Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [102]
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 –