by Ben Blake
*
In the end they went to the temenos, the sanctuary, to walk around the shrines and see the great Temple of Zeus, as large as most of Isander’s village back home. He had to crane his head back until it creaked before he could see the tops of the pillars. Temples weren’t really his idea of fun, but he supposed he ought to behave with a bit more maturity, now he was almost fully trained. It wasn’t like he was a boy anymore.
Still, it was his first free day since he’d come to the city, and the recruits had all been given two silvers to spend as they chose. It wasn’t every day that a king got married, after all. So the three of them went to the Theatre for half an hour, but the play was boring, some rubbish about a man talking to his dead father, not realising that it was only a ghost. That might be fine for sophisticated city folk, but it was deathly dull to a village youth, or to a farmer’s boy. Nikos said he was enjoying it and wanted to stay, but it didn’t take much persuading before he followed the other two outside.
At the market Gorka bought an amber pendant for his girl back home, ignoring Nikos’ comment that she’d have forgotten him long before he could hand it to her. Even Isander thought the necklace looked cheap, but he held his tongue; Nikos’ teasing was enough without him chipping in as well. After that they listened to a small band in the gymnasion, which had been given over to performers for the festival; there was only a drummer, a flautist and a man playing the pipes, the auloi, which Isander knew were fiendishly hard to learn.
And all of them bought little terracotta figures an inch high, to be inscribed with prayers or curses and thrown on the soil of a fresh grave when the time came. Soldiers were a superstitious bunch. They always wanted a curse figure handy for when they needed it.
They went to the heroon then, the shrine to the hero Pelops. Long ago Olympia had been oppressed by Harpies, flying women who ate only raw human meat. They swooped down and carried off whoever they chose, children usually, and consumed them on mountain eyries where men couldn’t go. Pelops, king at the time, begged Zeus for help, and the Lord of the Black Cloud told him where he could find a pair of pegasi, winged horses. They were dangerous beasts, unwilling to be yoked, but Pelops mastered them and harnessed them to his chariot, after which he took to the skies and shot the Harpies down one by one, so saving the city.
Pelops was the icon of the warrior ideal, in Elis. Every young soldier dreamed of matching his exploits, his Kleos; the glory and fame won in battle. Why else be a fighting man at all, if not to aspire to that? But it was hard to stay long in the shrine, feeling as though Pelops might be watching from the other side of death. The three youths poured a libation of wine over the altar, bowed, and went back into the sunshine.
As evening drew on they ate rabbit with garlic off long skewers, and honey pancakes with sesame seeds. It was natural, after that, for them to find a tavern and order some wine. They ended up in a trader’s den outside the walls, not far from the river Kladeos and the long line of masts strung out along the near bank. It was full of labourers and sailors, nearly all of them so drunk they could hardly stand, and in some cases had already collapsed on the rush floor. A pair of burly men were busy hauling them outside, where they threw them down by the back wall and abandoned them to the caprice of the Fates.
Nikos had been here before, it transpired. He wriggled through the crush of bodies until he reached the bar, shared a murmured conversation with a flat-nosed man there, and handed over something that glinted in the smoky lamplight. Shortly afterwards the three young men were allowed through a heavy door into the rear room of the inn, which while busy wasn’t as hideously packed as the front room, or as raucous. They found a rickety table in one corner and sat down.
“Wine for three, I think,” Nikos said. He stretched out his legs under the table. “And one of you is paying.”
Gorka did, bringing three cups and a pottery jug back from the bar. They were all wearing plain chitons, but citizens tended to walk small around soldiers, even half-trained ones. Isander had noticed that before. Perhaps they gave off an aura that others could sense, if not precisely see. At any rate, nobody barged Gorka or tried to filch the wine as he wound his way back, and moment later the three friends clinked cups together.
“To king Thalpius,” Nikos said. “May he have long life, many children, and find honour in death.”
“And be happy at night with his wife,” Isander added, which made Gorka grin and Nikos laugh so hard he had to take a gulp of wine before he spilled it. A couple of men looked around, and seeing nothing of interest went back to their drinks. Isander could hear a lyre playing somewhere in the room, but between the square pillars and the crowd he couldn’t see where.
“Who are those?” he asked, pointing with his chin.
Nikos turned his head to look. “Those are the reed girls, my country friend. Don’t you have them in mud country?”
“We have them,” he said, feeling his face redden, “but I don’t remember them looking like that.”
That was a pair of women, one of them red-haired, in chitons they had surely not bought from any normal tailor. Isander had never seen a hem cut so high, or a neckline slashed so low. It left a lot of flesh on show. He flushed further just thinking about that. A third girl came into view as he watched, leading a man by the hand towards a small door set in the far wall, hazy with smoke from the nearby fire.
“The tavern keepers sometimes let them use rooms over the bar, and look for custom inside,” Nikos said. “Especially close to the docks. It brings the customers in. The girls get to work in the warm, and they each have a room – a cubby, really – where they can sleep.”
Isander nodded, and took a sip from his cup to conceal the fact that he was looking at the red-headed woman again. It wasn’t a common shade among Greeks. Certainly not in flyspeck villages far from the capital, too small to have a name or for it to be remembered, even if they had. We have reed girls, he’d told Nikos, but that wasn’t really true. They’d had one woman of pleasure, who took her favours from settlement to settlement but never went into any of them for fear she’d be attacked. The men went to her outside, in a barn perhaps, or whatever other building was available. Isander had never worked out how they knew she was there. Nobody ever seemed to speak of her, they just knew, and slipped away unnoticed when they had the chance.
He found his gaze drawn back to the redhead again.
“Put your eyes back in,” Nikos grinned, “before someone treads on them.”
