Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  I nodded. ‘Fire and water to anneal make bronze soft,’ I said, ‘but iron hard.’

  He nodded. ‘So with all strife and all change,’ he said. ‘Strife is the fire, the very heart of the logos. Some men are made free, and others are made slaves.’

  ‘I am a slave,’ I said bitterly.

  Archi turned and looked at me. ‘I never treat you as a slave,’ he said.

  What could I say? He treated me as an object every day, but I knew that he treated me better than other slaves and a hundred times better than men like Hippias treated their slaves.

  But Heraclitus was looking out to sea, or into the heart of the logos, or nowhere. ‘Most men are slaves,’ he said. ‘Slaves to fear, slaves to greed, slaves to the walls of their cities or the possession of a lover. Most men seek to ignore the truth, and the truth is that everything is in flux and there is no constant except change.’ He looked at me. ‘It is ironic, is it not, that you understand my words, and you are free inside your head, while standing here as a chattel, property of this other boy who cannot fathom what we are talking about?’

  Archilogos frowned. ‘I’m not as stupid as you claim,’ he said hotly.

  Heraclitus shrugged. ‘What is the logos?’ he asked, and Archi shook his head.

  ‘Change?’ he asked. He looked at me.

  Heraclitus swatted him. ‘Best be going home.’

  I thought that I understood his message. ‘You think that I should not give up hope,’ I said.

  Now the master looked mystified. ‘What have I to do with hope?’ he asked, but he had a twinkle in his eye.

  Another winter passed. I could calculate inside my head without using my fingers and I could draw a man with charcoal. I could put my spear into a target ten horse-lengths distant, no more than a finger’s width from the instructor’s cane pointing where he wanted to see the throw. And I was growing to be the swordsman I wanted to be. I was strong. After all, I was getting the exercise of a rich man, and for nothing. Every day I could lift a larger weight stone. I could raise it behind my head and over my chest, I could lift my body off the floor of the temple with my hands alone. I was tall, and taller every day, and my chest began to grow broad. I was strong.

  Archi grew, too. He grew as quickly as I did, or perhaps faster. Suddenly he was as tall and as wide, and when we wrestled, we could hurt each other, and we no longer dared to use oak swords to fight, because we could break bones. Instead, we fought as the ephebes fought, a spear’s length apart, as if dancing, so that each blow was parried without sword and shield ever coming together.

  Archilogos loved competition and he never liked to lose, so he began to apply himself to his studies, and he could suddenly do the geometry I could do and he could solve sums in his head, too.

  I hated being a slave but, all the same, it was a good time. Adolescents are good at these divisions, and indeed, Heraclitus was full of such pairs of strife-riven opposites. So – at Ephesus, I was a slave, but in many ways, I was freer than I ever was again. I was poor and had nothing but my coins in the jar in the garden – although they were beginning to pile up. And yet, in just the way Heraclitus described, I was rich beyond imagining, with a young, strong body and an agile mind and the company of others like me. What young man – or woman – wants more?

  Yes. So it was. And so another year passed, and we worked and played. I thought less and less of Briseis, although every time I saw her – and that was seldom – my heart beat as if I was in a fight. Diomedes came to our house to woo her. Hipponax took care that I should be on errands when this happened, not because he knew – or would have tolerated – my hidden passion, but because he suspected who had sent the thugs.

  Although I still pursued Penelope, I understood that she had chosen to put space between us. I had other lovers – girls who were easier, freer, and never as much fun.

  And then came the events that broke the pot that held us, and smashed the futures we had imagined in our ignorance. Strife came, and with it, change.

  9

  It was spring. I remember that well, because the end of the world began with a day of roses and jasmine and sun and beauty.

  I was seventeen by my reckoning, and when I walked through the agora, women watched me. Don’t laugh, thugater. I was once one of those.

  And men watched me as well. What cared I? If I had been free, men would have put my name on pots. Even as a slave, I was kalos kagathos. I was beautiful and smart and strong.

  Oh, the arrogance of youth.

