Take what message you like from that.
We climbed up the streets of the lower town and Sallis showed us a few of the sights. The temple of Sardon was magnificent, if a little gaudy even by Boeotian standards.
‘The central sacred precinct is more than a thousand years old,’ Sallis told us. I suspect we craned our necks like hicks, because he laughed aloud. ‘If you pass Babylon, you can climb the temple of Marduk. It is more than three thousand years old.’ He shrugged.
Something crossed Bulis’s face. He glanced at me.
I walked next to him for a while.
‘It is not what I expected,’ he muttered. ‘I have been to Mycenae and it might have an old wall that is a thousand years old.’
I remember nodding. ‘These people are very, very old. But not the Persians. They are as young as we Greeks, or even younger. Indeed, some say we are related.’
Sparthius laughed behind me. ‘Nothing worse than near relations, in a blood feud.’
Hydarnes did everything in his power to welcome us. We were housed in the satrapal palace. Hector laid out a fresh linen chiton – it was hotter than any place I’d ever been, and damp, and everything seemed to droop in the heat. A slave took me to the bath, and a musician came in and began to play.
In the bath.
Musicians will sometimes play in public baths in Greece. But I’d never had one all to myself, and he played almost anything I knew. He, too, was Greek.
A pair of women came in. They were fine-looking women, with good breasts and small waists, muscled legs – really, I was very interested. They came naked, and there could be no doubt of their roles.
But they were both Aeolian Greeks. As soon as they saw I was Greek, they threw themselves at my knees and begged me to rescue them. It was, just possibly, the most humiliating moment of my life, because I fancy myself the sort of man who rescues the weak, not oppresses them further.
Hector heard their story later. They were a Chian nobleman’s daughters, and they had been ‘employed’ in the satrap’s palace for four years.
In fact, as we moved around the corridors and unpacked, it became obvious that every low-level slave in the palace was Greek.
We met Hydarnes in person just before dinner. He had a great feast prepared – iced wine, whole deer, antelope, and the head of a lion. Whole sheep in saffron and raisins, and a dozen more dishes. It was a dinner for six hundred men – and women.
We could smell the feast, and Hydarnes sat on a low throne flanked by golden statues of the local god. I went first, and I bowed – as an equal to another equal.
He waved a hand, as if dismissing my insolence as puerile. ‘I gather you are guest-friend to Artapherenes,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘I gather you were once a slave.’ He meant it to put me in my place.
I bowed again. ‘Two years ago, I was a slave of a Carthaginian tin trader,’ I said. ‘The gods decide men’s fates.’ A year of dealing with the bigotries of Sicilians had made me immune to this sort of thing.
He looked at my friends. ‘It is interesting to meet so many free Greeks. I only know them as slaves. Greeks make excellent slaves.’
I nodded. ‘As do Persians,’ I said. So much for diplomacy.
But he threw back his head and roared. ‘Hah! Good for you. Yes – I suppose that if I was taken, I would make a fine slave. I know how to give orders and to take them. This is the power of our empire.’
After me, he was introduced to Aristides. He smiled and rose from his throne and came down to take Aristides’ hand. ‘I understand you have been exiled,’ he said. ‘My king offers you his hand in friendship.’ Aristides took the proffered hand. ‘For myself, I would like nothing better than to be the king’s friend,’ he said. ‘But I remain an Athenian.’
Hydarnes nodded. ‘So few Greeks seems to feel as you do. They come to us and betray their homes for a few pieces of silver. But you are a nobleman.’
Aristides frowned, but Hydarnes went on to the Spartans. ‘And you – men of Lacedaemon! Will you be friends of the Great King? Are you exiles?’
Bulis looked at me. We’d discussed some responses to questions like this. He said, ‘We are heralds of the Kings of Sparta, with a message to the Great King,’ he said.
‘A message of friendship?’ Hydarnes pressed on. ‘From the Kings of Sparta?’
Bulis looked as cold as ice. ‘The message,’ he said slowly, ‘is for the king your master, and not for you.’
Hydarnes frowned.
