Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  My other sister, Chariessa, was short and dumpy, married a nice young man from Troezen when she was fourteen, and was dead a year later. These things happen.

  Well, like I just told you, we loved our games-playing and all dreamed like crazy of getting a chance to take part in some real games; but the only people on the island who were grand enough to merit games all steadfastly refused to die, and there we were, getting old and muscle-bound, with not much likelihood of getting a games. That was annoying, I guess, but we were realistic about it. And you can't expect people to drop dead for your own convenience, can you?

  And then, quite unexpectedly, someone did. And it wasn't even an Aeginetan, though he was family of a sort; my brother Ascaphalus' father-in-law, who happened to be on the island visiting, and who was a great man in every way (not to mention a miserable old bugger, and no loss, so we didn't even have to feel guilty about feeling pleased, if you follow me).

  It was an especially good time for me; my wife, Periboea, had just given birth to our second child - we called him Nicephorus, for luck- ('Excuse me?' the Phoenician asked.

  'It means "Bringer of Victory",' Palamedes explained.

  'Ah. Right. Sorry.')

  Have you quite finished? (Cleander said). Thank you.

  Anyway (said Pentheus), we decided to add the celebrations for Nicephorus' birth on to the funeral for Phorbus - Ascaphalus' father-in-law - and make a really big party out of it all. We invited everybody on the island, just about. We wanted to make it the most memorable bash in the history of Aegina. We succeeded, too.

  Fortunately, Phorbus died in the early winter. Because Aegina's so close to Athens, there was time to issue invitations to some of the really top-flight games-players on the mainland as well as the local talent, before the body went off and had to be got rid of.

  Now, it so happened that there was a Corinthian family visiting relatives in Attica at that very moment, and they were all red-hot games-players; four brothers, about the same ages as we were. Even on Aegina we'd heard of them, and so we were dead keen to get them to come too. They were the sons of Laops - Ctemon, Phorcys, Hephaestodorus and Axius. Our hearts told us that it couldn't have worked out better if we'd broken into the workshop of the Fates and fiddled about with the threads ourselves.

  Well, the big day came round. No fewer than four ships from Athens came in early in the morning, all low in the water with celebrated games-players and their horses and chariots and lucky weights and big, fat stocks of presents; but no Laopides, which nearly spoilt the whole thing for us. Anyway, we'd more or less given up on them and were about to do the actual cremation when someone keeping lookout from the top of a store-tower yelled that a ship was coming in. We stopped the proceedings to give them time; and, sure enough, it was the Corinthian contingent, who were late (they said) because they'd had problems getting the loan of a ship at such short notice. Anyway, they were there, which was all that mattered.

  First, of course, we torched the old man. He lit up just fine, bless his poisonous heart; then we did all the right things -quenched the ashes in good wine, scooped up the mud, covered it with best-quality beef fat, double-thick, in a gilt bronze bowl, heaped up the barrow round it and made good. We even managed to do all that stuff without grinning.

  Then, on to the serious business of the day. The first event was boxing. Poor Lycomedes went out in the first stage - literally, on a door, having failed to get out of the way of a very hard, straight left hand belonging to an Athenian whose name escapes me. One of the Corinthians won the prize, after flattening his brother with a tap on the cheekbone that would probably have killed me; but the other Corinthian - can't remember which one - was back on his feet again a moment or so later, and whining because he hadn't been given another chance.

  Wrestling next. The Corinthians didn't take part in that; but my brother Hyrtacus had a rough ride from an Athenian called Teleides, who nearly snapped the poor kid in half. Luckily, Hyrtacus kept his temper, and the god put it into his heart to let the Athenian try too hard; then, when this Teleides was about to break our brother off at the neck like a bunch of grapes, Hyrtacus put his weight on one foot and used the heel of the other to stamp down hard just inside the back of the Athenian's knee. Well, they both went down, but the difference was, Teleides hit the ground with his nose, and that was the last he knew about the funeral of Phorbus.

  So that was all right. After that came throwing the weight, about which I remember nothing; and after that the foot-race, in which I came fifth out of a field of twelve. A friend of mine won it, with a Corinthian second and an Athenian third. I was all set to make fourth place right up to the point where we were running for home, lengthening the pace - at which point the god robbed me, puffing a big, pointed stone right under the sole of my right foot at a very inconvenient moment. That allowed the youngest Corinthian, Axius, to nudge past me. Worse than that, I did my ankle no good at all and had to sit out the long-jump, which I'm sure I'd have been placed in - only my brother Ialmenus made a better distance than my normal practice-jump, so you can see it wasn't all that strong a field, in spite of the distinguished company.

  But we were feeling quite happy, my brothers and I; we'd won one event, I'd been placed in another, and we had our secret weapon for the biggest event of all. Our sister Actis was going to run in the chariot-race.

  Well, maybe it was asking for trouble; but even if we'd tried to stop her, we wouldn't have done any good. As it was, we managed to persuade her to dress up and hide her hair under a hat. In an old tunic and cloak of Lycomedes', she looked just like a man, thanks to her deep tan, bad girl's arms and excessive height. We announced her as Acteus, a cousin of ours from the hill country, and I don't think even Father guessed what was going on.

