Killer Of Men Part 23

I explained, with some blushes, what they do. She laughed. 'Not enough in it for me,' she said. 'What pleasure does the girl get?' and we laughed together.

The next morning, I ran six stades with Archi and he beat all of us. We threw javelins and fought with spears. After we had clashed s.h.i.+elds and bruised each other for an hour, Agasides came and ordered us down to the beach. Heralds were crying in the agora and on the steps of all the temples, and the whole army was a.s.sembling for the first time.

The beach was a vision of Chaos. We stood together in a mob, perhaps seven thousand men, and Aristagoras placed his contingents in the phalanx. He put the Athenians on the right of the line, in the place of honour. The Ephesians were in the centre, towards the left.

When Agasides had his place in the battle line, he chose men for the front rank. He chose Hipponax, but he did not choose me or Archi. Few men of Ephesus knew me, and despite my excellent armour and my victory in games, the Ephesians didn't see me as a citizen (which I was not). Agasides, of course, knew me as one of the men who had injured his son, and as a former slave.

So Archilogos and I were placed together in the fifth rank. We were, without a doubt, the two best athletes in the city, and probably the best men-at-arms, but Ephesus had known three generations of peace, and Agasides placed men according to his likes and dislikes and with no eye towards the phalanx as a fighting machine. Hipponax had fought pirates several times, and despite his reputation as a soft poet, was a good choice. But all the other front-rankers were Agasides' drinking companions, business partners and political allies.

We were one of the last contingents to form, and we looked bad. Other contingent commanders came and stared at us while we grumbled and switched places endlessly. A man would make his claim to the front rank always couched in political terms and Agasides would stand indecisively, balancing one interest against another.

When, at last, we were in our places, Aristagoras came and addressed us, and for all his faults he had lungs of bra.s.s. We were told that the army would march up-country to Sardis over the pa.s.ses in the mountains, and that all the hoplites and their slaves should a.s.semble in two days, after the feast of Heracles that is the feast that they celebrate in Ephesus, nothing like our Boeotian feasts. Two days, and we would march.

It was the first time most men had heard that we'd be marching up-country, and there was much grumbling.

I talked to the men around me and realized that none of them had ever stood in a s.h.i.+eld wall or fought with bronze or iron. They were like a pack of virgins going to do the work of flute girls. I was a mere seventeen, but I had seen three pitched battles and I had killed.

Archi took me aside after the muster. 'You've got to stop talking so much,' he said. 'You'll take the spirit out of us! Sometimes I regret that you are free. You cannot speak to the first men of the city as if they were simpletons.'

I shrugged. 'Archi, they are fools, and men are going to die. I have fought in a phalanx. None of these men have. I should be in the front rank.'

Aristides had his helmet perched on his brow. He was leaning on his spears, listening to us, and then he came over. He glanced at Agasides and spat. 'You were there when your father stopped the Spartans?' he asked.

I nodded. 'I was there,' I said. I didn't mention that I had been a psilos throwing rocks.

He nodded. 'You should be in command, then. These children,' and he nodded to Archi, 'will die like sacrificed goats if we face the Medes.'

Archi blushed. 'I will stand my ground,' he said.

Aristides shrugged. 'You'll die alone then,' he said.

I went back to the house and spent hours putting a pair of ravens over the nasal of my helmet. I softened the worked metal by annealing it, and then I had to cut my punches shorter to use them from inside the bowl of the helmet, but the work came along nicely enough. Sitting on a low stool at the anvil, tapping away at my work, alone in the shed, I was safe from the anger that had followed me from the muster.

I had started putting a band of olive leaves at the brow when the light from the doorway was cut off.

'I'm working!' I called without turning my head.

'So I see,' Herac.l.i.tus said. He came in, and I stood hurriedly.

'Stay where you are. I thought I would find you here.' He looked around, examined my practice pieces. 'You seem infatuated with ravens,' he said with a smile.

'My family calls itself the "Corvaxae",' I said. 'The Crows.'

'Ah! And why is that?' he asked.

I told him the story of the ravens and the Daidala, and then I told him about my sister's black hair, and how my father had always put the raven on his work.

Philosopher that he was, he wanted to see the metal worked, so I punched an olive leaf from inside the helmet and then made the work finer and neater by working it from the outside. I showed him how the work made the bronze harder.

He watched me anneal the back of the crown, and he reminded me of old Empedocles, the priest of Hephaestus, when he commented on the bronze tube that I used to raise the heat of the forge fire.

'I have seen the fire and the metal together before,' he said. 'I suppose that I already knew that fire softens and work hardens.' He smiled. Then he frowned. 'With iron, fire hardens.'

I shook my head. 'You are the wisest man I know, but no smith! Fire softens iron. To make it hard, you quench it in vinegar when it is hot.'

'It is fire that is the agent,' he said. 'The agent of change is always fire.'

I could hardly argue with that.

He looked at the new leaves around the brow of the helmet. 'You won the olive wreath at the games at Chios?' he asked.

I smiled with pride. 'Yes,' I answered. 'Now I will wear them for ever.'

He turned my work this way and that, and I explained planis.h.i.+ng to smooth and harden the metal. And then I showed him how I melted the bronze and poured it on slate. He played with the bronze tube, just as Empedocles had, and blew through it, making the fire leap, and he laughed with joy.

'All things are an equal exchange with fire, and fire for all things,' he said. 'Look at how you use the charcoal to make the fire, and the fire melts the bronze. You merely trade the charcoal for the heat, the way men at the docks change gold for a cargo.'

I nodded, because that made sense to me.

'So it is with anger and with war,' he said. 'Anger is to men what fire is to your forge. And if we eradicate that anger, much might follow.'

I shrugged.

