by Marilyn Todd
Any mule train carrying gold needs an escort, Lysander had told her. I sent Lynx Squad, under the command of a man called Gregos, to guard the dust from the moment it was weighed into the sacks to the moment it was discharged in Sparta.
The head of the secret police had made himself comfortable in the red, cushioned chair beside Iliona’s bed, crossing his legs at the ankles and resting his elbows on its maple-wood arms. Too much gold to move in one go, he’d explained. Those precipitous, narrow mountain roads would stretch the army into too long a crocodile and make it easy pickings for bandits. Better to move the gold in four smaller caravans to avoid overstretching resources.
Despite all our precautions, the first caravan contained ten per cent ordinary rock dust, weighted with metal, when it reached its destination. Gregos and I went through it at length, and neither of us could see how, or when, the switch was made. But somebody, somewhere went to a lot of trouble to make those sacks look, and feel, like gold.
It could have been the Macedonians, ripping off purchasers at source, though in that case it would have made more sense to swap the last consignment, rather than the first.
Not all thieves are bright, of course, Lysander had rumbled, adding that it was also possible this had been a genuine mistake. That somehow ballast got loaded, instead of gold.
The second mule train scotched both theories. More rock and metal in place of gold dust. Ten per cent on the nail.
By this time, Gregos was on the alert, he said, yet somehow the switch was still effected right under his nose.
The Krypteia steepled his fingers as he stared at Iliona’s bedroom ceiling. It was at this point, he explained, that he’d tasked his commander with the worst possible job for a soldier. Spying on his own men.
It could only be an inside job, and to say Gregos was unhappy is an understatement, but I know him. I know his family. They’re good people, and I knew he’d come through for me. We all have to make sacrifices for our country.
Death comes with honour. Spying does not.
Vigilance, however distasteful, obviously paid off and Gregos figured it out. Unfortunately, somebody followed him, and silenced him before he had chance to meet his superior officer.
Which means, Lysander said, the thieves aren’t just ruthless, they’re clever, resourceful and extremely well organized.
Iliona was beginning to see that. Lynx Squad comprised twelve crack troops, thirteen including Gregos, each accompanied by his personal helot acting as auxiliary troops, plus the pack master and any muleteers for the supplies. Too many people around to make the swap on the march, and in any case the gold would be too heavy for one, or even two men, to carry around on their person.
Macedonia to the north, she’d said. The Lake of Light to the north, and a posting station that bisects two major trade routes.
Exactly. Lysander’s smile was as cold as a midwinter frost. Up to that point, he said, the donkeys were only rested along the way. Here, the animals are changed.
Meaning the sacks also needed to be redistributed, Iliona said, where it would be very easy to store any substitute fillings close to the posting station, in readiness for a rapid changeover.
And for the accomplice to stash the gold until it was safe to collect it.
He could change Lynx for another squad, he added, which would put paid to any more thefts. But it wouldn’t tell him which of the men was involved.
For the same reason, I can’t question them, either. If I do, I’ll be alerting the thief, leaving all twelve under a cloud of suspicion.
Even if he nailed the bastard, he said, Spartan warriors were trained not to crack under interrogation. The accomplice, and the gold, would be lost in the wind.
In any case, none of Lynx Squad was in a position to leave the escort, he growled.
Whereas Gregos’ killer had been free to follow him to Sparta, implying both access to horses and an ability to handle them well.
I need a diversion, Iliona. A legitimate excuse to bring a Spartan contingent into the region without alerting attention. The Oracle would kill two birds with one stone.
The second, presumably, being vengeance?
If you call blinding the traitors with pitch then throwing them into a pit while they’re still alive vengeance, then yes. Lysander stood up and cracked his knuckles. I happen to call it justice, but that’s just my opinion. Either way I am going to find them, he said. That gold belongs to peace, not to them.
*
Driving at breakneck speed along the narrow tracks, Nobilor was oblivious to everything except the reins in his right hand, the whip in his left, and the vibration of the board beneath his feet.
