Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  And that’s how I met Briseis. Yes – you know that name. She’s as much a part of this story as Miltiades or Artaphernes.

  I bowed. ‘I apologize for hurting you, mistress.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘What will you do for me if I don’t report you, boy?’ She called me pais, like a small boy who runs errands. She meant to cut me, and she succeeded.

  ‘Nothing, kore,’ I returned. A kore was a little girl of good family.

  ‘Doru . . .’ Penelope cautioned.

  ‘Nothing. Report us to Darkar. Better yet, to your parents.’ I smiled. ‘I will be punished for hurting you.’ I shrugged. But I knew a few things – I was not a new slave. I knew that allowing someone to blackmail you was deadly. Masters loved to play this game – get someone else’s slave in your debt and then use them as a spy. Oh, yes. Darkar was on top of all those tricks – he was steward and spymaster, too. He knew how to put oil on bread, I can tell you.

  She looked at me for a long time. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Don’t forget to explain what you were doing outside the house after dark, naked under a chlamys.’ That was the free man in me, unable to shut up. Somehow, she was like my sister. And I knew what I’d say to my sister if she tried to blackmail me. Which, come to think of it, she had done, a hundred times.

  She whirled. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she shot at me.

  I shrugged. ‘Despoina, I am a slave, and slaves are notorious for protecting themselves. And you are naked under that chlamys.’

  She turned red – blushed so hard that you could see it under the fretful light of a house lamp.

  She pursed her lips and got up – carefully clutching her boy’s cloak around her figure – and ran back into her father’s house by the slaves’ door.

  Penelope paused only long enough to push two fingers rather painfully into the spot where my hip’s muscles stopped. ‘You idiot!’ she hissed. ‘She meant to scare you. For fun. Why did you have to challenge her?’

  I thought that I had behaved like a hero. On the other hand, I also realized that I had forgotten Penelope’s existence for three minutes.

  I went inside, shaking my head. I didn’t lose any sleep worrying about Briseis.

  Morning presented me with new troubles.

  I was summoned with Archi to face Hipponax as soon as Archi had breakfasted.

  Briseis was standing behind her father, dressed in an embroidered Ionic chiton of linen and a pair of golden slippers.

  ‘My daughter says that your companion was caught last night kissing her companion,’ Hipponax said. His eyes were on his son, not on me.

  Archi shrugged, as young men will do – a reaction that always infuriates a parent, I can tell you. ‘He kissed Penelope?’ Archi asked, looking at me. ‘Why?’ Then he grinned. ‘Or rather – why not?’

  Hipponax had a javelin on the table, a light spear with a shaft of cornel wood. He slapped it on the table. It made a noise like the whip of a muleteer. I jumped. Archi blanched.

  Briseis smiled.

  Only then did Hipponax look at me. ‘Well?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ I said. ‘I kissed her.’

  Hipponax glanced back at his daughter, and then at me. ‘I do not encourage flirtation among my people, young man. But I am angered by your casual use of my andron as a place to debauch my daughter’s companion.’

  I flicked my eyes to that lying little fox, Briseis. So I had kissed her companion in the andron, had I?

  But when my eyes met hers, a curious spark passed.

  Eyes can pass many messages. And faces give so much away, honey. Especially young faces.

  Even as her father spoke, she realized, I think, that her prank was going to cost me. And that her dare – she was daring me to tell her father where the incident had happened – was foolish. No slave would accept punishment under such circumstances. And who knows what she had thought inside that goddess-like head. That I would protect her because I was a foolish boy?

  All this in one heartbeat. With a plea not to betray her, now that she had lied and put me in danger.

  ‘I am disappointed in you, boy. You have a good life here. This sort of behaviour is emblematic of arrogance. I must punish it harshly, so that you will understand. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’

  I let it hang here for ten heartbeats. I was calm, and I already knew what I would do. So I flicked my eyes over her – and she flinched.

  Archi spoke up. ‘If he was half as drunk as I, Pater, it is scarcely his fault. He had to spend the evening avoiding the unsubtle grasping of Hippias of Athens.’ Bless Archi, he stood up for me like a man.

