The Great King (17 page)

It is one of the harshest truths that, in youth, the things you value – revenge, bloody honour, retaliation on your foes, manly prowess – as you grow older, you learn how hollow they are. Revenge? For the weak. Strong men have other things to do with their time – like live, till the ground, make babies, worship the gods. What is Arete? Are you excellent when you have another man’s life on your blade?

I think not. And I have taken more lives than most men.

Cimon drew a bloody picture that night, as the Great Bear sailed over our heads – a picture of our world in flames. And the excellence that made us what we are – as sailors, as bronzesmiths, as athletes – even as warriors – burned away in the hot fire. With nothing left but the ability to fight – not like Greeks, but like desperate slaves.

Finally he shook his long hair. ‘If they come – I will fight with my fortune and my hands. But better if they don’t come.’

I nodded.

‘How do we stop them?’ I said, convinced.

‘We prepare for war,’ he said. ‘And we appear as powerful, and as united, as we may. Only a strong front and the threat of a real fight will give the Great King reason to hesitate. And a good offer.’

It was my turn to scratch my beard and think.

‘The new Great King – Xerxes – is young. We hear he is very . . . emotional.’ Cimon looked at me.

I shrugged. Artapherenes and Cyrus hadn’t so much as mentioned him. My impression is that they didn’t think much of him and had probably backed another contender. No one came to Cyrus the Great’s throne without blood on his hands, and Xerxes killed his brothers to get to the throne – as was usual in the East. And, of course, contemptible to us.

‘Are Persians religious?’ Cimon asked me.

I frowned. ‘Of course. Why ask me? You know as many Persians as I do!’

Cimon shook his head. ‘I wish I did. I didn’t grow up with them, and the Persian renegades at my father’s court were not the men you describe. Renegades are seldom the true representatives of their culture – eh?’

I sipped wine and watched the fire. ‘In truth, Cimon, their best men are very like our best men. Despite the stupid trousers.’

Cimon nodded. ‘It will be dawn all too soon. I’ll make my point. And Gorgo’s. Do you remember Marathon year?’

I laughed. ‘Isn’t that a foolish question?’

‘I prefer to think of it as a rhetorical question. You recall the Persian envoys?’ He looked at me and I winced. ‘I don’t – but I have heard they were killed – in Athens and in Sparta.’

Cimon nodded. ‘Cleomenes ordered them thrown in a well. You must know the story.’

I did.

‘Most Spartiates believe he committed an act of gross impiety and that the gods are very angry at Sparta. I could list you off a dozen things the gods have withheld from Sparta – four bad harvests, a dozen minor failings, a bad earthquake . . .’ I was about to speak, but he held up his hand. ‘Spartans are
very
religious, Arimnestos. Never, ever doubt it. I’ve been in and out of their messes all my adult life. There is
nothing
about superstition and religious observance that a Spartan doesn’t believe.’

I nodded. Brasidas was a case in point. As usual. It put another face on his exile – of course, he was
also
cut off from full religious observance. I thought about that a moment, and lost the thread of Cimon’s discourse.

‘At any rate,’ he said, ‘the Spartans believe they are under a curse because of the murder of the heralds.’ He leaned forward. ‘One of the greatest signs of the displeasure of the gods is that Sparta has not won a single athletic event – not at the Isthmian games, not at Nemea, and not here – since the murder of the heralds. So – in the great sacrifice tomorrow, Leonidas will swear an oath to send his own heralds to the Great King – to do with as he pleases. Cleomenes is dead, but Leonidas may – I do not know – offer to send the Great King the men who killed his heralds.’

‘A symbolic act short of submission,’ I said. ‘No earth and water, but—’

‘And an act of piety to Zeus, showing that Sparta will atone for the stain. What is worse than the murder of heralds, sacred to Hermes
and
Zeus?’ Cimon nodded.

I shook my head. ‘I should sleep,’ I said. ‘There are too many secrets – Aphrodite, Cimon – and someone is throwing sling stones at Polypeithes!’ I got up.

Cimon understood at once. ‘Polypeithes’ injury was . . . the act of a man?’ he asked. ‘Son of a whore.’ He looked away. ‘That chariot is the best chance the Spartans have to win the laurel here. And we need them to win, Arimnestos. We need the old, conservative Spartiates to back Leonidas. Because Sparta has a pro-Persian party . . .’

