Killer Of Men Part 28

I a.s.sumed that Hipponax was dead, but that was not his fate, or mine. I touched him to roll him over and be sure, and he flinched and then screamed.

That scream was the worst sound I had ever heard.

It happens sometimes, that a man will go down on the field a blow to the head or a sudden cut, and the shock of it puts him under. But later he awakens to the awful truth that he is almost a corpse, lying amidst pain, waiting to die.

That was Hipponax's fate. He had a second wound, a cut that had gone right into his leather thorax, so that his guts glistened in the torchlight and lay hidden under his body, and when he moved, the pain must have been incredible. But worse than the pain I've seen it is the realization.

When you see your guts in a pile, you know you are dead.

He screamed and screamed.

Have I not said that I loved him? If not, I'm a fool. He was more my father than Pater with his humour and his slow anger, his sense of justice and his poetry. He was a great man. Even when I was a slave and he ordered me beaten even when he threatened me with a sword I loved him. I hated to leave him, and I knew that if I had not been exiled from his side, he wouldn't be screaming away the last heartbeats of his mortality amidst the ravens.

I got down in the b.l.o.o.d.y mud and put his head in my lap.

He screamed.

What could I do? I tried to stroke his face, but his eyes said everything. The unfairness and the pain. Remember that he never wanted war with the Great King. And yet he had fallen with his face to the foe and his spear in a Persian's guts, while worse men ran.

Have I mentioned the glories of war, thugater? Fill it to the top, and don't bother with water. All the way. All the way. All the way. When I give an order I expect it to be obeyed. When I give an order I expect it to be obeyed.

That's better.

Where was I?

Oh, I'm not even to the bad part yet.

I told you how he screamed. You have heard women in childbirth that's pain. Add to that despair which most women, thank the G.o.ds, don't need to fear in childbirth and that was his scream.

He'd been out, so his voice was fresh and strong.

After ten screams, I couldn't think.

After twenty screams, I stopped trying to talk to him.

Who knows how many times he screamed.

Finally, I put my knife under his chin. I hugged him close, and I kissed him between screams, and then I pushed it up under his jaw and into his brain.

Herac.l.i.tus had told me once that this was the kindest stroke. I've done it often enough, and I know that it ends the screams the fastest. Cut a man's throat and he has to bleed out.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough to fill my lap with his blood.

'You killed him,' Archi said. His voice was surprisingly calm. I had no idea how long he had been standing there.

Herac.l.i.tus had his hand on my shoulder. 'You are a brave man,' he said to me.

'You killed him,' Archi said again. Now there was a lilt to his words.

'Archilogos.' Herac.l.i.tus stepped between us. 'We must take his body and go.'

Kylix came, still crying. He began to strip the armour from his dead master's body. Another of the house slaves was there Dion, the water boy. No doubt he had come as Hipponax's skeuophoros. Together they rolled the corpse off my lap and stripped him. Idomeneus helped without being asked.

'You killed him,' Archi said, after the body was rolled roughly in a himation and laid across spears. killed him,' Archi said, after the body was rolled roughly in a himation and laid across spears.

Herac.l.i.tus struck him a sharp blow with his hand open. 'Don't be a fool, boy.' He turned to me. 'Your eyes are younger and sharper than mine. Can you lead the way?'

'YOU KILLED HIM!' Archi roared, and came at me. His sword was in his hand, and he cut at my head.

I drew and parried in one motion, and our swords rang together with the unmistakable sound of steel on steel.

It was dark, and the footing was bad. The only thing that kept him alive was that I wasn't fighting back. He made wild, savage sweeps at me and I parried them, and my new sword took the whole weight of his wide cuts and the blade held, notching his blade again and again.

He hacked at me and I parried, and Herac.l.i.tus finally tripped him with a spear and then rapped him on the head with the spear-b.u.t.t.

