by Tom Holt
Callicrates nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘you go home, quickly. Keep your head down and don’t show yourself above the skyline if you can help it. Head for the village; you’ll be safe there until midday at least if I know the Spartans.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I said, feeling quite weak with fear. ‘I’m not going back on my own.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Callicrates. ‘Just so long as you take care you’ll be all right.’
‘Stuff that,’ I said, ‘I’m coming with you.’
Callicrates thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘Maybe that would be best,’ he said. ‘That way I can at least keep an eye on you. But I’ve got to take a look at that farm over there.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘You can’t fight a Spartan army on your own.’
‘Of course not,’ said Callicrates irritably. ‘But there may be people down there who need help.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I shouted, ‘what about me? I want to go home.’
Callicrates was angry now. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, ‘I’m not stopping you. You got us into this, so you might as well clear out now before you cause any more disaster.’
We both knew that I wasn’t going anywhere on my own by this point, since I was far too scared and Callicrates was far too conscientious. So I nodded wretchedly and followed on.
The nearer we came, the more obvious it became that the fire was coming from a house of some description. I think we had both been hoping that it was just a field of barley or a rick; but it was definitely the sort of smoke that comes off burning thatch. Eventually we came to the edge of a sharp ridge, and Callicrates stooped down to avoid making himself visible to anyone watching below. I did the same and we peeped over.
Down below us was one of those small farms that used to be scattered about the remoter areas of Attica then, before they were finally abandoned after the war. It consisted of a long, thatched house and a storage tower, all enclosed by a little courtyard. From where we were, we could see that the whole place was on fire, and that in the courtyard there were a lot of men in red cloaks, apparently enjoying the spectacle.
‘Do you think they got away?’ I whispered.
‘I hope so,’ replied Callicrates. ‘But if we didn’t notice them coming out on the hill, I don’t suppose they did down here. This place wasn’t built as a lookout station, it was built as a farm.’
Then I saw two of the red cloaks coming out of an outhouse that hadn’t been set alight yet, and they were bundling along an old woman and an old man. They made these two kneel down beside the brick wall of the well. A third red cloak walked up and seemed to inspect them; then he reached for an axe that was lying beside a pile of logs ready for splitting. He pulled out one of the logs and the red cloaks put the old woman’s neck across the log. The old man didn’t want to watch, but the red cloaks made him. The third red cloak threw his cloak over his shoulder so that it wouldn’t get in the way, and cut the old woman’s head off; it took him three or four strokes. Then the red cloaks threw her body and head down the well, and dragged the old man up. He didn’t seem to struggle as much as the old woman had done. The third red cloak managed rather better this time; he had the head off the old man in two strokes and a bit. I was glad we weren’t closer.
Then they threw his body down the well too, and set light to the outhouse. As soon as it started to burn, a little old grey dog dashed out and they killed that too. Just then a small child came running out — I suppose he had been hiding in there hoping to escape notice — and at first they didn’t see him. I held my breath, but then one of the red cloaks must have caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye, because he pointed and two or three of the others went off after him like dogs after a hare. They caught up with him as he was trying to scramble over the courtyard wall — it was just too high for him to get over —and brought him back. The third red cloak had lifted his axe up again, but then he seemed to change his mind, and he pointed to the burning outhouse. The red cloaks who had caught the child lifted him off the ground by the arms, the way parents do when they’re walking a child round the market, and pitched him in through the window. I heard a very small, faint scream.
Then the red cloaks had a good look round to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, and formed up into a column. The third red cloak went along the column counting them to make sure they were all there, and he stopped at one point and relieved one of them of a chicken he was trying to hide behind his shield. He hit the offender behind the head with the flat of his sword and threw the chicken into the fire, and then they moved off, marching extremely quickly. There were three boys playing flutes marching along beside them. I shall remember that tune till the day I die; in fact, I sometimes find myself whistling it when I’m not thinking.
We watched until they were out of sight over the brow of the slope, and then went scrambling down the hillside as quickly as we could go. But we had to take a long way round even then, because the hillside overlooking the farm where we had been watching was more cliff than hill, and by the time we got there the thatch was almost burnt away and there was nothing left but bare rafters, like the branches of an oak in winter.
Callicrates wound his cloak round his face to keep out the smoke and went into the house; I didn’t try to stop him. He came out again a moment later coughing dreadfully, and shortly after that there was a crashing sound as the house started to fall in. He shook his head to signify that there was nothing he could have done anyway.
Round the back of the house, by the cowshed, we found the farmer Thrasydemus. He had tried to defend himself with a pruning-hook. There were four deep holes in his chest and he was quite obviously dead. We couldn’t find any trace of his wife or any other of the children; they must have been in the house, or perhaps they hadn’t been there at the time, although somehow we couldn’t bring ourselves to believe that. But when I was looking at the farmer’s dead body, I saw something shining under a small fig tree and went to investigate. It was a small jar full of silver money, which someone had smashed. I wondered why the Spartans hadn’t taken it; then I remembered that they don’t use silver for money, they use iron bars like roasting-spits, so of course it wouldn’t have been any use to them. Probably one of the Spartans had found it and the captain had made him throw it away, just like the chicken. The Spartans are very honourable and don’t hold with looting.
