The guides, Locris and Glaucus, looked at each other. ‘We’re not allowed weapons, lord,’ Locris said.
‘Can you throw a javelin?’ Draco asked.
Both men nodded, after some looking around.
‘Sling?’ Philokles asked. It was his first sensible word in a day.
Again, both helots looked at each other for some time. After a minute, Locris nodded. ‘We can sling,’ he said.
Draco and Philokles shared a look. Draco nodded back. ‘Why don’t you two boys make yourselves slings at dinner?’ he said. ‘And I’ll give each of you a javelin and my warrant that you can carry it.’
‘Thank you, lord,’ Locris said to the Macedonian. Everyone was a lord to the helots.
At dinner, the two of them sat by the fire, unweaving a net bag for the twine and then making slings. They wove the fibres – braided them, really – so fast that Satyrus couldn’t follow their motions.
Philokles watched him watching. ‘In Sparta, a helot can make a weapon out of anything,’ he said. ‘The Spartiates keep disarming them, and the poor bastards never really give up.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Ten slingers will beat a hoplite every time.’
Satyrus wanted to say ‘You’re sober!’ but he knew that would be the wrong thing to say. ‘I haven’t had a lesson in weeks,’ he said, as if requesting a lesson from your tutor was an everyday thing.
Philokles gave him a tight smile. ‘The last three weeks have been nothing but lessons, boy.’
Sophokles, the doctor, produced a wineskin. ‘Here!’ he said, offering the skin to Philokles. ‘Have some wine!’
Philokles swatted the skin away. ‘Rat piss.’ He produced his own. ‘Want some?’ he asked. He looked dangerous; he thrust the skin at Satyrus like a swordsman.
Satyrus sat on his haunches, balancing his forearms on his knees. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want any wine. And I’d rather you didn’t have any, either.’ His voice broke as he said it. Philokles scared him when he was this way. ‘Why do you have to be like this?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ Philokles said, and started drinking.
The doctor watched the Spartan, his face full of anger. Later he offered wine to Melitta, and she glared at him. ‘Keep your wine,’ she said. Sophokles stalked off.
Still later, when they were all in their blankets, Philokles started to sing. Satyrus didn’t know the tune, but it sounded martial, with a strong beat. The big man was by the fire, dancing, stomping his feet to the rhythm of the music that he sang. The postures of the dance looked like pankration, and then they looked like swordsmanship, and then they looked like marching. Philokles’ dancing was beautiful, and he danced on, singing as his own accompaniment.
‘Fucking Spartans,’ Philip said.
‘You people ought to do something about him,’ Sophokles said.
Later, just before the Dog Star set, the Spartan sat suddenly, like an olive shaken from the tree, and burst into tears.
It was a long night.
‘You look glum, brother,’ Melitta said. She didn’t look glum. Riding freed her, somehow, and she wore her freedom on her face when she had a horse to ride.
‘Thinking of Harmone’s golden sandals,’ he said. ‘She had four pairs. Now she’s been sold. She was the head of the tyrant’s wardrobe – a real job, doing something she liked. Where’ll she go?’
Draco laughed. ‘Any brothel will be happy to have her, lad. She loves the game.’
Satyrus shook his head with adolescent vehemence. ‘She’ll be a whore!’
‘Aphrodite’s tits, boy! Begging your sister’s pardon, of course. But are you in love with her? She’ll land on her feet.’
‘Or her back,’ Philip said with a leer.
‘I think what my brother is saying,’ Melitta said primly, ‘is that she might just possibly want more out of life than sweating under the likes of you.’
That reduced the two Macedonians to silence for twenty stades.
The Athenian doctor laughed, later. ‘They’ve never considered the possibility that women might be human,’ he said. ‘Good for you!’
‘Why does he applaud every time we fight among ourselves?’ Satyrus asked his sister.
She laughed. ‘You’ve been to Athens?’ she asked.
Satyrus made a show of receiving a blow. ‘Of course!’ he said.
Just after the noon halt, they met a caravan coming the other way. Two Heraklean merchants with salt and alum and a consignment of lapis lazuli on forty donkeys made up the convoy, with ten paid guards, two of them wounded.
Theron stopped their group at a wide point in the twisting mountain trail and pulled them all to one side so that the donkeys could pass in single file.
‘Have a fight?’ Philokles called.
One of the merchants rode over. ‘The next pass but one is full of bandits – old soldiers.’ He looked at the group, and the two girls. ‘Best ride back with us. They’ll kill you for the women.’
Philokles loosened his sword in his scabbard. ‘Have any wine to sell?’ he asked aggressively.
The man shrank back a bit from this display. ‘I might find you a skin,’ he said. He thought that he was being threatened – it was obvious from the way he looked up at the hillsides.
Theron glared at Philokles. Philokles paid no attention. He paid a silver owl for a skin of wine, an unheard-of amount, and the merchant beamed with friendship. ‘Drink it in good health!’ he called.
Theron drew his sword while Philokles’ attention was on the merchant, and cut the skin right out of Philokles hand, leaving him holding the neck. The wine made a gurgling noise as it poured out into the dust.
‘Get down and lick it, if that’s what you want,’ Theron said.
There was no warning. Philokles launched himself from the back of his mare on to the back of Theron’s mare, and the two of them went down on the far side of the horses in a tangle of limbs. Philokles landed on top and got in two vicious blows at Theron’s head, breaking his nose so that blood fountained and Satyrus’s nose hurt in sympathy.
Satyrus edged his horse closer, but a Macedonian arm blocked him. ‘Let ’em fight,’ Draco said. ‘The Spartan bastard has it coming. Besides, I want to see this.’
Theron, broken nose and all, gripped Philokles’ arms and began to force the man off his chest. He managed to raise his own hips, an amazing feat of strength, and then he rolled and tumbled and suddenly he was free. Dust flew as if they were dogs fighting, and Satyrus saw Theron get a fist in Philokles’ hair, and then there was a sickening thud as Philokles landed a heavy blow on the Corinthian’s head.
‘Ten gold darics on the Spartan,’ Philip said.
‘Shouldn’t somebody stop this?’ Sophokles asked. The doctor was amused.
The Macedonians ignored him. ‘Done. You’re an idiot.’ Draco turned to Satyrus. ‘Here – you’re a prince. You hold the money.’
Theron was on his feet with the Spartan’s hair in one hand. He’d taken three heavy blows and his face registered pain, but now he stepped in, grabbed a hand and suddenly, as if by magic, he had Philokles kneeling in the dust, one arm behind his back.
‘Submit!’ he ordered.
‘Fuck yourself!’ the Spartan spat.
‘I’ll break your arm,’ Theron said, and put some pressure on the joint.
Philokles roared with rage and kicked back with his right foot. For all that he was off balance and in pain, it was a shrewd blow, but Theron had not competed at the Olympics for nothing – he loosed his hold, rotated his hip and avoided the blow and then replaced his hold, all as if giving a lesson. This time he jerked the Spartan’s head up and his right arm down.
‘Submit,’ he said.
‘Or what?’ Philokles said. Despite the pain in his arm socket, he managed to roll his own hip and land an elbow in Theron’s gut. He broke the hold and rolled away. When he rose, he could barely raise his right arm.
Melitta slipped off her horse. ‘If you two don’t stop, one of you will be too injured to fight bandits.’ She planted her hands on her hips.
‘If he will not submit, his drunken foolishness will kill all of us,’ Theron said. ‘Act like a man, Spartan. I’m not going all out, you fool of a Spartan. I could pull your arm right out. Shall I? Or do you have to pretend that you can take me?’