Isander buried his face in his wine cup to hide his blushes. He knew the other youth was only teasing, but it was still embarrassing, even with Gorka the only other person to hear. Gorka was like a stone, he might hear things but he never spoke of them. He smiled a little at Nikos’ jest though, and Isander sought for a change of subject.
“So you think we’ll be sent out to fight before winter?” he asked. “The recruits, I mean. Not just us.”
Nikos shrugged. “Some of us might be. Those who are furthest along, and aren’t likely to put other men in danger through their own inexperience. Which means about one in five of us, I expect.”
“Are we that bad?”
Gorka leaned forward slightly, always a sign that he was about to speak. If the others went on talking he would just lean back again, and keep his silence, but they knew him and waited for his words. “I practiced with one of the Guards two days ago. I managed to last about five heartbeats against him. Once. The rest of the time I did even worse.”
That quieted them. Gorka was the biggest of them and probably the furthest along as well; it was sobering to think they might be so far behind the more seasoned men. They were learning fast, though. Isander couldn’t believe how much stronger he was now, after only two months of training. Life at home hadn’t been easy, with firewood to cut and chores to do, but in the few weeks in Olympia his body had strained and grown hard.
That brought another topic to mind. “Are either of you going to enter the Games next year?”
Gor
ka was a good wrestler – more than good – but he only smiled and shook his head. As for Nikos, his grin nearly split his face. “Not me. I’m a good archer, but there will be better at the Games, and a lot of them. Why? Are you thinking of putting your name in?”
“Maybe,” he admitted, embarrassed again. The Games came every two years, and he thought he was too young and green to stand any chance at all, even in the lightweight wrestling. But the experience would stand him in good stead in two years’ time, or four, when he might actually have a chance at a wreath. It was something to aim for, anyway. In training he was decent with both spear and sword now, and with the shoving motion that drove his shield into an enemy’s face and knocked him backwards, but he was outstanding in hand to hand combat. He could throw men much heavier than he was with ease.
“Patience,” Nikos said. He poured them each another cup of wine. “Just wait, my friend. The Games are always there, every two years. You’ve no need to rush. Wait until you’re a bit less green before you set yourself against the finest wrestlers in Greece.”
There was sense in that advice. Nikos usually did speak sense, in fairness: he was much the wisest of the three. The least green, Isander thought wryly to himself. But sometimes he didn’t want to wait until he was older. He wanted to be out doing things now, when he was hardly more than a stripling. Hadn’t Theseus gone to find his father when he was younger than Isander was now, and slain Sciron the Outlaw, and then wrestled Cercyon to his death? Isander especially liked that latter tale. And had not Perseus defended his mother from unwanted suitors when he was barely an adult at all?
Isander didn’t speak those things aloud, even to his friends. Socus would laugh himself into spasms if he heard them: Gorka and Nikos, though they were close, wouldn’t be able to stifle their guffaws either. Better to keep some things quiet. But still, sometimes now was better than later. His eyes slid towards the red-haired woman again.
He couldn’t see her at first, and assumed she must have taken a man upstairs while Isander was hiding his face in the wine cup. Five men were dicing behind where she’d been standing, every toss of the cup greeted with shouts of delight or groans, according to how the pips fell. Isander knew enough not to be tempted by that, at least. On his second night in barracks he’d seen one of the recruits lose every coin he owned to older soldiers, and while Isander couldn’t prove it he was sure the men had cheated, somehow. Luck just wasn’t as consistent as they made it seem.
Inexperienced youths new to the city were easy prey. He’d understood that, and kept himself wary. The red-haired woman came into view from behind one of the stacked pillars, chiton riding on the curves of her hips.
He drank down the wine in his cup at a gulp, making Nikos raise his eyebrows in surprise. “Are you expecting a drought?”
Isander didn’t answer. He pushed back his stool, and standing he went over to the woman with red hair. He felt as though every eye in the tavern was on him, and laughter bubbled behind every lip, but he didn’t stop. Without the wine he might have slunk away, his nerve failing him at the last moment. With it had the nerve to approach the woman, and not flee even when she sensed his approach and turned to him.
“I’m Isander,” he said. His voice sounded strangled, the words hardly recognisable. “Could you – I mean, would you mind…”
He tailed off, wilting under the amusement in her green eyes. But she smiled, and taking his hand she folded it in hers. “Aren’t you just the prettiest young man I’ve seen today? And a soldier, by the look of you.” She leaned in, so he could smell the musky perfume she wore, and whispered in a voice that curled his toes, “And I do like soldiers.”
“Enough to come upstairs?” he asked.
She ran a single finger down the line of his spine, making him shiver helplessly. “You have the coin? Four coppers and I’m yours.”
“I have it,” he said, and showed her. She didn’t take them straight away, an Isander had expected. Instead she leaned in and kissed him, quite thoroughly, while his two friends hooted encouragement from their table (which he really could have done without) and several other men whistled good-naturedly. When she drew back Isander felt giddy. He swallowed and still felt strange.
“I’m Meliza,” she told him. “Come upstairs, then. I’ll show you all the faces of the gods.”
He thought later that she must have known then it was his first time. But she didn’t say anything, blessedly, in that room full of tough drinking men. She took his hands and led him to the little door, walking sure-footedly backwards between the tables, and kissed him again at the bottom of the stairs beyond them. When they parted Meliza led him up the rickety steps and into a windowless room, furnished only with a narrow pallet with a sheet thrown over it. Isander closed the door, his heart beating wildly as Meliza bent to light a lamp, her chiton riding up as she did so. Isander gulped and hoped she wouldn’t notice.
She turned then, and gave a slow smile that nearly stopped the hammering of his heart completely.