I've already said that I think Lesbos is the prettiest island in Ionia, and I still think Methymna is the handsomest town in Hellas. I always swore that if Plataea sent me into exile, I'd go and be a citizen in Methymna.
She's no Ephesus. Methymna sits high above the sea, yet the sea is at her doorstep. Methymna is where Achilles landed and took the first Briseis as his war bride. The beach is black and the town rises to a high citadel on the acropolis that has foundation stones laid by the old people – or giants. The town itself climbs the hills and sits below the fortress where the lord lives. That fortress is the only reason the men of Methymna are not serfs of Mytilene. It is almost impregnable. Indeed, only Achilles has ever taken it.
We beached on the black gravel and kissed the first good ground. The beach was full of hulls – twenty, stretching along to the east, each black ship with its own fire and two hundred men, so that the beach itself was like a city.
I went to a shrine to Aphrodite and said a prayer that Briseis would not quicken. Archi found the customers who had ordered his goods and began putting things ashore. It was early afternoon before we had the benches clear. We sold every hide we brought and every ingot of copper that hadn't been ordered. I saw that Archi had kept a full ingot back.
I raised an eyebrow and pointed.
'Your armour,' he said. 'You can pay an armourer and have your metal, too.'
I clasped his hand. 'Thanks,' I said. I couldn't think of a jibe worth giving. Then we climbed into the town, up the steep streets, some with more steps than a temple, and explored, leaving flowers at the shrines. Later we went back to the beach to meet the other shipowners.
The men on the beach were Athenian. When they learned we were from Ephesus, one of their helmsmen came up to us and joined us where we'd started a fire to feed our rowers. Heraklides was a short, powerful man with sandy blond hair and a no-nonsense manner. He looked at our helmsman and spoke to him, and our man sent him to Archi. They clasped hands and Archi had me fetch a cup of wine. Slavery doesn't just fall away from you.
By the time I'd returned, they'd exchanged all the formulas of guest-friendship. Captains were always careful that way. When you meet a man on a beach, you want to be sure of him.
I handed them both wine, and then defiantly poured my own. Archi smiled.
'Doru, this is Heraklides of Athens, senior helmsman of Aristides or Athens. He commands three ships.' Archi was excited.
'Arimnestos of Plataea,' I said. 'Son of Technes.'
'Technes the war-captain of Plataea?' the older man asked. His clasp tightened. 'Aye, you have the look, lad. Every man who stood his ground against the fucking Euboeans knows your father.'
I wept. On the spot, without preamble, as if I'd been struck. I was free, and on the first beach I landed as a free man, I met men who knew my home and honoured my father. Heracles was with me – even in the name of our new friend.
'I was there,' I said, perhaps more coldly than was warranted. 'I saw him fall.' Suddenly I was chilled on the beach. And afraid, as if it was all happening again.
Archi looked at me as if he'd never seen me before.
'You were there?' Heraklides asked. He wasn't exactly suspicious, but he gave me a queer look. 'He died. There was a fight over his body. Aye,' he said, peering at me. 'I remember you. You took a blow, eh? We sent you home in a wagon. My uncle, Miltiades, said you were to get special treatment. We sent you home with your cousin. Cimon? Simon?'
'Simonalkes?' I said, and a terrible suspicion came to me. 'I fell at the bridge when they tried to strip Pater's armour,' I said. 'When I awoke, I was a slave in a pit.'
That took him aback. He looked at Archi. Archi shook his head. 'I've never even heard this story,' he said. 'We just freed him, the day before yesterday.' He looked at me. 'Why didn't you tell me?'
I drank some wine. I knew Pater was dead – but there is knowing and knowing.
Heraklides shrugged. 'Aye, I too was a slave for a year when pirates took my ship. What's to tell? Masters don't give a rat's shit, eh?' He nodded at me. 'Thing is, you're free now. Miltiades will want to know. He was – an admirer of your father, eh?'
'I've met Lord Miltiades,' I said. But I had to sit. My knees grew weak, and down I sat on the sand, unmanned.
It's all very well to say I never mourned Pater. In a way, that's all crap. Cold bastard that he was, he was my father. And the next thought that came unbidden – unworthy – was that the farm was mine, and the forge. Mine, not anyone else's.
I needed to get my arse home and see what was what. Because if they'd sent me home with Cousin Simonalkes – why, then, what if the bastard had sold me into slavery himself? That thought came to me from a dark fog, as if the furies were signalling my duty through a cloud of raven feathers. What if he was sitting on my farm, eating my barley?
I stood up so quickly that I bumped my head against Archi's chin where he'd leaned down to comfort me.
I think I'd have gone for home that very night – that hour – if I could have walked. Or – and the gods were there – if there hadn't been war. But war was all around me, and Ares was king and lord of events. I took to Heraklides very quickly. Most men who've been slaves never admit to it – you flinch every time I mention it, honey. He had it worse than me – pirates and a lot of ill treatment – but it never broke him, and you'll get to know him as the story goes on. He was a few years older than me, but young to be a helmsman already, and getting a name as one of the best. He wasn't really any relation of Miltiades at all, but his father's brother had died in the family service and that made them like family – Athenians are like that.
The Athenians were on their way to Miletus, because Aristagoras had convinced them that the town was ready to revolt. That evening, over roast pig, I met Aristagoras for the first time. A few weeks ago we'd called him the traitor of the Ionians – running off to Athens, revolting against the King of Kings – and now I was standing behind him on a beach of black sand and toasting the success of the war.
He was not the leader I would have chosen. He was handsome enough, and he pretended to be a solid man, a leader of men, bluff and honest, but there was something hollow about him. I saw it that night on the beach – even with everything at the high tide of success, he looked like a stoat peering around for a bolthole.
He promised them all the moon. Greeks can be fools when they hear a good dream, and Ionian independence was like that. What did Ionians need with independence? They were hardly 'oppressed' by the Medes and the Persians. The taxes laid by the King of Kings were nothing – nothing next to the taxes that the Delian League lays on them now, honey.
More wine.
You'd have thought that Persians had come to Methymna and raped every virgin. The men on the beach were ready for war. They had their own ships, and they'd already met with their tyrant and held an assembly. Methymna manned only three ships, but they were all joining the Athenians, and so were the eight ships from Mytilene. And you knew, back then, that if the men of Methymna and Mytilene were on the same side, something was in the wind.
