Killer Of Men Part 29

We took them downstream. I slept fitfully, and then the sun was scorching my face and I felt as if I had drunk wine all night. We took the boat to the beach below the city, where some jabbering fool insisted that we had stolen his s.h.i.+p until he saw the philosopher, and then he was silent.

That man aside, it was a silent city. The army was sprawled in exhaustion just upstream. A few panicked fools had made it home, however, and the city held its breath, waiting to find out how bad it might be.

We brought Hipponax home, and his son. I hired a pair of public slaves to carry Archi, and as we climbed up the town, my sense that this was an evil dream was heightened by the routine around me men were rising to transact business, and slaves waited by the wells and fountains to fetch water.

At every little square, women came and asked us for news of their husbands, and I protested that I had served with the Athenians, and Herac.l.i.tus didn't speak. I think he knew, or had an idea, and even his courage was insufficient to meet the needs of telling a hundred wives that they were widows.

We didn't go quickly. The sun was high by the time we made the upper town and the steps to the Temple of Artemis gleamed white, like a stairway to Olympus. I began to think that Herac.l.i.tus would take me aside, awaken Archi and we would go and have lessons, and when I came back down the white steps, I would be a happy man, and Hipponax would meet me in the courtyard and ask me to fetch him a cup of wine. Time plays tricks like that Herac.l.i.tus used to speak to us often of how, with age, a wise man begins to doubt the reality of what we imagine is time. It seems so possible that Hipponax, dead, is in the same place as Hipponax, alive and laughing.

Herac.l.i.tus used to tell us that time is a river, and that every time you dip your toe, the water it meets with is different but that all the water that ever flowed over your toe is still there, all around you.

And then we came home.

Euthalia met us in the courtyard, and she knew who was wrapped in the himation. She took charge of his body and her face was set and hard.

Archi had been conscious for half an hour by then. But every time he raised his head he retched. I offered him water, but he turned his head away from me.

Doubt the G.o.ds if you like, thugater, but never doubt the furies. I had sworn to protect Archi, and to protect Hipponax. But it was my knife that took his life, and that polluted me, and they took my friends.h.i.+p almost my brother as their price. Fair? There's no such thing, honey.

Nothing is fair.

Penelope came and she and Dion took Archi away.

I stood in the courtyard, waiting for Briseis.

She didn't come.

After a while, I left with Herac.l.i.tus. He offered to take me to his home, but I shrugged him off and went down the hill to where Aristides was camped, and I rejoined the Athenians.

The next morning I went back to the house, and Darkar met me in the portico.

'You are not welcome here,' he said. 'Go away.'

'How is Archi?' I asked.

'He will live. You killed killed Master? My curse on you.' Darkar slammed the gate on me. Master? My curse on you.' Darkar slammed the gate on me.

The following day, as the Persian army came down the river and prepared a siege, I tried the house from the back, the slave gate. And I found Kylix. He embraced me.

'I told Darkar,' he said. 'I told him you did what you did from love, not hate.' He kissed me.

'Will you take a message to Briseis?' I asked him. He had always wors.h.i.+pped me.

He shook his head. 'She's gone!' he said. 'She is to marry the Milesian lord Aristagoras. She has gone to his brother's house.'

'She will come back for the funeral,' I said.

Kylix shook his head. 'I doubt it. The things she said to her mother Aphrodite, they hate each other.'

I had scribed some words on a piece of bronze. 'Give this to her if she comes.'

Kylix nodded and I gave him a coin. Wors.h.i.+p is one thing service another.

I walked back down the hill.

That was the day that Eualcidas had his funeral games. We were a beaten army, but he was a great hero, a man who had triumphed at Olympia and stood firm on fifty battlefields. I felt sick and low, and I won only the race in armour. There was no hoplomachia hoplomachia, no fighting in armour. Stephanos won the wrestling, and Epaphroditos won overall and carried away the prize a magnificent feathered helmet. Then we all drank until we couldn't stand, and we set fire to his corpse, and the two slaves were formally freed.

Epaphroditos stood by the fire with his arm around Idomeneus and tears streaming down his face. 'May I end as he did,' he said.

Stephanos shook his head. 'I'll take home and hearth, lord.'

I thought of the battlefield. 'He went fast, and in the fullness of his strength,' I said. I nodded. I was drunk.

Herk laughed and held out his hand for the wine. 'Don't camp on the wineskin, lad. When it's your turn and you're one of them, I know that look you'll think your time was too short. Me I'm with the Chian boy. Home and bed, and all my relatives gathered around, arguing over the pile of silver I'm leaving.'

Cleon looked at the fire. 'I just want to get get home,' he said. home,' he said.

I stood there, and loved all of them, but the one I wanted with me was Archi. And that door was still locked.

Every man in the army knew me now, but I was not a captain or even an officer. So when they had their great conference, I did not go. Aristides went to speak for Athens, and he took Heraklides and Agios and another file-leader. Too many of the other leading men were wounded or dead.

They came back so filled with anger that it showed as they walked towards us on the road.

Aristides ordered the s.h.i.+ps loaded. Then he summoned me. 'We're leaving,' he said. 'You served with me and you served well, but you are not one of mine. Yet I don't think I can leave you here. Aristagoras knows your name what have you done that he hates you so much?'

I shook my head. 'It is a private matter,' I said. Had s.e.x with his bride? But how would the fool ever learn that?

'Why are we leaving, lord?' I asked.

Aristides raised an eyebrow. Even in democratic Athens, men like Aristides are not used to being questioned by peasants from Plataea. 'Apparently, we abandoned the men of Miletus on the battlefield,' he said.

