Marathon

by Christian Cameron

  putting her hand on my face, so that I could smel the wine on her

  breath.

  I steeled myself and gave no reply, except to go back to the

  forge and make sheet out of bronze stock – again.

  My aristocratic guests were surprisingly tolerant of my

  affection for my forge. Idomeneus took them hunting, and on the

  affection for my forge. Idomeneus took them hunting, and on the

  third day of their visit I joined them, and we flushed a boar up

  behind Eleutherai in driving rain. Antigonus was there, and

  Alcaeus, the leading man of the former Milesians, as wel as

  Teucer, who had a farm hard by my own purchased from waste

  land that Epictetus had been saving for his sons, Idomeneus, of

  course, and Ajax and Styges. My guests were Lykon, a very

  young man with pale skin like a girl and longer lashes than was

  quite right, and Philip, Antigonus’s guest-friend from Thrace.

  Philip was an excelent hunter, and in fact had been included

  by Penelope because his skils might impress the prospective

  father-in-law. Lykon was recklessly brave – the sort of courage

  that you have to show when you look like a pretty girl and have

  a high-pitched voice. I liked Lykon immediately – he was not

  afraid to wash our wooden bowls around the campfire, and now,

  faced with a boar, he simply lowered his spear-point and went at

  it.

  Lykon was between the boar and me. We were in open

  woods, high on Cithaeron. The ground was broken and rocky

  and rose steeply behind the boar, and it was littered deeply with

  oak leaves that muffled sound and made movement treacherous.

  It was cold enough to numb your hand on your spear, and

  raining.

  The hounds were as surprised as the rest of us. We’d been

  on the trail of a deer – a deer that Philip had wounded and we al

  wanted to bring home. The boar was no part of our hunt, but

  now our youngest man was facing it, and it was not smal.

  The boar put its head down and charged. Teucer leaped up

  The boar put its head down and charged. Teucer leaped up

  on a stump and shot – no aiming, no pause to think – and his

  heavy war arrow punched the animal in the side and deflected it.

  It skidded to a stop and Teucer shot it again, then Lykon tried to

  get the point of his spear into it – but from inexperience, he

  didn’t know that you never spear a pig in the face. The spear-

  point caught on the beast’s snout, which is ful of muscle and

  gristle, and glanced off its tusks – and the creature barged under

  his point, into his legs, and down he went.

  Teucer put a third arrow into it as it tried to savage Lykon.

  Philip and I reached it at the same instant. It backed a step

  and I put my point deep in the chest, under the chin, a low thrust

  as good as any I made in battle, and Philip, may the gods bless

  him, leaped high and plunged his point right down between the

  animal’s shoulder blades. Then another arrow thudded home – I

  was so close that I saw dust fly from the beast’s hide as it hit

  despite the rain – and Antigonus and Idomeneus were both

  there, adding the weight of their spears, and the thing was dead.

  Lykon lay stil, and for a long moment I thought his slim back

  was broken.

  His right leg was ripped from knee to groin, a long but

  thankfuly shalow gash that missed his privates by the breadth of

  a finger. And where he’d curled up to cover himself, the boar’s

  snout had broken his nose and its tusk had slashed across his

  face.

  He looked up at me, his face a mask of blood and tears.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I fucked that up.’

  We laughed. Lykon was a man after that. The facial scar was

  a gift from the gods. No man would ever have taken him

  seriously without it. As it was . . .

  Wel, you’l hear, in time.

  Lykon was the son of an important man from Corinth, a

  magistrate and shipowner, and Pen was very fond of him – al of

  us were. So we voted, like Greeks, to wait for his leg to heal

  before setting out. That meant two weeks of guesting three

  aristocrats, and the consequent drain on my pantries and staff.

  I tried to think of it that way – the peasant way – but the truth

  is, they were fine men and I had a fine time. We hunted some

  days, and Idomeneus and Ajax came and stayed – for the first

  time, I’l add – and there was wine and talk in the andron every

  night.

  In the second week, Cleon turned up. He had been to the

  house before, and Hermogenes liked him. So he came into the

  courtyard and Styges brought him wine.

  The first I knew of it was the sound of raised voices outside

  my forge. I pushed out through the hide curtains and there was

  Cleon, red in the face, and my brother-in-law was being held by

  Philip.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘This is what you brought me to Plataea to do?’ Cleon asked.

  ‘To be your servant?’

  Lykon sprang forward despite his wound. ‘Antigonus meant

  no offence,’ the boy said. ‘How could we know you are a free

  no offence,’ the boy said. ‘How could we know you are a free

  man?’

  In truth, Cleon looked as if he had slept with dogs – his wool

  chiton was badly soiled and had wine stains al around the hem

  and down the front. He had no leg wraps under his sandals, and

  no chlamys or himation. He looked like a slave.

  Antigonus had treated him like one, and Cleon had punched

  him.

  Antigonus was a gentleman. He apologized, and admitted that

  he had committed hubris.

