truth?” she wanted to scream, making the wife’s eternal complaint at her husband’s failure to divine what she could not bear to say.
Fortunately, within the year Antalcidas was of age to begin the Rearing. The boy-herd, Endius, son of Melancidas, came for him one morning when Molobrus was away on the hunt. Damatria had not made the mistake of heaping warm clothes on her son’s back, or packing him a last meal for the road, because she understood such things would be tossed in a ditch by his teachers. She had, in fact, not prepared him at all for his final departure from his parents’ home.
The boy seemed to guess the nature of the stranger’s business as he entered the yard. He ran to Damatria, wrapping his arms around her legs, and she looked down at him, frowning.
“Mother, who are they? Are they here for me?”
“What do you want from me, boy?” she cried, deeply embarassed in front of Endius. She yanked her skirt from Antalcidas’ grip and lifted it to midthigh. “Do you want to crawl back up under here? Now off with you!”
The boy-herd pried him loose, and with the kind of curt nod given by someone collecting alms or taxes, carried Antalcidas away. But the boy bit down hard on his forearm. He ran back to his mother, this time locking his arms around her ankles. Damatria, not entirely willing to kick him, finally asked Endius to wait outside.
“This is very disappointing,” she said as she got him to his feet at last. “Can’t you see that everyone is watching you?”
“But… I… leaving… go… don’t… wanna…” the boy uttered between sobs.
She gripped his arms tightly enough to make him yelp.
“Listen to me, you little shit. You will not unman this house. Don’t you think your father did his duty? And his father before him?”
More tears. She brought his face close to hers, with almost their noses touching, and said, “Antalcidas, look here. I need you to be brave. You need to take care of Epitadas for me one day, when I can’t be there. Do you understand?”
Lower lip aquiver, he nodded.
“To do this for me, you need to become strong. These men want to help you. Will you go with them?”
Uncertain, he showed a brave face as Endius returned and took him by the hand. The boy-herd had a poultice of mud and spit on his arm where Antalcidas had bitten him.
“No need for an apology!” declared Endius, though Damatria had not offered one. “We see all kinds of reactions… better tears now than in front of the other boys!”
He was gone. Damatria stood dreading the sound of him bolting back to the house, but she heard nothing more. Straightening the linen over her legs, she winced at the stains of Antalcidas’ tears on the fabric. A torment to the very end! Yet with that, Damatria hoped the ordeal that had begun more than seven years before, beside the rubble of her father’s house, was finally over. She looked to Epitadas, who had been watching through a doorway.
“By the gods, I don’t expect such a fuss from you!” she told him.
6.
Endius took him to a place in the fields where a wide circle of grain had been trampled flat. Fifteen other boys his age romped inside the circle. There were no introductions and little talking-just the vegetal crack of fifteen bodies jumping, wrestling, and flopping on the stalks. Endius stripped off Antalcidas’ cloak, leaving him with only a thin tunic. The boys halted to examine the new arrival. When Antalcidas looked up at him with a questioning look, the boy-herd winked and walked away through the rows of barley.
Antalcidas wondered if he was supposed to follow, until he was shoved from behind. Turning, he was confronted by an older boy, about twelve years old, who bore a striking mole on his right cheek.
“Are you really just seven years old?” asked Birthmark.
“Yes.”
“He’s too tall,” he said to the other boys. “Betcha his mother kept him at home an extra year, maybe even two!”
“Did not.”
“Don’t argue, Grub!” a redheaded boy ordered, holding his little fist under Antalcidas’ nose.
“Grub?”
“It’s a kind of useless worm… Grub!”
“We call all the new ones grubs,” said Birthmark. “If you’re lucky, you get a real name when you prove yourself.”
“Wake up! Scarecrow due east!” a third boy announced with hushed excitement.
All eyes looked to Birthmark, who Antalcidas realized must be the pack’s leader. The boy crouched suddenly, and was joined in the huddle by everyone else. Redhead turned back to Antalcidas.
“What are you doing, Grub? Get in here!”
The others made a space for Antalcidas to join them. Birthmark was in the middle giving orders, jabbing a finger at each boy in turn.
“Frog, Ho-hum, Cricket, and Beast take flanking position. Redhead, Rehash, and Cheese guard against the countermarch, while the rest of you circle around with me to the front…”
“Wait, what do I do again?” asked Rehash.
“I said, guard against the countermarch! New kid, you come with me too… on the double!”
As they scattered, each of the boys picked out a handful of stones from between the broken barley stalks. Antalcidas didn’t understand what they were attacking-until they all crept through the grain and fixed their target.
The “scarecrow” was a solitary helot, walking along the verge with a hoe across his shoulders, a sun hat on his head.
Birthmark led his party through the barley a short distance ahead of the helot. He paused, synchronizing his approach with the flankers and the rear guard. The helot halted too, cocking his head as if he’d heard something, bringing the hoe down in blocking position across his body. There was a pause as hunters and quarry held still; Antalcidas had stalked hares on his own, in the grove behind his house, but had never before felt his heart beat with such anticipation. And then it began: the squad closed in on three sides with rocks on high, letting loose a collective squeal that seemed more rodentlike than dangerous. But there was no avoiding the ferocity of the attack as the stones pelted the helot from all sides. His hat fluttering off his head like a wounded bird, he collapsed to the dirt with his face covered. Birthmark and his more brazen foot soldiers came in close to hurl their missiles from inches away. The helot, who seemed to have some experience with these things, convulsed on the stubble to avoid the blows.
They tortured him with every rock they could find, and when they ran out of rocks they tried sticks, pebbles, and cow chips. Climbing to his feet, the helot uncovered his face to see where he might run. That was when Birthmark served up his last surprise-a shard of granite he had held back just for that moment. It struck the helot square in the mouth. An arc of blood, like a libation uncapped, poured out of him. He escaped into the woods adjoining the next field. Frog and Beast moved to go after him, but Birthmark called them back.
The boys gathered around the splash of helot blood and broken teeth on the ground, cheering. Birthmark broke into the middle of them.
“Quiet, all of you! What do you have to celebrate? Doing your duty?”
“That’s one scarecrow who won’t raise his head for a while!” declared Frog, a seemingly neckless, dimpled lad. He picked up the stump of a broken incisor and tried to fit in into the gap in his own mouth.
“Maybe. But there are always more slaves than men like us. Remember that.”
“Look! New kid didn’t throw!”
They all looked to Antalcidas-the only one of them who still had a sizable rock in his hand. As they all scrutinized him he burned red with embarrassment. The rock dropped from his fingers.
“Well, I’d say we’ll be calling you Grub for quite a while yet,” Birthmark said.
