Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [141]
I was still afraid of going home. There’s no easier way to put it. A few weeks with Herk seemed delightful – a respite. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I have sworn an oath, and I must see to getting my release.’
‘We’ll be off with the evening breeze,’ Herk said. ‘If you have goodbyes, say them.’
I ran up the hill.
I ran all the way to the gate, and then I knocked, and Darkar opened it, and I pushed past him into the house, until I found Archi. He had a bandage around his head.
‘Get out of my house,’ he said.
I had had time to think, and I spoke words I had considered. ‘I am leaving,’ I said. ‘Aristagoras has cast the Athenians out of the army – the fool. I’ll go with them.’
‘Go!’ he spat.
‘But I swore to support you,’ I said. ‘And you need to get your family into ships—’
‘Support me? The way you supported my father? And my sister? You are the fucking curse of this family!’ He rose to his feet and then sank back, still woozy from his blow to the head.
‘You have to get out of here!’ I shouted at him. ‘Pack the slaves and go! When Artaphernes takes the city—’
‘I don’t need any words from you!’ he screamed.
‘Have you freed Penelope yet?’ I said, and he froze. ‘Free her. You owe her. By Ares, Archi, get your head out of your arse.’ I stood over him.
Darkar came back with two big slaves. I looked at them, touched my sword and they backed away.
‘Go!’ Archi said.
‘Diomedes has not given up on revenge,’ I said. I didn’t know it – it came to me from the gods. ‘Your father is gone and Briseis’s idiot husband intends to hold the city against Artaphernes.’
‘Scuttle off, cockroach,’ he said. ‘We will hold the city.’
I took a breath and let it out. ‘I would stay, if you wanted,’ I said. All my plans for careful speaking were gone, and I could only beg.
‘So you can kill me?’ he said. ‘Or would you rather fuck me? Whichever way you choose to wreck me? Did you hate us so much? Did we treat you so badly? By Zeus, you must have lain awake plotting how to bring us down. Did you bring Artaphernes into the house, too?’ Spittle was coming from his mouth. ‘The next time I see you, I will kill you.’
I shook my head. ‘I will not fight you,’ I said.
‘The better for me, then,’ he said grimly. ‘But your oath didn’t protect my father and it will not protect me. Run far, Plataean.’
So much for friendship.
At the door, Kylix pressed a slip of papyrus – a single leaf – into my hand. Written in her hand, it said only ‘stay away’.
So much for love.
When we sailed, the men of Chios and Miletus gathered on the beach to mock us as cowards.
There is no fairness, honey.
I thought that I was sailing away towards home – I hoped I was. But when we sailed out of doomed Ephesus, I was leaving home, and I wept.
Part IV
Scattering the Leaves
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation will grow while another dies.
Homer, Iliad 6.147
15
I never saw Byzantium that trip. The storm hit us four days out of Cyprus with a hull full of copper. We ran before it, because we were crossing the deep blue between Cyprus and Crete and we had nowhere to land and we didn’t dare show the low sides of our trireme to the wind.
It hadn’t been a good trip. We’d had weather out of Ephesus, weather all the way to Cyprus, weather while we collected copper and weather while we rowed – all rowing, no sailing – to Crete.
Men looked at me. I was the foreigner, and the gods of the sea were angry. Well they might. I was an oath-breaker, fleeing from my oath to Hipponax, and the sea had no love for me.
I took turns with Herk at the steering oars. We’d been trained well, Archi and I, when we made the runs up to the Euxine and across the wine-dark sea to Italy. I could handle a ship, even a long killer like Herk’s light trireme. I marvelled at the Athenian build style. They really were pirates – the hulls were thin as papyrus, and the ship itself was narrower and lighter, and the rowers