Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  Dusa wasn't making much headway with shifting the stranger. That just left Uncle Sarpedon. Now maybe, after a lifetime of experience, he'd found a way of keeping the god out of his mind at awkward moments like that; in any event, he seemed quite calm, though paying strict attention. When it was pretty clear that the chariot wasn't slowing down so as you'd notice, he stepped over the stranger's body and stood quite still, arms folded, right in the middle of the road.

  I'll swear by the River that by the time the chariot stopped he must have been feeling the horses' breath on his face, but he didn't budge so much as a finger's width. Quite remarkable; not to mention completely idiotic. But that was Uncle for you. Now that I'm his age, it makes me shudder to think of doing any of the stuff he did. I suppose being as mad as a pedlar's dog must have helped.

  The man driving the chariot didn't seem happy. 'You,' he shouted, 'get out of the road.'

  Sarpedon looked up at him. 'No,' he said.

  Now, up to this point, the men in the chariot (there were three of them) had acted reasonably sensibly. It was plain enough that they were set on killing the stranger, whose rather dilapidated condition they were presumably responsible for. Well, given such intention, running him over with a chariot was as good a way of going about it as any, better than most, and nobody in his normal mind would've anticipated some lunatic deliberately getting in the way. Having had the bad luck to encounter such a lunatic, they did the right thing in slowing down and not flattening him too - if they had, we'd have had no option but to kill them, though as you can imagine, getting involved in a blood-feud in the middle of a foreign country while surrounded by enemies wasn't something we'd have enjoyed particularly much. So; right up to that point, they'd come across as sensible, rational men. A pity, then, that they had to go and spoil it.

  The mistake the driver made was leaning forward over the rail and smacking Uncle Sarpedon across the face with the goad. Now, I wouldn't do a thing like that under any circumstances, unless I was deliberately setting out to start a war or a ten-generations feud. You probably don't get the full significance. Well, to hit a man with a goad or a cattle-prod is really rather serious; far more than if you smacked him with a stick or a regular weapon. By using an instrument you'd normally only use on slaves or cattle, you're actually taking away his status as a free man, let alone a man of the better sort. Not clever. In fact, downright rude.

  Which is why what Sarpedon did next was entirely justifiable; even I can't really argue with it, though I maintain that he started the whole thing by standing in the road like he did.

  Before the driver had the chance to lift the goad clear, Sarpedon grabbed it left-handed, yanked it out of the man's hand and turned it round. Then, blithe as a three-year-old, he vaulted up on to the chariot-boom, boosting himself up there with his right hand (I couldn't have done it even then; shows how fit he was), danced right down the boom, leaned forward over the driver's head and whacked him just over the right eyebrow, very hard indeed. The man on the driver's left tried to prod at him with a spear; that was a mistake, because Sarpedon took the spear away from him with his right hand and stuck him through the junction of neck and collar-bones with the butt-spike, then spun the spear across the back of his hand so as to be in position to skewer the third man, who died before he'd even had a chance to get his sword out.

  'Uncle,' I wailed. 'What the bloody hell do you think you're playing at?'

  Sarpedon twisted round - the way he was able to keep his balance standing on the boom was really very impressive - and gave me a look of pure, refined mustard. Then he pulled a little apologetic face. 'He hit me,' he said.

  'Yes, but-' I gave up. Wasn't much point agonising about it all now. No point crying over spilt blood, as the saying goes. 'So now what do we do?'

  Rather more carefully and awkwardly than he'd got up there, Sarpedon got down again. 'Well,' he said, 'it's rather a delicate point of protocol. Since it was a fair fight and they started it and it was a blood insult, we're definitely within our rights taking the weapons. The chariot's pushing it, I'll grant you, but the way I see it, since they were actually using the chariot as a weapon-'

  'Uncle!' I yelled at him. 'That's not what I meant.' I could see it was useless shouting at him, so I shouted at Dusa instead. 'This is all your fault,' I told her. 'If you hadn't insisted-'

  She wasn't listening. 'Uncle,' she said quietly, cutting me off short like she was pruning a vine, 'do you think he's well enough to be lifted up into the chariot? Only the bleeding looks like it's stopped - the last thing I want to do is start it off again.'

  I made one last effort. 'Dusa!' I shouted. Not a blind bit of notice.

