They applauded us like heroes after that round. We looked good. And I had him. He'd squandered energy trying to match my hold with sheer strength, and now he was beaten.
So I stepped in to finish it, grappled him and got dropped on my head for my pains.
Never believe all those stupid country-yokel stories. That Chian played me like the city boy I had become. He let me think him exhausted. He let me believe it with everything from posture to his weary 'you've got me beaten' smile as we stretched our arms out and started the last engagement. I don't think I ever made that mistake again.
I came to with fifty men around me, and Stephanos all but weeping on my chest. He'd dropped me just wrong – but thank the gods, he hadn't snapped my neck, although it hurt like blazes, a line of cold that was worse than fiery pain running up my spine.
Heraklides was there, too. He had a reputation as a healer, and he had my spine under his palms. 'Can you move, lad?' he asked me.
'Yes,' I said, and swore. Ares, I hurt! My fingertips hurt. But I was on my feet, swaying, but up.
They gave me a lot of applause and some back-slaps, and somebody, one of the Athenians probably, groped me. So much for heroism.
'Sorry, mate,' Stephanos said.
I laughed, and we clasped hands. 'Last time I teach you anything,' I said.
He grinned. 'I like to wrestle,' he said.
Then we had a break before the next event – until the sun was past a certain point in the sky, no water- clocks on a beach on Chios. I slept, and when I awoke, Stephanos came and massaged me himself.
'I can't throw a javelin, and I've never touched a sword,' he said. 'So you're my man to win. You're ahead, you know.'
I lay like a corpse under his hands. He knew how to get his thumbs deep in the muscle. He said his father taught him. Melaina had the trick too – she came and did my lower legs and feet, bless her.
When they were finished, I felt like quitting once and for all. And I felt like sex. Melaina suddenly appealed to me – the touch of her hands – hard to explain.
Instead, I got up and took javelins from Archi. I didn't even have my own – they were back in Ephesus. Archi slapped my back. 'You're in first place, you dog!' he said. 'That'll teach me to drink too hard.'
Not just sour grapes. Archi and I were always a dead match, except as swordsmen. If I was winning, he'd have been with me – except that the luck had been going my way in every encounter. It takes luck to be a winner. I've seen the best man trip on a stone or lose his footing in a match. Read the chariot race in the Iliad, honey – that's the way of it. The best man does not always win.
Or maybe it is the will of the gods, as some men say. Or the logos seeking change, so that one man does not dominate others, or to effect some other change.
I was never a great man with a javelin. I've killed my share of men with spears, thrown and pushed, as they say, but that's because the daimon in me doesn't lose its skills in the press of bronze. In a contest, I can't throw as well as other men, and that's a fact.
But that day I threw the best spears of my life. My first throw did it – which god stood at my shoulder I don't know, but I smelled jasmine and mint and I swear that it was Athena putting her hand under mine and lifting my spear. Other men matched my throw, and Cleisthenes beat it, the bastard. I threw twice more, and never came within a stride of my first throw.
I placed seventh. Cleisthenes won. But I placed in the top eight, and by the Chian rules I had won or placed in every contest, and no other man had done that. Cleisthenes argued that he had, but his grandfather overruled him, saying that he had failed to finish the two-stade run.
I had won. I couldn't believe it.
I think my slavery really ended there, on that beach, just before the sun started to swoop for the sparkling blue sea. I wasn't just free – I was a man who could win a contest with hundreds of other free men.
We Greeks love a contest, and we love a winner. They mobbed me, and I was kissed a little more than I liked and patted a little too much, but I didn't care. They put a crown of olive leaves in my hair.
And then Lord Pelagius took me aside.
'Listen, lad,' he said. 'You're the winner – clear winner. No judge even needs to count.'
'There was a goddess at my shoulder, sir,' I said.
He nodded. 'What a very proper thing to say! Who was your father?'
'Technes of Green Plataea, lord.' I bowed.
'I gather you were a slave?'
'I was taken,' I said. 'The family that had me – freed me.'
He nodded again. 'A fine story. Damned fine. The way good people should act.' He was an old aristocrat, and he had the best notions of how his class ought to behave. A few of them do.
The rest are rapists and tax-takers with pretty names and better armour.
At any rate, he put his arm around my shoulders. 'Listen, lad. You asked to fight with the sword. You're welcome to do it – we can all see you're a trained man. But after winning today, no one – and I mean no one – will think you're a shirker if you want to step aside.'
But, ignoring the hubris of it, and the sound of wings I might have heard, I shook my head. 'I want to fight, lord.'
He smiled. 'Well,' he said, 'I can't give you your prize yet. So go and armour up.' He meant that all the prizes were given at sunset.
So I put on my old leather spolas, not a tenth as glorious – or protecting – as the scale shirt I was so soon to own. I put my aspis on my arm and my crude, cheap and cheerful helmet on my head, picked up my meat-cleaver sword and went down to the lists.
In those days, we took wands – willow or linden, usually – and planted them at the four corners of the lists, and then we fought to the first cut. Men died from time to time, but most men were careful, and few fought all out in the lists.
Calchas had told me about such fighting, back on Cithaeron by the shrine of the hero, and I had thought that it sounded like the Trojan War. Here I was, five years later, standing by a row of black ships on a beach with a blade in my hand and the weight of my bronze helmet pressing down on my nose. While I listened to the judges caution us against using our full strength, my heart sang inside me – freedom and victory in games are a heady mix, like wine and poppy juice. The stars were out, although the sun hadn't set. There were only eight of us to fight – which, had I thought of it, might have made me wonder about our army.
Yet I tell this badly. I wanted to talk to the past. I wanted to tell the boy in the olive grove, and the slave boy in the pit, that there was this at the end of the road – that someday I'd stand on the sand, a hero.
Who knows? Heraclitus says that time is a river, and you only dip your toe once. But maybe you can skip a stone, too. I only know that the boy in the olive grove and the boy in the slave pit made it to be the victor on the beach.
You don't understand. Perhaps just as well. And just as well that the victor on the beach didn't know what was to come, either.
Count no man happy until he is dead. We paired off, and I was up against a Chian. We exchanged names, but I've forgotten his. I was too inexperienced to be afraid, and too eager to show my skill.
We circled for a while. No man with steel in his hand lurches into a fight without feeling his opponent. It's like foreplay with a beautiful woman. Well, it's not, actually. But there are a few things in common, and I like making your friend blush. Young lady, if you turn that colour every time I mention sex, we'll be good friends. What's your name? Ligeia? How fitting.
At any rate, we circled, and then we started to make jabs at each other's shields. It is hard to hit a man who has an aspis, when all you have is a short sword. The only targets are his thighs, his ankles and his sword arm. In a contest, his head is out of the question. Bad form. Which is funny, because in a real combat, that's what you go for.
I became bored with circling and tapping shields. I shuffled forward, shield foot first, and then I cut at his shield, stepped in hard with my back foot and cut back – the 'Harmodius blow' they call it in Athens – and caught him just above the greave. A nice cut and no real harm.
I think I made him happy – he was out with honour.
