Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  (Did I mention that during the battle, the one where Deistratus got killed, it was Sarpedon who waded through four - it was either four or five - at least four of the enemy when they were driving us back, and kept them busy with one hand while he dragged Deistratus' body out of the fighting with the other? Crazy thing to do, and he'd always loathed Deistratus while he was alive.)

  'Go away,' he repeated. 'After I've got the bear, I'll come and find you.'

  'It won't wait,' I replied. 'Official business. A mission on behalf of King Leon.'

  He scowled horribly at me from between the branches. 'So help me, Cleander, if I don't get this bear because of you, I'll break both your arms. Now get out of here.'

  My heart told me what to say. 'We'll go,' I said, 'if you'll promise to come with us on this mission. Otherwise we'll stay here under this tree shouting and banging sticks together so loud every bear from here to Corinth'll hear us. What do you say?'

  I won't tell you what he said; the long and the short of it is he got his bear the next night, and showed us its skin when he caught up with us, back at Leon's house. He had terrible deep claw-marks across one shoulder and an ugly scar across his left cheek -ploughed through his beard like someone cutting the first rap in a field of beans. He was fifty-two years old then. Tachys was really, really unhappy when he realised I was taking Sarpedon with us. I could see his point, at that.

  Now, if it had been up to me, that would have been the party -me, Cratus, Tachys and Sarpedon. Tachys and me to do the talking, Cratus to watch out for Tachys and me - I'm cleverer than Cratus, but Cratus is wiser; anybody who knows us will tell you that - and Sarpedon just in case we ran into any mad dogs or large enemy armies. A small, well-balanced, carefully chosen party. I was quite proud of myself, given that I'd had so few people to choose from. In fact, I was congratulating myself and thanking my heart for the inspiration when we arrived back at the palace. There was someone sitting on the step, much to the annoyance and embarrassment of the two guards, who were trying their best to pretend she wasn't there.

  But my sister Dusa was hard to ignore at that age; even if a man was able to keep his eyes off her, she'd probably kick his shins or bite him, just for wickedness. Her given name was Eurymedusa, but life's too short to spend the time it takes to say a name that long when you're talking about a girl who only comes up to your shoulder; so she was Dusa to family and close friends, Cimon's daughter to the world at large, and You-stay-away-from-my-sister to single men living in the city of Elis, if Cratus and I had anything to do with it.

  'What the hell are you doing here?' I asked.

  'Heard what you two are up to,' she replied. 'Hello, Uncle Sarpedon,' she added, grinning up at him. Needless to say, Uncle Sarpedon and Dusa got on famously. I suppose we should be grateful that the bad blood in our family seems to have been mostly concentrated in them, leaving the rest of us relatively normal.

  'Hello yourself,' Sarpedon replied. 'Answer the question.'

  'What question?'

  'What he said.'

  Dusa yawned. 'I hear you're all going on a jolly,' she said. 'Well, I'm coming too.'

  Cratus and I looked at each other. Cratus was the first one to say it.

  'No you're not,' he said.

  'That's what you think,' Dusa replied. 'But you're wrong. I mean, if King Leon says I'm coming with you, I'm coming with you.'

  I frowned. 'Not necessarily,' I told her. 'But what god would make the king say such a damned stupid thing?'

  She stood up, nudging one of the guards out of the way. 'No god,' she said. 'Me. In fact, it was his suggestion. I just agreed, like a loyal subject should.'

  I closed my eyes. The truth is, when she wasn't bored Dusa was a good kid. She was brave, straightforward, sharp as a new razor. But when she was bored, which was most of the time, she did things, just for fun. One of the things she'd been doing lately was making doe's eyes at the prince, the idiot boy we were going to all this trouble for. She was only doing it to annoy Cratus and me, and King Leon, and a dozen or so young men who tended not to think with their hearts or their brains, if you follow me. But another thing about Dusa: anything she did, she tended to do well. I could see how Leon might be extremely relieved to see her leave the country for a while.

  'All right,' I said. Cratus looked as if I'd just jabbed him in the leg with an arrow. But I knew Dusa: dealing with her was like trying to get a hook out of a fish's lip - the more you pull, the deeper it goes in. My best chance was to make her welcome on the trip; then she might decide she didn't want to go, just to be awkward. But she knew my heart as well as I knew hers, so I wasn't holding my breath.

  Uncle Sarpedon just went on grinning.

  The one who took it worst of all, needless to say, was Tachys. Never knew a man relish misfortune quite so much as he did.

