Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  I can't remember exactly how the subject came up. All I remember was, someone (may have been me) had said something about

  Mycenae, how we'd expected to see something there if it was such a famous city in the old days. Glycus grinned like a thirsty dog and passed the jug round.

  'I can tell you a thing or two about the old city,' he said, 'if you're minded to listen. But I don't reckon you'll believe it.'

  At that stage in the evening, we weren't all that fussed about truth. 'Try us,' said Cratus. 'You never know, we might surprise you yet. Some of us,' he added, 'will believe anything.'

  Glycus laughed. 'All right,' he replied. 'But don't you go getting mad at me if you figure I'm trying to give you short measure.'

  When I was nothing but a little kid (Glycus said), my grandfather, who was an old man then, asked me to give him a hand with shearing his six or eight raggety old sheep he used to keep up on the rough side there; ain't nothing but rocks, now as then, and it's a long walk there and back again. But I was young, didn't have nothing better to do; so I went with him, helped him pen up those old sheep and held 'em down while he did the shearing - he was the best shearer I ever did see, he could take off a fleece whole in the time you or I'd take to prune back a vine. Anyhow, he was mighty glad of the help, and when we got back home he said he'd give me something for my trouble. Now, it hadn't been no trouble; but nobody but a fool ever said no to a present, and I knew the old man still had a thing or two stashed away in a big old trunk in the upper room, that nobody but he was allowed to look in. Naturally, this made me and my brothers mighty curious to know what was in there, so you can guess how keen I was to have something out of that old box.

  He went away and came back with a bit of old rag, all waxed up with wool-grease, wrapped round a short dagger. I tell you, my eyes nearly bust out of my head looking at it - I didn't have any kind of knife of my own, and this wasn't just a knife, it was one hell of a thing. There was gold, real gold, on the handle, and pictures made of gold and white and blue stone cut into the blade; there was two men fighting on one side, and a man in a chariot stabbing a lion on the other.

  'Is that really for me?' I asked, and the old man said, Yes, it was. Reckoned he'd always meant for me to have it, soon as I was old enough to take care of it properly; he'd had it from his grandfather when he was a boy, and he'd had it from his grandfather, and the gods only knew how far back it had gone like that. 'Kind of like a tradition,' the old man said. 'And when you've got a grandson of your own, always supposing he's any good, mind you give it to him the same way.'

  (And I did, too; gave it to Mossus here the year before last, and if he's lost it or given it away, he's got the wit not to have told me about it.)

  'Another thing goes with it,' grandfather went on, 'is a story; and you can't have the one without the other. You still want the knife, son?'

  I nodded like crazy, because of course I wanted that knife, and I liked grandfather's old stories too. 'Sure,' I said. 'I'd really like that.'

  He gave me a big toothy smile. 'You're a good boy,' he said. 'Well, this is the story, and it goes back at least as far as the knife does, maybe even further. See, that knife came from Mycenae -that's what they used to call the old city that's gone now, buried under the hill. You heard any stories about the city, son?'

  I shook my head. 'Not really,' I said. 'Dad told me once about King Agamemnon and going to Troy, but that's not really about the city, Agamemnon just lived there.'

  He nodded. 'That's the truth,' he said. 'But this story's not about him or his time; it's a good few years after that, when the Sons of the Achaeans first came into these parts.'

  'That's us,' I said.

  'You bet. But the folks who lived in the old city, they weren't Sons of the Achaeans - least, they spoke the same tongue as we do, more or less, but they were different in a whole lot of ways. Cleverer, they reckon, and richer, and lived a whole lot longer than we do - because they were closer to the Golden Age, I guess, so they hadn't got so much bad in them.'

