Spartan (29 page)

‘Greetings,’ said Kleidemos, as Lahgal translated his words. ‘I am Kleidemos of Sparta and I have stopped to rest in the shade of this tree. Are you on a journey as well, noble
sir? I see none of your servants or companions.’

The warrior smiled, showing white teeth under his corvine moustache. ‘No,’ he replied in his language. ‘I am not on a journey. I am here by the orders of my king, Xerxes, the
King of Kings, light of Ariah, favoured son of Ahura Mazda. Returning from Yauna and crossing this arid land he found shelter in the shadow of this tree, whose size and beauty enchanted him. He
decreed that an Immortal from his guard would always watch over this tree, so that no harm could ever come to it.’

Kleidemos was astonished, as Lahgal translated the words of the Persian soldier. ‘Do you mean to say that a man from the king’s guard remains here permanently to protect a
tree?’

‘That is right,’ replied Lahgal. They lingered for a while, drinking from the spring which flowed next to the plane tree. The Immortal was seated on his stool, gazing off towards the
horizon. Then they resumed their journey. After walking for nearly an hour, they looked back: the tree looked even bigger, while the warrior could barely be seen in the quivering air. But the tip
of his spear, struck by the sun, flashed silver.

L
AHGAL FELL ILL
. The climate on the high plain had sapped all of his resources. When their supplies had run out and they could find no more wheat, the
rancid mutton they were forced to eat turned his stomach causing him to vomit violently. Kleidemos stopped in several villages to allow him to rest and wait until his fever passed and the cramps in
his stomach eased off. It was in one of these villages that he learned from its chieftain himself that the worst risk came not from eating, but from drinking; on the plateau, the waters were
prevented from flowing down towards the sea by the huge mountains in their way. And so they stagnated or seeped very slowly underground, becoming saturated with noxious humours. The damage done
could be so great as to bring about death. ‘It is the stomach that suffers,’ the chief assured Kleidemos. ‘It becomes so ruined that it can keep down no food at all; even a simple
piece of fruit will cause overwhelming sickness.’

‘Is there a remedy?’ Kleidemos asked the chief in Phrygian, which he spoke a little after two months of travelling through so many villages. The man took out an earthenware jug and
poured some murky liquid into a cup. It was an infusion of the poppy that produced oblivion.

‘This calms the cramping of the stomach and the spasms in the gut,’ he said. ‘In this way, your friend will be able to eat a little food; his body will slowly become stronger
and fight off the sickness.’

The potion was very bitter, but it was laced with wild mint and the savory which abounded in the surrounding fields; in fact, the Phrygian name for the village meant ‘place of
savory’. Kleidemos trusted the chieftain’s word; he remembered seeing a river – a month before, in a place called Kolossai – that abruptly disappeared underground, as if
swallowed up by the earth. The inhabitants claimed the water fell in a cascade two stadia long, and that on many a winter’s night they could hear the waters churning in underground caves.

Lahgal felt better within a week; his fever broke and was gone and he could manage to keep down the flat wheat bread they roasted on stones. Given his condition and his surroundings, he had
stopped dedicating himself to his grooming: his hair had grown to shoulder length and his tanned face was framed by a thick beard. His razor, strigil and tweezers were long forgotten at the bottom
of a saddlebag.

‘Now you look like a man,’ Kleidemos said to him one day as he was bathing in the river. Lahgal shrugged.

‘You Spartans are boors. You don’t appreciate beauty or gentleness. You have no art of your own, nor poetry. Only military songs to beat time as you march.’

‘I see you know a lot about Sparta, and Spartans,’ said Kleidemos, with a touch of irony.

‘Of course I do,’ replied Lahgal. ‘I’ve been living with them for years.’

‘You mean that you live with . . . King Pausanias.’

‘Yes, and so?’

‘Are you his lover?’ he asked bluntly.

Lahgal began to tremble and his eyes were fixed to the ground.

