Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  'No,' Callipous says wretchedly. 'Look, what's the problem? It's a good ship. We hauled her up at the start of the season and checked her over, there's nothing wrong with her that we could see. Have you spotted something we haven't, or what?'

  The young man smiles sadly. 'Friend,' he says, 'what we've seen, you couldn't ever hope to see. And if you could, you really wouldn't want to.'

  By now, Callipous is beside himself with apprehension; you can almost see his heart bobbing up and down, like it's trying to get out. 'Oh, come on,' he says, 'you can't just say something like that and walk away. What is all this?'

  The older man steps forward, as if he's trying to stop his young friend from saying something he shouldn't. The other two men are looking very thoughtful indeed. The girl is starting to snuffle. 'I'm sorry,' the young man says, looking genuinely upset. 'I'd tell you if I could, but... Well, there's my advice. Take it or leave it.

  He starts to walk away, but Callipous darts in front of him, so the young man would have to shove him aside to get past.

  'No,' he says. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Tell me,' Callipous pleads. 'Please.'

  You can see the struggle going on between the young man and his heart; finally, his heart wins and he says, 'All right. But if you breathe a word of this-'

  'No!' shouts the older man, grabbing his shoulder. The young man spins round and for a moment it looks like they're going to start fighting; then the older man slowly backs away.

  'I promise,' Callipous says fervently. 'By the River. Honest.'

  'All right.' The young man sighs; and he tells the wretched ship-master that the young woman - apparently young woman - is in fact none other than the Titaness Pandora; and the jar she's carrying is, well, Pandora's jar. Callipous' jaw flops open as if someone had just cut the tendons, but he doesn't say anything, he just stares. Pandora, the young man continues, is trying to round up all the plagues and evils and horrible things she was stupid enough to let out of the jar all those years ago; it's taken her a hundred years just to snaffle one minor variant of plague, and the trouble is, every time she opens the jar to put something back, something else pops out again. Still, it's the job the gods have given her to do, and she's got to keep at it till it's done.

  'That's awful,' Callipous mumbles.

  'You can say that again,' the young man says. 'And if you ask me, it's even worse for us. You see, we're her mortal descendants; she's my great-great-great-great-grandmother, believe it or not, and it's up to us to spend our whole lives helping her. I mean, look at us; destitute, in rags, spending our whole lives trudging from place to place with no end to it in sight; and what did we do wrong? Nothing.'

  Obviously Callipous agrees that it's a rotten shame. 'But what about my ship?' he says. 'What's my ship got to do with Pandora's jar?'

  The young man gives him a very severe look. 'You want to know how your ship's involved in all this? All right. But first you've got to promise me, if I tell you, you'll do what I say.'

  Callipous doesn't like that but he can't see any alternative. 'Go on,' he says.

  'There's a singularly nasty and destructive plague nesting in your ship,' the young man says. 'Which is why the only thing you can possibly do is sail it a couple of hundred paces out to sea and set it on fire. No other way, I'm afraid.'

  Callipous looks heartbroken - well, he would. That ship represents a substantial part of his wealth; to lose it, just like that - But on the other hand, a plague... 'Can't she just go on board and catch it?' he says. 'I thought you said that's what she does.'

  The young man shakes his head. 'Too dangerous,' he replies. 'You see, if she drives it off the ship while you're in harbour, the horrible thing's quite liable to fly out over the town like a startled partridge, and then you'll have the deaths of every man, woman and child in Corinth on your conscience. I don't think you'd like that, somehow. On the other hand, if you get on that ship and sail it anywhere, you'll get the plague and die yourself. No, the only thing for it is to burn the ship, and just hope that'll kill the plague. It's a real long shot, but it might just work.'

  Callipous is nearly in tears by this point. 'What about her?' he says. 'If she's a Titaness, like you said, the plague can't hurt her, surely.'

  'Oh, she's all right,' the young man says, 'and so are we; it's an inherited immunity. But that's not going to do you any good, is it? Well, that's the whole story. Now you'd better do what you promised, and burn the ship. You ought to be all right taking it out into the middle of the harbour; usually the plague doesn't strike immediately. Depends on whether it's asleep or awake, of course.'