But what really excited the Athenians was that Ephesus – mighty Ephesus – had sent the satrap packing.
'We could have this war over in a month,' the Athenian leader said.
He too was no Miltiades. In fact, at the ripe old age of seventeen, I looked at the Athenians – good men, every one – and the rest and thought that we were forming a mighty fleet, but we didn't have a man as good as Hipponax – or Artaphernes or Cyrus, for that matter – to lead.
Even a seventeen-year-old is right from time to time. I never did get that panoply made, and that ingot of copper sat in our hull as ballast – well, you'll hear soon enough – until she went to the bottom. None of the smiths in Methymna were armour-makers. They made good things – their bowls are still famous – but none had ever shaped the eyeholes on a Corinthian. I did buy an aspis, though – not a great one, but a decent one.
We took on a cargo of men – men of Methymna. We took the hoplites who hadn't made the grade to go on the town's three ships. Archi counted as a lord of the town – he was a property owner there, and his mother's people were citizens, so they treated us as relatives.
A trireme can take about ten marines – more if you don't plan to do a lot of rowing, fewer if you plan to stay at sea for days and days. When you fit a fleet, you pick and choose your marines, at least in Ionia – it's different in Athens, as I may have cause to explain later, if I live to tell that part. Even little Methymna had three hundred hoplites. Her ships rowed away with thirty of them. We took another ten and left good men on the beach. Then we cruised south, weathered the long point by the hot springs and beached at Mytilene. We picked up ships there and drank wine. It was more like a party than a war.
The next night we were on Chios. I had rowed all day and felt like a god. The rowers were all paid men, but one was sick with a flux and I wasn't proud. I was free.
Heraklides approved and offered me a place on his ship.
'Hard to be a free man with your former master,' he said. He made a motion that suggested that he assumed we were lovers. No, I won't show you!
I laughed. 'I swore an oath,' I said. One thing all Greeks respect, from Sparta to Thebes and all the way to Miletus, is an oath.
'Will Miltiades join us?' I asked.
He rubbed his beard. 'Heh,' he said. 'Good question. Miltiades is fighting his own war in the Chersonese. You might say he's been fighting the Persians for five years.'
'In Ephesus, Heraklides, we called him a bandit,' I said.
Heraklides grinned. 'Aye. Well, one man's pirate is another man's freedom-fighter, right enough.' He laughed. 'And you can drop the formality and call me Herk. Everyone does.'
That gave me something to think about. Miltiades was a soldier – a real soldier. And he wasn't coming. And Herk's friendship was worth something.
The next night, we were on another Chian beach. The Chians had a lot of ships, and a lot of men, and they were powerful and had never been conquered. They were going to have seventy or eighty hulls to put in the water. The Athenians were delighted, and decided to wait. The local lord, Pelagius, declared a day of games on the beach, and offered prizes. Really good prizes, so that even Archi wanted them. There was a full panoply for the winner. Spectacular stuff – a scale shirt, the smith's nightmare, six months to make. The aspis was fair, nothing spectacular, but with a worked bronze face to it, and the helmet was fine, although not as good as the shirt and nothing on my father's work.
There was a race in armour – just becoming the fashion, then – as well as a fight with swords, wrestling and javelin-throwing.
I was a free man, and Archi encouraged me, so we walked down the beach to where Lord Pelagius had his ship pulled in by the stern. We wrote our names on potsherds while his steward watched us, and the lord himself came up – an old man, as old as I am now, but sound.
'Now, there's a pair of handsome boys, that the gods love to watch compete. You'll race?' he asked Archi. Archi had the best body of anyone our age. He had surpassed me in size by a finger's breadth, and his muscles had a sharp edge that mine never had.
We both blushed at such praise. 'We'll enter all the contests,' Archi said.
The old nobleman smiled but he shook his head. 'Not the swordplay, lads. That's for men.'
Archi nodded, but that was my best event, I thought in my youthful arrogance. I spluttered.
'Fancy yourself a swordsman, do you?' the old man asked. He peered at me. 'Well, you look old enough to take a cut. If there's a place left, I'll put you in. But we don't fight past the first cut, and if you die, or kill a man, it's your fault. We expect careful men, not wild boys.'
I blushed again, and nodded. 'I've trained since I was ten, lord,' I said.
He looked at me again. 'Really?' he said, and smiled. 'That might be worth seeing.'
Archi put an elbow in my ribs as we turned away. 'Trained since you were ten? The gods will curse you for a liar, my friend. Even though you are the best sword I know.'
Archi was a typical master. He'd never asked where I came from or what I'd done. Never. I loved him like a second older brother – but he never knew me well.
We walked back along the beach, and I was pleased to see men looking at us and, I think, taking our measure. Games are good. Competition is good. That's how men measure themselves and others.
The games were still a few days away, though. So I walked around the promontory to exercise alone. I had a sword of my own, although nothing like what I wanted. It was short and heavy, a meat cleaver. I wanted a longer thrusting blade, because that's what I'd learned with, but Ares had not seen fit to help me.
When I'd worked up a healthy sweat and swum it off in the ocean, I walked back. Slaves cooked for us, and that made me think, every time I took bread from a boy, that I was lucky – and free. Honey, once you're a slave, you never forget it.
Anyway, Heraklides came and sat with me.
'How many ships does Athens have?' I asked my new friend.
'Mmm,' he said. 'A hundred?' he answered, before spotting a pretty Chian girl up the beach. I let him go.
Athens had a hundred ships, and Miltiades alone, or with his father, had another twenty. Then there were other Athenian noble families with ten or fifteen ships of their own.
Athens was half-committed to the Ionians. Not even half. They sent a tithe of their strength. I had spent enough evenings listening to Artaphernes to believe him when he said that the weight of Persia would crush the Greeks like so many lice between his fingers. He always said this in sadness, never in boastfulness.
I looked at our fleet, and it seemed very great to me. We filled the beach at Chios, and by the time the levy came in and all the Chian nobles and traders brought their warships, we had a hundred hulls – I counted them myself.
That night, while men sang Ionian songs around the fires and chased Chian girls up the sand, I sat on my new aspis with Archi.
'I think Athens is using us,' I said.
Archi laughed. 'Stop being a slave!' he said, which made me angry. 'These men have great souls. I have talked to a dozen of the Athenian captains, and they are gentlemen. Why, one or two of them are rich enough to be Ephesians!'