‘Is that what you want to know about me, Two-Names? Does our Kleomenid hero really want to plunge his hands in the shit? To poke around in the misery of a Syrian slave? Well, if
that’s what you want and you’d like to have a little fun listening to obscene stories, Lahgal can satisfy your curiosity. Oh yes, Two-Names, Lahgal has lots of stories to tell: besides
the scars that I showed you on my back, I have worse, and much more intimate scars.’ He raised his black eyes, burning with rage and shame. ‘When you met me in Cyprus, my master was
already prostituting me. I even had orders to let you have your share, if you liked me—’

‘That’s enough!’ shouted Kleidemos. ‘I don’t want to know—’

‘Oh yes, you do want to know and you shall, by the gods! You asked me something very specific, Two-Names, just a moment ago, or have you forgotten already? And so now let me tell you . .
.

‘My good looks became my curse. How I envied those who were deformed! I was forced to submit to sordid, repugnant beings and to undergo abominations, choking on my vomit and disgust.

‘Yes, Two-Names, I have become the lover of the king. But did I have a choice? Have I ever had a choice? All I could do was try to avoid the worst. Pausanias has never mistreated me, not
once, and he has promised that he will set me free.’ Kleidemos couldn’t say another word; Lahgal continued in a lower tone of voice. ‘When you left Cyprus I hoped ardently to see
you again one day. You were the only person who had ever shown me sincere affection, and when I saw you drenched and desperate under that tree in Thrace, I realized that I had saved you from taking
your own life. My joy at seeing you again was immense.’

‘As was mine,’ said Kleidemos.

‘Well, at first it seemed that way to me, too. But then you either imagined or found out, and you were repulsed. I’ve felt your scorn for months, even though you try to hide it. And
the shell that I gave you that day on the beach is no longer on your armlet – you had it when I first saw you in Thrace.’

‘Lahgal . . . I didn’t want to hurt you,’ said Kleidemos. ‘I can’t judge you for what your destiny has forced you to endure, perhaps against your own will.
I’ve been living as a soldier for four years and I have seen so much blood and so many massacres that I can hardly believe that a man loving a woman or loving another man makes the world any
worse than it already is.

‘Maybe the real reason that I asked you that question is because there is a terrible doubt that seizes me when I’m trying to sleep at night. I’m alone in the world, Lahgal, and
I have no one to confide in. All those I’ve loved are dead, or so far away I feel as though I’ve lost them forever. Your reappearance and the words of the king reawakened hope in me; I
felt alive again. But what I fear is that perhaps not everything I’ve been told is true.

‘I don’t know whether the king is sincere about his plans or is merely using me to satisfy his own ambitions. There were a lot of rumours going around the camp in Thrace about him.
They say he is a hard, cruel man, consumed by his insatiable thirst for power. That his soul has been corrupted by his desire for wealth and luxury . . . and that he is a slave to his passions.

‘I’m sure you can understand how I feel, and yet, in all these months of travelling together, you’ve never said a word. I’m sure you can read the doubt in my face, and
yet if you know things that I don’t know, you haven’t revealed a thing. And so I imagined that your bond with Pausanias must be stronger than anything else; that the little Lahgal who
gave me coloured shells on a beach in Cyprus was a person I’d have to forget.’

‘You’ve changed too,’ said Lahgal. ‘Your eyes are vacant and troubled and your voice is often harsh and cutting. I’ve felt like I’ve been travelling with a
stranger this whole time. How could I speak to you as a friend? I thought you despised me. When we left, it seemed that you were happy to carry out this mission and to support Pausanias’
plan; how could I imagine you had any doubts? And I know that . . . there’s a secret you’re keeping from me.’ Kleidemos looked at him with a puzzled expression. ‘Pausanias
gave you a message that you can read on your
skythale
,’ Lahgal insisted.

‘You can know anything you want about me, Lahgal. When I told you the story of my life you were only a boy. But what is written in that message regards neither you nor me. It concerns the
destiny of many men, entire populations, perhaps. I can’t—’

‘But have you read that message?’ interrupted Lahgal.

‘No, not yet. I have orders to read it only after my mission has been accomplished.’

‘And you haven’t even thought about reading it before then?’

‘I gave the king my word, and I have but one word, Lahgal. But tell me, why do you want to know what’s written in the message?’

‘Two-Names,’ Lahgal wrung his hands as if searching for words. ‘Two-Names . . . I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t understand. We’re not in any danger here.’

‘I’m afraid of dying.’

