Heh, heh. Boeotia is a tough place, and no mistake. And
we’ve little tolerance for those men who’ve lost their way. Can I
tel you a hard truth, friends? If a kiler goes bad, the best the rest
can do is put him down. Wolves know it, dogs know it and lions
know it. Men need to know it too.
Even when the man is your friend. But that’s another story.
More wine here.
Idomeneus came out and held my horse as I slid down..
‘Sorry to cal you al the way here, lord.’
The dent in my perfect helmet stil rankled, and I couldn’t get
the thought of a messenger from Sardis out of my head – Sardis,
the capital of Lydia, the satrapy of the Persian empire closest to
Greece. Who would send a messenger from Sardis? And why in
the name of al the gods hadn’t I stopped to ask?
But Idomeneus was a man who’d saved my life fifty times.
Hard to stay angry with him. ‘I needed to come out, anyway. If I
stay at the forge too long, I might forget who I used to be.’
‘Used to be?’ Idomeneus laughed his mad laugh. ‘Achiles
reborn, now hammering bronze?’
‘So, you kiled a man?’ I asked. One of the women pressed
a horn cup into my hand. Watered, spiced wine, just warmed. I
a horn cup into my hand. Watered, spiced wine, just warmed. I
drank thankfuly.
‘We just kiled us an Alcmaeonid,’ Idomeneus said. His eyes
glinted in the last light. ‘He stood there on the precinct wal and
proclaimed his parentage and dared us even to think of kiling
him. He thought that big name would protect him.’
I shook my head. The Alcmaeonids were rich, powerful and
nasty. Their wealth was boundless, and I couldn’t imagine what
one of them was doing at the tomb of the hero. ‘Perhaps he was
lying?’ I asked.
Idomeneus produced something from under his chlamys. It
flashed red-gold in the last beams of the sun. It was a clasp belt,
the sort of thing a very rich man wore with his chiton, and every
link was beaten gold. It was worth more than my farm, and I
have a good farm.
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘He had the mark of evil,’ Idomeneus said. ‘What could I
do?’
I went and looked at the corpse, stretched over the precinct
wal in the traditional way. He had been a big man – a head taler
than me, with a bel cuirass of bronze as thick as a new-flayed
hide.
He probably weighed twice as much as wiry Idomeneus. He
had a single wound, a spear-thrust in his left eye. Idomeneus was
a very, very dangerous man. The Athenian nobleman must have
been too stupid to see that – or the mark truly was on him and
the hero needed blood.
The armour was of the best, as was his helmet.
The armour was of the best, as was his helmet.
‘Fuck,’ I said again. ‘What was he doing here?’
Idomeneus shook his head. Behind him, men and women
were lighting the lamps. There were six huts now, instead of just
one, as there had been in my youth. My Thracians had one, and
former bandits were four to a hut in the others, except the last,
which was for the women. They were clean and orderly. Dead
deer hung in rows from the trees, and there was a whole boar,
and piles of salted skins, roled tight. Idomeneus ran the tomb
like a military camp.
‘He was recruiting,’ I said aloud, answering my own
question. Perhaps the grey-eyed goddess stood at my shoulder
and said the words into my head, but I saw it. He was in his best
armour because he wanted to impress. But he’d chalenged
Idomeneus – somehow – and the mad fuck had kiled him.
These things happen.
My problem, I thought, was how to clean it up. They were al
in my oikia, so I bore the responsibility and it was my place to
put it right. Besides, I knew most of the big men in Athens. I
knew Aristides, and he was related to the Alcmaeonids by
marriage and by blood. I was sure he could make it right, if
anyone could.
I considered the alternative – I could do nothing. It was
possible that no one knew where this man was, or what he had
intended. It was possible that even if his people found out, they
would take no revenge.
‘In the morning, I’l cast an augury,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the
‘In the morning, I’l cast an augury,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the
logos wil offer me an answer.’
Idomeneus nodded. ‘You’l stay the night?’ he asked.
‘Just as you wanted, you mad Cretan,’ I said.
‘You need to get away from the farm before you turn into a
farmer,’ he said.
I had the glimmer of a suspicion that my mad hypaspist had
kiled a powerful man merely to get me to come up the hil and
drink with him. I sighed.
Styges put a warm cup in my hand and led me to the fire
circle, where al the former bandits sat. We sang hymns to the
gods while the bowl of the heavens turned over our heads. The
firelight dappled the ancient oaks around the hero’s tomb. Styges
took out a kithara and sang alone, and then we sang with him –
Spartan songs and aristocratic songs – and I sang Briseis’s
favourite, one of Sappho’s.
My eyes kept meeting those of a slave girl. They weren’t
precisely slaves – their status was not simple. They’d belonged
to a farmer – a widow – and the bandits had kiled her and taken
her chattels. Then I’d kiled the bandits. Whose were they?
