I decided on my tactics well before the turn. As we closed on the cairn, I poured it on, everything I had, and I passed him in one burst before he was on to my tactic. I was ahead of him at the cairn by a stride and I angled sharply
across
him so that he had to lose a stride or risk crashing into the cairn – not the most genteel manoeuvre. Illegal, in the Olympian Games. But that’s youth. And then I hammered my feet on the sand, my trick done, and all there was left was to run the stade back.
There’s a point in the race where it is no longer muscle and training. It’s all in your head, eh? I was ahead. He would put everything into catching me, but my burst of speed must have made him wonder. And I thought – fuck it, if I can burst like that, I can run like that all the way home, if I have the guts.
So I did.
I might have been the depth of an aspis ahead of him when I crossed the line. But by Ares, I took him, and after he vomited in the sand, he came and wrapped his arms around me. ‘Good run,’ he said.
I grinned – I knew he was the better man. And I liked him for his good humour.
In those days, all the games counted and there was no resting. So while I was still breathing hard, Kylix brought my armour for the next race, the
hoplitodromos
.
That’s a laugh. My armour was an old leather
spolas
that I bought on the beach from a mercenary, recut by a leatherworker to fit me. I had an outdated Boeotian shield that Hipponax had bought and a pair of greaves. Without them, I wouldn’t have been allowed to compete in the race. On Chios, they carried an aspis and wore greaves, that was all. In Plataea, we ran in full panoply. So I snapped on my greaves, which fitted well enough, and lined up.
Lord Pelagius played no favourites, although by the time I had my armour on, I knew that the big lordling was his grandson. He could have made me run in the first heat, but he didn’t, and he ran the pulls – the removal of names from a pot – fairly. He was, in fact, a good lord and a fair judge – a rarer bird than you might think, friends.
Cleisthenes and Stephanos hadn’t finished the two-stade final, as they’d ended up fighting on the sand. Stephanos said that the big aristocrat tripped him, and the lordling claimed the same. But they were still in the contest. They ran in the third heat – I think the judges felt that they hadn’t squandered the energy that Kalos and I had used up in the run. We ran together in the fourth heat, with another pair of Athenians and one of the Lesbian hoplites from our own ship. He ran well, too. He and Kalos and I led our pack, and Kalos was well ahead until the cairn and then he dropped back, his wine head stealing his chance for glory while the Lesbian nipped me for the victory. Epaphroditos was his name, and he couldn’t believe he’d won. I worked to be as gracious as the Athenian boy had been with me. It wasn’t easy. I hate to lose.
But I was still in the finals. They took place right away, and I was tired. There was quite a bit of jostling on the line, and I thought, Ares, there are four events to go, and I made the finals. I don’t need to win. All I need is to finish.
The lordling was in the race, but he wasn’t next to me, thank the gods. To start with, I ran easily, without any attempt at real speed. I was the last man off the line, except for another Chian who Cleisthenes tripped as we started. That boy was vicious.
I ran at a good lope to the cairn, and made the turn, still last, but in touch with the pack.
Everyone
was tired. It was my first games, and I had no idea how a real athlete hoards his strength. I knew my body, but I knew nothing of how to read the others.
We were halfway to the finish – the hoplitodromos is two stades, and good men sprint the whole way – when I realized that I had plenty of strength left in my legs and I had just passed one of the Athenians. So I grinned and put my helmeted head down and ran. I didn’t bother to look around, or back – until there was a blow to my shield and I realized I was running alongside Cleisthenes.
We were running shield to shield, and the Lesbian was a stride ahead, the horsehair on his helmet within easy reach. Cleisthenes punched at my shield again and grinned. He was a mean bastard.
Me, too.
I put my shield rim into his hips and he screamed and fell, and then it was just me and the Lesbian with fifty strides to go. We ran our guts out. He was faster.
I hugged him anyway. He had a great heart, that man. There aren’t many men who can say they beat me, but Epaphroditos was so
happy
that I couldn’t be angry.
‘This is the best day of my life!’ he said.
Then Cleisthenes came up and swung his shield at my head.
There was no warning, but a year of ducking Diomedes’ thugs had finally had its effect, and Stephanos shouted, and I ducked. The shield missed. Men rushed to pull us apart.