  It was one hell of a field; there was an Athenian called Hippocleides who was the clear favourite, but if I hadn't known about our sister I'd have gone for either Phorcys or Hephaestodorus, the Corinthians, even though they were obviously having to run borrowed horses and chariots. I'd heard a few things about them from some of the Athenians I knew slightly. By all accounts, they relied more on technique and good position than the quality of their outfits, so the fact they weren't running their own teams wouldn't make any serious odds. Hippocleides, on the other hand, was held not to be anything special as a driver, he just had an exceptional pair of horses and a chariot that had been boned right down, until one man could lift it right off the ground.

  The poor fools, I thought; because not only did Actis have the best pair of horses ever seen on Aegina - they looked like they were only fit for dog-food, but they drew together like they were two parts of the same animal - but she was also the canniest tactician who ever bored her brothers to sleep by chuntering on about inside lines, clipping curves and forcing the pace on the straight. No doubt about it:

  Actis could take both the Corinthians any day, blindfold and driving the miller's donkey. The only problem that we could see was how to lay heavy bets with the Athenians without making them suspicious.

  All told there were five chariots in the race - the two Corinthians, the Athenian, a neighbour of ours called Haemon, and Actis. That's a lot of chariots in a small space; but Actis wasn't bothered at all. She let the Athenian and one of the Corinthians, Hephaestodorus, do all the early work while she held back in third place (old Haemon wasn't really bothering) and secured the inside track. The other Corinthian, Phorcys, was clearly thinking along the same lines; but for some reason he was perfectly happy to let Actis lead him, and seemed to be content just to follow up her line exactly.

  As anticipated, Actis made her move at the turning-post- 'I'm terribly sorry,' said the Phoenician, 'but I'm not following any of this. What's a turning-post, and what's all this stuff about lines and tracks?'

  Cleander closed his eyes and opened then again. 'You don't have chariot-races in Phoenicia,' he said.

  'No.'

  'Fine. All right, the basic thing to bear in mind is the shape of the track. At the f
ar end there's a single marker, either a wooden post or a pile of stones. At the other end there's a line scratched in the dirt. First past the scratched line wins. But first they've got to go up one side of the track - imagine a skein of wool looped over a woman's hands, and her fingers are the two marks. You do have skeins of wool in Phoenicia, don't you?'

  'Yes.'

  'Splendid. So, they go up one side, round the turning-post, back down the other and across the line. Now, if you think about it, the chariot that goes on the far outside - furthest away from a line running up the dead centre of the track, if you like - has got further to go than the chariot running the innermost line; so the trick is to get on the inside, be the closest to the post at the halfway mark, and then hold the inside line all the way back to the finish. That way you've got less distance to cover, so you're more likely to win. Does that make any sense, or do you want me to explain it again?'

  'No,' the Phoenician muttered, 'that's just fine. You carry on.'

  Actis made her move at the turning-post (exactly as I told you just now), and put on speed to haul ahead of the Athenian and Hephaestodorus the Corinthian down the home straight, edging them off from the middle. She was doing just fine; the Athenian was outside the line anyway and had nothing much left in reserve, so it was just Hephaestodorus and her. But then the Corinthian, who'd let her push past him on the inside, tightened his line and jammed her right up against the middle while reining his horses back and slowing down. Actis had no choice but to slow down too; otherwise she'd have been pushed back off the track and into the stones and rubbish in the middle, which would've done her wheels and horses no good at all. While this was going on, of course, the other Corinthian, Phorcys, pulled out all the speed he'd been holding back, hauled round the both of them and went sailing ahead.

  They'd planned it all before the race, you could see that; though how they knew Actis was the one they'd have to take down, rather than the Athenian or Haemon, I couldn't say. Anyway, we were angry about it but there it was. Nothing to be done except grin and bear it.

  But our sister wasn't like that. She didn't cheat, and she didn't hold with other people cheating. So, instead of reining back like a good little girl, she sideswiped Hephaestodorus' chariot as it moved in on her, and gave the man himself a mouthful of goad to chew on.

  'Oh gods, now what's she doing?' I heard Ialmenus moan beside me; at which point Hephaestodorus let go of his reins to grab his busted jaw, and everything went horribly wrong. Exactly how it happened, what hit what, I couldn't tell you. If you want me to guess, I'd say either his reins fell under the hooves of her horses, or her wheel got lodged in front of his; anyway, the result was that both chariots went over, locked together, rolled; his boom snapped, but it was too late by then, the damage was done; and, to make matters worse, her team dragged the tangled mess another thirty paces before they slowed down.

  He was thrown out after his chariot turned over; he was dead when he hit the dirt, snapped neck. She wasn't so lucky. Because they were so close to the middle anyway, she got swiped against the sharp stones in the dead ground - like when a harness-maker shapes leather with a heavy-toothed rasp. I remember seeing her hair come out from under her hat, and one arm sticking out at the side, bent right back the wrong way.