I shook my head, stung by his slave comment and sure that he was wrong. 'Athenians are the most grasping bastards in the world,' I said. I had watched the slow seduction of Plataea – I had been there as Miltiades brought the men of Plataea to his way of thinking. I could imagine him doing the same from island to island across the Aegean.
Archi sat back, took a long drink of wine from a skin and laughed. 'We're going to go home heroes,' he said.
'Has it occurred to you that we're going home just weeks after we left? Diomedes won't be over his injuries yet. His father will be panting for revenge. Niobe's children will be nothing on us, Archi!' I was growing louder and angrier because his good humour and cheerfulness were like the feathers on a heron's back, and my words rolled off him.
Archi laughed. 'I understand that you are a good companion, warning me of dangers ahead. But I'm the hero – I won't be worried. You can whisper good advice in my ear and I'll use my spear to cut my way to glory.'
He looked very much the hero on that beach, by firelight. He'd been homesick for the first few days, but he loved the sea life, camping on beaches and drinking wine by the fire every night.
'Soon we'll be home,' he said, watching a pair of Chian girls run by, their oiled hair swinging and their linen chitons plastered to their bodies. One looked back over her shoulder. She knew just how to play the game. Archi shot me a look. Then he rose to his feet and chased her.
Her companion flicked me a glance and then came nearer. She was younger and seemed too shy for her business.
'Not interested,' I said gruffly.
She stood there. I drank wine and saw in my mind's eye the Persian fleet crushing us against the coast. I must have been the only seventeen-year-old on that beach who wasn't chasing a girl.
I'm a killer, and I lie sometimes, and my stories go on and on – but I have never been called inhospitable. So, when a hundred heartbeats had passed and she squatted by our fire and began to play with the embers, I poured my bronze cup full of wine and handed it to her. She was sitting on her haunches, a very unladylike posture. I'd never even seen a slave do it.
'Careful,' I said. 'No water.' I sat back on my shield, curious about the Chian girls. 'Are you a porne?'
She spat my wine in the sand, put down my cup and jumped up. 'No,' she said. 'And fuck you.'
'Sorry,' I said. I stood up. 'Stay and drink the wine. I thought that you and your sister were prostitutes.'
'That's an apology?' she asked. 'Some alien stranger calling me a prostitute?' But she squatted down again and picked up the cup. 'I'd slap you, but your wine's too good.'
I sat back down. 'There's bread, olive oil and fish.' I waved around the fire. We were messy, and our baskets were spread over three or four oxhides of beach. Men only learn from long campaigns to be tidy when they camp, and we were as raw as an ingot of copper.
She wandered from basket to basket, picking a dinner. It was getting dark, but I could see that her chiton showed the signs of hundreds of washings, with that patina of old dirt and hard work that a garment gets when it is worn and worn. I remembered my own chiton at home, in Plataea.
She wasn't beautiful, she wasn't exactly pretty, but her legs were long and muscular and the angle of her hip pushed against her chiton. Her face was too pointy and her eyes were a little too close together, but she was quick-witted and bold without being rude – a good thing in a woman.
'If I told my brother you thought I was a prostitute, he'd kill you,' she said. 'We're fishermen. My father and my brother will pull oars for Lord Pelagius.' She smiled, under her hair, which was long, black and heavily oiled. 'He's big.' She rolled some of our fish in bread, poured a little oil on top and went back to her odd squat by the fire, eating her meal with satisfaction. She licked her fingers when she was done.
I thought that she was like a cat – a kitten, actually. Lesbos and Chios are full of cats – hungry ones.
'So,' I said, curious, but seeking to avoid offence, 'what are you doing, wandering among men, galay?' Galay is the local word for a cat, or a ferret, and I used it with affection – she was like a ferret – a pretty ferret.
'You're a westerner, aren't you? You keep your women in houses and screw each other, right?' She laughed. She was maybe fourteen. Everything from the motion of her hips to her language made Penelope, the slave, look like a lady of quality. Anyway, I remember how she laughed, as if she pitied me. 'Chian girls have their own lives, at least until some man fills us with a baby.' She shrugged. 'I've killed a deer!' she said, with a childlike change of topic.
I laughed and leaned back. 'Me, too.'
She stuck out her tongue at me. We both laughed, and that was the end of the coldness.
An hour later she was sitting with her back against me. It was a chill evening, and I had put my cloak around her. I told her stories of hunting on Cithaeron, and about my sister, and Pater, until I cried a little. She was kind and said nothing. She told me about riding her father's boat in a storm, and I told her about the storm we'd ridden up by Troy, and then we talked of the gods and we sang some hymns together.
People passed us constantly – don't imagine we were alone on that beach. While we were singing, Heraklides came to the fire with a girl called Olympias, the grandest name for the broadest-hipped peasant in all Hellas, but she and the girl in front of me were from the same village and they chatted in their rapid Ionian that I could just barely follow.
Herk was older than me, but he was a good companion. He drank some wine and made jokes – good jokes – and then we were all silent together. Oh, honey, I remember that evening as one of pure happiness, the happiness of good fellowship. It raised my mood, so that I didn't feel so doomed. Which was wrong, of course. I'd have been better to be wary and afraid, but really – and I ask you, sir, to agree with me – if we worry all our lives, when will we drink wine and enjoy ourselves? Eh?
Exactly. Hours passed. We sang again, and now I noticed that the girl leaning against me – I still didn't know her name, although I knew her sister's and her father's and how old she was when her first blood came and which goddess she followed – I noticed that she had a beautiful voice. I had heard the choir at the Ephesian Temple of Artemis, mind you – I knew a good voice when I heard one.
I was just pondering how a village girl got such a voice when a trio of big men came to our fire.
'That's my sister, lad,' the biggest said. He said it with a smile that robbed his words of malice. He was too damned big to have to worry about any man on that beach.
I had come to my full growth, minus a finger's width or so, and I was not a small man, but this Chian stood a head bigger and a hand's span broader.
'Stephanos!' my girl said, and she leaped up, taking my spare chlamys with her, and embraced her brother.
I got up, too, in the complex welter of thoughts that affects a man when he's confronted by the brother of a girl that he has not debauched. I didn't want to seem afraid, but he was big. He didn't seem angry, but I'd seen men like him launch a blow without a sign of it crossing their faces. He had that look.
