talking and wide-eyed. She was a lot more alive than she looked, and was soon pointing to the door and crying at the same time. “No worry, Neto, no worry ever again.” Then he sat her down gently and put himself between her and Gorgos, alongside Ainias.
The Stymphalian called the old man out. “Gorgos, you speak well for a man about to be speared, for one who invited in four of his executioners.” Ainias then lowered his spear as they all backed up to the corner of the hut and prepared to charge the helot. But first Ainias grazed Gorgos with his spear tip. “I never liked you, helot. We are here to fetch or kill you for what you have done to the Messenians and to our Neto and to our Erinna. I prefer to end you here; the others down in new Messene want to hang you, no doubt. Save us all much labor and come with us back to Ithome so you can sit in the dock of the Messenians and hear their justice. They will swing you up for ten days above the Arkadian Gate until your bald head rots off.”
Melon kept quiet at that. He slowly made his way around to the corner of the dank room behind Kuniskos, with Neto up and shuffling at his rear next to the wall, her hands on his shoulders. Nikon felt for his sword. Melissos stayed near the threshold with Ainias. Both had iron ready. Kuniskos had his eye on all of them, all the time. Neto was shaky, but growing stronger from the wine and her hatred of Gorgos. She hissed over Melon’s shoulder. “He’s alone, though he wants you to think his army is outside. Kill him and we go home.” Melon nodded and was ready to spear him.
Then the helot laughed at her. “Put those points away. Of course, I am alone. Your Gorgikos is tired of the slur of Kuniskos. I am no puppy dog, but a dragon man, a Gorgon of Helikon, watcher and protector of the farm of Malgis. The gods wish me back home on Helikon. You hate me because I killed your Erinna, yes, that red-headed Medusa sent to kill me. Was I supposed to stare at her and turn to stone? Gorgikos the loyal hound is to be killed because he bit first the master’s son who wanted to kick open his head? Master, at least give thanks to me. I both kept your dear little Neto alive and yet ensured you need worry no more that she might like other men far better than she did you in your dotage and lameness-especially with the passing of that faker Proxenos of Plataia. Let us eat, since I know you know your way around this hut. I wager you had the same dream about it that I and your late Chion once did-since we met here before in our sleep, as you know from the nighttime shades that Hypnos and his son Morpheus sent to us alike.”
Melon ignored him and was wondering if he could stab this Kuniskos before Ainias the spear-tosser impaled him. The Thespian also noticed that, in fact, Gorgos was right. He thought that he had seen the table before in his night visions and even on the wagon ride to Leuktra. He also wondered whether, as in the apparitions, there were also two doors to the hut, not one, as it had seemed when they first entered. So he looked into the shadows at the back of the long dwelling, and in fact thought he saw some sort of a smaller rear door.
Then Kuniskos seemed hurt and wounded and so sat sunken back into his leather-woven chair. Then his voice lowered and he was almost once more what they remembered of the broken-down Gorgos nearing his seventh ten-years on Helikon. He pointed his fork at his friends and softly, slowly told them the way of their world to come. So there would be peace and a quiet descent with him as their prisoner back to Messenia after all. “The great game is over. My Spartans are broken, a race humbled by lesser folk by far. My helot people are free, as I suppose they should be. You have forgotten. I, whom you slur as Kuniskos, I too am a Messenian, born one, bred one, and so should be happy at their freedom. Even here I pick up things from my messenger, my dear Scorpidion. Yes, I heard that your Chion could not stop his killing on Helikon. Who else could have hung up Medios or drowned Thrattos, my friends and neighbors. So he died an outlaw now, a killer of the old and weak? Or was it all on your prompt, Master, who wishes me to face the law of bloodletting? Who is the killer and who in contrast pulls wounded boys out of battle at great risk to himself? And my, my, how everyone seems to have passed on.”
This fluent Kuniskos was for a blink confusing his old friends with his long new way of talking as Lord Kuniskos. “Are you four alone? Just four? No more? So few to come so far? Three with good legs in your new band, and two sadly now with not? I thought I spied five of you as you came down the path. Or were there shadows in the woods? Were there not five or perhaps six of you? So many to fetch-or is it to kill-your Gorgikon. No Alkidamas here? I hear he is never far from you all but always safely distant when iron is drawn. Of course, Epaminondas stays warm back in my fort, too wise to tramp up here in the spring rain. And where is my Scorpas, always the loyal messenger to the end?”
