Killer of Men

And then men were screaming my name, and it was over.

Eualcidas was the first to embrace me. He pushed his helmet back on his brow and he was shaking from head to foot and had an arrow clean through his helmet.

'By Ares,' he said. 'I knew you were beautiful!'

And in those five minutes, in the time that the water-clocks give a man to speak his mind in the assembly, I was no longer a man.

I became a hero.

Most of the other eight men who ran with us were dead or badly wounded. Only Eualcidas and I had made the enemy line. And we had hurt the Medes badly, killing fifteen and downing another twenty. We had captives.

I was so dazed that I was sick. I threw up on the rocks, and Heraklides held my hair. Then we went back down the pass to where we had started. The slaves buried our dead and we waited in the sun. I drank the water men gave me, and then I drained the water and wine in my canteen.

Eualcidas came by. 'If they come back, will you do it again?' he asked.

I grinned. 'Of course,' I said.

It was like madness, or the smell of fine wine, or that moment when a woman lets her peplos fall but before you can touch her.

You want to know what makes Achilles different from the other men among the noble Achaeans? Homer must have known some killers of men. He knew us. Because any man – any good man, and the world is full of them – can stand his ground one fine day. He sets his mind – or he is angry, or simply young. And he will stand his ground and kill, fighting his fears and his enemies together. We honour those men.

But the killers come alive when there is nothing left but that fear and the rush of spirit, when all of your life falls away and you are the edge of your sword and the point of your spear. The killers will fight every day, not one fine day. Eualcidas was serious. He knew we might have to run into the arrow storm again – and now that he had my measure, he wanted me to run with him.

And of course, I wanted to go.

No, that doesn't mean I wasn't afraid. I was terrified. But I had to feel that terror again – and again.

But they didn't come back, and an hour after dark, we marched away into the torch-lit darkness, down the rest of the pass and on to the plain.

14

Artaphernes followed us on to the plains, but now he had Lydian cavalry and some Medes, and they harried our retreat. We had bought Aristagoras a day, only for him to squander it like the fool he was. And so, just two days later, while my wounds were still un-healed and the aches from the fight at the pass were at their height, he forced us to battle.

Aristagoras arrayed us. He hated the Athenians by then, and he was visibly afraid – a traitor in a losing rebellion. Eualcidas didn't hide his contempt, and Aristagoras retaliated like any petty tyrant, by putting us on the left and questioning our courage. He put his Milesians on the right, opposite the Medes, and he put the Ephesians in the centre with the Chians and the Lesbians. He set the lines in full view of Artaphernes. The satrap responded by moving his best infantry – Carians, who later joined the rebellion – against us. Unlike Aristagoras, Artaphernes never believed his own propaganda. He knew that the Athenians and the Euboeans were the most dangerous.

Aristagoras set our lines in the late afternoon of the second day after the fight in the pass. We stood in our places until the shadows were long, and then we walked back to our fires and ate. I didn't have a slave, but Cleon's slave, a surly Italian boy, made me stew and took my coppers with carefully hidden delight.

Eualcidas and I sat together after we ate. Most men thought us lovers. Perhaps, if things had gone otherwise, we might have been lovers, because he was Patroclus in every way that mattered, and perhaps I was Achilles. At any rate, we sat and talked, and other men came and sat with us – not just Athenians or Euboeans, either. Epaphroditos came with some men of Lesbos, and there were Chians and even Milesians around that fire. We drank wine and Eualcidas's singer – he had a rhapsode – gave us a thousand lines of the Iliad. His son sang another poem, and Stephanos came, clasped my hand and drank wine with me.

Men treated me differently. I liked it. I liked being lord. I was a hero, and other heroes accepted me as such. We lay on sheepskins and listened to the Iliad and drank wine, and life was good.

Here's a truth for you, thugater. War is sweet, when you are one of the heroes.

Late in the evening, Archilogos turned up. He stood in the firelight until I saw him. I rose and went to embrace him, but he held his hand between us.

'We are not friends,' he said.

I remember nodding. I understood then, perhaps for the first time, that it was not possible for us to be friends and for him to retain his place in the world.

'I heard that you had the name of a hero,' he said. 'That you slew ten Medes in combat.'

I nodded.

He smiled, but only for a moment. 'Damn it, Doru! Why did you fuck my sister? We could have been brothers! My father loves you!' I reached out again, but he turned his head away.

'Pater intends to prosecute you in the courts,' he said. 'Aristagoras pretends he does not know what happened, but he has suggested that we revoke or deny your manumission and have you taken as an escaped slave. Neither Pater nor I will accept this.' He crossed his arms. 'Why?' he asked me, and suddenly he was angry. He had come to talk – but I had ruined his life, or so he reckoned it.

I knew that a shrug might start a fight. 'I don't know,' I said carefully.

'Was it because of Penelope?' he asked, his face towards the new moon.

I tried to reach him. 'The – the first time, I thought that she was Penelope.'

That made him turn. 'I didn't even know that you and Penelope were – anything,' he said.

'Yes you did. You just forgot – because you were the master and I the slave,' I said. Then I shrugged. 'Penelope liked you better. And like all of us, she wanted her freedom.'

'She's pregnant,' he admitted. 'I'll free her. And see to it she has employment. Mater will take her to weave.'

'She'll like that,' I said.

'My fucking sister will marry Aristagoras. Oh, he's a worm,' Archi spat.

'She – plans. She makes plans and then carries them out.' I decided that anything I said would make things worse. We were having a conversation, but it was a fragile thing, like a spiderweb in a flood.

'Why does she want to marry him?' Archi asked.

I paused again. Perhaps it was three days with Eualcidas, but I wanted to watch my words carefully. 'Part of her believes she deserves no better,' I said. 'Part of her wants a man she can control.'

'Which were you?' he asked. He was angry now. I had not given the right answer.

'Both,' I admitted.

He took a deep breath. 'If we win tomorrow…' he said, and my hopes rose. Because despite all my talking to your fine people about heroism, what I really wanted back was my family – that house in Ephesus, and daily lessons with Heraclitus.

'Yes?' I asked.

'Run,' he said. 'Run far. And don't let Aristagoras catch you.' He threw his chlamys over his shoulder. 'I wish I'd been there – in the pass.'

'Me, too.' That's all I could say. It was true. I knew my former master. He, too, had it in his soul. He would have run all the way into the Medes, or died trying.

He walked away.

I let him go.

I still think about it. I've changed that conversation a thousand thousand times, said better things, chased him and wrestled him to the ground.

That's not what happened, though.

Maybe, if I had, a great deal of pain might have been averted.

I never promised you a happy story, thugater. In the morning, we formed early. I was in the front rank now, and for the first time I could see the whole army. The Athenians were on a slight hill, with the remnants of an old town under our feet. I rested my shield on the edge of an old wall buried in the ground. This had been a village with a tiny acropolis a thousand years ago, I could see. Then I looked south along our lines, and I could see what a worthless army we were.