  Hipponax glanced at his son and then at me. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ I said. ‘I did it. I meant no arrogance, lord. I broke nothing and only one hip of mine ever touched a couch. I was drunk, and I will take my punishment.’

  Hipponax raised an eyebrow, and there was humour in it for a moment. ‘Well said, boy. Ten lashes instead of twenty. Let it be done now, before your mistress is up. Darkar!’ he called, and the steward came forward with a pair of porters.

  They took me into the courtyard. They already knew what had passed, and what had really happened. Darkar tied my wrists to the flogging pole hard and poked me in the side. ‘You are a fool, and you deserve all twenty blows,’ he said. ‘You are playing a dangerous game, slave. She will do this to you again, now that she knows she has the power.’

  I took the ten blows with gritted teeth. They weren’t kisses. The whole weight of the javelin haft on my buttocks, ten times. By the tenth, it took all my strength not to call out. It hurts that much.

  Better your arse than your feet, though.

  I cried a little afterwards, but in the amphora cellar where no one could see me. Darkar took me there. He wasn’t a bad man. He left me until I was done sobbing, and then gave me a bowl of cold water and my chiton. ‘You are a fool,’ he told me.

  Oh, aye. I was a fool.

  Those ten blows had a profound effect, because they reminded me that I was a slave. It is one thing to offer to accept punishment to protect a beautiful woman – and that was my intention, very heroic – but it is another thing to take the blows. Humiliating and painful, and the humiliation had only just begun, because it was two weeks before I was healed, and because Archi told every one of his friends and Heraclitus exactly what I had done and how I had been punished. He began by being indignant on my behalf and ended being pleased to have such an adult story to tell of his slave, and that had an effect on our relationship. I was a slave.

  Penelope avoided me. One evening I found her in the water stores and we kissed. I thought that all was well, but she never came to the fountain. I couldn’t figure her out – kissing me like a hetaira, and then pretending she didn’t know me when she passed me in the market.

  And neither Master nor Mistress allowed us out together any more.

  There were other girls. There was a red-haired Thracian girl who was happy to play at the fountain, and I never even knew what house she came from. Sometimes she would come wrapped in a peplos like a matron, but with nothing underneath, and that was fascinating, too. But when I played with her, I thought of Briseis. Briseis’s face made other women ugly. Her colours made other women dull. Her figure—

  This is a disease that I still have, honey. Hah! The little archer put his shaft deep in me. I doubt that I’d even want the shaft to be drawn, that’s how bad I am!

  But time passed, and there were other pursuits. Archi began to practise at the gymnasium. He was fast and strong for his age, and we sparred constantly – every day, I think. We had oak swords that hurt like blazes when we swung them too hard, and we had shields – a round aspis for him and a big Boeotian shield for me, like an egg shape with two round cut-outs. It was a joke to Master – he knew I was from Boeotia and the shield was the only Boeotian thing he’d ever heard of.

  We threw spears, shot bows and carved each other up with woo
den swords. At the gymnasium he was paired against other boys his own age, and I watched. Slaves were not welcome to compete in the gymnasium. Another reminder.

  But in the Temple of Artemis slaves were welcome to compete. By the time a year had passed, I had begun to understand Heraclitus’s theory of the logos – and to share his suspicion that most men are fools. I could never understand why the other boys were so slow to understand his principles, so slow to learn the rules of rational argument, and so utterly, painfully slow in learning the fundamentals of geometry.

  Hmm. What a pleasure I must have been to have around.

  Diomedes was one of the young men of Ephesus. He was a year older than Archi, so just about my age, and one day he’d had enough of being called a dolt by Heraclitus. After class, when we were all pushing down the steps, he jostled me.

  I stepped closer.

  He laughed. ‘What are you going to do, slave? Hit me?’ He slapped me with his hand open. ‘Slave. Go suck Archi’s dick, there’s a good slave. Is his mouth good for you, Archi dear? Is that why Heraclitus loves the boy so much?’

