Killer of Men lw-1

by Christian Cameron

  Hephaestion reacted as if I'd slapped him. 'You don't?' he asked. 'He must be bitter.'

  I shook my head. 'He thinks he is unworthy.' I shrugged.

  Hephaestion laughed. 'You are a failure as a Cretan,' he said. 'But you're a good smith and you serve Hephaestus like a dutiful son.' We polished for a while, our rags full of powdered pumice and oil. The slaves and apprentices were silent, terrified to have their master working such menial duties.

  'I think perhaps while we make the helmets, you should stay here at the forge,' Hephaestion said. 'You, pais, go and get me wine. And wine for Lord Arimnestos.' He only called me lord to mock me.

  While we drank watered wine – wonderful stuff, the wine of Crete, red as the blood of a bull – he nodded at me. 'You sleep here. Until the Chalkeia. We'll dedicate all the helmets as our sacrifice – as our sacrifice of labour. And then you can go back to the hall. Lord Achilles will understand why I need you.'

  We've never had a Chalkeia here, thugater. We should. I'm a sworn devotee of the smith god, and I can say the prayers. Why have we never had one? In any case, it is a smith's holiday, and the smith has to dedicate work and pay the value of his labour as a tithe – and the smith god judges the quality of the work. In Athens – even in little Plataea – there's a procession of all the smiths, iron and bronze and even the finer metals, all together, with images of the god and of Dionysus bringing him back to Olympia after Zeus cast him out. There's a lot of drinking. We should institute it. Send for my secretary.

  I'm not dead, yet, eh?

  I had no idea why old Hephaestion suddenly wanted me staying in his house – the walk to the hall was only a matter of half a stade. But he was my master, as much as the lord was. Everything in that town was dedicated to preparing the lord and his men for the expedition to Cyprus, and we were two months from the date of launch. Women wove new sails of heavy linen from Aegypt. The tanner made leather armour as fast as he butchered oxen. The two sandal-makers worked by lamplight and, down by the slips, twenty fishermen and their boys worked all day to build a third trireme in the Phoenician style.

  Young men are all fools.

  I sent Lekthes up to the hall for my bedding, and he came back with Idomeneus. They made me a bed where the smith directed – not even in his house, but in his summer work shed, a pleasant enough building, but only closed on three sides. The two of them swept it clean and brought a big couch from the house and made it up.

  Idomeneus took a cup of wine with me. Lekthes had a girl up at the hall – he was a warrior now, not really a servant, and he was considering marriage. But Idomeneus's tastes ran in other directions, and he was in no hurry to leave the forge.

  'Nearchos asked after you,' he said. His eyes sparkled and he wore half a smile. 'He burns for you, master.'

  I shrugged. 'I'm not your master.'

  Idomeneus stretched out on a bench. 'You call Hephaestion master, ' he said.

  I shrugged. 'He is a master smith.'

  'You are a master warrior. And you made me a free man.' Idomeneus nodded. 'I have a way out of your tangle, lord.'

  I ran my fingers through my beard. 'Tangle?' I asked.

  He laughed. 'You've run off down here to avoid Nearchos. And lord, he thinks – you must know – that when the ships sail, you and he will be lovers. Why shouldn't he think this? Even his father says it.'

  I shook my head. Cretans. What can I say? And all of you tittering. Laugh all you like – this was my youth.

  'So – I have found a thread that you can follow out of our labyrinth. ' He poured more wine straight from the amphora.

  'Am I Theseus or the Minotaur?' I laughed. 'And who does that make you?' We both laughed together.

  'I am prettier than any of Nearchos's sisters,' he said, and we both guffawed until Hephaestion came and put his head under the eaves.

  'Is this the Dionysia?' he asked. 'By the smith god, I didn't expect a symposium your first night under my roof!' But seeing my wine, he sat, poured himself a cup unmixed and leaned in. 'Tell me the joke?'

  Idomeneus was fond of the smith – more than fond, I think. 'I am solving my lord's dilemma,' he said.

  Hephaestion winked. 'Bed the boy yourself and pretend to be Arimnestos?' he said.

  Idomeneus blushed. Then we started listing things that Nearchos might notice, and we drank a great deal more, and Hephaestion went to bed drunk.

