Killer of Men lw-1

by Christian Cameron

  'You're up early,' I said. 'I'm Arimnestos. Have you come to pay the ransom?'

  The two best-armoured men halted the rest, and they formed a small phalanx on the beach.

  'The men of the town will be here in the time it takes to sing a hymn,' I called in Persian. 'And they will kill all of you and take your ship.' I pointed up the hill. 'The lord of the town is my friend – any bribe you paid the guards was wasted.'

  They were arguing among themselves.

  It's a lesson you learn early – plotters never trust anyone. I was nearly certain that the town garrison were going to watch me butchered and not raise a hand – but the Phoenicians didn't know that.

  I pointed out to sea. 'My prisoners are out there, in that fishing smack,' I called. 'And if you don't pay up, they'll have their throats slit and be pushed over the side.'

  The two men in bronze armour argued, and finally, when I could see the new sun shining on spear points in the town, they turned and went back to their ship. 'We'll pay,' one of the men said. Honey, I've seldom heard those Persian words invested with so much hate.

  They stacked bars of silver on the sand.

  I ran off down the beach to Paramanos, and I didn't look back.

  The exchange went well enough. I rolled the silver and gold in my cloak and carried it to my boat. Then we released all four prisoners, well down the beach, almost as far as the threshing floor where the goats play.

  We were gone around the point before the freed men joined their friends. Briseis asked me to take her around to Eresus. How could I refuse? Eresus is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Briseis had made that fart Aristagoras buy her a house there, on the back side of the acropolis, good land with figs and olives, like a little piece of Boeotia in the desert of eastern Lesbos. The jasmine on the slopes of the acropolis perfumes the air, and the sun is bright on the cliffs over the town.

  The people came down to meet us, then Briseis took me up to the acropolis, where I met Sappho's daughter – an old, old woman. She was strong, the lady of the town and still fully in command.

  'You are her husband?' she asked.

  I shook my head, no, but she smiled.

  'You are her true husband,' she said.

  She was an odd woman, a priestess of Aphrodite, and the lady of the Aeolian goddess, and a famous teacher. I was a tongue-tied killer in her presence, but I saw another Briseis that day – a witty, educated woman who could sing a lyric as well as an Olympic competitor.

  That night we lay together in her house, with the doves cooing and the jasmine smell, and I have never forgotten it. It was the first time we had been together without an element of fear. It was different. She was different. I knew love that night – not the maddened, half-angry love of the young, but the gift of the Cyprian that turns your head for ever.

  I would have stayed a second day, but Paramanos came to me, pounding on her door, and his words were hard.

  'You are mad!' he said. 'And she is no better.'

  And that is what is wrong with the world, thugater. Because I accepted his words. We shared a last drink of wine under her fig tree.

  'You are Helen,' I said to her.

  'Of course I'm Helen,' she said. 'Why shouldn't Achilles have Helen? Why can't Helen have Achilles?'

  'I have to sail away from you for a time,' I said. 'Otherwise, one of us will die, or I'll kill Aristagoras and be an outlaw.'

  She put her arms around my neck and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. 'When I've had my way with the world, I'll call you to me and we will make love until the sun stops in the sky,' she said. 'I'll send you a copy of Sappho's epic to pass the time.' She laughed.

  I kissed her. 'I love you,' I said.

  She laughed. 'How could I have doubted you? Listen, Achilles – when you have a chance, kill my husband. If you don't, I'll have to do it myself, and men will talk.' She laughed again, and ice touched my spine.

  There was never anyone like Briseis. And if you know your Iliad, you'll know that it was on that very beach that Achilles took her.

  She made me feel more alive.

  She climbed the cliff while I walked down to the beach, and then she watched us sail away from the top.

  I never promised you a happy story. Miltiades was waiting for me on the beach at Mytilene. I hadn't learned, yet, that he was the greatest spymaster in the west, and knew of every event long before it happened. Indeed, his reach was long.

  He embraced me as I stepped ashore, but he was curt. 'Walk with me,' he said.

  He was my commander. I walked away with him, thinking of Briseis. I saw the cloud on his face and wondered how I could next see her.

  'You had Aristagoras's wife in your boat,' he said.

