Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  Uncle made a growling noise. 'It's true,' he said, 'you can. And if you try the experiment, you'll find we're heading due south. Why, where did you think we were headed?'

  Well, Cleander tried to make us go back. Luckily for him we were all too tired and hot to argue the point as forcefully as we'd have liked, and besides, there wasn't a well handy to put him down. So we had to make do with yelling at him till he gave way.

  'After all,' I pointed out, 'there are plenty of good games-players in the southern Peloponnese. We were going that way anyway; we'll just have to do them first, that's all.'

  Then followed a brisk, occasionally heated discussion, the outcome of which was that if we were going south (Cleander refused to admit this as a proven fact) we were much closer to our first stop than we would have been if we were going north, and were therefore making better progress than we thought we were, so that was all right. We'd know soon enough which direction we were travelling in, Tachys pointed out, because if we were going south, before the day was out we'd be paddling in the Alpheus river, not to mention being able to see the sea. Cleander replied that there was a perfectly good river, and a perfectly good sea, two days' march north of Elis as well, so that wouldn't prove a thing. At this point, Uncle Sarpedon offered to break Cleander's nose, but the consensus was that that'd only slow us up even more.

  We still weren't unanimous about it when we resumed our march - 'Knowing where you are isn't like a Council meeting,' Cleander said, 'you can't be in a certain place just because a majority of those present vote that you are' - but I was sick of arguing, Dusa was bored, Tachys was depressed and Sarpedon would probably have shed blood if the argument had gone on any longer, so moving on was the only sensible thing to do.

  It was just starting to think about getting dark when we reached the river. No sea, not in any direction, but an undeniable river, which Tachys solemnly assured us was the Alpheus (we didn't ask how he knew). We'd come down from the hills into a flat, grassy plain, with olive trees and white poplars scattered about, and on our right was a steep hill covered with pine trees. There was a small, old-looking thatched hut beside the river, but no signs of anybody living there, so we guessed it was a shrine or temple of some sort. Nice enough spot, if you like rustic.

  I was wondering if Tachys' obsessive piety would be outraged if we dossed down for the night inside the temple, when I noticed that Dusa had stopped still and was standing with a dead-sheep expression on her face, staring at the landscape.

  'Dusa?' I said.

  'Sorry,' she replied, without looking away. 'Do you know, I've got the strangest feeling about this place. My heart tells me I've been here before.'

  'Have you been here before?'

  She lifted her head. 'No,' she said.

  'Well, there you are, then.'

  'But my heart's really, really sure it's seen this place,' Dusa said. 'Like in a dream or something.'

  Oh, for crying out loud, said my heart. 'Come on, Dusa,' I said. 'We're going to have to get you a thicker hat.'

  'Shut up, Cratus,' she replied, a preoccupied frown on her face. 'Yes, this is definitely it. I'm sure of it.'

  'Sure of what?' Cleander asked.

  'This place.' Without taking her eyes off the view (which was all right, but nothing all that special, I promise you) she sat down and rested her chin on her hands. 'This is where we've got to hold the games.'

  'No it's not,' Cleander said. 'We're going to hold them in Elis, just outside the city, where we do the funerals. It's all settled.'

  'Then you'll just have to unsettle it,' Dusa said. 'I've remembered now. Hercules showed this place to me once.'

  Tachys frowned. 'Impossible,' he said. 'He's dead. Isn't he?'

  'In a dream,' Dusa said. 'He brought me here in a dream. Right here, where we're standing now-'

  I'd had enough. 'Dusa,' I said, 'this is all very good and I'm glad you're practising for when we meet the games-players and you pretend to be a goddess or whatever. But there's a time and a place. Doctors and executioners don't practise on their close relatives, and neither should you.'

  'I said shut up,' Dusa said. 'Right here, just behind where you're standing, Uncle, there should be a stone.'

  There was. 'Proving nothing,' I pointed out. 'This is the northern Peloponnese; it'd be more like a miracle if there wasn't a stone

  'Look at it closely,' Dusa went on - she was looking the other way - 'and you'll see a mark on it, like it was a wet clay tile and someone had trodden on it. It ought to be the size and shape of a man's foot.'

