Well, arguing with your heart is like arguing with your wife: just because you're in the right doesn't mean you stand a chance of winning. So, as carefully as I could, I slid open the double doors of the loft and poked my head out to see what was going on.
What I saw, down in the street below, was what I was most afraid of seeing: armed men and plenty of them, swarming through the city like ants in their nest. That told me that the baffle was over, we'd lost, and the victorious enemy had come home. Not difficult to know what was likely to be in their hearts, after they'd just beaten off an unprovoked surprise attack; not much harder to figure out what their attitude was likely to be towards one of the enemy caught prowling about in someone's house.
I was just pulling my head back in, nice and slow, when one of those dreadful men down there lifted his head and was looking me straight in the eye. The good part about it was, it was Prince Hipposthenes.
'Hello,' he called out, 'we were wondering where you'd got to. Still alive, then?'
'Yes,' I replied.
'That's good, your brother's been worried sick, had us turning over corpses where you were last seen.'
'No,' I said, 'I'm alive all right.'
Hipposthenes nodded, making the plume on his helmet dip gracefully. 'You coming down from there?' he asked.
'In a moment,' I replied.
'All right. When you do, you can tell me what's been happening to you.'
I smiled; not my best smile ever, but as good as I could manage. 'Oh, nothing much,' I said.
Cratus, who'd been shifting about in his seat for some time, lifted his head and made a rude noise.
'You call that an account of the battle?' he said.
'Yes,' Cleander replied. 'At least, it's what happened to me in the baffle. I'm not really qualified to talk about anything else, now am I?'
Cratus clicked his tongue. 'Absolutely right,' he said. 'And since, by your own admission, you spent most of the time either getting out of the way or hiding in somebody's storeroom, I put it to you, you're not the most reliable of witnesses.'
'All right,' Cleander said, 'but at least I'm telling it straight, like it happened. If it was up to you, I know you, you'd put in all this unnecessary and misleading stuff about what a bad thing war is and how dreadful it was, so many people getting killed. This is supposed to be a happy story, dammit.'
'Oh?' Cratus raised an eyebrow. 'Why?'
'Isn't that obvious?' Cleander shook his head. 'That's the whole point of telling stories about things that happened in the past, isn't it? To entertain, first of all - or nobody would want to listen - and secondly, to inspire, uplift, make people feel good about how things are and how they got that way. Depressing stuff, how pointless it all is - who needs to hear about that? It's all around us anyway, we don't want any more of it.'
Cratus shook his head. 'Amazing,' he said.
'Oh, it's all right for you,' Cleander replied angrily, 'you were born miserable and you'll die miserable, so miserable makes you happy. But the rest of us - normal people - we like to be able to look back on a past when things were better, people were better and braver - people need that. So tell me, Misery; if you take all that away from them, tell them that in fact the past was just as miserable as the present and people were just as mean and cowardly then as they are now - exactly what purpose does that serve?'
Before Cratus could reply (while he was still spluttering with rage, in fact), Palamedes held up his hands for silence. 'Seems to me,' he said, 'that you two aren't ever going to agree, so it's probably as well if we drop the subject while we're all still friends. Though I will say this,' he added, 'and then we won't mention it again. My heart agrees with Cleander; well, I think everybody would, if they stopped and thought about it. Remembering the past is a bit like saving things from a sinking ship or a burning house. You can't take everything with you, so you take the things that are worth keeping: valuable and precious things, or useful and essential things. You don't save junk or things that are worn out or broken; let them burn, they were no good anyway, they're best forgotten. Some memories just aren't worth anything - for instance, who cares what sort of hats they wore twenty generations ago, or what they used to thatch their houses with? Forget about that sort of thing, it's just clutter.