  'It's insane,' he said, when we were hanging around the hall waiting for Leon to show up. 'As if we didn't have enough to contend with, you're seriously suggesting we take with us a sixteen-year-old girl with a warped sense of humour and the morals of a-'

  Cratus gave him a look, and he subsided a bit. After all, she was our sister. If anybody was going to tell the truth about her, it'd be us.

  'Anyway,' he went on, 'you can't allow it. It's too dangerous. Quite apart from all the usual dangers of travelling - and they're bad enough to turn your hair grey, Zeus knows - we're quite likely to have to face attacks from Geleus and his people. Taking a girl into a situation like that...'

  I was beginning to wonder if I could face listening to Tachys all the way to the Outer Sea and back. I never knew anybody with such a burning compulsion to state the painfully obvious.

  'If we take her with us,' I told him quietly, 'it'll be over my hamstrung corpse. But you just leave this to me, I'll handle it. All right?'

  'It's between you and your heart, I suppose,' he grumbled. 'But you just remember-'

  I trod on his toe to shut him up; Dusa had just strolled in, looking as if she had every right to be there. I never knew a little detail like two guards in armour to keep Dusa out of anywhere.

  'In case you're wondering,' Dusa said, sitting on the edge of a table and swinging her feet, 'I'm not just coming along for the ride. In fact, if this crazy plan of yours works out in the end, it'll be all because of me. You should be grateful I decided to help out.'

  Cratus shut his eyes. I nearly said something that would have made things a whole lot worse. Tachys, all due credit, just stood there like he was holding the roof up with his head.

  'You've got an idea,' said Uncle Sarpedon, typically.

  'Not just an idea,' Dusa replied, looking up at the sky through the smoke-hole. 'Some god must've put it in my heart, it's so clever. I'm going to be your Victory.'

  For a moment, I didn't understand what she was getting at. Then Sarpedon burst out laughing and said, 'Like Dolonassa,' and I understood. I felt like I'd just put my foot in a wolf-trap.

  Dolonassa was - what, my great-great-great-great-grandmother. By all accounts she was a raving beauty; she was also as tall as a man, taller than most, and when whoever it was who was king of Elis in her day - can't remember the name, sorry - managed to get himself thrown out by the Sons of the Achaeans for being vicious and useless, he used Dolonassa to help him get back in again. Apparently he had her painted head to foot in white glaze, the stuff potters use, handed her a spear all covered in gold leaf and sprinkled a whole palm-sized bag of gold dust in her hair. Then he stood her beside him in his chariot and set off for Elis, having first sent ahead a couple of his men to spread the word that the goddess Athena herself was bringing the king home, and anybody who didn't like the idea was at perfect liberty to raise the subject with her. That was the end of that particular mutiny; and I believe the king married Dolonassa to keep her mouth shut thereafter, though it didn't do him much good in the end, when his sons by his first marriage stabbed him to death in his bath. After that, so they say, she married our ancestor and made his life hell by beating him up whene
ver he tried to tell her off about anything.

  Anyway, that's enough about her. What Sarpedon meant, and indeed what Dusa had got planned, was that Dusa would somehow dress up like Victory herself and go around with us on our journey. Every famous games player we visited, she would take him on one side and promise him Victory in the games, and that'd mean they'd be certain sure to turn up.

  Oddly enough, the more I thought about this ludicrous scheme of hers, the more it appealed to me - mostly, I guess, because of the precedent; grandmother Dolonassa and the king, I mean. It was just the kind of idiotic stunt that will work, provided it's carried off right. After all, everybody believes that there are gods walking about among us all the time, disguised as farmers and merchants and blacksmiths' apprentices and ugly old women and anything else you care to mention. I believe it myself, because it's obviously true. Now, the idea of painting Dusa with white runny clay and lugging her around in a chariot didn't appeal to me at all; it might have worked once, long ago in Elis, but quite apart from anything else the Dolonassa story was widely enough known that sooner or later somebody would tumble to it, and then we'd be a complete laughing-stock. No; what I was thinking was, take Dusa with us and make out, by hints and suggestions, that she was the goddess Victory in disguise.

  That night, when we were on our way back home from Leon's house and I put this idea to her, she pretended that that's what she'd had in mind all along. That was good; it meant she liked the plan and was happy to play along with it. Sarpedon, of course, was all for doing it the other way (or that's what he said; I guess he was just being annoying). Tachys was horrified by the very idea, goes without saying. And Cratus- 'Cratus,' Cratus said, 'would've tied all three of you up and dumped you in a barn till the god gave you your wits back; but there was only one of Cratus, and three of you, so I decided to keep my face shut. One of the worst decisions I ever made, that was.'