  'The bastard tried to ambush me.' I didn't know what else to say.

  'He tried to ambush you when you sneaked off to fuck his wife,' Miltiades said. He turned to face me. 'That's what he's going to say.'

  'She's two months pregnant!' I said – which was not, strictly speaking, a denial. 'I went to get my ransoms!'

  'What ransoms?' Miltiades asked me, and he was as shrewish as a woman buying fish in the agora.

  I hadn't told him, and suddenly I realized that this, not Briseis, was the real matter. 'I had Phoenicians to ransom after the fight at Amathus,' I said.

  'You thought to take the money for yourself?' he asked, and his voice was dangerous.

  I stopped walking. 'What?'

  'The ransom for the Phoenicians,' he said. 'You sought to sneak away? You thought that I wouldn't know?' This was a different Miltiades – a sharper, more dangerous man.

  'What?' I asked, foolishly. And then, 'What concern is it of yours?'

  'Don't try that on me,' he said. 'Half of anything you take is mine. You expect me to squander political capital to save you from Aristagoras and then you try to steal my money?'

  I stepped back. 'Fuck off,' I said. I shook my head. 'Those are my ransoms from Amathus. Nothing to do with you.'

  'Half,' he said. 'Half of every penny you take. That is the price of being my man. I pay the wages on your ship. You agreed to the contract.' He spat. 'Don't act like a fucking peasant. You got more than a talent.'

  I think that my hand went to my sword hilt, because he looked around – suddenly the great Miltiades was afraid to be alone on the beach with me. It wasn't the money, thugater. I am a killer and a lecher, but I have never been a greedy man.

  But I thought that he was cozening me, and I can't stand to let other men get the better of me. 'This is my money from before the contract!' I said. 'I've promised part of it to my men!'

  'That will have to come from your half, then,' he said. He crossed his arms. He was a little afraid – even then, men saw me as a mad dog. But he was bold, and he must have needed the silver.

  If you want to know how great a man truly is, see him talk about money.

  I sighed. 'Why didn't you come to me – like a man?' I might have said, like a friend, but I had just discovered that pirates have no friends.

  'If you ever speak to me that way again, I'll have you killed,' Miltiades said. 'Now pay up your half, and we can forget all about this.' He was shaking with fury, and yet he was above mere insults of manhood. He didn't point at the boat behind me, but he did jut his chin at it. 'You think it's going to be easy to keep you alive after this? He hates you. And you come sailing back from a rendezvous with his wife.'

  Oh, I can be a fool.

  I paid. Perhaps you'll think less of me, but Miltiades was the only anchor I had in that world. I had no family and no friends, and I was living far above my birth. So I walked back down the beach, took the rolled cloak out from under the floorboards of my boat and I paid Miltiades half of the ransoms that I had earned without him.

  Paramanos watched me do it without a muscle moving on his face, but I knew who the sycophant was by watching. Herakleides wouldn't meet my eye.

  I couldn't believe it. He was such an upright man.

  But he was an Aeo
lian, and such men can be bought.

  Cheap.

  I cursed.

  Miltiades counted it out and threw me back a gold bar – an enormous sum of money. 'That's to take the sting out,' he said. 'I'm going to assume you misunderstood. Don't let it happen again, and let's just forget.' He grinned and offered his hand.

  I took it and we clasped.

  Miltiades looked over his shoulder. Then he looked back. I think he was measuring my value to him. I met his eye. I trusted Miltiades. As I heard it from him, Aristagoras had plotted to kill her, and me, and that was enough.

  Later, he came back and told me. 'I earned every penny of the ransom you tried to hide from me, ungrateful boy,' he said. Then he waved, always the great man. 'Forget it,' he chuckled. 'We're going to have some wonderful times together.'

  I never forgot, though, and I assume he didn't either. He sent me to sea immediately, that evening, with orders to haunt the Asian coast. It should have been a happy autumn, but the politics of the Ionian camp were vicious, and I would have done better to enquire more closely from where my fountain of gold had come. Now that I served Miltiades, I was tied to the faction that favoured the war. There was a peace faction led by none other than the author of the revolt, Aristagoras, who now espoused a peaceful solution. Men said that he had been bought by the Medes with golden darics, and other men said that he feared the Great King.

