Gratus laughed, while Cleander scowled horribly. 'Not in the least,' Gratus said. 'And like I just told you, you gave us all a splendid demonstration of what I'm trying to persuade you all of. I mean to say, there we all were, trying our hardest to preserve the memory of Prince Onesimus, so the poor beggar won't have to spend all eternity in the freezing darkness, and you defeat all our best efforts by closing your eyes and taking a nap. So much for immortality.'
'I'm sorry,' the Phoenician said. 'And besides, I do remember what you were telling me about Onesicles-'
'Onesimus.'
'That's right, him. He was the rich show-off who gave you all such rotten presents.'
Gratus nodded gravely. 'That's right,' he said. 'You remember that about him, and I guess you won't be far wrong. Or at least,' he went on with a slight grimace, 'that's how tales get about, as my old grandmother used to say.'
Cleander grunted. 'No she didn't,' he interrupted. 'It was the old peasant woman. Our grandmother was just quoting her.'
'So? When she said what the old woman said, she said it. Don't be so damned picky. Doesn't matter anyhow, it's just a saying. Probably doesn't mean a thing to anybody outside our family.' He turned sharply towards the Phoenician. 'Does it?' he demanded.
'Sorry,' the Phoenician replied, 'I didn't quite catch all of that.'
At that point, Palamedes joined in. 'Gratus is right,' he said. 'Things have different meanings depending on what's gone before. Like the rat pies.
Everybody looked at him.
'Rat pies,' Palamedes repeated. 'My great-grandmother used to make a special sort of cake for Spring Festival, and she called them calm-cakes. When my grandmother was a little girl, she could never bring herself to eat them, because she thought they were ferret-cakes - you know, made out of ferret-meat; that's why festival cakes are called rat pies in our family.'
(The Phoenician looked blank for a moment; then he realised it was a sort of unintentional pun - galen, meaning calm, and galena, meaning polecat. He felt quite proud of himself for having spotted it, in a foreign language, when his head hurt.)
'What I'm trying to say is,' Palamedes went on, ignoring the stares, 'someone in our family knows what I mean by rat pies, while the rest of you are looking at me like I've gone daft in the head. Because of memory, you see; knowing the background, what's gone before. If I hadn't explained, our friend here might well have gone back to his own country and told everybody there that in Elis they eat rat pie. And of course we don't.'
'Well,' someone put m, 'not often, anyway.'
'Ignore him,' said Palamedes. 'And have some breakfast, it'll buck you up no end. Here, try some of this.'
The Phoenician noticed a dish of some kind of pastry, hovering to his left on a level with the bridge of his nose. 'Thanks,' he said, 'but I'm not hungry. Maybe just some plain wheat bread, and a cup of water.
Well (Gratus said), we were tempted to hang on there for a day or so, enjoy our welcome, wait for Alastor to show up... It'd have been entertaining to hear what our new friend Onesimus had to say to him when he tried to snatch the promise of immortality away from him, no doubt about that. But we were behind our schedule, and the distance we had to cover wasn't getting any less. So we said, Goodbye, see you in Elis; and that clown Onesimus was genuinely sorry to see us go, I'll swear to it. I suppose he wanted us to hang around for a month or two watching him prance about his palaestra all covered in olive oil and sand.
Before he let us go, he insisted on giving us four - I'll repeat that, four - mules and a spare pair of boots each, not to mention about a year's supply of fine-grade wheat flour, dried figs, olives, a cheese the size of a cartwheel with the plaster around it still damp, a whacking great big basket of apples and two big jars of wine. For two pins and an olive-pit, he'd probably have come with us himself; but we managed to dissuade him from that. It'd have been like going out hunting with a big, young, friendly dog that races off barking at the first sniff of a hare three hundred paces away.
The next leg of the journey was short enough, Bassae to Mila, one brisk day or two leisurely ones. Mila was very much an afterthought; we didn't even know for sure that there was a games-player there, though it seemed like a reasonable bet. And as luck would have it, there was: Prince Stenyclarus, shepherd of his people, a wolf with the discus and the javelin, so everybody we met assured us, and the only possible explanation for why we'd never heard of him was that all of us had spent our lives huddled in a small cave at the top of some remote and inaccessible mountain.