'Ares!' I said.

'Aristagoras is one of those men who not only lie to others but to themselves,' he said. And shrugged. 'I am not sorry to leave. Will you go to Athens?'

I took a deep breath. 'I think I'll go home, lord. To Plataea. Unless you would take me in service? As a hoplite?'

Aristides laughed. 'You are a foreigner. Listen, lad. Here you see me as a warlord with a retinue but once I go home and lay my s.h.i.+eld on the altar, I'm done I'm just another farmer. I don't keep warriors. We're not Cretans we're Athenians.'

Herk spoke up for me. 'We could find him work, lord,' he said.

Aristides shook his head. 'He's a killer, not a worker. No offence, lad. I would have you at my back in any fight. But I don't see you as a farm worker.'

I nodded. 'It's true.' I had to laugh. 'I could find a bronze-smith. Finish my training.'

Aristides looked interested. But Agios shook his head. 'You said that you knew Miltiades.'

I nodded.

Heraklides narrowed his eyes. 'I could take him. I have half a cargo for Byzantium, and I can get copper at Cyprus or Crete.'

Aristides shook his head. 'Herk, you'll make a profit off your own death.'

They both looked at me, and I was warmed by how much they both sought to do right by me. 'Lord, I think that it is time that I went home. I will not go to Miltiades,' I said.

'I will write you a letter,' Aristides said.

'Come with me anyway,' Herk said. 'I'll end up in Piraeus soon enough if Poseidon sends a good voyage you'll make a few coins with me, and be the richer for it this winter at home.'

I was still afraid of going home. There's no easier way to put it. A few weeks with Herk seemed delightful a respite. 'Yes,' I said. 'But I have sworn an oath, and I must see to getting my release.'

'We'll be off with the evening breeze,' Herk said. 'If you have goodbyes, say them.'

I ran up the hill.

I ran all the way to the gate, and then I knocked, and Darkar opened it, and I pushed past him into the house, until I found Archi. He had a bandage around his head.

'Get out of my house,' he said.

I had had time to think, and I spoke words I had considered. 'I am leaving,' I said. 'Aristagoras has cast the Athenians out of the army the fool. I'll go with them.'

'Go!' he spat.

'But I swore to support you,' I said. 'And you need to get your family into s.h.i.+ps-'

'Support me? The way you supported my father? And my sister? You are the f.u.c.king curse of this family!' He rose to his feet and then sank back, still woozy from his blow to the head.

'You have to get out of here!' I shouted at him. 'Pack the slaves and go! When Artaphernes takes the city-'

'I don't need any words from you!' he screamed.

'Have you freed Penelope yet?' I said, and he froze. 'Free her. You owe her. By Ares, Archi, get your head out of your a.r.s.e.' I stood over him.

Darkar came back with two big slaves. I looked at them, touched my sword and they backed away.

'Go!' Archi said.

'Diomedes has not given up on revenge,' I said. I didn't know it it came to me from the G.o.ds. 'Your father is gone and Briseis's idiot husband intends to hold the city against Artaphernes.'

'Scuttle off, c.o.c.kroach,' he said. 'We will hold the city.'

I took a breath and let it out. 'I would stay, if you wanted,' I said. All my plans for careful speaking were gone, and I could only beg.

'So you can kill me?' he said. 'Or would you rather f.u.c.k me? Whichever way you choose to wreck me? Did you hate us so much? Did we treat you so badly? By Zeus, you must have lain awake plotting how to bring us down. Did you bring Artaphernes into the house, too?' Spittle was coming from his mouth. 'The next time I see you, I will kill you.'

I shook my head. 'I will not fight you,' I said.

'The better for me, then,' he said grimly. 'But your oath didn't protect my father and it will not protect me. Run far, Plataean.'

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

At the door, Kylix pressed a slip of papyrus a single leaf into my hand. Written in her hand, it said only 'stay away'.

So much for love.

When we sailed, the men of Chios and Miletus gathered on the beach to mock us as cowards.

There is no fairness, honey.

I thought that I was sailing away towards home I hoped I was. But when we sailed out of doomed Ephesus, I was leaving home, and I wept.

Part IV

Scattering the Leaves.

The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation will grow while another dies. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation will grow while another dies.

Homer, Iliad 6.147

15.

I never saw Byzantium that trip. The storm hit us four days out of Cyprus with a hull full of copper. We ran before it, because we were crossing the deep blue between Cyprus and Crete and we had nowhere to land and we didn't dare show the low sides of our trireme to the wind.

It hadn't been a good trip. We'd had weather out of Ephesus, weather all the way to Cyprus, weather while we collected copper and weather while we rowed all rowing, no sailing to Crete.

Men looked at me. I was the foreigner, and the G.o.ds of the sea were angry. Well they might. I was an oath-breaker, fleeing from my oath to Hipponax, and the sea had no love for me.

I took turns with Herk at the steering oars. We'd been trained well, Archi and I, when we made the runs up to the Euxine and across the wine-dark sea to Italy. I could handle a s.h.i.+p, even a long killer like Herk's light trireme. I marvelled at the Athenian build style. They really were pirates the hulls were thin as papyrus, and the s.h.i.+p itself was narrower and lighter, and the rowers were packed even closer than rowers in Ephesian s.h.i.+ps free men every one, with a sword and a couple of javelins, the richer men with a spolas or a thorax.

South and east of Crete, the weather seemed to abate and we made a good landfall, and the first night that we slept on a beach, every man kissed the sand. I speak no blasphemy when I say that the furies must have had a lot of law-breaking and oath-breaking to pursue. Perhaps some other b.a.s.t.a.r.d took up their attention.