Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [105]
Yet I tell this badly. I wanted to talk to the past. I wanted to tell the boy in the olive grove, and the slave boy in the pit, that there was this at the end of the road – that someday I’d stand on the sand, a hero.
Who knows? Heraclitus says that time is a river, and you only dip your toe once. But maybe you can skip a stone, too. I only know that the boy in the olive grove and the boy in the slave pit made it to be the victor on the beach.
You don’t understand. Perhaps just as well. And just as well that the victor on the beach didn’t know what was to come, either.
Count no man happy until he is dead.
We paired off, and I was up against a Chian. We exchanged names, but I’ve forgotten his. I was too inexperienced to be afraid, and too eager to show my skill.
We circled for a while. No man with steel in his hand lurches into a fight without feeling his opponent. It’s like foreplay with a beautiful woman. Well, it’s not, actually. But there are a few things in common, and I like making your friend blush. Young lady, if you turn that colour every time I mention sex, we’ll be good friends. What’s your name? Ligeia? How fitting.
At any rate, we circled, and then we started to make jabs at each other’s shields. It is hard to hit a man who has an aspis, when all you have is a short sword. The only targets are his thighs, his ankles and his sword arm. In a contest, his head is out of the question. Bad form. Which is funny, because in a real combat, that’s what you go for.
I became bored with circling and tapping shields. I shuffled forward, shield foot first, and then I cut at his shield, stepped in hard with my back foot and cut back – the ‘Harmodius blow’ they call it in Athens – and caught him just above the greave. A nice cut and no real harm.
I think I made him happy – he was out with honour.
Men are fools. Combat is not for honour. I hadn’t learned that lesson yet, but I almost knew it, and I was annoyed with him, that he’d wasted my time and energy.
I was the first to finish, and I watched the others fight. Cleisthenes had his broken hand inside his aspis, and he was hammering his opponent, an older Athenian who was angered and afraid of Cleisthenes’ bullying, hammering attacks that were well beyond the spirit of the contest. Cleisthenes was swinging as hard as he could, chopping his opponent’s shield with his heavy sword, a curved kopis or falcata, depending where you’re from, a weapon like an axe with a sword blade attached.
Another Athenian effortlessly dispatched his man after a long shuffle in a circle. I saw him do it. He faked a cut to the man’s head and tagged his thigh under the rim of his shield – perfect coordination, perfect control. He was one of their noblemen. He was fast and elegant and had better armour than anyone else, including bronze on his thighs and upper arms.
It was good that I saw him, because he was my next opponent. The light was starting to go, and we fought between two bonfires. He smiled at me – he had an Attic helmet with spring-loaded cheek-pieces, and as soon as I saw it, I knew my father had made it. I held up my hand to him.
‘My father made that, sir,’ I said, pointing at the helmet.
He took it off. ‘You’re a son of Technes, the smith of Plataea who fell in Euboea?’ he asked.
‘I am, sir.’ I bowed.
He returned my bow, although he was a child of the gods, the son of the greatest family in Athens. ‘I am Aristides,’ he said, ‘of the Antiochae.’
I nodded. ‘I am Arimnestos of the Corvaxae,’ I said, ‘of green Plataea where Leitos has his shrine.’
He grinned. He liked that I could play the game. Then he put his helmet back on and I pulled mine down, and we faced off.
The Chians cheered us, because we were both foreigners. Aristides was probably the best-known man in