  I reckon I must have looked like I didn't follow, because he stopped and said, 'You ain't heard about the Golden Age?' and I said no, I hadn't. So he told me; how when the gods first made men it was the age of gold, and folks lived hundreds of years and never got sick, and they didn't have to work hardly at all, just picked fruit from the trees, and all the rivers ran with honey. But they turned wicked in time, though not so wicked as we are, and the gods took away the age of gold and turned it into the age of silver, which wasn't so good as the last one but still pretty good, considering. Folks still lived a long time and didn't get sick often, and though they had to do a little bit of work, it wasn't much. And they were all wise and didn't fall out or fight or steal. Now, grandfather reckoned that age of silver was when they built the old city, and those silver men were the ones who lived there; and he reckoned that the age of bronze, which is where we're at now, was when the Sons of the Achaeans came into the Peloponnese from the north; which would be around the time this story comes from.

  Anyway, the old man told me that his great-great-grandfather, or however many greats it was, he was a boy when they came this way, travelling in big old ox-carts as high as a house for years on end, never stopping in any one place above a year. Now, being curious, I asked the old man if they were the ones who buried the old city, which is what someone told me once - that the Sons of the Achaeans drove out the wild men from the city and buried it so they'd never come back. But grandfather lifted his head.

  'That's what people say,' he told me, 'but it isn't so. Truth is, the only reason why those old Achaeans kept moving on is because the old-city folks kept throwing them off their land and pushing them away; they were strong and powerful, we weren't nothing but simple folk, didn't understand about war and fighting. It was the same here; the King of Mycenae told us we couldn't stay in these parts, we'd have to move on, but since it was late in the season already when we arrived here, he said we could spend the winter here and take off come the spring. Well, we didn't mind that, it was better than trying to cross the mountains in the cold weather, and it was more kindness than we'd come to expect. We halted the wagons and put out our stock where we were told we could graze them, and settled in for the winter.

  'Before the winter came, though, word reached the king that there were wars going on all round - north, east and west, and nobody knew who in hell the enemy was. It wasn't our people, the Achaeans, nor theirs; it was people from across the Sea, who'd come over in ships from away somewhere, and all they cared about was gold and silver and metal, things they could steal and take home in their ships. Now, at first the king didn't pay no heed to these stories; but then he heard from a cousin of his that some of these people from the Sea had marched right up under the walls of Tiryns and burned it to the ground, just to get the gold and stuff and because they really didn't hold with cities much.

  'That worried him, sure enough; so he called up all his men and set them to guarding the gates and the walls, and in due course the enemy came. Never did find out who they were or where they were from; never did find a way to beat them, either. Now, our people took to the hills as soon as they heard these folks were coming, and they had the wit not to come out again till after they'd gone. All they found was ashes and cinders and fallen stones; there were places, the old man told me, where the fire got so hot it melted the stone into glaze, and it was all clear and shiny like black water. They didn't find a single man alive; just a few old women and some dogs. That was where my great-however-many-times-grandfather picked up this pretty knife; it was lying under a dead man in a fallen-down building, where the roof-timbers had fallen on him and stopped him getting burned up.

  'Anyhow; the enemy never came back this way, though folks from away told us they'd showed up in other parts of the Peloponnese, Pylos and Asine and Sparta; tried to burn Athens, but the Athenians managed to drive them away. By all accounts, they were the only ones that did. It wasn't all at once, mind - they'd come and burn one or tw
o cities a year and then go home again, and some years they went to the islands, or across to Egypt or Syria or Phoenicia, burning cities there till folks reckoned that pretty soon there wouldn't be any more cities left for them to burn. And all this time, nobody ever said they'd met one of these people, or spoken to them, or even seen one up close; nobody ever found out what they called themselves, or what things were like at home that they felt the need to come out burning and killing. All anybody ever called them was the raiders, or the pirates, or the bastards from the Sea.

