Stealing Fire

by Jo Graham

  I took that as a lesson indeed.

  My mother died when I was ten. Perhaps that should have drawn us closer in our grief, my father—my master—and I, but it did not. Instead of clinging to me, he wanted to be rid of anything that reminded him of her. And what should remind him more than their son together?

  It was perhaps a week after her burial when one of the women called me in and told me to bathe right away, that the master wanted to see me. I was hurriedly scrubbed, my long dark hair combed and tied in a wet tail at my neck, and dressed in a too-short chiton of good cloth that belonged to the oldest grandson. Still pink from the bath, I was rushed into the dining room.

  My father reclined on one couch, and a man I did not know reclined on another, the best one as he was an honored guest. I thought, from his beardless face, that he might be a eunuch too, but if so he was dressed like a gentleman. “This is Jio,” my father said. “He was ten in the spring, at the equinox.”

  Actually, my birthday was two weeks later, but I was surprised he remembered my age at all.

  “Come here, Jio,” the man said, and I walked across the floor toward him, my hardened bare feet against the cold mosaics of the floor. “Look at me.”

  I did, searching his face for some clue. I did not understand. His eyes ran over my face, my overbite and sharp chin, my eyebrows growing together in one long line over my eyes, my sun-darkened skin and ordinary brown eyes.

  “Turn for the man, Jio,” my father said. “Lift your arms over your head.”

  I did, with some embarrassment, as raising my arms in the too-small chiton pulled it up so that it half exposed my buttocks as I turned.

  The man's voice was amused. “What can you have been thinking? This boy belongs in the stable, not the bedroom! Graceless and completely unschooled, with a face he won't grow into until he's twenty! Yes, he has good bones, and I believe that his mother was a beauty, but I tell you quite frankly no one will take him. No, not even as a favor to you!”

  “You may go, Jio,” my master said coldly, and I did so gratefully, glad only that I had escaped whatever it was.

  A few days later I was sold to a horse trader.

  THE HORSE TRADER, whose name was Tehwaz, was not a cruel man. He was unsentimental about men or animals, but he never beat either for the pleasure in it. Man and horse should learn to obey, and that was all. He had no gentleness in him either. He bought horses and sold them at a better price. They were things for sale, and he had no affection or attachment to any of them. Of course they must be fed and taken care of, or they should lose their value.

  The last boy had died of a fever, and he needed another boy to muck out stables and do the dirtiest work. Each horse must be groomed and exercised daily, and even the yearlings who were not broken must be taken out. Being confined sickens horses, he explained, and horses who are sick do not fetch a good price. Likewise, horses and men alike must be fed, and if the food was the cheapest available, at least there was enough of it.

  Of course I tried to run away. Four times I tried it, and each time was caught before half a day passed, brought back to the inevitable beating. There was no anger in it, any more than there was for the colt who bit people. It was a bad habit of which boy and horse alike must be broken.

  It worked. After the fourth time it came to me that there was little point in half a day's freedom, which led to four days of pain, and that I should not run unless there was some chance of actually getting away. I should have to wait and bide my time. After all, I was smarter than the colt.

  And so I settled in quite satisfactorily, doing my work of mucking out, shoveling horse manure and old hay, and bringing in new hay for the feedboxes. All winter long that was what I did all day, as there were between ten and fourteen horses at any time. The muscles of my arms grew strong as I grew thinner, until it seemed to me that I was nothing but bone and muscle. I was taller, too, one of those mysterious spurts of growing coming on. By my birthday in the spring, when I was eleven, I looked like a boy no more.

  My consolation and my joy were the horses. I had never had anything to do with them before, but now I spent the entirety of every day with them. Since it was I who cleaned up their mucky stalls, and I who held their halters while they were groomed, I who brought clean hay and slept in the loft at night, they were used to me very quickly. One horse, in particular, took to me, a lean Nisean mare, almost white, who was in foal to a famous racing champion.

  The foal was due around my birthday, and Tehwaz had high hopes that it would be worth a lot of money. “With the dam's beautiful looks and his sire's turn of speed, he'd be a horse fit for a king!”