  I discovered, in between short cruises in the Ionian Sea, that Miltiades had informers everywhere, and that being his man did have benefits. He heard of a pair of Phoenician biremes taking a cargo of copper and ivory up the coast of Asia for Heraklea in the Euxine. We took them off the islands – without so much as a fight – and you can be sure that I had Miltiades' half bagged and ready before my stern touched the beach.

  Autumn was well-advanced when we heard that the Ionian cities of the Troad had all fallen in two short weeks, as Artaphernes took the Great King's army and besieged and captured them. Our morale plummeted, and men and ships deserted. The last of the Chians sailed away and only the Aeolians remained.

  The tyrant of Mytilene demanded that Miltiades leave. Our piracy – that's what he called it – was bringing the city into ill repute. What the bastard meant was that our ongoing commercial war against the Medes was costing his city, which was losing business to Methymna, around the coast of Lesbos.

  Salamis, the last free city of Cyprus, fell in late autumn.

  Miltiades called his captains to council. It was a fine day, with a stiff west wind blowing. We'd been beach-bound for ten days with bad weather and no targets. The Asians were staying well clear of Lesbos, and the bad feeling between Aristagoras and Miltiades had reached a new height. Men said I was to blame. Some even said that Briseis had had an affair with Miltiades himself – foolishness, as she was eight months pregnant and hundreds of stades around the coast of the island, but that's the sort of wickedness that spreads in a divided camp.

  'We're leaving,' he said. That was it – the whole council reduced to a few words. He wasn't much for a lot of talk, unless it was his own.

  'Back home?' Heraklides asked.

  'What do you call home, Piraean?' Miltiades asked.

  'Chersonese,' Herk said. He grinned. 'Don't act the tyrant with us, lord. The wind is fair for the Chersonese and we can lie on our couches with buxom Thracians before the first snow falls.'

  One of Miltiades' captains was Cimon, his eldest son. Metiochos, his second son, was his other most trusted captain. That's how the old aristocratic families worked – plenty of sons who could be trusted as war captains. I love to hear men call the Athenians 'democrats' as if any of them ever wanted to give power to common men. If Miltiades had had his way, he'd have been lord of the Chersonese first and then tyrant of Athens. He only loved democracy when it packed the phalanx with fighters.

  Hah! I'm a fine one to talk. Look at me, lording it in Thrace. There's no hypocrite like an old hypocrite.

  At any rate, Cimon was my age, a man just coming into his reputation. I liked him. And he was not afraid of his father. 'We're going back to bad wine and blonde Thracian women because Pater is under sentence of death in Athens!' he said – the first the rest of us had heard of it.

  Miltiades' look told me that he hadn't intended the rest of us to know, but Cimon just laughed.

  I never knew exactly when and where Miltiades and Aristagoras had started to be allies, and I never knew when they had a falling out, although I suspect that Briseis and I played our part. I still don't know. But Miltiades did all the thinking that won us the Battle of Amathus – in that much, I suppose the bastard deserved a share of my spoils. And I guess that Miltiades had no stomach for peace with the Medes – not that he hated them, but because he made his fortune preying on their ships and he needed that money to make himself tyrant at Athens, or that's how I see it now.

  I should have said earlier that by the time Miltiades wanted us to leave, Aristagoras had been supplanted by his former master, Histiaeus of Miletus, who had served the Great King as a general for years and then deserted suddenly. He must have been a great fool – the Ionians were all but beaten when he joined us, and many men thought that he was a double traitor come to betray us into the hands of the Persians. In fact, I suspect he was one of those tragic men who make bad decision after bad decision – his betrayal of the Great King was foolish and dishonourable, and all his subsequent behaviour was of a piece. I only met him once, and that was on the beach at Mytilene. He was haranguing Aristagoras as if the latter was a small boy. I stayed to listen and laugh, and Aristagoras saw me, and the hatred in his eyes made me laugh louder. No one respected him by then. His failure to lead us against the Medes – anywhere – and especially to help the men of the Troad, when our fleet was just a hundred stades away, showed that he was a fool, if not a coward.

