Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [114]
Aristides watched them with contempt, and Archi worried and fidgeted. Hipponax watched them looking at his daughter, and Briseis rode the wave of their lust like a skilled helmsman.
It was not a pretty party, and I should not have been there. They drank, and quarrelled, and each of them thought he was Agamemnon or Achilles. On the sixth bowl of wine, Dikaios the Eretrian raised the cup.
‘Your daughter moves like a dancer – can her lips do what flute girls do?’ he asked.
Men hooted – and then fell silent. Hipponax rose from his kline and he looked ready to kill.
‘Leave my house,’ he said.
Dikaios laughed. ‘You dress her like a whore and put her at a party, and then you’re offended when I speak what every man thinks? You easterners are soft, and your women are whores.’ He drank the wine.
The cup rang like a gong when it hit the floor, and his head hit only a moment later. It rang hollow, like a gourd. He was out.
I had put him in that condition, and now I lifted him – I was strong, then – and carried him to the courtyard, then threw him into the street, in the dung. Oh, it is easy to make enemies!
Darkar stopped me from going back to the party. So I went to my bed, and later I went to Briseis, and she embraced me with a vigour that frightened me.
‘I loved how you hurt him,’ she said. ‘What do flute girls do?’
I explained, with some blushes, what they do. She laughed. ‘Not enough in it for me,’ she said. ‘What pleasure does the girl get?’ and we laughed together.
The next morning, I ran six stades with Archi and he beat all of us. We threw javelins and fought with spears. After we had clashed shields and bruised each other for an hour, Agasides came and ordered us down to the beach. Heralds were crying in the agora and on the steps of all the temples, and the whole army was assembling for the first time.
The beach was a vision of Chaos. We stood together in a mob, perhaps seven thousand men, and Aristagoras placed his contingents in the phalanx. He put the Athenians on the right of the line, in the place of honour. The Ephesians were in the centre, towards the left.
When Agasides had his place in the battle line, he chose men for the front rank. He chose Hipponax, but he did not choose me or Archi. Few men of Ephesus knew me, and despite my excellent armour and my victory in games, the Ephesians didn’t see me as a citizen (which I was not). Agasides, of course, knew me – as one of the men who had injured his son, and as a former slave.
So Archilogos and I were placed together – in the fifth rank. We were, without a doubt, the two best athletes in the city, and probably the best men-at-arms, but Ephesus had known three generations of peace, and Agasides placed men according to his likes and dislikes and with no eye towards the phalanx as a fighting machine. Hipponax had fought pirates several times, and despite his reputation as a soft poet, was a good choice. But all the other front-rankers were Agasides’ drinking companions, business partners and political allies.
We were one of the last contingents to form, and we looked bad. Other contingent commanders came and stared at us while we grumbled and switched places endlessly. A man would make his claim to the front rank – always couched in political terms – and Agasides would stand indecisively, balancing one interest against another.
When, at last, we were in our places, Aristagoras came and addressed us, and for all his faults he had lungs of brass. We were told that the army would march up-country to Sardis over the passes in the mountains, and that all the hoplites and their slaves should assemble in two days, after the feast of Heracles – that is the feast that they celebrate in Ephesus, nothing like our Boeotian feasts. Two days, and we would march.
It was the first time most men had heard that we’d be marching up-country, and there was much grumbling.
I talked to the men around me and realized that none of them had ever stood in a shield wall or fought with bronze or iron. They were like a pack of virgins going