  'I've got a better idea,' Callipous says, shivering. 'Why don't you take the ship and sink it? You'll be all right, you just said.'

  The young man looks astonished. 'Us?' he says. 'What the hell makes you think we know anything about ships? Besides, you're the one who promised.'

  'Please,' Callipous says desperately. 'After all, it's your plague. Surely it's up to you to deal with it.'

  The young man bites his lip and his mouth twitches as he talks the idea over with his heart. 'Oh, all right,' he says eventually. 'I suppose it's up to us, we can't ask you to risk your life in our battle. I'll tell the others; though they really aren't going to like it.

  Then there's a long, seemingly acrimonious discussion between the young man and his companions; at the end of which the young man nods to Callipous - yes, they'll do it. He looks like he's just been saved from drowning.

  'That's wonderful,' he says. 'Right, I'll just get my gear off the ship, and then she's all yours.'

  'Oh no you don't,' the young man says. 'For all we know, the plague's already laid its eggs all over your cargo. No, that's got to go down to the bottom of the bay, just like the ship. Otherwise there'd be no point, and the deal's off.'

  Callipous looks sad for a tiny splinter of a heartbeat; then his heart tells him, Bugger the cargo, your life's at stake here. 'You go ahead,' he says, 'do whatever you have to. Just get rid of the crow-struck thing.'

  Which is how we came to acquire a ship of our very own.

  I'd been sceptical when Pentheus told us he knew how to work a ship - comes of being an islander, he told us; pretty well everybody on Aegina knows about ships - but credit where it's due, he certainly knew his stuff. It was a pity, though, that he was such a bad shipmaster - he knew what had to be done and how to do it, he was just lousy at explaining. Since he was down the back end holding on to the steering stick - don't look at me like that, friend; you people may spend all your lives on boats and know the technical terms, but I don't, and I'm the one telling the story - since Pentheus was working the rudder (you see? I knew it really), he couldn't leave his post to show us how to do all the ropes and stuff; all he could do was shout at us until, by a process of elimination, we managed to do what he wanted.

  It didn't help matters that we were all horribly seasick; apart from Pentheus, of course. If he'd had enough tact to fill a small acorn cup, he'd at least have pretended to groan and make a show of leaning over the side making horrible noises from time to time, instead of lounging about in the bows scowling at us as if we were children making a fuss over nothing.

  'When he said there was an evil spirit on board this ship,' Dusa gasped, as she scoured the dregs out of an already empty stomach, 'I thought he was kidding.'

  'You wait,' I replied, 'till the wind gets up. They do say that when there's a storm blowing, the movement of the ship can make some people a trifle queasy.'

  'Shut up,' Dusa replied, reasonably enough; and just then, some unkind sea-monster grabbed hold of the ship from underneath and rocked it up and down, and I had other things on my mind than squabbling with my kid sister.

  'You two,' bellowed Pentheus, 'I thought I told you to make those lines fast. Come on, or we'll lose the damned sail!'

  I didn't reply - I wasn't capable of speech just then - but if I'd had the Gorgon's head handy at that moment, we'd have had a life-sized statue for a helmsman. The only consolation that
I could see was that the rest of my family were suffering just as much, and in some cases rather more.

  And that was only the first day.

  We spent the night out at sea - there was some technical reason for this, to do with winds, currents, the attitude of the Pleiades and the fact that we couldn't find anywhere to put in before it got dark -and we spent it lying on our backs on the deck feeling very ill indeed, while Pentheus cheerfully informed us that next day we'd be putting in at Sicyon, which was traditionally hostile to Corinth and therefore likely to be reasonably safe. We'd make landfall, he predicted, just after sunrise. None of us believed him.

  But, come sunrise - we'd been awake all night, so we didn't miss anything - we looked out over the left side of the ship and, sure enough, there was a city, exactly where Pentheus had predicted it would be. I'll confess, I felt a little bit guilty for having assumed that he couldn't possibly be right; everybody, they say, is good at something, and there was no reason to believe that navigation wasn't Pentheus' particular skill. We mumbled a few words of apology as he bossed us around, trying to get us to do all the complicated things that need to be done in order to get a boat into a harbour.

