Halo

by Zizou Corder

  ‘Don’t make a fire now,’Thanus was saying to Thalia. ‘We mustn’t draw attention to ourselves or they’ll come here. The children must stay in tomorrow, and for the next – oh, Lord Zeus, how long will it last? Oh, Zeus, Hera, if ever we made a sacrifice that was pleasing to you, protect our home now, protect us, protect us…’

  Halo was shocked to see how the strong, bearish boy seemed to be crumpling.

  Then he pulled himself together. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘we’ll make the warning fires, and no one will leave the house, and we will make sacrifices. Other than that it’s in the hands of the Gods. Tonight you will all sleep together upstairs. Halosydnus, make your bed by the children. Mother, I will stay awake downstairs. Don’t be afraid. And Halosydnus – we are in your debt. You have been a messenger to us, to bring warning. We thank you.’

  No one slept well that night. Thalia insisted on dragging the children’s pallets right close to hers, which woke them up.

  ‘It’s nothing, little ones. Nothing’s the matter,’ she said, in a cheerful voice that made them nervous. The small one began to cry, and Thalia was hugging him too hard.

  Halo lay on her back on the hard wooden floor and looked up at the ceiling in the darkness; then she rolled over and covered her head in her cloak. ‘Athena, queen of wisdom, owner of my gold owl, give me wisdom,’ she whispered. She made her usual prayers for her Centaur family, and then she lay watching the moonlight hang in a shaft from the little high window, and listening to the sheep muttering in the enclosure below. The children had settled and Thalia’s breath was low and regular as if she was sleeping. Halo hoped that she might sleep too. And perhaps she did sleep for a while.

  And then she heard footsteps, and she came awake with a jolt.

  Footsteps on the roof.

  Silently she threw back her cloak, and silently she took her knife and crossed the room to the door to the stairs. It was easy to draw back the bolt. With the utmost stealth she crept up the wooden stairs to the roof, her knife ready in her hand, her breathing steady.

  When her head came level with the roof, she stopped a moment, and then, keeping her head as low as possible, she peered over the edge.

  It was Thanus, lying low on the roof in the moonlight.

  Relief rolled over her. She hissed softly to alert him, and he looked round. Scurrying low, she crossed the roof to join him, and they spoke briefly in low tones.

  ‘Anything?’ whispered Halo.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Together they scanned the moonlit landscape, spread out soft and strange in the silvery light. How beautiful and peaceful it looked. Mount Taegetus loomed black as ink to the west, a great silhouette against the sky. The moon shone so bright and spread its light so strong that there were no stars at all to be seen. Somewhere over there, she thought, looking to the right of Mount Taegetus, way over there, was the sea, and Zakynthos, and the Centaur village, and the little vine-covered shelter where her family would be sleeping. Perhaps Chariklo would be worrying about her right now, lying restless under the huge moon.

  Did I really walk all the way from beyond that great mountain? It seemed hard to believe. She thought of the almond trees and the stream with the fish, the wild fennel and deer, the kind horses, the wild grapes, the blackberries. She thought of the rocks beneath her feet, the long days without water, the poor dead goat, the bears and the howling wolves and the wild boar; the snakes and the eagles and the scorpions. She thought of the gang of boys in their cloaks, looking for people to kill.

  ‘Shall I keep watch for a while?’ she murmured to Thanus. ‘You’ll be stronger tomorrow if you sleep awhile.’

  ‘No,’ said Thanus. His voice was tight. ‘I can’t sleep. But it’s good to have another man here. My father is – well, I only hope he doesn’t think of travelling home by night in the moonlight. He went to meet his brother. They’re not due till tomorrow.’

  Halo smiled to be thought of as ‘another man’.

  ‘I’ll stay up here anyway,’ she said. ‘I’m used to sleeping outside. It’s not so cold.’

  She sneaked back downstairs and got her cloak, and lay down to sleep on the roof, dreaming of warm chestnut bodies lying around her, and scorpions climbing through her hair.

