods every hour on the hour, and cursed the

  gods for setting him on Delos. He was a little man – in mind, not

  stature – and a lesson to anyone who would listen about the

  stature – and a lesson to anyone who would listen about the

  vices men can get into through idleness and superstition. I might

  have been a foolish young man, but I was the very king of piety

  next to Philocrates.

  ‘If you care so little for the gods, why did you come here and

  confess?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged. ‘I swore an oath – nothing big – just part of a

  business deal. I never meant to pay the bastard – he was