‘Right,’ said Callicrates, ‘there’s nothing we can do here. We might as well get back to the village and make sure they know what’s going on.’
I was delighted to leave the place, and we walked very quickly away. Obviously we couldn’t go back by the road, since that would be courting disaster, so we picked our way along just under the line of the hill, where we could see but, with luck, not be seen. After about half an hour, we cut across the top of the mountain, following a little goat-track that Callicrates remembered, which he reckoned would bring us down a few hundred yards from the village itself. That way, we ought to outrun the Spartans comfortably and maybe in time to raise the alarm, if it hadn’t been raised already. As we walked we saw another column of smoke coming up from a sheltered little combe below us, but this time we didn’t try and interfere.
‘Callicrates,’ I said as we hurried along. ‘Do the Spartans always do things like that? I haven’t heard any stories about it.’
‘Only the last year or so,’ Callicrates said, ‘ever since we started doing that sort of thing in Messenia when we go raiding there.’
I was horrified. ‘You mean we started it,’ I said. ‘We’re in the wrong.’
‘What do you mean, in the wrong?’ Callicrates replied. ‘It’s a war, things like that happen. And they only happen when people are stupid enough to hang around when the enemy are approaching.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Are you trying to say it was their fault they got killed?’ I asked.
Callicrates stopped walking and looked at me. ‘Don’t you understand anything?’ he said. �
��It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way things are. Why does everything have to be somebody’s fault all the time?’
I wanted to argue but suddenly I couldn’t think of anything to say — a most unusual state for an Athenian to be in, whatever the circumstances. Then Callicrates started walking again, faster than ever, and his legs were much longer than mine.
That walk seemed to go on for a very long time. The closer we got to the village, the more scared I became, and I made myself dizzy staring at the horizon looking for more columns of smoke. But we didn’t see any and Callicrates seemed to cheer up, hoping that we had managed to steal a march on the Spartans.
‘I reckon that what we saw back there was just a raiding party,’ he said. ‘If they’re going to have a go at the village they’ll concentrate their forces and surround the place. They don’t want any more trouble than they can help — I expect they’re as fed up with it all as we are, and they certainly won’t want to risk getting themselves killed by taking on a populated place without proper forces. All they’re really interested in is doing as much damage to crops and livestock as they can; they’ll want to give the bigger places plenty of time to evacuate.’
‘It didn’t look that way back there,’ I said, but more out of general argumentativeness than for any other reason. I wanted nothing more than to find the village undisturbed; even the prospect of getting the better of Callicrates in an argument (which was something I had never managed to do) was not particularly inviting at that moment.
We were getting down on to much more level ground now, among the vineyards and olive groves, and we couldn’t see any sign that the Spartans had been through before us. Callicrates told me that he had done much the same sort of thing in his military service, and that after a while it turns into a very boring sort of a job, with no one displaying any sort of enthusiasm for it or wanting to find ways of doing it better or quicker. I didn’t ask him if he had killed any farmers himself; I didn’t really want to know.
Callicrates had a splendid natural sense of direction, and we came out more or less exactly where he had said we would, on the top of the ridge above the village. We looked down and to our immense delight saw a column of mules, ox-carts and men with parcels on their shoulders streaming out of the place as fast as they could go. The Spartans hadn’t arrived yet, and this was the village evacuating itself, in a proper and organised fashion, according to the proper custom of war.
I was just about to go plunging down the hill to join up with this column when Callicrates put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me down. I couldn’t understand what he was doing and struggled, but he clapped a hand over my mouth and pointed. Just behind the village there was a cloud of dust.
‘Sit still,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s nothing, but we’d better just stay here for a moment.’
I pulled his hand away. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘If they haven’t seen it, we’ve got to warn them.’
‘Shut up and stay here,’ Callicrates said furiously. ‘Do what you’re told, just this once.’
So I crouched down beside him in the shade of a boulder, while the cloud of dust came nearer. The people in the column had seen it too, and they didn’t like the look of it any more than I had. Some of them dumped their loads in the roadway and started running, along the road or up the hill. Others turned back towards the village; others just stood where they were.
The cloud of dust suddenly turned into a column of horsemen, riding very fast. I couldn’t see the colour of their cloaks, but they had helmets that flashed in the sun and they carried two javelins each. They didn’t look anything like any of the cavalry units that I had seen in Athens; they were far too businesslike and organised. Under different circumstances, it would have been a pleasure to watch them.
