Tyrant t-1, page 4
part #1 of Tyrant Series
Kineas read him easily — he was an observant youth. He was going to say that Kineas had looked the better wrestler. A smart boy. Kineas put a hand on the smooth skin of the boy’s shoulder. ‘I always imagined Ajax would be bigger.’
‘He’s heard that stupid joke his whole life,’ said the father.
‘I try to grow to fit it,’ Ajax returned. ‘And there was a smaller Ajax, too.’
‘Do you box? Care to exchange a few cuffs?’ Kineas gestured at the straps for boxers, and the boy’s face lit up. He looked at his father, who shook his head with mock indignation. ‘Don’t get too cut up, or no one will want to take you home from the symposium,’ he said. He winked at Kineas. ‘Or should I say, get cut up, so you won’t get taken home? Have kids of your own?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Well, it’s an experience. Anyway, feel free to put a few welts on him.’
Diodorus helped them both wrap their hands, and then they began, starting as if by mutual consent with simple routines, blows and blocks, and then moving to longer exchanges and thence to sparring.
The boy was good — better than a farm boy in a Euxine backwater had any right to be. His arms were longer than they looked and he could feint, rolling his shoulders to telegraph a roundhouse that never came and then punching short with the off arm. He stretched Kineas, now fully warmed up and eager; a short blow to his cheek gave him some personal interest in the contest, and suddenly they were at it.
Kineas was unaware that they drew every citizen in the gymnasium. His world limited itself to his wrapped hands and those of his opponent, his eyes and torso. In one flurry, each of them jabbed ten or twelve times, parrying each blow with an upper arm, or taking one high on the chest to deliver one to the head.
The flurry ended in a round of applause that moved them apart. They eyed each other warily, still charged with the daimon of combat, but the surge of spirit soon dwindled and they became mere mortals in a provincial gymnasium again. They shook hands warmly.
‘Again?’ said the boy, and Kineas shook his head.
‘Won’t be that good again. Keep it as it is.’ Then, after a pause, ‘You’re very good.’
The boy hung his head with real modesty. ‘I was going as fast as I could. I don’t usually. You are better than anyone here.’
Kineas shrugged and called over the boy’s head to his father, proclaiming how talented his son was. It was an effective way of making friends in the gymnasium. Everyone wanted to congratulate him on his skill, on the beauty of the moment. It made him happy. But he needed a massage and a rest, and he said so, declining innumerable offers of further contests until someone said they were all going to throw javelins and he couldn’t resist. He followed them outside and felt a pang — Philokles, forgotten or ignored, was running laps outside around a big field full of sheep.
Kineas didn’t know what to do with the Spartan, who seemed to have become a dependant. Gentlemen weren’t supposed to be so bereft, but Kineas suspected that he himself wouldn’t have been much different if he had washed up on an alien shore with no belongings and no home. He waved. Philokles waved back.
A slave herded the sheep well down the field and the men started to throw. It wasn’t a formal game; older men who were disgusted by their first throw took a second or even a third until they were satisfied, whereas younger men had to suffice themselves with one throw. It would never have done at the Olympic games, but it was comfortable, as the shadows shortened, to lie on the grass (mindful of the sheep turds) and watch the whole community of men compete. Kineas was conscious of his legs and the imperfections of his body, but he’d proven himself an athlete and was one of them now, making easy conversation with Isokles about the olive harvest in Attica and the problems of shipping olive oil.
Calchus threw with a great cry, and his javelin came close enough to make one of the sheep move with unaccustomed speed. He laughed. ‘That’s the best so far. I have a mind to throw again — they’re my sheep, we could all eat mutton tonight.’
Kineas was to throw next to last and Philokles last, places of honour because they were guests. Diodorus had thrown early — a good throw, with no grunt or cry, beaten only by Calchus. Most of the other towns-men had been competent, but the youth Ajax had surprised Kineas by his poor throw. Isokles had beaten it, throwing well, if short of the final mark, and he’d teased his son.
Kineas was used to throwing from horseback, and he threw too flat, but it was still a long throw — again the sheep started as his javelin landed close to them.
Calchus winced. ‘You’ve become an athlete while I run to fat in exile,’ he said.
