Nikon answered. “Neto warned of the son of Lichas who lapped up the poisonous milk of Kuniskos. I fear he will do far worse than boast of killing our Chion. He has a bad date with one of us, or maybe many to come.”
The trunk of Gorgos was lying face down in two large puddles of blood. “He bled red,” Ainias offered. “I thought he would leak black like what has dribbled down his legs.”
Melon was already dragging over Elektra by the braids and stopped to grab a wider grip of hair from the backside of her head. The weight vanished from his hand, as he pulled off a thick black horse-hair wig. Below him fell the bald Amazon, old and wrinkled, her hairless skull hitting the stones, with its teeth all knocked out. Melon picked her up and tossed her on top of her husband Lichas, royal granddaughter of Agesilaos, as if the hag were no more than a sack of barnyard waste. “Yoked to the last, they can say of these bald Spartans.” All of the Spartans were finally on or under the table in Neto’s old haunt. Gorgos’s bowls were still set for his victory feast.
Melon then put the mangled head of Kuniskos on the table, on top of the torso of Thibrachos, and passed his own right hand over the man’s bald and partly crushed pate. The braids were torn off, and Neto’s nails had shredded his skin. Gorgos’s right temple was caved in from her clubbing. “He was a good man with a pruning hook. Some evil that was sired in him in his youth ate away at his heart. So it often is that when the good go bad, they prove the worst of all. He was a cursed helot, then free, and perhaps got too many of my foul looks when he got up late or pruned the wrong canes. The Spartan brand burned him all the same. I hate this man and can only think of my Homer to say how much: “I only wish that my spirit and fury would drive me to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things you have done to me.”
Then Ainias paused and barked out, “Melissos, bring in the wood of Gorgos. The burners will be burned. And we will tear apart the fence out back to pile even more fuel over these vermin. Yes, torch them as they lie. That’s far better than how they would have left us. The Spartans will call it a hero’s pyre-we a purification.”
Neto was still weeping as she sat in the dirt outside, propping Chion in her lap and wiping away the oozing blood of his wound with her tunic. “Had I killed Gorgos above Leuktra near the wagon. Had I had the courage even in the fort of Antikrates to end him, our Chion would now live. Instead I polluted our Chion, I let that foul killer’s blood drip on him from my tunic.”
Ainias was back outside and shrugged. “So we all could have done our part to avoid this. I froze when our hemi-god crashed through that door. No mortal kills Lichas with a single blow. No man takes down two of the royal peers as he rushes after three more. We were all a step behind him. Just as at Leuktra. We thought some god was upon us. But then Chion was a god of sorts.”
Melon answered Ainias. “Put him on the pony, just as Neto once bore Lophis home. Wrap and tie him in these red Spartan capes that will hide his blood. Take him to Ithome where he will be honored and burned as the hero he was. So ends the Fury who evened the score on Taygetos, so ends the man-bear of the high mountain. And when we return to Helikon I imagine we will see none who once bothered us. Yes, he had cleaned the field of thistles and burrs, but Chion had too many cuts and splinters on his hands to show for his thinning.”
Ainias walked away mumbling. “The end of the man-bear? Maybe-and then maybe not.”
The victors had piled the dry limbs and brush over the corpses, along with the posts and rails of the pinewood fence. A fire was soon licking the roof-beams, as the burning hut crashed down on the dead killers. The five watched it transfixed. “Do not breathe the smoke of Kuniskos or Lichas, master, or even that of Elektra,” Neto whispered. “It is poison, and may draw the dark spirits who feed off such evil.”
Melon grimaced as the bodies crackled. He knew that laxity is the evil of the world-that the real barbarians were the refined and double-thoughters who think their hands are too smooth to put around the necks of the accursed. Too many times on Helikon Melon had let the killer Gorgos live. He knew now that the good, to kalon, comes alive only with action-the hard willingness to kill the bad and end the false sense of good that prompts us to lord ourselves over others that we are pure and free of blood guilt. Worse men worry whether the Gorgones of the world are given a good burial, the better only that they are dead. Terrible souls fret that Gorgos might have been a bit good, better ones know that it mattered little since he was mostly bad. And Melon did not know quite where he himself fit in all of that. He turned back as the flames devoured the head of Gorgos. Then loud sounds came from the pyre-either the juices and bones of his head frying in the heat, or maybe yet another gasp from a reawakening Lichas. Melon mumbled, “Even in death Lichas and Gorgos have the last words. Even the fire recoils from its foul fuel.”
“No, flame conquers all. Pur panta nika.” Ainias at last smiled and for just a moment the smoke intoxicated him. He now spoke, but just for a moment, as the Ainias of old, as he had before the death of Proxenos. “This time they have found fire, something stronger than their lies and evil. They will be ash on the needles of these trees by today’s breeze. They have all died poorly, these fakers of Lichas who claimed to be the true Hellenes because they so long and so eagerly put down the weaker-until we proved that they, not the helots, were the frail ones, the dregs of a new, a better Hellas.” The five in their fury had burned the hut, the fences-everything they could find that would ignite in the light drizzle. Sparks lit up the cold late-afternoon spring sky. Then carefully, with two red Spartan capes, Neto wrapped and tied Chion. They cinched him over their small Messenian pony and headed back down the trail under the stands of wet spruce and fir. Kerberos led the way, howling at shapes on the crest above.
After about five stadia from the pyre, the dog sprang ahead. The five turned from the bend of the path back into an open meadow. The trail was muddy with stagnant pools. It was late afternoon. Kerberos howled and stopped. At last they found their guide Scorpas just as Chion had left him. His big idea to reach the old port of Pylos in the west had gotten no farther than a short walk from the hut of Gorgos, where the wolf-dog of Kithairon had cornered him. Chion had found him shuddering above Porpax, on the lower branch of a mountain oak, whimpering for his life and offering to lead the way back to the hut of Gorgos. Chion, the man-bear of Taygetos, had dealt with Scorpas as he had with the wild bears that he and Porpax had once run down above the farm on Helikon. The throat of Scorpas was slit from ear to ear. He was hung by the heels-and with his own tunic-from a limb. A pool of blood soaked the pine needles. A red beta was swabbed on his back. Kerberos now pulled on his dangling braids, furious to bring the corpse down.
“His end is a small nemesis,” Melon whispered as he gave the hanging corpse a push. They went on by and shooed Kerberos off, leaving Scorpas to swing as an offering to Chion. The wolves yelled as they went down the trail, in answer to the greeting of Kerberos, who knew their way well. The five hiked all night on the downhill path. It was right before dawn when the night walkers with Chion draped over the pony reached the low foothills beneath the west slopes of Taygetos. They had not bothered staying at the upland huts.