  “Are you going to sell him?” I asked. I hoped not for a while, as I was fond of the mare.

  “Not his first year at least,” Tehwaz said. “And who knows? I might keep him until he's broken and I can get the best price.”

  “He'd sell better if he'd won a race or two so people would know what he could do,” I said shrewdly, visions in my head of clinging to the back of a milk-white stallion as he charged effortlessly across the finish line, the crowd shouting my name.

  “You may have something there, Jio,” Tehwaz said. “We'll see.”

  The colt was born on the night of the equinox, and it was I who stood at his mother's head as he tumbled free. A colt, yes, but not milk white. He was almost red, with a white blaze and white feet, his mother's height, and long, spindly legs.

  As he stood at her side to nurse, his legs wide-planted, Tehwaz clapped me on the shoulder. “Well done, boy. And if he's not white, he looks like his sire and that's good enough. He'll have the Nisean size! Look how tall he stands! He'll seat a man in armor when he's grown.”

  “He's beautiful,” I said, for I had fallen in love.

  From that day on any extra time I had was spent with him. Tehwaz called him Good Fortune, but I had another, better name for him. Watching him cavort in the pasture, kicking up his heels for the fun of it, charging and leaping in the spring sunshine, it looked to me as though he were dancing with an invisible twin, with the Spirit of Horse who had come to play beside him. I called him Ghost Dancer.

  Late spring began to turn into summer, and we left Miletus. Now was the time to make the circuit of all the fairs along the coast, from the great horse fair at Halicarnassos to the one at Ehweh in the uplands, in the mountains where there was snow on the peaks even in the summer. Hittite lands, they said, where men had lived forever worshipping the gods of the heights. The high mountain pastures produced good horses, and we made a long passage through them, buying and selling. Ghost Dancer was not for sale, of course, but he made a good show frisking along the road beside his mother, full of high spirits. Some horses do not take to the uncertainty of each night in a different place, but he was undisturbed.

  “Born for campaign,” Tehwaz said with satisfaction. “Not a timid bone in him. He will fetch the best price I've ever had, mark my words!”

  I did. Ghost Dancer would be sold. But not yet. Not yet. We had at least a year, he and I.

  Often we would buy a horse in one place and then sell it a bit farther on, so I learned to ride many different kinds of horses, and to stay on those of uncertain temper. Often I rode Ghost Dancer's mother, with him frisking along beside, and we brought up the rear of the column keeping any new buys from straying. The skies were blue and the peaks glittered with snow. On the high currents of the air eagles patrolled, almost seeming to stand motionless at times, borne on the winds.

  I might have run. But where should I go? I was city bred, and what should I do in open country alone? I did not know how to hunt or track, and I had nowhere to go in any case. And I should have to leave Ghost Dancer. Tehwaz had tethered me as surely as Ghost Dancer, who skipped along without halter or rope, following after me and his mother.

  When autumn ended and winter came we returned to Miletus. I do not think my father should have recognized me if we had passed in the street. Almost two years had changed me. I was growing, and like Ghost Dan
cer I should be tall if the length of my legs were any indication. It seemed that everything was ungainly, and that my bones ached with the speed of their growth. There was no such thing as enough food. I ate one man's portion and was still hungry, still wanting more. We passed the winter in Miletus, and in the spring were on the road again.

  Tehwaz had an offer for Ghost Dancer from one of the leading men of the city, which he laughed at. “If that is what he will pay for a yearling that is not even broken, think what he will pay in the autumn!”

  I thought, my face against Ghost Dancer's glossy hide. He was growing too. Soon we would begin breaking him, and when he had his strength I would ride him. I would be the first, I promised him. He should know no cruelty, learn no bad habits. When it came down to it, he should know nothing but love.

  And he did love me. I knew that in the eagerness in his brown eyes, in the way he bugled out for me when I first came near, a small shadow of the stallion's bugle he would have soon. He would not be gelded, of course. He would be too valuable at stud. In him, every promise was to be fulfilled, strong and tall and gentle, fast and tractable and brave. Ghost Dancer would serve princes, and no less.