  'Well, when it seemed like it was safe enough, our folks moved down into the valleys and started building houses and walls, clearing the fields and planting out vines and trees. That's how we got started in these parts, and we've been here ever since. I did hear tell once as it was the King of Egypt who finally put a stop to all the raiding and burning, when all of those raiders ganged up and attacked him; he fought a great battle against them in the middle of the sea, fighting on ships like they were dry land, and all of them as wasn't killed were drowned. Maybe so; or maybe they just got tired of being away from home, or the famine ended, or they went off somewhere far away; maybe they're still out there somewhere, all ready to come back again, soon as we've learned how to build cities as big and fine as the old ones. I don't know. But I'll tell you this: it's something that's been in my heart all these years, and I never knew what to make of it. You think about all the tales you hear, about great heroes and mighty Sons of the Achaeans, and the great kings of Sparta and Argos and Mycenae; and Hercules, too, and Perseus, and all the famous men we remember to this day. If what my own grandfather told me is true - and he'd got no reason to lie that I can see - then how can all those stories be true as well? How come they don't tell about these city-burners? And how could Agamemnon be a Son of the Achaeans when Mycenae was burned down and buried in the ashes before we ever came to live there? Hell, even if any of the stories are true, which I'm inclined to doubt, they must be stories about the old-city folks, not our people - and if that's right, how did we ever get to hear them, since most of those folks were killed, and the few that was left we drove out into the hills and made into wild men? You don't push a man off his land and at the same time ask him about what his great-great-grandfather did.'

  So, my grandfather told me, that's the story that goes with this knife; he told me to believe it or not as I pleased, and I'm telling you the same thing. Me, I believe it, because I've been to the old city and dug and poked about, and seen where there's ashes and charred timbers, just like he said, and the bones of dead men; but no gold or silver or anything like that, which you'd expect to find in great palaces such as those people built. Hell, if you want I'll take you there and you can see for yourselves, though it's a powerful sad place. It's all still there, and what's in the earth can't lie.

  So that's that (Glycus said); and when folks like you come here, telling me they're lost noblemen and by rights they're princes in their own country - well, I think of the old burned city and the wild men, and my heart tells me it doesn't matter what the crows eat who you were or who you should be, or who you reckon you might have been if things had gone different; doesn't matter much more who you will be, when you're dead and somebody remembers your name, because most of that's just tall tales and comfort. All that matters, I reckon, is who you are now, what you can do with your hands and what you carry round with you; which is why you're in here sharing the wine with me, and not out there in the dark with the old dead heroes and the goats.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  'Actually,' the Phoenician interrupted, 'he was right.' He realised that everybody was staring at him, as if he were a chariot race. 'What I mean is,' he went on, 'I went to Egypt once, a long time ago now, and while I was there the people I was doing business with took me to see the great temple - one of the great temples anyway, they have rather a lot of them scattered about the place. Anyway, on the walls of this temple were carved pictures of an amazing-looking battle actually fought on the decks of ships, just like your friend told you about. When I asked the people I was with what the picture was meant to be, they told me it showed the Great King of Egypt utterly defeating his enemies. Well, that didn't help much - all the carvings on all the walls in Egypt show the Great King defeating enemies, even when everybody knows for a fact that he lost that particular battle and ran home and hid under his bed for the next two years. But I asked them if they could tell me more and they said, Yes, it was all in the -' (here he used that word again, the one the Sons of the Achaeans didn't know) '- under the pictures. So I asked what it meant and they-'

  'Excuse me,' Palamedes interrupted. 'Are we talking about scratched squiggles again?'

  'That's right,' the Phoenician said.

  'Well, you people understand squiggles; why did you have to ask what they meant?'

  The Phoenician could feel a headache coming on. 'Different squiggles,' he explained. 'In Egypt they have an entirely different system of [that word again] which we can't understand, just as they can't make out ours.'

  There was a moment of silence. Then somebody sniggered.

  'Sorry if I'm being a bit slow here,' Palamedes said, 'but if not everybody can understand them, doesn't that defeat the whole object of the exercise? I thought the idea was that anybody looking at the squiggles would know-'

  'Any Phoenician,' the Phoenician said with a sigh. 'Or, if they're Egyptian squiggles-'

  'I see,' Palamedes went on. 'And those ones you were showing me earlier, they're Phoenician squiggles?'

  'That's right.'

  'Which only Phoenicians can understand?'

  'Well, yes. But-'

  'So even if we were to learn how to make the squiggles, like you said we should, only you Phoenicians would know what they meant?'

