Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Stay where you are. I thought I would find you here.’ He looked around, examined my practice pieces. ‘You seem infatuated with ravens,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘My family calls itself the “Corvaxae”,’ I said. ‘The Crows.’

  ‘Ah! And why is that?’ he asked.

  I told him the story of the ravens and the Daidala, and then I told him about my sister’s black hair, and how my father had always put the raven on his work.

  Philosopher that he was, he wanted to see the metal worked, so I punched an olive leaf from inside the helmet and then made the work finer and neater by working it from the outside. I showed him how the work made the bronze harder.

  He watched me anneal the back of the crown, and he reminded me of old Empedocles, the priest of Hephaestus, when he commented on the bronze tube that I used to raise the heat of the forge fire.

  ‘I have seen the fire and the metal together before,’ he said. ‘I suppose that I already knew that fire softens and work hardens.’ He smiled. Then he frowned. ‘With iron, fire hardens.’

  I shook my head. ‘You are the wisest man I know, but no smith! Fire softens iron. To make it hard, you quench it in vinegar when it is hot.’

  ‘It is fire that is the agent,’ he said. ‘The agent of change is always fire.’

  I could hardly argue with that.

  He looked at the new leaves around the brow of the helmet. ‘You won the olive wreath at the games at Chios?’ he asked.

  I smiled with pride. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Now I will wear them for ever.’

  He turned my work this way and that, and I explained planishing to smooth and harden the metal. And then I showed him how I melted the bronze and poured it on slate. He played with the bronze tube, just as Empedocles had, and blew through it, making the fire leap, and he laughed with joy.

  ‘All things are an equal exchange with fire, and fire for all things,’ he said. ‘Look at how you use the charcoal to make the fire, and the fire melts the bronze. You merely trade the charcoal for the heat, the way men at the docks change gold for a cargo.’

  I nodded, because that made sense to me.

  ‘So it is with anger and with war,’ he said. ‘Anger is to men what fire is to your forge. And if we eradicate that anger, much might follow.’

  I shrugged.

  He took me by the shoulder. ‘You are full of anger,’ he said. ‘Anger gives strength, but it comes at the price of soul. Do you know what I am saying?’

  I said yes – like a boy. In fact, I heard him, but had no idea what he was saying – that is, how his words were meant for me. He had come down from the temple just to say those words, but I was young and foolish.

  I embraced him, and he left me, and then I finished my work.

  That night I went to sleep early, intending to rise and go to Briseis, but I was tired and I slept through the night. Then the next day we had an assembly of arms, and we drilled – raising and lowering our shields, and forming to the left, so that we marched up the beach and formed a front on the Athenians from a column into a deep line.

  Aristides said it was horrible. I had no idea. This kind of drill was outside my limited experience of war.

  In the afternoon, I read Thales to Briseis. She smiled at me. ‘I was lonely last night,’ she said, and I started, because she said it in front of Penelope.

  So that night I went through the bead curtain into her room. We made love, and it was good. And then we began to talk of my going up-country.

  I wanted her to tell me that she loved me, and that she would miss me. But she was merely playful, and when I searched for an endearment, she grabbed my manhood and kissed me until I lay with her again.

  I am making all of you blush. But the blushing time is over, and the hard part has come.

  We were lying together on her kline after that second time. She lay on top of me, the weight of her – not much of a weight, I’ll allow – pressing down on my hips. She was idly licking the bruise on my shoulder when I heard heavy footfalls in the hallway. I had time to roll her off me.

  The beads parted and Hipponax burst into the room.

  He had a sword.

  Behind him was Darkar, and behind both of them was Archi with Penelope in tow, her eyes wide with terror.

  Hipponax raised the sword. He hesitated – unsure, I think, which of us to kill first.

  I took the sword from him as easily as you would take a spoon from a child. Then I stood between him and his daughter.

  Oh, the furies must have been laughing.

  What hurt most was the look of pain on Archi’s face.

  Hipponax was weeping. He hit me with his fist, ignoring that I had a sword – that’s how angry he was.

  I flung the sword away rather than kill him with it. And he hit me again. I fell.