  I shook with rage.

  Archi laughed. ‘You’re a bad loser, Diomedes. And if you had fewer pimples, I imagine you could arrange to suck a few dicks yourself, instead of talking about it.’ Archi had that knack – as his sister had – of biting worse than he was bitten.

  Diomedes lunged at Archi and I tripped him. He fell down the steps in a tangle of chlamys and limbs, and was hurt. He screamed with pain and his slave, a silent boy named Arete, had to carry him home.

  Archi laughed and we went home. But two days later, a big man with a beard asked after me at the fountain. One of the older slaves sent him to me, where I was holding court for the younger slaves. By that time I was quite the young cock among the little ones. No man can be a slave all the time.

  The big man came up out of the dark with a companion of his own size, and I knew they were trouble.

  ‘Doru? Slave of Archilogos?’ the big man asked.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ I asked.

  He went for me. He had some training and he had a palm’s width of reach on me, and his companion was already brushing the smaller boys out of his way to get behind me.

  ‘Get Darkar!’ I shouted at Kylix. He ran for the house and I took a punch. I got away from most of it, but the part I took staggered me, and the second blow caught my forehead.

  I ducked and ran into the fountain house, but they were on me, and the slaves inside were as much an impediment to me as they were to the two thugs. One had a leather strap, and he kept hitting me with it. It stung, but it was a weapon for terrifying a cringing slave, not a weapon for hurting a warrior.

  I took the strap across my kidneys and got my hand on one of the bad planks in the seats and ripped it free.

  Now, mortal combat is an interesting experience, honey. I don’t think I ever planned to get that plank. I ran inside the fountain house from instinct and terror. And only terror got that plank off its supports. Amazing what you can do when terror aids your muscles. But once it was in my hands, my daimon entered me, and I went from terror to attack in the blink of an eye.

  I ripped it clear and hit one of the thugs right in the side of the head and he went down. His head made an ugly sound hitting the stone floor, too. Music to my ears, and the killer was loose.

  The other man grunted and hit me, a light, glancing blow on my arm muscles, but perhaps the twentieth blow I had taken. He was wearing me down.

  I feinted and swung my unhandy club, but he was under it and he got an elbow in my gut. I stamped a foot on his instep and we were down in the muck that lay over the stones. I hit my elbow so badly going down that my left arm was numb, then he got my head under his arm and hit me two or three times, hard enough to break my nose – again – and the next shot almost put me out.

  But I was a killer, not a victim. I grabbed his balls and tried to rip them off and he screamed. He thought that he had me, with that headlock. I got his balls and I dug my thumb in while I ripped, and he screamed like a woman in childbirth.

  He lay writhing on the floor and I knelt on his back, got my hand under his head and snapped his neck.

  Then I went back to the one whose head I’d hit, and I snapped his neck, too.

  I swore I’d tell you the truth, honey. I’m a killer. When the daimon comes on me, I kill. And remember the lesson – that dead men tell no tales.

  Then Darkar came.

  ‘Demeter, boy!’ the steward said. He held me at arm’s length because I tried to hurt him. I’m like that when the spirit of Heracles comes on me. ‘Ares, boy! You’ve killed this one!’

  I was losing the daimon of combat, and I shook my head and my nose hurt. ‘He was hurting me,’ I said.

  Kylix poured water over my head. ‘You killed them both,’ he said, and there was awe in his voice.

  Darkar looked at the shambles. He looked for some time and then he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ he said. ‘I have to tell Master. This is more than I can cover.’

  I don’t know how long it was after my meeting with Briseis in the dark, but it must have been six months. We’d just had a trip to Lesbos and I was well-liked, for a slave. Hipponax didn’t view me as a troublemaker. But this time, it was dark, I was covered in blood and Master was standing over me in his own courtyard.

  ‘Men attacked him,’ Darkar said. ‘He sent Kylix for me.’