Soon after, we went into the great hall to dinner. We lay on couches in the Greek manner, but women sat in chairs. There were at least a dozen Persian, Median and Babylonian women. Not many among six hundred men, but enough to draw comment from the Greeks.
Aristides was sharing my couch, and Hector was waiting on us with Aristides’ hypaspist, Nikeas.
I remember that the wine was odd. First, too sour, and then too sweet.
‘You know who would love this?’ Aristides asked me, while using a fold of bread to shove more mutton in saffron into his mouth. He laughed like a boy and chewed politely.
‘Cimon?’ I asked. ‘Miltiades?’
‘Jocasta,’ Aristides said. ‘She craves travel and adventure. For her, this would be like . . . meeting Odysseus.’ He leaned closer, as Hector poured wine and thus covered us from observation. ‘Do you think all the Greek slaves are a message?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I pray to Zeus you are wrong. And to Hermes, god of heralds and ambassadors.’ He sat back. ‘You no longer think it can be stopped.’
I shook my head. ‘I never did, once Artapherenes said the Great King was determined to make war. He’s already spent the money. Can you imagine how much it costs to have three hundred triremes at sea a year before you plan to attack?’
Greek slaves averted their eyes while serving us, so that we would not look into their faces. But some cried.
One young boy broke down while serving Bulis. Bulis put a hand on his head and whispered something in his ear.
Hydarnes looked at the Spartan from his dais. ‘Come, my friend,’ he said. ‘You must talk to us, and not to our slaves. Tell us all why you men of Lacedaemon decline to say you will be the friends of the Great King. You have but to look at me and my fortune to see that the king knows well how to honour merit. In like manner you yourselves, if you would only make your submission to the Great King, would receive great gifts and land from his hands, seeing that he deems you men of merit.’
Bulis rose to his feet. ‘Hydarnes,’ he said, ‘you understand less than half of the story. You tell me that if I am a good slave, I will be rewarded for surrendering my freedom, and that may have been your own experience.’
I had never heard Bulis speak so well. But Spartans are full of surprises. Bulis’s interpreter stumbled when he reached the insult – the sting in the tail, as we Greeks say. He fell silent.
I stood up and finished Bulis’s statement in Persian.
Bulis raised his voice to continue. ‘I am merely a citizen of Sparta, and perhaps I misunderstand. But it seems to me that you have all your life been a slave to this king, and since you have never been free, you have no idea how sweet liberty might be. Because if you had tasted it,’ Bulis said, and he smiled at the boy who had cried, ‘then, as I see you are a man, you would have fought not just with your spear for freedom, but with axes and knives and even with the nails on your fingers.’
So he answered Hydarnes. As I translated, I was quite sure that I had the same smile on my face that I wear when I fight.
Hydarnes was obviously annoyed, and equally obviously unwilling to show it. But at the end of dinner, he stood and waved at me in a way that had to have been insulting.
‘Tomorrow I hunt lion,’ he said. ‘A great man-killer is preying on my slaves. Come ride with me, and let us see who is a man, and who is a slave.’
He hadn’t included the Spartans. That made sense – as heralds, they were exempt from all challenges and all contests. And
sacred.
I was not, so I rose and bowed. ‘I would be delighted,’ I said.
Later that night, I lay in bed and listened as Greek slaves were beaten with rods in the courtyard. I’m sure they beat the boy – he had laughed aloud when Bulis spoke, and Hector liked him.
But there are ways and ways of scoring one’s victories. The next day, I hunted in the mountains with Cyrus and Hydarnes. I could tell that neither liked the other – indeed, I had seen Cyrus grin like a daemon when Bulis’s insult went home, so I understood that we had some latitude here. But I was determined that I would rescue something from here.
My goods – Athenian goods – had fetched shockingly high prices on the wharves. Sekla reported to me in the dawn as we mounted our horses for the hunt, and I knew that I had silver. So, when our dogs had run the lion and it was cornered in a stand of trees – alien trees, of a kind I’d never seen before, with yellow flowers – while the party sorted out their weapons, I turned to Sallis, who was with me most of the time.
‘If I wanted to buy a few of the Greek slaves who have pleased me, what then?’ I asked.
