Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [113]
The dreams were powerful but they could never compete with the reality of Briseis. Or the coming war. I told myself that it was time to go home – soon.
Anyway, I tell this story awry. I gambled on the waterfront and made love to Briseis; I listened to Heraclitus and read philosophy in the garden; I worked and played on the palaestra and in the gymnasium with Archi. It sounds like a good life. In fact, it was a bad time, but I could not tell you why, except that I could feel the doom over me.
When I had my bronze sheet forged, I cut some scrap from the edges and began to work them, chasing figures into them as practice. I did olives and circles and leaves and laurels, and then I tried a stag, but my stag became a raven early in the process. I made six or seven ravens, until I had done one well.
I remember that raven, because while I admired my work, Darkar came in and asked me to wait on Archi at dinner. That was the third time that Hipponax hosted Aristagoras. This time Briseis was the hostess, with most of the great men of the army as guests. The house was busy, and in those days, it was perfectly acceptable for a free man to wait on his lord, and I did it willingly enough.
I should have refused.
First, Aristides was confused to find me at his elbow. He smiled at me. I had to look at him for a long time to see the cool swordsman – my toughest opponent from the beach. ‘So,’ he gave his slight smile, ‘you have come to take your place among the captains?’
I grinned, and walked off to pour wine for Archi, and then I caught the Athenian’s look, and it was one of anger. None of the men at the party knew how to talk to me – was I a cup-bearer or a champion? It made them uneasy. Which, in turn, made me uneasy.
Then there was Briseis. She moved among them, dressed in a Doric chiton of pure new linen, shining white, and transparent, and they watched her the way dogs watch the slave with the food.
I had to watch the interplay among the captains, and I didn’t like it. Aristides was not the chief of the Athenians – that was Melanthius, an older man, and an astute politician, but not, I think, much of a fighter. Melanthius shared a couch with Aristagoras and they drank together like friends, but I could see that Aristides thought little of either of them. Aristagoras was belligerent and fawning by turns, a depressing sight. Diomedes’ father, Agasides, was there and Briseis treated him as if he were made of dung, which he reciprocated. And yet, Hipponax supported him as the war leader of the Ephesians.
There was a captain named Eualcidas from Eretria in Euboea, a famous athlete who had been praised by Simonides the poet, and another Eretrian, Dikaios, who made clear that he loathed all the Athenians more than he hated the Persians. I stared at them, for every one must have been at the fight by the bridge where my father died and I was made a slave.
The Eretrians had come with five ships because of their ancient alliance with the men of Miletus, of which Aristagoras was once again ruler, although he disdained the title of tyrant now that he had returned to them, and claimed that he would liberate all the Greeks of Asia and give them democracies.
The Milesians and Eretrians had sailed up the river together, fifty ships or more, and landed their men in the precinct of Koressos. Aristagoras was now the accepted commander of the war, and the whole purpose of the war had changed, because all the Greek cities had declared. Now it was the Trojan War. Now all the Greeks were going to make war on Persia. They planned to seize Sardis, expel the satrap Artaphernes and then perhaps march on Persepolis. And that night was the first I had heard of any of these things.
None of them noticed me, but they bickered among themselves aplenty, thugater. If I had been half the veteran I thought myself, I’d have smelled