Melon kept his spear pointed at his helot. “Ready your things. We have a night of walking down the mountain still. Epaminondas wants you to face the
“Calm, calm down, Master, my master. Neto no doubt will tell you soon enough that she lives due to me. I kept her safe in my fort. I tried to save Lophis, at Leuktra, though he was near dead when I picked him up from the gore of battle. How could I return to the Boiotians when your Chion swore he would kill me after the battle? I had no choice but to cross the battlefield, since for all my babble I loved your Lophis and you too in my way. I yelled in vain to my Lichas to let him live. I, no one else, dressed out his body. I, Gorgos, left my own good money on the road south for the priestess Kallista at Kreusis to keep him safe from the birds and dogs. I was the good servant, and you are angry only because I the lowly now am free. May Zeus bless Lichas who alone let me live free, the true, the only liberator among you.”
Melon stopped for a moment, and thought he heard traces of the old Gorgos in the talk of Lord Kuniskos. Indeed the helot was slumped even further in his chair, and seemed wrinkled as he always had been. Yes, he was almost the helot of Helikon once more-tired, old, flabby even. He had a tear in his right eye and slobber at the side of his mouth. Maybe he had tried to save Lophis after all?
The myth floated away in a blink with a shout of “Liar!” Neto shrieked again, “Liar!” She may not have looked any more like the helot maiden of Helikon, but her voice was the same and she dragged her foot and closed on Kuniskos. “Liar. Dogfaced liar. You killed Lophis as if with your own hand. I know your hands that snuffed the life out of Erinna in the house of Antikrates. You can tell the jurymen all that-even more when we get down the mountain, about the dead Messenians hung up on trees, and their women sent to the Kaiadas after your play. You will drink the hemlock poison or they will throw you into the pit alive, as you did to hundreds of our own-or you will hang for the buzzards. We will stone your poisoned corpse, then hang it from the new north gate before throwing it as
Kuniskos now stared her down. “Jurymen? Trial? Aren’t you talking of your own day in court to come in Thebes, you renegades who are this year outlaws, the real lawbreakers of Boiotia?” Kuniskos shouted and all the pretense of the old good Gorgos vanished now for good. “Such hypocrites you are. You slave-owning liberators of helots.” Kuniskos could not stop. The spell was broken once his tears had not swayed any of his guests. “How do your helot folk govern themselves or keep the Spartans out without hiring Epaminondas each season? When you are through with your fun under Ithome and all go home, who will clean up this mess, govern these wild tribes? Who gives you the power to free anyone, you who owned me, the better man, the helot who wants freedom from the likes of you and your kind? Do you plan to move down here to watch them, as if parents who must change the soiled clothes of their half-grown children?”
Neto cut him off. “Liar, liar you are, old man. Liar on our Helikon. Traitor of your own kind, sell-out to the killers of Agesilaos.” Then she stepped up and slapped the palm of Kuniskos, thinking how these hands had squeezed Erinna and tightened the bonds on her neck. The other four went silent as they watched instead the right arm of Kuniskos, who was now up and out of his chair. As Melon knew from the weak lamplight, the long narrow cottage was far larger than it seemed to the eye when outside. Maybe twenty or thirty paces to the rear, eyed again the second door of his dreams-now noticed in the dark shadows as well by the sharp eye of Ainias, who usually scanned all rooms on entry as if he were on a crest over the battlefield.
Suddenly three tall shapes appeared there at the back of this single room. They swung the rear door wide open. At the same time, before Melissos could yell out, a spear tip pushed him back off the front threshold as another two men and a woman came in from the front door. Melon’s band had Gorgos in front of them and Spartans on both their right and left, altogether seven to their five.
Melissos grabbed the hand of Melon. “The cave, master, the cave, they came out of the cave.” The rescuers were trapped. Both doorways were barred by tall men in armor-Spartans who were veterans of the
“Meet, Master Melon, my Spartan friends.” Kuniskos laughed and waved with each hand to the six Spartans at the two entries. “And you, my Lakonian friends, this is my master of the long whip, lame Melon. He is the killer of our king Kleombrotos. Over there is his new lackey Ainias, another rat in our trap who smelled some sweet cheese