I nodded. ‘Of course. There’s a King of Sparta living at the Persian court!’ I got it all, now. It was, as a plot, essentially Greek. It was as if Aeschylus were writing us our doom. The Spartans were the greatest military power in Greece. We all required them. And their house was deeply divided – Hades, Cleomenes only murdered the heralds to make it impossible for his rival king Demaratus to make peace!

Round and round. Plot within plot. Consequence within consequence.

Just the way we had been before Lades, when the Persians destroyed us and a third of our fleet defected.

I spat. ‘We’re contemptible,’ I said. ‘Not just the fucking Spartans. We’ll fight among ourselves and plot for our own ends and the Persians will march in here and eat us.’

Cimon got up, too. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not, brother. But tonight, at the sacrifice, Leonidas will promise to send his heralds. As Delphi advised him. And they have asked
you
to take them – all the way to Susa if I have my way.’ Cimon shrugged. ‘And then, if one of the Spartan athletes can manage a win, I’d say we were on the way.’

‘And someone here is trying to stop us,’ I said.

Cimon shrugged. ‘Not someone,’ he said. ‘Almost everyone.’

Too little sleep and too much wine. And a throbbing ankle, so I couldn’t run. I needed exercise, and I walked out through the camp just after dawn. Slaves and poor men were cooking, and the rich were standing about looking tousled, or lying at ease in their blankets.

It was the great day. The day of the opening of the games, when we would all participate in the greatest set of sacrifices in the Greek world – more than a hundred oxen, all simultaneously on the vast altars. I could hear the beasts lowing, and I could smell them.

Walking doesn’t heal a man the way running may, and it doesn’t affect his essential daemon in the same way – taking a man to a greater height of spirit, I mean. I wanted a run. Instead, I had a hobble.

Nor did I see Gorgo, although I confess that I went closer and closer to the well-ordered Lacedaemonian camp and I suppose I had my reasons.

At the edge of the camp were twenty Spartiates, naked in the dawn. All of them had their sword-belts on. Every one of them had a chlamys over his left arm. They stood like statues, and then one of them – there was no obvious leader – barked a single syllable. It sounded very strange to me – not a Greek word at all.

Twenty hands went to twenty scabbards. Their swords – their short stabbing swords – appeared in their hands as if by magic, and as they drew, they cut – overhand, the blade rising up the body and flickering past each man’s left ear and out – like the tongue of an adder – as their right foot glided forward, flat to the ground.

I had seen Brasidas practise the same movement. In fact, I had played with it myself. But I had never seen it done by twenty Spartiates.

‘He!’ grunted the leader.

The end of the down cut became a wrist rotation – a stomp of the right foot – and twenty swords thrust, point first.

‘He!’

Every man pivoted on his hips and pushed with his aspis – in this case, each man used his chlamys draped over his left arm as if it were an aspis. I could see the attack – as a strong man steps with his left foot, he can slam the rim of his shield into you like a second sword. As a weapon, the rim of an aspis can break an arm or a leg or crush a skull.

The shield-thrust covered the flicker of the short sword up into an arc over each man’s head . . .

‘He!’

The swords whispered down, this time on a steep angle that would have cut from eyebrow to hip, right to left – the opposite cut from the first cut. Every blade made a hissing sound passing through the air. Go and try it. Take a Laconian blade and try to make it whistle through the air. See how much strength and fine control it takes.

‘He!’

Every man cut
up
, into the adversary’s thigh and his manhood, the blade reaching under the locked shields.

‘He!’ he grunted, and twenty hands returned twenty blades to the scabbard. No one looked or fumbled or used their left hand – of course, you can’t, with an aspis on your arm.

I can do that. A lifetime of practice. I’m a professional warrior and I can, on a dark night or with my eyes closed, put my sword back into the scabbard under my arm without pinking my own breast or fumbling.

But every Spartan could do it – even the young man of twenty who was running against Astylos.

When they were done they were all still for a moment, and then they relaxed and became human – one man stretched an arm and laughed, and another murmured something and the three men nearest smiled.

A middle-aged man glanced at me, frowned – and looked back. He snapped his fingers and his helot ran to his side, and he pointed at me.

The helot ran all the way to my elbow. ‘Sir – move along. Please. No trouble, sir – these gentlemen do not want an audience.’