‘When we wrestle, I’ll dislocate your shoulder,’ he shouted. ‘And break your pelvis. By mistake!’ Every man on the beach heard him.
People like him have always raised the daimon in me. I said
nothing
, but I let him look me in the eye, and he didn’t like what he saw.
Then the lord was there. He slapped his grandson, and he ordered the big man to apologize to me. Cleisthenes refused.
Now that I had the attention of the whole beach, I leaned in towards Cleisthenes. ‘I’ve been a slave half my life,’ I said, so that every man heard me, ‘and my manners are better than yours. What does that make you?’ The daimon spoke. Had it been me, it would have been young man’s bravado, but when the daimon had me, I was as calm as a summer sea. My words fell like harp notes in a quiet hall, and he flushed.
The next contest was wrestling, although as the Chians practised it, it was more like
pankration
, since everything was legal – blows, tripping, punches, everything but eye-gouging and grabbing the testicles.
I drew an early opponent – but by the will of the gods, I drew a beardless Athenian boy who was in his first contest, as I was. We grinned at each other, and grappled, and I had his measure by so much that I could give him a throw. In fact, I dragged it out, because I was
resting
. And I made him look good. His father was there, and he slapped my back at the end and said I was kind.
The boy grinned at me.
Then I went to my second bout, against a big-arsed oarsman from Lesbos. He was tall and untrained and I was smaller and well-trained. There are men out there who’ll tell you that size doesn’t matter in combat, and what they are full of, honey, smells bad. Eh? Big men have all the advantages. I’m not big, but you can see that I have long arms – like an ape, an Aegyptian once told me – and those arms have saved my life a hundred times.
I’ve put a hundred big men down in the dirt, but they always scare me and I always thank the gods when I walk away from a contest with one.
This one saved me by being afraid of me. I could see it – I was a man who’d won the stadion and come in second in the run in armour and my muscles gleamed in the sun, and he flinched. I still had to wear him out, and it sucked the energy out of me. My ankles hurt where my second-hand greaves had bit them during the run, and those little things start to add up when it’s high noon on a hot beach in the third competition of the day.
I played him, and he put me down once, and his morale improved, but by then I had him tired and the next time he came in at me I broke his nose with my fist, and then I had him.
I got him a cloth for his nose, and on the way back I met Melaina, who was pouring water over her brother. She kissed me. ‘You go and win now,’ she said. ‘Then I can tell all the girls I slept with a great athlete.’ She giggled.
Stephanos frowned.
‘You all right?’ I asked.
‘I drew that bastard Cleisthenes,’ Stephanos said. His sister didn’t worry him, I could tell.
‘You can take him,’ I said.
Melaina spat in the sand. ‘His father’s our lord,’ she said. There was quite a lot of information in that short sentence.
I stepped close to Stephanos. ‘You know how to break a finger?’ I asked.
Of course he didn’t. Only trainers and professionals know tricks like that. I smiled to think that I could have been the best wrestler on Chios. So I bent close and told Stephanos how to break a man’s finger in the grapple.
He looked at me, and I think he was shocked.
I shrugged.
‘You’re a bastard!’ he said.
‘He’s going to knee you in the balls,’ I said. ‘I’d wager a gold daric on it.’
‘Aye,’ Stephanos said.
‘Get his hands at the first engagement, go for a leg sweep and go down with him. Break his finger in the tangle and apologize a lot after you’re declared the winner. And it is absolutely legal.’ I shrugged.
Stephanos nodded. ‘I can take him.’
‘Not wheezing from a groin kick,’ I said.
And then I was called for my third bout. It was another big man – bigger than the last. In fact, I remember him as being bigger than Heracles, but that can’t be true. But my good fortune was that he’d pulled a muscle in his groin in his last bout, and I took him. I took him so fast that he apologized afterwards. I told him that I thought he was probably the better man, and he liked that, and we clasped hands.
Stephanos broke Cleisthenes’ hand. If we’d all been lucky, he’d have broken the lordling’s right hand. But he broke the bastard’s left, and he apologized, and Lord Pelagius himself said it was an accident.
