Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [147]
When I discovered that Idomeneus and Lekthes were to fight in the line with me, I bought them simple arms and armour – good stuff from a local smith of god-sent talent called Hephaestion, a fitting name for a smith. They had simple leather corslets and good bronze helmets in the local style, and it was my fancy to have us all carry Boeotian shields, to mark us as different.
You hardly ever see a Boeotian any more. Take mine down, thugater. Try that on your arm, young man. You see? The porpax runs the opposite way from what you might expect, eh? Long and narrow – and the cut-outs in the side are not for putting your spear through! Older men on Crete told me that those holes are for wearing the shield on your back in chariot combat – the holes make it easier on your back and elbows, or so I’m told.
I think it’s just because that’s the way a bull’s hide cuts. Those old Cretan noblemen never made a shield, and I’ve made quite a few.
But you can see that it is lighter than an aspis. Not as safe – thinner. And a man with a Boeotian shield has to be aggressive in his blocks – no messing around. You can stand behind an aspis and take blows, but with a Boeotian you have to get that forward edge out and in your opponent’s face.
Anyway, that was my whim. I was flattered by the attention of all these Cretan aristocrats, and the word of my killing the warrior Goras on the east coast had come to Gortyn.
I trained the two of them and Nearchos together. Nearchos had already received years of training, or what the Cretans called training, meaning that he was in top shape and could recite the Iliad. So we ran, and we hunted, and I began by teaching them the Pyrrhiche – the Boeotian war dance in armour that shows a man how to move his body, flex his hips, thrust low and high, and drills a group of men to move in unison. I drafted an old flute player from the hall and in two weeks they were able to do the dance. Men came and watched and laughed.
Lord Achilles watched one afternoon. Nearchos was surly, because he hated performing in front of people. I knew him a little by then and liked him a little better. There was a noble young man buried beneath the angst and the boyhood and the burning desire.
When we had completed the dance ten times, and all three of my students were stumbling with fatigue, Lord Achilles got up and nodded. ‘You give them grace. But how is it different from our dances?’
I had seen their dances. In Gortyn, when the ephebes dance, they dance with weapons and armour, but it is all show – postures meant to show a man’s muscles, to stretch him and prove the soundness of his legs. On Crete, they use the dances to pick the fittest – by which they mean the most beautiful.
It’s the same dance in Plataea, and yet utterly different. We dance for war, and our dance has all the feints, all the attacks, all the shield parries – and the first figure is the hardest, where men learn to rotate from one rank to another. On Crete, they never rotate ranks – the front-rank dancers are the most beautiful. I don’t know what they do when they get tired in combat.
‘If we are all trained the same way,’ I said, ‘we will all move together in combat.’ I shrugged, I think. ‘And he needs something different. This is different.’
Then I remembered something that Calchas had said. ‘And men are scared in combat,’ I added. ‘If they learn to block and thrust by rote, over and over, then they can do it even when terror and panic pull at their guts.’
Old Achilles had been in a fight or two. He nodded. ‘How many fights have you seen?’ he asked.
I thought for a minute. ‘Four field battles. Ten duels.’ That was an exaggeration, but not by much. ‘A skirmish or two,’ I added with modesty that was, in fact, the exact truth. And some beatings and a murder, I thought. I was just eighteen, and I’d seen more violence than any of the men in the lord’s hall.
After that day, there was less laughter when we danced, and other men came and asked to join in. They came self-consciously, with servants carrying