  Sarpedon gave the stranger a quick examination and said that, in his opinion, while putting the man in the chariot might lead to further bleeding and subsequent death, not putting him in the chariot would most definitely cause his immediate demise, and the likeliest cause of death would be bronze poisoning.

  'What?' Dusa said.

  'Over there.' Sarpedon pointed back down the road. You didn't have to be far-seeing Polydeuces (or Castor; I can never remember which of those two is which) to see the sunlight glinting amber on sword-blades and spearheads. 'I suggest we go away before they get here.'

  The god put it into my mind that on this one occasion, Uncle was probably right.

  And that's how we got involved. So easily done. I don't suppose you could have brought a quart pot to the boil in the time it took us to change our lives beyond all recognition. If you were quick, maybe you could have skinned and jointed a hare, or cut down a small olive tree. I have an idea that the gods punish us for wanting to be masters of our own destinies by ordaining that all the most irrevocable things men can do - ending lives, or creating them - can be done quickly, blindly, in a haze of passion, when the mind is empty and the heart is full. It takes a whole day to make a good pair of boots or a gate or a bronze cauldron or to plough the waste in a vineyard.

  Five of us in one two-horse chariot; Cleander drove, Uncle Sarpedon and I held the stranger up, and Dusa clung on to the rail like a young kid on top of the hay wagon. If we'd turned over or lost a wheel, all five of us would've been killed - and Cleander was driving with the sheer blind recklessness of a very frightened man, so it's a wonder I'm here to tell the tale.

  I don't know how long we kept the pace up for, but it seemed to last all of this life and a hefty mortgage on the next. When finally we persuaded Cleander to slow up, I was shivering like a man with a bad fever, and my clothes were wringing wet with, among other things, sweat. But slow down we eventually did, at a place where the road passed through a little wood. We all got out - that was a wonderful feeling, getting out of that chariot - and while Cleander and Sarpedon cut the horses loose and dragged the chariot off into the scrub where it'd be hard to find, Dusa and I got the stranger out of sight. We found a nice sheltered dip, laid him on his back and had a look to see if he was still breathing.

  To our great surprise, and the disappointment of one of us, he opened his eyes after a while and muttered something about being thirsty. As if we hadn't done enough for him already. If he'd had a scrap of decency in him, he'd have offered to fetch water for us.

  'It's all right,' Dusa said, exaggerating shamelessly. 'You're safe now.'

  'No we aren't,' I pointed out. 'We're hiding in a wood, with a bunch of armed men no more than an hour behind us. If that's your idea of safe-'

  'Be quiet!' Dusa snapped at me, so ferociously that I took a step backwards. 'Ignore him, he's my brother,' she added, as if that explained everything.

  I didn't even try to reason with her, because my heart told me I'd be wasting my breath. You see, she had that look in her eyes - not the serious one, a different one, but if anything rather more ominous.

  Now, there are some young women who must have an invisible stuffed bird hanging round their necks - you know, the sort they put up for archery practice. Fortunately, Dusa wasn't like that. I say fortunately; mixed blessing, because sh
e was quite the opposite. Where the dizzy sort of girl has the invisible stuffed bird, she had a warranted triple-proof solid bronze cuirass, the sort that comes with a little dent in it to show you that when it was made, they shot an arrow at it point-blank and failed to puncture it. That's how come we'd never managed to marry her off. Not for want of trying. Four times we actually got as far as setting a date and organising the torch-bearers and the musicians. Once, we were so close we'd actually spent a morning picking rose-petals for the bridal bed. Every time, though, there was that moment when she frowned, lifted her head and said, No, this is a very bad idea - and that was that. Finish.

