small band spread out in the trees. “There, over there, far in the distance, in the meadow by the outcropping, see the hut? And beware, behind it there is a small cave that ends up on the other side of the peak out to an opening among a stand of spruce. There my friend said your man Gorgos hides. He is afraid of the wild monster of the forest. He won’t quite yet leave his cottage until he is forced out. There, there we go. I think dogs guard the house on the ridge. Though I don’t see them as I once did.”
Ainias was quiet at this. He signaled Melissos to put down the shields and tether the horse. He hadn’t wanted to bring the Makedonian, but now he was glad that he had the boy’s extra right arm. Nikon also had been silent for most of the day. He whispered, “Strangers are in this vale. Not all of them enemies. I don’t know whether I dreamed this or our dead Neto told me or I only sense it now. And now I see Scorpas has already slipped off into the trees.”
“No matter.” Melon motioned to Ainias. “Gorgos, not that half-helot, is our business. Now if there is someone alive in that hut, and if he is really our old Gorgos, then we learn whether he is our friend with a shred of good. Or, as you say, he is really the killer Kuniskos of the helots and more still.”
Ainias knew better and laughed out loud at that nonsense. “Learn what? Oh, my Melon, you always knew your Gorgos in the blink you set eyes on his no-good hide on Helikon. And I would feel better if I had killed our missing Scorpas long before now. All done quietly as well. Fouler still he is now at our backsides. Let me backtrack and grab this man. He can’t be a step or two into the forest. Then at spear point he will lead us into the hut or die in his tracks. Better yet, wait till sundown. We can crawl on our bellies into that hut in the darkness and kill Gorgos or whoever is in there in his sleep or pile boughs on his walls and smoke him out.”
Scorpas had run off the trail into the forest, since Nikon in all the talking had lost thought of him as they spied the hut. Right now Melon needed every spear arm to confront Gorgos, and could hardly have Ainias chasing Scorpas down the mountain, Melissos drew his own long knife as they all quickened their pace ahead on the flat ground to the hut. He quietly spoke as he walked, “No Scorpas around here to be found. I see our Scorpas has no stomach for iron. He is nowhere to be seen. Maybe my eyes don’t spot him, or he is running through the trees to collect his wage for leading us here.”
“Yes,” Nikon sighed, “and I am worse. I too took my eye off him for only a moment. He is gone into the shadows. Neto’s Porpax, our Kerberos, is gone too, but on the scent of something else-something in these dark trees, since I haven’t heard him bark like this since I found him in the woods near the camp of Kuniskos yelping at the gate. Listen to how he howls on the run. He is gone after the scent of Scorpas, who won’t get far from that hound. So we four are alone. Careful now. Kerberos has let all inside the hut know we are here. There was more to this tale than I knew when I ordered you all to come.”
The two hoplites approached with leveled spears. Behind them Melissos and Nikon had blades, choppers with one edge. They all imagined that Scorpas was even now backtracking down Taygetos, perhaps on his way for the coast near Pylos or right down to the gulf. Ahead in the opening was more a stockade than a house. It was dreary and dark, in the shadows of the tall spruces that ringed the building. Flat stones piled as high as a man’s shoulders were its sides that supported long beams. On them rested heavy stripped rafters of oak that held up a roof of broken tiles and flat stones. Sparks rose from a fire pit at the back of the house, and there was more smoke from a chimney inside. The light rain was unable to quench the burning in the pit. A small wooden stockade connected the shelter to what looked like a cave. A few goats and a steer were inside the fence.
The two hoplites were no longer crouching among the grass, but stood upright and began making their way on a path that led to the north side of the hut. As they neared, both raised their shields and leveled their spears. Nikon was behind with Melissos and could see they were almost to the hut. In fact, the four were a hundred paces from the door. There were no windows in the hut but smoke proved someone or something was inside. Gorgos, they remembered, was good enough with a bow or javelin, and there was no proof yet that he was not in the dank hut, and if so no doubt hardly alone. The trees around offered good cover for an ambusher, and the cave even better.
Then a sharp, familiar sort of voice stopped the four who had long been seen and heard. “Hoa, you’re late, my Melon. Ah yes, the son of Malgis returned. Are you so rich from your winnings in Lakonia that you forgot to fetch your slave who has loyally awaited you these long months?” It was Gorgos. Gorgos was alive, after all. And now he threw open the door and waved them in.
