Halo

by Zizou Corder

  The other boys had gathered round him as he spoke. Even just standing there, laughing at the idea of this weedy little foreigner undergoing their training, they moved as one, like parts of a whole. Limbs on a beast.

  She thought of the ferocious phalanx she had just seen, row upon row of Spartan warriors, crimson-cloaked, undefeatable, new ones rising up to replace the fallen. She imagined that phalanx grinding and grinding against their enemy as the little boys had been grinding against the tree.

  ‘So what are you scared of?’ she said.

  There was a moment of icy serious silence as they all stared at her, amazed at her impudence. Then they all started laughing at her again. They laughed a lot.

  The others went off, and Leonidas took Halo to the gymnasium to meet the man called Borgas.

  ‘What’s a sparring partner?’ she asked him on the way.

  ‘It means the little kids get to beat you up,’ he said.

  She squinted at him blankly.

  ‘Boxing?’ he said. ‘Sweet Ares, where were you brought up? Fighting? You know what fighting is? Well, the little kids learn to fight by fighting you.’

  ‘I don’t fight,’ she said. Even as she said it, she remembered the feeling that had flown through her back in the Mani, when she had wanted to kill the man who stole her owl and hit his wife. She squashed it firmly. ‘I don’t fight,’ she repeated.

  Leonidas glanced at her. ‘You do now,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, they’re only babies.’

  Borgas was old, strong and hairy. He laughed like a donkey braying and smelt like an ox, and carried a small, vicious-looking whip. He squeezed her biceps, picked her up to check her weight, and made her punch him in the belly. The picking up and squeezing annoyed her so much she punched him as hard as she could.

  He laughed like a donkey. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Bit of life in him. Do you know how to fight at all?’

  ‘No,’ she said irritatedly, rubbing her knuckles. His belly had been harder than it looked.

  ‘Never mind, you’ll soon learn,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All right, get rid of that girly chiton and you can start with the nine-year-olds.’ He grabbed Halo’s tunic and began to try and pull it over her head.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she shouted, wriggling out of his grip and leaping backwards. ‘Where I come from we wear clothes and I am not going naked for you or anyone!’

  ‘Quick on his feet too!’ said Borgas.

  Halo was glaring at him.

  ‘Come on, take it off,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ she shouted.

  ‘My little friend is foreign,’ said Leonidas, trying not to show his amusement. ‘He’s unusually modest. Let him keep his chiton. Titch!’ he said.

  ‘Don’t called me that,’ she scowled.

  ‘Don’t be a pain,’ he said. ‘Do as you’re told. And don’t try to run away. If you run away, they’ll kill you.’

  He said it so easily. Again she wondered, Is he mocking me or warning me?

  ‘Good advice,’ said Borgas, fingering his whip and showing his yellow teeth in a grin. ‘Now come on. To work.’

  Across the level grass of the field, bands of boys were engaged in various types of exercise. Runners flew down the track; at a safe distance a handful were throwing discuses, and measuring how far they had sent them. Borgas led her to where a group of boys was circled round something. Their shrill cries sounded almost like birdsong from a distance, but as Halo drew closer she realized that it was serious.

  Two boys in the middle were fighting – it was that simple. Punching and kicking and scratching and slapping and grabbing and trying to gouge each other’s eyes out. They were furious and they were trying to kill each other.

  Borgas swore loudly and waded in.

  ‘What are you doing, you twits?’ he shouted. ‘Calm down! Skill, you fools, not anger! You don’t listen to a word you’re told, do you…?’ He grabbed each of them by the upper arm, pulled them apart, and held them up, dangling, still trying to throw punches at each other in mid-air. ‘You little fools! Lesson number one! No anger!!’

  Halo couldn’t stifle her laughter. They looked so silly, hanging there like kites stuck up a tree.

  The boys crowded round the fight all turned to look at her. Their eyes narrowed. Their mouths tightened.

  Oh.

  She realized her mistake.

  Now they all hate me. Fifty nine-year-old boys hate me. And until I find a way out of this madhouse, fifty nine-year-old boys who hate me are going to punch me and kick me and scratch me and slap me and try to gouge my eyes out, every day.