  When he turned on Briseis, she had the sword. She looked at me – with contempt.

  ‘Stop this,’ Briseis said. She was sixteen, and yet her voice stopped all the war in the room.

  ‘You whore!’ her brother cried. He sounded as if he was in physical pain.

  ‘How could you—’ her father started. He sobbed. ‘What is the curse of the women of my house?’

  Briseis stood there, naked, the sword in her fist. She held it steady, and when her father approached her, she pricked his chest with the point. ‘No closer,’ she said. ‘My virginity was never yours to barter.’

  ‘What?’ Hipponax asked. ‘Drop the sword!’

  She shook her head. ‘Go to bed. We will talk about this in the day.’

  Hipponax took a shuddering breath and exploded. ‘You faithless bitch!’ he roared. ‘And I allowed your brother – and this piece of offal – to beat Diomedes! He was right! I will flog you in the streets – I will sell you to a brothel. I will sacrifice you—’

  She pricked him with the point. ‘No,’ she said.

  She looked at Archi. ‘Take Pater to bed,’ she said.

  Archi was shaking. He flicked a glance at me. ‘He must die,’ Archi said.

  So much for friendship.

  She looked at me. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘He is not anybody, and he will never tell.’

  Her words cut me as if the blade she held pricked my flesh.

  So much for love.

  She laughed. ‘You are all fools. This body is mine. I will use it as I wish. If I wish to take my pleasure with a man or a dog, so be it. I learned that from Mater, and from Diomedes, and you two fools will need to learn the lesson. Men will not be my masters. By Artemis the virgin, and by Aphrodite, I will be the master and not the slave.’

  They stepped back.

  ‘You will die a lonely old bitch,’ her father said.

  Briseis laughed. ‘Pater, you are dear to me, but you are a fool. I will die the queen of Lydia. Aristagoras has agreed to marry me.’ She laughed.

  Something in me died. ‘What?’ I spat. It was good, then, that I had no weapon in my hand.

  Briseis smiled at me – the smile matrons give to simple children in the agora. ‘You thought I was going to marry you, because you have a fine suit of armour?’ She pointed the sword at her father and brother. ‘As soon as Sardis falls, I am to wed him.’

  She turned to me and smiled. ‘You have served your turn, Doru. Take your armour and go from this house. I don’t think you should come back. Pater might hurt you. And you love him.’ She said the last as if it made me the greatest fool in the world.

  But I obeyed her, and my world filled with darkness. I went to my bed with Darkar at my heels. He spoke, and I have no idea what he said. I took the wool bag with my armour, and I took my sword and my spears. I rolled my heavy cloak and my sleeping pad inside my aspis.

  Darkar was still talking at me when I got to the gate.

  Archi was there.

  ‘How could you?’ he asked.

  ‘I love her,’ I said. He had a naked blade in his hand, and I drew my blade. ‘Loved her,’ I spat.

  ‘Never come back,’ he said. We faced each
other with blades in our hands.

  I found Aristides on the beach in the morning.

  ‘Will you take me as a hoplite?’ I asked him, straight away.

  He looked around. ‘Tell me why,’ he said. ‘You served with Archilogos of this city, last I heard.’

  ‘I serve him no longer,’ I said.

  Aristides nodded. ‘More fool he.’ He smiled. ‘Will you stand in the seventh rank?’

  The lowest place. An eighth-ranker was a file-closer – a form of officer. But a seventh-ranker was a man either too young or too small to fight.

  ‘I’m better than that,’ I said, with all the anger gathered in the last few hours.

  Aristides was only a couple of years older than me, but he had a way about him, and he gave me his famous half-smile. ‘I know that you can kill,’ he said. ‘I don’t know you otherwise. Seventh rank, or stay on the beach.’

  So when we marched on Sardis, I marched with the Athenians, the wings of betrayal beating about my head, the furies at my back and all of Persia before me.

  In the seventh rank.