But it was too late for us. Even as Archi slumped to the ground, half-stunned, the hoof-beats that I had half-heard while I blocked his savagery came closer, and suddenly we were surrounded by torches and Persian voices. They surrounded us efficiently, despite the bodies on the ground. Most of them had spears, and there were more than ten.

I knew Cyrus immediately, even mounted in the dark. He was giving orders.

'Hail, Lord Cyrus,' I shouted.

He pushed his horse forward past his companions and raised a torch. 'Doru? Why are you here oh! Of course. You were looking for your master.' Cyrus slid from the horse's back. 'This is Hipponax a fine man.'

'That's one of yours,' I said, pointing my sword at the dead Mede.

Cyrus held the torch back over his head so that he could see the ground.

'Darius,' he said. 'He didn't muster after the battle.'

More hoof-beats.

'Sheathe that sword or you are a dead man,' Cyrus said at my side.

I looked at him. I felt perhaps I felt a hint of what Hipponax felt, awakening to pain and the knowledge that there was nothing to come but death. They would enslave me. No one on earth would pay a ransom for me, and I would not be a slave again.

So I smiled, or my face made an imitation of a smile. 'I think I'm a dead man anyway,' I said.

'Why?' Artaphernes asked from the dark. I knew his voice, too. 'Put up that sword.'

Herac.l.i.tus took my arm and stripped the sword from my hand as if I was a child. I had forgotten that he was at my side.

'd.a.m.n you,' I spat.

Artaphernes was on a white horse. He rode between the two close-wrapped corpses, Hipponax and Eualcidas. The wind was picking up, and the torches were snapping like angry dogs.

Oh, he owed me a life. But only a born n.o.bleman expects the world to work like that like an epic poem. A slave expects the instant revocation of every favour, every promise.

But Artaphernes was a different sort of man. He gestured to me. 'You,' he said. 'You are a rebel?'

Cyrus spoke up, and he was never a better friend to me than in that hour. 'Master, they came to retrieve the body of Hipponax, your guest-friend in Ephesus.'

It was obvious in the torchlight that I was wearing a scale s.h.i.+rt. 'You were in arms today, boy?' the satrap asked.

'Yes, lord,' I said.

He nodded. 'I have already declared an amnesty for all those taken in arms,' he said. 'No man will be sold into slavery or executed if he returns to his allegiance. I will punish only those who came from over the sea to attack my lands. The Athenians and their allies.'

I shrugged. 'I served with the Athenians,' I said. 'And you won't find another one to punish. They broke your Carians and then marched off to their s.h.i.+ps.'

'Are you a complete fool?' Cyrus hissed in my ear.

'But you were born in the west. I remember you telling me so.' The satrap shrugged. 'Go home, boy. Tell them in the west that the Great King is merciful.'

He was going to let me go. I took the ring his ring off my hand and held it up to him. 'You repay my favour,' I said.

He shook his head. 'Gentlemen never repay,' he said. 'They exchange. Keep the ring. Go with your G.o.ds. Who is that other man?'

I knew he didn't mean the slaves. 'Herac.l.i.tus the philosopher,' I said.

Artaphernes dismounted. 'I have long wanted to meet you,' he said.

Herac.l.i.tus shrugged. 'You have the advantage of me, lord.'

'You were in arms today?' the satrap asked. He ignored the insult.

'Aye, lord,' Herac.l.i.tus said.

'Do you accept my amnesty?' Artaphernes asked.

Herac.l.i.tus bowed his head. 'I do not, lord.'

'Your name carries much weight,' the satrap said. 'Will you not speak to your fellow citizens?'

Herac.l.i.tus shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'No words of mine could sway the wind that blows now, lord. War, not reason, is master here. Too many men are dead.'

'Can we not stop before more die?' Artaphernes asked. 'There is nothing for you Greeks to fight for. We do not enslave you you do that to yourselves. This freedom is a word just a word. A Greek tyrant takes more from a city than one of the Great King's satraps ever would.'

