Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [207]
Everyone smiled, except the tinker, who looked confused, and the peddler, but sullen was pretty much his only mood.
We got our oxen hitched and started up the long road to Plataea. There’s a short road, down the valley of Asopus, and a long road up along the skirts of the mountain. The long road would pass the hero’s shrine and come down past my father’s farm. The short road was faster. I wasn’t surprised when both of the other travellers stuck with us at the fork towards the mountain, however. Not surprised at all.
‘You said that you were a smith!’ the tinker said when we were clear of Eleutherai.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But he thinks you’re some sort of aristocrat,’ the peddler said, as if I was intentionally deceiving him.
‘Hmm,’ I said. We crossed the Asopus in silence, and started up the long ridge towards the hero’s shrine. When we reached the first copse of big oaks, I pulled the wagon off to the side.
‘Arm,’ I said to Idomeneus and Hermogenes.
The tinker watched us as if we were performing a miracle play, his eyes as wide as a young girl’s. The two Thracians were slaves, of course. But I took them aside, handed each of them a heavy knife and a javelin. ‘Stand by me, and you will be that much closer to being free men.’ It’s easy with Thracians – they arm their own slaves, and a bold slave can expect to be freed faster than one who hangs back. They took the weapons as if they were going to a party.
‘Swords in your belt, spears in the top of the wagon and a cloak over everything,’ I said.
I went over to the peddler and the tinker. ‘You two might want to walk away,’ I said. I looked pointedly at the peddler. ‘You especially. ’
He wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Oh – I can look after myself,’ he said.
‘Hmm,’ I said. I turned to Tiraeus the tinker.
He looked around. ‘You’ll – let me go?’
I remember laughing. We must have been a grim band when we changed into our armour, because he was terrified. ‘We’re not the thieves,’ I said. And then it hit me – we weren’t the thieves here. It actually took my breath away. These thieves – these men on Cithaeron who stole from travellers – were only doing what we’d been doing to Phoenician ships for years.
Except that they preyed on their own, and they weren’t very good at it.
Tiraeus watched me.
I must have made a face, because he flinched. But then I opened my hands. ‘I intend to rescue the old priest and rid the pass of thieves,’ I said.
The peddler made a noise.
Tiraeus opened his chlamys and revealed a short sword, or a long knife. ‘I am a servant of the god,’ he said. ‘And – perhaps it will change my luck.’
Maybe he had decided that following me might get him a job.
‘Everyone made up his mind?’ I said.
We went up the road, the oxen plodding along. The sky went from blue to leaden grey in the time it took to climb half the ridge, and it began to rain, a slow, cold rain.
‘What if they have bows?’ Idomeneus asked. ‘I should scout ahead.’
I shook my head. ‘They won’t have bows,’ I said. ‘That boy was hacked down by a kopis.’ I shrugged. ‘They’re mercenaries. They’re using the old shrine as a headquarters, because all the hard men used to come there when Calchas was priest.’ In my head, the rule of law was reasserting itself, and the gods themselves, and I thought that it must have been too long since the hero had had his sacrifice.
Since Oinoe, I had thought about the logos. How Heraclitus said that men could only come to wisdom through fire. How strife was the master of all, and change was the way. But most of all, I thought of what he said to me when he chided me for beating Diomedes.
‘If you would master the killer in you, you must accept that you are not truly free. You must submit to the mastery of the laws of men and gods.’
So I trudged through the ever-increasing rain, and I thought about fire.
Hermogenes stepped up beside me. ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.
‘Find the bandits and teach them some philosophy,’ I said.
Idomeneus laughed.
I shook my head. I had a Boeotian cap, a heavy felt one purchased that morning from a stall, and it was