  'I never heard your idea,' I said.

  Idomeneus was drunk, and he put his arms around me. 'I love you,' he said.

  'Yes,' I said. 'Go to bed!'

  'Ish – is that an invitation?' he asked with heavy innuendo, and then he grinned. 'Lisshen, master. Tell the boy that he'sh a warrior now – too noble to be your lover. Tell him you free him to have a lover of his own.' Idomeneus burped, which rather spoiled his performance.

  'Hmm,' I said, or something equally useless. I was drunk myself.

  But the next morning, pounding metal with a heavy head – not something I recommend to any of you – the idea seemed better and better.

  I drank water and worked, trying to sweat the wine out of my head. Which was for the best, because in early afternoon, a long line of dancing women came up the hill from the town, heading for the mountain. Troas's daughter was at the head of one of the files of dancers, and she led her laughing girls in a full rehearsal around the yard of the smithy.

  I had a pair of roses that Idomeneus had plucked, at my direction, from the garden behind the hall, and I'd woven them with bronze wire so that they would sit with the laurel in her hair.

  Hephaestion had a mirror, and I showed her what she looked like in the golden light of the bronze surface.

  'Oooh!' she said, patting the flowers gently. 'I wish I was prettier, though.'

  'You are beautiful, Gaiana!' I said. Or words to that effect.

  She laughed. I kissed her, and she did not kiss like a virgin. She laughed into my mouth like Briseis.

  And then I knew why the smith had given me the shed. I grabbed her hand, but she pulled away and straightened her chiton. She grinned. 'Too fast for me, lord,' she said.

  I had a horn comb, and I combed her hair a little. She leaned back against me and we kissed again, then she stood up. 'No one expects the girls down from the mountain until dawn,' she said. Outside the shop, the other girls were calling for her.

  'I will be in the shed,' I said, and ran a finger around one of her nipples, and she smacked me – playfully, but hard.

  'Don't go to sleep,' she said, before darting out of my arms and out of the door.

  And I didn't. Nor did Gaiana. That's another happy time in my memory. She came to me every night and I worked all day in the smithy. Her father came on the third day and Hephaestion introduced me.

  'He's smitten with your daughter,' Hephaestion said.

  'You don't look like the kind of man who marries a fisherman's daughter,' Troas said. He had a scraggly beard and the hands of a man who dragged nets all day, with enormous shoulders.

  'Marries?' I asked, and I suspect, thugater, that my voice cracked.

  Troas laughed. 'If I tell the priests you took her maidenhead, you'll owe me her bride price.'

  I felt foolish. We were bartering. Before you think ill of the man, remember that the lords of the town might take his daughter for nothing, and he would have the care of any resulting children. That's Crete. Democracy has a great deal to recommend it, honey.

  Mind you, daughters were usually safe from lords on Crete. Hah!

  'What is her bride price?' I asked. In truth, he scared me more than a Persian battle line.

  'Ten silver owls,' he said.

  I almost laughed my relief. Hephaestion interrupted me.

  'Ten? For a girl who has lain with any man who will have her?' He spat.

  Troas flushed. I think he was hurt. 'I thought we were friends?'

  Hephaestion glared at him. 'When you come to buy a bronze knife, what do you tell me? That it is a beautiful item, that the blade is as sharp as obsidian,
that it feels perfect in your hand? No! You tell me that it is too small, dull, ugly – anything to lower the price. Why is your daughter different from my knife?'

  I served them both wine, and Hephaestion, pretending to be my father, arranged the bride price at six owls.

  It was odd, but I knew I would be sailing away with the fleet, and I knew in my heart that I wouldn't come back. So out of something – it was hardly love – I said that I would marry her.

  Troas looked as if he had been axed. 'No, lord,' he said.

  Well, there you go. He had a son-in-law lined up. Not some useless sword-swinger who would vanish in the summer, but a strong young man with a broad back for hauling nets.

  Beware, when you think too much of yourself. I realized in an ugly moment that Troas didn't think much of me. He wanted six silver owls so that his daughter and her boy could have a good start – his own boat, probably.

  I was born a peasant, lass – never let yourself believe that peasants have a simpler life.

