The Great King (31 page)

So he answered Hydarnes. As I translated, I was quite sure that I had the same smile on my face that I wear when I fight.

Hydarnes was obviously annoyed, and equally obviously unwilling to show it. But at the end of dinner, he stood and waved at me in a way that had to have been insulting.

‘Tomorrow I hunt lion,’ he said. ‘A great man-killer is preying on my slaves. Come ride with me, and let us see who is a man, and who is a slave.’

He hadn’t included the Spartans. That made sense – as heralds, they were exempt from all challenges and all contests. And sacred.

I was not, so I rose and bowed. ‘I would be delighted,’ I said.

Later that night, I lay in bed and listened as Greek slaves were beaten with rods in the courtyard. I’m sure they beat the boy – he had laughed aloud when Bulis spoke, and Hector liked him.

But there are ways and ways of scoring one’s victories. The next day, I hunted in the mountains with Cyrus and Hydarnes. I could tell that neither liked the other – indeed, I had seen Cyrus grin like a daemon when Bulis’s insult went home, so I understood that we had some latitude here. But I was determined that I would rescue something from here.

My goods – Athenian goods – had fetched shockingly high prices on the wharves. Sekla reported to me in the dawn as we mounted our horses for the hunt, and I knew that I had silver. So, when our dogs had run the lion and it was cornered in a stand of trees – alien trees, of a kind I’d never seen before, with yellow flowers – while the party sorted out their weapons, I turned to Sallis, who was with me most of the time.

‘If I wanted to buy a few of the Greek slaves who have pleased me, what then?’ I asked.

Sallis made a face – the face Asians make when they are prepared to haggle. ‘If they are the Great King’s slaves, we may not sell them,’ he said. ‘If they are my master’s slaves, all is well.’

I described the boy and I named the two Aeolian women – Sappho and Lysistrata.

Sallis shrugged. ‘But you didn’t lie with either of them,’ he said.

I found Sallis to be – it is hard to say what I found him to be. Comprehensible? Easier to understand than Hydarnes? A fellow sufferer under the yoke of Persia? A man with a sense of humour? Perhaps all of these things.

‘They are the daughters of a man who was my friend,’ I said. That stretched the matter a little, but not much.

He nodded in complete understanding. ‘Ah! If you appealed so to Hydarnes, he might give them to you.’

‘I would prefer to buy them,’ I said.

‘You do not want to owe my master anything?’ he asked. He looked past me to where one of Hydarnes’ guardsmen was handing out spears. ‘You are wise, for a Greek.’ He looked away. ‘Babylon revolted just last year, and one of my cousins was taken for the Great King’s house.’ He shrugged. ‘Among us, it is no dishonour.’

A guardsman, face wrapped against the dust and wearing the most ridiculous trousers I’d ever seen – and I had seen Gallic noblemen – handed me a spear so magnificent that I lost the thread of our conversation for a moment. It was steel, blued with care, inlaid with gold, and the sarauter was of solid silver. It was a lonche, just seven feet long, and the head was sharp enough to cut like a good sword.

‘My master bids you take this spear and join him for the kill,’ the guardsman said.

I slid from my horse. Sallis was suddenly fighting his.

It was the terror of Sallis’s mare that gave me space in which to live.

I have to tell this tale backwards and say that the lion, cornered by dogs in a stand of trees, was an old and wily campaigner, and he had, in fact, killed two dogs and then slipped away from the pack, gone down the ravine behind the woods – a ravine we hadn’t seen – and now, like the man-killer he was, he was stalking us.

He’d come up the ravine, and his scent panicked all the horses at once. Men were thrown. Better riders, like Sallis, had their hands full.

In Persia, one is supposed to kill the lion with a spear, from horseback or on foot – usually after the dogs have softened it up a bit.

I saw the beast. He was coming at us through the grass, with the swagger of a killer and the eyes of a madman. His head was low, but he was scarcely troubling himself with concealment. He’d picked his quarry, and he was intent only on his kill.

Hector.

Hector saw him. But he froze – his feet seemed to have grown roots.

I’d never faced a lion before, so I did everything wrong. I didn’t expect it to be so fast, and I rather expected it to . . . I don’t know, to hesitate, or to pause, or to
ready itself
before attacking.

