Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

But the next day, he cut two poles and asked me to show him what I meant. So I showed him as Calchas showed me – how the movement of your hips reinforces the push of the spear or the rise of the shield. Chalkidis was no fool. No sooner did he see, than he was asking questions. And he took his questions to Pater. Pater came and watched us.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘I sent you up the mountain to learn to read and write,’ he said. ‘What is this?’

  I was proud of my martial skills, so I showed him. I showed him the guards that Calchas taught and the spear attacks. I could hit my brother at will, although when I had the weight of a real aspis on my shoulder, I could barely move.

  Pater shook his head. ‘Foolishness,’ he said. ‘All you should do is keep your place in the shield wall. The rest is madness. The moment you lunge, the enemy to your right plunges his spear in your thigh. Or your neck. Every attack you make leaves your shield side uncovered. ’ He shook his head. ‘Calchas must stop teaching you this nonsense.’

  ‘He is a great warrior,’ I said hotly.

  Pater looked at me as if really noticing me for the first time. ‘There are no great warriors,’ Pater said. ‘There are great craftsmen, great sculptors, great poets. Sometimes, they must put a spear on their shoulder. But nothing about war is great.’ Pater looked across the valley, towards the shrine. ‘Your teacher is a broken man who keeps a shrine about which no man cares a whit. He teaches boys to read and he nurses old hatreds. I think that it is time I brought you home.’

  ‘Many men care about the shrine!’ I said. There were tears in my eyes.

  Pater dusted his hands. ‘Come,’ he said.

  We walked to the shrine. I argued, and Pater was silent. When we arrived, Pater ordered me to collect my things. And he went and spoke to Calchas alone.

  I still know nothing of what they said to each other, but I never saw a frown or a harsh word. I collected my javelins, my spear ‘Deer Killer’, my scrolls and my bedroll. I put them on the donkey and went to kiss Calchas goodbye. He embraced me.

  ‘Time for you to go out into the world,’ he said. ‘Your father is right, and I have probably filled your head with nonsense.’

  I knew that he would be drunk before we walked to the base of the mountain. But I smiled and kissed him on the lips – which I had never done.

  On the way down the path, I stopped. ‘He will die without me,’ I said. I was eleven going on twelve, and the world was much less of a mystery to me than it had been. ‘By leaving, I am killing him!’

  Pater embraced me. I think it is the only embrace that I remember. He held me for a long time. Finally, he said, ‘He is killing himself. You have your own life to lead.’

  We walked home, Pater silent, me crying.

  I went back to working the forge, although I now lagged far behind my brother. I read to my mother, who fussed over my hands and bellowed abuse at Pater about how his noble son was being forced to peasant work.

  Pater ignored her.

  I lose track of time, here. I think it was the same summer as I left Calchas, but it might have been the next. They were golden summers, and the wealth of Plataea came in with the grain. We sold much of our grain in the markets of Attica, and now that we were the richest peasants in Boeotia, our fathers plotted how to spend our wealth on the greatest Daidala in history.

  Men came to the yard of the smithy and leaned against the new sheds, or sat on the stools that now littered the yard, drank Pater’s excellent wine served by a pair of pretty slaves and planned the Daidala. There was no other discussion that summer, for the next spring was the moment when we would watch the ravens on the hillside, choose our tree and set in motion all the traditions and customs and dances and rituals that would lead us to a successful festival – a festival that would cause other men across Boeotia to envy our wealth and curse us. Or rather, that was the plan.

  For before the summer was old enough for the barley to lose its green, the word came to our valley that the men of Thebes were preparing the Great Daidala, and had ordained that Plataea was but a community of Thebes and not a free city. What’s more, Thebes had voted a great tax to be placed on us to ‘support the festival’.

  I had missed two years of talk in the courtyard, but little had changed. The speakers wore a better quality of cloth, but they were the same men – solid men, who were a little richer but had no toleration for fools. Myron was not the richest, but he tended to speak for Pater’s friends in the assembly, and there was talk of making him archon instead of the old basileus. The old basileus was now poorer than Pater. The world was turning on its head.

