Sacred Games

by Gary Corby

  “Timodemus seemed to me both knowing and confused.”

  “That’s a contradiction.”

  “Welcome to human nature. Conflict, young man—the passions of great men in opposition, in sport as in war—it’s the stuff of great poetry.”

  “But truth is what we need here.”

  Pindar snorted. “What is truth? I seek something more important: inspiration for my art. I’ve been in the thick of every war, attended every great sporting contest. So when Exelon announced this contest between Athens and Sparta, one in which the life of a man hangs in the balance, I was instantly intrigued. My plan is to observe this battle of wits between you and the Spartan.” He looked me up and down. “Are you sure you’re prepared? Someone who’s never heard of allusion is hardly in a position to be solving crimes. Perhaps I can help you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “That’s what your opponent said when I made him the same offer, but he changed his mind quickly enough.”

  “What?”

  Pindar did the eyebrow raise again. It was obviously a stock theatrical move for him, and it put me in mind that this man was accustomed to performance before thousands of men. “As you and Markos took the oath—I must say in passing his voice projection was better than yours—you should work on that …”

  I felt myself about to explode.

  “Where was I? Oh yes, as I say, I told him it was odd you should carry the whip of a racing chariot.”

  Of course. It was so obvious now that Pindar said it. What other long whip would you find at the Olympics?

  “I don’t suppose you know who owns this whip, do you great Pindar?”

  “A driver, of course. May I?”

  Pindar took the whip from me. He held it lengthways before him. “It’s a lucky thing for you I have observed hundreds of chariot races.” He ran his finger along the handle. “Observe the threads woven into the leather. This declares the team,” he said. “All the teams have their own racing colors, so the spectators can discern who is who in the thick dust of battle. See the distinctive checkered pattern in reds and greens? This is typical of teams from Thebes.”

  “And you’ve already told Markos?”

  “Yes.”

  I seethed. That bastard Markos had tricked me. He’d asked me about witnesses, knowing I’d say what I had, so he could interview the chariot driver on his own in perfect innocence.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the important part at once?” I said.

  “I like you; I was enjoying our conversation. My dear lad, if poets got to the point immediately, then it wouldn’t be poetry, would it? The important thing is to savor the words along the way.”

  I said through gritted teeth, “I must speak with the driver of the Theban team.”

  “Then perhaps you should hurry. If I do not mistake, that trumpet we both hear is the summons to the hippodrome to observe the chariot race. The teams must be in the final stages of preparation.”

  I HAD TO find that driver. I had to find out if he was the killer; if he wasn’t, I had to find out if he knew anything.

  Pindar beside me strode along at a good clip for such an old man. He needed to be at the race, he explained, in case the winner commissioned a praise song. “It helps if I’ve seen what I’m paid to describe,” he said. I left him at the gates and hurried to the stables behind the hippodrome.

  “I’m looking for the chariot team from Thebes,” I said to one man after another amid the frantic preparations. They pointed me from one box to the next, until I came to the one that housed the Megarans, at the end of the line.

  Markos was already there, next to a man in a pure-white chiton, which marked him as a chariot driver. They stood alongside the chariot, decorated in the same colors as the whip handle I carried. I silently cursed Pindar for telling my competitor first, but refused to let Markos see I was upset.

  “Does this belong to you?” I asked, and proffered the whip.

  “That it does.” The driver cast aside the whip he held and grabbed mine. He said, “This is my lucky whip; I’ve never run a race without it, so thanks. Where did you find it?”

  “I wondered when you’d arrive,” Markos said to me.

  “What did you get from my witness?” I demanded.

  “Your witness?” Markos smiled the superior smile of a man who’d won a race to the man who’d come in second. “I found him first. What do the little boys say? Oh yes. Finders keepers.”

  I grated. “We’ll interview this witness together.”

  “Didn’t we just agree to compare notes later?” he said, in all apparent innocence. He even managed a slightly hurt tone.

  “I’ll save you the trouble in this case. He might have vital information, and it’d be a pity if any of it unintentionally slipped your mind in the debrief.”

  The Spartan gave me an evil grin. “Very well, we can question him together.”

  The driver’s head had swiveled between Markos and me as we argued. He opened his mouth to speak, but an angry voice behind us got in first.

  “No, you can’t. Not now.” A short, dark man who sweated freely and wore a harried frown stepped between us and the driver. The stress oozed from his voice. This had to be the team manager. He pointed to the hippodrome. “Iphicles is about to risk life and limb out there in a race that requires the utmost concentration, and you idiots want to bother him? Right when he needs to focus?”

  “These are important questions,” Markos said. “King Pleistarchus commands they be asked.”

  The manager snorted. “You think I care about kings now? You could be bum-boy to Zeus himself, and I wouldn’t halt the team for you.”

  Iphicles said, “They found my lucky whip, Niallos. Look, they returned it.”

  He held up the whip to be seen.

  That stopped the manager. “They did, did they?” Niallos looked from one of us to the other. “In that case, I thank you. Chariot drivers are the most superstitious men alive. Well, you can see why; their lives depend on luck as much as skill. Iphicles was convinced he’d die in this race unless someone found that whip.”