Philokles picked up several javelins before choosing one. He walked over to Calchus, who was talking business with another man. ‘This is scarcely sporting. I’m a Spartan.’ He said it with a smile, an overweight Spartan showing a sense of humor.
Calchus didn’t understand. He indicated with a flick of his head that he had been interrupted. ‘If you can do better than we have, let’s see it.’
Nettled, Philokles gestured at the sheep. ‘How much for the straggling ewe?’
Calchus ignored him, returning to his conversation and then jerked his head around in time to see Philokles throw, arching his body and almost leaving the ground. The javelin leaped from his hand, flew high and descended fast. It knocked the ewe to the ground, all four feet splayed, the bolt from heaven pinning her to the ground through her skull.
There was a moment of shocked silence and then Kineas began to applaud. Then they all applauded the throw and teased Calchus about his ewe, suggesting various prices for her, some obscene, until Calchus laughed. Most of the town’s social interaction seemed to revolve around keeping Calchus pleased. Kineas didn’t like to watch it.
Isokles pointed down the field. ‘Let’s have a run,’ he said. And they set the distances and were off, running for a while in a pack until the better runners grew bored and took off. They circled the field three times, a good distance, and finished in the yard of the gymnasium. Kineas was close to last and took some good-natured teasing about his legs, and then they headed for the baths.
Tired and clean, with a couple of bruises and a general sense of eudaimia, well-being that inevitably came to him from the gymnasium, Kineas walked beside Calchus. Diodorus had gone off with some younger men to see the market.
‘You could do well here,’ Calchus said suddenly. ‘They like you. This fighting you do — it’s no job for a man. In defence of your city, that’s different. But — a mercenary? You squander what the gods have given you. And one day some barbarian’s sword is in your gizzard, and there you are. Stay here, buy a farm. Take a wife. Isokles has a girl — she’s pretty enough, smart, a housekeeper. I’d put you up for citizenship after the festival of Herakles. By Zeus, they’d accept you today after that boxing.’
Kineas didn’t know what to say. It appealed. He’d liked the men. The citizens of Tomis were a good lot, provincial but not rustic, given to gross jokes and amateur philosophy. And all good sports. He shurgged. ‘I owe it to my men. They came here to join me.’ Kineas didn’t add that something in him looked forward to another campaign.
‘They can just as easily move on and take up service elsewhere. You are a gentleman, Kineas. You don’t owe them anything.’
Kineas frowned. ‘Most of them are gentlemen, Calchus.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Calchus waved dismissively. ‘But not any more. Not really. Perhaps Diodorus? Could be a factor, or your steward. And those Gauls — they should be slaves. They’d be happier as slaves.’ Calchus spoke with authority and finality.
Kineas frowned again and allowed himself to be distracted by a man lying in the street. He didn’t need to quarrel with his host. ‘A barbarian? ’ he asked, pointing.
The man in the street was plainly a barbarian. He wore trousers of leather and had filthy long hair hanging in plaits, and a leather jacket covered in a riot of colourful decoration, and he wore gold. His jacket had several gold ornaments, and showed spaces where other bangles had been removed. He had an earring in his ear. And a cap on his head like a Thracian.
And he stank of urine and vomit and bad sweat. They were almost on top of him. He wasn’t asleep — his eyes were open and unfocused.
Calchus looked at him with deep contempt. ‘A Scyth. Disgusting people. Ugly, stinking barbarians, no one can speak their language, and they don’t even make good slaves.’
‘I thought they were dangerous.’ Kineas looked at the drunk with interest. He imagined that at Olbia there would be a lot of Scyths, born to horseback, a dangerous enemy. This one didn’t look like a warrior.
‘Don’t believe it. They can’t hold wine, can’t speak, can’t really walk. Scarcely human. I’ve never seen one sober.’
Calchus walked on and Kineas followed him, albeit unwillingly. He wanted a better look, but Calchus was uninterested. Kineas looked back, and saw that the drunk was rising unsteadily to his feet. Then he toppled again, and Kineas followed Calchus around a corner and lost sight of the Scyth.