  Oh, she fooled around a bit with boys and girls her own age, but mostly just to annoy Father and Cleander and me; as for actually falling in love, she'd done that precisely once, which is how come I recognised the signs so clearly. That was a story, and no mistake; she fell for this man (he was nearly twice her age) who was staying with us; he was the third son of a family from the northern side of Elean territory, a bit of a waste of space by anybody's standards. He was bored with just farming and pottering about, he told us (what he really meant was, he wasn't any good at it), and he wanted to go abroad, maybe travel round a bit, take service as a soldier with the Lydians or the Kings of Tyre, come home with wealth and glory -but of course he didn't have a ship of his own, so did we know anybody who was fitting out a ship and was looking for company on the voyage? For some unaccountable reason, my father took a shine to this buffoon; at least, until he found out that Dusa was absolutely besotted with him and not particularly bothered who knew it. That's the point at which versions of the story differ. Afterwards, Dusa told people they'd been secretly married, and a few months after he left she got word that he'd been killed fighting for the Tyrians against the Sicels (or the other way round; who cares?). Father's version was that he'd found the man a place on a ship and given him a very useful cargo of presents and the like, everything the young adventurer needs, on condition that he never came back to Elis. What I heard, a while later, was that he'd taken Father's stuff, swapped it with another man on the ship for his allotment at a colony, and was making a very pleasant life for himself in Ionia.

  And now, here was that look again; and I thought, Oh, Dusa, not now, for the gods' sakes. But I didn't say anything to her, for fear of making things worse. Instead, I sat down and pretended to feel neighbourly concern for our injured guest.

  He'd been in a fight, no doubt about that. He had a clip to the side of the head, just above and alongside the left eye; showy and gory, but nothing serious. What had put him down was the deep puncture, probably from one of those imported Assyrian-style thin bladed swords, level with his navel on the right side. He'd bled like a pig from that - I expect you could have made a whole string of sausages out of what he must have dripped between getting that wound and when we found him. And yet it was only a little mark, compared with the showy slice off his head; which only goes to prove what they say about appearances.

  He repeated his request for something to drink; and since I wasn't going to budge, Dusa went off to find some clean water. That gave me a chance to ask some straight questions.

  'My name,' he started to say; then he thought about it for just a heartbeat, and went on, 'My name is Pentheus.' And I thought, Oh gods, melodrama; because obviously he wasn't called that - sorry, it's an Achaean thing; Pentheus means 'man of sorrow', and nobody's actually going to call a kid that, are they? It'd be like calling your best mule Steal-Me. 'Where are you from?' he added.

  'Never you mind about us,' I replied. 'Where are you from and what've you done?'

  'Done?' He looked at me. 'I was set upon by bandits-'

  'No, you weren't.'

  He frowned a little, then winced because frowning hurt. 'All right,' he said, 'it wasn't robbers.'

  'Feud?' I asked, trying to make myself sound sympathetic.

  'I suppose so,' he replied. 'At least, the beginnings of one. I killed someone in Tegea, and his brothers came after me.'

  I sighed. 'Figures,' I said. 'What was it? His wife? Sister? Boyfriend?'

  He looked shocked. It was as convincing as made-in-Elis Egyptian beadwork. 'Nothing like that,' he said. 'I was avenging an insult to my honour. It was a fair fight.'

  He was about twenty-five; old enough to know better, anyhow. 'Try again,' I replied. 'Or if you're too tired and weak to talk, let me have a go, see what the god whispers in my ear. Well, for one thing, your boots tell me you don't live in Tegea; those soles have been even further than mine. Likewise, either those were originally someone else's boots, or your feet have shrunk.' He opened his mouth, then closed it again. 'Now then,' I went on, 'that smack on the head's not the first you've had to put up with, because there's a scar just like it on the other side; also this one, on the ball of your shoulder. Suggests to me that you've been in a fight or two, but not wearing armour, like you would if you'd been in the wars. Let's see your hands.'

  He scowled at me, but didn't resist.

  'Well now,' I said. 'Either you're very rich or very poor, with hands like these. No calluses, look; it's been a long time since you did any cutting or pruning, or took a mattock out on the fallow.' Then I saw something and grinned. 'Oh, now that's interesting,' I said. 'Hard skin in the top joints of the first three fingers of your left hand. I'll bet if I look at your right wrist, there'll be a few scars there.'

  He looked mustard at me. 'So I'm an archer,' he said. 'So what?'

  'So nothing,' I replied. 'It's not necessarily a bad thing to be. But put it all together: an archer who doesn't do any work, far from home and found lying all bloody in the road.' I smiled at him. 'If you ever were set on by bandits, it was because they caught you trying to sneak off with more than your share. Is that what happened?'

  He gave me a cold, nasty stare. 'You couldn't be more wrong,' he said. 'But why should I bother telling you the truth? You wouldn't believe me.'