  But Cleon’s lips trembled and he walked out of my gate. ‘I

  came . . .’ he said, and then he spat. ‘Never mind. I won’t come

  again.’

  He stalked off down the hil. I caled his name, but then I let

  him go. You can only do so much for a man.

  Mater was surprisingly sober. I’m not dul-witted – I know why.

  For once, Pen and I were living the life Mater had wanted, and

  she stayed sober enough to be part of it, although it might have

  been truer to the gruesome drunkard’s creed if she’d managed

  to be roaring drunk and ruin the whole thing for everyone – the

  element of self-loathing in the drunkard is the ugliest part of the

  whole thing.

  But she didn’t. She and Pen sang with Leda and the better

  slaves joined in, and she did loom work in the andron while the

  men argued.

  Mostly, we talked about the Persians. Antigonus and Lykon

  and Philip were equaly awestruck that we’d served in the east.

  and Philip were equaly awestruck that we’d served in the east.

  Philip saw the Great King as a force for good, a great aristocrat

  who would make the world a better place – but he liked a good

  war story. Lykon took the opposite tack – his father owned

  ships and had no time for Persia.

  We debated when, and if, the Great King would come for

  Athens. Idomeneus and I insisted that we could have won Lade,

  and Philip maintained that the Great King could never be
/>
  defeated.

  We drank a great deal of wine. Pen mocked us from her

  loom, and Mater proclaimed that it was high time I stopped

  wandering the world like Odysseus and got myself a wife and

  some sons and daughters.

  What I didn’t know was that Mater had sent a messenger

  over the mountains, to Athens.

  During his recovery, Lykon couldn’t hunt, so he hobbled around

  the farm, asking hundreds of questions, and I returned one

  evening, cold through, with a deer across my horse and Philip’s

  laughter floating up the hil from the crossroads where he was

  drinking with Peneleos.

  Ting ting.

  Ting ting.

  I went into the forge, expecting to find Tiraeus, and there he

  was, sure enough, guiding Lykon through making a cup.

  I laughed. ‘I’m not sure what your father would think,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Pater worries that I’l sleep with older men,’ he

  said. ‘He’d never object to a little work.’

  said. ‘He’d never object to a little work.’

  Lykon’s time in my shop put the seal of aristocratic approval

  on my smithing. I see that now. By the time Lykon was ready to

  go over the mountain, I had shown al of them how to start a

  helmet, and I had my brother-in-law’s deep-bowled Corinthian

  roughed out, so that the skul stood proud to the cheekplates and

  the elegance of the shape had begun to show.

  At any rate, we were fast friends by the time we rode up past

  the shrine, two by two – Antigonus with Pen, Idomeneus with

  Lykon, Teucer with Philip, Alcaeus with me, and a passel of

  slaves behind us on donkeys with hampers of food and some

  gifts. It was cold, and our breath rose to the heavens with the

  breath of the animals, as if we had fires burning inside us.

  We had a snowstorm the second day, and we chose to stay

  an extra night back at the shrine. The two women who lived

  there asked me about Apolonasia, and when I told them that she

  was free and had a dowry of forty drachmas, they laughed and

  offered to folow me over the mountain. I didn’t tel them the

  price the poor girl had had to pay for her dowry. I don’t brag of

  my failures. But it served to remind me, when I was feeling

  cocky, of what failure was like.

  I left the rest of them, rode to the summit despite the snow

  and made sacrifice there, surrounded by an endless field of

  white, with a clear view over al of the earth as far as I could see

  – out to sea to the south, and over al Boeotia to the north, so

  that the smoke of hearths in Thebes was a smudge that I could

  see far over the dance floor of Ares.

  And al I could see in the rim of the world was war.

  And al I could see in the rim of the world was war.

  And then we rode down into Attica.

  Aleitus had a tower. It was a fine building, of carefuly cut stone

  in the Lesbian manner, and I liked it immediately, although the

  rooms smeled of smoke al the time. I had money – I thought

  that I might build myself a tower. Our house had had one once –

  a smal thing. But the one Euphoria’s father had was another

  thing entirely. It was elegant and strong.

  He met us in his courtyard and I liked him, too, although he

  wasn’t sure of me. He wasn’t a big man, but wel-muscled, grey-

  haired but with plenty of life left in his face, and he was

  surrounded by dogs – big boarhounds of a kind we don’t have in

  Boeotia. The dogs barked and barked at so many strangers.

  The blonde woman-girl who dashed into the courtyard and

  stood locked in an embrace with Leda had to be my intended

  bride, and I found that my tongue was stuck to the roof of my

  mouth.

  She was beautiful, the way Briseis was beautiful. I looked at

  her, and I became aware that Pen was laughing at me.

  Her father clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Happens to al the

  suitors,’ he said. ‘Don’t spend too much time with her – she’l

  eat your brain and leave you a drooling idiot. I’ve seen it happen

  again and again.’ He laughed – the way a strong man laughs

  when he is wounded.