Kleidemos looked at him in suprise. ‘Why would you? You’ve been ill, but it was nothing serious. It’s easy to fall ill when you’re travelling in foreign countries –
the food, the water—’

‘That’s not what I mean. King Pausanias has already sent other messages to the Great King, but those who carried them . . . never returned.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I know only what I’ve said, Two-Names, nothing more. I know for certain that the bearers of those messages never returned. You don’t understand why I’m afraid? That
message might be an order for you to kill me. If not, why would the king have ordered you not to read it until you had completed the mission?

‘Listen to me. When I brought you the king’s message in Thrace, I realized that the mere thought of returning to Sparta, of reuniting with the woman who raised you, of seeing the
people you love, was enough to make you want to live, to fight again. I think . . . I’m afraid . . . that you would do anything to have what was promised you. I don’t know what the king
told you in the meeting you had with him alone. Important things, certainly. I know that he thinks very highly of you. And the life of a Syrian servant is certainly nothing with respect to all
this. And that’s why I’m afraid, Two-Names.

‘In two days we will reach Kelainai where you will deliver your message, and then you will read Pausanias’ orders. I beg of you, if that order is to kill me, please do not open my
throat with your sword; let me take my own life. I know of a potion that produces a sweet stupor which lets you pass without suffering from life to the endless night . . .’

Two big tears fell from Lahgal’s dark eyes. He fell still, not daring to look his companion in the face. Kleidemos fell silent as well. Shaken, he thought of everything that had happened:
of the huge hopes that Pausanias’ words had awakened in him; of the horror of the act that might be looming before him. But maybe Lahgal was wrong. Perhaps the men he was talking about had
disappeared for other reasons; they may have lost their way, or been ambushed on the long journey home. But his knapsack held the roll of leather with the king’s orders, and the
skythale
, his walking stick, held the key to reading them. He no longer carried the cornel crook which Kritolaos had chosen for him; he had burned it on Brithos’ pyre at Plataea. It
had been destroyed, as had his boyhood life, on that blood-soaked field. He was startled by Lahgal’s trembling voice.

‘You’ve read many a death order on your
skythale
before, Two-Names, for thousands of men. You are a Spartan warrior and you must surely follow your destiny. The gods have
spared your life many times. When you were a child, you were saved from the fangs of the wolves, and as a man, from thousands of Thracian arrows. Your soldiers have never been able to understand
how you can challenge death with such impunity on the battlefield. You, the lame warrior, you who were destined to have two names and two lives, you who escaped the death that you yourself were
about to administer with your own sword. It’s the truth, Two-Names. There must be a great destiny awaiting you, perhaps a terrible one. You cannot escape it.

‘That day that I saw you under that tree in Thrace you’d touched bottom. I could see the distress in your eyes, yet your face was stony, resolute. What could the life of a mere
servant mean, sold before he could ever hold it for a moment in his own hands. A body prostituted for five obols—’

‘That’s enough, Lahgal!’ shouted Kleidemos, his head in his hands.

But the voice continued, without a tremor now. A voice deep and dark, a voice of pure pain: ‘You’ve reached the point where you can’t turn back. Read that message now, as if I
were not here, and if I must die let me die. I will accompany you today and tomorrow as your faithful servant, but the morning after that there will be no awakening for me. You’ll never even
notice. There’s just one thing I ask of you. Don’t leave my body to the jackals. Bury me as if I had been a free man, a friend, whom you loved. Do not let my shade wander in despair
along the icy banks of the Acheron, which they say is the fate of those who go unburied—’

Kleidemos placed a hand on his head: ‘You will not die by my hand, Lahgal. Nor shall you be forced to kill yourself.’ He took the sealed roll from his knapsack and wrapped it around
the
skythale
to make it legible. It said:

‘You were right to be afraid, Lahgal,’ he said, tossing the roll into the river. ‘The king orders me to kill you.’

*

The walls of Kelainai stood out against the blue sky. On the top of each tower sat a stork’s nest. The huge birds soared slowly over the city, gliding with unmoving wings
spread wide, buoyed by the wind of the high plain. The silver ribbon of the Meander descended behind a hill; the river’s source was said to be in a dark cave within the city, once inhabited
by nymphs and satyrs, surrounded by a forest of poplars filled with singing birds.