He heard a lot about Scyths at the symposium because he was the senior guest and he introduced the topic. The wine flowed; the inevitable flute girls and fish courses folllowed each other in the approved manner, and then the older men settled in to talk, moving their couches together so that the younger men could relish the more amorous of the flute girls with a degree of privacy. Eyeing a black-eyed girl, Kineas had a brief pang that he was now considered old enough to make conversation, but he pulled his couch to the side, and when he was asked, he suggested that they all tell him about the Scyths on the plains to the north.
Isokles took the pitcher of wine from a slave and looked at Kineas. ‘You’re not proposing we drink in the Scythian fashion? Unwatered wine?’
The young men yelled for it, but the older men held the day, and the wine was mixed at a sedate two waters to each measure of wine. While Calchus mixed the wine, Isokles looked thoughtful.
‘They’re barbarians, of course. Very hardy — they live on their horses. Herodotus has a lot to say about them. I have a copy at my house if you’d care to read it.’
‘Honoured,’ said Kineas. ‘We read Herodotus when we were boys, but I had no idea I’d end up here.’
‘The thing about them is that they fear nothing. They say they are the only free people on the earth, and that all the rest of us are slaves.’
Calchus snorted derisively. ‘As if anyone could mistake us for slaves.’
Isokles, one of the few men who seemed willing to risk Calchus’s displeasure, shrugged. ‘Deny it if you will. Anarchises — does that name mean something to you?’
Kineas felt as though he was back in school, sitting in the shade of a tree and getting interrogated on his reading. ‘Friend of Solon — a philosopher,’ he said.
‘A Scythian philosopher.’ Philokles spoke up from the end of the room. ‘A very plain — spoken man.’
A whisper of laughter honoured his pun.
‘Just the one.’ Isokles nodded at Philokles. ‘He told Solon that the Athenians were slaves to their city — slaves to the walls of the Acropolis.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Calchus. He started passing cups of wine around the circle of couches.
‘Oh, no, not nonsense, if I may.’ Philokles was leaning on his elbows, his long hair framing his face. ‘He meant that Greeks are slaves to their notions of safety — that our incessant need to protect ourselves robs us of the very freedom we so often prate about.’
Isokles nodded. ‘Well put.’
Calchus shook his head vehemently. ‘Crap. Pure crap. Slaves can’t even carry arms — they have nothing to defend, nor can they defend anything.’
Philokles waved to the butler who had brought the wine service. ‘You there,’ he said. ‘How much do you have in savings?’
The slave was middle-aged. He froze at being singled out.
‘Answer him,’ said Isokles. He was smiling.
In fact, Kineas realized that not only did Isokles not mind twisting Calchus’s tail, he positively relished it.
The slave looked down. ‘I don’t exactly know. A hundred owls? Sirs?’
Philokles dismissed him with a wave. ‘Just my point. I have just lost all of my possessions to Poseidon. I do not have a single owl, and this bowl of wine, the gift of my esteemed host, will, once in my gullet, be the sum total of my treasure.’ He drank it. ‘I am now as rich as I’ll be for some time. I do not have a hundred owls of silver. This slave does. May I take it from him?’
Calchus ground his teeth. As the slave’s owner, he probably held the man’s cash. ‘No.’
Philokles raised his empty cup. ‘No. In fact, you would prevent me from taking it. So, it appears that this slave holds property and can defend it. And so would Anarchises say of us. In fact, he would say that we are slaves to the very act of holding our property.’
Isokles applauded with a trace of mockery. ‘You should be a lawyer.’
Philokles, apparently immune to the mockery, replied, ‘I have been.’
Kineas sipped his wine. ‘Why are the Scythians so free, then?’
Isokles wiped his mouth. ‘Horses, and endless plains. They don’t so much defend their territory as wander it. When the Great King tried to make war against them, they melted before him. They never offered him battle. They refused to defend anything, because they had nothing to defend. In the end, he was utterly defeated.’
Kineas raised his cup. ‘That I remember from Herodotus.’ He swirled the wine in his cup thoughtfully. ‘But the man in the street today…’ He paused.
‘Ataelus,’ Isokles put in. ‘The drunk Scyth? His name is Ataelus.’
‘Had a fortune in gold on his clothes. So they have something worth defending.’