'And some memories are worse than that, they actually cause problems. For instance, if we remembered every war we'd fought and every city we'd fought against, we'd end up hating all our neighbours, pretty well every city on this side of the Peloponnese. We'd remember that in our great-great-great-grandfathers' time there was a dreadful battle against the Sicyonians, say, and a hundred of our best men were killed. So we'd hate the Sicyonians for ever - and who wants that? Next year it might be in our best interests to be friends with the Sicyonians and hate the Messenians (who were probably on our side back when we fought Sicyon all those years ago). Look, the point I'm trying to make is quite obvious, I'd have thought. The past is over and done with, we don't owe it anything; it's not like we've got a responsibility to tend it and guard it, like the temples of the gods. No, the past is like some fallen-down old building: either you leave it alone, because it doesn't concern you, or you pull out the well-cut blocks from the walls and use them to build your own barns and houses and walls. That's what the past is for, to be useful in the present. So,' Palamedes went on, 'to cut it short, I'm with Cleander here, and I think the way he told us about the battle, keeping it light and interesting and exciting and not dwelling too much on the bad aspects - I think he got it more or less right. And if you don't agree, Cratus-'
Cratus lifted his head. 'Of course I agree with the basic point you're making,' he said impatiently. 'I mean, you'd be a clown if you thought otherwise. All I was saying was, Cleander's not fit to tell you the story of the battle, because he wasn't actually there. I was.'
Palamedes sighed. 'All right,' he said. 'But keep it short, will you? I mean, now that we all know who won-'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We won the battle (Cratus said). And, contrary to what my dear brother's just told you, we won it rather easily - the only place we had any trouble, in fact, is down the end of the line where he was, or at least where he was when he wasn't off hiding in other people's houses. True enough, they gave us a bit of a hard time there - the few reinforcements who came down from the city all piled in there, and even managed to push us back a couple of times; but when the rest of us were through with our part of the battle, we came round them on all sides and sorted them out good and proper. We managed to surround them, in fact, and we killed or captured more of the enemy there than on any other part of the field, so you can say that the god gave us success there as well.
I was up the other end of the line, and we went through them like water through a cracked dam - first we opened a little gap in their front, when some of them just ran away before we even reached them, and then we pushed through the gap, and the rest of them did the sensible thing and went home before anybody else got hurt. It was the same elsewhere, though a few of them stuck it out and got killed for their trouble. Mostly they were Corinthians, or men who'd originally come over from Corinth about the time the old king was killed - yes, all that was true, apparently, what Pentheus had told us. But I'll tell you about that later.
As soon as we were sure we'd secured the field and there weren't any nasty surprises waiting for us - basically, when we'd cleared up the mess Cleander told you about - we headed on up to the city, expecting to find the gates shut. But they weren't. The Aeginetans, it turned out, had no intention whatsoever of letting themselves in for a siege; as far as the people in town were concerned - not the better sort, obviously, because they were all down the hill fighting -well, they didn't mind the Corinthians particularly but they sure as hell didn't like them enough to risk a siege for them, especially if they were all killed and dead in the battle anyway. Wouldn't have been any point, really. So they left the gates open, put their better stuff where it was more likely to be safe, and waited to see what happe
ned.
Prince Hipposthenes and Uncle Sarpedon didn't take long to figure out how things stood; put simply, provided we didn't bother them, they weren't going to bother us. Good attitude, if you ask me. So the prince told his people, sorry, no looting today except for specified houses where the Corinthians lived, and the better sort, who'd fought for them - and set off for the palace to see if anything needed to be done there. The essential thing was to find out if the Corinthian princes - the usurpers, if you like - were still in the palace, or if they'd been killed or captured in the baffle, or if they were still loose somewhere. Turned out, luckily, that they were among the dead; they'd been killed quite early on, which was one of the reasons we walked through their supporters so easily.
At this point, Hipposthenes asked if anybody had seen Pentheus.