  The word of the Theban tax goaded them even more than the word that we would not host the festival. Peasants hate it when other men take their money. I know that hate. Steal the money of a slave and look at his eyes. That is the look of a peasant who is taxed.

  Simon had joined the men in the yard. I wasn’t there when he moved back into our lives. It seems odd, after all that happened, but peasants quarrel as much as aristocrats and then settle their differences or simply move on. Simon came back, and I continued to hate him, but Pater treated him with courtesy and all was well.

  It was Simon who said the words on everybody’s mind.

  ‘We should fight,’ Simon said.

  Every man in the yard sipped his wine and nodded.

  ‘We should ask the Spartans for an alliance,’ Draco said.

  Epictetus the Younger spent more time in the yard than he should have, but he was rich enough already that slaves did all the farm work for him, and he wandered about with a body slave like a lord. It made his father frown, but his farm ran well enough and he was growing into a big man who spoke well and would fight in the front rank. He stood up. ‘We should offer alliance to Athens,’ he said. ‘Miltiades is a friend of every man here.’

  Draco shook his head. ‘Miltiades is our friend, but he’s almost an exile this year. They refused to let his ships land last autumn. Men say he’ll make himself tyrant of Athens. He’s no help to us. Besides,’ and Draco looked around as if expecting enemies to leap from behind the forge, ‘Sparta is ready to make war on Thebes.’

  ‘Once we take it to the assembly, Thebes will know what we are about,’ Myron said.

  Pater stood forward. I remember him from that afternoon, how dignified he was and how proud I was that he was my father. He looked around the circle of men. ‘What if we decide on a thing, here in this yard,’ he said, ‘and then Myron travels around and talks quietly to other men of substance?’ He paused, and fell silent. He was never a man for big talk.

  Myron nodded. ‘We might call it something different. We might call it the “salt tax”.’

  It took a moment to explain to Draco, who could be slow, and to my brother, who had no notion of the duplicity an assembly could practise.

  But that’s what they did. They called the alliance with Sparta the ‘salt tax’ and Myron went from oikia to oikia around the whole polis, so that when they went to the assembly where the Thebans waited, and voted for a salt tax, the Thebans were suspicious but nothing could be proven.

  Then the farmers sent Draco, Myron and Theron, son of Xenon, one of our richest men, and he sold his leather armor as far away as Peloponnese. His son began to wear Spartan shoes and Myron’s son began to puff out his chest and speak of buying himself a horse. Epictetus came by and frowned.

  ‘We owe Miltiades better than this,’ he said. ‘We should send him word.’

  Pater shrugged. ‘He is an exile in a barbarian land,’ he said.

  Epictetus looked around the yard. ‘His money bought everything here.’

  ‘Send word to your son, then,’ Pater said. ‘Miltiades has a factor at Corinth. I have a shipment of armour for him. I’ll send word to him. But Draco has the right of it. Miltiades is our friend and our benefactor, but he has no power in Boeotia.’

  ‘Uhh,’ Epictetus grunted.

  Pater sent my brother with the armour to Corinth. He came back with some fine pottery and a new donkey and a sm
all pile of silver coins. He was proud of himself – he’d been far from home, over the mountains, and returned without incident.

  Pater nodded, and sent him back to the forge. I suppose it was a form of compliment that Pater always assumed that we would succeed at anything he assigned us. But an actual compliment would have gone a long way.

  The message must have carried, though, because just after the feast of Demeter, the great man himself came up the lane, riding another magnificent horse. He wore a golden fillet in his hair and he looked even more like a god.

  The thing that made him stand out to me this time was that I could see he’d been trained the same way I had. I could see it in how he stood and how he walked. I still did the exercises that Calchas had taught, and twice I’d gone deer hunting alone, and once killed a deer. I’d taken Calchas wine. He ruffled my hair and said little. I left offerings at the shrine when he wasn’t there – or perhaps he was there, lying drunk on his pallet and waiting for me to go away.

  At any rate, Miltiades came and stayed the night, and Pater invited Epictetus, along with Myron’s son Dionysius and my brother. I was too young for the andron, but I served the wine.

  They spoke of politics, about Athens and Sparta and Thebes.