He took me by the shoulder. 'You are full of anger,' he said. 'Anger gives strength, but it comes at the price of soul. Do you know what I am saying?'

I said yes like a boy. In fact, I heard him, but had no idea what he was saying that is, how his words were meant for me. He had come down from the temple just to say those words, but I was young and foolish.

I embraced him, and he left me, and then I finished my work.

That night I went to sleep early, intending to rise and go to Briseis, but I was tired and I slept through the night. Then the next day we had an a.s.sembly of arms, and we drilled raising and lowering our s.h.i.+elds, and forming to the left, so that we marched up the beach and formed a front on the Athenians from a column into a deep line.

Aristides said it was horrible. I had no idea. This kind of drill was outside my limited experience of war.

In the afternoon, I read Thales to Briseis. She smiled at me. 'I was lonely last night,' she said, and I started, because she said it in front of Penelope.

So that night I went through the bead curtain into her room. We made love, and it was good. And then we began to talk of my going up-country.

I wanted her to tell me that she loved me, and that she would miss me. But she was merely playful, and when I searched for an endearment, she grabbed my manhood and kissed me until I lay with her again.

I am making all of you blush. But the blus.h.i.+ng time is over, and the hard part has come.

We were lying together on her kline after that second time. She lay on top of me, the weight of her not much of a weight, I'll allow pressing down on my hips. She was idly licking the bruise on my shoulder when I heard heavy footfalls in the hallway. I had time to roll her off me.

The beads parted and Hipponax burst into the room.

He had a sword.

Behind him was Darkar, and behind both of them was Archi with Penelope in tow, her eyes wide with terror.

Hipponax raised the sword. He hesitated unsure, I think, which of us to kill first.

I took the sword from him as easily as you would take a spoon from a child. Then I stood between him and his daughter.

Oh, the furies must have been laughing.

What hurt most was the look of pain on Archi's face.

Hipponax was weeping. He hit me with his fist, ignoring that I had a sword that's how angry he was.

I flung the sword away rather than kill him with it. And he hit me again. I fell.

When he turned on Briseis, she had the sword. She looked at me with contempt.

'Stop this,' Briseis said. She was sixteen, and yet her voice stopped all the war in the room.

'You wh.o.r.e wh.o.r.e!' her brother cried. He sounded as if he was in physical pain.

'How could you-' her father started. He sobbed. 'What is the curse of the women of my house?'

Briseis stood there, naked, the sword in her fist. She held it steady, and when her father approached her, she p.r.i.c.ked his chest with the point. 'No closer,' she said. 'My virginity was never yours to barter.'

'What?' Hipponax asked. 'Drop the sword!'

She shook her head. 'Go to bed. We will talk about this in the day.'

Hipponax took a shuddering breath and exploded. 'You faithless b.i.t.c.h!' he roared. 'And I allowed your brother and this piece of offal to beat Diomedes! He was right! I will flog you in the streets I will sell you to a brothel. I will sacrifice you-'

She p.r.i.c.ked him with the point. 'No,' she said.

She looked at Archi. 'Take Pater to bed,' she said.

Archi was shaking. He flicked a glance at me. 'He must die,' Archi said.

So much for friends.h.i.+p.

She looked at me. 'Why?' she asked. 'He is not anybody, and he will never tell.'

Her words cut me as if the blade she held p.r.i.c.ked my flesh.

So much for love.

She laughed. 'You are all fools. This body is mine. I will use it as I wish. If I wish to take my pleasure with a man or a dog, so be it. I learned that from Mater, and from Diomedes, and you two fools will need to learn the lesson. Men will not be my masters. By Artemis the virgin, and by Aphrodite, I will be the master and not the slave.'

They stepped back.

'You will die a lonely old b.i.t.c.h,' her father said.

Briseis laughed. 'Pater, you are dear to me, but you are a fool. I will die the queen of Lydia. Aristagoras has agreed to marry me.' She laughed.

Something in me died. 'What?' I spat. It was good, then, that I had no weapon in my hand.

Briseis smiled at me the smile matrons give to simple children in the agora. 'You thought I was going to marry you, because you have a fine suit of armour?' She pointed the sword at her father and brother. 'As soon as Sardis falls, I am to wed him.'

She turned to me and smiled. 'You have served your turn, Doru. Take your armour and go from this house. I don't think you should come back. Pater might hurt you. And you love him.' She said the last as if it made me the greatest fool in the world.

But I obeyed her, and my world filled with darkness. I went to my bed with Darkar at my heels. He spoke, and I have no idea what he said. I took the wool bag with my armour, and I took my sword and my spears. I rolled my heavy cloak and my sleeping pad inside my aspis.

Darkar was still talking at me when I got to the gate.

Archi was there.

'How could you?' he asked.

'I love her,' I said. He had a naked blade in his hand, and I drew my blade. 'Loved her,' I spat.

'Never come back,' he said. We faced each other with blades in our hands.

I found Aristides on the beach in the morning.

'Will you take me as a hoplite?' I asked him, straight away.

He looked around. 'Tell me why,' he said. 'You served with Archilogos of this city, last I heard.'

'I serve him no longer,' I said.

Aristides nodded. 'More fool he.' He smiled. 'Will you stand in the seventh rank?'

The lowest place. An eighth-ranker was a file-closer a form of officer. But a seventh-ranker was a man either too young or too small to fight.

'I'm better than that,' I said, with all the anger gathered in the last few hours.

Aristides was only a couple of years older than me, but he had a way about him, and he gave me his famous half-smile. 'I know that you can kill,' he said. 'I don't know you otherwise. Seventh rank, or stay on the beach.'

So when we marched on Sardis, I marched with the Athenians, the wings of betrayal beating about my head, the furies at my back and all of Persia before me.

In the seventh rank.

13.