So it was me and Stephanos in the final. We were already breathing hard, and Archi strigiled me – as if he was my slave, he said, and I loved him for it – and put fresh oil on me. Melaina proclaimed that this was the best bout – because she liked both the contestants and was sure to be pleased – and Lord Pelagius looked at her fondly and then told the circle of men and women to keep quiet. It’s odd – at Olympia and Delphi, they forbid matrons to watch men compete, but allow maidens. In Ionia, women had their own foot races and they
all
watched.
Stephanos came at me with a grin, and tried to break my left hand at our first engagement, the bastard.
I didn’t fight back the same way. My blood wasn’t up, and I knew he had to pull an oar. I’m not always a bad man. So I punched him, even when we were grappling, and I got his shoulders down for a count and had a fall.
The second fall, he roared like a bull and came in at me, going for a throw. I stayed away, avoiding his hands, and just barely kept him from pinning me against the crowd. But by my third retreat the crowd was hissing at my apparent cowardice – especially as I was up by a fall – and like a foolish boy I let the crowd noise sway me. I saw my opening. Went over the attack, and found myself face down in the sand.
Then I was angry – angry at myself – and I tried to stand toe to toe with him. I got a leg behind him and I went for a throw and missed – we all miss sometimes, honey – and he got hold of me and then I was grappling a bigger man. He got me, although we put on a long grapple and a good contest and we were both covered in sand and sweat, and when we rose, Stephanos looked at me with a certain wariness.
Down two throws to one, I was a sober fighter. I was bone weary, but still unhurt.
Stephanos made a mistake, or was unlucky. Seconds into the fourth round, as I circled him, he crossed his legs – a foolish thing to do, and something even Chians must have trained against. I was on him in a flash and he was down, and although he was strong I got my legs around his hips and I had a control hold on one arm. I knew I had him – and after some long minutes of struggle and some grunting, he knew it too.
They applauded us like heroes after that round. We looked good. And I had him. He’d squandered energy trying to match my hold with sheer strength, and now he was beaten.
So I stepped in to finish it, grappled him and got dropped on my head for my pains.
Never believe all those stupid country-yokel stories. That Chian played me like the city boy I had become. He let me think him exhausted. He let me believe it with everything from posture to his weary ‘you’ve got me beaten’ smile as we stretched our arms out and started the last engagement. I don’t think I ever made that mistake again.
I came to with fifty men around me, and Stephanos all but weeping on my chest. He’d dropped me just wrong – but thank the gods, he hadn’t snapped my neck, although it hurt like blazes, a line of cold that was worse than fiery pain running up my spine.
Heraklides was there, too. He had a reputation as a healer, and he had my spine under his palms. ‘Can you move, lad?’ he asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said, and swore. Ares, I hurt! My fingertips hurt. But I was on my feet, swaying, but up.
They gave me a lot of applause and some back-slaps, and somebody, one of the Athenians probably, groped me. So much for heroism.
‘Sorry, mate,’ Stephanos said.
I laughed, and we clasped hands. ‘Last time I teach you anything,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘I like to wrestle,’ he said.
Then we had a break before the next event – until the sun was past a certain point in the sky, no water-clocks on a beach on Chios. I slept, and when I awoke, Stephanos came and massaged me himself.
‘I can’t throw a javelin, and I’ve never touched a sword,’ he said. ‘So you’re my man to win. You’re ahead, you know.’
I lay like a corpse under his hands. He knew how to get his thumbs deep in the muscle. He said his father taught him. Melaina had the trick too – she came and did my lower legs and feet, bless her.
When they were finished, I felt like quitting once and for all. And I felt like sex. Melaina suddenly appealed to me – the touch of her hands – hard to explain.
Instead, I got up and took javelins from Archi. I didn’t even have my own – they were back in Ephesus. Archi slapped my back. ‘You’re in first place, you dog!’ he said. ‘That’ll teach me to drink too hard.’
Not just sour grapes. Archi and I were always a dead match, except as swordsmen. If I was winning, he’d have been with me – except that the luck had been going my way in every encounter. It takes luck to be a winner. I’ve seen the best man trip on a stone or lose his footing in a match. Read the chariot race in the
Iliad
, honey – that’s the way of it. The best man does
not
always win.