had, and blew through it, making the fire leap, and he laughed with joy.
'All things are an equal exchange with fire, and fire for all things,' he said. 'Look at how you use the charcoal to make the fire, and the fire melts the bronze. You merely trade the charcoal for the heat, the way men at the docks change gold for a cargo.'
I nodded, because that made sense to me.
'So it is with anger and with war,' he said. 'Anger is to men what fire is to your forge. And if we eradicate that anger, much might follow.'
I shrugged.
He took me by the shoulder. 'You are full of anger,' he said. 'Anger gives strength, but it comes at the price of soul. Do you know what I am saying?'
I said yes – like a boy. In fact, I heard him, but had no idea what he was saying – that is, how his words were meant for me. He had come down from the temple just to say those words, but I was young and foolish.
I embraced him, and he left me, and then I finished my work.
That night I went to sleep early, intending to rise and go to Briseis, but I was tired and I slept through the night. Then the next day we had an assembly of arms, and we drilled – raising and lowering our shields, and forming to the left, so that we marched up the beach and formed a front on the Athenians from a column into a deep line.
Aristides said it was horrible. I had no idea. This kind of drill was outside my limited experience of war.
In the afternoon, I read Thales to Briseis. She smiled at me. 'I was lonely last night,' she said, and I started, because she said it in front of Penelope.
So that night I went through the bead curtain into her room. We made love, and it was good. And then we began to talk of my going up-country.
I wanted her to tell me that she loved me, and that she would miss me. But she was merely playful, and when I searched for an endearment, she grabbed my manhood and kissed me until I lay with her again.
I am making all of you blush. But the blushing time is over, and the hard part has come.
We were lying together on her kline after that second time. She lay on top of me, the weight of her – not much of a weight, I'll allow – pressing down on my hips. She was idly licking the bruise on my shoulder when I heard heavy footfalls in the hallway. I had time to roll her off me.
The beads parted and Hipponax burst into the room.
He had a sword.
Behind him was Darkar, and behind both of them was Archi with Penelope in tow, her eyes wide with terror.
Hipponax raised the sword. He hesitated – unsure, I think, which of us to kill first.
I took the sword from him as easily as you would take a spoon from a child. Then I stood between him and his daughter.
Oh, the furies must have been laughing.
What hurt most was the look of pain on Archi's face.
Hipponax was weeping. He hit me with his fist, ignoring that I had a sword – that's how angry he was.
I flung the sword away rather than kill him with it. And he hit me again. I fell.
When he turned on Briseis, she had the sword. She looked at me – with contempt.
'Stop this,' Briseis said. She was sixteen, and yet her voice stopped all the war in the room.
'You whore!' her brother cried. He sounded as if he was in physical pain.
'How could you-' her father started. He sobbed. 'What is the curse of the women of my house?'
Briseis stood there, naked, the sword in her fist. She held it steady, and when her father approached her, she pricked his chest with the point. 'No closer,' she said. 'My virginity was never yours to barter.'
'What?' Hipponax asked. 'Drop the sword!'
She shook her head. 'Go to bed. We will talk about this in the day.'
Hipponax took a shuddering breath and exploded. 'You faithless bitch!' he roared. 'And I allowed your brother – and this piece of offal – to beat Diomedes! He was right! I will flog you in the streets – I will sell you to a brothel. I will sacrifice you-'
She pricked him with the point. 'No,' she said.
She looked at Archi. 'Take Pater to bed,' she said.
Archi was shaking. He flicked a glance at me. 'He must die,' Archi said.
So much for friendship.
She looked at me. 'Why?' she asked. 'He is not anybody, and he will never tell.'
Her words cut me as if the blade she held pricked my flesh.
So much for love.
She laughed. 'You are all fools. This body is mine. I will use it as I wish. If I wish to take my pleasure with a man or a dog, so be it. I learned that from Mater, and from Diomedes, and you two fools will need to learn the lesson. Men will not be my masters. By Artemis the virgin, and by Aphrodite, I will be the master and not the slave.'
They stepped back.
'You will die a lonely old bitch,' her father said.
Briseis laughed. 'Pater, you are dear to me, but you are a fool. I will die the queen of Lydia. Aristagoras has agreed to marry me.' She laughed.
Something in me died. 'What?' I spat. It was good, then, that I had no weapon in my hand.
Briseis smiled at me – the smile matrons give to simple children in the agora. 'You thought I was going to marry you, because you have a fine suit of armour?' She pointed the sword at her father and brother. 'As soon as Sardis falls, I am to wed him.'
She turned to me and smiled. 'You have served your turn, Doru. Take your armour and go from this house. I don't think you should come back. Pater might hurt you. And you love him.' She said the last as if it made me the greatest fool in the world.
But I obeyed her, and my world filled with darkness. I went to my bed with Darkar at my heels. He spoke, and I have no idea what he said. I took the wool bag with my armour, and I took my sword and my spears. I rolled my heavy cloak and my sleeping pad inside my aspis.
Darkar was still talking at me when I got to the gate.
Archi was there.
'How could you?' he asked.
'I love her,' I said. He had a naked blade in his hand, and I drew my blade. 'Loved her,' I spat.
'Never come back,' he said. We faced each other with blades in our hands. I found Aristides on the beach in the morning.
'Will you take me as a hoplite?' I asked him, straight away.
He looked around. 'Tell me why,' he said. 'You served with Archilogos of this city, last I heard.'
'I serve him no longer,' I said.
Aristides nodded. 'More fool he.' He smiled. 'Will you stand in the seventh rank?'
The lowest place. An eighth-ranker was a file-closer – a form of officer. But a seventh-ranker was a man either too young or too small to fight.
'I'm better than that,' I said, with all the anger gathered in the last few hours.
Aristides was only a couple of years older than me, but he had a way about him, and he gave me his famous half-smile. 'I know that you can kill,' he said. 'I don't know you otherwise. Seventh rank, or stay on the beach.'
So when we marched on Sardis, I marched with the Athenians, the wings of betrayal beating about my head, the furies at my back and all of Persia before me.
In the seventh rank.
13
As it turned out, I had Herk as my file-leader. Of course, as helmsman, he was an officer – I was unused to
