Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [154]
‘You can get used to it,’ I said.
On the way down the hill, I considered that Idomeneus and Nearchos both loved me, and said so, while neither Penelope nor Briseis nor Gaiana ever said they loved me. Perhaps it is because none of my three women ever stood with me in the battle line. Hah – that would be a phalanx. And not a coward among them.
At any rate, after that day, Nearchos and I were friends, and a little more. I lived in the smith’s shed until the festival, and afterwards, too. We made fine helmets, and good armour, that turned Persian arrows and kept men alive. At the Chalkeia I made myself known to the priest with signs, and was raised from the first to the second degree because my sacrifices were found worthy.
I was happy. Too bad it doesn’t take long to tell. I am honest – too honest, and look at her blush when I say Gaiana and I made love every night – every night – ten times, if we wanted. Oh, youth is wasted on the young, honey. But you might ask – what of home? Didn’t I want to go home?
Didn’t I want to avenge my father, live on my farm? Or kill Aristagoras and take Briseis for my own? See? You do want to know. Well, children, this isn’t the Iliad. If I had a fate, I didn’t know it. And when you are eighteen, or perhaps nineteen, and men treat you like a hero, when your hands make beautiful things, when every night has a soft mouth and your couch is warm with love . . .
No one who is that happy gives a crap about fate, or furies. I was happy. I didn’t give my father, my farm or Briseis any more than a passing thought. And of the three, Briseis would have won out.
For two months, I was happy. Two months of making love while the rain fell on the roof of the shed, and making beautiful things all day with the power of my arms and shoulders – dancing the military dances, drilling with weapons, wearing armour.
A week before we were due to sail, Lord Achilles paraded us in the agora, and we made a fine sight. There were men lacking swords and men lacking greaves, but every man had a thorax of bronze or leather, a good helmet, spears and a knife. Every man – even the rowers. Six hundred men. Sixty of us – the lord’s retainers and relatives – had full panoply. On land, we would be the front rank, and at sea we would fight as marines.
Nearchos had the new ship, of course. He was the lord’s son. And I, of course, was to be his helmsman.
We celebrated with a night of drinking, and we poured wine over the ram of the new ship and I called her Thetis. Then we spent a week practising at sea. Our fisherfolk could row, and our officers were decent enough, but I needed that week, and more. I was not really a helmsman and I made mistakes every day, getting the Thetis off the beach and back on, stern-first. But I was smart enough to go for help, and I found it with Troas, who was rowing in our upper bank and wearing one of my helmets. I brought him aft as ‘assistant’ helmsman. He had his own fishing boat, and he knew the sea far, far better than I.
Never be too proud to get help, honey bee. And he did help. After all, I’d paid him double his price, and I’d given Gaiana good gifts – I’d made her a mirror, and I’d made her two pairs of bronze oar-pins, guessing that her eventual husband would want them.
The last day was hard for Nearchos and the other local men. Me, I was anxious to get away. I could feel the draw of the world. It was as if I had been asleep and now I was waking up again.
Gaiana came to me one last time at the shed. I had presents laid out for her on the bed – a length of good Aegyptian linen and a necklace of silver with black beads. She cried a little.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
I smiled, because I was a man of the world and I had expected this. ‘How do you know?’ I asked.
She smiled – no wild talk. ‘Girls know,’ she said. ‘I could just be late,’ she admitted.
‘Best marry your fisher-boy, then,’ I said.
She looked confused.
‘Don’t you have a boy to marry?’ I asked.
‘How do you know?’ she blurted