'I'm called Doru,' I said. 'Your sister's my guest-friend. Sit at the fire and drink some wine, if it pleases you.'
Pretty good, eh? You know, honey, sometimes we make up these speeches later to sound better to bards like your friend, but I'd had the right amount of wine that night – enough to loosen my tongue and not enough to clog it up, eh?
Stephanos grinned. 'Guest-friend, eh?' he said. He laughed. 'You must be a gentleman, sir. No Chian fisherman would ever have a "guest friend".'
He grunted when he tasted the wine. 'Good stuff. Sorry, lord. I guess you are a gent and I'm making an ass of myself.'
No one had ever called me lord in all my life. 'Stephanos, I was born a farmer in far-off Boeotia and I've been a slave for years. Just freed. No lords here, unless my master Archi comes back.'
Then he slapped my back and laughed – he laughed quite a bit, a deep, throaty laugh that made everyone else want to laugh, too. Ares, he was big! And he introduced his two friends – oar friends, the men who sat below him in his spot in his lord's ship. I don't remember their names. I know where they died, and I'll tell that part when I get to it. But they were good men, and good companions, and I'm sorry I've forgotten them. Here's a sip of wine to their shades.
I hate it when I forget names, honey. The names are all we have, and all that ever gets remembered. Now I'm a lord, and while I live, every son of a bitch in the Chersonese will fear me and know my name. But when I die – who will remember me? Who will know the name of Arimnestos?
By the ravens of Apollo, pay me no attention. Fucking maudlin old man. Too much wine. What was I saying? Aye, it was a good evening. The night I met Stephanos.
We ended up all curled together around the fire. Archi never came back that night, but there were a dozen or so of us, and one of the local girls ran off and came back with a bundle of straw – she'd been selling it all day, she said – and we lay on the straw like chicks in a nest and slept, woke and talked, and slept. Melaina was her name, I learned from hearing Stephanos chide her for sleeping next to me.
'You'll wake up with his dick in your arse,' he said, and laughed. That's what passed for a sense of humour, on Chios. They thought we all loved boys. Or pretended to think that.
I woke with the dawn. Melaina's hair smelled like fish. She snuggled her hips against me and whispered that I was not allowed to move. But I had to get up and I was embarrassed by the, mmm, projection I had grown, but she just laughed, not even awake, and told me that if I had to piss, I should piss for her, too, so she could go on sleeping.
Only when I was well away from our fire, pissing in the sand, did I realize that the games were to start in a matter of hours – perhaps less, as games always began with the sun – and I had been awake most of night. I blessed Lord Apollo that good company had kept me from drinking a foolish amount.
I went back to the fire and warmed up while I built it up. All the slaves were asleep. Then I oiled myself. Archi was nowhere to be seen. I was pretty sure Stephanos had mentioned wrestling, so I woke him.
'Are you in the games?' I asked.
'Mother fuck!' he said, or words to that effect, and rolled out of his cloak. 'You are a good man,' he said. 'Can you spare some oil? I can't run home and get back in time – the foot race is first.'
So I oiled him, and we went up the beach together. In those days, men didn't compete naked, like fools. We wore loincloths, and I had to give him my spare. Then we ran. He had long legs but no training.
We got to the crowd just in time to catch the second heat of the two-stade race. I won – not easily, but I had his measure from the run up the beach and all the other competitors were local boys who were no match for him.
You run the foot race, honey – and you, sir? Good. Easier to tell this to people who know how games go. But in those days it was all informal. The lord had put up cairns, and we started by one, turned at the other and elbows flew in the turns. If I wanted to beat a man as big as Stephanos, I needed to be well clear of him at the turn, eh? Heh, heh. Otherwise I would have kissed the sand.
Then we watched another heat, this time mostly gentlemen – hoplites, especially Athenians. They were all trained men, and they didn't even trouble to jostle each other. It was like watching a different sport. And most of them ran naked, which I found – imposing. And odd.
A final heat of local gentry, and a big youth won by knocking most of his competitors flat. Stephanos stood by my shoulder watching. As first and second in our heat, we'd be running in the final. He pointed at the winner. 'Cleisthenes,' he said. 'He's a right bastard.'
'I can tell,' I said.
Kylix came up then, and Archi. Archi shook his head. 'My own damned fault,' he said. 'Hard to be a hero in the night and morning too,' he quoted from Heraclitus, who was full of such sayings for the young.
'Archilogos, this is my new friend Stephanos,' I said, with Ephesian formality. They eyed each other as potential rivals, and I was annoyed that they couldn't be friends – but neither saw in the other what I saw in both, and they stood apart.
I sent Kylix back for my armour. I looked at Archi, but he shook his head. 'You have to be the hero today, Doru,' he said. 'The only muscles I have that are hard are in my head and my dick.'
That got a laugh from all the men. Indeed, Archi was not alone, and half the men there – more than half – were showing signs of a good night of feasting. I heard later that the man they called 'Kalos', the beautiful, the best of the Athenian athletes, was hung-over from the beginning to the end.
So we lined up in the sand for the two-stade final. I was next to the big Chian lordling, with Stephanos on my other side. Luck of the draw.
I'd watched the lordling in his first race, and I knew I'd get an elbow in the ribs off the starting line. So when Lord Pelagius dropped his arm, I shot off from a low crouch just as the trainers in Ephesus taught, bless them. Then I cut diagonally across the field.
The tall, pretty Athenian, Kalos, was on the inside and I let him lead me. From the first, we were alone. There was a roar behind me, and some shouting, but I just kept pounding up the beach, and the naked Athenian was a stride ahead.
Damn, he was fast. And he was better trained, I'd say. Hangover or not, he was the better man. And he wasn't running full out, either. He was saving himself, measuring me.
I decided on my tactics well before the turn. As we closed on the cairn, I poured it on, everything I had, and I passed him in one burst before he was on to my tactic. I was ahead of him at the cairn by a stride and I angled sharply across him so that he had to lose a stride or risk crashing into the cairn – not the most genteel manoeuvre. Illegal, in the Olympian Games. But that's youth. And then I hammered my feet on the sand, my trick done, and all there was left was to run the stade back.
There's a point in the race where it is no longer muscle and training. It's all in your head, eh? I was ahead. He would put everything into catching me, but my burst of speed must have made him wonder. And I thought – fuck it, if I can burst like that, I can run like that all the way home, if I have the guts.
So I did.