  ‘Our friend Draco has it wrong,’ Miltiades said. ‘Sparta is not going to make war on Thebes. Sparta is making an alliance with Thebes to isolate Athens.’

  I thought that the red-haired man was angry, but hiding it well.

  Dionysius was braver, or more foolish, than the older men. ‘What do you care, sir?’ he asked. ‘Athens has exiled you.’

  Miltiades leaned back on his kline. I was filling his cup and he put a hand on my hip. ‘You fill out well, boy,’ he said. ‘Who taught you to move like a gymnast? You make the other boys look like farm workers.’

  I froze. I knew that touch.

  Pater laughed. ‘He’s as much a farm worker as the rest,’ he said, and Miltiades laughed with them, aristocrat that he was. Then he shrugged. ‘City politics can’t be so different in Plataea and Athens,’ he said. ‘I’m an exile, but I will always be a man of the city. I have a settlement of my own, and colonists, every man of whom is a citizen somewhere else – by the gods, I have some of your own young men! And we are still loyal to our homes. Would you want me to convince your sons to be my citizens rather than Plataeans?’

  They nodded. We all understood him.

  ‘So I watch out for the good of Athens,’ he went on. ‘Athens needs Plataea. Plataea needs Athens. Sparta will take your alliance – and later he’ll shove it up your arse.’ His crudity hit them hard. He was a brilliant speaker, capable of using all words, big and small, rough and elegant, and he could modify his text to his audience, a wonderful talent. But most of all, he was a charismatic man. Later I saw him in an assembly of thousands, and his words carried an army. At close quarters, he was as deadly in argument as he was in combat.

  Epictetus frowned. ‘What do we do, lord? We did not seek to displease you.’

  Miltiades shook his head. ‘My fault for not voicing my desire openly. I shouldn’t have made you guess. I’m not usually so coy. I want this alliance. I want Plataea welded to Athens with bonds of bronze and iron.’ He grinned his infectious grin. ‘Well, we’ll see. Your embassy will be back soon enough. Doubtless the Spartans will accept and shaft you later, but perhaps I can speak sense into you before that.’ He laughed. ‘I’ll go and visit the old soldier on the hill. Calchas. Do you know him?’

  Pater glanced at me. ‘He was my son’s tutor,’ he said.

  Miltiades gave me an appraising glance. ‘Really? Old Calchas took you on? What did he teach you?’

  ‘Reading,’ Pater said quickly.

  ‘Hunting,’ I said, before I knew what I was saying.

  Pater frowned, but Miltiades smiled. ‘You hunt? Take me in the morning, lad. We’ll have a fine time.’

  ‘He is my son,’ my father said carefully.

  ‘I understand,’ Miltiades answered.

  We went up the mountain together. I rode his horse, my arms around his waist and a bundle of javelins in my fists. I showed him my prize spear and he looked it over carefully and admitted that it was a fine one for a lad my age. I realized that I was striving for his approbation with every breath. I never wondered why his slave had stayed on the farm, or why he didn’t lend me his slave’s horse, although, in truth, I probably couldn’t have ridden her.

  It took us less than an hour to cross the valley and mount the slopes to the shrine. We rode into the green meadow and dismounted. I ran to the door of the hut, but Calchas didn’t answer my knock. The sun was just rising, and Miltiades was fully active – he was never a sluggard, even with a skinful of wine.

  He had a fine canteen, covered in leather, and he spilled a libation to the hero. Then he tethered his horse and we went up the trails behind the tomb at a run. He was in magnificent shape – I’ve seldom seen a man with a better command of his body – and we ran six or seven stades without stopping, until we were high in the oak forest.

  ‘I thought we might catch up with the old bastard,’ Lord Miltiades said. He was scarcely panting.

  ‘No tracks on the trail,’ I said. I was breathing hard.

  Again, the lord looked at me carefully. ‘Good eye,’ he said. ‘Can you find me a buck, lad?’

  So we moved quietly across the mountainside. It took me an hour to get the spoor of an animal, and another hour – the sun was getting too high – to put the small buck between us. I charged it, yelling hard, and it broke away from me, running for its life right at the Athenian.