Sallis made a face – the face Asians make when they are prepared to haggle. ‘If they are the Great King’s slaves, we may not sell them,’ he said. ‘If they are my master’s slaves, all is well.’
I described the boy and I named the two Aeolian women – Sappho and Lysistrata.
Sallis shrugged. ‘But you didn’t lie with either of them,’ he said.
I found Sallis to be – it is hard to say what I found him to be. Comprehensible? Easier to understand than Hydarnes? A fellow sufferer under the yoke of Persia? A man with a sense of humour? Perhaps all of these things.
‘They are the daughters of a man who was my friend,’ I said. That stretched the matter a little, but not much.
He nodded in complete understanding. ‘Ah! If you appealed so to Hydarnes, he might give them to you.’
‘I would prefer to buy them,’ I said.
‘You do not want to owe my master anything?’ he asked. He looked past me to where one of Hydarnes’ guardsmen was handing out spears. ‘You are wise, for a Greek.’ He looked away. ‘Babylon revolted just last year, and one of my cousins was taken for the Great King’s house.’ He shrugged. ‘Among us, it is no dishonour.’
A guardsman, face wrapped against the dust and wearing the most ridiculous trousers I’d ever seen – and I had seen Gallic noblemen – handed me a spear so magnificent that I lost the thread of our conversation for a moment. It was steel, blued with care, inlaid with gold, and the sarauter was of solid silver. It was a lonche, just seven feet long, and the head was sharp enough to cut like a good sword.
‘My master bids you take this spear and join him for the kill,’ the guardsman said.
I slid from my horse. Sallis was suddenly fighting his.
It was the terror of Sallis’s mare that gave me space in which to live.
I have to tell this tale backwards and say that the lion, cornered by dogs in a stand of trees, was an old and wily campaigner, and he had, in fact, killed two dogs and then slipped away from the pack, gone down the ravine behind the woods – a ravine we hadn’t seen – and now, like the man-killer he was, he was stalking us.
He’d come up the ravine, and his scent panicked all the horses at once. Men were thrown. Better riders, like Sallis, had their hands full.
In Persia, one is supposed to kill the lion with a spear, from horseback or on foot – usually after the dogs have softened it up a bit.
I saw the beast. He was coming at us through the grass, with the swagger of a killer and the eyes of a madman. His head was low, but he was scarcely troubling himself with concealment. He’d picked his quarry, and he was intent only on his kill.
Hector.
Hector saw him. But he froze – his feet seemed to have grown roots.
I’d never faced a lion before, so I did everything wrong. I didn’t expect it to be so fast, and I rather expected it to . . . I don’t know, to hesitate, or to pause, or to ready itself before attacking.
Instead, two horse-lengths from Hector, it went from its swaggering lope to a leap. It was in the air.
Calchas and Polymarchos saved Hector. A lifetime of training and nothing else. I don’t remember anything but its stinking breath and the cat dead, my spear cleanly impaled so deep in its neck that it emerged at the back, and I had to do a little bit of undignified scrambling to avoid the dying energy of its claws, which still got my thigh – see these scars, thugater? Four lines all parallel.
It was a three-day wonder, and the infection that Apollo shot into my thigh was a two-week wonder and more, giving me strange dreams and making riding an agony. But that was in the future. At that moment, I stood in the grass with the dead lion at my feet, and turned to find Hydarnes behind me, empty handed because in the commotion caused by the panicking horses he hadn’t got a spear.
I’d been living with the Spartans for some time, at that point. I’m very proud of what came next. I turned to my host and bowed, with the dead lion at my feet and my own blood running down my leg.
‘Good spear,’ I said.
That night I was feasted like a god. The wound had not yet begun to trouble me. And when the feast was over, and Hector had cleared away my gifts – a fortune in cups and the spear I had used – I went back to my chambers only to find Sallis standing at the entrance.
He handed me three clay tablets. ‘I have arranged that all three shall be sold to you. My master accepted your offer of three mina of silver without quibble, and your slave Sekla has already paid me.’
Sekla was no man’s slave, but he was a good actor.
I offered my hand. ‘May I offer you my guest-friendship? Among Greeks, this is a sacred thing.’
