Hero for Hire (17 page)

“Not my friend any more, it seems.”

He didn’t answer, partly through tact and partly because he was evidently tiring. The
Chelidion
was long out of sight and we weren’t floating any closer to Telemenos. I was hating the sea more every minute but that’s not the kind of thing you say out loud while bobbing around in Poseidon’s domain.

“You should kick off your boots,” I said. “They’ll just drag you down.”

“I would, good sir, but my knife is in the left one. We may need it.”

“You’re something of a philosopher yourself, aren’t you?”  That knife could prove to be the difference between our survival and our bones being discovered on the island in thirty or fifty years when the neighboring islanders’ fears wore off.

I lashed my belt around the cask, endways. “Hang on,” I said, and bit on the leather. Using the full range of motion in my arms was impossible because of how the leather strap crossed my chest but I could still swim faster than Phandros, even while dragging him along.

“Oh, my,” he said when we began to build up speed. The waves were crashing in my ears. I could have sworn I heard him say ‘Yee-Haw!” when I breasted the breakers over a sandbar. The splash did look impressive, I suppose.

We tumbled onto shore. Even before he checked himself for damage, Phandros checked the cask. “I don’t think it shipped any water, do you?”

I looked it over. I didn’t have much choice; he’d practically shoved the thing up my nose. “It seems tight enough,” I conceded.

“Good. Goat and sheep this island may have, we might even be able to press some olive oil, but wine doesn’t fall out of the sky into your hand. You must plan ahead for wine.”

I did not heed him. I jumped off the sand and sprinted away. The ruined building, half-palace, half-fortress, sat high on a hill, with a tower still intact. Taking huge strides, heedless of rabbit holes or loose gravel turning beneath my feet, I raced to the top of the hill. The tower took a little more care as the inner stair was all but gone. The exterior rocks protruded handily, however, making it easy to swing myself from block to block.

Far away, as evening stretched her hands over the sea, the ship’s white sails caught the last of the daylight, turning her into the swallow whose name she carried.

I hoped against hope that I would see the flashing bronzed wings of the harpy stroking through the sky toward me. She could disembowel me for stupidity if she liked so long as she was safe and free.

I stood there a long time, eyes straining against the gathering dark before Phandros came to the bottom of the tower, calling my name. He bore a lighted torch aloft. I climbed down to him, using the pattern of the stones I’d learned on the way up to get down in the gathering dark.

“You started a fire?”

He looked at the tower, then at me, then back at the tower. He seemed perplexed. I had to ask him again. “Er...yes, I thought it best. I found some flint and I happened to have a little piece of iron on me.”

“Where?”

With his free hand, he fished in his bosom. He held up a square of scratched metal, pierced through at one end to slide upon a long, thin leather cord. “The flint was easy. Half the island must be made out of it. I’ve started chipping an axe out of it. With that, we can cut down trees.”

He led the way down from the cliff to the beach. On the way, he talked about the things he’d found on the island. I hardly listened, depression settling on my shoulders like one of the Furies. What could I do to save my harpy from the hunt? Trapped here on Telemenos, my strength was useless.

“There’s the remains of a forge, too,” he said. “The bellows gone to pieces but with your strength, fanning the flames for hours won’t be a problem. Getting the fire hot enough is the main difficulty.”

“Why bother?” I asked. It seemed to me he was talking out the back of his neck. “Are you taking up a hobby?”

“Am I’m right in thinking you could be in rather a hurry to reach Troezen?”

“If they hurt her...” I swore, knowing any promise of mine was futile now.

“Very well. Then we’ll need a boat. We could, of course, build it with wooden pegs but I think nails would be more efficient.”

I started to pay more attention. “Where do we find the ore? A convenient iron mine? Or shall we just pray for it?”

“I had a look around. I don’t know why these people left, if they ever did, but there are iron pots in every house and a tumble-down shed or two full of odds and ends. With a forge, we can melt things down and make what we need.”