  Archi and I were boxing in the garden, Euthalia watching us from her couch, and Hipponax lay next to her, stroking her as she watched us fight.

  We’d been at it for enough time for the water-clock to run out and be refilled. We were covered in sweat and euphoric with the daimon of it. And then Briseis came.

  She seldom entered the centre of the house. As an unmarried virgin, she kept very much to the women’s quarters. But that was the week that Hipponax had put his seal to her wedding contract with Diomedes, and she was gathering her trousseau and acting like an adult. So she was allowed out.

  She looked like a goddess. I say that too often – but she was flawless. I know now that she must have done it on purpose, but she was arrayed in linen and wool worth the value of my father’s farm and the smithy, too. The smell of mint and jasmine came off her, as light as a feather on the air.

  I caught all of this in the same glance that showed me Penelope at her heels and earned me a blow to my upper chest. Archi wasn’t distracted by his sister – far from it. He bore down. His blows came thick and fast.

  But he had not had Calchas. And he had never killed. Later, he became a great warrior, a name that was spoken throughout Hellas, but when I was seventeen, he was never my match.

  So I took a few blows and then my right shot out, a stop-attack into his flurry, straight through his guard on to the point of his chin, and he staggered.

  Briseis clapped mockingly. ‘Oh, Archi, show me that again!’ she called.

  He held up a hand to me and I bowed. Then he picked up a pitcher of cold water, drank half and tossed the rest over his sister and all her finery.

  She screamed and her right fist shot out, as fast as mine, and she clipped his head with her blow.

  Yet, for all that, they loved each other, and suddenly they were laughing – he naked, and she with the purple dye leaking off a garment that had cost more than I imagined my father made in his best year. Now ruined.

  How rich they were.

  She stripped the two garments over her head – Ionians don’t worry about the nudity of women the way westerners do – and took a simple linen shift from Penelope, who blushed when she took it off and gave it to her mistress and ran for something to wear herself.

  No one in the garden was looking at me, so I drank in the beauty of Briseis’s body – her high, pointed breasts and the lush growth of black hair between her legs. I tore my eyes away and glanced around – Hipponax was spluttering wine at his daughter’s behaviour, and Archi was staring after Penelope with the same lust with which I was watching his sister.

  And Euthalia was watching me, her face set in cool appraisal. I flinched and dropped my eyes. There were rumours in the slave quarters that Euthalia was anything but a loyal wife – and that Hipponax cared little. But no one had suggested that her games extended to slaves. I was old enough, however, to know what that cool appraisal meant in an older woman – Cook looked at me just the same way, whether she meant to slap my hand for stealing bread or to get me in her bed.

  My theory is that women who have borne a child learn the same lesson men learn when they face the enemy on the battlefield, and that after that, they look at you with the same look. That’s my theory.

  Learn what, you ask?

  I’m old, and my cup is empty. Don’t read into that, honey – just pour some wine. Learn the lesson yourself.

  Penelope came back, decently covered, and Briseis stayed, enjoying the trouble she had caused. ‘When is Diomed
es coming?’ she asked for the fourth time. Their betrothal having been signed, they would shortly have a ceremony at her hearth and then a party. She was an old woman of fifteen and wanted to get on with life.

  Hipponax made a face. ‘Girl, we have enough on our plates without you going womb-mad to your betrothal party!’

  Euthalia slapped her husband lightly. ‘We have a small problem, Briseis,’ she said. ‘Artaphernes has chosen to honour us with a visit. In fact, he has summoned many of the leaders of Ionia – great men, and famous names – to meet here in our city and have a synod.’

  She didn’t mention that Diomedes’ father was a member of the other faction – the independence faction. And thus not a man to be delighted to find Artaphernes at his son’s betrothal party. Only their mercantile links kept them friends. The betrothal had been planned since Briseis was born.

  All this went by in the beat of a heart. Briseis shrugged. ‘My betrothal is more important than the bickering of old men,’ she said with a toss of her head.

  Her mother shook her head. ‘No, my dear. Your betrothal can happen whenever we ordain it. These men gather to prevent a war. You have no idea what war is, dear. None of you do.’