He looked surprised. But he took my hand. ‘With thanks, my lord. I am but a servant—’
‘You are a good man,’ I said. ‘Come and feast with me in Greece, when all this is over.’
Sallis bowed. ‘My lord – I will.’ He nodded. ‘And I . . . if you pass Babylon, let me send a letter to my sister.’
So I made Sallis a friend. And went into my chambers, to find two beautiful women and an eleven-year-old boy, all weeping together. They had Hector weeping too.
All of them – except Hector – came to me on their knees, thanking me and praising me. Now, every man craves the good opinion of others, whether he admits it or not, but these three – it was too much.
I was gruff, and sent them away.
Hector came to me a little later. The wound was just starting to bother me. Hector waited silently until I gave him leave to speak, which I did with a wave.
‘I could take the boy,’ he said. ‘I could use the help. You are a demanding master.’ He spoke solemnly.
It is true that Hector was my manservant and my armour carrier and my signals officer and sometimes my secretary. And like most men with slaves and servants, I’d provided him with freedom and some real benefits, but I hadn’t really noticed how much he did.
‘He’s free. I suspect he’s nobly born. He may not want to be the hypaspist to a hypaspist.’ I raised my eyebrows.
‘He wants to be a warrior,’ Hector said.
I nodded. ‘He was born in the right time,’ I said.
Hector frowned and looked at the floor. ‘So do I,’ he said. ‘But the lion . . . I was . . . I was . . .’ He turned his head away and the word came out as a sob. ‘Afraid.’
I laughed. I agree, it was probably the wrong thing to do, but really – adolescent boys and their fancies. As bad as girls. The same as girls. Who puts these ideas in their heads?
Homer, that’s who.
He flinched from my anger and I grabbed his shoulders. It was really the first time I’d hugged him. I know that sounds odd, but he was a very grave boy, and he’d lost his father. His reserve was very . . . adult.
But I grabbed him and wrestled him into an embrace as he burst into angry, humiliated tears. I said all the things older men
say to boys about courage, and he didn’t listen – like all boys.
Lysistrata and her sister appeared with their bedding. They drew the wrong conclusions and withdrew, but as Hector began to recover, Lysistrata came back with a bowl and a towel. She paused in the doorway and met my eyes. She was a fine woman – intelligent and sensitive and tough enough to survive in a harem.
Hector fled.
Lysistrata came in and made the sort of bow that women make to fathers or husbands at religious ceremonies – at least in Plataea. I agree that in Ionia they can be both more and less formal.
‘I have some small skill at healing, my lord,’ she said. ‘And the wound on your thigh is more dangerous than you think.’
I took the bowl and started to wash my thigh, and considered how to get her into my bed without taking advantage of my power over her. Of course, we all know the answer to that. But I am as human as the next man, and just then, I didn’t want her healing powers. Or rather, I wanted her to heal me of the stare of the lion’s eyes, because they held my death.
She mistook my hesitation. ‘I will not fawn on you, my lord. But . . . what care has this wound received?’
I shook my head, embarrassed by my own desire. ‘I wiped it with grass,’ I said.
She shook her head, all business. ‘Lion’s claws carry every kind of disease,’ she said. She had me lie down, and then, with Hector and her sister helping, scrubbed the wounds until it was all I could do not to scream. She put honey into each wound after dribbling wine on them.
I suspect she saved my life.
When the other two were gone, sex was the farthest thing from my mind. I hurt. She rubbed my upper back for a little while. ‘My sister and I would like to sleep in your apartment, lord,’ she said, somewhat dreamily.
I agreed. Of course they wanted to escape.
The next day, I was almost speechless with fever. The fever lasted three days, and when it passed, I was as weak as a child. Despite which, our party was ready to ride for Susa via Babylon, three thousand stades away.
I sent the two Greek women to my ships. I had a farewell conference with Sekla, and directed him to meet me at Ephesus in late winter. I gave him a letter for Artapherenes and another for Briseis, and wished him – and Meglakles and Harpagos – well. I took Brasidas and left the rest of the marines.
Long War 04 - The Great King Page 24