"It'll take too long," I said despairingly. "They'll have her head off before we ever leave here."

"Not to worry." He raised his eyes to the sky. "The Games at Troezan aren't until the full moon. And look at it now...just a sliver."

I tried to take comfort from the moon, tipped over onto its side like a ship or a smile. Maybe it was an omen that we would build a ship and all would be smiles. I tried to convince myself, but I did not succeed.

I took a little more notice of my surroundings when Phandros lead me to the fire-pit, which was properly lined with stones. I still remember one recruit in...never mind. But he decided to build a fire with bituminous shale. When it exploded and the burning bits started falling on the tents, he wished it had blown him to pieces to save him from me.

Phandros had caught and skinned some rabbits, roasting them on spits. Their juices dripped into a pot of soup. I couldn’t believe how much he’d accomplished in the comparatively short time I’d been gone. “How did you do this?” I asked, with an especial reference to the rabbits. “Whenever I try to catch wild game, it always takes an eternity and I usually wind up just as hungry as when I started.”

This time, he pulled the leather cord over his head. It was thin and tough, knotted at the back so that a long loop hung down over his shoulders, hidden by his clothes. “Hold up your fist.”

I raised my clenched hand above my head. With a swift whirling motion, he swung the cord two or three times then the cord flew through the air and settled over my hand. He twitched his wrist and the cord closed tightly. In a moment, I couldn’t feel my fingers.

“Amazing,” I said. “Can you teach me?”

Nothing ever pleased Phandros more than being asked to teach someone something. “Tomorrow? We'll need daylight. I found some wild garlic which, when mashed in wine, makes a very nice sauce for rabbit.”

Several squash were roasting in depth of the fires. “These were on the roof of a building over that way. It’s not much of a roof but I guess the goats couldn’t climb it. All the rest of the vines are nibbled down to practically nothing.”

He told me it would be at least until full dark before the rabbits would be done. Somehow he’d found time to hollow out a couple of gourds into drinking cups. They made the wine taste a little odd, but did not dilute the power. “Good stuff....”

“Go slow. It’s quite deceptively strong. That’s why it comes in such small casks.”

“I wonder how Jori came by it. He’s never shown much interest in drink.”

“You should probably assume that you know nothing about him. If he can treat a friend so badly for mere money, Gods knows what else he might do.”

“Well, you know, he is a pirate.” Seeing Phandros’ disbelief, I added, “No, really. I shouldn’t have forgotten that. He's always been a pirate at heart.”

The rabbit was tasty, especially when dabbled with the sauce Phandros produced from another damp gourd. “In the morning,” he said after eating, “you should take a look around for yourself. It’s a nice little island. Pity everyone left. Or died. It couldn’t have been a monster; there are too many goats and sheep left.”

He sat on the other side of the fire, chipping away at a pointed stone. Little flakes of rock pinged off, hitting the fire-stones, his feet and, sometimes, me. He had a rhythm going. He’d hit the large stone at an angle with a smaller stone, turn the axe he was making to a new angle, hit it again. Hit, turn, hit, turn....

“You’re a Spartan, aren’t you?”

Hit, turn, ‘ow’.

“What?” he said around the thumb in his mouth.

“You’re a Spartan. All this, the fire, the iron around your neck, the way you caught the rabbits...besides nobody makes that sauce but a Spartan.”

“Don’t be absurd. Do I look like a Spartan?”

“What does a Spartan look like?” I asked.

“You know. Burly, muscles on muscles, shouts a lot, can march for days on nothing but unleavened bread and water. More like you than me, in fact. What am I? A scrawny, drunken fool with a head stuffed full of useless knowledge.”

“Do I shout a lot?”

He had to concede that I did not. “But look how you climbed that tower before. That’s what Spartans do. Never mind the sensible way, taking the stairs. No, climb the outside, barehanded, in the dark.”