I smiled at the helot. ‘Then they shouldn’t practise in a field at the Olympics.’

The helot didn’t even take a full breath. He stepped in and put a hand on my shoulder . . .

And I threw him.

He rolled. Rose easily to his feet, and nodded. Almost companionably. He wasn’t angry. It was as if he was saying, ‘Nothing personal.’

He came at me again, now bouncing slightly on his toes.

My hands came up in a pankration stance and he reached to grab them – like lightning, let me add.

Well.

I stepped under his grab – passed my arm across his neck and swept his legs. He was a trained man, but not a really well-trained man.

To be fair, he was the best-trained
slave
I’d faced outside of Italy.

Now I had his arms. I put a knee deep in his armpit and he couldn’t move. He was face down, and his left arm was hyper-extended.

‘Ready to walk away?’ I asked.

‘No!’ he shouted, and tried to flip. Which must have hurt his arm. He screamed with rage – and pain – and still couldn’t overcome his position.

‘If you keep trying, you will dislocate your shoulder,’ I said. I blessed Polymarchos for showing me this wonderful pin. I’d expected to use it on drunken friends, but the helot was the perfect target.

Once more he bellowed – and he got enough purchase with his hip that for a moment, I thought he was going to make it off the ground – and then his shoulder gave.

‘He has to keep trying,’ said a low voice. I knew that two Spartans had come out of the group – I was very aware of them, and their swords.

‘He knows he’d be killed if he showed fear or gave up,’ the other said, conversationally.

‘Why don’t you tell him to stop trying?’ I asked.

‘Why?’ he replied.

I stood up suddenly, stepped cleanly away from the helot – even desperately injured, he made a grab at my leg – and turned to face the two naked Spartans.

‘Why don’t you go away when you are not wanted?’ the nearer man asked.

‘I don’t take orders well – especially from slaves. And rude men who are their masters.’ I dusted some sand off my chiton. ‘I am interested in your Pyricche.’

‘Leave him, Bulis,’ the bigger man said to the handsomer. ‘He’s some troublemaker.’

Bulis – I assumed that was his name – stepped inside what I would call my comfort zone – the girdle around me where a man can kill me.

I raised my left hand slightly to catch his eye, and succeeded. My intention was to take his sword out of his scabbard with my right hand. His was to strike me with his right hand.

It would not have gone well for one of us.

‘Arimnestos!’ called a woman’s voice. ‘Hades, Bulis, are you a complete arse!’

The Spartan paused.

As soon as he began to step back, I stepped back.

My hands were shaking.

So were the Spartan’s.

For a moment, I couldn’t think. I had been . . . there.

So had he.

‘You know the queen?’ he said.

‘And the king,’ I added.

Bulis took a deep breath.

Gorgo – fully dressed, may I add – appeared just out of our range. ‘Bulis?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘I thought he was an arrogant piss-ant of a xenos, but I gather he’s another of your friends,’ he said.

‘He’s Arimnestos of Plataea,’ the bigger man said. He smiled. He was older – almost forty – and had wide-set eyes and was missing a third of his front teeth. His missing teeth made my name sound exotic.

Bulis smiled – not the reaction I’d expected – and raised his eyes to the gods – and his hands. ‘Ares’ balls, sir. My apology.’

The helot was trying not to whimper.

The man missing the teeth knelt by his side, felt his shoulder and then – without any hesitation, and as fast as the strike of a snake – cut his throat, the draw from the scabbard flawless, the blade pulled across the helot’s throat as if he were a human sacrifice, and just like that, the man was dead.

‘He was a brave one,’ he said, as he carefully wiped the blood off with the dead man’s chiton. Then he poured oil from a flask – an arybollos, an exercise flask – and cleaned the blade and oiled it.

Spartans.

Gorgo put her hand on my arm. I think that she – as a woman – understood non-Spartans better than the men, and had – because she so often accompanied Leonidas – got an idea of what the rest of Greece thought about Sparta.

‘He was badly injured,’ she said calmly. ‘And might never have been able to work again.’

‘And you declare war on them every spring,’ I said. I knew a
few
things about Sparta. Every spring, the ephors reminded Spartans to shave their moustaches – and to remember the war against the helots. The Spartans have a secret military organisation – like our religious bodies – to track and kill any helot whom they deem ready to revolt. They act quite regularly. They killed helots. In the night, in secret.