The conversation grew much duller as the merchants present squab-bled over the source of the Scythian gold. After another cup of wine, that gave way to a mock-scholarly debate on the reality or fiction of the tale of the Argonauts. Most of the men present insisted that the golden fleece was real, and debated which river feeding the Euxine had the gold. Philokles insisted that the entire tale was an allegory about grain. No one listened to him.
No one told Kineas anything useful about the Scythians, either. He drank four cups of watered wine, felt his internal balance change, and passed on the next cup.
‘You didn’t use to be such a woman about wine,’ Calchus laughed.
Kineas didn’t think he had done anything to react, but Calchus flinched from the look on his face and the room fell silent.
In a soldier’s camp, that would have been an insult demanding blood. Calchus didn’t mean it as such, Kineas could see, although he could also see that the habit of power had robbed Calchus of his social conscience.
Kineas bowed and forced a smile. ‘Perhaps I should go sleep in the women’s quarters, then,’ he said.
Guffaws. Outright laughter from Isokles. Calchus’s face grew red in the light of the lamps. It was his turn to resent an insult — the suggestion that his women might enjoy a visit from Kineas, however oblique. Kineas saw no reason to apologize. He upturned his cup and slipped away.
3
The next morning he was up with the dawn again. He didn’t have a hard head and he didn’t like to drink too much wine, however good the company.
Once again, Philokles was snoring on the portico. Kineas walked past him, thinking that the man was certainly a nested set of surprises, contrasts within contrasts and he barely knew the Spartan. Fat athlete, Spartan philosopher.
He walked out to the paddock. One of the Gauls was standing sentry. This morning Kineas raised a hand in greeting and then went out to the paddock and got the grey stallion to come to him with a handful of dates. Then he was up on his bare back, his thighs clenched on the animal’s ample sides, and the chill air of the morning was rushing past him as he cantered the length of the paddock. He jumped over the paddock rail without much effort on the stallion’s part and headed north, off Calchus’s farm and on to the rolling hills of the plains. He walked until the sun stood clear and red above the horizon, and then he made a garland of red flowers and sang the hymn to Poseidon, which the grey stallion liked. The stallion ate the rest of the dates and spurned the grass as too coarse, and then Kineas mounted and rode back towards the town, gradually pushing the stallion to his extended gallop, until he was a god, floating on a carpet of speed. The stallion was scarcely winded when he pulled up at the edge of the market. He dismounted and led the grey along the street until he found an early stallholder with a jug of watered wine for sale by the cup. He drank deeply of the sour stuff until he came fully awake. The grey watched him, waiting for a treat.
‘Good fucking horse,’ the Scythian said. He was standing by the stallion’s rump. Kineas turned and saw that he was stroking him and cooing. The grey didn’t resent it.
‘Thanks, I think.’
‘Buy me for wine?’ the Scythian asked. The phrase rolled off his tongue as though he had said it a thousand times.
He didn’t smell so bad this morning and he fascinated Kineas. Kineas paid for more wine, handed a cup to the Scyth, who drained it.
‘Thanks. You ride for her? I see you ride — yes. Not bad. Yes. More wine, please.’
Kineas bought more wine. ‘I ride all the time.’ He was tempted to boast, but couldn’t see why. He wanted the Scyth — a drunk, a beggar, but one with the value of a farm in gold about his person — to like him.
‘Thanks. Rotten wine. You ride for all times? Me, too. Need for horse, me.’ He looked comical, with his pointed hat and his terrible Greek. ‘You got more horse? More?’ He patted the grey.
Kineas nodded gravely. ‘Yes.’
The Scyth patted his chest and touched his forehead — a very alien gesture, almost Persian. ‘I call Ataelus. You call?’
‘Kineas.’
‘Show horse. More horse.’
‘Come along, then.’ Kineas mounted with a handspring, a showy, Cavalry school mount. Before he could think about it, the Scyth was mounted behind him. Kineas had no idea how he had mounted so quickly. Now he felt ridiculous — he hadn’t intended to let the man ride with him and they doubtless looked like fools. He took a back street and kept the stallion moving, ignoring the glances of a handful of early rising citizens. Something for Calchus to twit him with when he was up.