  She seldom spoke seriously, but when she did, we listened. But inside, I thought, I have seen war.

  ‘I am from Lesbos, and throughout my youth, the men of Mytilene made war on my city. Farms burned and women raped and families sold as slaves – good families. If Athens storms this city, Briseis, you will be sold in the market to a soldier. Do you understand?’

  Briseis couldn’t have been more shocked if her mother had hit her. ‘Athens is a town of barbarians,’ she spat. ‘You and Pater both say so!’

  ‘Barbarians with a fleet and an army,’ Hipponax said. ‘Listen, dear. Let us have the conference and then we’ll have the party. You will only have to wait a month.’

  Briseis flicked her eyes around the garden and she found me, and blushed. Then she sat in the chair that Dorcus, one of the house slaves, brought for her, and she leaned out over the table to take her father’s wine cup, exposing her bare side and causing my whole body to twitch. All quite intentional.

  ‘Very well, Pater,’ she said calmly. This was so far from her parent’s expected reaction that her father was literally open-mouthed with astonishment.

  ‘The good of Ionia is more important than my wedding,’ she said sweetly.

  If we had been on a stage, the audience would have seen the furies gathering.

  Artaphernes came with a whole regiment of cavalry, Lydians and Persians in separate squadrons, the Lydians armed with lances and the Persians with bows and spears. In the agora, men complained that he had brought all the soldiers to overawe them, and the soldiers were arrogant, thrusting out their chests, pushing men and flirting with women in every square in the town.

  I watched them curiously. They were very different from the hoplites of Boeotia. For one thing, they were the most aggressive woman-hunters I’d ever seen, especially the Persians, and if there was a boy-lover among them, I never met him. Second, they were lazy. Not at their soldier-work – when I visited their camps, I saw swordplay and archery of a high calibre. But if they were not drilling or shooting, they did nothing but swear, fight and fuck – sorry, dear.

  In my day, in the west, we had no ‘professional’ soldiers, except the Spartan nobles, and even the Spartans occupied themselves with ceaseless athletics and hunting. I’d never seen full-time soldiers who sat in wine shops, drinking, spitting and grabbing girls.

  They were tough. They were rich, too. The average Persian cavalryman had a groom for his horse and a slave for his kit. He had his own tent and perhaps another felt shelter for his slaves and his gear. Every one of them had bronze and silver cups, water pitchers, plates – I’d never seen a soldier with so much stuff.

  And they had women in their camps. Some were wives and some were prostitutes, and many seemed to fall in some mysterious (only to me) gap between the two defined roles. They worked hard, too – harder than the men, washing, cooking, sewing and minding children.

  A Persian cavalry regiment was like a travelling town where all the citizens were lords. I liked them quite a bit. They liked me, too. Most of them had never seen a western Greek. They were contemptuous of Ionians, as poor warriors, but they’d heard that we Boeotians were fighters, and I told my war stories to the four men I liked best – a pair of brothers and their two friends, all from the same small town near Persepolis. They were lords, or they called themselves noblemen, and you might well ask why they talked to Greek slaves.

  I was in camp on an errand to Artaphernes, carrying a herald’s staff for my master. Artaphernes had a tent in camp and a lavish establishment, and he was sometimes there and sometimes at our house, for reasons that were beyond me. When he was in camp, I was the herald, mostly because he liked me and I could get to him faster than other messengers.

  I was picking up a little Persian – camp Persian, hardly what anyone speaks at court. But I was there every day or two, and the delivery of a message to a satrap of Persia is never a simple or quick task, especially if there is an answer. One time I remember cooling my heels all day only to discover that the satrap was already at our house.

  At any rate, one day my four Persians were on duty outside the satrap’s tent-palace, and after I showed them my staff, I entertained them by pretending it was a sword and doing my exercises, since I was missing lessons by running errands. And Darius – in those days, it seemed that all Persians were called Darius – called out and asked my name.

  ‘I’m Doru,’ I said, ‘companion to Archilogos, son of Hipponax.’ I shrugged.