I might have been the depth of an aspis ahead of him when I crossed the line. But by Ares, I took him, and after he vomited in the sand, he came and wrapped his arms around me. 'Good run,' he said.
I grinned – I knew he was the better man. And I liked him for his good humour.
In those days, all the games counted and there was no resting. So while I was still breathing hard, Kylix brought my armour for the next race, the hoplitodromos.
That's a laugh. My armour was an old leather spolas that I bought on the beach from a mercenary, recut by a leatherworker to fit me. I had an outdated Boeotian shield that Hipponax had bought and a pair of greaves. Without them, I wouldn't have been allowed to compete in the race. On Chios, they carried an aspis and wore greaves, that was all. In Plataea, we ran in full panoply. So I snapped on my greaves, which fitted well enough, and lined up.
Lord Pelagius played no favourites, although by the time I had my armour on, I knew that the big lordling was his grandson. He could have made me run in the first heat, but he didn't, and he ran the pulls – the removal of names from a pot – fairly. He was, in fact, a good lord and a fair judge – a rarer bird than you might think, friends.
Cleisthenes and Stephanos hadn't finished the two-stade final, as they'd ended up fighting on the sand. Stephanos said that the big aristocrat tripped him, and the lordling claimed the same. But they were still in the contest. They ran in the third heat – I think the judges felt that they hadn't squandered the energy that Kalos and I had used up in the run. We ran together in the fourth heat, with another pair of Athenians and one of the Lesbian hoplites from our own ship. He ran well, too. He and Kalos and I led our pack, and Kalos was well ahead until the cairn and then he dropped back, his wine head stealing his chance for glory while the Lesbian nipped me for the victory. Epaphroditos was his name, and he couldn't believe he'd won. I worked to be as gracious as the Athenian boy had been with me. It wasn't easy. I hate to lose.
But I was still in the finals. They took place right away, and I was tired. There was quite a bit of jostling on the line, and I thought, Ares, there are four events to go, and I made the finals. I don't need to win. All I need is to finish.
The lordling was in the race, but he wasn't next to me, thank the gods. To start with, I ran easily, without any attempt at real speed. I was the last man off the line, except for another Chian who Cleisthenes tripped as we started. That boy was vicious.
I ran at a good lope to the cairn, and made the turn, still last, but in touch with the pack. Everyone was tired. It was my first games, and I had no idea how a real athlete hoards his strength. I knew my body, but I knew nothing of how to read the others.
We were halfway to the finish – the hoplitodromos is two stades, and good men sprint the whole way – when I realized that I had plenty of strength left in my legs and I had just passed one of the Athenians. So I grinned and put my helmeted head down and ran. I didn't bother to look around, or back – until there was a blow to my shield and I realized I was running alongside Cleisthenes.
We were running shield to shield, and the Lesbian was a stride ahead, the horsehair on his helmet within easy reach. Cleisthenes punched at my shield again and grinned. He was a mean bastard.
Me, too.
I put my shield rim into his hips and he screamed and fell, and then it was just me and the Lesbian with fifty strides to go. We ran our guts out. He was faster.
I hugged him anyway. He had a great heart, that man. There aren't many men who can say they beat me, but Epaphroditos was so happy that I couldn't be angry.
'This is the best day of my life!' he said.
Then Cleisthenes came up and swung his shield at my head.
There was no warning, but a year of ducking Diomedes' thugs had finally had its effect, and Stephanos shouted, and I ducked. The shield missed. Men rushed to pull us apart.
'When we wrestle, I'll dislocate your shoulder,' he shouted. 'And break your pelvis. By mistake!' Every man on the beach heard him.
People like him have always raised the daimon in me. I said nothing, but I let him look me in the eye, and he didn't like what he saw.
Then the lord was there. He slapped his grandson, and he ordered the big man to apologize to me. Cleisthenes refused.
Now that I had the attention of the whole beach, I leaned in towards Cleisthenes. 'I've been a slave half my life,' I said, so that every man heard me, 'and my manners are better than yours. What does that make you?' The daimon spoke. Had it been me, it would have been young man's bravado, but when the daimon had me, I was as calm as a summer sea. My words fell like harp notes in a quiet hall, and he flushed.
The next contest was wrestling, although as the Chians practised it, it was more like pankration, since everything was legal – blows, tripping, punches, everything but eye-gouging and grabbing the testicles.
I drew an early opponent – but by the will of the gods, I drew a beardless Athenian boy who was in his first contest, as I was. We grinned at each other, and grappled, and I had his measure by so much that I could give him a throw. In fact, I dragged it out, because I was resting. And I made him look good. His father was there, and he slapped my back at the end and said I was kind.
The boy grinned at me.
Then I went to my second bout, against a big-arsed oarsman from Lesbos. He was tall and untrained and I was smaller and well-trained. There are men out there who'll tell you that size doesn't matter in combat, and what they are full of, honey, smells bad. Eh? Big men have all the advantages. I'm not big, but you can see that I have long arms – like an ape, an Aegyptian once told me – and those arms have saved my life a hundred times.
I've put a hundred big men down in the dirt, but they always scare me and I always thank the gods when I walk away from a contest with one.
This one saved me by being afraid of me. I could see it – I was a man who'd won the stadion and come in second in the run in armour and my muscles gleamed in the sun, and he flinched. I still had to wear him out, and it sucked the energy out of me. My ankles hurt where my second-hand greaves had bit them during the run, and those little things start to add up when it's high noon on a hot beach in the third competition of the day.
I played him, and he put me down once, and his morale improved, but by then I had him tired and the next time he came in at me I broke his nose with my fist, and then I had him.
I got him a cloth for his nose, and on the way back I met Melaina, who was pouring water over her brother. She kissed me. 'You go and win now,' she said. 'Then I can tell all the girls I slept with a great athlete.' She giggled.
Stephanos frowned.
'You all right?' I asked.
'I drew that bastard Cleisthenes,' Stephanos said. His sister didn't worry him, I could tell.
'You can take him,' I said.
Melaina spat in the sand. 'His father's our lord,' she said. There was quite a lot of information in that short sentence.
I stepped close to Stephanos. 'You know how to break a finger?' I asked.
Of course he didn't. Only trainers and professionals know tricks like that. I smiled to think that I could have been the best wrestler on Chios. So I bent close and told Stephanos how to break a man's finger in the grapple.