  13

  As it turned out, I had Herk as my file-leader. Of course, as helmsman, he was an officer – I was unused to taking orders, which may seem a foolish comment from a former slave, but it was true. Still, I did well enough, and the men in my file were all veterans, at least of some raids and a siege or two, and I had plenty to learn about camping and eating and keeping clean. I was amazed at how much time the Athenians spent on their gear – polishing and cleaning with pumice and tallow and scraps of tow, every spare moment.

  Agios was my file-closer in the eighth rank. He was a well-known man, and at sea he was a helmsman – far too important to serve in the front rank and get killed, or so I understood. He and Herk were peers, and good friends. Later, they were my friends, but on the march to Sardis, Agios had few good words for me. Even as I was amazed at how hard the Athenians worked on their gear, so Agios was disgusted with how careless I was with mine. It was there – marching to Sardis – that I learned how much of the business of war was in maintenance.

  My mood was black – so black that I have no memory of marching upriver to Sardis. We crossed the mountains through the pass, I assume, but I don’t remember it. I had to carry my own gear because I had no slave. I don’t remember anything of that, either, although I must have sweated like a pig and been the laughing stock of the Athenian taxeis.

  I had a hard time with Briseis in my head. I hated her, and yet, even then, I knew that I was lying to myself. I didn’t hate her. I understood her. But I also knew that my life had been smashed – again – as thoroughly as my enslavement had smashed it.

  I was locked inside the prison of my head for the whole march. It rained and I was wet and at the top of the pass it was cold. I know that my friends talked to me – Stephanos and Epaphroditos and Heraklides, because they all referred to it later. But I remember nothing but a waking nightmare of the loss of Hipponax and Archi – and Briseis.

  Hipponax and Archi were in the same army I was in – there were only eight or nine thousand of us, all in, and I saw both of them every day, at a distance. They must have known that I was with the army, marching just a stade or two from them. I do remember wanting to go to them, every day – a yearning to face them, to receive blows or embraces. I think I believed that they would commiserate with me. Now, I shake my head.

  We were fifteen days marching on Sardis, and despite our long delay at Ephesus, we caught the city unawares. Which will give you an idea of how badly prepared the Medes were for us. I think that Artaphernes never really believed that men he had counted as friends and guest-friends – men like Aristagoras and Hipponax – would actually march on him. And so great was the name of Darius, King of Kings, that no man had ever dared to strike at him. Amongst the Ionians, they talked openly of conquering Persia. Amongst the Athenians, they laughed and talked about increasing their trade with Ionia. No man so much as mentioned Persia. I remember that, too.

  At any rate, the Persians were unprepared.

  When we came down the pass, the scouts told us that the gates of the great city – one of the richest in Asia – were open.

  We lost all order. The whole army broke into a mass of sprinting soldiers racing for the gates. At least, that’s how it seemed to me, and I was close to the front. Aristides roared like a bull to make us stand our ground, and we ignored him and raced for the nearest gates.

  I followed Herk. He was fast, but nothing like me, and I loped easily, keeping pace. The rest of our file fell behind – Herk wasn’t the fastest, but he had stamina. Other men caught us, and a few passed us, but the upshot was that a dozen of us came to the Ephesus Gate of Sardis, just around the hour men leave the agora, and the gates were open.

  Even as we ran up, the Lydian gate-guards finally decided that they were in peril and began to close the great wooden doors – or perhaps they closed them every day in late afternoon.

  Herk threw himself at the nearest door and men joined him. I flashed through the narrowing gap and my spear caught a Lydian and killed him, and the other guards broke and fled and the gates were ours, and I was the first man in the city.

  Then I saw men behave as animals, and men treated as animals, and it was amidst the slaughter that I awoke from my nightmares of the loss of Hipponax and family and Briseis. I found myself in the wreckage of the agora, watching a trio of Eretrians raping a girl while others looted the stalls in an orgy of destruction, like animals let loose from cages. Oh, you haven’t seen what men are until you see them let loose inside a city.

  I did nothing to stop it. It was happening all about me. And my sword was red, and blood dripped down my hand.

  The storming of a city is the grimmest of man’s acts, and the one most likely to draw the wrath of the gods. Sardis was defenceless, and the men and women of the city had never resisted us, or done us any hurt greater than taking some of our money in their trades. But we butchered them like lambs.