  His tone of voice made the company round the table feel uncomfortable, like a cold breeze coming in under the door. Everyone sat still and quiet, waiting for something to happen.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  'I f it's all the same to you,' said the Phoenician, anxious to seize his chance, 'I think I'll just wander off down the other end of the hall and get some sleep. Thanks for the story.'

  He started to get up, got in the way of a stare from his host and another one from Cratus and sat down again with a faint sigh.

  'You don't want to go to sleep quite yet,' Cratus said. 'The story's just starting to get interesting.'

  'It's very interesting indeed,' the Phoenician mumbled. 'But I think I'm a bit too tired to appreciate it properly. Perhaps tomorrow.

  Or the next time I'm in the area, even-'

  'Sit still and listen,' Cratus said. So the Phoenician sat still, and listened.

  My brother said an interesting thing just now (Cratus continued), about how he's cleverer than me, but I'm wiser than him. I can't say I'd ever thought of it in those terms before, but yes, basically he's right.

  That is, he's always been the one who comes up with schemes and plans and good ideas; they seem to sprout in his heart like seed corn stored in a damp jar, and as soon as a new one pops its shell, off he goes telling everybody, badgering them into going along with it. Oh, he's an extraordinarily persuasive man, my brother; he could talk a hill-farmer into swapping his grain for a wagon-load of stones. Maybe he should have taken up your line of work, going from place to place giving and getting given presents. Once one of his ideas starts to roll, it's like a cart running away down a hill when you've forgotten to put the brake on. Unless you're quick enough to jump aboard and stop it before it's really begun to move, all you can do is run alongside it, watching it getting faster and faster as it races towards the pile of rocks at the bottom of the slope.

  Not only is my brother clever in the way he comes up with ideas, he's shrewd too, or should that be cunning? Anyway, he knows just when to turn the idea over to somebody else to look after, round about the point where everybody's praised him to the skies for being so smart and come to the conclusion that a scheme that clever is bound to succeed unless somebody actively sabotages it. That's when he shoves the reins at somebody else and hops off the cart; so, when it crashes, it's the driver's fault and not his.

  He doesn't mind me saying all this, you know. Deep down, somewhere in the hayloft of his heart, he knows it's true. Otherwise, do you think he'd be sitting there now, quiet as a cat, while I'm saying all these rude things about him?

  Well, this particular cart was nicely under way before Dusa decided to jump on board, so she wasn't really his fault, strictly speaking. Still, that won't ever stop me from blaming him for everything. After all, he's my brother.

  I remember going home that evening, dumping my shoes and hat on the floor and stomping into the inner room like I was trying to squash ants.

  'What's up with you?' my wife asked. 'You look like you've had a bad day.'

  'Don't ask,' I replied, pulling my tunic off over my head and managing to tear the seam.

  'All right,' she said, and went back to the mending she was doing.

  I sat there for a while, scowling at the wall. 'Well?' I said. 'Aren't you going to ask me what the matter is?'

  'You said not to,' she replied, not looking up.

  I sighed. 'Yes, but I didn't mean it,' I said. She nodded.

  'One of those days,' she said. 'I have them all the time, but of course you never take any notice.'

  I grunted and climbed into bed. 'Don't start,' I said.

  She put down the cloak she was darning and looked at me. 'This isn't any good,' she said. 'Now you're going to lie there all night grunting and muttering, keeping me awake, and finally you'll get to sleep just before dawn, when it's time for me to get up. Tell me what's upset you, and then maybe we can both get a good night's rest.'

  I closed my eyes. 'It's that brother of mine,' I said.

  'Ah,' she said.

  'If I had the sense of a small rock, I'd clear out of here,' I said, 'get on a ship and go found a colony or something. Sometimes I'll swear he does it on purpose, just to aggravate me; but that'd be like saying he's got the wit to see the consequences of something, and I'm here to tell you, he hasn't.'

  'This is about these games-with-nobody-dead, isn't it?' she said calmly. 'Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea.'

  'Figures,' I grumbled.

  'And you've taken against it just because it was Cleander who thought of it, not you -I made a rude noise. 'If I started thinking up ideas like that, I wouldn't be here; I'd be over at the shrine, offering prayers for a speedy recovery.'

  '- And so you're probably going to make trouble for him over it, which'll only end up falling back on you, like it always does. And then I'll have you sulking round the house for months, until it's all blown over or Cleander does something else you don't approve of...'