  At any rate, Histiaeus's arrival was the last straw. I think that Miltiades imagined that he would become the leader of the Ionian Revolt – and eventually the tyrant of all Ionia. And they would have been better for having him, I can tell you, honey. He may have been a bastard about money, but he was a war-leader. Men loved to follow him.

  I ramble. Here, mix some of that lovely water from the spring in the bowl, and add apples – by Artemis, girl, do you blush just for the mention of apples? What a delicate flower you must be – thugater, where did you find her? Now pour that in my cup.

  We sailed away ahead of the first winter storm, and just as Heraklides predicted, we were soon snug on our couches at Miltiades' great palace at Kallipolis.

  Aristagoras took his own retainers and fled to the mainland of Thrace. He had founded a colony there, at Myrcinus, and he abandoned the rebellion, or so Miltiades' informers reported. I wondered where Briseis was. She must be bitter, I thought – from the queen of the Ionian Revolt to the wife of a failed traitor in three short years.

  The winter passed quickly enough. I bought a pretty Thracian slave and learned the language from her. I taught the Pyrrhiche to all my oarsmen, and kept them at it through the whole rainy winter, and we went together to celebrate the feast of Demeter, and the return of the sailing season.

  I was another year older. I dreamed all winter of ravens, and when the flowers began to bloom I saw a pair rise from a day-old kill and fly away west, and I knew that it was an omen, that I should be going home to Plataea, but there was nothing there for me – I thought. I worried more about my oath to Hipponax and Archilogos, which goes to show what fools men are about fate.

  In the spring, Histiaeus declared himself commander of the Ionian Alliance, and set the rendezvous of the fleet at Mytilene again, where he had, over the winter, made himself tyrant. He did it the simple way – his picked men infiltrated the citadel, then he killed the old tyrant with his own hands and every one of his children, too. Soaked in blood, he stepped forward to the applause – the terrified applause, I assume – of the town.

  Miltiades told us the tale at dinner, shaking his head with disgust. 'Should have been you,' I
said. I didn't mean it as flattery – simple fact. 'Not the killings – the lordship.'

  He grinned at me. We were almost friends again – which is to say, he was unchanged, and I had almost forgiven him. Miltiades' land of the Chersonese was the most polyglot kingdom I'd ever seen – Thracians and Asiatics and Greeks and Sakje at every hand, at dinner and in the temples. If Paramanos was the only black man, he was not the only foreigner. He loved the place, and my fear about his loyalties began to relax. At any rate, that afternoon, we had been joined by Olorus, the king of the local Thracians and Miltiades' father-in-law.

  He grunted. 'That Aristagoras,' he said. 'I visited him over the winter. He's a greedy fool, and if he keeps taking slaves out of the Bastarnae and the Getae, they'll kill him.'

  Miltiades nodded. 'He is a greedy fool,' he said.

  'Does he have his wife with him?' I asked, trying to sound uninterested.

  He grinned. 'Now, that is a woman!' he said. 'By all the gods, Miltiades – count yourself lucky you didn't marry her. She is all the spine Aristagoras lacks.'

  Miltiades shrugged. 'I met her on Lesbos,' he said. 'She is too intelligent to be beautiful.' He looked at me.

  Heh, honey, that's how men like Miltiades like their women. Dumb. Fear not – I won't marry you to one of those. Miltiades' chief wife – he had several concubines – was Hegesipyle, as beautiful as a dawn and as stupid as a cow tied to a post. Olorus's daughter, in fact. I couldn't stand to talk to her. She had never read anything, never been anywhere – my Thracian slave was better educated. I know, because I taught her Greek letters in exchange for her teaching me Thracian, and then we read Sappho together. And Alcaeus.

  Oh, I'm an old man and I tell these stories like a moth darting around a candle flame.

  The point of telling you about that dinner is that Miltiades rose and told us that we would not be joining the rebels. 'The Ionian Revolt is only dangerous to the fools who play at it,' he said, and his bitterness was obvious. He was a man who sought constantly for greatness, and greatness kept passing him by.

  Cimon was there. He had a lovely girl on his couch, I remember, because she had bright red hair and we all teased him about what her children would look like. Miltiades had red hair, too, remember.