Were they free? They slept with al the men and did too many
chores.
She was short, almost pretty, and one of her legs was
twisted. Our eyes kept meeting, and later she laughed aloud
while I was inside her. Her breath was sweet, and she deserved
better than a hero who thought only of another woman. But
despite her limp and her odd face, she stuck in my head. In those
days I must have mounted fifty slave girls a year. Yet I remember
days I must have mounted fifty slave girls a year. Yet I remember
her. You’l see why.
In the morning, I hunted on the mountain with Idomeneus, but if
he’d left any deer alive within half a day’s walk, I didn’t see
them. But we did cross the trail where we’d ambushed the
bandits a year before. The road goes as high as it ever does on
Cithaeron’s flank, then drops down into a mud-hole, after which
it climbs a little before starting the long descent, first to the tomb
and then to Plataea herself.
There was a cart abandoned by the mud-hole, and tracks.
The cart was loaded with weapons and leather armour –
good, strong stuff. And there were a few coins scattered on the
ground.
‘He had servants,’ I said.
‘And they ran,’ Idomeneus said. ‘No need to cast an augury,
is there?’
The abandoned wagon meant that the rich man had had
attendants – men who even now were running back to the family
estates in Attica with a tale of murder.
‘We could chase them down and kil them,’ Idomeneus said,
helpfu
ly.
‘Sometimes, you realy piss me off,’ I said. And I meant it.
‘I feel bad,’ he admitted. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’l ride into Attica and make it right,’ I said. ‘Send to the
farm, get Epictetus to fil a wagon with my work, and have it
head for Athens. I’l meet the wagon in the Agora in Athens in
ten days. Before the Herakleion. Then my whole trip won’t be
ten days. Before the Herakleion. Then my whole trip won’t be
wasted fixing your fuckup.’
Idomeneus nodded sulenly. ‘He had the mark on him,’ he
said, like a child who feels a parent’s law is unfair. ‘The hero
wanted his blood.’
‘I believe you,’ I said. And I looked at him. He met my eye –
but only just. ‘You can’t come,’ I said. ‘Not unless you want to
die,’ I added. He shrugged.
My entertainment of the night before was standing a little
apart. I palmed a coin to give her, but she shook her head and
looked modestly at the ground.
‘I want to go,’ she said. ‘I can be a free woman in Attica. I’l
warm your bed on the trail.’
I considered it for a while. ‘Yes,’ I said.
The other two women cried to see her go.
I’d have done better if I’d stopped to cast the auguries. But
who knows? The gods like a surprise.
We made good time up Cithaeron’s flank. Up where the oak
trees falter, I kiled a young boar with my bow. From there, and
with that as an omen, I took the old road and we climbed al the
way to the top of the ancient mountain, and made camp in the
wood of the Daidala, the special place of al the Corvaxae,
where the crows feast on meat we provide for the god.
I made a good camp, with a wool sheet as a tent and a big
fire. Then I left the slave girl to cook meat from the hero’s tomb
and I climbed up to the altar. In our family, we say that the altar
is to Cithaeron himself, and not to Zeus, who is, after al, an
is to Cithaeron himself, and not to Zeus, who is, after al, an
interloper here.
There was a sign on the altar, the remnants of a burnt offering
and a hank of black wool. So – Simon’s sons lived. And they
had come here in the dark of the moon to curse someone. Not
hard to guess who. I smiled. I remember that smile – a wolf’s
snarl. Hate comes easily when you are young.
It was a clear night, and I could see out to the rim of the
world, and everywhere I looked, I could see fire. And I thought:
War is coming. The thought came from the god, and his eyes
helped mine to see the girdle of fire al around the world,
standing there on the summit of the mountain.
I heaped brush on top of the pile of ash on the old altar, and I
roled the boar’s hide, hooves and bones around the fat, then lit
the fire. That fire must have been visible to every man and
woman from Thebes to Athens. I set the boar to burning and
made my prayers. I fed the fire until it was so great that I
couldn’t stand near it naked, and then I went back down to
where the slave girl waited.
She served me food. ‘Wil you free me,’ she asked, ‘or sel
me?’
I laughed. ‘I’l free you,’ I said. ‘With that twisted foot,
you’re not worth seling, honey. Besides, I keep my word. Do I
not?’
She didn’t laugh. ‘I wouldn’t know.’ She stuck out her bad
foot and stared at it.
‘Your barley broth is delicious,’ I said, and it was. That’s al
the flirtation a slave gets. ‘I was a slave, honey. I know what it’s
like. And I know that al my talk isn’t worth shit until you have
your freedom tablet in your hand. But I give you my word, by
the high altar of my ancestors, that I wil free you in the Agora of
Athens and leave you twenty drachmas as dowry.’