“The stairs were creaking like trees in a windstorm. They might have held you, but not me.”

“To a Spartan, that wouldn’t have mattered," he said. "Safety and sense is not the Spartan way."

“When I was a boy," I reminisced, "not long after I’d left home, a Spartan regiment came to support our king, Cisseus, in a war with the Anshanites, across the Hellespont. I’d just come down out of the hills. I thought the Spartans were the men of bronze told about in legends. They marched and drilled as if they were one man, one soul animating many bodies.”

“Is that when you started building your body to look like that? In emulation of those Spartans?” Phandros said, gesturing at my chest.

“No, I was this size by the time I was sixteen. We grow large, we Maedi, but I was considered unusually so even among my tribesmen.”

“We who?”

“The Maedi. That’s my tribe.”

“I thought you were Thracian.”

“So I am, among you Greeks. But at home, I’m a Maedi.” I sighed. “It’s a beautiful place, between the rivers. There are lots of mountains, which is where I learned to climb, and much good pasture land. I was a shepherd’s son. You Greeks talk of Arcadia as being the most perfect place in the world. That’s only because you’ve never been to my home.”

“Home. It’s the saddest word in any language when you cannot return to it.”

“No, you are wrong. The saddest word is ‘hope.’”

“Hope? Surely not. Hope was sent to us as a favor from the Gods. When Pandora....”

I took another drink. “Pandora did us no favors when she shook ‘hope’ out of her cursed casket. It is easier to bear hardship and disaster when that is all there is. Add ‘hope’ to the mix and such things become torture. Waiting for release, looking forward to freedom, to happiness. Which is worse? To know you have failed utterly or to hope fruitlessly that something may be saved from the wreckage?” I hiccupped and turned the gourd in my hand, sighting down my nose at it. There seemed to be two bowls, until I shut one eye.

“What is this wine called?”

“It’s from Parthini.”

“I know this wine,” I declared. “It’s famous. One draft makes you forget your troubles, two makes you reminisce, three makes you phi...phi...losophical. How many have I had?”

“At least three. I have skipped right to four...dead drunk.”

He fell over onto his side, like a ship run aground. I supposed I should not have mentioned the Spartan thing, though it was so self-evident that not to have said anything would have been foolish.

Many Greek states make a fetish of the military. All that gleaming armor, those dashing young men, each a paragon of masculine honor and pride, all with the unquestioning obedience that makes a good soldier, tends to make people proud of the country that can create such men. But most cultures, including or especially Athens, prize other qualities as well. Intellect, mathematics, poetry, wit, all have a place of honor when great men gather.

Not in Sparta. There, service to the state of a very particular kind is all that matters. Their boys have no option but to suffer hardship and brutality in their training camps until they are adjudged fit to join up. Anyone who fails is stripped of their citizenship and turned into a despised member of a merchant class who still serve the military power with a boot to the face if they object. Anyone who wants something else out of life has no place to go. The Spartans tended to make brief but sharp examples of those who try to depart or change the system, so that no others would dare follow in their steps. I began to wonder just how and why Phandros escaped.

I made sure the cask was stoppered, moved Phandros’ legs so he wouldn’t roll into the fire, and made myself as comfortable as possible. When sleep stayed far from me, yet again, I took up a torch and went to explore.

By night, the fire’s light deepening the shadows, there didn’t seem to be much left of whatever civilization had resided, however briefly, on Telemenos. I found the remains of the settlement that Phandros had searched.

Abandoned places have an eerie atmosphere, as if the people aren’t gone, merely unseen. Shadows move, half-heard whispers sigh, and a muffled drumming breaks the silence until you realize it is the beating of your own heart.

The thatched roofs were long ago fallen in and scattered to the winds. Only one building had a pretense of integrity. Judging by the still-stalwart columns and the remains of a tiled roof, I guessed this had been a small sanctuary. Of what god had been worshiped here there was no sign.