Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [75]
A month later I was back at my lessons. Diomedes caught me on the steps. ‘Your nose looks bad,’ he said. ‘How could that have happened? ’
I didn’t even meet his eye. I consoled myself that I had killed his thugs. I told myself that I would have my revenge.
But I crawled like a slave and didn’t meet his eyes.
And that hurt more than the beating.
Heraclitus understood something of what had passed. He became more careful of his praise for me and at the same time more acerbic in his dealings with Diomedes. I kept my head down until one day, as we rose to leave the steps, I found his bronze-shot staff resting against my sternum.
‘Stay,’ he said. He nodded to Archi. ‘You, too.’
When the other boys were gone, he looked around. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
We were both silent, as young men ever are in the face of authority.
His staff pointed at my nose. ‘Who did that?’
I shrugged.
Heraclitus nodded. ‘Strife makes change, and change is the way of the logos,’ he said. A statement I’d heard a hundred times, actually, except there and then, I think that I understood.
‘Change is not always good,’ I said, rubbing my nose.
‘Change merely is,’ the philosopher said. ‘Why are you so good at geometry, boy?’
I bowed my head at his praise. ‘My father was a bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘We use a compass, a straight edge and a scribe to lay out our work. I knew how to make a right-angled triangle before I came here.’ I shrugged. ‘Any potter or leather-worker could do as well, I expect.’
He shook his head. ‘Somehow I doubt it. So – you know how to work bronze?’
I nodded. ‘I’m no master,’ I said. ‘But I could make a cup.’
He shrugged. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I am more interested in the properties of fire than in having a cup made.’
I have to say that at some point I had learned that, far from being the penniless beggar he seemed, Heraclitus had been offered the tyranny of the city and his father and brother were lords. He was a very rich man.
He went on, ‘Fire hardens and softens, isn’t that true, bronze-smith? ’
I nodded. ‘Fire and water to anneal make bronze soft,’ I said, ‘but iron hard.’
He nodded. ‘So with all strife and all change,’ he said. ‘Strife is the fire, the very heart of the logos. Some men are made free, and others are made slaves.’
‘I am a slave,’ I said bitterly.
Archi turned and looked at me. ‘I never treat you as a slave,’ he said.
What could I say? He treated me as an object every day, but I knew that he treated me better than other slaves and a hundred times better than men like Hippias treated their slaves.
But Heraclitus was looking out to sea, or into the heart of the logos, or nowhere. ‘Most men are slaves,’ he said. ‘Slaves to fear, slaves to greed, slaves to the walls of their cities or the possession of a lover. Most men seek to ignore the truth, and the truth is that everything is in flux and there is no constant except change.’ He looked at me. ‘It is ironic, is it not, that you understand my words, and you are free inside your head, while standing here as a chattel, property of this other boy who cannot fathom what we are talking about?’
Archilogos frowned. ‘I’m not as stupid as you claim,’ he said hotly.
Heraclitus shrugged. ‘What is the logos?’ he asked, and Archi shook his head.
‘Change?’ he asked. He looked at me.
Heraclitus swatted him. ‘Best be going home.’
I thought that I understood his message. ‘You think that I should not give up hope,’ I said.
Now the master looked mystified. ‘What have I to do with hope?’ he asked, but he had a twinkle in his eye.
Another winter passed. I could calculate inside my head without using my fingers and I could draw a man with charcoal. I could put my spear into a target ten horse-lengths distant, no more than a finger’s width from the instructor’s cane pointing where he wanted to see the throw. And I was growing to be the swordsman I wanted to be. I was strong. After all, I was getting the exercise of a rich man, and for nothing. Every day I could lift a larger weight stone. I could raise it behind my