  The young woman in question glanced at me, smiled and

  went back to her friend. So much for my vanity.

  Stil, that’s why we have rules of hospitality and customs – to

  Stil, that’s why we have rules of hospitality and customs – to

  pass the time when our brains are fuddled by sex. I managed to

  get down from my horse and introduce my friends and my sister,

  and then we were in his hal and my slaves were laying out a

  selection of my gifts.

  One of the many rewards for a life of piracy was that I had

  some beautiful things to give as gifts. Aleitus received a gold and

  coral necklace from Aegypt, and a gold cup that had come off

  the captain’s table of some Phoenician merchantman, with a long

  body and a swan’s head. That was for Euphoria.

  My Tyrian dyed wool passed without comment, and a pair of

  bronze water pitchers – my own work, let me add – were

  virtualy ignored. But I’d made a pair of boar spears to match the

  ones I’d seen at Aristides’ house, with long staves and sharp

  bronze butt-spikes and heavy heads, and Aleitus passed over

  some much richer gifts to pounce on them.

  ‘Now, these are a sight for sore eyes, lad!’ he pronounced.

  No one had caled me lad in quite some time. It made me

  laugh.

  Stil, the company was good, and Euphoria sang and showed

  us her weaving, which I have to admit was superb. In fact, I’d

  never seen such fine work from a girl her age.

  ‘I love to weave,’ she said, and it was the first serious,

  grown-up thing I heard her say. ‘Do you know anything about

  weaving?’

  I thought about a number of answers – I had, after al,

  watched my mother and sister weave al my life. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Is it true that you are a master smith?’ she asked.

  ‘It is true,’ I said.

  Her eyes went back to her loom. ‘Are your hands always

  dirty?’ she asked.

  ‘Often,’ I alowed.

  She nodded. ‘Then if we wed, you must be careful not to

  touch my wool,’ she said. Her eyes flitted across mine. ‘I should

  like to marry a man who could make something,’ she added.

  ‘But Pater says you are low, so I shal not get my hopes up.’ She

  wore an enigmatic half-smile as she said this, and I was too much

  a fool to realize that this girl-woman was playing me like a lyre.

  Low, is it? I thought. But I wiped the rage from my face.

  We hunted rabbits the first day, and I knew from the start that I

  was being tested. It was wonderful. I felt as if I was living in the

  epics, and here I was competing for Atlanta, or Helen, or

  Penelope.

  The wound on my leg didn’t bother me as it had, but I stil

  had trouble keeping up with Lykon and Philip, and it was al I

  could do to run the rabbits down. Philip kiled four and Lykon

  two – but Lykon, without a word, began to edge them my way

  in the last hours, and I managed to kil two with my clu
b before

  the sun set.

  ‘I would have expected a man as famous as you to be faster,’

  Aleitus said. It was not quite a sneer – indeed, by the standards

  of a rabbit hunt, any man who kiled was alowed to wear a

  garland – but his barb went home. Fleetness of foot is one of the

  garland – but his barb went home. Fleetness of foot is one of the

  most important aspects of war-training, as the Poet recognizes

  when he cals Achiles ‘swift footed’.

  I swalowed my anger and nodded. ‘I was swifter,’ I said,

  ‘when I was younger.’

  Aleitus laughed. ‘Not yet old enough to know when an

  excuse is holow,’ he said.

  I almost rode away that day. But my friends calmed me.

  The second day we got a dose of winter rains, and we stayed

  indoors, listened to the women sing and swapped stories. I told

  some of the stories I’m teling now, and my host’s doubts were

  plain on his face, and some of his friends – local gentlemen –

  sneered.

  Let me pause here to say something about them. They were

  hippeis and richer – rich farmers, aristocrats, mostly of the

  eupatridae – and most of them shunned Athens the way other

  men shun impiety. They never went into the city – the city I had

  already come to love. They had their own countryside temples,

  and sometimes they went to the assembly to vote, but they were

  the ‘country’ party, and they loathed the oarsmen and the metics

  and the tradesmen, and wanted Athens to be Sparta – a land of

  aristocratic farmers. To them, I was a combination of alien things

  – a smith, a foreigner. But they were, taken together, good men.

  When the weather cleared in the afternoon, we went out into

  the fields below his tower to throw javelins. I have my moments

  with the javelin, but I’ve never practised as much as I ought, and

  while Apolo and Zeus have sent me some good throws, none

  while Apolo and Zeus have sent me some good throws, none

  came to me that day. My first was so bad that men laughed. One

  of the ‘local gentlemen’ was heard to say that my reputation as a

  kiler of men must be one of those ‘provincial tales’ that would

  not stand up to scrutiny.

  Idomeneus grinned from ear to ear and came to stand by me.

  We shared the same thought – to kil the fool. But my brother-in-

  law, Antigonus, who by that time I loved like a brother, kicked

  me – hard – in the shin. I whirled on him, looking for blood. He