  'This is better,' Dusa said, once we were on dry land again. 'I love the way it doesn't move about under your feet.'

  'It's more or less as I remember it,' Sarpedon announced. 'It's a long time since I was here last, but nothing seems to have changed. Well,' he went on, after I'd asked him what was so unusual about that, 'on this trip I've learned not to make assumptions like that. like, I'm not assuming that just because we've arrived safely, something horrible isn't going to happen to us.'

  Pentheus frowned at him disapprovingly, then announced that we were going into the city to visit the princes; we might look like tramps, but the splendour of our gifts (Callipous' gifts, actually, but only we knew that) would soon convince them of our worth and true nobility, and then they'd probably give us some decent clothes and a good meal.

  I couldn't remember having been at the staff meeting where we'd elected Pentheus as our leader; but it was a good suggestion, in spite of its origin, so I didn't object. Actually, I felt mildly confident. After all, we were going there as ordinary travellers; there was no reason why the subject of games-playing (which my heart had come to regard as the most dangerous and ill-omened topic under the sun) should possibly arise; which meant Pentheus was unlikely to get an opportunity to kill anybody in a terrible accident or offend any major local customs, and we might actually get out of Sicyon alive and with our ears still on our heads.

  'The palace is up there,' Sarpedon said, 'just behind the side of the hill. We'll be able to see it as soon as we get to the top of this ridge.' He was quite right. Sicyon was larger than I'd expected from the few passing references I'd heard; the same size as Elis, maybe a little bigger or a little smaller - hard to tell when a city's spread out over the landscape, like honey on a handful of bread.

  Somehow we felt a little bit diffident about marching up to the palace gate, something we wouldn't have given a second thought to not so long before. Understandable, I suppose; we were grubby and scruffy, and we'd just been thrown out of two major cities. These things tend to tarnish even the most brightly burnished heart. I think the gatekeeper shared our doubts about our suitability as guests of a great house; but Pentheus snarled him out of the way in best aristocratic style, and we marched past the gatekeeper without another word.

  I suppose it was getting things right for a change that inspired the change in Pentheus' demeanour; instead of being wan and interestingly pathetic, he held his head up like a man who owns a herd of a thousand head, looked the princes straight in the eye and gave them just the right kind of cheerful, slightly offhand greeting that you'd expect from a man who was, to coin a phrase, a prince in his own country. As a result, the princes didn't seem to notice what we were wearing, or the dust in our hair; they called for food and water and tables, showed us to the seats of honour and sat quiet until we'd washed and eaten.

  'Is this your first visit here?' asked the elder prince.

  'For my brother and sister and myself, yes,' Cleander replied, wiping his hands on a napkin. 'My uncle's been here before, but that was quite a few years ago.'

  'It was just after the war between Corinth and Nemea,' Sarpedon added. 'What would that be? Twenty years ago?'

  The older prince smiled. 'That explains why I don't remember you,' he said. 'I'd only have been five, and my brother here wasn't even born then.'

  'My name's Sarpedon,' Uncle replied. 'These are my nephews Cleander and Cratus, and my niece Eurymedusa. Our companion here is Pentheus.'

  I was watching the princes closely out of the corner of my eye, but the name didn't seem to mean anything to them. So that was all right.

  'I'm Oenophilus,' said the older prince, 'and my brother's called Hipposthenes.' He turned his head a little and gave Dusa a rather charming smile. 'It's a rare pleasure for us to get such a beautiful visitor,' he added. 'I hope you'll have time to stay a while, if your business elsewhere isn't too urgent.'

  Big-brother instincts made me clench a little at that; and then I thought, Hang on, no; Prince of Sicyon's interested in my sister, best of luck to him. If he was seventy years old and never sober after sun-up, he'd still be an improvement on the competition. 'We'd be delighted,' I replied, before anybody else had the chance. 'We're in no particular hurry, after all, and what we've seen of your city so far has impressed us greatly.'