That sounded promising, so we got a move on and limped off a very stony, rutted road into Mila just as it was getting dark. We asked a woman filling her jars at the well, and she pointed out Stenyclarus' house - one of two large, rather slab-sided buildings that stood side by side in the square.
That told us all we needed to know about politics in Mila: two palaces meant two princes, sharing the rule of the city between them. Now, I don't know about you, or what it's like where you come from when a king dies and two sons inherit jointly, but in these parts it's either a total success or a desperate failure. The good thing is, you can usually tell which as soon as you pass under the gatehouse.
In Mila, though, there didn't seem to be any indications either way. The gate was still open even though it was dark, with a bored-looking man-at-arms leaning on his shield who didn't bother looking up as we walked by; good sign. But the street was almost empty and most of the houses had closed doors, nobody hanging about outside in the porch; bad sign, possibly. In truth, no way of knowing.
'Still,' Dusa said, 'we can start from the assumption that there's going to be rivalry between Stenyclarus and his brother, friendly or otherwise. That ought to mean he'll be interested in a way of boosting his own prestige, especially if he can do it without overtly treading on Brother's toes. He ought to be interested.'
Well, we banged on the gate, first with our fists, then with our spear-butts. It was a long time before anybody came.
'More guests,' the doorkeeper snarled at us. 'You'd better come in.'
Alastor and his people? Possible. But one of my reasons for stopping in Mila was because I was sure Alastor wouldn't; he'd assume we were heading straight for Pylos, and so get there before we did. I wanted to be one step behind Alastor for a while, so that we'd be getting the last word. Probably not Alastor, then. Gould be anybody.
Wasn't.
It shows how my mind was elsewhere - I didn't recognise them at first. Oh, I knew that I knew them from somewhere, but not straight away. In other words, they recognised me as the man they'd robbed in Elis before I realised that they were the men who'd robbed me.
Given that the god gave them this advantage, they should have made better use of it. If I'd been them, I'd have tried something a bit more subtle than they did - I might have jumped up and pointed me out as a bandit who'd waylaid them, or a sworn enemy in a blood-feud, anything to discredit me. I suppose they weren't subtle people; not much call for guile and subterfuge when you make your living behind a spear.
By the time my memory had caught up with me, the leader (or at least the man I'd spoken to) was on his feet, waving his knife at me. On balance, he'd have done better to have removed the large chunk of roast pork from it first. A moment later the rest of his party were on their feet too, while the host was sitting up with a bemused look on his face and asking what was going on. The bandit leader, however, wasn't in a chatty mood. His heart was telling him to get out of the hall, which would mean going through or over us.
That was the point where I got shoved out of the way and fell sideways over a bench, bumping my head quite hard. I don't know how long I was out of it, but what brought me to was a big man with a sword in his hand standing over me looking ferocious. Fortuitously, I had the angle and the presence of mind to boot him sharply in the nuts before he could get beyond the staring-and-growling stage that he clearly regarded as an indispensable prologue to a respectable fight.
With him out of the way, at least I had
a clearer view of what was happening, not that that was something I'd necessarily have wanted. The centre of attention was my uncle Sarpedon, who seemed to be enjoying himself no end. Where the sword came from I don't know; we'd all left our weapons with the doorkeeper, so either Sarpedon had bashed one of our host's men-at-arms to get it, or it was a spare he'd got hidden away down the side of his tunic. Whichever; the first I saw was his hand going up over his head, the sword gripped firmly just behind the hilt. Then someone got in the way, but the sound was quite enough for me to know what Sarpedon was up to. There's no other noise like it, not even the crunch of a pig's carcass being jointed.
I couldn't see Tachys. Dusa was sprawled over a bench, presumably where someone had shoved her. I saw her grab a big silver jug for the purpose of bashing heads, but she hesitated and stayed where she was. Cleander was in some sort of trouble with a short, stringy man who had his back to me. Worst of all, there were men-at-arms squeezing their shields through the door and heading straight for us.
I could only think of one thing to do; so I did it.
'Stop it!' I yelled, at the top of my voice.
And stop it they did; though that may have had more to do with the half-circle of spear-points bearing down on them than my magnificent tone of voice. Hard to say, looking at it objectively. Of course, I'm a biased witness, so you mustn't count on getting the plain truth out of me.
