by Ben Blake
*
“I’m surprised you made it,” Nikos said. “Tore yourself away from your redhead, did you?”
“Shut up,” Isander said.
The other man’s grin widened. “Such a witty retort. I don’t know how you think of them so quickly.” Gorka smiled and, typically enough, said nothing.
In truth, Isander didn’t really mind the teasing. Since he and Meliza had become lovers Nikos didn’t seem quite as sophisticated as he had before. Or perhaps it was that Isander was more sophisticated. He supposed that was inevitable, now he’d left his little village behind and moved to Olympia instead.
It was Meliza who had changed him though, and not the city itself. She’d shown him bed games, of course: things to make a goddess blush and cover her eyes. But she’d shown him much more than that. Singing in the ceremonies of Aphrodite at her Temple, surrounded by smiles and laughter. The sterner rituals of willow-bound Artemis, the virgin goddess, whose favour Meliza asked as all reed girls did, that their bodies not betray them with pregnancy or disease.
She took him to the theatre, where her whispers in his ear meant he actually understood the play for once – though they also filled him with such heat that he all but groaned with it. She took care of that later, back at her room. There were honeyed apples eaten on the slopes of Mount Cronos, and a pigeon cooked over her own hearth stuffed with raisins and sesame seeds, and a blend of herbs she wouldn’t describe.
With her he discovered markets tucked away in back streets, almost impossible to find unless you knew where they were. Instead of stalls there were small handcarts, or sometimes just bags that folded out to reveal their contents; things that could be moved swiftly away if a soldier or taxman came sniffing. The bazaar could vanish in less than a minute, its traders melting into alleys and the customers becoming no more than citizens taking the air. But while the sellers were there you could buy things at half their usual price; saffron from the east, powdered ivory from Egypt, lion’s teeth and tiny clay pots of pepper. Meliza had stopped Isander buying one of those until she could check that it really was pepper inside, and not dried bat guano or something just as vile.
No taxmen meant cheaper prices, but no government checks meant more chance of being fleeced.
Meliza was working today. Isander found he didn’t like that very much, but he couldn’t think of a way to raise the subject without making her angry. Besides, he didn’t know why it upset him to think of her with other men, or what he could do about it in any case. Until he could figure that out, he’d do better to keep quiet and enjoy the time he had with her.
More sophisticated, he thought, and chuckled inwardly.
“You’re just in time, as it happens,” Nikos said. “Let’s get moving before crowds block all the gates.”
They set off through the city, hurrying a little. Olympia was busy today, the streets thronged with people in from the countryside. Word had spread rapidly of Troy’s shocking raid on Sparta, and the seizure of Helen from her own palace. It was plain treachery, captain Socus said, to lure a king away with promises of talks and then kidnap his wife while he was gone. Isander agreed with him, actually. When women were taken it was usually as a result of impetuousness, not this carefully planned plot.
Most people didn’t seem to care very much about Menelaus and Helen. Several times Isander had heard someone say that if the king of Sparta couldn’t keep hold of his wife that was his affair, and nothing to do with them. But they could work out consequences as well as anyone. Farmers were buying grain for winter planting before prices rose, and masons bought up porphyry just as eagerly. Lapis and faience were already more expensive, which had caused a fight which Isander’s squad had broken up two days earlier, before anyone suffered worse than a smashed nose. And there was no pepper to be found at all, not in any of the stalls in the agora or the back alley markets either. That had led to a fight which left two men dead, just this morning.
Isander kept his precious pot wrapped in a tatty chiton, right at the bottom of his rucksack in the barracks. In a month’s time he might be able to sell it for three times what he’d paid, or more, but he doubted it would last that long. He seemed to have a taste for pepper, and Meliza would live on it if she could.
The three friends went down the main street to the west gate, which as Nikos feared was already crammed with people waiting to come in or out. They joined a queue of raucously unhappy citizens and waited their turn, trying to be patient about it. After what seemed like an hour they were passed through by a guard they knew, and headed quickly down the packed earth road past fields of ripe wheat, towards the Kladeos River ahead.
There was already a good-sized mob there, centred around a trio of ships drawn up on the shallow strand at the outside of a bend in the river. Trading galleys stretched away on each side, but those three were fighting ships, from the navy of Elis. Soldiers is dusty cuirasses made a half-circle to keep the citizens at bay, while the last preparations were made to sail.
