Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [146]
I rolled my eyes. Boys will be boys, and what happens after a hunt is not for a maiden’s ears, but I’ve never understood the peculiar mating of boys and men that some practise, and even if I did appreciate such stuff, Nearchos’s face would not have launched a single scow, where Helen’s launched a thousand ships.
On the other hand, I was flattered to be treated as a hero in a foreign land. Back at the hall, the pig grew in size with every retelling, and my act of generosity was magnified to near legendary status.
Herk took me aside. ‘They love you,’ he said. ‘I thought they might. Will you stay?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ I asked.
Herk shrugged. ‘Don’t be a prick. I’m doing my best for you.’ And he was.
I shrugged. Nearchos was leaning against a pillar, whittling a stick with a pretty knife and looking at me when he thought I couldn’t see him.
‘I could live here for a season.’ I shrugged again. ‘But sooner or later, they’re going to know that my father was a bronze-smith. Not a noble.’
Herk tried to hide a smile as he saw how it was with Nearchos, and he turned his back on the boy. ‘Lord Achilles is as rich a man as Miltiades and he’s asked me twice if you might be interested in staying on as his boy’s war tutor. And to fight in his war band, of course.’ The big Athenian sighed. ‘It’s a soft life here. But you already have a name. What’s waiting for you at home? A farm? Farming is for fools. Stay here, and be rich. And when you leave here, everyone will think of you as an aristocrat. Crete is the most aristocratic place in Hellas. What in Tartarus does home have, by comparison?’
‘I’ll let them know who I am,’ I said, with a little too much youthful emphasis. ‘All right. I’ll stay.’
‘And Cleon’s right – see a priest.’ My friend raised an eyebrow.
‘Before the furies come for you.’
I looked at Nearchos. Then I looked back at Herk.
‘You don’t have to lie with him,’ he said. ‘Be unattainable. But teach him. You have a great deal to teach. You have a brain, lad – remember that sophist you took us all to see?’
‘Heraclitus?’ I asked.
‘That’s it. You have a formal education. You can teach.’ He pointed his chin at Lord Achilles, who was laughing with his leading men. ‘I’ll negotiate your price, if you like. And I can set it high – ten times what Miltiades would pay for a spearman.’
‘Very well,’ I said. And the knucklebones were cast. I was not going home.
Both Idomeneus and Lekthes chose to stay with me as my ‘men’. Old Herk wrote them into the contract like the wily Athenian he was, and so we all had bed and board and wages from Lord Achilles, and they became my sworn men in the Cretan way. Idomeneus was all for it – he was a peasant from down the coast and he understood the system better than I. In three weeks he’d gone from bed-warmer to warrior. He began to grow proud.
I had few friends on the ship, as I’ve said, but Cleon was one. We embraced, and I promised to visit him in Athens. He laughed. ‘I live in a house smaller than a grain-byre,’ he said. ‘But I’d love to see you. By Zeus and Hermes and all the gods, it is good to be going home, and here’s my hand and a prayer that I see you framed by my doors!’
Good man. Listen, honey – the Poet talks about heroes, but there’s never enough about the Cleons – good men who love their wives and their children but still stand their place in the battle line. He hated war. But he did it.
Then, richer and lighter, Heraklides and Cleon and their ship sailed away, and left me and my little entourage with the lords of Crete. And Cleon’s eagerness to be home rang in my ears.
In fact, Idomeneus, the scared boy of the battlefield, Eualcidas’s catamite, became my confidant and adviser. He knew the local words, he knew the laws and he understood the complex relations between lord and lord – so much more complicated than life in Boeotia, or so it seemed to me then. Now I understand that every man’s