  Besides, there was no hurry to sell him, and no stampede to buy. There had been a panic in the spring, when it was rumored that Phillip of Macedon meant to invade Asia, and that there would be a run on warhorses. It was many years since the Greek colonies of Ionia had been independent, since Persia had conquered them, but men like my father still dreamed of that time. Phillip had beaten the last of the cities in Greece who opposed his League, and had sworn a mighty vow to free the cities of Asia from Persia. He was a formidable man, and it seemed for a little while that he might actually bring an army over, but he was assassinated at a festival in his own city, and there would be no invasion. His heir was barely twenty. The satraps of the western provinces breathed a sigh of relief. It would be long years yet before Macedon was again a threat. We set off for the uplands and the circuit of the horse fairs unconcerned with any rumors of war.

  I rode Ghost Dancer a week short of his second birthday, with no saddle pad or bridle, only a halter and my knees. I thought that I should make a try of it before Tehwaz did, so that I could show him that it was already done, and there should be no need for harshness. Indeed, there was not. We practiced at night, by the light of the moon, and by the time Tehwaz came round to it a month later, after my thirteenth birthday, we could put on a pretty show. We walked and trotted around the ring, Ghost Dancer with his neck arched in pride, every step perfectly responsive to my signals. Together we went through everything we knew, even stepping over bars that had been placed on the ground, the first thing before learning to jump. At last we finished right before him, Ghost Dancer's ears pricked forward and me with a grin I could not suppress.

  Tehwaz nodded as he did when he had found a horse to be unexpectedly sound and worth more than he had paid for it. “You'll make a horseman yet,” he said. “From now on you're exercising.” He bought a new boy to muck out, and I was instead set to exercising the horses and working with them to overcome small faults, like following too closely.

  Ghost Dancer, of course, was my joy, but I loved all the other horses too. I thought sometimes that the Spirit of Horse must be pleased with me.

  Tehwaz began teaching Ghost Dancer the things a warhorse should know, and I learned too. My master was not as young as he used to be, and scrambling up and down banks or fording icy streams of the uplands repeatedly was not a pleasure to him. Once he had shown us both, I was set to practice with him. We charged at targets and veered off at the last second, jumped over low hurdles, rode at things that flapped or made noise, and learned to wheel at a canter about obstacles. In this way, I learned as well.

  “Next year, when he is three, he will fetch enough to make me a rich man!” Tehwaz said. “And then I shall turn the fair circuit over to my nephew and spend my days at home in Miletus!”

  He was triumphant, but I felt sick. Ghost Dancer should go to some other home, to a lord who might or might not cherish him, and I should be stuck with Tehwaz's nephew, endlessly pacing the fair circuit. I should be fourteen, and yet it seemed my life should be over without him.

  In the spring there was no market. The lords of Miletus were called to service by the Satrap of Sardis, to join the army of the Great King that marched west from Anaya. The new King of Macedon had crossed the straits, and even now celebrated rites on the grave of Achilles at Troy. His name was Alexander, and though very young he was something to reckon with.

  While the lords of Miletus marched north, we made the circuit of the early horse fairs, south to Halicarnassos. There we collected a good fee for putting Ghost Dancer to stud for the first time, which pleased Tehwaz immensely. I held out the hope that if the stud fees were high enough and regular enough he should not want to sell him.

  While we were there the news came—Alexander had defeated the army of the Great King on the banks of the Granicus River, and now he marched down the coast. Cities opened their gates to him, merchants like my father professing that they had always admired Macedon and they viewed him as a liberator. The Great King's fleet intended to make a stand in the harbor of Miletus, and they had shut the city gates against him. Now Miletus stood besieged.

  “Not for anything would I go into that. We'd lose our whole stock,” Tehwaz said. “In fact, best to go into the uplands and let the Great King take care of this.”

  Of course it occurred to me to run. With Ghost Dancer I could get a long way. But he was not only very recognizable, but also very valuable, and if I were caught it would be as a thief, not a runaway. I had no desire to chance that.

  We were at Emmen in the uplands when the word came that Miletus had surrendered after a brief siege, and that the gates were open and the city returning to normal. The leading citizens had made peace with Alexander, and it seemed that as long as tribute was paid to him rather than the Great King all would be well.