We found him too, eventually. He was right at the bottom of a pile of dead men, at the point where the resistance had been most fierce. By the looks of it, he'd been killed defending the ships when the enemy were threatening to get at them and set fire to them. Now, it's quite possible that he died there because he had no choice, if you see what I mean; he was with a bunch of men who were beaten back, overwhelmed and killed, and whether he died well, striving to be the best like the hero games-player he always made out he was (believed he was, for all I know), or whether he died badly, killed because he wasn't good or clever enough to defend himself, or even whether he died indifferently, stabbed in the neck by a man he hadn't even seen - well, that's something we'll never know, and I don't suppose it really matters. For my part, in spite of everything I may have said about him, I can see no point in saying he didn't die well, bravely, heroically, fighting ever in the forefront like a great warrior in a poem. Besides; we'd come all this way to put him on a throne, and now he'd got himself killed. We looked silly enough as it was without having our man prove to be a gutless wonder into the bargain.
Now here's an interesting thing, while we're on the subject. Naturally enough, one of the first things we asked when we were on speaking terms with the locals was, did they once have a Prince Pentheus who escaped when his family were killed, and was the rest of the story true? Turns out it was; even the stuff about the chariot-race that went wrong, and the king and his family being burned in their house. At that point, some accounts differed. At least two old men swore blind that they'd seen Pentheus' head on a pole over the city gate - it had been there for a month, they said, and there was no mistaking it. Other people said no, they couldn't remember a head on a pole, and they never heard that Pentheus was killed with the others. And then we found a couple of greybeards who were absolutely positive that all the royal family died in the fire, and when the bones were gathered up all the princes were accounted for. We put Pentheus' body on a trestle in the hall and asked people to take a look, tell us if that was the Pentheus they remembered or not; about a third of them said, Yes, that's him, a third said, No, definitely not him, and the remaining third said, Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, they couldn't be sure. So whether Pentheus was the Pentheus, or just some kid who'd taken his name - well, that doesn't matter either. I knew a man who called himself Pentheus, who died fighting the enemy in a battle. I never liked him much, and when he died I must admit part of me was pleased, because it meant he wasn't going to marry my sister. But even I'm not so mean and vindictive that I'd deny his ghost a chance of life on the other side of the River; so, as far as I'm concerned, he was the rightful King of Aegina, and he died avenging his father and taking back his own.
There. Positive enough for you all? That's all right, then.
But I'm going to spoil it a little - sorry, but you'll just have to indulge me - by mentioning that my sister didn't take his death well. For some reason she'd been in love with him - anybody here know why women love the men they do? Thought not - and the thought that he might be killed in the battle hadn't crossed her mind until the news actually reached her. What made it worse for her was that none of this would have happened if she hadn't played that idiotic trick on the princes with the oil and the flour; so it was, in a sense, all her fault.
She dealt with it by crying a lot and keeping out of everybody's way. She didn't want to talk to me or Cleander or Sarpedon - when we tried to talk to her, she got hysterical and started screaming and hitting until we went away again, so that's what we did. She was like that for three days, and we let her get on with it. I don't know if that was the right thing to do or not, but it's what we did.
'All right,' said Prince Hipposthenes later that day, as we sat against the wall in the palace hall. 'What the hell do you suggest we do now?'
It was a valid question. We had no king to put on the throne, no reason to be there at all. We couldn't even reinstate the Corinthian mob, say, 'So sorry,' and leave, since we'd killed them all. If there were any Aeginetans of the better sort left, they weren't exactly lining up to offer their services as kings of Aegina. All in all, it was a mess.
Prince Oenophilus lifted his head. 'I don't know,' he replied. 'I don't suppose you'd fancy being king? We could say Pentheus named you as his heir-'
'Absolutely not,' Hipposthenes answered with a shudder. 'It's too hilly for chariots, I hate anything to do with the sea, and kings don't seem to live very long in these parts. Of course, if you want it-'
'No, thank you very much,' Oenophilus replied. 'All right, what about your sister? If we made out that she and Pentheus were actually married - we could tell people there's a kid on the way, I'm sure we could get a kid from somewhere - and then she could be regent, with a few of our people to advise her-'
'You lay off my sister,' I growled. 'Not that we don't appreciate the offer, mind,' I added, remembering that we needed these people if we wanted a ride home, 'but I think she's been through enough as it is. Getting involved in a game like the one you're suggesting - no, I don't think so.'