Oblivious to the lynx that snoozed in the clefts between the rocks. To the waterfalls that cascaded down past chestnut trees and pines. Oblivious to the lake below, a sheet of azure. According to legend, the lake was the home of the Blue Goddess. Zabrina of the Translucent Wave, whose circular shrine stayed warm to the touch, even in winter, and whose throne was guarded by dragons that laid eggs of pure gold.
Nobilor was blind to beauty and legend.
‘Yah!’ he shouted, cracking the whip. ‘Yah! Yah!’
Faster and faster his chariot flew, wheels rattling louder than thunder. Hurtling round the narrow, rutted hairpin bends, there was no time to take his eyes off the road, much less think.
No time to dwell upon a marriage that had blossomed with his Olympic success, then cracked under the strain, leaving him with a three-year-old daughter to raise on his own.
No time to worry about Daphne, whose hips and breasts seemed to have rounded into womanhood overnight, bringing men sniffing round like tomcats.
As bay and palomino responded to the sting of the leather, the past and the future merged into a present defined by horses’ manes flying in streamers and hooves that kicked up the dust. Exactly how Nobilor liked it.
Panting with exhilaration as much as exhaustion, he slowed at the summit, steering the chariot into a clearing and guiding the mares to a patch of lush meadow grass. Easing himself out of the strappings, Nobilor shook his head in amazement. Who’d have thought this ugly face would be decorating wine mugs? Or that posh folk would be holding banquets in his honour? He ran a huge paw over his forehead to mop off the sweat. If someone had told him poets would one day be writing songs about him, he’d have laughed in their face. Other men are the subject of plays, not me, he’d have scoffed. Yet now look! Nearly two decades on, he was even more famous and still being challenged to contests. Not only challenged, but winning them, too.
‘Aye.’ He patted the flanks of his chomping mares. ‘Everyone loves a winner, don’t they?’
It was inevitable that, over the years, he’d have several teeth knocked out, an ear ripped right off, and more fingers broken than he could count. His ribs got cracked with tedious regularity, his nose smashed too, and, on one memorable occasion, in Corinth, he’d been crowned with the bone sticking white and shining through the skin of his left arm—and all because the rules of wrestling were simple. There were none.
Three falls on any part of the body to be declared the winner, no holds barred. He’d heard of men dying from accidental throttling or, like boxers, days after, from the effects of strong blows to the stomach. Nobilor shook his head. If folk only knew how many potions he had to swallow, how many ointments needed rubbed in. Not just at the time, but it hurt like buggery for ages afterwards, and after each contest took that little longer to heal.
But the money compensated. And he had, not to put too fine a point on it, been staggered at the way women who wouldn’t normally have looked twice threw themselves at him left, right and centre. And still were, he chuckled, thinking of busty, red-headed Yvorna. Still bloody were, that was the miracle of it. And admit it, he’d never have met Calypso if he hadn’t been famous.
Oh, Calypso. His throat tightened. Calypso, Calypso, Calypso. As beautiful as her husband was ugly. As delicate as he was knotted…
‘C’mon, girls,’
he said hoarsely. ‘Time to go.’
But Nobilor made no attempt to drag the mares away from their succulent clumps. Not yet, he thought. Not just yet. Instead he walked round the chariot, testing the tension on the reins, checking the bag of chalk dust that would stop the straps from slipping in his hands, examining the buckles on the harnesses.
‘Hello, hello, what’s this?’
He leaned down to peer more closely at the axle pin on the offside wheel. Maintenance was a task he entrusted to others, but even so. It didn’t look right, that pin. Not right at all.
‘Sloppy,’ he muttered. ‘They shouldn’t have left it like that.’
Still. If it was dangerous, someone at the posting station would have fixed it before he’d ridden off. Nobilor pushed it out of his mind.
Above him, the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, kites mewed and crickets rasped in the trees. The colours of the leaves were changing to a kaleidoscope of ambers and rusts. Red apples shone, ripe and round. A feast for the wasps. Nuts split and scattered over the forest floor for jays to eat and squirrels to bury.