  Some fools set fire to the Temple of Cybele, and that sacrilege was repaid a hundredfold later. But worse was to come.

  The initial assault took the city, but we had no officers and no enemy to fight, so we all became looters and rapists, roving criminal bands. The men of the town gathered, first to fight the temple fire and then to resist us, and as the flames spread, they were driven towards the central agora.

  Because we had no leadership and no order, we didn’t storm the citadel. I was no better than the rest – I assumed that the city had fallen. I stood in the agora, watching the city burn, refusing to rape and contemptuous of the looters, and I watched the other side of the market fill with men – panicked men, I assumed.

  And then Artaphernes was there. His armour glittered in the fires, and he led the Lydians of the town and his own picked men of the citadel straight at us, and the Greeks were scattered the way sheep are scattered by wolves.

  I saw Artaphernes coming. Greeks ran past me and some were already casting aside their shields. That’s how bad we were. We must have outnumbered the Lydians three or four to one, and they scattered us.

  When the attack came, Herk was stripping a gold-seller’s stall like a professional sea wolf, which he was. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘I knew this was too easy.’

  He began to blow on his sea whistle, and I fell in next to him. He had his shield and I had mine, and other men who were not utterly in the grip of chaos and panic joined us, and in a few moments we were a hundred men. I noted that the man on my right was the athlete from Eretria, Eualcidas, whose friend I had thrown from the symposium. War makes strange shield-fellows. Agios was close on me, standing behind Herk.

  The Lydians stopped short of us.

  That was their mistake, because as soon as the other Greeks saw the Lydians halt, they turned and became men. So it is in any fight.

  Aristides was there, then. He ran across the front rank and praised us for standing, a few quick words, and more men joined us, Chians, mostly. Our shield wall cover
ed the agora, and we were four or five men deep – not a proper phalanx, but a deep line of mixed men.

  Then the Lydians came at us. They weren’t big men, or well armoured, except Artaphernes’ bodyguard in the centre, where I was. And the fates laughed, because the man coming at me in the fire-lit afternoon light was Cyrus, with his three friends around him. They halted ten paces from us, to see if we would give way, but we had Aristides to give us some wood in our backbones, and we shuffled but held.

  Artaphernes’ men began to shoot at us with powerful bows at close range. Eualcidas on my right took an arrow through his shield into his shield arm – that’s how strong their bows were close up. I saw that Heraklides slanted his, and I did the same, and then, under cover of my shield, I got the shaft out of Eualcidas’s arm and two other Eretrians dragged him to the rear. The next man to stand beside me got Cyrus’s arrow in his ankle – I saw the shot – and then Aristides exposed himself to the fire and ran along the front, ordering us to kneel behind our shields, and we did. He was magnificent. He was only a couple of years older than me, and I wanted to be him.

  So I indulged in some bravado of my own. I called Cyrus’s name until he saw me, and I stood up and took off my helmet. Arrows rattled on my shield, and one pinked my naked thigh above my greaves, scraping along the muscle without penetrating.

  ‘Cyrus!’ I roared.

  He raised his axe over his head and waved it at me. ‘You fool!’ he called, and laughed. The Greeks around me wondered aloud how I knew a Persian, one of the elite, and I laughed.

  And then their line stopped shooting and charged us.

  Artaphernes led his men from the front. Never believe all that crap about the Medes whipping their men forward – that’s the slaves they sometimes use as living shields. The real Persians and Medes – like Cyrus and Artaphernes – are like lions, eager for a fight all the time.

  They only had ten paces to come at us. I had a stranger behind me and another on my right, but I had Heraklides on my left. I looked back at the man behind me. He seemed steady. When the Medes charged, I stood crouched, shield on shoulder, and as they came up I punched out with my first spear and caught Cyrus in the leg, my spear in his calf, and down he went. Pharnakes was right with him, and he had a heavy axe, which he put in the face of my shield as I threw my second spear into the second rank, where an unshielded man took it in the gut – a Persian – and went down. I pushed my shield in Pharnakes’ face, axe and all, and the man behind me stabbed him while I got my sword out from under my arm.