Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  'Can't be bothered,' the smith replied. 'And I got a whole heap of things to do. What the hell would I want to go to Argos for, anyway?'

  'To see the games,' piped up a voice from the corner. I looked round and saw a tiny little old man huddling in the far corner like a spider in a web. He was wrapped up in a tatty old cloak that was more holes than cloth, and the tip of his nose poked out over the top.

  'What games?' I asked.

  The old man laughed. 'It's true,' he said, 'they ain't from round here. The games, boy; the Argive games, in honour of Hera.'

  Cratus frowned. 'Who died?' he asked.

  This time the smith laughed too. 'Ain't nobody died,' the old man said, 'least, nobody I heard of. We don't wait for people to die in these parts 'fore we have games.'

  'Have 'em every year,' the smith said. 'Waste of time if you ask me, mind, all that effort and sweating and running about, and they don't actually do anything. So they can jump a finger higher than anybody else? So what?'

  'Every year,' I repeated.

  'That's right.'

  'And how long's this been going on for?' Cratus asked.

  The old man shrugged. 'Five years,' he said, 'maybe ten. Don't reckon as how they keep tallies.'

  Cratus and I looked at each other. 'And when are these games?' I asked.

  'Soon,' the smith replied. 'That's a job I got to do, make up a throwing-weight for some horse-taming git who's going to the games. Just a big lump of bronze, and a handle on it. Talk about a waste of good material.'

  I took a deep breath; it helps me keep my temper. 'When you say soon-'

  The old man scratched his nose. 'When the Pleiades set,' he said. 'Round the time honest folks are starting to plough. Damn foolish time to be away from home playing games, but that's Argos for you.'

  'And do many people go to the games?' I asked. 'People from away, I mean? Or is it just for the Argives?'

  The old man thought for a moment. 'Mostly just the Argos folks,' he said. 'Few from away - heard tell that one year they got folks from as far away as Asine and Troezen. But who'd go out of his way just to play games in a foreign city, right at the start of ploughing?'

  'Right,' Cratus said. 'It'd have to be someone with nothing to do and no brains to do it with.'

  The smith turned over the sickle and studied the rivets for a while. 'Where did you boys say you were from?' he asked.

  Well, we got out of there as soon as it was polite to leave, and headed back the way we'd come.

  'To the crows with it,' I snarled, as soon as we were away from the village. 'That just about ruins everything.'

  Cratus looked at me. 'You reckon?' he said.

  'Well, of course. This big idea of mine, it isn't new at all.

  According to that old fool in there, they've been having games-with-nobody-dead in Argos for ten years.'

  'True,' Cratus replied. 'But we didn't know that.'

  'Well, of course we didn't. If we did we wouldn't be here, wasting our time.'

  Cratus frowned. 'You're missing the point,' he said. 'We didn't know. Nobody else we've met so far has known. As the man said, it's only a few Argives and the occasional off comer - guest-friends of the Argive princes, probably.'

  'So?'

  'So,' Cratus said patiently, 'if nobody knows about it, it doesn't matter.'

  'What?'

  'Oh, for crying out loud.' Cratus sat down and pulled me down with him. 'Think about it,' he said. 'What's the difference between something happening that nobody knows about, and the same thing not happening at all?'

  'What?'

  'All right, I'll use shorter words. Suppose we'd never come here, right? And suppose for some reason we missed out Argos and went straight on to Corinth. We'd never have heard of these Argive games. Neither would anybody else. As far as all of us are concerned, they might just as well not exist.

  'But we know they exist,' I pointed out.

  'Really? What if the old bugger was lying? Making it up?'

  'Why should he want to do a thing like that?'

  'That's not the point,' Cratus said angrily. 'The point is, we've only got his word for it. Nobody else knows - nobody who matters. And if nobody knows, then it's all right. Something nobody knows about might as well not exist. It's really very simple when you think about it.'

  I thought about that for a moment. 'You mean,' I said, 'we shouldn't tell anybody, even though we do know? We should pretend-'

  'Yes.'

  'Oh.' I shrugged. 'All right, then,' I said. 'We'll do that.'