Instead, two horse-lengths from Hector, it went from its swaggering lope to a leap. It was in the air.

Calchas and Polymarchos saved Hector. A lifetime of training and nothing else. I don’t remember anything but its stinking breath and the cat dead, my spear cleanly impaled so deep in its neck that it emerged at the back, and I had to do a little bit of undignified scrambling to avoid the dying energy of its claws, which still got my thigh – see these scars, thugater? Four lines all parallel.

It was a three-day wonder, and the infection that Apollo shot into my thigh was a two-week wonder and more, giving me strange dreams and making riding an agony. But that was in the future. At that moment, I stood in the grass with the dead lion at my feet, and turned to find Hydarnes behind me, empty handed because in the commotion caused by the panicking horses he hadn’t got a spear.

I’d been living with the Spartans for some time, at that point. I’m very proud of what came next. I turned to my host and bowed, with the dead lion at my feet and my own blood running down my leg.

‘Good spear,’ I said.

That night I was feasted like a god. The wound had not yet begun to trouble me. And when the feast was over, and Hector had cleared away my gifts – a fortune in cups and the spear I had used – I went back to my chambers only to find Sallis standing at the entrance.

He handed me three clay tablets. ‘I have arranged that all three shall be sold to you. My master accepted your offer of three mina of silver without quibble, and your slave Sekla has already paid me.’

Sekla was no man’s slave, but he was a good actor.

I offered my hand. ‘May I offer you my guest-friendship? Among Greeks, this is a sacred thing.’

He looked surprised. But he took my hand. ‘With thanks, my lord. I am but a servant—’

‘You are a good man,’ I said. ‘Come and feast with me in Greece, when all this is over.’

Sallis bowed. ‘My lord – I will.’ He nodded. ‘And I . . . if you pass Babylon, let me send a letter to my sister.’

So I made Sallis a friend. And went into my chambers, to find two beautiful women and an eleven-year-old boy, all weeping together. They had Hector weeping too.

All of them – except Hector – came to me on their knees, thanking me and praising me. Now, every man craves the good opinion of others, whether he admits it or not, but these three – it was too much.

I was gruff, and sent them away.

Hector came to me a little later. The wound was just starting to bother me. Hector waited silently until I gave him leave to speak, which I did with a wave.

‘I could take the boy,’ he said. ‘I could use the help. You are a demanding master.’ He spoke solemnly.

It is true that Hector was my manservant and my armour carrier and my signals officer and sometimes my secretary. And like most men with slaves and servants, I’d provided him with freedom and some real benefits, but I hadn’t really noticed how much he did.

‘He’s free. I suspect he’s nobly born. He may not want to be the hypaspist to a hypaspist.’ I raised my eyebrows.

‘He wants to be a warrior,’ Hector said.

I nodded. ‘He was born in the right time,’ I said.

Hector frowned and looked at the floor. ‘So do I,’ he said. ‘But the lion . . . I was . . . I was . . .’ He turned his head away and the word came out as a sob. ‘Afraid.’

I laughed. I agree, it was probably the wrong thing to do, but really – adolescent boys and their fancies. As bad as girls.
The same as girls.
Who puts these ideas in their heads?

Homer, that’s who.

He flinched from my anger and I grabbed his shoulders. It was really the first time I’d hugged him. I know that sounds odd, but he was a very grave boy, and he’d lost his father. His reserve was very . . . adult.

But I grabbed him and wrestled him into an embrace as he burst into angry, humiliated tears. I said all the things older men say to boys about courage, and he didn’t listen – like all boys.

Lysistrata and her sister appeared with their bedding. They drew the wrong conclusions and withdrew, but as Hector began to recover, Lysistrata came back with a bowl and a towel. She paused in the doorway and met my eyes. She was a fine woman – intelligent and sensitive and tough enough to survive in a harem.

Hector fled.

Lysistrata came in and made the sort of bow that women make to fathers or husbands at religious ceremonies – at least in Plataea. I agree that in Ionia they can be both more and less formal.

‘I have some small skill at healing, my lord,’ she said. ‘And the wound on your thigh is more dangerous than you think.’

I took the bowl and started to wash my thigh, and considered how to get her into my bed without taking advantage of my power over her. Of course, we all know the answer to that. But I am as human as the next man, and just then, I didn’t want her healing powers. Or rather, I wanted her to heal me of the stare of the lion’s eyes, because they held my death.

