Olympiad Tom Holt

by Olympiad (lit)

  'Some of them are bound to,' I replied.

  He sighed. 'That's all right, then,' he said. 'Is there anything else you think I ought to know, or is that it?'

  I thought for a moment. 'Tachys is dead,' I said.

  'I see. Anything else?'

  'Uncle Sarpedon's now the King of Aegina.'

  'Really? I thought you invaded to help out this friend of yours.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'But he got killed in the battle.'

  King Leon smiled. 'You know,' he said, 'I can believe that, after what you've just told me. So that's what you've been up to, is it?'

  'I suppose so,' I replied. 'But there's more to it than that, of course.'

  He looked at me. 'You don't say. I'm amazed you found the time to do anything else.'

  'It's not so much what we did,' I told him, 'as how we did it and why. If you'll just let me explain-'

  He lifted his head. 'Later,' he said. 'Have you been home yet, or did you just come from your ship?'

  'I haven't been home,' I told him.

  'Then my heart tells me that'd be a good thing for you to do. It'll probably please your family, and it'll get you out of my sight for a while.'

  So I went home.

  It occurred to me, as I walked through the city, that maybe I could have expressed myself better when I reported to King Leon. But he'd asked me questions, and I'd told him the truth. I had given an accurate report, a true record. The thought depressed me.

  Maybe because of that, I was feeling preoccupied and a little irritable when I reached the doors of my house; anyway, my temper wasn't improved when I found nobody waiting for me outside, and the doors closed. Clearly Alastor hadn't done me that one little favour I'd asked of him - typical, my heart told me, and serves you right for trusting him. I gave the doors a shove with my hand; they were barred on the inside. Odd, I thought.

  But it was my house, I wasn't going to make a spectacle of myself by banging on my own front door and yelling. Better idea:

  I'd go for a walk, clear my head, calm down and come back a little later. So I strolled out to the edge of town, trying to make myself appreciate the familiar sights and sounds. I met a couple of acquaintances, who expressed surprise and a certain degree of pleasure at seeing me. I promised them a full account of my adventures once I'd settled in again. That made me feel a little better, and by the time I found myself back at my house I was rather more human.

  The doors, though, were still closed. I couldn't make that out. Nothing for it, I decided, but to bash and yell after all.

  I was at it a long time before the doors opened. It was my wife.

  'Cleander,' she said.

  I scowled. 'Oh, for pity's sake,' I said, 'is that any way to say hello, after I've been away so long?'

  And then I caught a movement in her face. She wasn't actually looking at me; she was squinting over my shoulder. Why would anybody do that?

  Unless.

  I darted backwards and looked up at the upper-room balcony above my head. Sure enough, there was a man with one leg over the rail, about to climb down. To be precise, my second cousin Hegesilochus. Furthermore, he had his tunic on back to front and his cloak draped round his neck, for all the world as if he'd just dressed in a panic.

  My wife squeaked and darted back inside the house, slamming the doors. Hegesilochus made the mistake of hesitating before clambering back over the rail; long enough for me to jump up, with a degree of suppleness and power that would have done credit to any games-player, and grab his ankle before it disappeared. Then I lifted my feet off the ground and pulled as hard as I could. As anticipated, Hegesilochus was dragged down over the rail and fell, almost but not quite on top of me. He landed on his hands and knees in a sort of crouch, his bum stuck up in the air - perfectly positioned to receive the spine-jarring kick I was all wound up to deliver. He howled, tried to scramble to his feet and fell over.

  'Hello, cousin,' I said, and went to kick his head. But he was always a quick, slippery fellow, my cousin; he grabbed my foot with both hands and gave it a strong, sharp twist that made me scream with pain, before letting go and leaving me to drop to the dirt like an empty sack. By the time I pulled myself together, he was long gone.

  Wonderful, I thought.

  I got up slowly, gradually easing weight on to my very sore ankle, and hobbled across to the door. She'd barred it.

  'Hey!' I shouted.

  'Go away,' she replied. 'Don't hurt me. If you lay a finger on me, my brothers'll kill you.'

  Now that was offensive; the thought of hitting her hadn't even crossed my mind. Shouting a lot, yes; maybe even kicking furniture and breaking crockery. But I'd never hit her in all the years we'd been married, and I wasn't proposing to start now.