  Actis was still alive when we got there, but the mess was so badly tangled that we couldn't get her out. There was a big spar of splintered wood right through her stomach, poking out the other side, and half her face had been wiped off on the stones. She tried to say something, but her jaw was shattered. We didn't dare move anything, she was so hopelessly caught up and pinned down, so much a part of the chaos. So we just sat on our heels and waited until she died.

  While we were waiting, we were sort of dimly aware of someone shouting and yelling in the background, but it wasn't until after she'd died and we were getting up, noticing the cramp in our knees, that we realised that the shouting was aimed at us, and it wasn't very friendly.

  Turned out to be the Corinthian, Phorcys. His brothers were holding his arms; he was straining, like an excited dog on its leash, trying to pull away and get at us. To begin with we couldn't imagine what he was so upset about; then we remembered, his brother had been killed too. He was howling something about murder and revenge; I thought, that's a point, I suppose, properly speaking he's responsible for her death, maybe we ought to do something about it - but it was a vague idea, too big and difficult to deal with at that precise moment, when we had other things on our minds and in our hearts. Then I realised: he meant that our sister had murdered his brother. Which was absurd.

  I wasn't in the right mood to argue the point; but my brother Lycomedes was. He jumped up and stalked over to face the Corinthian. What the hell was he talking about? If anybody was to blame it was Hephaestodorus, for cheating and recklessly dangerous driving. At that, this Phorcys struggled so hard he nearly got away from his brothers; that was an evil lie, he shouted, our sister had hit his brother with a goad; that was insult-with-injury-with-intent-to-degrade, reason enough for him to kill us all even if his brother wasn't lying all smashed up dead. Perhaps it was injudicious of my brother to pull a face and say, He was cheating, he had it coming; anyway, Phorcys got away from his brothers and made a grab for Lycomedes' throat. Another mistake; Lycomedes was the boxer, remember, and a moment later Phorcys was on his nose in the dust. Then things started to get out of hand.

  This really isn't the time, I remember thinking; but then one of the Corinthians tried to hit me with his walking-stick, and to tell you the truth I was glad of it; I suddenly had an opportunity to turn all that anger and horror and shock into a definite act, aimed against one specific person instead of the whole world and the gods. I hit him good, and he went over.

  Then some fool drew a sword. I'm not sure who, although I have a bad feeling it was me; but I can't remember for sure, because everything was confused and a mess, like a couple of chariots rolling together. Maybe that Corinthian got up and whacked me across the shoulders with his stick when I'd turned my back on him, and got me mad that way; if it was me, then some god clearly took away my wits and put madness in my heart. The next thing I remember for certain was the look on the Corinthian Axius' face; it shocked me so much I stopped what I was doing and took notice, and saw that we were all holding weapons, including me; and apparently I'd just cut Axius across the back of the left hand, because his fourth and fifth fingers were dangling by a strip of skin, and blood was draining out of him like water from a burst pipe.

  That stopped the fight, anyway; we were all too dazed and dizzy to move. Some Athenians bustled the Corinthians away; presumably they bound up Axius' hand before he bled to death. I remember asking a perfect stranger, 'Did I hit him?', but I can't remember what he told me, or whether he answered me at all.

  Anyway, that was the end of the games. The foreigners hung about for an hour or so, just standing in a group talking quietly. We got Actis' body and took it home, and didn't go out of doors again that day. Someone else must have cleaned up the mess, taken down the stand and the jumps and barriers and things, carted off the smashed chariots, seen to the horses. It's just as well that there are always people to take care of such things, or they'd never get done.

  We hardly said a word to each other that night, or the next day; it was a long time before talking returned to our house, and even then the race, the deaths, our sister were never mentioned. I think two of the maids turned out Actis' things from the upstairs room. I gathered later that some fool proposed holding games for her funeral, but luckily none of us got to hear of it, or there'd have been more blood shed.

  We burned her early one morning; just father, my brothers and me, not even our mother. It was something that had to be got out of the way, like a mistake covered up before the master gets home. I don't recall anybody saying out loud, From now on, she never existed; it somehow didn't need to be said. I tell you, it was the same sour mood that you get when a joke goes badly wrong, nobody laughs, someone gets angry or
hurt. You just want to forget about it and hope the grass will grow over it, as you might say.

  A couple of months later a herald arrived from Corinth. He looked absolutely terrified, as well he might; he was there, he said, to demand settlement for the life and honour of Hephaestodorus, who'd been shamed and murdered by our late sister.

  Father heard him out in complete silence, without moving a muscle. Then, when the poor fellow had said what he'd come to say, father sighed.

  'Get out,' he said.

  The herald did just that, quickly and efficiently, and we shoved the matter out of our minds.

  Well, a whole year went by. Most of the time we loafed about feeling bored, my brothers and I; somehow we didn't feel like games-playing any more, even hunting seemed like too much effort.

  My kid brother Hyrtacus got married, but it was a quiet wedding. Just after harvest, my wife said she wanted to go to visit her father on the other side of the island. It would only be for a month, she said, and she took our children with her. Two months later she sent a messenger to say that she'd be staying there a bit longer. I sent back that that was fine.