All in all, not a bad day, he thought. He’d woken late. Made love to Calypso, then eaten a hearty breakfast of ham and cold chicken before making love to his wife a second time. Now here he was, doing what he loved most. Racing his chariot, with the sun on his back, the wind in his hair, and his knuckles white from the strain. He straightened up from the axle, knowing that whatever tomorrow might hold, whatever uncertainties he was required to face, he would cope. He was a big man with a big future. Hadn’t he always risen to whatever challenge was waiting?
‘Sorry, girls,’ he told the mares, and felt bad when they rolled their eyes in longing at the juicy blades of grass. ‘It really is time to go.’
Daphne, though… He worried about his baby, by the gods he did. It had been tough raising her on his own, and sure his Ma pitched in and he’d had slaves to take care of his girl. But at the end of the day, the onus fell on him and him alone. His kid. His responsibility. But at fifteen, his baby was growing up fast. He worried about her more than ever before—
‘Yah! Yah, yah!’
Nobilor cracked the whip, and with the world ripping past, his worries about Daphne disappeared. He felt the horses’ excitement in the thunder of their hooves. Saw it in the pricking of their ears, as chariot, driver and horseflesh fused into the one racing machine. Faster they raced, down the narrow track, past pines and chestnuts, larch and laurel. The scenery blurred. The lake swelled as they made their descent. Became broader, brighter and bluer.
Then—
One minute Nobilor was leaning into the bend. The next the chariot was flying through space.
Down.
And down.
And down…
The faces of three women flashed before him. His mother, his daughter, his bride. He tried to speak. To call out their names. But no sound could pass his throat.
Nobilor’s last thoughts, before the blackness engulfed him were, not such a big man after all, in a crisis…
*
Long after the sound of tearing branches had given way to the trill of warblers and the horses finally stopped screaming, a figure stood at the spot where the chariot had careered into the ravine.
Nodding in satisfaction of a job well done.
Five
‘Lysander’s quite right.’ Jocasta threw herself down on Iliona’s voluminous feather-filled bed. ‘Sparta will be the first name to spring to mind after your visit.’
For all the wrong reasons, though. Iliona groaned.
From a distance, the posting station could pass for any aristocrat’s villa anywhere in Greece. Same blood-red terracotta roof tiles. Same columned entrance court, where fountains danced and fragrant resins burned, and where topiaries lined a statue-filled garden to one side. The difference lay in the scale of the construction, including a stable block that made Hercules’ clearing of the Augean look like child’s play.
And of course few noblemen saw squads of Nordic kilt-wearers milling around their yard or Thessalian merchants checking the straps of their saddlebags, much less Germanic leggings throwing themselves over a gelding. They wouldn’t have exhausted runners coming in, refreshed couriers setting out, wagons and carts being hitched and unhitched. Or altars to Zeus and Apollo, as well as a statue of Hecate who protected crossroads, and a bronze pillar with Hermes’ bust on the top, since he was the patron of merchants and travellers. Iliona also spotted at least two pairs of almond eyes that belied very different, and far more outlandish, beliefs.
‘There has to be a way out of this,’ she moaned. ‘After all, it was an accident.’
‘An accident that just happened to befall the most famous person ever to pass through,’ Jocasta reminded her. ‘And for superstitious mountain folk, who already believe crossroads are haunted by witches, they can now add cursed to the list.’ She folded her arms behind her head. ‘Cursed by the Oracle of Sparta.’
Iliona groaned even louder.
And to think it started off so promisingly, too.
‘Welcome to Phaos, my lady.’ A man with olive skin, neatly clipped beard and pleasant if somewhat lined features bowed when they rode through the archway. ‘What an unexpected honour.’
Iliona swallowed her smile. The Krypteia were hardly likely to give the gold thieves warning. ‘This is not an official visit.’ She’d needed to make that clear. ‘More a personal retreat.’
‘Then you have chosen well.’ His name was Hector, he explained. He was master of this posting station, and was there ever a lovelier location to be based? ‘I doubt the gods on Mount Olympus enjoy such beauty and purity of air.’