Isander looked for the king but couldn’t see him. He did spot Socus though, distinctive in his boar’s tusk helmet. The captain strode over to shout something to a man aboard one of the ships; even two hundred yards away his voice was audible, if not the words. The man’s lungs must be made of leather.
Street vendors had appeared around the crown, pushing barrows from which they sold figs and glazed fruit, olives and raisins and herb bread. Isander thought those sellers must be related to flies, to judge by the way they were drawn to any place where sweaty men gathered in numbers. They seemed to appear out of nowhere, as though they’d flown in. Today neither he nor his friends were hungry though, so they found a fence to lean on and watched the ships preparing down at the river.
“Do you think there will be a war?” Isander asked finally.
Nikos had picked up a grass stem and was chewing it. He often did that, munching on the stalk as it grew shorter and shorter until only the seed was left, at which he’d throw it away and pick another. “Maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe,” Nikos said. “King Thalpius has been complaining for years that the High King’s laws mean he can’t fight neighbouring countries, even when he has cause. But he’s kept on training new soldiers – like us,” he added wryly, “which doesn’t seem quite such a good idea just now, does it?”
Isander didn’t understand. “So?”
“So every land in Greece has a lot of soldiers,” Nikos said, “and no wars to keep them busy. Can you see any problems with that?”
He could, of course. Bored soldiers were apt to take risks, do foolish things just to break the monotony of long days with nothing to do, and no one to fight. Sometimes they’d support a rebel, back a rival claimant to a throne, simply for something to do. Every king must know it. Those idle, trained killer’s hands needed to be kept busy.
He looked down at the ships again, and presently said, “We’re going to war in Troy, then.”
“Perhaps,” Nikos said. “And perhaps not. Because Troy is powerful, my friend. I’m not sure all of Greece together is strong enough to break through those walls. Not if what they say is true: that the towers touch the sky, and men can walk four abreast along the parapet. Idle soldiers is one thing. Sending them to pointless death is another.”
“Well, now,” a voice said from further along the fence. “I reckon you’re not a bone-headed idiot after all.”
The speaker was a large man with black hair, and a vivid scar on one muscular forearm. He wore a cuirass, worn with hard use but well cared-for, which would have named him a soldier even if the friends hadn’t recognised him. That they did was not much comfort.
“Axylus,” Nikos greeted coolly. “I see you’re not going with the king. Must be a disappointment.”
Isander tensed despite himself. They all knew Axylus as a bully of new recruits; Gorka had escaped the bruises because of his size, but the other two had not. Few new soldiers did. But the soldier was here alone now, which Nik
os had doubtless noted before he spoke, and after a brief tightening of his mouth he relaxed again and grinned.
“I wouldn’t want to go to Mycenae anyway,” he said. “The soldiers who do will have to camp outside the city, and I prefer sleeping in a pallet in the barracks to making do with a mat in the open air. Better to stay here, I reckon.”
Gorka spoke before Nikos could throw another barb. “What did you mean, about him not being an idiot?”
“What he said about Troy,” Axylus replied. “There’s not going to be a war there. I’ve seen that city, which I bet none of you young ‘uns can say. And only a god-cursed fool would send men against the walls. You’d leave a lot of men cold on the plain with their mouths full of dust, and for nothing.”
Isander couldn’t help a shiver at those words. He’d joined the army because he wanted to fight, and thought he could make a success of life as a soldier. Besides, there were few ways for a poor villager to rise in the world, apart from fighting. The temples, maybe, but Isander didn’t have the patience for that. He preferred to be out doing, using his own hands, rather than praying for a god to do it for him.
But he had expected his battles to come against bandits in the mountains, or at worst against neighbouring kings. Familiar foes, on familiar land. The thought of going into combat on a plain across the sea terrified him. Death wasn’t something a true man should fear, but the prospect of dying far from Greece and the gods made him cold inside and out.
No one said anything for a long time. Axylus went away after a moment, probably to find his friends and then a recruit to harass, but the three friends stayed where they were. Nearly an hour later the king appeared, a stocky man dressed in a soldier’s gear, though with a flowing cloak over the top. He boarded the central ship and then crewmen began to work the oars, sending up sheets of spray over the labourers who shoved at the prows. The vessels groaned and then slid into the river, turning as the current caught them.
Isander saw Socus’ tusked helmet once more, but then the sails came down and hid the deck from view. He still watched though, until the ships were out of sight and the crowd dispersed, the vendors going in search of a new gathering where they might sell.