Archi took his new sword from a peg on the wall. I shook my head. In those days, I assumed that every man had the same daimon I had. 'We aren't going to kill him, master,' I said.
'He has thugs,' Archi said. Of course, I'd been going back and forth to the Persian camp for weeks. I'd missed a change. Diomedes' father, Agasides, had hired him a pair of Thracians as guards. In fact, like most of the gentlemen of the city, he was hiring bodyguards to increase his fighting strength if Persia came, but Diomedes flaunted his pair of Thracians everywhere.
I rubbed my chin. 'We can't just kill his thugs?' I asked. 'Your father-'
Archi shook this off. 'You have the right of it, Doru. We need to strike back. Just killing his thugs might be enough. But we have to get them, or they'll keep us off him. Right?'
Youth has its own logic. It isn't like the logic of the assembly or even the phalanx. Archi was angry, and Penelope had made him brave – and she was right there, bolstering his desire to be strong. In youth logic, we had to put those men down.
Poor bastards. A pair of Thracian slaves with clubs. It was three hours later, and Diomedes was heading home. He'd bragged so long and so loud about the insult he'd given us that we'd heard him in the agora, ranting like an orator. Kylix tracked him for us, and we were waiting when he turned off the broad Avenue of the Artemision and cut up the hill through an alley that ran between the looming walls of rich men's yards.
Diomedes saw me first. I was lounging against a wall, cleaning my nails with a knife that Cyrus had given me in my bag of gifts.
'Look who it is,' he said. 'The cock-licker! Get him, boys!'
Sometimes, the gods are kind. And hubris is the worst of sins. Diomedes had, in a single day, spurned a guest-friendship, broken a solemn vow and bragged of it in the public places.
The two Thracians were big men, and tattooed like warriors, although slavers often tattoo a peasant to get a better price.
They split up and came at me quickly, no nonsense, one on either side. I backed past the gatehouse of the next house and then turned and attacked, going for the Thracian on the left. The thug on the right tried to take me in the flank and Archi emerged from the shadow of the gatehouse and gutted him.
It was Archi's first kill, and it took him out of the fight. He just stood there, blood dripping from his blade, as the man writhed and screamed from the thrust into his kidneys.
The other man swung his club, and I backed away a step as they taught in Persia and Greece both, and then I swayed in and cut his wrist with the knife, and he dropped the club, but I was still moving – right foot past left foot, down cut – and suddenly he was sitting in the street with his guts around him.
I don't think they had earned their tattoos. I fought Thracians later – real Thracians – and they were, and are, scary bastards who will swing at you when their lungs are full of blood.
Diomedes turned to run, but Kylix tripped him. Before he could get to his feet, I was on him.
Archi was recovering, although he was white as Athenian leather. 'I killed him!' he said. And then, 'I killed him!'
'If you so much as touch me, my father will have you ripped apart by dogs!' Diomedes said. 'Don't touch me – I might be polluted by a family of prostitutes!'
He was a fool. We really should have killed him.
I grabbed his nose between my thumb and forefinger and broke it with a vicious twist. I'd seen a slave do it to another slave in the pits. 'Bring your dogs,' I said.
Archi kicked him in the groin while he writhed in the muck, his nose pouring blood. He kicked him quite a few times. In fact, it was then I discovered that my master wasn't any nicer than I was.
We beat him pretty badly. I'll save you the details. Except that when we were finished, we took a jar of Briseis's paint and tied him to a pillar in the portico of Aphrodite and painted 'I suck dicks for free' on his back while he wept. Why the portico of Aphrodite? That's where men sold their bodies in Ephesus. The boys cleared out while we did our work. They knew a revenge beating when they saw one.
We sneaked back into the house by the slaves' entrance. We thought, I think, that if we weren't caught coming in, Hipponax would swear to our innocence. Or some such adolescent foolishness.
The whole house was dark – it was late. Dinner had been served, and we'd no doubt been missed – so much for our so-called plan. And we were both covered in mud and blood and worse.
I got Archi past the kitchen, where Darkar was talking in a low voice, and to his room. 'I'll get you water,' I said.
'Bathhouse,' he said. 'I need to wash my soul.' But then he smiled. It wasn't a boy's smile, or a nice smile. But it was a brother's smile, not a master's. 'You need to be clean. If you're caught, they'll kill you. Me? I can take the weight.'
Frankly, I agreed. 'I'll bathe first, then,' I said. I slipped out of the door and down the hall into the kitchen. Cook was leaning on the counter, talking to Darkar.
Darkar understood everything as soon as he saw me. 'Burn it,' he said, pointing at my chlamys. I dropped it in the kitchen fire and Cook piled wood on top, squandering shavings and bark prepared for fire-starting to make the blood-sodden thing burn. All my extra work and helpfulness and popularity had come to this – Darkar and Cook conspiring to keep me alive.
'I need a bath, and then Archi needs one,' I said.
Darkar squinted at my use of the young master's name.
'He says it's death if I'm caught, but mere annoyance for him. So I bathe first.' I pulled my chiton over my head – a work chiton of raw wool, and no loss to anyone. Kylix was in the kitchen by then, and I handed it to him. 'Go and give this to the ragman,' I said. 'Better yet, just throw it on his pile.'
Darkar nodded.
'Bath is hot,' Cook put in. 'You got the bastard?' This is the ultimate sign of a good house – the slaves are loyal to the master's revenge. Like the Odyssey.
I told them where he was. 'They won't find him until morning,' I said. 'Maybe some Spartan visitor will come and bugger him!' That got a nervous laugh.
The kitchen was filling up with slaves. I hadn't told Kylix not to spill to his friends – he was already spreading the whole tale. He told it to the slaves at the fountain when he took the cloak to the ragman's pile, too. That's the world of slaves. Word gets around.
We hadn't considered that.
Darkar shut them up and pushed me out of the door. 'You what?' he asked as he pushed me towards the bathhouse. 'You what?'
'I told you,' I said.
Darkar was alone with me in total darkness. The bath was like that – no windows. He smacked me, hard, in the head. 'I thought you'd have the master beat him. Not you, boy.'
'Ouch!' Lo, the mighty warrior. The steward hurt me more than the Thracians had.
'You will be killed. Do I have to remind you that you are a slave? You scout for him, you take a blow for him, but you do not strike a free man!' Darkar slapped me again, this time at random, because he couldn't see any better than I could. Then, after a pause in the dark, 'I think you'll have to run or die.'
With that, he left me to the bath.
It was a big oak tub, the kind where men crush the grapes at harvest time when they don't have stone basins. It leaked slowly, but it held enough water for two to bathe together. Archi and I had shared it many times but, covered in blood, a man doesn't really want to touch anything much. Different from a feast-day bath.
There was pumice and oil, and I worked hard. I knew I had blood under my nails and in my hair. Even then – even as a slave – I had long hair.
I was washing my hair when the door opened. The bath was in a low shed and that door let a little light in from the kitchen windows, so I saw Penelope's robe fall to the floor. Then she was in the bath with me and water sloshed over the sides and on to the floor.