Talk about a mess. I've thought about that scene a few times over the years, mostly from our host's point of view. What he saw, when the blurred movement stopped and he had a clear view, was one dead man lying face down on the floor of his hall, another man curled up in a ball in the corner by the doorway, covered in blood; he saw an arm - well, a hand and a wrist - lying almost at his feet, like the bones you don't fancy yourself so you sling them to the dog. He saw them, and he saw us, two parties of strangers who'd come into his home and started a fight for no reason he knew.
He looked round, with an expression of distaste on his face the like of which I've never seen, then pointed to the dead man, and the arm.
'Who did that?' he asked.
One of his men-at-arms took a step forward. He was wiping blood off his face from a very nasty cut that ran from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth; he'd have a real horror of a scar there for the rest of his life. 'He did,' the man said, pointing at Sarpedon with his spear. 'That old bugger there.'
Our host looked at Sarpedon. 'Well?' he said.
'Sure,' Sarpedon replied. He was breathing a little heavily, but grinning. Not a mark on him, of course, unless you count someone else's blood. 'That was me.'
I could feel the situation going bad on us. 'I can explain,' I said, but someone prodded me hard in the ribs and told me to shut my face.
'All right,' our host said. 'And who the hell are you?'
'Sarpedon of Elis. You've probably heard of me.'
'No.'
'Oh.' Sarpedon looked hurt. 'You do surprise me.'
'Please,' I said, managing to anticipate the spear-butt this time, 'let me explain. These men attacked me-'
'No they didn't. You attacked them.'
He had a point. I could have put it better, I suppose. 'Not here,' I said. 'These men robbed me on the road just outside Elis.'
He frowned. 'And you are?'
'My name's Gratus. This is my brother Cleander and my sister Eurymedusa. Oh, and our travelling companion, Tachys.'
Stenyclarus nodded. 'What about him?' he said.
'He's my uncle.'
'Excuse me.' It was the leader of the bandits. 'Excuse me, but that's not true, what he's saying about being robbed by us. I've never seen any of them before and I've never been to Elis. Come on, do we look like robbers?'
That was a fair point, too; but then again, they hadn't looked like robbers when they robbed me. Come to that, I'm not sure what robbers do look like.
'All right,' Stenyclarus said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with the flat of his hand, like a man who knows he's getting a headache. 'So why did they attack you? Unprovoked, soon as look at you.'
The robber shrugged. 'I have no idea,' he said. 'Perhaps Madness lodged in their hearts, these things happen. Or-' He snapped his fingers, as if inspired by a sudden insight. 'If they're from Elis, maybe they attacked us because we're Triphylians. There was a war recently, you know.'
'Was there?' Stenyclarus raised an eyebrow. 'First I've heard of it.'
'Actually,' Cleander interrupted, 'that's perfectly true, there was a war. But we've just been with the Triphylian king, he gave us presents and sent us on our way.'
'Really. Oh well, maybe you're right.' Stenyclarus took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. 'But I think that's beside the point. What I see as the point is, you people come bursting in here, you attack guests of mine with swords, kill one and maim another, beat up my retainers, allegedly because these men are supposed to have robbed you in Elis.' He scowled like thunder. 'Is that about it?'
I nodded. 'Let me try to prove it to you,' I said. 'I can describe the things they stole from me. Maybe they've still got some of them with them.'
Stenyclarus shook his head. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'You could have been snooping round my stables before you came in here, going through their panniers; or maybe you met up with someone they'd been with, who described what they were carrying. And anyway,' he went on, 'that's not the issue here. It's none of my business what any of you got up to in Elis. But it's my business when blood gets shed on my floor.'
'Just a moment,' someone interrupted; I looked round and saw it was Tachys. 'Sorry to butt in, but that's not what happened. As soon as we walked in, that man there jumped up and came at Cratus here with a knife. Then Cratus got knocked over, and the rest of them came at us; that's when Sarpedon pulled out that sword and started hitting people.'
'That's true,' Stenyclarus admitted. 'Yes, that's a valid point, I suppose. You, what do you say to that?'