  The next day was tense. Thalia and Halo were awake before the dawn, and Thanus had already prepared their little household hearth for the sacrifice. Being poor, all they could offer was a couple of barley cakes, but Thanus did it properly: washing first to purify himself, building the fire, calling on the Gods with such passion and intensity that Halo was sure they would hear him and grant his plea. Indeed, she prayed along with him in silence, even though she did not know the father and uncle for whose safety he prayed. Finally he burned the little cakes for the Gods, apologizing to them for the poverty of his offering.

  The children slept on, and Thalia let them, though usually they would have been out in the fields working from daybreak. She and Thanus built a great fire in the courtyard, then as soon as it was burning well they put moss and water on it to make it smoke.

  ‘I hope they see it,’Thalia murmured. ‘I hope they understand it.’ Halo was pretty sure everyone would see it from here to Asia Minor, it was so black and stinky.

  Later Thalia and the children went to the storeroom, and worked quietly pulling the grapeskins from the surface of the new wine in its great jars. ‘Might as well get something useful done,’ she said. Thanus mostly strode up and down, looking nervous. Halo decided to help with the wine, as Thanus still would not let her take a turn at keeping watch.

  He’s going to explode, she thought. I know he’s worried about his family, but he’s being foolish.

  In the afternoon, finally, Thanus slept.

  Thalia and the children carried on working quietly in the house. Thalia was spinning and Halo was just about to say, ‘Here, let me do that,’ when she remembered, just in time, that no Greek boy would know how to spin. All afternoon they worked under the weight of silence, while Halo kept watch. Every now and then Thalia would look up suddenly as if she had heard something. The children grew fractious. It was as if they were all waiting for something dreadful to happen.

  After dusk Thalia laid out the dinner: kykeon porridge, and olives and a little barley bread. Thanus woke up for the meal, but nobody ate very much.

  After dinner, Thalia took the children upstairs. Tonight, she didn’t argue with Thanus about staying down. Thanus, taking with him a big stick from the woodpile and the largest knife from the kitchen, went back up on to the roof, and without a word Halo followed him.

  The moon was rising in the south: vast and golden, round and full. How strange, thought Halo, that the beautiful moon, Selene, should allow such horrors.

  They lay on their stomachs on the roof, Thanus watching the north and east; Halo watching the south and west. The moon sailed higher, shrinking and growing paler as she rose. Is Selene scared too? Halo wondered. Is that why she seems to be retreating and going white?

  The agela had prepared. They had met at sundown at the appointed place. They had eaten their little meal, said the prayers they had to say, and danced their ritual dance. They had sung their hunting songs, and sharpened their gleaming weapons. They had drunk their thin wine. They had grinned and laughed and clapped each other on the back, and as the moon rose higher they had run out from the forest, in a thin, flexible, unbreakable, invisible line, ducking and hiding, silent as the night, down towards the Helot land. This area was known to be full of people with rebellious notions. The Spartan mentors didn’t send the boys just anywhere. They weren’t hunting for the sake of it. They were hunting to warn off rebels, to protect Spartan citizens, Spartan families and the Spartan way.

  The plan had been to skirt the houses, looking for movement, and whatever moved, to hunt it. Any house that was completely dark and silent they would leave. What is the honour in slaying the sleeping? But then they had had a stroke of good fortune – approaching the third settlement, they spotted
two travellers on the track, trying no doubt to finish off a long journey and be home that night.

  Concealed in the undergrowth alongside the track, the hunters, silent and concentrating, drew level with the travellers.

  Two Helot men, in workmen’s clothes, tired. And anyway, what were they doing out at this hour? Law-abiding men would be at home.

  The hunters took pride in how long could they follow these two idiots, these bumpkins, without being spotted. These boys had known each other all their lives, had trained together, eaten together, rested together, prayed together, for ten years. They had learned the same things, shared the same bread, suffered the same punishments. They had done nothing else. Each youth knew how his fellows would react – they could move as one without speaking. They could dart and follow, knowing that they were protected. Each one put his comrades’ lives before his own.

  But they weren’t even spotted. It was as if the bumpkins didn’t even have ears.

