Killer Of Men Part 6

Ah, listen, honey. He was not a bad man, as powerful men go. He saved Greece. He was good to me. But he was used to the finest horses, the most beautiful women. It was our foolishness that made us think he was happy to drink sour wine with peasants in Boeotia.

I climbed in through the window of horn. I'd done it dozens of times once to steal the bow. I told you that story.

As soon as I got it open the stick I'd whittled to prise the window open was still leaning where I'd left it flies came out, buzzing like some evil thing. In Canaan, men call the lord of the dead the 'Lord of the Flies'. It was just like that as if all the flies made a single creature and moved with one will.

I dropped from the sill into the room, and it smelled of old leather and bad food. At first I thought he had gone, leaving a rotten haunch of venison and an old brown cloak on the deer's carca.s.s in the middle of the floor.

But, of course, he was there.

The details came to me one at a time, although I think I understood as soon as the flies buzzed past me in the window. The odd shaft of light over the deer carca.s.s was s.h.i.+ning on the sword. The sword was stuck, hilt first, into the floorboards. There was no deer carca.s.s.

Calchas had wedged his sword into the floor and fallen on it. He had done it so long before that the brown cloak was just his hair and the last of his skin over his bones.

How long since I had crossed the valley and left a sacrifice at the tomb? How many times had I come when he already lay here, dead? I wonder, in a way, if I had already known, because I had said my goodbyes and I didn't weep. I went to the door, unbarred it and found the bronze-shod shovel Pater had made for him with his athlete's pick. I carried them out into the yard and went straight to the tomb. Miltiades called something but I didn't listen. Instead, I began to dig.

I didn't see Miltiades go to the hut, but I know that before the sun rose much higher, he was at my side, his lord's hands digging in the earth with mine. We did a proper job.

'Not much to burn,' Miltiades said, when I began to pile up the winter's supply of wood in the yard. It was old wood, and a little rotten. He hadn't cut more, nor had he burned much, last winter. This was the wood I had cut while training.

I piled it high. I was tempted to burn the cottage, but I knew that another man would come to mind the tomb. Why ruin it for him?

Then I went in and spread my cloak on the floor. I lifted his corpse and put it gently on the good wool. Some pieces of him fell away. I was not squeamish. I filled my cloak and carried him into the yard. I put copper coins in the empty sockets of his skull and set the bag of my cloak and his bones on top of the woodpile, then Miltiades got a flame going with his fire kit.

'He was a great warrior,' Miltiades said. 'Twice he saved my life in the haze of battle. Once he saved my s.h.i.+p. And he could sing poetry like a bard. He was a gentleman like the heroes of old. May his shade go with theirs, to the island of the blessed, for he was all the old virtues together in one man.'

Then I wept. I said a few halting words, and the flames rushed up and consumed him.

But he lives in my words, honey. Honour him. He made me. In a way, he made you. Because he put the skill of arms in me, and because of him, I am not dead.

His death was the beginning of everything that went wrong.

Miltiades and I went back home. You might think that I'd have shouted at Pater, but I didn't. Pater knew that is, he knew when we were riding away, the day he took me from Calchas. He knew what would happen, and he told the truth. We didn't kill him. We were like a sword left lying in a tavern, and then used in a murder. We were the instruments of his death.

I think some of Calchas pa.s.sed through the skin of my hands and into my heart. I think I became a man while I carried his body, light as dried bone, out to the yard to burn him on his pyre. Is that just memory playing tricks?

Mater had never met him, but she wept for him, nonetheless odd, in a way. He had no use for women, and yet a woman who had never known him mourned him. Somehow, it was fitting.

We kept a three-day vigil at our home, as if he'd been family, and Miltiades joined in or led us and that bound him to us even more, and us to him. He sat with Mater and read to her and told her she was beautiful. She drank a little and flirted harmlessly.

Then Draco and Theron came back, riding donkeys.

They came into the yard, failure written on their bodies like words on papyrus. Draco dismounted first and he didn't meet Miltiades' eyes, but told the story simply and quickly. The Spartans had derided the three of them, called them peasants and rebels, and told them to take their petty attempts at democracy to Athens, where such things are welcome.