She mistook my hesitation. ‘I will not fawn on you, my lord. But . . . what care has this wound received?’

I shook my head, embarrassed by my own desire. ‘I wiped it with grass,’ I said.

She shook her head, all business. ‘Lion’s claws carry every kind of disease,’ she said. She had me lie down, and then, with Hector and her sister helping, scrubbed the wounds until it was all I could do not to scream. She put honey into each wound after dribbling wine on them.

I suspect she saved my life.

When the other two were gone, sex was the farthest thing from my mind. I
hurt
. She rubbed my upper back for a little while. ‘My sister and I would like to sleep in your apartment, lord,’ she said, somewhat dreamily.

I agreed. Of course they wanted to escape.

The next day, I was almost speechless with fever. The fever lasted three days, and when it passed, I was as weak as a child. Despite which, our party was ready to ride for Susa via Babylon, three thousand stades away.

I sent the two Greek women to my ships. I had a farewell conference with Sekla, and directed him to meet me at Ephesus in late winter. I gave him a letter for Artapherenes and another for Briseis, and wished him – and Meglakles and Harpagos – well. I took Brasidas and left the rest of the marines.

If it came to a fight, we weren’t going to cut our way out of Persia.

I sat my three Spartans down on the tiled porch of my magnificent apartment in the palace. My thigh was alternating cold and hot, and I had had two dreams of Herakles and one of the lion’s eyes. But I wasn’t dead, and I needed these men. Because of my wound, I was blunt.

‘I need all three of you to get along well enough to serve together. This is not about Sparta only, but about all of Greece. Bulis, I ask you to treat Brasidas with honour.’

Bulis’s face was as absent of emotion as the lion’s had been. ‘I will do Brasidas all honour,’ he said in his eerily flat voice.

I looked at Sparthius and he laughed his comedian’s laugh. ‘Don’t look at me. I have always honoured Brasidas.’

Brasidas looked at me with the slight smile of a man who has received an unexpected injury from a friend.

I thought,
Damn it! Why did I get this wrong?

But the three exchanged a kiss of peace and a hand clasp, and I thought Bulis and Brasidas lingered for a moment.

When they were gone, Hector approached me cautiously. He looked at Brasidas, just walking down the front steps and being greeted by Cyrus. The two were obviously discussing the pack animals.

‘You tell me never to listen to the gossip of slaves,’ Hector said.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘I agree that it’s hard advice to follow,’ I said.

‘Sparthius’s helot has been teaching me some wrestling,’ he said, which neatly implied that I hadn’t. The young are very good at placing the knife. ‘He says . . . he says Brasidas exiled
himself.
He says that Brasidas refused to pay his mess bill and left. But he doesn’t know why, except . . .’ Hector had the good manners to blush, since he was now repeating pure hearsay. ‘. . . Except that he’s heard of Brasidas referred to as the only man in the world who hates Leonidas.’

I nodded. I could barely think – I was still fevered.

‘And I want to thank you for saving my life,’ he went on, as if that was the less important item. ‘I want to apologise for breaking down last night. Sappho says . . .’

I raised both eyebrows.

He turned bright red.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s like that, is it?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m sending her home to Chios, my lad. I’ll send you to the ship to say your goodbyes.’

He stammered something, but he went to the ship eagerly enough.

Youth. Wasted on the young. Or perhaps not.

Riding was agony – first because of my thigh, and second because I was dizzy all the time, but I couldn’t send them on without me, as Cyrus was
my
escort, not theirs. And the first three days were all climbing – up and up and up into the highlands. We passed a number of ancient monuments in those three days – a statue of an Assyrian king, lording over a slave; a small pyramid that marked some feat of arms by an Aegyptian king – it was like a road of wonders. Truly, northern Syria is where all worlds meet – Persia and Babylon, Urarit and Phrygia and Palestine and Aegypt – and Greece.

Lysistrata had left Hector with thorough directions on my wound, and we put infusions on it, and I drank tea – tea made of something like sage, although it had a bitter taste that was only saved by honey. But the first two weeks of that journey are lost to me, and even the Spartans commiserated, which suggested to me that I was doing well in the endless contest of manhood.