  'She's right, you know,' Sarpedon said. 'Damn big foot, mind,' he went on, putting his own not inconsiderable foot inside the mark.

  'That sounds right,' Dusa said. 'It's Hercules' footprint. He made it while I was watching, in my dream. He said we should mark out a race-track six hundred times the length of the footprint.'

  'Hercules told you that?' I asked.

  'In my dream.'

  'Then he must be as batty as you are,' I said. 'Stop mucking about, Dusa. This is all a wind-up, isn't it?'

  She stared at me for a moment with completely hollow eyes; then grinned at me. 'Had you going there, though, didn't I?' she said. 'Gods, you should see the look on your face.'

  Well, we forgave her for her excruciating wit, eventually; and although Tachys was extremely upset and shook his head till I was afraid it would come off, we spent the night in the little shrine (it was empty apart from a small rock) and left there just before dawn the next day. It was while I was waking up, still sweeping out the sleep from my mind, that my heart asked me how come, if Dusa was playing tricks on us, she'd known about the stone with the footprint on it, which she couldn't possibly have seen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'Excuse me,' said the Phoenician, 'but I've got to go and take a leak.'

  There was a nice convenient channel running under the wall of the house. When the Phoenician got back, there was an argument going on.

  'I'm sorry,' Cleander was saying, 'but he's doing it on purpose, to annoy me. And he's succeeding, too. He knows I can't see to bash him any more, so he carries on and says what he likes, and it's not fair.'

  'Not fair,' Cratus repeated in a sing-song voice. 'Not fair, not fair, not fair. I've had to listen to that all my life, since we were snot-nosed kids. Listen, I tell it how I remember it, that's all.'

  Cleander was clearly upset. 'It's not all, not by a jarful,' he said. 'This Phoenician's listening to you, and he's going to go away thinking that it all happened like you said. And it didn't, and I don't want people thinking it did when I'm dead and gone and not there to straighten them out.'

  'Tough,' Cratus said. 'But since we're the only two people left to tell the story and our hearts don't agree about what happened -which is putting it mildly - I'd say it'd be just as unfair if you told the story - your version of the story - and left our guest with a false impression of me.'

  Not for the first time, the Phoenician wished he knew exactly who these two men, Gratus and Cleander, were. At first he'd assumed that they were members of the household, poor relations or retired hangers-on. Somewhere along the line he'd revised that impression and concluded that they must be ancient retainers, probably inherited by Palamedes along with the fixtures, fittings and live and dead stock. At this point he was tending towards the view that they were simply old friends of Palamedes or his father, who hung around the big hall because they liked it better there than at home.

  Trying to achieve such precision among Greeks was, of course, a very efficient way of boiling one's brains; in Greece, he'd learned over the years, you were a fusion of who you thought you were and who everybody else thought you were, qualified to a certain extent by such factors as wealth, military prowess and whether people liked you. Come to think of it, he'd never actually seen or heard any proof that Palamedes was the King of Elis - he didn't wear a tiara, like proper kings back home, but people generally did what he said; and when his father had referred to 'trading with Elis', he'd meant g
oing to visit Palamedes, or at least whoever was living in this house at the time. Since it didn't actually matter very much, he decided to compromise; Palamedes was a king, if not necessarily the king, which meant that Cratus and Cleander could have the word 'courtier' scratched on their lids (there was, to the best of his knowledge, no Greek word for 'courtier') and he wouldn't have to think about it any more.

  'I know,' the Phoenician piped up. 'How about if we forget all about the rest of the story and I keep an open mind about the both of you?'

  Cleander lifted his head. 'Too late for that,' he replied. 'It's started now, you'll have to listen to the whole thing and then make up your own mind.'

  'Oh,' said the Phoenician. 'Only, I really don't want to cause any more trouble between you two; and besides, it's late, and I'd love just to go to bed-'

  'And,' Cleander went on, 'I insist on being allowed to tell the next bit, because it's too important to let him twist it round and make it all sound bad.'

  Cratus yawned ostentatiously. 'You go ahead,' he said. 'The next bit isn't really all that important anyhow.'