He looked at me, and I think he was shocked.
I shrugged.
'You're a bastard!' he said.
'He's going to knee you in the balls,' I said. 'I'd wager a gold daric on it.'
'Aye,' Stephanos said.
'Get his hands at the first engagement, go for a leg sweep and go down with him. Break his finger in the tangle and apologize a lot after you're declared the winner. And it is absolutely legal.' I shrugged.
Stephanos nodded. 'I can take him.'
'Not wheezing from a groin kick,' I said.
And then I was called for my third bout. It was another big man – bigger than the last. In fact, I remember him as being bigger than Heracles, but that can't be true. But my good fortune was that he'd pulled a muscle in his groin in his last bout, and I took him. I took him so fast that he apologized afterwards. I told him that I thought he was probably the better man, and he liked that, and we clasped hands.
Stephanos broke Cleisthenes' hand. If we'd all been lucky, he'd have broken the lordling's right hand. But he broke the bastard's left, and he apologized, and Lord Pelagius himself said it was an accident.
So it was me and Stephanos in the final. We were already breathing hard, and Archi strigiled me – as if he was my slave, he said, and I loved him for it – and put fresh oil on me. Melaina proclaimed that this was the best bout – because she liked both the contestants and was sure to be pleased – and Lord Pelagius looked at her fondly and then told the circle of men and women to keep quiet. It's odd – at Olympia and Delphi, they forbid matrons to watch men compete, but allow maidens. In Ionia, women had their own foot races and they all watched.
Stephanos came at me with a grin, and tried to break my left hand at our first engagement, the bastard.
I didn't fight back the same way. My blood wasn't up, and I knew he had to pull an oar. I'm not always a bad man. So I punched him, even when we were grappling, and I got his shoulders down for a count and had a fall.
The second fall, he roared like a bull and came in at me, going for a throw. I stayed away, avoiding his hands, and just barely kept him from pinning me against the crowd. But by my third retreat the crowd was hissing at my apparent cowardice – especially as I was up by a fall – and like a foolish boy I let the crowd noise sway me. I saw my opening. Went over the attack, and found myself face down in the sand.
Then I was angry – angry at myself – and I tried to stand toe to toe with him. I got a leg behind him and I went for a throw and missed – we all miss sometimes, honey – and he got hold of me and then I was grappling a bigger man. He got me, although we put on a long grapple and a good contest and we were both covered in sand and sweat, and when we rose, Stephanos looked at me with a certain wariness.
Down two throws to one, I was a sober fighter. I was bone weary, but still unhurt.
Stephanos made a mistake, or was unlucky. Seconds into the fourth round, as I circled him, he crossed his legs – a foolish thing to do, and something even Chians must have trained against. I was on him in a flash and he was down, and although he was strong I got my legs around his hips and I had a control hold on one arm. I knew I had him – and after some long minutes of struggle and some grunting, he knew it too.
They applauded us like heroes after that round. We looked good. And I had him. He'd squandered energy trying to match my hold with sheer strength, and now he was beaten.
So I stepped in to finish it, grappled him and got dropped on my head for my pains.
Never believe all those stupid country-yokel stories. That Chian played me like the city boy I had become. He let me think him exhausted. He let me believe it with everything from posture to his weary 'you've got me beaten' smile as we stretched our arms out and started the last engagement. I don't think I ever made that mistake again.
I came to with fifty men around me, and Stephanos all but weeping on my chest. He'd dropped me just wrong – but thank the gods, he hadn't snapped my neck, although it hurt like blazes, a line of cold that was worse than fiery pain running up my spine.
Heraklides was there, too. He had a reputation as a healer, and he had my spine under his palms. 'Can you move, lad?' he asked me.
'Yes,' I said, and swore. Ares, I hurt! My fingertips hurt. But I was on my feet, swaying, but up.
They gave me a lot of applause and some back-slaps, and somebody, one of the Athenians probably, groped me. So much for heroism.
'Sorry, mate,' Stephanos said.
I laughed, and we clasped hands. 'Last time I teach you anything,' I said.
He grinned. 'I like to wrestle,' he said.
Then we had a break before the next event – until the sun was past a certain point in the sky, no water-clocks on a beach on Chios. I slept, and when I awoke, Stephanos came and massaged me himself.
'I can't throw a javelin, and I've never touched a sword,' he said. 'So you're my man to win. You're ahead, you know.'
I lay like a corpse under his hands. He knew how to get his thumbs deep in the muscle. He said his father taught him. Melaina had the trick too – she came and did my lower legs and feet, bless her.
When they were finished, I felt like quitting once and for all. And I felt like sex. Melaina suddenly appealed to me – the touch of her hands – hard to explain.
Instead, I got up and took javelins from Archi. I didn't even have my own – they were back in Ephesus. Archi slapped my back. 'You're in first place, you dog!' he said. 'That'll teach me to drink too hard.'
Not just sour grapes. Archi and I were always a dead match, except as swordsmen. If I was winning, he'd have been with me – except that the luck had been going my way in every encounter. It takes luck to be a winner. I've seen the best man trip on a stone or lose his footing in a match. Read the chariot race in the Iliad, honey – that's the way of it. The best man does not always win.
Or maybe it is the will of the gods, as some men say. Or the logos seeking change, so that one man does not dominate others, or to effect some other change.
I was never a great man with a javelin. I've killed my share of men with spears, thrown and pushed, as they say, but that's because the daimon in me doesn't lose its skills in the press of bronze. In a contest, I can't throw as well as other men, and that's a fact.
But that day I threw the best spears of my life. My first throw did it – which god stood at my shoulder I don't know, but I smelled jasmine and mint and I swear that it was Athena putting her hand under mine and lifting my spear. Other men matched my throw, and Cleisthenes beat it, the bastard. I threw twice more, and never came within a stride of my first throw.
I placed seventh. Cleisthenes won. But I placed in the top eight, and by the Chian rules I had won or placed in every contest, and no other man had done that. Cleisthenes argued that he had, but his grandfather overruled him, saying that he had failed to finish the two-stade run.
I had won. I couldn't believe it.
I think my slavery really ended there, on that beach, just before the sun started to swoop for the sparkling blue sea. I wasn't just free – I was a man who could win a contest with hundreds of other free men.
We Greeks love a contest, and we love a winner. They mobbed me, and I was kissed a little more than I liked and patted a little too much, but I didn't care. They put a crown of olive leaves in my hair.