The bandit looked a bit worried, but he recovered well. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'but that's not how it happened at all. Some strangers came in, I stood up to welcome them, same as anybody'd do-'
'Really? I didn't, and it's my house.'
'It's what we do where I come from,' the bandit replied.
Stenyclarus shrugged. 'Carry on,' he said.
'That's about it. This one barged at me, I grabbed at him to keep my balance, he fell over. Then the madman started slashing at us with his sword. Ask him, by the way, exactly why he had a sword hidden under his cloak, if he meant no harm.'
'What about you?' Sarpedon snapped at him. 'You were waving a knife.'
'I didn't wave anything. I was still holding my knife, I was eating my food with it. That's not the same as waving, and you know it.'
Stenyclarus closed his eyes, as if he was hoping that when he opened them again, it'd all have gone away. 'All right,' he said to the bandit, 'suppose I believe you. What do you want me to do about it?'
The bandit looked shocked. 'Hang them, of course,' he said. 'He murdered my nephew, he cut off Theoclymenes' arm. In your house,' he added, 'under your roof.'
'Oh, sure.' Stenyclarus looked very weary. 'So I string up five perfect strangers, and next thing I know I'm locked into some ghastly blood-feud with half the families in the Peloponnese. I don't think so.' He turned round. 'And what if I believe you?' he said, looking at me. 'What's your suggestion?'
I thought quickly. 'I don't think it's up to you to do anything,' I replied. 'I'd say this dead man and the other man's arm cancels out the robbery. Just send us on our way, and them too. If anything still needs to be sorted out, we'll do it somewhere else, where it won't concern you.'
The bandit looked appalled. 'Now just a moment-' he started to say, but Stenyclarus shut him up with a gesture.
'That sounds more like it,' he said. 'At least, you're on the right lines. Here's what you're all going to do. You're all going to get out of my house and off Milaean land by sunrise. And if I ever lay eyes on any of you again, I'l
l kill you on the spot. Fair enough?'
'No,' the bandit shouted.
'Absolutely,' I said.
'Then it's a deal,' Stenyclarus said. 'You, take this lot and walk them to the southern boundary.' (This lot was us.) 'And you, take these men to the northern boundary. If you see any of them again, kill 'em on sight.'
'What about Theoclymenes?' the bandit protested. 'He's just had his arm cut off, he's in no fit state to move.'
Stenyclarus shrugged. 'Carry him,' he replied. 'Do whatever you like, just so long as you go away and don't come back. But hear this, all of you. I won't have fighting in my house, and I won't have my people beaten up or put at risk. That's all there is to it.'
'What a dreadful thing,' the Phoenician said. 'First these people robbed you, then they set on you again, then they nearly got you hanged. That's awful.'
Cratus smiled. 'You think so?' he said. 'Well, all due respect, but that's because you've only heard me tell the story. Think about it. In my opinion, we were very lucky indeed.'
'Lucky!'
Cratus nodded. 'It was clear enough to me that he hadn't believed a word I'd said. He didn't believe a lot of what the bandit said, either - my guess is, he thought we were the two sides in some feud or other, and neither of us were ready to tell him what was really going on. He got rid of us simply because he didn't want to get mixed up in whatever we were involved in. Wise choice, if you ask me; he only had a limited number of men, and remember, it was a split city. Last thing he wanted was to get sucked into some faction war where his brother might have gone in on the other side as a pretext for getting shot of him. If the same thing had happened in a strong city - Bassae, say, or here - chances are we'd all have been lynched, or locked up till he found out if anybody was ready to pay a ransom for us.'
The Phoenician looked disturbed by that. 'It can't be right,' he said. 'After all, you were all respectable people - well, possibly not Sarpedon, but the rest of you. And they were bandits. Surely that'd have come out sooner or later.'
Palamedes shook his head. 'Why so?' he said, leaning across the table. 'I expect the bandits told him they were respectable people when they first called in; or more likely, Stenyclarus assumed that, because that's what you automatically assume. In fact, the world wouldn't work if you didn't.' He smiled. 'You make it sound as if it's always possible to scrape right down to the truth, whereas in reality it's only very rarely you come across something your heart can really be sure is true. And that's just life, the way the gods have ordained things should be.'
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 14
