more than a sack of barnyard waste. “Yoked to the last, they can say of these bald Spartans.” All of the Spartans were finally on or under the table in Neto’s old haunt. Gorgos’s bowls were still set for his victory feast.
Melon then put the mangled head of Kuniskos on the table, on top of the torso of Thibrachos, and passed his own right hand over the man’s bald and partly crushed pate. The braids were torn off, and Neto’s nails had shredded his skin. Gorgos’s right temple was caved in from her clubbing. “He was a good man with a pruning hook. Some evil that was sired in him in his youth ate away at his heart. So it often is that when the good go bad, they prove the worst of all. He was a cursed helot, then free, and perhaps got too many of my foul looks when he got up late or pruned the wrong canes. The Spartan brand burned him all the same. I hate this man and can only think of my Homer to say how much: “I only wish that my spirit and fury would drive me to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things you have done to me.”
Then Ainias paused and barked out, “Melissos, bring in the wood of Gorgos. The burners will be burned. And we will tear apart the fence out back to pile even more fuel over these vermin. Yes, torch them as they lie. That’s far better than how they would have left us. The Spartans will call it a hero’s pyre-we a purification.”
Neto was still weeping as she sat in the dirt outside, propping Chion in her lap and wiping away the oozing blood of his wound with her tunic. “Had I killed Gorgos above Leuktra near the wagon. Had I had the courage even in the fort of Antikrates to end him, our Chion would now live. Instead I polluted our Chion, I let that foul killer’s blood drip on him from my tunic.”
Ainias was back outside and shrugged. “So we all could have done our part to avoid this. I froze when our hemi-god crashed through that door. No mortal kills Lichas with a single blow. No man takes down two of the royal peers as he rushes after three more. We were all a step behind him. Just as at Leuktra. We thought some god was upon us. But then Chion was a god of sorts.”
Melon answered Ainias. “Put him on the pony, just as Neto once bore Lophis home. Wrap and tie him in these red Spartan capes that will hide his blood. Take him to Ithome where he will be honored and burned as the hero he was. So ends the Fury who evened the score on Taygetos, so ends the man-bear of the high mountain. And when we return to Helikon I imagine we will see none who once bothered us. Yes, he had cleaned the field of thistles and burrs, but Chion had too many cuts and splinters on his hands to show for his thinning.”
Ainias walked away mumbling. “The end of the man-bear? Maybe-and then maybe not.”
The victors had piled the dry limbs and brush over the corpses, along with the posts and rails of the pinewood fence. A fire was soon licking the roof-beams, as the burning hut crashed down on the dead killers. The five watched it transfixed. “Do not breathe the smoke of Kuniskos or Lichas, master, or even that of Elektra,” Neto whispered. “It is poison, and may draw the dark spirits who feed off such evil.”
Melon grimaced as the bodies crackled. He knew that laxity is the evil of the world-that the real barbarians were the refined and double-thoughters who think their hands are too smooth to put around the necks of the accursed. Too many times on Helikon Melon had let the killer Gorgos live. He knew now that the good,
“No, flame conquers all.
After about five stadia from the pyre, the dog sprang ahead. The five turned from the bend of the path back into an open meadow. The trail was muddy with stagnant pools. It was late afternoon. Kerberos howled and stopped. At last they found their guide Scorpas just as Chion had left him. His big idea to reach the old port of Pylos in the west had gotten no farther than a short walk from the hut of Gorgos, where the wolf-dog of Kithairon had cornered him. Chion had found him shuddering above Porpax, on the lower branch of a mountain oak, whimpering for his life and offering to lead the way back to the hut of Gorgos. Chion, the man-bear of Taygetos, had dealt with Scorpas as he had with the wild bears that he and Porpax had once run down above the farm on Helikon. The throat of Scorpas was slit from ear to ear. He was hung by the heels-and with his own tunic-from a limb. A pool of blood soaked the pine needles. A red beta was swabbed on his back. Kerberos now pulled on his dangling braids, furious to bring the corpse down.
“His end is a small nemesis,” Melon whispered as he gave the hanging corpse a push. They went on by and shooed Kerberos off, leaving Scorpas to swing as an offering to Chion. The wolves yelled as they went down the trail, in answer to the greeting of Kerberos, who knew their way well. The five hiked all night on the downhill path. It was right before dawn when the night walkers with Chion draped over the pony reached the low foothills beneath the west slopes of Taygetos. They had not bothered staying at the upland huts.
Neto wept. Where was Alkidamas? Why had he let Chion go on from the coast? Then she sighed that it was hard to save a man who had begun living to die, rather than dying to live. Then Neto-always the good bearer of corpses-leaned with her side on the horse to lay her arm on the wrapped Chion and secure his corpse, her Chion, bought slave of the Malgidai-free citizen of Thespiai, hero of Boiotia, and the great nemesis of the Spartans.
CHAPTER 35
There were more guards on the streets when the five reached the torches of the new city. They brought in Chion to the houses of the dead, put him on a table, and then went to sleep in the tent by the Arkadian Gate. Melon kept his distance from this Nikon, and wondered once more whether his city was the calm or nightmare of his nightly dreams on Helikon. The helot in turn was babbling about more bad helots to hang. Epaminondas turned. “Quiet, Nikon, we have a better dead man than all your men alive. We mourn Chion as he burns. At least torch those you hang. Don’t leave them for the dogs. We are better than the men of Sparta. Kill the looters if you must. Hang the traitors. Hunt down the Spartans left, though I wager there are no more than a handful alive and none on Taygetos. But do it on the vote of your
In the days after the deaths of Lichas and Gorgos up on Taygetos, Melon and Ainias said little. They kept busy on a hero shrine outside the Arkadian Gate where their hired Messenians had erected two gray limestone lions. Proud heads roared in stone over the ashes of Proxenos and Chion. Each sat on his haunches and seemed to be bellowing out to the southeast, “The end of Sparta.” Ainias took up the chisel himself, and wondered again as he cut the stone what had driven two northerners to come so far south to die for those who had never known them. When he was done, something of the faces of Proxenos and Chion stared out from the lions’ manes and whiskers. For a bit he was angry again for the end of his friend, the death of Chion and the laming of Neto, angry at the once-grand idea to free the Messenians, and so he could not keep quiet even among the helots around him. “Look at us, Melon. Making stone beasts roar like our Chion and Proxenos. Look at what they died for-a city of crooked towers, of thieves, of looters and worse. Proxenos planned their city and we cannot even give him credit, so we lie about some faker Aristomenes who envisioned it so that these child helots won’t have hurt feelings that they could not even plan their own city. Now look at them, drunk on the freedom we gave, all in need of the Spartan lash.