  Iphicles said, “Niallos, there’s nothing for me to do yet but stand here. I may as well speak to them. I owe them. I might win the Olympics because of these two.”

  Niallos turned to Markos and me and said, “You have until the trumpets sound again.” He marched off to bellow orders at the crew.

  I said, “Thanks, Iphicles.” The driver was as short as his team manager, but his shoulders were massive, and the muscles in his upper arms were like ropes. I glanced down. The middle two fingers of his left hand were missing. “What happened to your fingers?”

  “Racing accident, years ago when I was young and reckless.”

  “Now you’re older and wiser?”

  “Just older.”

  “Dangerous for you.”

  “That’s where the luck comes in. I’m one of the veterans of this race. It’s the youngsters more likely to make mistakes, but we all have to watch out.”

  Iphicles could not have been much older than me.

  It was hard to think among the barely controlled chaos of the race preparations. The crew swarmed all over the chariot and the horses. Two grooms stood at the front to hold the bridles and prevent the team from bolting. Men checked leather straps, made minute adjustments, and checked again. A slave rubbed oil into the harness. Another slapped pig fat and oil about the axle. One man checked the coupling between the harness and the chariot, and another man checked the work of the first. If that coupling failed, it would be disaster. One man, his eyes closed, ran his fingers along every part of the reins to ensure there was not the slightest nick, nothing to snap under the intense pressure of the race.

  The roar of the crowd rose steadily over the noise of the race crews as they put the vehicles through final prep. Nervous horses neighed and danced in excitement, held barely in place by struggling grooms.

  Against the noise I said, “Do you know a man named Arakos?”

&n
bsp; Iphicles bent close to say, “Isn’t he the dead man? Heard of him but never met him. I’m a race driver, not one of those fighting thugs.”

  Unfortunately, that made sense. “Where were you last night?”

  “Across the river, screwing as many women as possible and guzzling the best wine.”

  I blinked. Iphicles was a straight talker.

  “I puked twice already this morning. I’m still nursing a massive hangover.”

  “Do you always drink and wench yourself senseless before a major race? The preparations don’t seem entirely adequate.”

  Iphicles laughed. “Look about you.” Across the boxes, attendants and crews everywhere made last-moment preparations the same as the men next to us. In many boxes the driver had already stepped up to his vehicle. “See those men taking the reins? Some of them will die today. What man doesn’t make the most of his last day on earth?”

  “Last night, did you see—”

  Iphicles said something I couldn’t hear over the rising noise.

  I leaned close to his ear and shouted, “What did you say?”

  He leaned close to my ear and shouted back, “I said, What did you say? You’ll have to speak up; I can’t hear you over the crowd.”

  The next box along housed Team Megara. Their chariot had a problem of some sort; the wheels screeched fit to tear out my teeth. Men with buckets smeared fat as fast as they could ladle.

  I cupped my hands together and shouted into Iphicles’s ear, “How did you lose your whip?”

  “This is hopeless,” Markos shouted. “We’ll have to wait till after the race.” He abandoned the struggling conversation and stepped back to watch the crew prepare the chariot. I silently agreed with Markos that there was no hope of getting any useful information, but I wasn’t willing to give up.

  Iphicles had watched my mouth as I spoke, and he nodded to show he understood. He shouted something back, but though I heard fragments, I couldn’t make sense of what he’d said. I wanted to drag Iphicles away from the noisy place, but I knew he couldn’t go.

  The noise level suddenly dropped.

  “Quick, tell me how you lost the whip.”

  “I already told your friend that. I took a wrong turn while I staggered home, went left into those woods instead of right across the river. Sounds dumb, I know, but my head wasn’t working too well, so I followed the guy in front of me.”

  “What guy?”

  “I dunno. There was a man ahead of me. Obviously I thought he was going back to camp, too. I just staggered along behind.”

  “Obviously. What happened then?”

  “The man turned around and said I was going the wrong way. He pointed me toward the ford. I said thanks—at least I think I did—and then I must have tripped, ’cause next thing I knew I was flat on my face. When I came to, I went in the right direction. I don’t remember much else.”

  “You carried a horsewhip to meet women?” My imagination ran wild.

  “It’s a lucky whip. When I woke this morning without it in my hands, I almost died.” He shuddered. “I realized I must have dropped it when I fell, and like a fool I was so wasted I hadn’t noticed. I went back for it, but it was gone.”

  Because Markos and I had taken it for evidence.

  “Would you recognize this man if you saw him again?”

  “I dunno. Maybe. Ask me later. Right now I’m all nerves.”

  And there I’d been expecting the owner of the whip to solve the case for me. He knew almost nothing. But who was it he’d followed? The murderer? Or Arakos?

  As we spoke, a crewman beside us scooped out a large handful of grease from a bucket, slopped it onto the chariot’s right axle where it joined the wheel, and spread it around. When he was satisfied, the crewman raised his arm and called. “Right wheel. Check!”

  At almost the same moment a man on the other side raised his arm and called, “Left wheel. Check!”

  Markos had crouched down to admire the chariot. “It’s a remarkable piece of machinery,” he said, rising and wiping the pig fat of the axle grease from his hands onto his tunic. “So small, so light.”