  Cratus grinned at me. 'Well done,' he said. 'Now, look on the bright side, will you? It proves it can be done. It proves that people will go to games where nobody's died.'

  I lifted my head. 'That doesn't help us,' I said. 'We aren't telling anybody, remember?'

  'That's not the point-'

  'Yes it is,' I insisted. 'We can't go around saying, Come to the games in Elis where nobody's died, they're just like the ones in Argos. And they say, Oh, do they have games in Argos where nobody's died? And we say, no, of course not. No help at all.'

  Cratus looked at me. 'You know,' he said, 'the fact that you and I are brothers never ceases to amaze me. Your very existence accuses our mother of adultery. Nevertheless, I will try to explain. The fact that these games have succeeded, that they've managed to keep them going for ten years, suggests to me that the very idea of games where nobody's died isn't quite as bone-headed stupid as I thought it was when you first suggested it. I find that a great comfort.'

  'Do you,' I said.

  'Yes.'

  'I see. You won't believe me, but you'll believe a bunch of Argives you've never met, and an old fart you got talking to in a smithy.'

  He smiled. 'Of course,' he said. 'I'm your brother.'

  I was about to say something about that when I noticed the expression on Cratus' face. Anybody could tell that the god had just put something into his mind. Now, I wasn't in the mood to listen to Cratus trying to be funny, but you'd be a fool not to listen to a god. 'What?' I asked.

  'I've just had an idea,' Cratus replied. 'These games.'

  'Yes?'

  'Well, if they're when the Pleiades set, that's no more than a week or so away. We could go.'

  I didn't follow. 'Go where?'

  'To the games, of course. Oh, come on, brother, even you aren't that slow. Where better to find games-players who'll be prepared to go to games where nobody's died, than games where nobody's died?'

  'But I thought you just said-'

  'Right,' said Cratus, standing up. 'That's settled, then.'

  CHAPTER NINE

  'Just a moment,' said the Phoenician. 'I've been to Argos, several times. I never heard of anything like that.'

  Cleander looked surprised. 'Really?' he said. 'That's odd. I suppose they must have stopped holding them there at some stage over the last fifteen years. After all, just because they did something once doesn't mean they'll carry on doing it for ever.'

  'Even so,' the Phoenician said, 'I'd have thought someone would have mentioned it.'

  'Why?' Cratus asked. 'I mean, I don't suppose you ever asked.'

  The Phoenician nodded. 'That's right, I didn't. But didn't we agree a while back, the whole point of games is so that people who are good at them get remembered? That's not likely to happen if nobody talks about them.'

  'Maybe they only talk about them if you ask,' someone suggested.

  'All right; but first you've got to know to ask; and if you know already, why bother to ask?'

  Nobody appeared to have an answer to that. Finally Palamedes said, 'So, what exactly are you saying?'

  The Phoenician looked uncertain. 'I'm not sure,' he said. 'I was just pointing out that if the reason for having games is to be remembered and so cheat death, the Argives were wasting their time.'

  'Maybe they were,' Palamedes agreed. 'Of course, the same thing goes for anything a man does to try to get himself remembered. Take war, for example; you could have a wonderfully brave and str
ong man who fights to the death surrounded by hundreds of the enemy, kills half of them before he dies himself, makes it possible for his king to escape or his people to close the city gates in time. But nobody on his side was watching, and the enemy aren't likely to tell stories about a man who made them look like a bunch of idiots. All that effort and heroism, for nothing. Maybe it was the same with the games at Argos - they did their best, but nobody was interested. Or,' he went on, 'take you and your patterns-scratched-on-waxed-boards. You could scratch down records of all sorts of wonderful things, but how are you going to make sure people ever look at them? You can't.' He shook his head. 'And you know, when I think about that it makes me wonder. You'd think someone - the gods, I suppose, there's nobody else could do it - you'd think the gods would see to it that the more splendid a man's deeds are, the more people will hear about him and remember him. But it doesn't seem to work that way. I remember a man when I was a kid, he could lift this enormous great big stone that the smith used as an anvil, Lift it clean off the ground, he could; but I can't remember his name or anything else about him, while I know all about Theseus of Athens, who first got famous for lifting a big stone. What if my man's stone was bigger and heavier? There's no justice in that.'