Draco wasn't a broken man, but he was changed by the experience. He was used to being taken seriously, and he'd been treated like a boor and a dolt. He complained long and hard. Indeed, for the rest of his life, he complained of the treatment he received in Sparta.

Myron came later. He complained less, but his resentment was hotter. Perhaps, as a farmer and not a craftsman, and as a member of an old family that claimed descent from the G.o.ds, he actually thought of himself as an aristocrat. Anything is possible. But the insults of the Spartans made his blood boil. The difference was that he never spoke of it again. Neither did Theron. For other reasons, as you shall see.

Epictetus followed, and then the archon himself. He had a horse, although it looked like a sorry beast beside the fine mounts Miltiades had brought.

Mater wanted to know who had arrived, and I went up to the women's quarters to tell her.

'Your father is about to find out why a man like Miltiades has cooled his heels for five days in our house,' she said. 'Will you grow to be a man like him? Like Miltiades? Or just another good craftsman like your father? Poor man. I led him to this. I couldn't just be the wife of a smith, and now we're about to be part of a political game.' She gulped wine. 'I should fall on a sword like your teacher. He knew what he was about.'

I sighed and left her.

I served the wine that night, when they decided to send the 'salt tax' to Athens. Miltiades sent his slave with them and stayed with us, well over the border from his home city.

We didn't have to wait long.

The events of that summer were like one of the storms that roll down the valleys of Boeotia. First you see the storm the black clouds rising like the strongest towers, spiralling up over the mountains and then you hear the thunder. And when the thunder comes, honey you run, or you get wet. At first it seems very far away a murmur on the far horizon, and perhaps a prayer to the storm G.o.d. Then, before you know it, unless you are in the barn or house, you'll be wet through your cloak and chiton in an instant, as the lightning flashes every few heartbeats and crashes to earth sometimes all around you and the wind rips branches from the trees and the end of the world seems just one bolt away.

When the men of Plataea sent Myron to Athens, the storm was still a tower of darkness on the horizon, and we were blinded by our own desires. But the desires of men are nothing when the G.o.ds send a storm. The first drops of rain were falling, and only Miltiades knew how big the storm was. And he didn't tell us.

Athens sent a deputation back in a week, riding on horses over the trade road. They brought a decree welcoming Miltiades back and they brought us a treaty. The men of Plataea signed the treaty, promising to stand by Athens, and Athens promised the same. The men of the city went to the Temple of Hera and swore together in the sacred precincts. Pater went, and my brother. I was too young.

It was a magnificent summer. I remember them coming back from the temple, all the men of our valley in their long clothes chitons and the big cloaks we wore then. They made a beautiful procession. I thought that this must be how the king of Persia looked.

The sun was high and the sky had the magnificent blue that is so hard to remember on a rainy day like this. We were all proud that Athens wanted us. And the men from Athens acted as if we were men of worth.

I remember that time as happy. Perhaps it is just by contrast with what came after.

The men of Athens went home and Miltiades went with them. Pater went back to work on an order for spear points. Draco went up the mountain with both his sons to cut oak for wheel rims. Myron went home to watch his slaves reap his barley.

I began to form my first cup.

It wasn't going badly when the Athenian herald rode up the valley, summoning us to war.

Two weeks. That's how long we had before the storm broke.

I never doubted that I would go with the men. I went as a s.h.i.+eld-bearer, of course a hypaspist I was too young to fight as a hoplite. These days men take slaves, but in those days, it was more acceptable to take boys just short of manhood to carry your equipment.

Hermogenes went for his father and I went for my brother. My father took a slave.

We never thought to refuse the Athenians. And aside from my mother, who wept and railed against the fates, there were few who saw how completely the Athenians had duped us. They were not saving us. We were marching to protect them. But no one said so.

We took less than a week to muster. We might have mustered faster, but our farmers needed to get their crops in. It was already known in the polis that Thebes intended revenge that we were viewed as rebels. They might come and burn our crops if we didn't bring them in. It was bad enough leaving grapes on the vines and olives on the trees.

I have no idea whether any man suggested that we either forget our alliance with Athens or simply send a minimum of men. We were proud peasants, and we sent the whole of our muster over the mountains. Men like Myron worked like slaves to get their harvest in. I remember working in the fields with Hermogenes and our slaves, already feeling like a man at war. I drank wine with the men in the evening and hoped that they would present me with an aspis and put me in the taxis. Farmers freed slaves to fill out the ranks, but I was not invited.