  Hipponax loomed over me and his cool hands, which smelled of beeswax, touched my cheek. ‘Gods – get him a doctor.’ Darkar was silent. ‘What is it, Darkar?’

  ‘He killed them,’ Darkar said. ‘Both of them. Free men, I think. Their bodies are in the fountain house.’

  Hipponax knelt beside me. ‘They attacked you, boy?’

  I nodded. I could barely breathe. I had a broken nose and at least two broken ribs, too.

  Hipponax rose. ‘Take him to the Temple of Asclepius, then. And dispose of the dead men. Pay the other slaves for their silence. I take it these are not men of property?’

  Darkar spat. ‘Scum, lord. Thugs.’

  Archi came at a run. He looked at me and he took my hand. ‘Artemis! Doru – what happened?’

  I was silent, but Archi figured it out. ‘Diomedes!’ he said.

  Hipponax ignored his son and turned to his steward. ‘The fountain is now off-limits to our people. Dispose of the bodies. You may use a cart and a mule.’

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ I said.

  Hipponax ignored me. To his son, he said, ‘Diomedes will soon be a son of this house. Are you accusing him of attacking your slave?’

  Archi shrugged – which, as I have mentioned, is not the way to placate a parent. You might take note of that yourself, thugater. My mind whirled. Son of this house? That meant that Diomedes was to marry Briseis.

  I vomited on the flagstones.

  After that, I was in debt to every slave in the house. It took a conspiracy of the whole neighbourhood to keep me safe. Yes – slaves are never friends. Or perhaps I should say that desperate slaves are never friends. Happy, prosperous slaves in a good house have the time and safety to be friends – selfish, backbiting friends, but friends nonetheless. But they hate the masters in their own way. Someone might have blabbed, if anyone had made it worth their while, but those two men – slave or free – they were scum. No one came looking for them.

  I began to live with fear. In fact, I began to think like a slave – really think like a slave. I began to be very careful about what I said. I began to swallow insults. Those two killings taught me another lesson – and I was lucky to get off so cheaply. A week in the temple, and a year of carrying water and emptying chamber pots and fetching yarn and running errands – and minding my words. And a twinge in my chest when the rain is coming, every time – those broken ribs are still with me, honey.

  A month later I was back at my lessons. Diomedes caught me on the steps. ‘Your nose looks bad,’ he said. ‘How could that have happened? ’

  I did
n’t even meet his eye. I consoled myself that I had killed his thugs. I told myself that I would have my revenge.

  But I crawled like a slave and didn’t meet his eyes.

  And that hurt more than the beating.

  Heraclitus understood something of what had passed. He became more careful of his praise for me and at the same time more acerbic in his dealings with Diomedes. I kept my head down until one day, as we rose to leave the steps, I found his bronze-shot staff resting against my sternum.

  ‘Stay,’ he said. He nodded to Archi. ‘You, too.’

  When the other boys were gone, he looked around. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  We were both silent, as young men ever are in the face of authority.

  His staff pointed at my nose. ‘Who did that?’

  I shrugged.

  Heraclitus nodded. ‘Strife makes change, and change is the way of the logos,’ he said. A statement I’d heard a hundred times, actually, except there and then, I think that I understood.

  ‘Change is not always good,’ I said, rubbing my nose.

  ‘Change merely is,’ the philosopher said. ‘Why are you so good at geometry, boy?’

  I bowed my head at his praise. ‘My father was a bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘We use a compass, a straight edge and a scribe to lay out our work. I knew how to make a right-angled triangle before I came here.’ I shrugged. ‘Any potter or leather-worker could do as well, I expect.’

  He shook his head. ‘Somehow I doubt it. So – you know how to work bronze?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m no master,’ I said. ‘But I could make a cup.’

  He shrugged. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I am more interested in the properties of fire than in having a cup made.’

  I have to say that at some point I had learned that, far from being the penniless beggar he seemed, Heraclitus had been offered the tyranny of the city and his father and brother were lords. He was a very rich man.

  He went on, ‘Fire hardens and softens, isn’t that true, bronze-smith? ’