  And stay we did; and very pleasant it was too, even after the relative novelty of good food, good company and nobody trying to kill us had worn off a little. In fact, we were feeling so relaxed and comfortable by the third day that one of us actually ventured to raise the dread subject of games-playing. What's more, it was me.

  'That sounds fascinating,' said Prince Hipposthenes, after Cleander had given the standard speech. 'You know, Oenophilus, I think we ought to go. It'd be fun.'

  'You go,' his brother replied indulgently, 'you're the games-player. Stands to reason,' he added, 'that someone called Strength of Horses should be a mad-keen charioteer. You are going to have chariot-races, aren't you?'

  'Of course,' Cleander said. 'We're expecting quite a strong field; particularly if we can get Rhius of Aegeum to come. We'll be calling on him in a couple of days - well, we'll be virtually passing his door, so we thought-'

  Hipposthenes looked puzzled. 'A couple of days?' he said. 'You'll be lucky, unless you've got all the winds tied up in a bag, like the man in the story. Or are you thinking of a different Aegeum?'

  Cleander frowned. 'There is only one, isn't there? Aegeum, on the north coast of the Peloponnese, about two days' sail from here.'

  The princes looked at each other. 'Excuse me if this sounds like a silly question,' said Oenophilus, 'but where exactly do you think you are?'

  Cleander raised an eyebrow and smiled quizzically. 'Sicyon, of course,' he said.

  'Oh.' Oenophilus pursed his lips. 'Well, actually, you're in Megara.'

  'Megara?' Cleander looked as if someone had just dropped a chicken on his head. 'No, that can't be right, surely.'

  'Well, we've lived here all our lives and we're pretty sure,' Hipposthenes replied.

  In my heart, the mist cleared and I understood. Instead of taking ship from the northern harbour of Corinth and sailing north-west along the coast of the Peloponnese through the Corinthian Gulf, we'd sailed north-east from the eastern harbour, on the other side of the Isthmus, away from the Peloponnese and up the Saronic Gulf towards Athens; completely the opposite direction, in fact. Easy enough mistake to make, I suppose, provided the god's taken away your wits and you were an idiot to start with.

  'Pentheus?' Cleander said.

  'Not that it matters to us,' Hipposthenes continued smoothly. 'After all, we're us and you're you; the fact that you'd confused the place we live with somewhere else can't matter all that much, can it?'

  'And we've really enjoyed having you as guests,' Oenophilus added. 'So
if there's anything we can do to help get you back on the right course - food, wine, anything else you might need for your journey-'

  'Especially since it turns out to be rather longer than you'd anticipated-'

  (Which was an extremely valid point; instead of being eight days from Elis, we were - well, considerably more. We'd have to turn round, go back past Corinth, all round the southern Peloponnese -more or less the same way we'd come. It wasn't really the sort of thing we wanted to hear at that precise moment.)

  I was looking at Pentheus, however; not because I was trying to kill him with a stare (if that technique had worked, he'd never have left Argos alive) but because he wasn't looking at all the way I'd have expected. Me, in his position, I'd be cringing with mortal embarrassment. Not Pentheus. He was looking - well, completely preoccupied.

  'Megara,' he said.

  'That's right, Megara,' Cleander repeated. 'And you promised us we were well on the way home. Of all the-'

  'That's only a day and a half's sail away from-'

  From Aegina; and the tiresome young fool had suddenly come over all thoughtful. I really didn't want to hear any more. Unfortunately, it wasn't up to me.

  'From Athens?' prompted Hipposthenes. 'If you've never been to Athens, you really ought to consider a detour. For one thing, there's some really first-class games-players-'

  'From Aegina,' Pentheus said. 'Where I come from. Only, I haven't been there in a long time.' He frowned, and I'll swear I could actually see the god standing over him, stuffing the idea into his mind so tightly that it's a wonder his head didn't burst. It was clearly an idea that would take some shifting. 'Oenophilus,' he said, in a strangely cold voice, 'did you say just now that you'd be prepared to help us out with anything we needed?'

  No fool, the Prince of Megara; he could see trouble coming. 'Well, yes,' he said. 'Within reason, of course.'

  'Oh, of course,' Pentheus replied. 'Look, if it's no trouble, I'd like to borrow an army.'