Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [56]
Master kissed her shoulder. It was a shock – everything was a shock, but his casual, open affection wasn’t something I had ever seen Greek people do. ‘I can think of another role for him, if he can hunt and fight,’ he said, ‘and read.’
‘As can I. But let’s have him put to the farm with some reins in his hand first,’ she said. ‘And he can always drive for Archilogos if he can’t last a race.’
‘So he can, my dear. Your usual splendid eye for good muscles.’ He turned back to me. ‘Arimnestos, we are sending you to learn to be a charioteer. Do you think you will like that?’
I might have said many things. Instead, I shrugged. Really – I was ten thousand stades from home and my world was dead. What was I to do? Escape? It never crossed my mind. It sounded better than being pissed on, or hauling mud bricks for priests.
So I went to the farm with an old slave and slept well enough, and in the morning, I started to learn to be a charioteer.
7
I was never a great charioteer. I stood at the reins in some races on the farm, and I never won. The truth was that Hipponax had me pegged. As soon as they gave me good food, I grew so fast that I was too heavy for even a four-horse team – in a race. As a military charioteer I would have been like a god, but chariots were hardly ever used in combat any more.
Scyles was my teacher. He was an old man from Mytilene, on Lesbos, and had been a charioteer all his life. I was unsure whether he was a family retainer or a slave – he seemed part of the horse farm, as much a part of it as the old stallions and the young mares.
I will disappoint you again by saying that my slavery was so soft that I enjoyed it, and my door was never locked. Not even the first night! I could have picked up my crutch and hobbled away at any time, and a week later, when I was almost fully healed and the growth began, I could have run.
But run where, my honey? Back to Plataea across the sea? I was in mighty Ephesus in Asia, the slave of a wealthy man. No one seemed to know anything about my home, or even about the war that I’d been in. I asked – I asked Scyles from the first day. He shrugged and said that no one in the real world cared a damn what the barbarians of Athens and Sparta did. He called them bumpkins – clods.
And to be honest, honey, I wasn’t really so anxious to get back to Green Plataea.
Sounds shocking, doesn’t it? I was a slave and I didn’t want to return to my homeland and be free. But freedom is a word we use too easily. I think now – older and wiser – I can say that I was free for the first time. I was free of my father, who was, in many ways, a cold, unfeeling bastard who seldom had any time for me. There, I’ve said it. I never mourned him – not really. I was proud of him. But I couldn’t muster much regret that he was dead. And Mater? I wouldn’t have crossed Ephesus, wouldn’t have walked down the steps to the temple, to see her. So – be shocked if you like. I can remember the first night sitting on the cool marble floor of the slave quarters – the slave quarters had a marble floor, – and thinking that I must be a poor son because I didn’t want to go home. I cried a little. I began to wonder if I was going to be a cold, unfeeling bastard like my father.
And I’ll say it again – in Ephesus, no one had ever heard of Plataea. Among a thousand shocks I received that autumn, this had to be the greatest – that to the Greeks of Asia, mighty Athens and military Sparta were clods of no importance. Interesting, too, that this was soon to change. And that I would play my part in making it change. I dare say every man in Ephesus knows where Plataea is now.
Nonsense, I can drink wine at this hour. Wine is always good for a man. Pour it full, there’s a dear.
Now – where was I? Ah, yes. Life as a slave. Not a bad life. They called me Doru – all of them, so that for a while I simply forgot my name. As soon as my thigh was healed, I had a training schedule and I was massaged and exercised by professionals. I learned to ride, and to feed