  Our first visit (said Cleander) was to the King of the Triphylians- 'Hold on,' the Phoenician interrupted. 'I thought you were at war with the Triphylians.'

  Palamedes held up his hand to indicate that he was going to answer. 'We were,' he said. 'But the war finished.'

  'Just like that?' The Phoenician looked confused. 'But it was a terrible defeat,' he said. 'Cratus said so himself; his uncle Deilaus -'

  'Deistratus.'

  '- Deistratus was killed, along with that other man, the charioteer s father. And Cratus killed the crown prince. Don't tell me that after all that you just walked into the palace yard and said "Hello".'

  Palamedes frowned. 'Why not?' he said.

  'Because...' The Phoenician shook his head. 'Oh well,' he said. 'I suppose it's all to the good, really, if you don't hold grudges.'

  Someone at the opposite end of the table laughed. 'Put it another way,' he said. 'If we did hold grudges, it'd be impossible to live. Dammit, when we aren't at war with the Triphylians, it's the Achaeans or the Mantineans-'

  'Or with the Triphylians against the Mantineans and Bassae-'

  'Or with the Achaeans against the Triphylians and the Mantineans-'

  The man grinned. 'Anyway, it's complicated,' he said. 'If we worried about that sort of thing, like remembering and laying down in our hearts what happened in the war before the war before last, we'd all be wiped out in a year or so.'

  'But surely,' the Phoenician replied, 'as far as I can make out, one of the main reasons you have wars is so you can do great deeds that will cause you to be remembered. And I assume that means remembering the names of the great warriors you kill.'

  'Sure,' said Palamedes. 'But not the wars themselves.'

  'I understand,' the Phoenician lied. 'Sorry, I interrupted you.'

  That's all right (said Cleander). Anyway, we reached the palace just in time for dinner - fortuitous, really, because we'd eaten all our food, and since Cratus contrived to get his bow and arrows stolen, we couldn't hunt; and you can live on nuts and berries, but it's unbelievably boring.

  So there we were, making our first call on a great games-player. Not the king, of course; he was well into his seventies, past all that. His son had been a fine discus-thrower, but he was dead, so that ruled him out. That left the king's younger brother Ischomachus, who was reckoned to be one of the finest boxers since Castor and Polydeuces.

  (Castor and Polydeuces? Long before our time. They were twin sons of Zeus by some mortal woman. Depending on who you believe, either they're immortal or they died in my great-great-great-grandfather's time. Anyway, Castor was the greatest boxer ever. Sorry, Polydeuces. Well, one of them, anyway.)

  Ischomachus wasn't there that evening; he'd gone up into the mountains to take a look at his pigs. They say that every man's heart has a special joy, something that speaks directly to it in a way that nothing else can. For some men it's love or wealth or power, glory in battle, the beauty of the sun on the sea or the dew on a rose. With Ischomachus, it was pigs. He doted on them. Now, a good man ought to take an interest in his pigs. They're a very efficient way of providing meat all year round, they'll eat any damn thing and live anywhere, and the bits you can't eat you can make things out of. They make a big song and dance about how Prometheus was the great friend and benefactor of mankind because he stole fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk and brought it down to us here, but for some reason whoever it was that smuggled the first pig off Olympus never achieved the same level of recognition, and I call that a shame and a miscarriage of justice. With the possible exception of these new-fangled chickens you're starting to see everywhere you go, the pig's quite possibly the most useful animal going.

  Well, I happen to like pigs. Nothing wrong with that.

  Next day we set off up the mountain. The king sent a boy with us to show us the way; he was thrilled to be out in the fresh air in the company of so many terrible and ferocious Elean warriors. ('Do you really eat the kidneys of the men you kill in battle?' he asked. 'Yes,' we replied. 'Doesn't everybody?' He couldn't do enough for us after that.) He took us what he called the 'short way', which was pretty well straight up the side of this sheer cliff into which some crazy optimist had cut terraces for olives - bizarre, since they're quite well off for good land in those parts, unlike so many places.