  'Don't be ridiculous,' I called back. 'And open the damned door.'

  'No. You'll hit me.'

  'Oh, for...' I was getting angry now. 'You want me to come back with an axe and bust the door down? Fine.'

  She screamed, started yelling, 'Help! Help!' Which, needless to say, brought the neighbours out into the street. I felt an absolute idiot, and if I'd been able to move without hobbling I'd probably have retreated for pure shame. 'Open the door,' I roared, and the neighbours started to look uncomfortable. It was probably a tactical error on my part to draw my sword - all I was going to do was slide it between the doors, see if I could lever them apart, and all I'd have achieved, I'm sure, was a broken sword - but as soon as I had the thing out of the scabbard there were neighbours all over me, pulling the sword out of my hand and shoving me down into the dirt, on my knees.

  'Grab hold of him,' someone behind me was saying. 'Madness has got him, you can see it in his eyes.'

  'Told you no good would come of it,' someone else said, 'swanning off like that to foreign parts. Someone go and fetch his brother.'

  'Why? Is he back yet? Here, Cleander, is your brother home too?'

  I growled like a bear. 'Let go of me,' I said, 'or by the gods, I swear, I'll rip your arms off.'

  'Definitely crazy,' someone else opined. 'We'd better tie him up and put him in the barn till he calms down.'

  And they did, too, the bastards. Oh, a fine homecoming that was; up there with Agamemnon (hacked to death in his bath) and Ulysses, and all the other great wandering heroes you hear about in stories. Why is it, I wonder, when someone gets home from a long and dangerous journey, nobody's ever pleased to see him?

  I wasn't in the barn for long. Shortly afterwards, Hegesilochus turned up with a bunch of his people to lay a formal complaint for assault and wounding - but at least they were kind enough to untie me, in return for a duly sworn ransom of fifteen yards of coloured cloth and a milch ewe.

  'What happened to you?' Hegesilochus asked me, grinning, when I was free again.

  'Don't ask,' I replied. 'And get out of my sight before I break your neck.'

  He frowned. 'Are you threatening me?' he asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Thought so. All right,' he said, signalling to his men, 'tie him up again. You can forget about the ransom,' he added, as they did as they were told, 'I've changed my mind. You can damn well stay out here till you learn some manners.'

  So they tied me up and went away. I wasn't alone for long, though; my wife came out to tell me she was going home to her father, taking the kids with her, and she'd be divorcing me as soon as she got there and could find the necessary witnesses.

  'Fine,' I said. 'Now would you please undo these damned ropes?'

  'Certainly not,' she said. 'You've gone crazy, you're dangerous. Everybody says so. You were coming after me with a sword.'

  'No, I was just trying to - oh, forget it,' I said. 'Go away.'

  After she'd gone, would you believe I actually fell asleep? Yes, hanging off the ropes, fast asleep. Well, it'd been a long, eventful day.

  I don't know how long it was before I was prodded awake - by Alastor, who stood there looking very serious.

  'Are you all right?' he said.

  'Do I loo
k all right?'

  'No,' he replied. 'You've got a nasty cut on your forehead and a black eye.'

  I scowled at him. 'It's all your fault,' I said.

  'Me? I didn't do anything.'

  'Exactly,' I told him. 'If you'd come round like I asked you to and warned my wife I was home, none of this would've happened. Where the hell did you get to?'

  He lifted his head. 'I did come by earlier,' he said. 'I knocked on the door, but nobody answered, so I thought I'd come back later. Who tied you up, anyway?'

  'None of your business,' I said. 'Look, just get these ropes loose and we'll call it all even between us, all right?'

  'Sure,' he replied. 'You do mean that, don't you?'

  'Of course I do. I swear by the River. Now untie the goddamn ropes.'

  He didn't look happy, but he untied the ropes. 'Thank you,' I said. 'Now go away, please.'

  He started to go away, then came back. 'Look,' he said, 'can I help you at all with anything? Only - I've got to say this, it strikes me as odd, a man comes home after several months away on a perilous mission and next thing you know, he's trussed up like a goat in his own barn.'

  I looked at him. He really was trying to help.

  'Thanks,' I said. 'I'll be all right. You go away.'

  So off he went, and not long afterwards I followed him. The doors of my house were still shut, and the last thing I wanted to do was to make any more noise or fuss and have the neighbours round my ears again. So I decided to cut my losses and go to Cratus' house.