And then Lord Pelagius took me aside.
'Listen, lad,' he said. 'You're the winner – clear winner. No judge even needs to count.'
'There was a goddess at my shoulder, sir,' I said.
He nodded. 'What a very proper thing to say! Who was your father?'
'Technes of Green Plataea, lord.' I bowed.
'I gather you were a slave?'
'I was taken,' I said. 'The family that had me – freed me.'
He nodded again. 'A fine story. Damned fine. The way good people should act.' He was an old aristocrat, and he had the best notions of how his class ought to behave. A few of them do.
The rest are rapists and tax-takers with pretty names and better armour.
At any rate, he put his arm around my shoulders. 'Listen, lad. You asked to fight with the sword. You're welcome to do it – we can all see you're a trained man. But after winning today, no one – and I mean no one – will think you're a shirker if you want to step aside.'
But, ignoring the hubris of it, and the sound of wings I might have heard, I shook my head. 'I want to fight, lord.'
He smiled. 'Well,' he said, 'I can't give you your prize yet. So go and armour up.' He meant that all the prizes were given at sunset.
So I put on my old leather spolas, not a tenth as glorious – or protecting – as the scale shirt I was so soon to own. I put my aspis on my arm and my crude, cheap and cheerful helmet on my head, picked up my meat-cleaver sword and went down to the lists.
In those days, we took wands – willow or linden, usually – and planted them at the four corners of the lists, and then we fought to the first cut. Men died from time to time, but most men were careful, and few fought all out in the lists.
Calchas had told me about such fighting, back on Cithaeron by the shrine of the hero, and I had thought that it sounded like the Trojan War. Here I was, five years later, standing by a row of black ships on a beach with a blade in my hand and the weight of my bronze helmet pressing down on my nose. While I listened to the judges caution us against using our full strength, my heart sang inside me – freedom and victory in games are a heady mix, like wine and poppy juice. The stars were out, although the sun hadn't set. There were only eight of us to fight – which, had I thought of it, might have made me wonder about our army.
Yet I tell this badly. I wanted to talk to the past. I wanted to tell the boy in the olive grove, and the slave boy in the pit, that there was this at the end of the road – that someday I'd stand on the sand, a hero.
Who knows? Heraclitus says that time is a river, and you only dip your toe once. But maybe you can skip a stone, too. I only know that the boy in the olive grove and the boy in the slave pit made it to be the victor on the beach.
You don't understand. Perhaps just as well. And just as well that the victor on the beach didn't know what was to come, either.
Count no man happy until he is dead. We paired off, and I was up against a Chian. We exchanged names, but I've forgotten his. I was too inexperienced to be afraid, and too eager to show my skill.
We circled for a while. No man with steel in his hand lurches into a fight without feeling his opponent. It's like foreplay with a beautiful woman. Well, it's not, actually. But there are a few things in common, and I like making your friend blush. Young lady, if you turn that colour every time I mention sex, we'll be good friends. What's your name? Ligeia? How fitting.
At any rate, we circled, and then we started to make jabs at each other's shields. It is hard to hit a man who has an aspis, when all you have is a short sword. The only targets are his thighs, his ankles and his sword arm. In a contest, his head is out of the question. Bad form. Which is funny, because in a real combat, that's what you go for.
I became bored with circling and tapping shields. I shuffled forward, shield foot first, and then I cut at his shield, stepped in hard with my back foot and cut back – the 'Harmodius blow' they call it in Athens – and caught him just above the greave. A nice cut and no real harm.
I think I made him happy – he was out with honour.
Men are fools. Combat is not for honour. I hadn't learned that lesson yet, but I almost knew it, and I was annoyed with him, that he'd wasted my time and energy.
I was the first to finish, and I watched the others fight. Cleisthenes had his broken hand inside his aspis, and he was hammering his opponent, an older Athenian who was angered and afraid of Cleisthenes' bullying, hammering attacks that were well beyond the spirit of the contest. Cleisthenes was swinging as hard as he could, chopping his opponent's shield with his heavy sword, a curved kopis or falcata, depending where you're from, a weapon like an axe with a sword blade attached.
Another Athenian effortlessly dispatched his man after a long shuffle in a circle. I saw him do it. He faked a cut to the man's head and tagged his thigh under the rim of his shield – perfect coordination, perfect control. He was one of their noblemen. He was fast and elegant and had better armour than anyone else, including bronze on his thighs and upper arms.
It was good that I saw him, because he was my next opponent. The light was starting to go, and we fought between two bonfires. He smiled at me – he had an Attic helmet with spring-loaded cheek-pieces, and as soon as I saw it, I knew my father had made it. I held up my hand to him.
'My father made that, sir,' I said, pointing at the helmet.
He took it off. 'You're a son of Technes, the smith of Plataea who fell in Euboea?' he asked.
'I am, sir.' I bowed.
He returned my bow, although he was a child of the gods, the son of the greatest family in Athens. 'I am Aristides,' he said, 'of the Antiochae.'
I nodded. 'I am Arimnestos of the Corvaxae,' I said, 'of green Plataea where Leitos has his shrine.'
He grinned. He liked that I could play the game. Then he put his helmet back on and I pulled mine down, and we faced off.
The Chians cheered us, because we were both foreigners. Aristides was probably the best-known man in the fleet, while I had just won the athletics, and that made it a good-natured match with lots of cheering. I could hear Melaina's clear soprano and her brother's bass.
And then they all went away, and I was alone on the sand with a deadly opponent. He moved the way a woman dances, and I admired him even as I tracked his motion.
As far as I was concerned, he was beautiful, but he put too much energy into it. That is, he looked wonderful – and he was good, very good, a true killer. But he also played to the crowd.
He had not, on the other hand, run several stades and wrestled.
Early on, he came at me with his kill shot. All swordsmen have one – a simple combination they have mastered, that can get the fight over in a hurry. Listen – if you live past a man's kill shot, it's a whole different fight. But most men go down, in sport or play or on a blood-spattered deck. Calchas taught me that, and every sword-fighter in Ephesus said the same.
I didn't buy the feint to my head and my shield caught his blow to my thigh, then I cut back at his arm and my blade ticked against his arm guard.