Every god in Olympus must have been listening. A man needs
to be careful when he swears, and careful what he promises.
‘The sons of men lie,’ she said, her voice holow, so that just
for a moment I wondered what goddess was sharing my
campfire. ‘Wil you be different?’
‘Try me,’ I said with a young man’s arrogance. I moved
towards her, and as I put a hand behind her head, the ravens
came, a great flock, and they alighted in the trees around my fire
– the same trees where the Corvaxae feed them, of course – and
they knew me. I had never seen so many. The fire reflected their
eyes – a thousand points of fire – and when I put my mouth over
hers, her eyes glowed red in the fire, too.
We made love anyway. Ah, youth.
We were five days crossing Cithaeron, at least in part because I
became infatuated with her. Sometimes one body just fits
another – hard to describe to you virgins. Suffice it to say that
despite her twisted foot and odd face, my body adored hers in a
way I have seldom experienced. I wanted her every minute, and
the wanting was not slaked by the having, as it is so often with
men, especialy young men.
After we had made love on a rock by the trail, where you can
After we had made love on a rock by the trail, where you can
first see the rich blue of the sea over Attica, she rose from my
best efforts, smiled and threw her chiton over her shoulder and
stroled on, naked, by my horse.
‘Don’t you want to get dressed?’ I asked her.
She smiled and shrugged. ‘Why? It wil only come off again
And she was right. I could not have enough of her.
She wouldn’t tel me her name, and sometimes I caled her
Briseis. That got a bitter laugh and a hard bite. I begged her and
tickled her and offered her money, but she said that teling her
true name would break the spel. So I caled her Slave Girl, and
she resented it.
After the slowest trip over the mountain in the history of the
Greeks, we came down by the fort at Oinoe, where my brother
had died. I poured wine to his shade and we rode on, the horse
useful now. We didn’t camp in Attica – I was a man of property,
and we stayed in inns or I claimed guest status from men who I
knew a little, like Eumenios of Eleusis, who was happy to see
me, toasted me in good wine and warned me that he’d heard
that the Alcmaeonids were out for my blood.
I sneered. ‘They don’t even know who I am,’ I said. ‘I’m
just some hick from Boeotia.’
Eumenios shook his head. ‘No. You’re a warrior and a friend
of Miltiades – and Aristides. It’s said in the city that you can lead
three hundred picked men of Plataea over the mountain
whenever Miltiades snaps his fingers.’
I shook my head and drank my wine. ‘Who the fuck would
I shook my head and drank my wine. ‘Who the fuck would
say that? Myron is the archon – Hades’ brother. In Plataea we
care very little for who lords it in Athens, as long as the grain
prices are good!’
But then I thought of the black wool on Cithaeron’s altar.
Simon’s sons would spread that st
ory, if it would help them to
revenge.
In the morning, Eumenios pretended he’d missed a night’s
sleep because of my antics with my slave girl. He saw me
mounted, poured a libation and sent me on my way. But before
I’d turned my mare’s head out of his gate, he caught my ankle.
‘Go carefuly,’ he said. ‘They’l kil you if they can. Or bring
you to law.’
Nine days on the road, and we came to Athens.
My daughter, and young Herodotus, have both been to
Athens – but I’l tel you about the queen of Greek cities anyway.
Athens is not like any other city in the world, and I’ve been
everywhere from the Gates of Heracles to the Mountains of the
Moon.
Most men come to Athens from the sea. We came down
from the mountains to the west, but the effect is the same. The
first thing you see is the Acropolis. It was different then – now
they have new temples a-building, fantastic stuff in white marble
to rival anything in the east, but it was impressive enough in my
day, with the big stone buildings that the Pisistratids, the tyrants,
had put up. New temples, and new government buildings, and
power in every stone. Athens was rich. Other cities in Greece
were stronger – or thought they were stronger – Thebes, and
were stronger – or thought they were stronger – Thebes, and
Sparta, and Corinth – but any man with his wits about him knew
that Athens was the queen of cities. Her Acropolis had held the
Palace of Theseus, and men from that palace went to the war in
Troy. She was old, and wise, and strong. And rich.
More people lived within the precincts of Athens than in the
whole of Boeotia, or so men said. The city was bigger than
Sardis, and had almost twelve thousand citizens of military age.
Athens had bronze-smiths and potters – the best in the world
– and farmers and fishermen and sailors and oarsmen and
perfumers and tanneries and weavers and sword-smiths and
lamp-makers and men who dyed fabric and men who whitened
leather and men who did nothing but plait hair or teach young
men to fight. Moreover, they had women who did most of these
things. The world was turned on its head in Athens, and in my
time I’ve met women who played instruments, women who
coached athletes, women who wove and women who painted
pots – even a woman philosopher. It was the city.
The City.
They’re a greedy, rapacious, foxy lot, the Athenians. They lie,