Gary Corby - Sacred Games

Not that there was time, even if I wanted. Diotima and I had been summoned to Queen Gorgo.

“You have saved the Spartans and the Athenians from war, young lady,” Gorgo said. “A war that would have weakened not only both our cities, but all of Hellas. You’ve done well.”

“Thank you, Queen Gorgo,” Diotima said.

I waited for Gorgo to praise me, too, but apparently I hadn’t saved anyone.

“I have something for you,” Gorgo said.

Diotima knelt before Gorgo, and Gorgo placed into Diotima’s hands a stained backing board and four pieces of thin wood.

“What is it?” Diotima asked, confused.

Gorgo said, “This is what’s left of the wax tablet that held the secret message, the warning that the Persians were about to attack. Do you see the message itself scratched into the wood? I saved the city-states when I deduced the existence of that message-not only my own city, but all of them. Do you take my meaning, girl?”

“I understand you,” Diotima said. Her voice quavered.

Gorgo looked into Diotima’s eyes. “I’ve waited twenty years for a Spartan woman of the next generation, one to whom I could pass these bits of wood. Now I find they must go to an Athenian.”

Gorgo looked to Pleistarchus and me. “Leave us,” she said, in a voice that commanded kings. “This young lady and I have a few things to discuss.”

It’s not every day you get to shoot the breeze with a king of Sparta.

Pleistarchus and I walked through the camp while we waited for his mother and my betrothed to end their conversation.

Pleistarchus said, “I could almost wish the Persians would come at us again.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, surprised. His father had died fighting Persians.

“You’re right, I’m not serious. But we Hellenes had something back then that we’ve lost: unity of purpose. When it looked like we might all die together, we fought as one. The moment the pressure was off, we went back to our old internecine bickering ways. I hate it.”

“You’re a king, Pleistarchus. Why don’t you do something about it?”

He laughed a bitter laugh. “You went through the last four days, and you don’t know the answer to that?”

“You could change the rules, rule without the ephors.”

“The last man to try that was my mother’s father. He ended up minus a certain amount of his skin.”

All about us, as we ambled, Spartans packed their belongings with military precision. They paused to salute Pleistarchus wherever he passed.

“Traditions should change when they no longer work,” I said, sure of my point. Wasn’t that what had happened when we Athenians created the democracy?

“I see you have no future as a Spartan,” Pleistarchus said.

“I’m relieved to know it.”

“As am I. I’ve seen you fight, Nicolaos, and your technique is appalling, more like a street thug than a soldier.”

“Then that would be appropriate, King Pleistarchus, because that’s where I fight,” I said.

He laughed, and this time it was a happier sound. “I could wish that I were you and not me. I’m pleased you survived.”

I nodded. I’d seen what a tough job it was to be a king of Sparta, and I’d rather be me, too.

He said, “You and that rather clever girl of yours stopped a war. Sparta owes you both a debt.”

“Not all your fellows agree.”

“I’ll keep them in line. Tell Pericles that Athens must curb her ambitions. Tell him that the Hellenes are like a chariot pulled by two horses. If one horse gets ahead of the other, the whole thing overturns.”

“I’ll tell him.”

He offered me a kingly nod of the head. “Farewell, Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus. Usually I offer a wish to meet again, but in your case I suspect it would mean bad news for both of us.”

Diotima emerged from Gorgo’s tent, carrying the old, broken pieces of wood. She looked somewhat stunned. “I’m ready to go, Nico.”

As we left the Spartan camp, three men stepped in front of me, three of the five whom Markos and I had beaten.

“What now, Skarithos,” I said. I was tired. I was hungry. “It’s all over. Everything’s done.”

Skarithos sneered, “This time you don’t have Markos to protect you.”

“No, instead I have King Pleistarchus. He just thanked me.”

“What Pleistarchus thinks isn’t what I think. We have kings to serve us, not rule us. We Spartans think Athens needs taking down, and if you’re in the front rank of your army when that happens, Athenian, then all the better. I want to meet you on a battlefield.”

I was already on my battlefield, fighting a war few men even realized existed. Pleistarchus had his work cut out for him if he thought he could keep this lot on a leash. Perhaps Pericles was right, perhaps war was inevitable.

Skarithos looked over my shoulder. I didn’t bother to turn; I knew he could see his king watch us depart. Skarithos stepped aside.

“I’ll be seeing you, Athenian,” he hissed as we shouldered our way past.

“Not if I see you first,” I said. It wasn’t the most witty reply, but I really was tired. All I wanted was to go home.

We walked out of the Spartan camp for the last time, down the path that would take us back to the Athenians. Diotima was unusually subdued. She trudged along beside me with her head down and concentrated on stepping as delicately as she could through the mud. After five days, and thousands of men and women walking back and forth, the ground was churned up like the aftermath of a war.

“What did you talk about in there with Queen Gorgo?” I asked.

“Woman talk. You wouldn’t be interested,” she said. “But one thing I’ll tell you. Gorgo is dying.”

I wasn’t surprised. The Dowager Queen of Sparta looked thin enough to be dead already.

Parked along the road, out of the worst of the mud, was a long line of racing chariots. Their horses snorted and pranced.

The easiest way to take a chariot home is to drive it. The chariots from all the cities traveled in convoy because they made such an attractive target for brigands. Besides, it was the perfect opportunity to do a bit of road racing.

Coming up the path from the Athenian camp was a bunch of men. They waved sticks, and I could hear their angry voices from more than a hundred paces away.

When they saw Diotima and me, they stopped. I walked another five paces before I realized they waited for me.

“Stop, honey.” I grabbed Diotima’s arm. “Come with me.” I turned her around, and we walked the other way at a brisk pace, only to see behind us a mob of Spartans with hard eyes and harder clubs. At their head was Skarithos, who only moments ago had threatened me.

The Spartans stopped when I turned toward them.

I looked over my shoulder. The Athenians stood at the other end with arms crossed and grim expressions.

It occurred to me that I’d angered a lot of people. The Spartans had insisted an Athenian killed Arakos. Instead, I’d proven it was one of their own. Pericles had insisted the Athenians were innocent. Instead, I’d proven an Athenian had cheated at the Nemean Games, and tried again at the Olympics. Both Sparta and Athens were in bad odor with the other cities, and it was all my fault.

At the very least, I was about to take a beating.

Diotima was safe. Hellenes wouldn’t harm a woman for what her husband had done. What was about to happen would be painful for her to watch, but not as painful as it would be for me.

Diotima saw the problem, but my brave girl wasn’t scared, merely perplexed. There was no other path and no building in sight in which we could hide.

“We could run cross-country,” she suggested.

“Outrun trained soldiers?”

“Nico! Nico!” It was Pindar. He ran down the street past the Spartans-he didn’t even notice them-waving a sheet of papyrus in his right hand and holding his lyre in his left. “Listen to this, you’re going to love it,” he said.