Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [210]
Then he lay still so long I thought he was asleep, or dead. But when I threw my cloak over him, he managed a smile. ‘I saw you,’ he said.
‘Father?’ I asked.
‘Sacrificed the bastard,’ he said. ‘Zeus, you frightened me, son.’
We fed the lot of them on deer meat and barley from our wagon. I let the prisoners stew in their fear. The tinker stayed with me and was enough of a help that I wanted him to stay.
I left the body of their leader across the threshold of the precinct, so that his end was clear to all of them. Let them wonder how it had happened. Divine justice takes many forms. I had just learned that lesson, and it was steadying me; the blackness of three days before was already a memory. And seeing Empedocles – even older, and badly hurt – was a tonic. It reminded me that this life – Boeotia, a world with ordered harvests and strong farmers, a cycle of feasts, a local shrine – it was real. It was not a dream of youth.
Idomeneus wanted to kill the lot of them. Of course, that’s what we’d have done at sea. My reluctance puzzled him.
‘Different places have different rules,’ I told him.
He nodded, happy that there was some reason. ‘Wasn’t much of a fight,’ he said.
‘I’m not here to fight,’ I said. ‘I may go back to smithing. And farming.’
He had finished his deer meat, and we were sharing wine from his mastos cup. He winced, as if I had cut him. ‘That’s not you, lord,’ he said. ‘You’re no farmer! You are the Spear! Arimnestos the Spear! Men shit themselves rather than face you. You can’t be a smith!’
‘I’m tired of killing,’ I said.
In the morning, I sat on a log with all the prisoners. They were a useless lot, beaten men in every way, but they’d behaved like animals when they had the chance – raping the women they’d taken, burning Empedocles, and only the gods knew how many more victims were in the shallow graves behind the tomb.
‘You are broken men,’ I said.
They stared at me dully, waiting for death.
‘I will try to fix you,’ I said.
One man, a dirty blond, smiled. ‘What will you have us do?’ he asked, already aiming to ingratiate with the conqueror.
‘We’ll start with work,’ I said. ‘If you displease or disobey, the punishment will be death. There will be no other punishment. Do you understand?’
‘Will you feed us, master?’ another man said.
‘Yes,’ I said. They were ugly, those men. As far from the virtue that Heraclitus taught as Briseis was from an old hag in Piraeus. But I understood that the principal difference between us was that my hand still held a sword.
Their first task was to dig up all the shallow graves. There were fifteen – ten men and five women. None of the corpses was very old, and the task horrified them. That pleased me.
We made a pyre and purified the bodies, and then we sent their spirits to the underworld avenged, the old way, at least in Boeotia, and their ashes went into the hero’s tomb, where they could share in the criminal’s blood, or that’s how I understood it from Calchas. The women wept as we poured the oil we had over the bodies. The two who survived had known some of the others.
I didn’t ask them any questions.
It took us three days to restore the cabin and to dispose of the victims. We raked the yard, and we cut firewood, and we cleaned the tomb. I poured wine on Calchas’s grave each day.
Each night, I lay awake, thinking.
On the third day, Empedocles’ fever broke and he began to recover quickly.
That night, Hermogenes came and sat by me as I looked at the stars shining down into the clearing by the tomb.
‘I understand,’ he said.
I put my hand on his. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘But it has to be done,’ he said.
‘I had to put my own house in order,’ I said, ‘before I go to my father’s.’
‘This is not your house,’ he said. Hermogenes lived in a very literal world.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is my house.’
The two women had been farm slaves across the river. After some conversation, and some halting answers, I set on a course of action with Hermogenes.
I left Idomeneus at the shrine. Ah, thugater, you smile. Well