Melon wondered whether this was the Kuniskos of the fur collar and forked beard of the house of Antikrates who had cut down Erinna and killed his Neto, or the aged helot Gorgos in rags, the harmless broke-back servant of Helikon that had stoked his fires and cooked his meat-or both. It was Gorgos, that much was sure. He was bare- chested, even in the spring mountain air despite the cold drizzle, with only a small tunic wrapped around his privates. “I was asleep. So I needed wakening and your dog did that well enough.” At that he walked a few paces from the cabin toward them, palms out and open. Melon kept silent at his appearance, since he had not seen him in this year and a half after Leuktra, not since the day they had wagonned together to the battle.
Maybe this half-naked man was the killer Sinis whom the villagers in the foothills said had a dangerous voice and a new shape for each day to lull his victims to drop their swords. He wasn’t the man-bear, since Gorgos loved his Spartans and did not hang them by the toes from the forests of Taygetos. True, in winter on the farm Melon had never seen much of the helot without his tattered long cape, and even in summer he had worn two tunics, and often a hood. The muscles on this man suggested someone half his helot’s age. Yet his voice was surely that of the Gorgos he had known, though his words were longer and more delicate and with a Doric tinge. So was this an apparition?
Kuniskos turned around again, pointing to the hut. “Oh yes, the answer to your doubts is I am Kuniskos and I am also your Gorgos-or more than your Gorgos of old, I should say. You slave liberators should welcome a freed helot in his pride. Come in. Come in. There’s a chill out here from the rain, at least I feel it on my bare back. Anyway before I napped I made sure to have a surprise for you, or maybe two or three of them. Do you remember our Neto? Yes? Or have you gone helot-freeing without a thought of your old love back on Helikon, now that you build great cities and talk of democracy and no more the small folk like us.”
Neto?
“Oh yes, your Neto. Well, she may not be quite dead, at least not yet. Or then again, she may be gone by now. Let me go on a bit about her. She is here, or at least something like her is. Inside, inside as I said. So come in, come in-look under the table when you enter and see if she breathes with that iron collar on her neck or maybe I replaced it with a rope. My, how age has clouded my memory. Yes, just a rope now. Or maybe the mind loses its edge up here in the high country. Dogs need leashes of some sort. I think she’s better than any dog I have. Down here they called me the little dog, so I should know. I’m not so sure she breathes with her hood and limp, and that pretty branded cheek. She is copying our gimpy master these days and has been quiet the last two in her night trances and murmuring. Yes, Melon, if her heart still beats, her leg is worse than yours-and likewise the work of Sparta. But come in. Let’s pull her out from under the table, take off her cape, and together see what’s left. I’m heating up some black barley broth out back. Your servant has set a table like in the old days. Though my new house is less than what I enjoyed below on Ithome. It surely isn’t like our shed on Helikon where I slept in the dung with your animals out back. I want company. There are black rumors of a wolf-man or shape-changer out here. By Zeus, a monster in fur with an iron club who eats Spartans and tidies up his dinner plate by stringing up their bones. Or have you heard? Yes, beware you of the man-bear loose on Taygetos. How did you get by him to reach me?”
Melissos grabbed Melon’s arm. “Don’t go in. We have room out here to fight, Master, plenty of room to spear and stab, since this vagabond will have others like him lurking in the corners and rafters. He’s lying about Neto. She’s dead, months ago he killed her. Or better yet, let me and Ainias go in first. Nikon can guard our rear.”
Melon would have praised this Makedonian boy for his growing sense, and taken his advice as well. But he had heard “Neto,” and wanted to find her or her body-and then kill all who had a hand in her torture or death. So he went in, spear ready, and all three followed. The room ahead was dark with a weak lamp light on a table. The four were not sure Gorgos was alone. The murmurs inside below the table were of a dying or sick dog, at least at first so they thought. But as they reached the long table, it leapt up. Alive? Or at least they thought this caped thing was something close to alive. Neto? The four pulled it up.
It was Neto and alive!
They could see their old Neto beneath the dingy blanket, and the scabs and scars. Melon embraced her, as Ainias kept his eye on Gorgos. Melissos helped Melon quickly cut off her binds. Nikon kept his blade in the face of Gorgos as they all stepped back to the wall. Melon grabbed some wine as he passed the table and soon had her