  The company around the table looked at him, as if wondering where all this was leading. Nowhere, apparently, because Palamedes tilted his cup, found it empty, and shouted for the jug.

  Well (said Crams, after Palamedes' cup had been filled), you just heard my brother, who seemed to reckon I was suggesting something odd, possibly bad. That's the difference between him and me. I thought it was just common sense.

  After all, as I said to the others when we got back to the camp in the woods, if you're looking for a ploughshare, you go to a smith; you don't wander through the villages on the off chance that someone might have a spare they don't want tucked up in the rafters. If you want games-players, go to the games.

  'Seems reasonable to me,' Sarpedon said. 'Only thing is, what's to stop them telling everybody about the games in Argos? If they do that, everybody'll be in on the secret, and we'll all look like fools.'

  'Not necessarily,' I replied. 'Besides, does it really matter that we didn't have the idea first? As I see it, our job is to make sure that we get as many games-players to go to our games as possible. Once we've done that, anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault.'

  'Dusa?' Cleander asked. 'What do you think?'

  Dusa looked round. 'Sorry,' she said. 'What were we talking about?'

  Cleander and I looked at each other; got it worse than we thought, our hearts said to each other. 'These games in Argos,' Cleander said. 'Did you get that bit?'

  'Yes,' Dusa said. 'Cratus thinks we should go. I agree with him. Stands to reason.'

  'Oh.' Cleander sighed. 'All right then, we'll go. If we make a diversion and go to Asine first, then head back to Argos from there, we should arrive just in time.'

  'Excuse me,' said Pentheus.

  We'd forgotten - Cleander and Sarpedon and I had forgotten -all about him. 'What?' I asked.

  'Sorry to be a nuisance,' he said, 'but I'd really rather not go to Argos while these games are on. You never know, the Corinthians might be there, if they have foreign games-players. I don't want to run into them. And if not them, maybe there'll be people who know them, or know me.'

  Cleander looked angry. 'That's not on at all,' he said. 'We're here to find games-players, remember. We aren't going to manage that by skulking around in the dark with our cloaks over our faces.'

  'Pentheus is right,' said Dusa firmly. 'It's too dangerous. We can't go.'

  Cleander made a rude noise. 'Then we might as well go home,' he said. 'Look, if we go about calling on kings and princes, and this man's the surviving Prince of Aegina, then yes, there's a risk someone's going to recognise him.'

  'You're all missing the point,' Sarpedon said. 'It's not as if we can just dump Pentheus and be rid of all our problems. Oh, we can dump him all right - might be a good idea, at that - but it won't change the fact that we fought and killed his enemies, which means that his enemies are now our enemies. Now he's not the only one who's got to be careful where he goes and what he does.'

  That really depressed us all. I mean, the god had put the same thought in all our minds, but we'd ignored it because it didn't taste nice. Now we had to deal with it.

  'End of discussion, then,' Dusa said. 'We go home.'

  A part of me - the sensible part, I suppose - was very much inclined to agree with this suggestion. Unfortunately, it was outnumbered and shouted down. Why? Well, the first thought that occurred to me was that if Dusa was allowed to take her new pet home, like a kid who finds a bird with a damaged wing out on the hill, next thing we knew she'd be married to him, and we'd have to support the rogue for the rest of his life. I didn't want that.

  'No, we don't,' I therefore said. 'Don't even think about it. We've come this far, we're going on. For gods' sakes,' I continued, as my brother and uncle stared at me as if I was out of my head, 'are you suggesting we ought to scurry home and hide under the bed the rest of our lives, just in case some nasty men come looking for us? I don't think so. More to the point,' I added, 'how is anybody supposed to know that it was us who killed those people? We got them all, didn't we? If anybody comes up and accuses us of killing them, we just look blank and deny everything. But I can't see that happening unless they plan to waylay every party of travellers in the Peloponnese.'