I’m told the scenery is stunning and the climate quite impeccable. You will recuperate much faster there, I’m sure.
‘What attracts me, Hector, is not so much the elemental beauty of the place.’
Though heaven knows, lakes and mountains always made for an idyllic combination, especially where the landscape offered such spectacular diversity. On this side of the lake, the hillsides were densely wooded, a riot of red and yellow autumn colours. On the far side, the spurs were sparse and down to scrub, and where some shorelines were rocky, others were marshy, while more still comprised long, white sandy beaches that were just itching to be walked in bare feet. The islands in the middle beckoned, rugged, mysterious, breathtaking, inviting.
With a lake surface of some hundred and seventy square miles, she supposed there were bound to be topographical differences. What surprised her was the amount. Where some of the mountains slipped sensuously into the water, others plunged straight down, where it was said that the strange patterns in the cliff faces were sculpted by Titans, long before the gods had been born.
The only consistency in this kaleidoscope of landscape was Zabrina’s watery kingdom. Cobalt blue and transparent to ten fathoms, the Lake of Light certainly lived up to its reputation.
‘It isn’t even the intoxicating scent of raspberries and sweet myrrh on the air,’ she added lightly. ‘It’s that brand-new bath house, Hector, that I’ve had my eye on from the top of the hill.’
She looked longingly at the rotunda’s tiled roof and central chimney. Swore she saw the statues in its colonnaded entrance crooking their fingers to beckon her in.
‘Then I regret your eye will need to retain that image for a little longer, my lady.’ Hector steadied the reins while she dismounted. ‘The afternoons are reserved for gentlemen only. I can, of course, have a tub delivered to your bedchamber, but if you want the full treatment—the steam bath, the plunge pool, the massage—I’m afraid you will have to wait until morning.’
Out on the lake, swans and pelicans were mirrored in the crystal cobalt waters. Oh, to be a swan…
‘In fact, you’ve picked a bad time, full stop,’ he was saying. ‘The Festival of the Axe God has left me perilously short-handed.’
She’d thought it strange there were hardly any servants about.
‘Still, what can you do?’
Hector had shrugged. ‘It’s their religion. I can’t stop the locals from attending.’
At that point, Jocasta paused from shaking off what seemed like half of Greece. ‘You don’t employ slave labour, then?’
Trust her.
‘Only what the state obliges me to, ma’am. In my experience, staff work better when they have a financial incentive.’ He’d turned back to Iliona. ‘I usually keep a much larger skeleton staff on during the festivals, but after Nobilor’s accident, I felt it better to give everyone a chance to let off steam—’
‘Nobilor the wrestler?’
‘The very same.’
‘What kind of accident?’ Jocasta asked, grabbing her medical box. ‘Where can I find him?’
‘At the bottom of a ravine,’ growled a uniformed official, striding out from the doorway. He placed his fist to his breast in salute.
‘Nobilor enjoyed driving chariots at full speed,’ Hector explained. ‘Unhappily, these mountain tracks aren’t built for sport and our celebrated champion took the bend a little too fast.’
‘Or rather didn’t,’ the thin-faced official corrected.
Iliona grimaced. ‘We commented on a gap in the trees when we passed,’ she told the two men. ‘The branches were torn and twigs snapped, but the vegetation was blackened from smoke. In fact, the stench of burning made our horses shy.’
The two men exchanged glances.
‘It is a sad day, my lady, when Greece is reduced to rolling barrels of blazing tar down a hillside to cremate its heroes in situ,’ Hector said grimly.
‘You left him there?’
A twist of the lip expressed better than words the impossibility of retrieving Nobilor’s body. ‘The ravine left me no option.’
What did she expect station managers to look like, she wondered. Had she stopped to think about it, she’d have pictured a round, jolly man with twinkling eyes and quite possibly roving hands, too. Hector looked like life had excavated his face with a pickaxe, though for a man in his forties, his belt showed no sign of straining. Either way, though, he didn’t look the type who went round burning the corpses of heroes where they had fallen.