We went across the mountains after the feast of Demeter. We marched up the same road that pa.s.sed the shrine, and every man in the ranks touched the tomb, and I thought of Calchas. We'd heard that the Spartans and all their Peloponnesian allies had marched around the south end of the mountain and entered Attica. Boys like me feared that we would be too late.

War is something a man should want to be late for. We crossed into Attica, and the Spartans were sitting across the stream from the tower at Oinoe, a fortification the tyrants of Athens had built against this very kind of war. Of course, Sparta had been an enemy of tyranny but when the Spartans saw how strong the new Athens was going to be, they became enemies of democracy as well. Nation states are always that way, honey. They have no more morality than a wh.o.r.e in the Piraeus looking to score some wine. Anything to get what they want.

Ares, how we feared the Spartans. Cleomenes, their king, a famous man, had with him only a thousand Spartiates the Spartan citizens, and there were six thousand Athenian citizens. But he made up the numbers with 'allies', cities of the Peloponnese that had to fight when Sparta said fight.

And how the Athenians cheered us, although we brought just a thousand hoplites. They gave us the honour of the left end of the line. The position of highest honour is the right flank. If the right gives way, an army is done dead. Miltiades' father, also called Miltiades, held the right of the line with the senior tribes of Athens. They looked magnificent, with cloaks of tapestry-woven wool, and the whole front rank had bronze breastplates like heroes. Every man had a horsehair plume in his helmet. They made us look like farmers.

Hah! We were were farmers. Half our men had leather caps. Only the front rank had helmets, and half of them were open-faced war hats. My father was one of only a dozen fighters with bronze panoply, and not all our front rank even had leather to cover their bodies. A couple of men wore felt. farmers. Half our men had leather caps. Only the front rank had helmets, and half of them were open-faced war hats. My father was one of only a dozen fighters with bronze panoply, and not all our front rank even had leather to cover their bodies. A couple of men wore felt.

Hermogenes and I were psiloi psiloi. That meant that we were to run close to the enemy, throw rocks at them and goad them into action. Sometimes psiloi just yelled insults. It was all rather like something religious. Psiloi rarely harmed anyone.

I had six good javelins quite a few for a boy my age, but then none of the others, slave or free, had spent two years on the mountain hunting deer. I gave three to Hermogenes.

Myron's youngest son Callicles was our leader. He was a year older than me, and bossy. I was used to my brother, who would listen to any argument I made and judge it on its merits. Slow and careful and totally solid, my brother. Callicles had none of those qualities. My halting attempts to tell him that I knew a lot more about this game than he did led to him putting an elbow in my nose. He caught me by surprise and had me on the ground in an instant. I broke free before he could hurt me but I chose to obey.

We camped for two days, watching the Spartans. The alignment meant that if we fought, we'd be the ones facing the Spartiates. They'd be on the right of their line, and we'd be on the left or ours. There was some talk, but none of the men had much time for us boys except my brother. He told me how scared he was.

'I feel like I'm going to die,' he said. 'I'm cold all the time. I'm going to be a coward, and I hate it!'

I hugged him. 'You'll be brave!' I told him. 'Just don't be too brave.' I grinned and gave him Calchas's advice, which must have sounded foolish from a beardless boy. 'Stay in the s.h.i.+eld wall and don't let anyone over your s.h.i.+eld,' I said.

He laughed at me, despite his fear. 'I'm in the sixth rank,' he said. 'Safer than we are in a storm at home!' He laughed, but then he was serious. 'We're going to form deep, to slow the Spartans down,' he said. 'Pater says if we form a dozen deep, we'll stand longer.'

It sounded like sense to me. Still does.

In those days, honey, men didn't fight as they do today. Well the Spartans did. They were orderly and careful, but most men didn't even form a proper phalanx with ranks and files something every city does today. No, back then, we were still like the war bands of the lords in the Iliad Iliad. Men would cl.u.s.ter around the leaders like trees around a spring, and if a leader died, all his men would run.

But my father paid attention to things he saw and heard, and it was he who had suggested that the men of Plataea should each have a place a rank and a file and should practise in those places, the way the Spartans and the best of the Thebans did their apobatai apobatai, the elite fighters, who had once been the charioteers. And now Pater had ordered them to fight in a very deep order in those days, twelve deep was twice as deep as most men fought.