  'In a sense, yes. However-'

  'Assuming, of course, that there's enough Phoenicians who care about what happened long ago in Elis to bother with it.'

  'I-'

  'Or even enough of you who have the faintest idea where Elis is. Right, thanks for clearing that up for me. Do go on with what you were telling us.'

  The Phoenician wasn't sure he wanted to now; but it'd have been rude to sulk. 'All I was saying was,' he continued, 'the Egyptians told me what the squiggles said, and it was an account of how this king had fought a battle against a huge army of savages from across the sea who'd been going around burning and looting all the great cities of Asia. So yes, what that old man told you was true; they must have existed, and it was the Egyptians who put a stop to it. And if that part of the story's true-'

  'Doesn't follow the rest of it is,' someone interrupted. 'No offence, but what you saw on the stones, that could've been a lie, just as what the old man told Cratus and Cleander could've been a lie. Maybe it was the same lie, even, and both of them had got it from the same place.'

  'Besides,' someone else put in, 'you're only going on what these Egyptians told you. Isn't it possible that they couldn't understand the squiggles and were telling you some old tale they heard from someone else who pretended he'd got it from his great-great-great-great-grandfather? You've no actual way of knowing, have you?'

  'He's right,' Palamedes said. 'The Egyptians apparently say one thing. The Sons of the Achaeans tell it a different way. What makes you automatically assume that they've got it right and we've got it wrong?'

  The Phoenician thought for a moment. 'Well,' he said, 'you're just going on what you remember being told, years and years later. The Egyptians told me the carvings were put up in the king's lifetime. Surely the carvings are more likely to be right, for that very reason.'

  Cratus smiled. 'But you said yourself,' he pointed out, 'a lot of the king's victories and great deeds carved on the walls weren't true; and everybody knew this, I'm assuming because their grandfathers told them what they were told when they were kids. You see the point I'm making here: even the Egyptians have more faith in their memories than the squiggles, because they know the squiggles sometimes lie. Well, if they don't trust the
ir own squiggles, why exactly should we?'

  'But...' The Phoenician was beginning to wish he hadn't raised the subject in the first place. 'I only thought I'd mention it,' he said. 'I thought you'd be interested, that's all.'

  Palamedes smiled at him. 'There's interesting,' he said, 'and there's telling us we aren't who we think we are and the people we think we're descended from never existed. If that's what your squiggles teach you, I think we'll make do with our memories, what's in our heads and hearts. Much more of this knowledge of yours and we won't know anything at all.'

  'Anyway,' Cleander said, yawning and getting to his feet, 'I've been sat here long enough; I think I'll go and sit in the sun for a bit. I don't need to hear the next bit of the story,' he added, 'I know it, because I was there. Unless, of course, my memory's starting to play tricks.'

  So there we were (Gratus said), just like my brother's told you. Somehow, we'd decided that the best way to get back to Elis was to go on to Corinth. A good idea at the time, as you might say.

  The old man gave us more than enough food and wine to see us to Corinth; I have no idea why, unless for some reason he'd decided he liked us. Or maybe it was by way of compensation for making us listen to that damn fool story.

  Now, I've met some travellers over the years; men who've been on a long journey, and real, genuine travellers. You can tell them apart quite easily. Put them down in the middle of some great and wonderful city they've never been to before. Your not-really-travellers will walk around all morning with their heads jammed right back, gawping at the arches and the gateways and the tall buildings; but you'll find your true travellers sitting in the shade somewhere, not particularly fussed about what they see or don't see, happier taking a rest while they can and talking to each other about home.

  By the time we reached Corinth, we were real travellers. Shortly before we reached the city, we'd all started arguing about what we were going to do when we got back - what we were going to say to the king, whether we might possibly have recruited enough games-players already to be able to put on some kind of a show, whether any of the men who'd said they'd come would actually turn up. We were so busy arguing that we hardly noticed walking through the city gates or through the streets. In fact, we went straight through and out the other side, heading down to the harbour, without realising what we'd done.