  Tehwaz shrugged. “The lords make it go round, and it's the same to us. Still, it's best not to be in the way of an army, especially with a string of horses. We'll cut it short and go straight back to Miletus, where this king has already been.”

  And so we did. Tehwaz was right that it seemed little had changed. I gaped at the broken gates as we went in, at the streaks of black soot on some of the walls. The harbor was full of Greek ships instead of the Persian fleet, but the buildings of the town seemed little affected. Miletus had only held against Alexander for six days, and most of the actions had been fought at sea. I wished I had been there. War seemed very exciting to me, and I cursed Tehwaz's caution that had deprived me of the chance to taste it.

  There were Macedonians and Greeks here still, though the King and the main body had moved on to Halicarnassos. The wounded were here, and the officers and men of the navy, as well as a couple of very young men who were supposed to organize supply for the army as it moved. They were not despoiling the land, but paying for supplies properly, if at about half the going rate. Still, Tehwaz said, it could have been worse. As yet I had no concept what he might mean.

  Tehwaz, of course, had an eye to the main chance. The King of Macedon's army would want remounts before they started off on the long road east, following the Royal Road through the mountains toward Gordion. Remounts are expensive, and good ones hard to find. We had sold more than half of our stock at good prices before the blow fell.

  The boy who mucked out came running to me while I was tending to a sore hoof. “The master wants Good Fortune turned out, looking his best, as fast as you can! There's a gentleman here and he's delaying him with wine while you do it!”

  With a sinking feeling I laid aside the hoof pick and set about getting Ghost Dancer ready, pad and bridle and a quick brush to his mane. I pressed my nose against him, my arms around his neck, then led him out into the yard.

  Tehwaz had just come out, several Macedonian gentlemen with him. They were all young, and all of them wore gleaming harness and swo
rds, a fair show and not at all what I was used to. “Now, sirs,” Tehwaz said, “you will not see a finer three-year-old in all the world! I swear to you he is like my own son!”

  Ghost Dancer's ears pricked forward, but he did not shy at the bright light reflecting from their polished steel. He stood patient and alert, solid on all four legs.

  “What do you think, Ptolemy?” one of them asked in Greek.

  Ptolemy, a nondescript young man with his helmet under his arm, shrugged. “He's a big fellow. But I'm not shopping, remember? I'm just along for the company.”

  “Just like at the whorehouse,” another of them jested. “You aren't shopping, just passing through!” The rest laughed.

  One paid no attention to the joke. He was tall, with red hair, dark eyes, and a square jaw. He was looking at nothing besides Ghost Dancer. He nodded slowly, approaching where I stood with my hand lightly on his bridle. Ghost Dancer's eyes followed him, and he waited patiently while the man put his hands on him and looked at him. He took the bridle from me and lifted his head, looking at his teeth, which Ghost Dancer bore without protest. “Three years old?”

  “Yes, Lord,” I said.

  His eyebrows twitched, surprised I spoke Greek, perhaps. “How does he go?”

  “Sweetly, Lord,” I said. I was half tempted to tell lies, anything that would make him not buy Ghost Dancer, but I could not. Like it or not, he would be sold, and this Macedonian lord seemed to know horses at least.

  “What does he answer to?” he asked me quietly, taking the bridle off and putting it back on to see how he took the bit.

  “Ghost Dancer,” I said, and his brows twitched again. I had named him in Greek, not Carian.

  “Well, Ghost Dancer,” he said, one hand on his side, “let us see how we will get on. I am Hephaistion son of Amyntor.”

  I thought it was a bit strange to introduce oneself to a horse, but I stepped back and let him swing up easily. He was much heavier than I was, and wearing steel as well, but Ghost Dancer did not flinch, only waited patiently for a signal. A squeeze and they stepped out nicely, going round the yard at a walk, turning easily. They looked just alike, I thought, blood-red horse and red-haired man. I watched them walk about the yard, then trot. He put Ghost Dancer into tight circles, and I was glad that we had practiced that, and then sent him flying at a canter around the yard, his hooves drumming on the packed earth. When at last they pulled up, I saw that he was grinning.