But I digress, as usual. I could tell that my brother was afraid. I wasn't afraid. I thought that it would be like deer hunting. I imagined that I'd run around the flank of their line and throw my javelins into this packed ma.s.s, killing a Spartiate with every cast. Calchas had told me the truth about war, but my ears had been closed.

It may sound odd to you, but I took quite a s.h.i.+ne to young Callicles. He was arrogant but he was older, and that matters to peasants. And when he saw how far I could throw a javelin he only had one he treated me differently. In an afternoon of rock- and javelin-throwing on the height beside the tower, I became his second man, his phylarch, and we copied our elders, speaking at length about our 'tactics'. As boys will, we made the other boys do as we did, and we practised running and jumping and throwing javelins and rocks. Most boys merely had rocks. The slaves hung back.

Fair enough. It wasn't their fight. Those who had been freed had everything to gain by fighting well, but those who were still slaves had no interest in the fight at all. They sat around until we yelled at them, and then the older ones were slow and so obviously unwilling that they poisoned our confidence. These men were masters of avoiding work, and a couple of teenaged boys were nothing to them. These were men who were used to dealing with the wrath of Pater or Epictetus the Elder.

By the third day, it looked to all of us as if there would be no fight, and the Athenians heaped praise on us. Just by coming, we'd given the Peloponnesians pause. Now they were outnumbered. And, it appeared, they'd expected the Thebans to join them, but the Thebans weren't there yet. Or weren't coming at all.

I'll have a lot to say about war, honey. I may put you to sleep with it for a month while I weary you with my story. And one thing I'll say a thousand times is that every army has its own heart, its own soul, its own eyes and its own ears. In that army, that Peloponnesian army, they didn't really want to be in Attica. They were all too aware that the Spartans were only there to support their alliance with Thebes, and the Spartans, as was their way, had shown their lack of interest by sending only a token force under the junior king.

As they did again later, against the Medes. Never trust a Spartan, honey.

Anyway, they should have known that the b.l.o.o.d.y Thebans were coming. They were a hundred stades away or less. Ares must have laughed.

Cleomenes finally committed to fight because the Peloponnesians were starting to leave him. Allies were freer in those days. They told the king of Sparta what they thought, and then they marched away. Not many of them, but enough to make old Cleomenes decide to fight before he had no army at all.

We knew that the Thebans were coming. It was said around every fire. The Athenians and all the farmers of Attica they had farmers too were already looking over their shoulders and doubting the new leaders that they'd elected. But Miltiades and his father were everywhere even among us putting bars of iron into the spines of every man. Miltiades even came and watched our boys practising. He praised my javelin throw, and an hour later his slave came and gave me a pair of spears with blued steel heads even now, the memory of them makes me smile. They were fine weapons. I thought my spear Deer Killer was a fine weapon it had a bronze head made by Pater with its name engraved on the spine but it was crude next to these, with their red hafts and their blue-black heads.

I kept Deer Killer and the gifts and gave my other javelins to other boys. Callicles took the best and gave his own to the poorest.

Three javelins for the richest boys. A hemp sack full of rocks for the poorest. What fools we were. And our fathers were being matched against the red cloaks of Sparta.

The day dawned. I slept well enough, unlike my father, my brother and most of the other Plataeans. The heralds had been exchanged the night before. By the time we ate our barley porridge, Miltiades the Elder had made his sacrifices. He found them auspicious.

I'm sure they were auspicious for Athens.

I had never seen a phalanx form. Pater was one of the chief officers of the Plataeans and he walked up and down, forming men into their place in the ranks, his black and red double crests nodding as he walked, and he looked as n.o.ble and as deadly as any Spartiate. I marvelled at his performance he knew who was steady and who had nerves, and he placed them as gently as possible, avoiding any form of insult. I was proud that he was my father. Still am.

I saw that Cousin Simon was in the sixth rank. What fool of a polemarch had ever put him in the front for the last battle? He was green already! In the middle, he'd be safe and he wouldn't hurt anyone.

