The Scythian couldn’t force us to help him, but that wasn’t the point as far as I was concerned. We didn’t want any hint of suspicion hanging around Hyanthidas, and helping the public slaves would show everyone he had nothing to hide. Add to that, Kallinos had helped me get justice for that dead man dumped at my gate. I owed him a debt.
Hyanthidas stood up. ‘All right, but I can’t see how we can be any use.’
‘We’ll be back as soon as we can,’ I promised Zosime.
Kallinos was already knocking on the house door under the porch. He apologised to the owner and handed over the second jug of wine. ‘I’m sorry for bringing this inconvenience to your home. No one here has had any part in any wrongdoing. Enjoy your festival.’
Kallinos strode through the streets and we followed, with Neokles bringing up the rear. Everyone got out of the Scythian commander’s path, visitors and Athenians alike. I saw avid curiosity on a few faces, though I didn’t see anyone I knew. That was a relief. I didn’t want Nymenios or my mother hearing some wildly exaggerated story that I had been hauled off to the city jail. Rumour races around Athens on swift wings.
We soon arrived at the scene of this crime against gods and men. Two more Scythians were standing guard at the entrance to a narrow alley. They moved aside to let us pass. I swallowed uneasily as I caught the mingled scent of blood and shit that means violent death lies ahead. I’d had a lifetime’s worth of that stench on Boeotia’s battlefields.
I stole a quick glance to see how Hyanthidas was taking it. He was pale, but resolute. I realised I had no idea what military experience he might have seen. Like me, he wasn’t old enough to have fought the last time Corinth and Athens had gone to war, but it was probably wisest not to ask. If he had seen death up close, and dealt it out in his city’s service, he wouldn’t want to talk about it. I don’t, and nor do my brothers. The only men who glorify war are the helmet-polishers who never get within sniffing distance of a real fight.
We rounded a curve and I saw the body. A young Scythian who must be a recent arrival was doing his best to keep flies off the corpse. He wasn’t having much success. They needed to get the dead man under cover soon and wash him down with oil, or they’d have a mass of maggots on their hands before his family was found.
‘Was he in the tavern?’ Kallinos asked us.
‘His own mother wouldn’t recognise him,’ I objected.
The man’s head wasn’t just badly beaten. His face had been obliterated. There was no recognisable shape to his jaw or his skull, just a bloody mass of matted hair, torn flesh and broken bone. I’ve never seen anything so stomach-churning.
Kallinos persisted. ‘Is there anything familiar about him?’
I studied the rest of the corpse, averting my eyes from that shattered head. The dead man was lying on his back, on the red cloak that marked him as an epic poet here to play his part in the Iliad. His arms and legs were sprawled wide, and vicious bruises were dark against the pallor of death on both his forearms.
‘He tried to defend himself,’ Hyanthidas observed.
‘But he didn’t have a weapon if he took those blows on his arms.’ I looked around. ‘Where’s his staff?’
The three of us looked up and down the alley.
‘There.’ Kallinos pointed, and jerked his head at the youth, who scurried to fetch it.
The boy brought it back, looking queasy, and offered it to his boss. Kallinos didn’t take it, looking thoughtfully at the foot end. I did the same. It wasn’t easy to see at first, amid the clotted blood and hair, but the staff had been shod with iron to protect the wood. I pictured the poet striking the paving as he strode around the city, making sure that everyone noticed him.
‘So that’s what did the damage.’ Kallinos grimaced.
I steeled myself to look at the corpse’s head again. ‘Whoever did this went on pounding long after the poor bastard was dead.’
‘So this was personal,’ the Scythian said grimly.
‘Except the killer didn’t bring a weapon, if he used the poet’s own staff,’ I pointed out. ‘Could this just have been a quarrel that got horrendously out of hand?’
‘You tell me,’ Kallinos challenged. ‘Was the argument you saw in the tavern savage enough to lead to this?’
I recalled the squabbling, pompous poets. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. They were mostly showing off, except the Boeotian, but he was obnoxious and drunk. They were all fairly drunk. I suppose that made whoever this is an easy target. On the other side of those scales, I can’t see any of them sneaking up to take someone else by surprise. Not quickly enough to snatch his staff.’
I tried to picture what had most likely happened, as the oblivious, tipsy victim had sauntered along. Someone had come up silently behind him, maybe grabbed a handful of his cloak and yanked it, to pull him off balance. While the poet was staggering, the killer grabbed his staff. Now the attacker had the upper hand. That’s how I would stage the scene in a play, but this was no laughing matter.
‘If they were both drunk, this would have been a much fairer fight.’ I spoke that thought aloud. ‘I reckon whoever did this was sober, and he knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted this man dead.’
‘There would have been an awful lot of blood,’ Hyanthidas said grimly. ‘On the killer, I mean.’
He was right. There was a lot of blood here, far more than the red cloak could soak up. No one could commit a murder as brutal as this without being stained with guilt for all