  The trees and thorn bushes thinned out as the track led into an olive grove, silvery with moonlight and black with the dark shade of night. The hunters, secure in their silence and invisibility, fell back a little. Soon their leader would give the signal to strike. They were well within reach. The Helots were as good as dead.

  ‘Look!’ hissed Halo. ‘On the track in the olive grove! Two men!’

  Thanus snaked over to where she lay, and squinted into the night.

  ‘There,’ whispered Halo.

  ‘Hera, mother of all kindness, it’s my father and my uncle,’ Thanus gasped quietly.

  ‘And look behind,’ Halo hissed. ‘Among the trees. Do you see?’

  ‘It is them,’ said Thanus, and his breath drew short. ‘It is them. They have come. It is over.’

  ‘Over?’ asked Halo. ‘Aren’t we going to fight?’

  ‘Oh, sweet Hera, what can we do?’Thanus whispered, quickly and oddly, his voice coming light and thin. ‘What can we do? If we fight them we all die. If we don’t fight them we all die. Even if – ha! – we fought them and beat them, others would come. And we’d die. Don’t you understand? Spartans don’t lose. Slaves don’t win.’

  He was gulping for air.

  ‘Can we warn your father?’ said Halo. She was staring at the figures. Was one of them Leonidas, whose kind hands had bound her wound?

  ‘No,’ said Thanus. He was shaking his head, and it wouldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘Shout?’ asked Halo.

  Thanus’s face was white in the moonlight. ‘If we shout,’ he said, ‘they will come here and slaughter my mother… and my little…’

  Thanus turned away from her, and he threw up.

  And at that moment a sound came from the olive grove – a blood-curdling shriek. Not the piercing call of a regimental trumpet, not the cold clang of metal on metal, or the dark clump of sword on leather shield, for this was no fair battle between soldiers – just that dreadful shriek, then cries, and grunts, and then the pounding of feet dull on the dust of the track in the dark.

  Halo couldn’t bear it – but she couldn’t take her eyes away. She watched it as if it were some horrible performance, far from her, unchangeable, unstoppable, beyond her power. Ten or twelve dark figures had emerged from the shadows of the olive grove, and gathered round the two figures on the track. She heard shouts, and a thud. She saw one of the two breaking away and hurtling brokenly towards the house. Four of the hunters broke off to follow. She saw the flash of metal in the moonlight as a sword circled in the air. She saw the figure stagger and fall. She saw the further group dissolve and move apart, leaving a pile on the ground.

  She heard laughter on the still night air, and the clapping of hands together above heads. She saw arms held aloft.

  She too felt sick.

  She saw one figure standing still, alone and black against the silver earth.

  She heard Thanus weeping, and from downstairs she heard Thalia weeping too, and then the little children, one by one.

  Leonidas spat and caught his breath.

  What was wrong with him?

  None of the others had noticed but he had noticed. He knew.

  They had been so caught up in the glory of the hunt, the perfect availability of their prey, their joyful success at slaughtering them. But he, Leonidas, knew.

  He had been the first to spot the prey. He had stalked them, with the others, brothers in arms. He had joined in the thrill of not being seen; a man’s pure joy at his own skill and stealth. He had been ready to step out in front of the prey, challenge them, and kill them face to face as a man should kill his enemy. And the Helots were enemies! Pathetic enemies, for sure, but enemies all the same. Hadn’t they tried to destroy Sparta at the time of the great earthquake, rising up and taking advantage of the chaos? Weren’t they constantly scheming and plotting and looking for ways to destroy the state? Weren’t there many thousands more of them than there were of the Spartans?

  He would be happy to stand before any enemy and beat him in fair fight.

  And he had given the signal for the kill.

  But when the boys had leapt out, sleek and silent as a serpent, twelve of them on to two unarmed Helots, one of whom was almost an old man, and drawn their knives, and chased the old man and laughed… Leonidas had been unable to join in.

  He had not killed a man. He was ashamed. What kind of Spartan was he? Was he a coward, after all?

  He was the leader. If he could not kill a man, what use was he?