Then I saw that he was one man to the right of my brother. Chalkidis looked worried, but he waved. He was the only man in the sixth rank who had greaves and a fine helmet. That's what you get when you are a bronze-smith and the son of a bronze-smith. He had his helmet tipped back on his head, the way you see the G.o.ddess Athena in her statues. And he managed a solid smile for me. I pushed through the ranks and hugged him, leather cuira.s.s and all. I was jealous, but he looked magnificent and he was still a head taller than me, and suddenly all I wanted was for him to succeed and be a hero, and when we were done embracing, I hurried to the roadside shrine and poured a little of Pater's honeyed wine on the statue of the Lady and prayed that he would be brave and succeed in battle.

I had no doubts that he'd be brave.

Before my first battle story is told, I think I have to speak about courage, honey. Are you brave? You don't know, but I do. You're brave. And when it's your turn to face the woman's version of the bronze storm when a child comes from between your knees into the world you may scream, and you may be afraid, but you'll do it. You'll get it done. No one expects you to like it, but all your friends, all the womenfolk who've borne their own children, they'll crowd around you, wiping your brow and telling you to push.

It's the same for men. No one is brave. No one really, deep down, wants to be Achilles. What we all want is to live, and to be brave enough to tell our story. And older men who've done it before will call out and tell the younger men to push.

The thing is, hardly anyone is such a coward as to stand out. You are there with the whole community around you. Courage is asking a girl to marry you, alone against her parents. Courage is standing before the a.s.sembly and telling them they're a pack of fools. Courage is fighting when no one will ever see your courage. But when the phalanx is locked together, it's hard to be a coward.

f.u.c.king Simon. He was no coward in other ways, but when the phalanx formed, he lost his wits. G.o.ds, how I still hate him.

Our phalanx looked a poor thing next to the Athenians. They had blue and purple and bright red and blinding white, and we had all the homespun colours of peasants. Pater had a good cloak, and so did a dozen men all Miltiades' friends. The son of the basileus's sister looked as good as the Athenians. The rest even some of the better men looked drab and dun.

We formed our boys in a thin line in front of our fathers. We saw the Athenian psiloi. They were a poor show compared to us all slaves, and half of them didn't even have rocks. So we joked that there was one thing we did better than the men of Athens.

We were still forming when the Spartan helots came across the ground at us. They had rocks in bags, and they threw hard. I caught one on my s.h.i.+n and I fell. That was the glory of war. Just like that the first rock, and I was down.

Two or three of us fell, and the rest of the boys ran like deer on the mountain. I hadn't even had time to think about how I might be a hero. I hadn't even thrown a spear. But my pater was right there, so close I could almost touch him, and I was not going to run. Besides, as I got up, I found that I couldn't. My s.h.i.+n hurt too much and there was blood.

The helots were almost close enough to touch, too. In fact, two of them had just begun to lob rocks at our phalanx. They ignored me.

I killed the one closest to me. Deer Killer knocked him flat, just as she had done a dozen times to deer.

That got their attention. A rock came so close that it brushed my ear like the whisper of a G.o.d, telling me that I was mortal. I planted my feet, ignoring my s.h.i.+n, and a beautiful blue-tipped spear killed a second helot. They died died. This is no boyish boast. We were as close as your couch and mine, honey and I threw to kill.

They broke. They were slaves, and like our slaves, they had nothing to gain from bravery. They didn't even care about avenging their comrades. Slaves have no comrades. They turned and fled as our boys had just moments before.

That's when I learned that Calchas had come into my body when I burned his corpse, because when they fled, I killed another. I liked it. I c.o.c.ked back my arm and threw my spear into the back of a fleeing slave and I liked it and I liked it.

Then I hobbled forward and retrieved my javelins.

Behind me, the left-most Athenians and the right-most Plataeans were cheering. They were cheering me. It went to my head like unwatered wine.

The other boys came back fast enough. They weren't cowards. They just hadn't understood the game.

We still didn't understand. Callicles slapped my back and we ran forward together. I tried to angle across the Spartan front, because I knew we'd be safer on the flank, but I was slowed by my s.h.i.+n.

When I looked up, the Spartans terrified me. It's not like being in the phalanx, out there in the middle between the armies. And the Spartans they all look the same, with matching s.h.i.+elds of bronze, like the richest Athenians, and with almost identical helmets. I actually wondered who made all those helmets. They looked very fine. And they scared me.