  I went up to the hall, still wearing my leather apron. I opened the cedar box where I kept my goods – my embroidered cloak, my good linen chiton, the gold and lapis necklace from Sardis, and my pay.

  I took twelve silver owls from the hoard – a little under a third of my coins, and turned away to find Nearchos gazing at me from the other side of the hall.

  I smiled at him. I couldn't help it.

  He came across to me, dressed in a scarlet chiton with matching sandals. His pimples were gone and his chest had filled out and his hair was long and oiled.

  'You are an odd man, Arimnestos,' he said, and we embraced.

  'Walk with me,' I said.

  He looked around and his face was red. I sighed and prayed to Aphrodite.

  I caught the eye of Idomeneus, and he winked.

  So we walked out into the garden, and then up the mountain, and the gossip of the older warriors followed us like a living thing.

  'I'm not taking you for an afternoon of love,' I said, as soon as we were out of earshot of the other men.

  He flushed. 'I didn't expect as much,' he said – but he had hoped it.

  'I want you to look at yourself,' I said. Like many a teacher and father before me, I dare say.

  But he looked away, expecting censure.

  'Do you listen to me when I tell you what Heraclitus said? Do you understand anything of the logos, and of change?' I asked.

  He shrugged, the angry young man I'd met more than a year before.

  'I am not a Cretan lord, Nearchos. I am a peasant from Boeotia, and I have made my name with my spear.' I took his shoulders and he looked at me then, because this was not the speech he expected.

  'You are a lord's son,' I said. 'And now you are a man, not a boy. You are waiting – all of you are waiting – for me to take you as a lover.' I shrugged. 'That would be wrong. I admire you – but you are a man, now. A man chooses his own lovers.'

  He stood, suddenly. 'But I want you!'

  Suddenly I realized that this boy deserved the truth and not some story, some manipulation from Idomeneus. He was an honourable boy, with his whole life before him.

  'I am not available,' I said primly. There – the truth.

  'I am not worthy yet,' he said.

  'Don't be foolish,' I said. 'Customs are different. I am from Plataea. In Plataea, we frown on relations between men.' Well, not exactly. But close enough.

  That made him smile. 'My sisters said the same to me,' he said, smiling because it was so silly – to him.

  'I am taking a girl in the town as a lover,' I said. 'I will not bring her to the hall. I do not seek to embarrass you. And if you require it, I will leave.'

  He shook his head. 'A girl?' he asked. 'You are the oddest man. You spend your spare time pounding bronze and reading scrolls, and now you make love to women. It is – unmanly!' He spat the last word.

  'I will leave, then,' I said. There – I'd told the truth. I felt better for it. Idomeneus's way might have worked, but the deception would have required too much effort. And I think that Heraclitus would not have approved.

  He took my hand. 'No,' he said. 'No, I am being stupid. I love you.'

  I embraced him. 'We will fight side by side,' I said. 'Better than sex. Now – go and take a lover. And be kind to him. Or her.'

  'A girl?' he asked. He laughed. 'We might set a fashion. I was with a girl once – they're soft.' He laughed again.

  'You can get used to it,' I said.

  On the way down the hill, I considered that Idomeneus and Nearchos both loved me, and said so, while neither Penelope nor Briseis nor Gaiana ever said they loved me. Perhaps it is because none of my three women ever stood with me in the battle line. Hah – that would be a phalanx. And not a coward among them.

  At any rate, after that day, Nearchos and I were friends, and a little more. I lived in the smith's shed until the festival, and afterwards, too. We made fine helmets, and good armour, that turned Persian arrows and kept men alive. At the Chalkeia I made myself known to the priest with signs, and was raised from the first to the second degree because my sacrifices were found worthy.

  I was happy. Too bad it doesn't take long to tell. I am honest – too honest, and look at her blush when I say Gaiana and I made love every night – every night – ten times, if we wanted. Oh, youth is wasted on the young, honey. But you might ask – what of home? Didn't I want to go home?