Herac.l.i.tus grunted. He raised his face, and his tears showed in the firelight. 'The logos is but words,' he said. 'But words can take on the breath of life. Freedom is a word that breathes. Ask any man who has been a slave. Is it not so, Doru?'

'Indeed, master,' I said.

'Every man is slave to another,' Artaphernes said.

'No,' Herac.l.i.tus said. 'Your ancestors knew better.'

Artaphernes let anger master him. 'You have been held up to me as a wise man,' he said. 'As long as I have come here, men have told me of the wisdom of Herac.l.i.tus. Yet here I stand, surrounded by the stinking corpses of your friends. I offer to preserve your city, and you prate to me of freedom. If my men storm Ephesus, who among you will be free free? Have you ever seen a city stormed?'

Herac.l.i.tus shrugged. 'My wisdom is nothing,' he said. 'But I am wise enough to know that war is a spirit that can never be put back in a wine jar once released like the spirits of strife in Pandora's box. War is the king and master of all strife. This war will not end until everything it touches has been changed some men will be made lords, and others will be made slaves. And when the world is broken and remade, then we can make peace.'

Artaphernes took a deep breath. 'Do you prophesy?' he asked.

'When the G.o.d is on me. Sometimes I see the future in the logos. But the future does not always come to pa.s.s.'

'Listen to my prophecy then, wise man. I will come in two days with fire and sword, and I predict that submission would be the wisest course.' Artaphernes remounted his horse. 'I desire to show mercy. Please allow me to do so.'

Herac.l.i.tus shook his head. 'Every woman whose husband lies here will demand vengeance,' he said.

'And their vengeance will be to spread their legs for my soldiers?' Artaphernes sighed. 'There is no Greek army in the world that can stand against the Great King. Go use your head, philosopher.'

Herac.l.i.tus was wise enough to bow, instead of saying what came to his lips.

Cyrus came over to me. 'You are a fool,' he said. 'Ten times over. Why do I like you?' He embraced me. 'Do you need money?' he asked, with typical Persian generosity.

I shook my head. 'No,' I said. 'I have my loot from Sardis,' I added, with the foolishness of youth.

'Don't let me find you at the end of my spear,' he said. 'Walk in the light,' he called as he mounted, and then he followed his lord and they rode away into the darkness.

And just like that, the enemy left us with our dead.

The enemy. Let me tell you, friends I never hated Artaphernes, not when he was ten times deadlier to me than he was that night. He was a man man. Hah! It is fas.h.i.+onable to hate the Medes now. Well, many are better than any Greek you'll find, and most of the men who tell you what they did at Plataea or Mycale are full of s.h.i.+t. Persians are men who never lie, who are loyal to their friends and love their wives and children.

Aristagoras, now. I hated him.

We walked down to the river together. We had no choice, because Herac.l.i.tus and I had to carry Archi, who was unconscious so deeply gone that I had begun to fear that the teacher had hit him too hard.

We only carried him a stade, but it gave me a taste of what the slaves had endured all evening.

When we got to the water's edge, I realized that I had no plan past that point. As I stood there, my hand in the small of my back like an old man, panting from the exertion, I wondered where Herk could be and what I would do if he didn't come.

Herac.l.i.tus sat in the gra.s.s, catching his breath. He was not young, and he had stood his ground in the phalanx or the mob, to be honest and then helped carry the bodies. Now he was done. Too tired to move, or even be wise.

I left them in the false dawn, cold and desperate, and walked the riverbank a stade to the south and then back again.

Herk appeared just as the first streak of orange came to the sky. Every Persian must have seen his s.h.i.+p in the river, but no man stirred to challenge the triakonter.

I got my party aboard and fell heavily on to the helmsman's bench.

Herk was full of apologies. 'My s.h.i.+p wouldn't go far enough upriver. We had to row to Ephesus and take this pig of a vessel from the docks,' he said. 'Who are they?'

I shook my head. 'Men of Ephesus,' I said.