  ‘You have the wrist of a real swordsman,’ Darius said. He took my herald’s staff, a pair of solid bronze rods, and hefted it. ‘I’d be hard put to do my cuts with this. Cyrus, try your sword arm on this toy.’ He tossed my staff to his brother, who caught it.

  They were as alike as statues in a temple portico – skin the colour of old wood, jet-black hair and clear brown eyes, handsome as gods.

  Cyrus whirled my staff through some exercises – not my exercises, so I watched with fascination. He tossed it to me. ‘Let’s see you do that, boy!’ he said.

  So I did. I copied his moves, interested in the differences, and all four Persians applauded, and after that we were all friends. They were easy men to like, and we fenced sometimes. They never used shields, which made them very different men to face. Cyrus also taught me a trick that has saved my life fifty times – how to kill a man with his own shield. Have you seen it?

  Here – you, scribe. Take that shield off the wall – I won’t eat you – and put it on your arm. So you do know how to hold a shield – good for you. My opinion of you just went up. Now face off against me – damn this hip. Pretend you have a sword. Now watch, honey.

  Just like that, and I’ve broken his arm and killed him. Sorry, lad. You can get up now. Useful trick, eh? All I do is grab the rim of the shield and rotate it. There’s no man born, no matter how strong, who can hold the centre of a wheel while I rotate the rim. Yes? This is based on a mathematical principle that I could explain if I was given enough wine, but for the moment, it suffices that it is true. And see how our pen-pusher’s arm is in the porpax – that bronze strap across his upper forearm? So he can’t escape his shield once I start to rotate the rim – and I break his arm.

  If he was a killer, he might gut me with his blade while I break his arm. If he isn’t – and few men are killers, thank the gods – then I push his now helpless arm and shield rim into his face, smash his nose and he’s dead. See? Cyrus taught me that, bless him.

  They were free-giving, hard-drinking men, and I grew to love them in two weeks. They seemed more alive than other men. More real. They fought duels all the time, cutting other Persians over fancied or real slights, over a misspoken word or a cold shoulder. They were dangerous dogs, and they bit hard.

  My status as a slave meant nothing to them, of course. To them, all Greek
s were their slaves. Which rankled, but they were so far above me that I couldn’t be offended at their attitude to the Ionians – an attitude I shared.

  At any rate, the summer passed with lessons and struggles. I was seeing an Aethiopian girl from a house as lavish as ours, the Lekthantae, hereditary priests and priestesses of Artemis, one of the noblest and richest families of the city. Salwe was tall and thin and dark like night, and while we never loved each other, she had a sharp mind and a vicious tongue and we entertained each other, in and out of bed. I loved going out to the Persian camp. I loved working through the ever more complex problems of geometry that Heraclitus gave me. I would sit in the fountain house – after Master lifted the ban – and sing on my lyre, and Salwe would sing with me, her voice capable of curious harmony that she said her people in Africa always sang. It was a good summer.

  The tyrants of Ionia were gathering in the houses of the upper town, and so we had dinner with Hippias again, and dinner with Anaximenes of Miletus, who had replaced the traitor Aristagoras as tyrant of Miletus. Aristagoras was reputed to have spoken that summer to the assembly of Athens, just as Hippias predicted, and to have been granted a fleet of Athenian ships to come and make war on the Great King in the name of the ‘rebellion’.

  There was no rebellion. All the leaders of Ionia were in and out of our house, and the great cities – Miletus, Ephesus, Mytilene – were, if not solid in loyalty to the Great King, at least uninterested in revolt. Some men wanted war, but most of them were penniless exiles.

  It was odd, but as a slave, I probably knew more about what was happening than the satrap. I knew that on the dockside, where young men gathered when the ships came in from all over the Ionian, men spoke of Aristagoras as a hero and of Athens as a liberator. Gentlemen and rowers, seamen, small merchants – they were all fired by the idea of independence. But the nobles and the rich in the upper town were insulated from this talk, just as they were insulated from the gossip of their slaves.