Christian Cameron: Marathon: Freedom or Death

Even when the man is your friend. But that’s another story.

More wine here.

Idomeneus came out and held my horse as I slid down..

‘Sorry to call you all the way here, lord.’

The dent in my perfect helmet still rankled, and I couldn’t get the thought of a messenger from Sardis out of my head — Sardis, the capital of Lydia, the satrapy of the Persian empire closest to Greece. Who would send a messenger from Sardis? And why in the name of all the gods hadn’t I stopped to ask?

But Idomeneus was a man who’d saved my life fifty times. Hard to stay angry with him. ‘I needed to come out, anyway. If I stay at the forge too long, I might forget who I used to be.’

‘Used to be?’ Idomeneus laughed his mad laugh. ‘Achilles reborn, now hammering bronze?’

‘So, you killed a man?’ I asked. One of the women pressed a horn cup into my hand. Watered, spiced wine, just warmed. I drank thankfully.

‘We just killed us an Alcmaeonid,’ Idomeneus said. His eyes glinted in the last light. ‘He stood there on the precinct wall and proclaimed his parentage and dared us even to think of killing him. He thought that big name would protect him.’

I shook my head. The Alcmaeonids were rich, powerful and nasty. Their wealth was boundless, and I couldn’t imagine what one of them was doing at the tomb of the hero. ‘Perhaps he was lying?’ I asked.

Idomeneus produced something from under his chlamys. It flashed red-gold in the last beams of the sun. It was a clasp belt, the sort of thing a very rich man wore with his chiton , and every link was beaten gold. It was worth more than my farm, and I have a good farm.

‘Fuck,’ I said.

‘He had the mark of evil,’ Idomeneus said. ‘What could I do?’

I went and looked at the corpse, stretched over the precinct wall in the traditional way. He had been a big man — a head taller than me, with a bell cuirass of bronze as thick as a new-flayed hide.

He probably weighed twice as much as wiry Idomeneus. He had a single wound, a spear-thrust in his left eye. Idomeneus was a very, very dangerous man. The Athenian nobleman must have been too stupid to see that — or the mark truly was on him and the hero needed blood.

The armour was of the best, as was his helmet.

‘Fuck,’ I said again. ‘What was he doing here?’

Idomeneus shook his head. Behind him, men and women were lighting the lamps. There were six huts now, instead of just one, as there had been in my youth. My Thracians had one, and former bandits were four to a hut in the others, except the last, which was for the women. They were clean and orderly. Dead deer hung in rows from the trees, and there was a whole boar, and piles of salted skins, rolled tight. Idomeneus ran the tomb like a military camp.

‘He was recruiting,’ I said aloud, answering my own question. Perhaps the grey-eyed goddess stood at my shoulder and said the words into my head, but I saw it. He was in his best armour because he wanted to impress. But he’d challenged Idomeneus — somehow — and the mad fuck had killed him.

These things happen.

My problem, I thought, was how to clean it up. They were all in my oikia, so I bore the responsibility and it was my place to put it right. Besides, I knew most of the big men in Athens. I knew Aristides, and he was related to the Alcmaeonids by marriage and by blood. I was sure he could make it right, if anyone could.

I considered the alternative — I could do nothing. It was possible that no one knew where this man was, or what he had intended. It was possible that even if his people found out, they would take no revenge.

‘In the morning, I’ll cast an augury,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the logos will offer me an answer.’

Idomeneus nodded. ‘You’ll stay the night?’ he asked.

‘Just as you wanted, you mad Cretan,’ I said.

‘You need to get away from the farm before you turn into a farmer,’ he said.

I had the glimmer of a suspicion that my mad hypaspist had killed a powerful man merely to get me to come up the hill and drink with him. I sighed.

Styges put a warm cup in my hand and led me to the fire circle, where all the former bandits sat. We sang hymns to the gods while the bowl of the heavens turned over our heads. The firelight dappled the ancient oaks around the hero’s tomb. Styges took out a kithara and sang alone, and then we sang with him — Spartan songs and aristocratic songs — and I sang Briseis’s favourite, one of Sappho’s.

My eyes kept meeting those of a slave girl. They weren’t precisely slaves — their status was not simple. They’d belonged to a farmer — a widow — and the bandits had killed her and taken her chattels. Then I’d killed the bandits. Whose were they? Were they free? They slept with all the men and did too many chores.

She was short, almost pretty, and one of her legs was twisted. Our eyes kept meeting, and later she laughed aloud while I was inside her. Her breath was sweet, and she deserved better than a hero who thought only of another woman. But despite her limp and her odd face, she stuck in my head. In those days I must have mounted fifty slave girls a year. Yet I remember her. You’ll see why.

In the morning, I hunted on the mountain with Idomeneus, but if he’d left any deer alive within half a day’s walk, I didn’t see them. But we did cross the trail where we’d ambushed the bandits a year before. The road goes as high as it ever does on Cithaeron’s flank, then drops down into a mud-hole, after which it climbs a little before starting the long descent, first to the tomb and then to Plataea herself.

There was a cart abandoned by the mud-hole, and tracks.

The cart was loaded with weapons and leather armour — good, strong stuff. And there were a few coins scattered on the ground.

‘He had servants,’ I said.

‘And they ran,’ Idomeneus said. ‘No need to cast an augury, is there?’

The abandoned wagon meant that the rich man had had attendants — men who even now were running back to the family estates in Attica with a tale of murder.

‘We could chase them down and kill them,’ Idomeneus said, helpfully.

‘Sometimes, you really piss me off,’ I said. And I meant it.

‘I feel bad,’ he admitted. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll ride into Attica and make it right,’ I said. ‘Send to the farm, get Epictetus to fill a wagon with my work, and have it head for Athens. I’ll meet the wagon in the Agora in Athens in ten days. Before the Herakleion. Then my whole trip won’t be wasted fixing your fuckup.’

Idomeneus nodded sullenly. ‘He had the mark on him,’ he said, like a child who feels a parent’s law is unfair. ‘The hero wanted his blood.’

‘I believe you,’ I said. And I looked at him. He met my eye — but only just. ‘You can’t come,’ I said. ‘Not unless you want to die,’ I added. He shrugged.

My entertainment of the night before was standing a little apart. I palmed a coin to give her, but she shook her head and looked modestly at the ground.

‘I want to go,’ she said. ‘I can be a free woman in Attica. I’ll warm your bed on the trail.’

I considered it for a while. ‘Yes,’ I said.

The other two women cried to see her go.

I’d have done better if I’d stopped to cast the auguries. But who knows? The gods like a surprise.

We made good time up Cithaeron’s flank. Up where the oak trees falter, I killed a young boar with my bow. From there, and with that as an omen, I took the old road and we climbed all the way to the top of the ancient mountain, and made camp in the wood of the Daidala, the special place of all the Corvaxae, where the crows feast on meat we provide for the god.

I made a good camp, with a wool sheet as a tent and a big fire. Then I left the slave girl to cook meat from the hero’s tomb and I climbed up to the altar. In our family, we say that the altar is to Cithaeron himself, and not to Zeus, who is, after all, an interloper here.