  I tell you, it was an absolutely magnificent piggery. You've never seen the like. It was way up on a spur, looking out over the valley -you could see for miles. As we approached the top, we passed the quarry where the stones had been cut; someone had been to a lot of trouble. The outer stockade was all whitethorn, and inside that there were a dozen sties, each with fifty-odd brood pigs; naturally he kept the boars in a separate pen round the back. All the buildings and fixtures were new and well maintained, all the gates sat sweetly on their hinges; I've seen scruffier temples.

  It was just on feeding time when we got there, and the noise of six-hundred-odd pigs all filling their faces was one of the most raucous, deafening sounds I've ever heard outside a general assembly of the Sons of the Achaeans. In the corner of one of the pens there was a big bald-headed man covered in mud and pigshit; he was raking muck with a long wooden rake.

  'You there,' Tachys called out - we'd agreed that he should be the chief herald for the day. 'Where's your master?'

  'What?' the man grunted, sounding just like a pig himself.

  'Your master. Prince Ischomachus.'

  The man leaned his rake against the sidewall. 'Who wants to know?' he replied.

  Tachys frowned. 'That's for us to tell Ischomachus,' he said. 'And unless you want a kick up the backside for keeping his guests waiting, I suggest you go and fetch him.'

  The man smiled. 'Expecting you, is he?'

  'What's it to you if he is or if he isn't?' Tachys was well annoyed by this stage. 'What's your name, anyhow?'

  'Ischomachus.'

  'Oh.'

  Maybe I should explain, for the benefit of our Phoenician friend; maybe they do things differently where he comes from. In these parts, one of the rudest, most offensive things you can do to a man - well, a man of the better sort, anyway - is ask his name, straight out and to his face. It's just not done. Well, maybe that's a little too sweeping; if someone turns up on your doorstep and you invite him in and feed him and pour wine down his neck for three days and he still hasn't volunteered the information, I reckon you'd be within your rights to make a polite enquiry; that's if you're the host, of course. For a guest to go asking names is really bad form, believe me.

  (Why? Don't ask me. If you want my opinion, it's another of those Sons-of-the-Achaeans things - the idea is, any Achaean is as good as any other, so what does it matter who he is? When someone comes to your home, first thing you do is give him food and drink and something to wash his hands and feet with, that's a basic duty we owe to Zeus. Who the stranger is really doesn't matter all that much.)

  Of course, theo
retically Ischomachus had made the first breach of protocol with that who-wants-to-know crack. But there was no getting round it, we'd made an awful start; why the boy who'd showed us the way didn't warn us, I don't know. I was all for apologising and getting out of there before we started another war; Sarpedon looked like he wanted to cover up our gaffe by killing Ischomachus and burning the steading to the ground. Cratus was looking the other way, a talent he's been developing all his life. As for Tachys - well, for two pins I reckon he'd have jumped in one of the sties and let the pigs eat him alive, out of pure shame.

  'Excuse me,' Dusa said, 'but are those Argive saddlebacks?'

  I nearly fell over; but Ischomachus scowled, then grinned all over his face. 'That's right,' he said. 'Fancy a girl knowing that.'

  'Less of the fancy-that, if you don't mind,' Dusa replied. 'What are you feeding them on?'

  If someone had tapped me on the shoulder right then and I'd woken up, I'd still have been asking my heart what the hell was going on; because even in a singularly odd dream I'd never have thought of Dusa as an expert on pigs. In real life, it was enough to make your eyes hurt.

  But Ischomachus answered her - acorns, he said, and bean-helm, and there was a whole lot more of it but when it got technical I lost track - and she stood there nodding, as if he was her apprentice and she was testing him. Then she was asking about yields and litter sizes and the gods only know what, and he was chattering away; and the next thing we knew, we were inside the house (which made my place look like a tool shed) being fed on roast pork and barley meal, washed down with some of the nastiest neat wine I've ever had to swallow in my life. All good friends, in other words; although it was pretty clear that we were only there because we were with Dusa, and it'd have been rude to make us stand outside while they went indoors and talked pig.

  While we were still eating, Ischomachus jumped up mumbling something about afternoon feed. When he'd gone, I grabbed Dusa by the wrist.