  Borgas was shaking his head at her in weary impatience.

  ‘That’s Titch,’ he said. ‘Someone teach him the basics of boxing, please, so he can be some use round here.’

  A tiny, evil-eyed boy emerged from the crowd.

  ‘I’ll teach him, sir,’ he said in a wheedly voice. He looked as if he’d like to teach her to fall on her face in the dust, spitting teeth.

  Halo stared at him.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Here? Now?’

  Borgas had turned to attend to a boy whose foot had been trampled.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the evil-eyed boy, his jaw hanging open and a nasty look of excitement appearing on his face. ‘Here and now.’

  Halo was ready. The boy launched himself on her before he’d even finished speaking – but she leapt out of the way.

  ‘Oops,’ she said, sarcastically, as he stumbled. He didn’t like that, and turned, and grabbed at her neck – but not before she raised her fist and punched him, as hard as she could. He went down again.

  ‘Titch!’ shouted Borgas, who had realized what was going on. ‘What are you doing?’

  The boy had jumped up and had flung his arms around her waist, trying to bring her down. He was biting her arm too, and it hurt. And she could feel his spit on her skin, which was disgusting.

  ‘Sparring, sir!’ she shouted, trying to loosen the boy’s armhold by digging her fingernails into him, and kicking him at the same time. She was furious. She hated this boy.

  ‘That’s not sparring!’ Borgas yelled.

  Halo gave up trying to get the boy off her waist, and elbowed him in the head instead. She caught him right in the temple. He fell to the ground.

  Borgas swore again.

  ‘Crenas, you twit,’ he said. ‘Get up.’

  Crenas lay there, moaning.

  Halo wiped his spit off her arm. She was breathing a little heavily. She was surprised. It seemed she did fight after all. When provoked.

  ‘You head’s bleeding,’ Borgas said.

  ‘Well, he didn’t do that,’ she said. ‘That’s my own wound – I brought it with me.’

  Borgas sighed and swore and shook his head, as if those were the only things he knew how to do.

  ‘OK, enough,’ he said. ‘You lot – you’re sleeping in the agora tonight. Go and get your dinners. Not you.’ He gestured to Halo. ‘You come with me.’

  The sun was on its way down as they all headed into the city.

  Borgas stopped beside a shack. ‘There’s your bed,’ he said, gesturing inside, to a pile of straw. (Only later did she discover she’d be sharing it with a number of greasy little rats.) He reached into another shack, next door, and shouted to someone. A woman’s voice replied.

  ‘There’s your dinner,’ he said, passing Halo a dish of oats. (She suspected the rats had been there too.) ‘Enjoy it. There’ll be more tomorrow night. And remember – if you leave the city, or look as if you might leave the city, or even think about leaving the city, you’ll be dead.’ He gave her another yellow-toothed grin.

  Later, lying on the straw, she heard the rats squeaking, the guards shouting to each other, and the bolt shooting into place on the other side of the shed door.

  So far so good, she thought. At least I’ve shown the nine-year-olds what a tough guy I am.

  The next morning, there was no breakfast. Instead there was a tiny boy with skin as black as the night sea and little musc
les like knots in string asleep beside her in the straw. That was surprising enough, but then a handful of other lads emerged from the straw too. Three of them had black eyes; one had a badly mashed nose; one had stitches on his eyebrow. They all had scars. They greeted her with nods, and one said, ‘Come on then,’ as they filed out on to the street and along to the gymnasium.

  Well, she thought. I suppose some scars will make me look more like a boy, at least…

  The first two days she was banned from sparring because of her wound. Then she was put up against Crenas again. He gave her his evil grin, then ran up, grabbed her, and kneed her hard between the legs. Then he stood back, obviously expecting some big reaction. She just stared at him.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He did it again – so she did it back to him.