  He wasn't pleased to see me. To be precise, he was in bed with his wife, having told the household to get lost, and was quite upset to find me banging on the door demanding to be let in. So I told him what had happened.

  He didn't laugh. But he came close.

  'Right,' he said, when I'd finished the story. 'And what do you want me to do about it?'

  I frowned. 'For a start,' I said, 'give me a place to sleep for the night. Then-'

  'I've got a better idea,' he interrupted. 'Why don't you go over to Sarpedon's place? After all, he won't be needing it. In fact, you could move in there till everything's sorted out - you'd be doing him a favour, looking after his stuff until we get it packed on the ship.'

  My heart wasn't exactly filled with joy at the thought. But it was obvious enough that Cratus didn't want me in his house - fair enough, we'd been together for a long time without respite, which is bad enough for two brothers in the most harmonious of families -so it was either Sarpedon's place, or back home (Home home) and put up with Dusa...

  'I'll do that,' I said. 'And in the morning, we'll get your people and my people and go and break down my door.'

  He looked at me, and sighed. 'Well, that'll be something to look forward to. Goodnight.'

  Then he closed the doors on me; so I traipsed over to Uncle's house, explained myself as best I could to his stone-faced household, and spent the night camped out among the dusty helmet-plumes and verdigrised sword-blades. Some homecoming.

  News of my discomfiture was all round the city when we set off in the morning. Cratus called for me bright and early - 'Let's get this over with before there's anybody about,' he said gloomily, as soon as I opened the doors to him. He had an impressive number of men with him, including my people, all of whom were looking appropriately shamefaced and shifty, and thanks to our weight of numbers we didn't have any trouble with my dear neighbours. Of course, she'd barred the door from the inside and climbed down from the upper room on a borrowed ladder, so we did actually have to smash in the door, using a big log as a battering-ram - a damned shame, because my doors were solid oak, lovingly polished and fitted by me. I must have made a good job of them, because it took us a lot of time and effort to trash them.

  We'd just finished when King Leon rolled up in his chariot, escorted by a bunch of men at arms, to find out what all the commotion was in aid of. He was about the last person I wanted to see right then.

  'You again,' he said. 'Still busy, I see.'

  'It's a long story,' I told him.

  He scowled. 'I don't like long stories,' he said; so I gave him a shortened version - my wife's left me, she locked me out before she went, so I had to bust the doors down to get in.

  Leon nodded. 'Someone told me you were chasing her through the streets with an axe,' he said. 'I'm not surprised she left you. Also, I've had a complaint, assault with intent to degrade, from your cousin Hegesilochus.' He sighed. 'This sort of behaviour may have been all right where you've just come from,' he said, 'but we're quiet folks here in Elis. Knock it off, will you?'

  I could have explained; but there are times when people just aren't in the mood to hear the whole truth. I promised I'd be good, and he went away again.

  Cratus, on the other hand, was still there. 'Well,' he said, 'personally I can't think of any more ways for you to humiliate yourself, but I'm sure you can. I'll leave you to it.

  'Thank you,' I replied.

  He waved a hand dismissively. 'Don't mention it,' he said. 'My pleasure. It almost made up for the last few months, watching your face when Leon appeared.'

  Don't get me wrong. I love my brother, always have. You can tell how much I love him by the fact that, in spite of cracks like that, he's still alive.

  Anyway; that was our homecoming, the end of our adventure in the wide world.

  It didn't take long for things to get back to normal, as if our being away had been a wound, which healed over quickly and only left a small scar. Eventually I got to tell King Leon the whole story, from the day we left Elis to the moment he and his men rolled up outside my door; and once he'd heard it all he actually thanked me for everything I'd done, though it was more a never-mind-you-did-your-best kind of thank you than anything hopeful. My wife didn't divorce me after all; very magnanimously and in front of a large audience of her family she forgave me, after which it would have been churlish to ask her exactly what she and Hegesilochus had been up to, behind locked doors and in broad daylight. Likewise, my dear cousin abandoned his complaint against me, and I reciprocated the gesture of goodwill by not burning him to death in his house one dark night. For some time afterwards my neighbours tended to stare at me in alarm whenever I left the house, and scurry away whenever I came near; but you can't keep that sort of thing up for very long when you live in a city, and eventually they started trickling round to my doors, wanting to borrow hoes and whet-stones and olive-presses and so forth, so it looks as if they found it in their hearts to forgive me, too.

