Killer of Men

Aristides ordered the ships loaded. Then he summoned me. 'We're leaving,' he said. 'You served with me and you served well, but you are not one of mine. Yet I don't think I can leave you here. Aristagoras knows your name – what have you done that he hates you so much?'

I shook my head. 'It is a private matter,' I said. Had sex with his bride? But how would the fool ever learn that?

'Why are we leaving, lord?' I asked.

Aristides raised an eyebrow. Even in democratic Athens, men like Aristides are not used to being questioned by peasants from Plataea. 'Apparently, we abandoned the men of Miletus on the battlefield,' he said.

'Ares!' I said.

'Aristagoras is one of those men who not only lie to others but to themselves,' he said. And shrugged. 'I am not sorry to leave. Will you go to Athens?'

I took a deep breath. 'I think I'll go home, lord. To Plataea. Unless you would take me in service? As a hoplite?'

Aristides laughed. 'You are a foreigner. Listen, lad. Here you see me as a warlord with a retinue – but once I go home and lay my shield on the altar, I'm done – I'm just another farmer. I don't keep warriors. We're not Cretans – we're Athenians.'

Herk spoke up for me. 'We could find him work, lord,' he said.

Aristides shook his head. 'He's a killer, not a worker. No offence, lad. I would have you at my back in any fight. But I don't see you as a farm worker.'

I nodded. 'It's true.' I had to laugh. 'I could find a bronze-smith. Finish my training.'

Aristides looked interested. But Agios shook his head. 'You said that you knew Miltiades.'

I nodded.

Heraklides narrowed his eyes. 'I could take him. I have half a cargo for Byzantium, and I can get copper at Cyprus or Crete.'

Aristides shook his head. 'Herk, you'll make a profit off your own death.'

They both looked at me, and I was warmed by how much they both sought to do right by me. 'Lord, I think that it is time that I went home. I will not go to Miltiades,' I said.

'I will write you a letter,' Aristides said.

'Come with me anyway,' Herk said. 'I'll end up in Piraeus soon enough if Poseidon sends a good voyage – you'll make a few coins with me, and be the richer for it this winter at home.'

I was still afraid of going home. There's no easier way to put it. A few weeks with Herk seemed delightful – a respite. 'Yes,' I said. 'But I have sworn an oath, and I must see to getting my release.'

'We'll be off with the evening breeze,' Herk said. 'If you have goodbyes, say them.'

I ran up the hill.

I ran all the way to the gate, and then I knocked, and Darkar opened it, and I pushed past him into the house, until I found Archi. He had a bandage around his head.

'Get out of my house,' he said.

I had had time to think, and I spoke words I had considered. 'I am leaving,' I said. 'Aristagoras has cast the Athenians out of the army – the fool. I'll go with them.'

'Go!' he spat.

'But I swore to support you,' I said. 'And you need to get your family into ships-'

'Support me? The way you supported my father? And my sister? You are the fucking curse of this family!' He rose to his feet and then sank back, still woozy from his blow to the head.

'You have to get out of here!' I shouted at him. 'Pack the slaves and go! When Artaphernes takes the city-'

'I don't need any words from you!' he screamed.

'Have you freed Penelope yet?' I said, and he froze. 'Free her. You owe her. By Ares, Archi, get your head out of your arse.' I stood over him.

Darkar came back with two big slaves. I looked at them, touched my sword and they backed away.

'Go!' Archi said.

'Diomedes has not given up on revenge,' I said. I didn't know it – it came to me from the gods. 'Your father is gone and Briseis's idiot husband intends to hold the city against Artaphernes.'

'Scuttle off, cockroach,' he said. 'We will hold the city.'

I took a breath and let it out. 'I would stay, if you wanted,' I said. All my plans for careful speaking were gone, and I could only beg.

'So you can kill me?' he said. 'Or would you rather fuck me? Whichever way you choose to wreck me? Did you hate us so much? Did we treat you so badly? By Zeus, you must have lain awake plotting how to bring us down. Did you bring Artaphernes into the house, too?' Spittle was coming from his mouth. 'The next time I see you, I will kill you.'

I shook my head. 'I will not fight you,' I said.

'The better for me, then,' he said grimly. 'But your oath didn't protect my father and it will not protect me. Run far, Plataean.'

So much for friendship.

At the door, Kylix pressed a slip of papyrus – a single leaf – into my hand. Written in her hand, it said only 'stay away'.

So much for love.

When we sailed, the men of Chios and Miletus gathered on the beach to mock us as cowards.

There is no fairness, honey.

I thought that I was sailing away towards home – I hoped I was. But when we sailed out of doomed Ephesus, I was leaving home, and I wept. Part IV Scattering the Leaves The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation will grow while another dies. Homer, Iliad 6.147

15

I never saw Byzantium that trip. The storm hit us four days out of Cyprus with a hull full of copper. We ran before it, because we were crossing the deep blue between Cyprus and Crete and we had nowhere to land and we didn't dare show the low sides of our trireme to the wind.

It hadn't been a good trip. We'd had weather out of Ephesus, weather all the way to Cyprus, weather while we collected copper and weather while we rowed – all rowing, no sailing – to Crete.

Men looked at me. I was the foreigner, and the gods of the sea were angry. Well they might. I was an oath-breaker, fleeing from my oath to Hipponax, and the sea had no love for me.

I took turns with Herk at the steering oars. We'd been trained well, Archi and I, when we made the runs up to the Euxine and across the wine-dark sea to Italy. I could handle a ship, even a long killer like Herk's light trireme. I marvelled at the Athenian build style. They really were pirates – the hulls were thin as papyrus, and the ship itself was narrower and lighter, and the rowers were packed even closer than rowers in Ephesian ships – free men every one, with a sword and a couple of javelins, the richer men with a spolas or a thorax.

South and east of Crete, the weather seemed to abate and we made a good landfall, and the first night that we slept on a beach, every man kissed the sand. I speak no blasphemy when I say that the furies must have had a lot of law-breaking and oath-breaking to pursue. Perhaps some other bastard took up their attention.

Cretans aren't like other Greeks. The men of Crete are war-worshippers, and they have aristocrats and serfs – most of the farmers are not free men at all, but something like slaves. Only the aristocrats fight, and some of them still use chariots. I didn't think much of their primitive agriculture. It is a curse of youth that you cannot keep your mouth shut and so, on our third night in the 'great hall' of the local lord, Sarpedon of Aenis, I found myself arguing with local men about how best to grow wheat and barley. I used an unfortunate phrase in the heat of my anger at the fool's intransigence – we don't call them Cretans for nothing – and this fool called me out, demanding blood.

'You must be joking?' I asked. I'd had some wine.

He slapped me like a woman. 'Coward,' he said. 'Woman.'

Idomeneus came and told me that I had to fight or be ashamed. I laughed. I wasn't ashamed and I had little interest in fighting. But the lord glowered and the other men hooted at my apparent cowardice.

His name was Goras, and I killed him. He was a good fighter, but half drunk and no match for me. The only danger was from the darkness and the drink – I vowed never to fight under such conditions again. His first blows were wild and thus dangerous, but I set my feet and put my spear into his throat and down he went, and the hall fell silent. Herk shook his head. He gathered me with his other men, paid an indemnity and took us away. In the morning we sailed, heading west along the south coast of Crete.