Tim Leach - The Last King of Lydia

In the morning, a new decree was announced in the city. Croesus commanded that all iron weapons outside of the armouries were to be taken from the men’s quarters and hung up in the women’s quarters. All the armouries were to have their guard doubled, and no weapons were to leave them without his permission. Soon after, the palace guards were rearmed with bronze weapons. The guards complained to their captains when the soldiers of the city jeered at their inferior, effeminate weaponry, but the edict stood.

The fear was choking at first. For weeks afterwards, he would spend much of his free time in one armoury or another, touching each spear and sword and arrowhead in turn, trying to locate his dream self, his iron double. But, gradually and inevitably, the fear receded. He had been granted a vision, and surely no vision would come without the ability to change that future. The Gods would not be that cruel.

The absence of iron weapons soon became nothing more than another strange custom of the Lydian court. Rumour spread in the neighbouring countries that it was an aesthetic choice, that Croesus, in his vanity and his love of glittering wealth, found bronze more pleasing to his eyes than iron. The king enjoyed this rumour, and began to spread it himself.

In time, he almost came to believe it.

The priest brought two sets of hands together, pronounced the old words, and they were married. The watching crowd cried out, and Croesus tried to give his voice to the celebration. But no words came, only air — a soft sigh of relief.

Five years had passed, five years in which Lydia had grown stronger. Tribe and city, island and township — all people west of the Halys river soon came under the power of Croesus. Some fought or endured siege for a time, others surrendered as soon as the flag of bull and lion was seen on the horizon. After the wars, the eastern tribes brought Croesus offerings of honey, necklaces of gold beads, patterned silver bracelets. The Ionians gave him red wine in black and brown amphorae, the black the colour of Nubian skin, the brown the colour of wet earth, the deep red wine like blood and water.

Five years of conquest and prosperity, and only now had his son chosen to take a wife.

He had made countless introductions to the daughters of the Lydian nobility, but his son, smiling shyly, had rejected each one. Croesus could have forced his son to respect his wishes, but found he did not have the heart for it. He wanted more than anything for his son to be married, but, it seemed, was powerless to bring it to pass. The king waited, and each day he woke and prayed for his son to fall in love.

He looked around the temple, at his family. Atys sat drinking wine with the other young men as they pledged countless toasts to the health of the new couple. Occasionally one of them would lean in close to Atys to whisper something in his ear. Obscene suggestions, judging by the way Atys blushed and shook his head. Amongst them, drinking quietly, was Adrastus, the man who had thrown himself on Croesus’s mercy five years before. Croesus remembered how the priests had poured pigs’ blood over Adrastus’s hands, reading the spooling gore as it ran down to the floor and pronouncing the omens to be good, the blood guilt cleansed. The priests had received a gold statue four cubits high from Croesus in return. Good omens did not go unrewarded, and Adrastus had been taken into the royal household without complaint.

He looked at the women. Danae moved through the crowd, mollifying disappointed fathers, entertaining visiting ambassadors and diplomats. He looked at Iva, the woman his son had chosen at last to be his wife. She had a delicate beauty, and it was not difficult to see why Atys had been drawn to her, though she was thinner than Croesus would have liked, and shy too. She was the daughter of a minor nobleman, and it was a match that gave no political advantage, but to the king that no longer mattered. He saw Maia sitting with the new bride, talking quietly. He supposed she was telling Iva of what would happen in the night ahead, telling her not to be afraid. Beside them both, Gyges sat with a bewildered expression on his face, looking in on a strange ritual from this other world. He had, at least, understood enough to remain quiet during the ceremony. The king wanted no ill omens on this day of all days.

Croesus turned away from the wedding crowd, and found Isocrates at his side, waiting silently for orders.

‘Isocrates.’

‘Master.’

‘Everything is well with our guests? No trouble from the Ionians?’

‘They seem to be behaving themselves. Do not worry, all is as it should be. It is a fine wedding.’

‘Yes. I suppose it is.’ Croesus smiled.

‘You are happy, master?’

‘Relieved. It’s a difficult thing, having one’s happiness depend on those one cannot control. Don’t you think?’

‘I wouldn’t know, master.’

‘I suppose you wouldn’t.’ Croesus turned away, but did not dismiss his slave. ‘I’d like you to do some investigating for me.’ He gestured to the milling crowd. ‘Talk to the Athenians. They have a small delegation here. Afterwards, send our messengers and emissaries to the city.’

‘Yes, master. And what am I to enquire about? The state of the Athenian army perhaps? Or their relations with Sparta, with Delphi?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. I want you to find out about Tellus.’

‘Tellus?’

‘Yes.’ Croesus looked closely at his slave. Few would have noticed a change in the man, for he had given no obvious outward sign. The slightest tensing of the slave’s body, a particular flatness to the eyes — it took a man as familiar with him as Croesus to notice this response. ‘You have heard of him?’ the king said.

‘I do not think so,’ Isocrates replied. ‘Whom do you mean?’

‘A man of some fame. Dead now, or so I have heard. Killed in battle against Eleusis. Solon spoke of him. It shouldn’t be hard to learn more of him. Not for a man of your talents.’

Isocrates bowed low to hide his eyes. ‘As you wish.’ He turned to walk away.

‘Isocrates?’

He looked back at his king. ‘Yes?’

‘You are sure you have not heard of Tellus?’

‘No, master,’ Isocrates said.

It was the first lie he had ever told his king.

Far north of Sardis, the woods of Mysia sprawled across land that lay beneath high mountains. They were dense, broken only by the path of the great Macestus river, and the occasional natural clearing where the trees would not grow. It was in one of these rare clearings, at the same moment that Atys’s marriage was taking place in the great city to the south, that a hunter lay on a bloodied patch of earth. He lay, quiet and still, and waited to die.

It was a monster, larger than any boar he had ever seen or heard of before. They had heard the rumours, he and his friends, and had gone out into the woods to hunt it. To protect their lands. In pursuit of glory. They were all experienced hunters, careful and skilled. It hadn’t mattered. The boar had killed them all.

He had set the spear perfectly as the boar charged at him. Again and again, he re-created the moment in his mind, trying to think what he could have done differently, but there was nothing. The spear had been positioned without error, but as soon as the point touched flesh, the shaft had shivered and snapped as though the beast’s hide were made from stone. It had carried on its charge at full force, and for an instant, when it was only a few spans away from him, he had seen himself reflected in the boar’s eyes. He had seen his death there. Then the sharp pain as the tusk entered his stomach, the taste of wet dirt in his mouth as he rolled against the ground again and again until he came to rest against a tree.