  But I hadn’t seen the other buck. He was a magnificent animal, as big as a small horse, and in autumn he’d have carried a rack of antlers big enough to sell. Even in high summer he had started his horns. He rose out of a tangle of brush, crashed shoulder to shoulder with the younger buck, spilling him and saving his life, and sprang. His leap was so high and so hard that Miltiades stood with his mouth open, his javelin cocked and forgotten in his hand, as the buck sailed over his head.

  We didn’t touch either animal. Miltiades slapped me on the back. ‘You can stalk,’ he said. ‘Not your fault I missed my throw, boy. And what an animal! Artemis held my hand – I felt her cool fingers on my wrist, I swear. That beast must be her special love.’

  We walked down the mountain together. The sun was too high to try again. I potted a rabbit foolish enough to sit in the middle of the trail eating a leaf, and Miltiades praised my throw, sweet praise such as I never received at home.

  Yet he was not just a flatterer. He made me throw for him six or seven times, and he adjusted my body each time, correcting my tendency to advance my right foot too much, and there was none of the urgency to his touch that I’d felt with Calchas. He taught well, and when he threw his own spear, a heavy longche that I would be hard-pressed to toss across the meadow, he threw it as Zeus on high throws a bolt of lightning.

  I was worshipping him by the time we returned to Calchas’s hut and the shrine.

  ‘I wanted to see him,’ Miltiades said.

  ‘I’ll fetch him out,’ I said, bold as brass. ‘Lord, he may be a little drunk.’

  Miltiades laughed. ‘You fetch him out of there,’ he said. ‘I’ll sober him up – or give him some decent wine, better than the piss you peasants drink.’

  It was the first time I’d heard Miltiades speak ill of us. He could only guard his tongue so long.

  Ah, listen, honey. He was not a bad man, as powerful men go. He saved Greece. He was good to me. But he was used to the finest horses, the most beautiful women. It was our foolishness that made us think he was happy to drink sour wine with peasants in Boeotia.

  I climbed in through the window of horn. I’d done it dozens of times – once to steal the bow. I told you that story.

  As soon as I got it open – the stick I’d whittled to prise the window open was still leaning where I’d left it – flies came out, buzzing like some evil thing. In Canaan, men call the lord of
the dead the ‘Lord of the Flies’. It was just like that – as if all the flies made a single creature and moved with one will.

  I dropped from the sill into the room, and it smelled of old leather and bad food. At first I thought he had gone, leaving a rotten haunch of venison and an old brown cloak on the deer’s carcass in the middle of the floor.

  But, of course, he was there.

  The details came to me one at a time, although I think I understood as soon as the flies buzzed past me in the window. The odd shaft of light over the deer carcass was shining on the sword. The sword was stuck, hilt first, into the floorboards. There was no deer carcass.

  Calchas had wedged his sword into the floor and fallen on it. He had done it so long before that the brown cloak was just his hair and the last of his skin over his bones.

  How long since I had crossed the valley and left a sacrifice at the tomb? How many times had I come when he already lay here, dead? I wonder, in a way, if I had already known, because I had said my goodbyes and I didn’t weep. I went to the door, unbarred it and found the bronze-shod shovel Pater had made for him with his athlete’s pick. I carried them out into the yard and went straight to the tomb. Miltiades called something but I didn’t listen. Instead, I began to dig.

  I didn’t see Miltiades go to the hut, but I know that before the sun rose much higher, he was at my side, his lord’s hands digging in the earth with mine. We did a proper job.

  ‘Not much to burn,’ Miltiades said, when I began to pile up the winter’s supply of wood in the yard. It was old wood, and a little rotten. He hadn’t cut more, nor had he burned much, last winter. This was the wood I had cut while training.

  I piled it high. I was tempted to burn the cottage, but I knew that another man would come to mind the tomb. Why ruin it for him?

  Then I went in and spread my cloak on the floor. I lifted his corpse and put it gently on the good wool. Some pieces of him fell away. I was not squeamish. I filled my cloak and carried him into the yard. I put copper coins in the empty sockets of his skull and set the bag of my cloak and his bones on top of the woodpile, then Miltiades got a flame going with his fire kit.