He nodded at me as we drew apart – acknowledgement that I'd hit him. Then we circled for a long, long time, until the crowd was silent. I wasn't going after him. He was better than me. And he wasn't in a hurry. And, frankly, I knew he was the best man I'd ever faced – better than Cyrus or Pharnakes, even.
Twice, we went in. The first time, he came forward gracefully – and fooled me, his swaying approach a trick as he darted to the right and his blade shot out in a cut to my right hip, of all unlikely targets.
I parried the blow on my blade and hammered my aspis into his. I cleared my weapon and tried to reach under his shield, but he didn't allow it, and we were kneeling in the sand, shield to shield, pushing. The crowd roared but the judges separated us.
The second time, I saw him stumble. It was dark now; the fires gave unsteady light and the helmets didn't help. But before my attack was even fully developed, he had his feet under him. He cut low and then high, and our blades rang together, and we both punched with our shields, leaning our shoulders into the push, and our blades licked out and we both rolled left and broke apart. The ocean cold of his blade had passed across my sword arm and my blade had ticked against his thigh armour.
I raised my blade for a halt. 'He touched me,' I said. I can be an honourable man.
But his blade had been flat on, and Athena was by me, and when the judges looked, there was no blood.
Stephanos gave me a drink of wine while the judges looked at my opponent. Archi pointed at him.
'Back of his knees, brother,' he said. He'd never called me brother before, and it was the warmest praise of the day.
'Cleisthenes hurt his last man,' Stephanos said. 'He'll face the winner here but his grandfather is mad as fury. The man he cut is bad.'
Cleisthenes came and started to catcall. He was a rude fuck, and while other men cheered, he jeered. My blood started to rise.
I decided to go for the Athenian's knee. Archi was dead right – when you're in the fight you don't always see. He was a tall man and the back of his knee was the best unarmoured target on him.
He went for his kill shot again. I think he felt that he hadn't got it off perfectly the first time. But as soon as he started, I knew the combination. I knelt, ignoring the head feint, and snapped my wrist in a long cut against the back of his left knee while his sword cracked on to my shield and bounced up on to my helmet – I'd knelt too low. The blow was hard – not as well pulled as his first, and I fell sideways with a bump on my scalp where my helmet turned the blow but not all of it.
He gave me a hand up and apologized.
I pointed my heavy blade at the black line of blood running down the back of his greaves.
'By Athena!' he said. 'Well cut, Plataean.'
Men cheered, but Cleisthenes jeered again, calling us pansies. And then he insisted on fighting, right there.
'I want this,' he said. 'Unless you're afraid.' And closer up, 'I'm going to hurt you.'
His grandfather tried to stop it. But the other judges said there was enough light, and I was an arse, and simply insisted I'd fight.
'You're a fucking slave,' he said, and he grinned. 'I own you already. Slaves always fear men like me – real men. Do you feel the fear, boy?'
The thing I hated was that of course I did feel the fear. I did fear men like him – big, brutal men who wanted to inflict pain. And my fear made me hate him, and the daimon came.
Suddenly I was as cool as if I had bathed in the sea. When we came together, I already knew how I would fight, and what I would do. The daimon was in me, and I give no quarter then. And truly, I have done shameful things, but this was hardly one of them. He was an evil bastard, and he earned his way to Tartarus all the way.
But I regret – some of it.
As soon as his grandfather gave the word, he came at me, his sword high, and smashed it into my shield.
He cut at the top, his tactic simple. He would cut the bronze band that held the rim in five or ten strokes, and then start chopping the shield until he broke my arm or cut my shield arm. It was a brutal technique, and he was a brutal man.
I ducked and dodged. I wanted him contemptuous and hurried.
He was easy.
He laughed and spat and chased me, landing a blow or two on the shield face. He finally stopped.
'Fucking coward, stand and fight!' he yelled.
I laughed. 'Come and catch me, arse cunt.'
Some men heard me. Others didn't. He heard me, and he should have paused to consider that if I had the breath to insult him, I wasn't afraid. But he was a fool.
But his grandfather had heard him and threw down his staff. 'Stop!' he roared.
He picked up his staff and prodded his grandson in the stomach. 'Boys talk like that,' he said. 'Men respect their opponents. One more jibe and I will throw you from the lists.'
Cleisthenes didn't even pretend to obey. He did not fear the gods, and they knew him for what he was.
Before Lord Pelagius gave the word, he came at me again, and he almost caught me, because, in fact, he cheated. His sword hammered my shield and we were shield to shield. The sword went back and he cut at my head. His blow clipped the rim of my shield and then my helmet, and it hurt.
'I'm going to kill you,' he crowed.
I could tell you that the pain of his blow made me do what I did, but I promised not to lie much when I told these tales. I knew from the moment we crossed swords. I always meant to kill him. Honey, I'm a killer. A little more wine. Your friend is blushing.
I danced away and he came after me, sure that he had me. And I let him come. He came in to hammer my shield, and I cut his sword hand off his arm as easy as making your friend blush.
See, he'd over-extended a little more with each cut, trying to get the biggest part of his blade into my shield rim. I just led him by the nose until I had his arm where I wanted it. And I could have simply given him a cut to remember.
He fell to his knees. He couldn't get the shield off his shield arm and he couldn't get a hand on his wrist to staunch the blood, and it was pumping out, almost like a neck wound.
If he'd had a friend in that circle, perhaps that man would have stepped up and stopped the blood. Or maybe not. What's a man worth with no right hand, like a criminal?
His grandfather stepped forward – and then paused.
That was the awful part. His own grandfather let him bleed out. And the other men in the circle – a conspiracy of two hundred.
He was gone quickly, but his eyes went to mine near the end, and suddenly he wasn't a bad man, a rapist, a tax-taker, a bully. He was a deer under my spear, and he didn't understand the darkness that was coming, or why it had to come to him. And in his eyes I saw the reflection of that god who comes to every man and every woman, and I also saw myself – the killer.
I didn't look away. I held his eye until he fell forward and everything was gone.
But as his soul left his body, I think something of me went with it.
I killed him because I didn't like him.
And when my eyes met Aristides', I could see that other men knew it as well as I did.
I won't go on and on about this, friends, but before I killed Cleisthenes, I was one man. Briefly, I was a victor, a man men admired. That might have been my life, however brief.
But the fates, the gods and my own daimon said otherwise. And when Cleisthenes fell face forward into the sand black with his own blood, I was another man. Some men admired me.
But aside from a few, the rest feared me.