  I shrugged. 'Suit yourself,' I replied. 'Doesn't matter a bit, anyhow. Thanks to my dear sister and my dear uncle, I find myself in the thoroughly rotten position of being on your side, or at least, on the opposite side from the people who were trying to kill you, and who'll now be trying to kill us. On balance, I'd far rather you turned out to be a dispossessed prince or a wandering hero, just so I don't feel such a complete and utter clown.'

  He scowled some more; then his face sagged. 'So what're you going to do?' he asked.

  'Do?' I smiled again. 'I'm going to believe you, of course, for the reason stated. After all, I could be jumping to quite the wrong conclusions about what I've seen. Two words of advice, though.'

  'Yes?'

  'First,' I said, 'I'm going to find it a whole lot easier to believe you if the story you tell me and the others takes account of the points I've mentioned. Clear?'

  'Yes.'

  'Second,' I said, 'I put it to you that you're married to a beautiful girl who lives somewhere a long way away, and very much in love. Is that right?'

  He frowned, then nodded. 'Yes,' he said.

  'Wonderful,' I said, 'how the god tells me these things. Maybe I ought to set up my own oracle.'

  'Well, you certainly have the knack of telling people things they don't want to hear.'

  The sound of snapping twigs and rustling leaves told me Dusa was coming back (did any of you ever meet a female who could walk quietly in a wood? Thought not. And the silly thing is, the patron deity of hunters is a woman).

  Anyway-

  Cratus suddenly lowered his voice. 'Talking of people coming back,' he whispered, 'here's my brother. Can I just mention, he's never heard about the talk I had with the stranger. Can we keep it that way, please?'

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Now then (Cleander said), where had my brother got up to?

  The stranger's name was Pentheus, and he had a remarkable story to tell, like something out of the fall of Troy or the wanderings of Ulysses. It affected me, I can tell you; but that was nothing compared with what it did to my sister. I'll try
to tell it as near as I can to the man's own words - it's been a few years, of course, but I've got a reasonable memory - I can still recite you stories I heard just the once when I was a boy, except you really wouldn't want to hear them, because they were fairly dull.

  Anyway; this is what Pentheus told us.

  I was born (Pentheus said) on the island of Aegina, where my father was the king. He had five sons - three older than me - and two daughters. We were well off; I don't know if any of you have ever been to Aegina - No? Well, it's a flat, fertile island with good grazing and fine vineyards. To tell the truth, we were a lazy family, spent more time hunting than farming. My brothers and I used to go and shoot wild goats up in the hills, and that was about all the work we ever did.

  I expect you're wondering why I'm here, all bloody and in need of the help of strangers, if I'm a king's son in my own country. Well, here's what happened.

  When we weren't hunting, my brothers and I, we used to practise games-playing. I was a reasonable runner and long-jumper, my brothers Ialmenus and Ascaphalus were better runners and competent charioteers. Our eldest brother, Lycomedes, was actually a top-class boxer, and if you go to Aegina any time, you'll find plenty of people who lisp when they talk because they're missing a few teeth; ask any of them, if you can make out what they're saying, they'll tell you the same thing. Even our kid brother Hyrtacus knew how to pass for a competent wrestler. But the real games-player in our family, believe it or not, was my elder sister, Actis; she could run and, most of all, she could drive a two-horse chariot.

  Actis was actually the eldest, a year older than Lycomedes. She didn't look much, being too fond of the open air; brown as a nut, she was, and all muscle and bone. But she could easily have got married if she'd wanted to - a king's daughter, it goes without saying; only she didn't want to. What she liked best, after games-playing, was camping out in the hills with a lot of other big, brown, bony girls her own age, in honour of some women-only goddess we weren't even supposed to ask her about. Likely story, we all thought; they used to go off with a big cart loaded down with jars of wine and nice things to eat, and come back five days later all dirty and ragged and foul-tempered - one time I'll swear I saw blood under her fingernails before she had a chance to go m and wash, so the gods alone know what they all got up to. Anyway, whatever it may have been, Actis reckoned it was much better fun than getting married and raising a family; so my father decided to make the best of it and endow a temple for this goddess of hers, with Actis as the priestess; which made it a bit more respectable, and gave us all an excuse for why our sister was twenty-two years old and still hadn't got a husband.