  'Wrong,' I interrupted. 'I'm not going to be round this house for a very long time, sulking or otherwise. My dear brother, who you seem determined to defend at all costs, is making me go with him on this wretched jaunt of his. Gods alone know how long we'll be away for.'

  'Oh.' She looked at me. 'That's a nuisance,' she said. 'Have you really got to go?'

  I lifted my head. 'I'm afraid so,' I replied. 'You see, it's not just Cleander and me. For reasons known only to his heart, he's taking Uncle Sarpedon along as well.'

  'Oh.'

  'Quite. And that's not the really inspiring bit. Guess who else is coming along?'

  She frowned. 'Your cousin Theagenes?'

  I shook my head. 'If only. I wouldn't mind being bored to death; they tell me it's gradual and really rather soothing, in the final stages.'

  'Worse than Theagenes? This sounds serious.

  'You bet. The silly fool's only agreed to take Dusa along.'

  She bit her lip. 'Oh,' she said.

  'You could say that. She didn't give him much choice about it, mind. But the idiot's got this idea about pulling a sort of Dolonassa stunt
-'

  'Surely not?'

  'Would I make something like that up?' I replied. 'I'm not that imaginative.

  She sat down on the bed beside me, and started pulling a comb through her hair. 'Do you know where you're going yet?' she asked.

  'No idea. Don't suppose Cleander has, either. I overheard him gabbing away to King Leon about all the great heroes he plans on visiting; I'm not even sure that some of the places he was talking about really exist.' I shook my head. 'Have you ever heard of Sardinia?' I asked.

  'No.'

  'Nor me. But Cleander's planning on going there.'

  'Do you think he knows where it is?'

  'You know Cleander.'

  She sighed. 'Well, if you're not back in two years' time, I suppose I can always marry Stasilaus.'

  I smiled. 'If he'll still have you,' I said. 'You've put on weight since then.'

  'Look who's talking.'

  Well, the rest of our conversation that night was purely domestic in nature, and of no interest to anybody. Perversely, though, the more she sympathised and agreed that yes, Cleander had got me into a really ugly mess this time, the better I felt about it all. It can't be that bad, I said to my heart; and all the time I was exaggerating, making it sound even worse than it actually was, just to get more sympathy. That in turn set me thinking about how much worse it could have been, which is next door to stepping back and saying, Well, it isn't as bad as it sounded at first. Come the next morning, I was almost cheerful about it all, until I left the house to walk into the city.

  Unfortunately, the first person I happened to meet was Alastor, Oeleus' kid brother.

  He had every right to be there, more than I did. I was taking a short-cut across an orchard that lay on the boundary between my neighbour Calliphon's place and a small farm that belonged to an old boy (his name escapes me) who was one of Oeleus' debtors. I don't know if you have anything like it where you come from; round here, when the small farmers run into difficulties - bad harvest, illness, disasters of that sort - and their neighbours can't or won't help them out, they have the option of going to the king or one of the princes, or any of the better sort, and getting what they need on a sort of permanent-loan basis. The way it works is that the king or prince never expects to see his capital again (if a man's reduced to asking for help in this way, you can bet he'll never be in a position to pay back anyway). Instead, the lender settles for a regular share in the debtor's surplus produce each year; a sixth, usually, though it can be more or less, depending on circumstances. But that's really just a pretence too, for the same reason. Anybody whose farm produces more than he needs is going to have put aside a bit of fat, so to speak, in case of hard times; it's the ones who live right on the edge who end up knocking on other men's doors. Besides, if you're in a position to lend to others, it's a certainty that you've got more than you need; you can't eat it all yourself, you'd swell up like a drowned man and die. No, what the lender gets out of it is rather more valuable to him than jars of flour or olive oil. He gets the loyalty and support of a free man, not to mention respect, gratitude, prestige - all those things we of the better sort tend to value most, gods bless our vainglorious little hearts. I'm in two minds about the system myself. On the one hand, it's a way for the powerful man to help his weaker neighbour without actively making things worse for him on a day-to-day basis, and I'm all in favour of that. Can't help thinking, though, that it's not good for us to get into the habit of dealing in people, the same way we reckon up our worth by how many head of cattle we own, how many jars of wine we stored last year, how many pairs of sandals we've got in the chest beside the bed. Put that sort of obligation on a man and he's not much better than a slave, or a hired worker. Still, that's easy for me to say. I've faced my share of dangers and hardships in my time, but starving to death for want of a bag of seed corn hasn't been one of them, so what would I know about it, anyway?