  Thanus, in the fury of his grief, came rushing down from the roof and out into the olive grove to take his father’s body in his arms. Leonidas stood before it with his knife drawn. Around him stood his boys, bloodstained and proud.

  ‘Another one!’ cried one of them. ‘Take him, Leonidas!’

  And Leonidas drew his knife up. Face to face, he had no problem with death.

  But behind Thanus was someone else – a woman running up to them, desperate and shrieking. ‘Thanus!’ she cried, in a heart-shaking voice of fear. ‘Thanus!’ Behind her were two little children, and behind the children, trying to hold them back, clutching their wriggling, crying bodies and arms, there was someone else.

  ‘What do you want from us?’ cried the woman. ‘What more?’ Her voice rang across the valley and echoed back to them off the mountainside. ‘What more? More? More?’

  ‘Take them all!’ cried another of the Spartan boys, and the cry went up: ‘Take them all!’

  Leonidas stood in the moonlight; his eye on the further figure, the one standing with the children.

  ‘There’s no honour to Sparta in killing babies and women,’ he said harshly. ‘We are blooded. Our business is done here.’ He grinned, and Halo could see the moonlight flash on his teeth and on the blade he raised in the air as he turned to his boys. ‘Leave these little animals to their little business,’ he cried, and if the boys were disappointed they didn’t show it, because they were Spartans, and Spartans always obey their leader.

  Thalia fell to the ground. The children struggled from Halo’s grip and ran to their mother. Thanus stepped up to where his father and his uncle lay on the dust track in the silver moonlight, and knelt by them, and holding his head in his arms whispered a prayer over their bodies.

  And Leonidas, before he strode back up the road, pointed at Halo, and said, ‘Just bring that one.’

  Xαπτερ 11

  Halo knew there was no point in running, no point in trying to escape. Twelve Spartan boys? She wouldn’t have a chance – plus she didn’t want to get into a struggle with them. She was a boy now, and she did not want to be discovered.

  She stepped forward when he spoke, her arms out to show she was unarmed, her head low to show she was giving in – but only for now, she told herself. Inside, I’m not giving in to you. Her mind was racing with what might happen to her. She didn’t even have time to glance back at Thalia and the children, or at Thanus.

  One of the boys quickly whipped a piece of rope round her wrists and tied them behind her back, leaving a
tail of rope to lead her by. He prodded her to move along, back the way they had come. She seemed to be in some kind of dream, removed from reality in the silver and black night.

  ‘What do you want this kid for, Leon?’ said another of them.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Leonidas – and she glanced up quickly. ‘He’s no Helot.’

  The boy who had tied her put his hand to her chin and tipped her face into the moonlight. Every muscle in her body clenched at the touch of his hand on her skin.

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ she hissed, staring at him defiantly. She could see the dark fuzz on his cheeks and lip.

  ‘Ooo-ooh!’ he sang, mockingly. But Leonidas glanced at him and said, ‘Leave him alone, Scitas,’ and he let her go.

  The boys gathered round.

  ‘Look at that!’ said one. He was pointing at her tattoo.

  ‘What is it?’ said another.

  ‘He’s a barbarian!’ cried Scitas.

  ‘No,’ said Leonidas.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked one.

  ‘I know,’ said Leonidas. ‘We’re taking him back with us.’ And that was it. The Spartan boys set off, moving quickly and silently through the night. Halo was dragged along, tripping and stumbling, behind them. She put all her strength into keeping up and not falling. She was not going to shame herself in front of them. They didn’t speak again for some hours, until Leonidas stopped them, and with a glance and hardly a word they rolled themselves in their cloaks and went to sleep.

  Except for Leonidas. He didn’t sleep. He sat, staring silently out into the darkness.

  The night was cold by now, and the ground beneath her was rocky. Halo shivered as she huddled in her cloak. They had tied her feet as well, and tied the end of that rope to an ilex tree. There were stones beneath her back and she couldn’t get comfortable enough even to rest.

  Somewhere far off the wolves were howling.

  I am with the wolves now, Halo thought, and shuddered. She closed her eyes, and looked into her own mind, trying to focus, to come round to herself after the dreadful dreadful things that had happened that night.