  He doubled over and yelled blue murder. Borgas came running up and grabbed Halo by the ear.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You little rat – don’t do that. You’re here to spar, not to destroy the future of Sparta. And Crenas, don’t be pathetic. You think that the whole world fights with Spartan codes of honour? They do not. You need to be prepared for anything. This little rat is just the kind of thing you need to be prepared for. And next time you come moaning about pain, I’ll whip you.’

  As soon as Borgas’s back was turned, Crenas kneed her again in the groin. This time she yelled and screeched like he had. It pained her to show weakness to him – particularly a weakness she didn’t have – but she didn’t want anyone noticing that she didn’t hurt the way a boy did.

  Soon after that, Borgas decided to put her up against the ten-year-olds.

  Unfortunately, Crenas turned ten that same week.

  Halo was not happy with the discovery that she did fight after all – and that she fought like a wildcat: scratching, spitting, gouging and kicking. She was ashamed of it. She remembered what the Centaurs had taught her. This was not the kind of boy she had wanted to be – a dirty-fighting filthy-tempered slave. She wanted to be like Arko would be – brave and strong, cool under pressure, with self-control.

  But Borgas made her fight. He stood over her with his whip, and the boys insulted her the moment his back was turned, and she had no choice… So she took all the resentment she had built up against human beings and vented it on these Spartan boys. She thought of the Maniot, of Aristides, of the slave captain, of Hypsipile, of Scitas, of Crenas, of Borgas, and above all of Leonidas’s band, attacking Thanus’s father… If Thanus’s father had been a fighter, would he still be alive now?

  She fought.

  She didn’t, though, think of Leonidas when she was fighting. When she thought of him, she recalled how he had made Borgas let her wear her chiton, of how he turned up sometimes at the training and taught her the basic moves of boxing, and of how once he had given her a piece of cheese. None of the boys, Spartan or slave, ever had enough to eat, and the cold drawing in made it worse. The boys were kept hungry on purpose, to teach them to steal food. They weren’t punished. They were meant to steal food – it was good training for times of war or shortage. They were only punished for being caught.

  And for Halo it was a winter of constant fear. Every day, she was in danger of being discovered. She rolled her cloak tight round herself at night, and by day strapped her chiton against her so that none of the boys could see her body. Every time she had to wrestle, she could have been discovered. The boys had all kinds of rough-housing games; she made it clear with a couple of sharp punches that she did not play. When she saw Spartan girls at the training ground she kept well away from them in case they might notice what the boys did not. And almost all the time, she needed to pee, because there was never any moment of privacy for her to relieve herself. Luckily, some of the other slaves also had the habit of privacy. The African boy, Nebo, and she looked out for each other as they slipped into the bushes. Otherwise, she was never alone. How could she be? She was a slave, and though she tried her best to seem obedient, Borgas seemed to smell that she was rebellious at heart.

  The sky that winter was grey and heavy. Rain turned the training ground greasy with mud. The winds were chill and damp, the days short and gloomy. At night, on her smelly straw pallet, she cuddled up and dreamed of Arko, of picking figs and splashing in the caverns. Blue light filled her dreams, so that sometimes when she woke she wept because it was gone.

  The worst thing of all was that she had no friends. She had had hopes of Nebo – but Nebo didn’t speak. Sometimes he sang mysterious songs in his own language, but he knew no Greek of any sort. Halo smiled at him, and liked his singing, in a sad way, but she couldn’t really be friends with him. In her rare free moments Halo would go out and visit the mules that shared the yard where the sparring boys stayed. She would stroke their long velvety ears, and stare into their big black eyes. She felt for them. She felt like them – alone, used and abused.

  Often, the men would come down and watch the boys training, and she would sometimes overhear their conversations. She heard the same words Thanus had used: Kerkyra, Potidaea, what the Corinthians thought, what the Athenians did, how the Megarans had reacted. Melesippus, she heard, had gone away to Athens.