  Cleander rubbed his eyes; he looked tired. 'But what if they catch us with him?' he said, pointing at Pentheus - very bad manners, don't you think? 'They may not know us, but-'

  'Who's to say we didn't meet him later, after somebody else killed those people? All right, they may not believe us; but anybody who's rational enough to stop and ask questions is also going to be rational enough not to risk getting involved in an unnecessary feud by harming strangers when they can't be sure they're picking on the right men. Besides, it's him they want. And if the situation arises, we hand him over and go on our way.'

  Of course, Dusa made a hell of a fuss about that; but for once we didn't allow her to bully us. After all, there were three of us, grown men, against one girl - close odds, but still in our favour.

  'Look,' I said to her, 'this is the deal. Either we dump him now, or we take him with us, reserving the right to dump him later. Which would you rather?'

  She scowled like the Gorgon and didn't say anything, which experience has taught me means, Oh, all right then, in female. So that was settled.

  We went to Asine.

  We'd now reached the stage familiar to all you seasoned travellers where one city starts looking pretty much like another. You know how it is; first time away from home, you start off thinking how wonderfully different everything is - gods, you say to yourself, in these parts they roof their cattle-stalls with osiers and have an entirely different way of lacing their boots, isn't this incredible? And after a while, once you've trudged far enough and seen enough of the cities of mortal men, you tend only to notice the similarities, the basic shapes that are common to all human settlements - here's the city gate, here's the square, here's the well, here's the palace wall, big deal. I don't know if either way of seeing things is right, or better than the other, although you could say that since the latter view comes with age and experience, it ought to be wiser and therefore more valid. But I don't know. Don't care much, either.

  We might have been more aware of our surroundings if Asine hadn't been such a dump. It was a small, fairly new city. The wall was low and rather shoddily built, a bit bowed and out of true in places. The houses were small, too. The people we saw in the streets wore plain, old clothes. The palace would have been a medium-sized barn in Sparta. The two princes seemed pleased to have company; our presents actually impressed them, but what we got in return was low-grade locally made rubbish. There was something about the place that was extremely and depressingly familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it at first.

  The
n I realised what it was. Asine was just like Elis.

  I suppose it's only to be expected when you've been away for any length of time. The further from home you get, the harder it becomes to remember who you are.

  Prince Demodocus, the younger and chattier of the two princes, thought the idea of a huge and magnificent games-with-nobody-dead was quite wonderful; like the Argive games, he said, only bigger and better. We nodded and looked grave, like a nestful of owls. Prince Demodocus explained that although he was a moderately good archer and boxer, the best games-player in Asine wasn't a prince, or even a son of one of the Better Houses; his name was Sclerus, and he'd just shown up at the door one day looking sad. Eventually he'd come out with a tragic story about being a nobleman's son in Crete who'd been abducted by Tyrian pirates - no offence, friend, I'm just telling you what he told us - and sold as a slave in Corinth; after a few years, he'd run away and come south, making his living as a day-labourer, which is probably a worse hardship than slavery - you serve many masters, not just one, and you don't have the slave's security of knowing you'll be fed come nightfall. The princes weren't too sure about harbouring a runaway; but then they reflected that it was all right because, after all, the man was a prince in his own country. So they asked him if he felt like staying with them for a month or so, to get a good rest and eat a few solid meals. That had been five years ago.

  But it didn't matter (said the princes) because, for one, he was a prince in his own country, and also he was an absolute prodigy when it came to running, jumping, throwing weights and wrestling - which of course proved that his story about his royal origins was true, because nobody who's not of the better sort can be good at games; known fact.

  Far from being a pest (they said), this Sclerus had become one of the most admired and popular men in Asine, all because of his wonderful ability to run, jump, throw things and damage people in the name of healthy fun. Crowds gathered to watch him practise. Girls wanted to marry him. Young men invited him on boar-hunts. Needless to say (the princes added), he was still very sad, what with being a stranger in a foreign land, deprived of his rightful inheritance; but it was a real credit to him that he managed to stay so cheerful all the time, especially when he was invited to someone's house for dinner. The ability to smile in the midst of misfortune, the princes said, is the unmistakable mark of the true man of quality.