  Dusa was ominously quiet to begin with; she stayed indoors like a good little girl, spinning and mending and weaving, all the things she'd always maintained she hated most. That was peculiar, verging on scary, but I couldn't very well barge in, drag her away from the spinning-wheel and tell her to snap out of it. Then, quite suddenly, she announced that she was getting married. Furthermore, she was going to marry an entirely suitable, not to mention eligible lad, a distant cousin of ours on our mother's side, who'd been trailing along after her for years. Leucophron, his name was - a big, good-looking man with wide, bright teeth and broad shoulders, devoted to her, but - and this was why she'd never wanted anything to do with him before - about as intelligent as a small tree. I tried to figure it out, but I couldn't see it, unless she was somehow punishing herself - the oil-and-flour gag that led to Pentheus' death, I supposed, though she never mentioned it at all. It was only when I heard that this Leucophron was putting together a party to go and found a colony somewhere over the western sea - Italy or Sicily, some godforsaken place over in that direction - that I realised what she was up to. All she wanted was to get away - from Elis, from us, from the whole of the Peloponnese, and this was her best chance of doing it.

  I didn't even try to talk her out of it; neither did Cratus, though he moaned to me about it until I begged him to stop. I guess she'd reached the point where she couldn't stand her life here any longer, and when someone's reached that point - well, Italy's better than the wrong side of the River, make no mistake about
it. I could just see how well she would do as a colonist's wife; a woman's station in life is a good deal more flexible when you've got nothing at all except what you can carry in a ship, and nothing is firmly established.

  They were married quite soon after that. We gave her a proper traditional wedding; led her through the streets by torchlight to her husband-to-be's house, lifted her over the threshold to avoid bad luck, sang the appropriate hymn, then went away. She didn't smile once; it was as if her mind was somewhere else, all the time. A month later they sailed for Italy, early one morning, without telling anybody, so I never got to say goodbye.

  It was a long time before we heard news of the colony. Eventually a guest of ours mentioned that he'd spoken to a shipmaster who'd called there; everything was well, except that Leucophron the Founder had died from a poisoned cut during their first winter. His widow had immediately married again - one of the colonists, was all he could tell me - and she and her new husband were more or less running the place, insofar as anybody was. I got the impression that there were more important things to be done there than ruling and being ruled, such as clearing scrub, building terraces and fighting the locals. A few more reports, all in similar vein, trickled in from time to time; it was fourteen years later that I heard she'd died, nobody knew what of, leaving three sons and two daughters. Her eldest son, they told me, was now calling himself the King of Rhoma ('Stronghold'; that's what they finally decided to call the place) and wasn't making too bad a fist of things, all told. His name, according to the man who told me all this, was Pentheus.

  So I had an uncle who was a king, and now (to the best of my knowledge) I've got a nephew who's a king too. I suppose that's not bad going, for a bunch of country boys. I can't help thinking, though, that my life has been a ship, blown off course by the fury of the winds, and I tend to consider Sarpedon and Dusa as having been washed overboard, while I stood by and did nothing. Silly, I know; but if I hadn't dreamed up the big idea, games-with-nobody-dead, and whisked them away from home and out into the perils of the world - well, they'd never have got to be kings and queens, and both of them would probably be dead now in any case. The idea that anything one does makes a difference is both misleading and dangerous, and I'm old enough now not to want a part of it any more. I should be dead too, by rights; five years ago I was desperately ill, I went blind and spent days lying on a bed coughing up blood. But I survived, and I have no idea why; maybe it was just to annoy Cratus, or get under the feet of my sons for a few years more, or maybe the gods have something for me to do that'll change the lives of everybody in Elis - I could be the one to open the gates to a besieging army, or intercede with the god to stop a devastating plague; or maybe the citizens of Rhoma will send a ship for me and I'll become their king, everybody else having died, and do something in the years left to me that'll save them from extinction or bring about their annihilation. Maybe I was left alive just to tell this story to someone who'll lay it to heart and go away and found their own games-with-nobody-dead, that'll be the wonder of the world and a great force for good or evil. Most likely not; most likely I'm still alive because I haven't died yet, just as I was on the day after I was born.