  “The horse team barely knows I’m there,” Iphicles said. “As long as I’ve somewhere to put my feet and a leading panel to brace myself against the pull of the reins—that’s all I need.”

  All along the line, race crews were doing the same as Team Thebes. Men stepped back from the chariots with raised arms to show they were ready, an action easily seen and understood no matter the noise and chaos of the race start.

  I had only moments. Iphicles must have seen more than he’d said, something he probably didn’t even know was important. I said to Iphicles, “Quickly, what I really want to know is—”

  Trumpets drowned me out. The herald called the contestants to the starting line.

  Iphicles stepped up to his chariot. “If you want to talk to me, it’ll have to be after the race.”

  Markos said, “By the orders of my king, you must tell us—”

  Iphicles grabbed the reins of the two leftmost of his horses in his left hand and the reins for the others in his right. I wondered what happened if a driver dropped his reins, but this didn’t seem a good time to ask.

  Iphicles flicked his lucky whip. “I have a race to win. Poseidon preserve me and bring my team home first.”

  “Step back there!” The team manager pushed Markos and me out of the way.

  Iphicles flicked the reins, and his eager team started forward. We watched him depart without a backward glance, shoulders braced to control the uncontrollable: four peak racing horses that ached to run.

  Markos shook his head. “We never had a chance. Bad luck. I hope the rest of the investigation doesn’t go like this.”

  “What do we do now?” I said.

  “The only thing we can. We watch the race.” Markos took off without a backward glance to see if I followed. “There might still be time to find a good spot.” I hurried to catch up with him. And that is how I came to see the first event of the Olympics in the company of a Spartan.

  Most of the crowd was clustered about the two turning posts, particularly the one at the east end, which had a reputation for producing the most spectacular crashes. There was no room at either end, so we elbowed our way to the front at the middle of the field, where we would have a good view of the sprints between posts. There was plenty of room for anyone who wanted to watch; the hippodrome is three times larger than the stadion where the running races and the fights are held.

  The judges were already seated, ten abreast in their special box on the opposite side of the field.

  I nudged Markos. “There’s Klymene.” She stood alone in a box beside the judges. I told Markos about the interview Diotima and I had held with her. His eyes brightened at Klymene’s parting words, and he studied her from afar. “Now there’s a girl I’d like to meet. Do you think she’s doing it now?”

  “Control yourself until after the Games,” I told him. “Have you any idea what would happen to the man who polluted the Priestess? They’d have to suspend the Games while they replaced her.” I thought about it. “I wonder if it’s ever happened?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of,” Markos said.

  I looked at the sports-crazed Hellenes all about us. “Imagine telling this lot they have to wait because some guy had it off with the Priestess of the Games. They’d impale him.”

  “If he was lucky. Maybe they’d remove the offending organ first. All right, you’ve made your point.”

  The trumpets sounded again. Each chariot made a single turn around the track, stopping before the judges, where the driver reached into a jar held up by attendants and withdrew a lot.

  The drivers took their places according to their lots in the stalls of the hippaphesis, the horse-starter, which ensured every team had a fair start even though not everyone could begin at the center line. The hippaphesis was a huge V-shaped frame, with stalls built into it to hold the teams; the apex of the V pointed at the start of the c
ourse. Teams of horses four abreast, massive beasts bred for power and speed and aggression, stamped and snorted and pawed the ground in their eagerness. The beasts had been born and lived their whole lives for this moment when they would run this race. Each team of four pulled a chariot so small and light that one man on his own could lift it. Drivers braced themselves in the flimsy vehicles and waited for the hippaphesis to release them.

  In the center of the V was an altar to Poseidon, into which a cunning machine had been built, with a silver rod, at the top of which the figure of a silver dolphin played. Taut ropes ran from the machine within the altar to the starting gates for the race.

  The moment the last chariot team was locked in its stall, the Chief Judge stood up—the horse teams must not be kept waiting any longer than necessary, lest they injure themselves in the confined space—then the Chief Judge held high a white cloth for all to see, and dropped it.

  At once the assistant starter, who stood at the altar, turned the silver rod. The silver dolphin at the top end fell. At the other end a silver eagle with wings spread wide rose into the air. The turn of the rod caused a wheel within the altar to turn, which pulled the ropes that ran to the horse-starter. The ropes operated the first two of the releases, one at each wing of the V. As the releases dropped, the two outer teams surged off with whips flying. They were at opposite ends of the V, but they were racing each other. Those two were the only ones running until they reached the next stalls along the V. At that moment the restraining ropes dropped for the next two teams, the waiting drivers flicked their whips, and now there were four in the race. They continued like this—teams released as front runners reached them—until everyone was out of the stalls. The system ensured every team had an equal start, and an equal chance of gaining the inner line of most advantage.

  “That’s a brilliant device,” Markos marveled.

  “Of course, it’s brilliant; it was invented by an Athenian,” I said.

  The racers reached the apex of the V, the rope restraining the last two teams fell away, and now forty chariot teams jostled for position, all down the centerline of the course in a perfect start.

  The crowd screamed and cheered.