  Didn't I want to avenge my father, live on my farm? Or kill Aristagoras and take Briseis for my own? See? You do want to know. Well, children, this isn't the Iliad. If I had a fate, I didn't know it. And when you are eighteen, or perhaps nineteen, and men treat you like a hero, when your hands make beautiful things, when every night has a soft mouth and your couch is warm with love…

  No one who is that happy gives a crap about fate, or furies. I was happy. I didn't give my father, my farm or Briseis any more than a passing thought. And of the three, Briseis would have won out.

  For two months, I was happy. Two months of making love while the rain fell on the roof of the shed, and making beautiful things all day with the power of my arms and shoulders – dancing the military dances, drilling with weapons, wearing armour. A week before we were due to sail, Lord Achilles paraded us in the agora, and we made a fine sight. There were men lacking swords and men lacking greaves, but every man had a thorax of bronze or leather, a good helmet, spears and a knife. Every man – even the rowers. Six hundred men. Sixty of us – the lord's retainers and relatives – had full panoply. On land, we would be the front rank, and at sea we would fight as marines.

  Nearchos had the new ship, of course. He was the lord's son. And I, of course, was to be his helmsman.

  We celebrated with a night of drinking, and we poured wine over the ram of the new ship and I called her Thetis. Then we spent a week practising at sea. Our fisherfolk could row, and our officers were decent enough, but I needed that week, and more. I was not really a helmsman and I made mistakes every day, getting the Thetis off the beach and back on, stern-first. But I was smart enough to go for help, and I found it with Troas, who was rowing in our upper bank and wearing one of my helmets. I brought him aft as 'assistant' helmsman. He had his own fishing boat, and he knew the sea far, far better than I.

  Never be too proud to get help, honey bee. And he did help. After all, I'd paid him double his price, and I'd given Gaiana good gifts – I'd made her a mirror, and I'd made her two pairs of bronze oar-pins, guessing that her eventual husband would want them.

  The last day was hard for Nearchos and the other local men. Me, I was anxious to get away. I could feel the draw of the world. It was as if I had been asleep and now I was waking up again.

  Gaiana came to me one last time at the shed. I had presents laid out for her on the bed – a length of good Aegyptian linen and a necklace of silver with black beads. She cried a little.

  'I'm pregnant,' she said.

  I smiled, because I was a man of the world and I had expected this. 'How do you know?'
I asked.

  She smiled – no wild talk. 'Girls know,' she said. 'I could just be late,' she admitted.

  'Best marry your fisher-boy, then,' I said.

  She looked confused.

  'Don't you have a boy to marry?' I asked.

  'How do you know?' she blurted out. And then she met my eyes. 'I like him.' Defiantly. And then, hesitantly, 'I like you, too.'

  'I won't be coming back,' I said, more harshly than I meant. 'I offered to marry you and your father turned me down. He knows I won't come back.' I shrugged. I was growing to like the purity of telling the truth. Sometimes it was very hard – sometimes I still lied just to make things easier – but simple truths seemed to make things, well, simple. 'Is your boy on my ship?'

  She shook her head. 'He wants to go, but Pater won't let him.'

  Pater – Troas – sounded smarter and smarter.

  I gave her my gifts and we made love. It should have been gentle and tragic, but it wasn't. Gaiana never had tragedy in her. She laughed in my mouth, and she laughed when our fingers last touched.

  'What shall I call your boy?' she asked. 'If he's yours?'

  'Hipponax,' I said.

  16

  The Battle of Amathus was my first sea-fight.

  We sailed and rowed the long way around Crete, because Lord Achilles, who hadn't been to war in ten years, was still a canny old bird and he had a head on his shoulders. So we rowed away towards Italy, and the rowers cursed.

  Lord Achilles knew what he was about. We spent two weeks going around the island, and by the time we put our bows to the deep blue east of Crete, our muscles were hard as rock and our rowing was excellent. Our helmsmen – even me – could handle our ships. We could sprint and we could cruise and we could back-water.

  I have said that Nearchos commanded the Thetis. In fact, I commanded it, while teaching him to command, while Troas taught me to be a seaman. Laugh if you like.

  Lord Achilles commanded the Poseidon and his brother Ajax, a long-limbed nobleman I had only met twice, commanded Triton. We didn't practise formations much, although we did take turns rowing in the middle of a three-ship line, so that we could get used to the length of another ship's oars.