Detorix leaned forward. ‘He’s on his way south with a cargo of tin.’
‘Stolen tin?’ she asked Detorix.
Ten years before, I’d have slammed my fist on the table and said something like, ‘I’m right here.’
Instead, I sat back and had a sip of wine.
‘He purchased the tin at Vecti,’ Detorix said.
‘With spoils taken from the Phoenicians?’ she insisted.
I snorted.
She ignored me.
Detorix looked at me, though. ‘He says not. He says that he brought trade goods from the Inner Sea.’
‘And the Phoenicians, our most reliable trade partners, are lying — is that it?’ she asked.
Detorix shrugged and didn’t meet her eye.
She turned to me. ‘The Phoenicians landed north of Vecti, burned a village and killed a handful of people,’ she said slowly. ‘My people.’
‘And took fifty of them as slaves?’ I guessed.
She shrugged. ‘Yes, I have reason to believe it.’
I nodded. ‘When I stormed their town, I opened the slave pens. There were hundreds of Keltoi.’ I shrugged. ‘And I rescued them and brought them home. Ask around.’
‘Your attack may have provoked a war,’ she said.
‘They attacked me first,’ I said.
She shrugged, as if the rights and wrongs of the issue didn’t interest her much. And there was no reason it should. As I found out later from Detorix, she was the queen of three tribes, and she needed to keep her peoples happy and well fed — which meant a constant tin trade, reliable alliances and open communications — with the Phoenicians.
‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to burn a couple of their ships to teach them not to enslave your people?’ I asked.
She went back to talking to Detorix. ‘If we just send them his head, will that be enough?’
Detorix shook his head. ‘They don’t even know what he looked like,’ he said.
Well, there’s barbarian honesty for you. They discussed taking me, executing me and sending my head to my enemies — in front of me. It’s honour of a sort.
‘I’m not sure there are enough men in this town to take me,’ I said, conversationally.
She looked at me the way a man would look at a pig, if the pig talked. She smiled. ‘Southerners don’t even know how to use a sword,’ she said.
‘Really?’ I asked. ‘I don’t expect many of our swordsmen come this way. The way I hear it, you get architects, tin vendors and wine merchants.’
She smiled; it was amazingly condescending. Briseis could have taken lessons.
‘And are you a swordsman?’ she asked.
Damn it, I was being played. She knew what I would say, and I was being manoeuvred into giving a display of skill so that I could be killed. And Neoptolymos wasn’t close.
I had a boy — a pais — named Ajax. He was tiny, underfed and fast. He was around me all the time, fetching me wine, carrying my purse — you know, a pais. He wasn’t a slave — or rather, he had been a slave and now he was free, and I’m not sure he had noticed a difference.
‘Ajax, run and fetch Gaius, will you, lad?’ I said. The boy ran out into the afternoon.
The great lady leaned forward. ‘Are you going to show us your swordsmanship?’ she asked.
I frowned. ‘Against whom? You?’
She smiled. ‘You are as far beneath me as the pigs who eat rubbish on my farms, foreigner. Why not fight one of them first?’
I leaned back — I’m a Greek, not a Kelt. I was being bated, and I knew it. And I wasn’t fifteen years old, either.
We were sitting on three-legged wooden stools at a wooden table in the open, under a linen canvas awning that stuck out from a timber building. When I leaned back on two legs, I could put my back against one of the supports that held up the awning.
I pointed a finger — my left hand — at Detorix as if I was going to make an accusation. And then my left hand darted to her right arm and pinned it down, and I drew my kopis and laid it on her throat.
Her eyes were fairly large.
‘Leukas, tell this woman exactly what I say. Are you ready?’
Leukas swallowed. ‘She’s my queen, boss.’
I nodded. ‘Good. Tell her, she can fight me herself. I don’t see any reason to fight the pig, the pig-keeper — you getting this? The pig-keeper’s boss, her warlord, her top swordsman — no, I’ll wait until you’re done.’ I kept her pinned in place. She tried to get to her feet and I slammed her back down on the stool.
‘Or, I’ll just cut her throat and burn the town and steal what I need to get home,’ I said to Detorix. ‘Understand me, Detorix? You tried to take my things and my ships once before. Call me pirate? What you lack here is the force to carry out your will. Understand?’
The silence went on a long time.
Gaius came in. ‘There’s some very unhappy barbarians over there. I think they are sending for archers,’ he said.
‘You will be my second in a duel,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Detorix?’
I let go of the queen and backed away.
She looked at me with pure, unadulterated hate.
I smiled. ‘You haven’t met a swordsman, lady. I know, because a swordsman wouldn’t have let that happen. I don’t think you want the humiliation of facing me with a sword in your hand, but unless you apologize to me, now, and swear an oath to the gods that you will not harm me, you can fight.’
She stood straighter. ‘Fight,’ she spat.
I turned my back on her and walked out into the sun.
Leukas followed me. ‘Aristocrats — all they do is fight. And practise to fight.’
I was looking at her sword, which was long and straight. ‘Ajax, go and fetch me my long xiphos,’ I said.
Six burly Kelts in heavy leather came and stood around the queen. I smiled at them. None of them smiled back. Two were huge, and two were quite small — thin and wiry. Such men can be the most dangerous.
Detorix came towards me, hesitating with every step. ‘I really need to stop this,’ he said. ‘This is not our way. This woman is a guest. You are a guest.’
‘And we have agreed to play a little game,’ I said. ‘Gaius, ask her if she wants a shield.’
Leukas asked the question. No one answered him.
Ajax ran back with my longest, slenderest xiphos. I had taken it off a Carthaginian, and I rather liked it.
I walked in the sun, a little way along the gravel, turned and drew the sword. I put the scabbard in my left hand, and threw my chlamys over my left arm.
She had a shield. A big shield.
I saluted and she did not. I stepped in, flicked my blade up and she raised her shield, and I kicked it and her to the ground with a pankration kick which she didn’t see coming because I was too close, and she’d raised her shield and thus couldn’t see.
I stepped back and let her get to her feet. When she set her stance again, I shook my head. ‘No, you lost. There is no second chance. If you want to send another man, so be it — but you lost.’
She glared. But she walked over and tapped one of the big men.
His sword was as long as my arm, and longer. He took the shield.
It didn’t look thick enough to be stable. It was oddly shaped and too damned long, and his arms were like an octopus’s arms — too long and too fast.
He came at me, whirling his sword in front of his shield.
Polymarchos had made me practise against this sort of thing, which he called the whirlwind. I made myself relax, moved with him, backing away, letting him slowly close the distance. He had a tempo to his spin, and I moved with it, almost as if we were dancing.
I had my strike prepared, but he surprised me, leaping forward with a shriek, the sword cutting up from below my cloak. I got my scabbard — my heavy, wooden scabbard — on his blade, and he cut right through it and into my chlamys. The blow didn’t cut into my arm, but he almost broke my arm with the blow.
Of course, he had a foot of my steel through his head. A little punch, a hand-reverse to clear his raised shield — one of Polymarchos’s best tricks.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
I hadn’t intended to kill him. In fact, it’s worth noting that he was too good. If he’d been worse, or slower, or less long-limbed, I’d have let him live.