Callicrates pulled me further behind the rock, and then we peeped out. The cavalry had caught up with what was left of the column, and they were throwing javelins. It was rather like a high-class boar-hunt, such as you get in the hills when a lot of rich young men go out for a day’s sport — except that there weren’t any dogs or nets, and the quarry were rather less inspiring in their resistance than the average wild boar. When the cavalrymen had thrown their spears they drew their sabres and closed in, and since I had had quite enough of that sort of entertainment for one day, I didn’t bother watching too much after that. I had this strange feeling that I was at the Theatre — probably because I was sitting a long way back and watching what was going on — and that some tasteless God was laying all this on for my benefit. I wanted to stand up and tell him that I was a Comedian not a Tragedian and so all this was wasted on me; and besides, it was against all the conventions of the Theatre to have the actual killing on stage. Besides, I wanted to say, I’ve seen this play before not two hours ago and I didn’t reckon much to it then.
I don’t suppose it lasted more than ten minutes. I remember Callicrates saying, ‘It’s all right, they’ve gone now,’ and me thinking that that was exactly what my father used to say when my cousins from Thria came to visit and I used to hide in the stables because the woman had a hare lip and frightened me, and then looking out and seeing the mess.
Mess is the only word to describe it. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the City the morning after the Festival of Pitchers and wandered down to the Market Square; but it was just like that, I promise you — exactly that same sort of sorry-looking, depressing mess that comes of people trying to enjoy themselves just a little bit too much. Except that instead of smashed wine jars and abandoned sandals and little pools of vomit at the feet of the statues of the Heroes of Athenian History, there were dead bodies and shattered carts and puddles of blood; and even they were the same colour as spilt wine, until you looked closely at them. The way I account for it is that the human soul can’t really cope with strange and horrible things, and so it tries to pretend that what it’s seeing is something everyday and normal; I guess that’s why similes work so well in poems. If I tell you that the roadway was littered with severed arms and legs you can’t really picture that in your mind since, unless you’ve seen a few battlefields, your soul doesn’t know what that looks like and probably doesn’t want to imagine it. But if I say that there were arms and legs scattered about like bits of driftwood on the beach after there’s been a storm at sea, you’ll be able to identify with that; and, if you know your Homer, you’ll be able to say exactly which passage from The Cypria I’ve just lifted that simile from. But there we are.
Callicrates and I wandered down the hill — there didn’t seem to be much point in hurrying — and did our best to make ourselves useful, but there was nothing much we could do. The other villagers who had had the wit to run away when they saw the cavalry coming had crept back and were seeing to such of their relatives and friends who weren’t completely past helping and sprinkling dust on those who were, and Callicrates and I just got in the way for most of the time. I remember we saw one man lying on his side, and he didn’t look particularly dead; but when we lifted him up to see if he was still alive, his head rolled right back and dangled from his neck by a strip of skin, and the expression on his face was frankly ludicrous, so we scooped a little dust over him and walked away quickly, the way you do when you’re shopping in the Market Square and you accidentally bump into one of these neatly piled pyramids of melons or oranges and knock them over.
Just as we were despairing of being able to do any good, we found an old man who apparently didn’t have any family, because he was just squatting there all over blood and nobody was taking any notice of him. Anyway, he was calling out for water in a horribly wheezy voice, and so I sprinted off and found a helmet which one of the cavalrymen had dropped, and I filled it with water from a stream that ran down the hill and brought it back, feeling like the God of Healing. The old man grabbed it from me and poured its contents into his face; but none of us, not even he, had noticed that he had a great big hole in his throat from a sabre-cut, and of course most of the water just poured out of this on
to the ground. A moment later the man made a sort of rattling noise, like someone gargling with salt water when they’ve just had a tooth pulled, and rolled over and died, so that was a complete waste of time. Now I come to think of it, that was the first time I ever saw anyone die when I was close enough to see the expression on their face.
And then there was a little girl — she couldn’t have been more than eight or nine — who had had an arm cut off at the shoulder, and what with the fear and the pain she had wet herself, and this seemed to be causing her more unhappiness than her injury. She wasn’t weeping or screaming, just grizzling like any other small child, and her mother had finished doing the best she could to stop the bleeding and was trying to change her wet clothes, and was swearing at her for not keeping still. Really, it made me want to burst out laughing to see them, but maybe I was just getting hysterical. Now perhaps you’re thinking that that sounds a little strange coming from someone who had seen Athens in the plague, but I assure you that it was all very different. You see, there had been no blood and no wounds in the plague, just a lot of dead bodies, and besides I was very much younger then. But it was like the plague in one respect, because however unhappy and sick it all made me feel I nevertheless couldn’t help noticing the little details, not because they were heartrending or disgusting but because they were interesting, as being curious specimens of human behaviour.
I’d better stop talking like this before you start getting the idea that I’m some sort of ghoul, like that terrible fellow Chaerophon the scientist who goes around watching people having their gallstones cut out. Please don’t think I was enjoying any of this; I was absolutely terrified, since I was firmly convinced that the Spartan infantry were going to arrive at any minute and finish off the job. I think Callicrates had much the same idea, for all his good intentions about helping the wounded, because he kept looking over his shoulder in a worried sort of a way. But for all my fear, I don’t think it ever seriously entered my head that anything was going to happen to me; I was rather more interested in not witnessing yet another massacre. I seemed to have the idea that I wasn’t really part of what was going on; as if I was a tourist from one of the islands, or a God who could make himself invisible.