  ‘Every Athenian assumes he knows best,’ she heard him tell Leonidas, after he was back. ‘They assume that only they can run Greece. Zeus knows Sparta wants peace, but the way things are going…’

  Later that day Melesippus made a speech to the boys after training. ‘The time will come,’ he said, ‘when you will fight; when you will make that wall of muscle and blood and loyalty, and battle side by side for Sparta. You will fight for family, for the Gods, for the ancestors, and for the man beside you.’The boys stood up a little straighter, and smiled. The older men, those who had seen war, looked on them approvingly. The warriors of Sparta would never fail, because there were always more young warriors coming up: the agoge continued. Leonidas’s gang were nearly ready; and behind them were the fifteen-year-olds, the thirteen-year-olds, the eleven-year-olds, the nine-year-olds…

  ‘Other cities,’ Melesippus continued, ‘pull farmers out of the field, fishermen from their boats, blacksmiths from their fires, and call them an army. Only we have real soldiers. We – Sparta – hatch out and train up from babyhood. Only Spartan warriors are really warriors.’

  ‘We are warriors, you are scum!’ shouted the ten-year-olds, as Halo turned up the next morning for another day of being beaten and abused. ‘We are Sparta, you are no one!’ She stretched and shook out her limbs and tried not to hear the insults. Using what Leonidas had taught her, she was getting pretty good now at dancing about and dodging their blows. The ten-year-olds were still nasty, but they were becoming more obedient. There was a word she had learned here: oidos. It meant a willingness to believe that someone else knows better than you. They all had it. Melesippus had told them that they would never be more free than when they freely gave obedience to the laws of Sparta – he’d said that choice was a stronger bond than being forced. They all agreed with him. Halo most certainly did not have oidos. She knew perfectly well that she, a kid, knew better than all these people. She felt a hundred million miles away from them.

  Above all, she wondered why they lived like this, eating on their feet, sleeping in gangs just anywhere around the town, instead of at home with their families. She wanted to shout at them – ‘You have families! Why don’t you appreciate them? I don’t even have my family!’

  ‘You’re no one,’ Borgas said. ‘You don’t even know what city you’re from!’

  So does having no family, no city, make me no one? She rubbed her aching limbs as she lay on the straw that night. Most of my bad fortune has been because I have lost my family. Perhaps – perhaps, if I knew who I was, perhaps I could turn my ill fortune to good. But at least, she thought with a bitter little laugh – at least I’m not a Spartan.

  *

  One morning, there was no training. There was to be a festival. Halo was looking forward to it. The boys were nervy and excited: they were all going do
wn to the temple of Artemis Orthia, their parents would be there, the priestesses too. Borgas said the slaves could go and watch. ‘It’ll teach you something about your betters,’ he said.

  She lined up on the side of the road. She didn’t know what to expect – a procession perhaps. Beside her in the crowd was a tall fair boy not much older than her, with soft curly hair and pale creamy pink cheeks. His eyes were blue and dreamy, and his limbs gentle. He didn’t look at all like the Spartan soldier boys. She had never seen him before.

  Up by the temple a wooden statue of Artemis had been brought out. A crowd of older boys was up there – she saw Scitas among them – and Leonidas.

  They had whips and wooden bars.

  The younger boys appeared, marching in ranks up to the temple, cheering and singing, looking brave and bold.

  As they passed, the older boys beat them.

  The priestess cried out, singing a high and happy song.

  The young boys bit their lips and blinked back tears and raised their heads and kept on singing. One or two cried out in pain and shock – men’s voices in the crowd shouted, ‘Shame on you! You’re a disgrace!’

  The pale boy beside Halo was smiling.

  The older boys raised their whips higher, brought down their sticks harder.

  Blood blossomed on the young boys’ backs, welts coming up. Halo saw two boys holding hands, their fists gripping tightly, sharing their strength and their pain. A boy stumbled and fell. It was Silenas, a short quiet boy who was not quite as unpleasant as the others. Halo had sometimes wondered, as she held Silenas off in the ring, how he had escaped being left out on the hillside at birth, as a weakling.

  The crowd – their parents, their teachers – booed him loudly.

  She thought of the gleaming scars on Leonidas’s back, and she looked at him now. For a moment, between the blows raining down on the boys, she saw his face, and saw that he saw her. Their eyes locked for a moment, and she felt a sudden sharp pang of pity for him, of tenderness.