Oenophilus shrugged. 'Fair enough,' he said, 'I think the god who put that idea in my mind wasn't really trying to help. All right, has anybody else got any suggestions?'
There was silence for the time it takes to get an arrowhead to forging heat in a good furnace. Then Uncle Sarpedon looked up. 'I'll do it,' he said.
'Sorry?' said Prince Hipposthenes.
'I'll rule the kingdom,' Sarpedon said. 'As a loyal vassal of Megara, of course - I'm not letting you leave me here on my own. But provided you leave me some men for a garrison, and help me out with things generally, I'll hold the fort for you here. It's something I've always fancied doing, being a king.'
The silence that followed that was quite a bit murkier than the previous one.
'No offence,' Oenophilus said eventually, in the tone of voice you use when you know you're bound to offend someone, 'but I hadn't actually considered-'
Sarpedon grinned. 'If you're worried about how to make it all seem legitimate, that's easy,' he said. 'First, young Pentheus named me to the succession just before the baffle. Second, his wife, my niece, has begged me with tears in her eyes to look after the kingdom until her unborn child comes of age. Third, lend me fifty men-at-arms and I'll have the heads of anybody likely to cause trouble up above the city gate before dawn tomorrow.' He shrugged. 'And besides,' he said, 'you really haven't got anybody else, have you? Unless you were figuring on installing one of your own people here, a Megaran - and any Megaran who volunteers, or even agrees to do the job, is someone I wouldn't put in charge of a toll-bridge, let alone a vassal state.'
Hipposthenes looked at him for a moment. 'You know,' he said, 'we could do worse.'
His brother looked startled. 'Could we?' he asked. 'It'd be like appointing a wolf as chief sheepdog.'
'Dogs are descended from wolves,' Sarpedon said with a grin. 'Didn't you know that?'
Oenophilus frowned, probably trying to figure out in his heart whether that last remark was exceptionally profound or completely beside the point. 'All right,' he said, 'supposing we did. What about stability? You'll excuse me saying this, you're not a young man any more-'
'You
're as young as you feel,' Sarpedon interrupted. 'Or in my case, as young as the last man whose head I cut off. By that reckoning, I'm about twenty-six.'
Hipposthenes smiled. 'I think what my brother's trying to say is,' he said, 'he doesn't think you'd make a very good king. You'd be likely to be a bit - well, rough.'
'So?' Sarpedon shrugged. 'Do you care?'
'Well-' Oenophilus said.
'Do you care enough to leave your brother behind here, or someone else you value enough to trust?'
Oenophilus looked down at his feet. 'If you put it that way,' he said, 'no. But who's to say we need to install a king at all? Why not just let these people sort themselves out, elect a king of their own and go about their business?'
Sarpedon lifted his head. 'You can't mean that,' he said. 'You'd be a laughing stock. We all would. The Princes of Megara launch a mighty expedition, fight a desperate battle, win a glorious victory and then go home again? People will think you're mad.'
Oenophilus sighed. 'All right,' he said. 'But you're going to have to promise me, on your word of honour: do a good job, no unnecessary killing or stuff like that. If we're going to be associated with what happens here in any way-'
'Relax,' Sarpedon replied, with an easy gesture of both hands. 'And credit me with some sense. All I want out of this is to live in a nice house and have people flatter me rotten. I figure, since in spite of everything I've done in my life I'm not likely to be remembered as a fighter, the next best thing is being a good and wise king. It's not what I'd have chosen, but if it'll keep me off the Riverbank for a few generations, it'll do me.'
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 35
