A voice bellowed orders from the darkness. ‘Rush him! He can’t hit you all at once!’
Curse him to Hades, he was right. But as the men surged forward, Kadous yelled from the end of the street. ‘Philocles! Is that you?’
‘Yes!’ I barely got the word out before an assailant tried to silence me with a punch to the face. I was mobbed like an eagle pursued by murderous crows. Without room to use the spear shaft, I let it fall. Reaching for the closest man’s mask, I wrenched it askew. That cost me a painful flurry of punches to the ribs and guts but I tightened my belly muscles and endured it. This close, they didn’t have the elbow room to hit me as hard as they hoped.
I got a good handful of another wig and yanked it hard. The man yelled, startled, and reeled away, deaf and blind now his disguise was twisted around on his head.
When I’d fought in Boeotia, we’d soon identified the men in our phalanx who’d performed in a chorus, used to singing and dancing wearing theatre masks and wigs. They were far better prepared for an infantry helmet’s eyeholes narrowing their field of vision, and the bronze enclosing their heads to muffle their hearing.
‘Hey! Shit-for-brains!’ A solid thud of wood on flesh followed up the insult. One of the men surrounding me howled and lurched away. Kadous had found the spear shaft that I’d dropped on the ground. I heard it smack into my assailants again.
Two more attackers quickly retreated from this unexpected intervention. That gave me more room to manoeuvre. I hooked my fingers around another mask’s upper edge and pulled down hard. Plastered linen cracked in my hands, and the man tore himself free before I could smash his face into my rising knee.
Somebody’s agonised yell followed the thwack of another bone-cracking blow. That broke the nerve of the rest. Some fled for the main road. Others scarpered back down the alley where they’d been lurking.
One stumbled and went sprawling. As he recovered and raced after the rest, I saw he’d stepped on the fallen knife, losing his footing as the blade slid away under his foot. Wincing as I stooped, I retrieved the weapon. The next person to attack me tonight would end up gutted like a fish.
I had a whole new collection of bruises to add to my battering in the agora. Thankfully, as far as my cautious fingers could tell, the cut on my arm was only a shallow slice. The man with the knife had been too wary, afraid that he’d stab an ally. Of course, the wound could still fester and kill me or claim the limb. I needed to wash it clean with wine as soon as I could.
Kadous was leaning on the spear shaft, breathing hard. ‘You weren’t easy to find. It’s a good thing I heard you yelling.’
‘Thank all the gods above and below that you did,’ I said fervently. ‘I’d have been dead meat before anyone here got off their arses and sent for the Scythians.’
The Phrygian looked at the silent, shuttered houses. ‘Shall we go before someone gets up the nerve to come and see who’s left alive?’
‘Good idea.’ Before the festival, I was just another face in a crowd. Now anyone who’d been in the theatre had heard my name, my father’s name and my voting affiliation. If someone here recognised me, I didn’t want gossip blaming me for a disgraceful fracas disrupting their neighbourhood.
‘Who do you suppose they were?’ Kadous bent down to pick up a fallen mask.
Several of the attackers had discarded them. That was hardly a surprise. Being caught with such disguises if the Scythians turned up would make it pretty hard to deny their involvement.
‘Men who didn’t want to be recognised.’ I picked up two more masks. ‘Much good that’ll do them.’
‘Oh?’ Kadous heard the satisfaction in my voice.
Once we reached the main road, a few houses had lanterns outside their gates to guide revellers home. I paused beneath one and examined the knife. I hadn’t been mistaken.
‘This is Tur’s knife. He lost it in the agora riot. I need to let Aristarchos know.’ That was only one of the things I had to tell him.
‘Can’t it wait till morning?’ Kadous looked pointedly at me. ‘You should let Zosime know you’re not lying murdered in some alley.’
I winced, and not just from my bruises. ‘Was she very cross, when I left her at the theatre?’
Kadous shrugged. ‘She knows something important is amiss. What’ll make her furious is being left in the dark any longer than necessary.’
I looked up and down the road. There was no sign of the men I’d been following. Now that my blood was cooling, heading somewhere safe to nurse my injuries and get a good night’s sleep seemed a sensible notion.
Aristarchos couldn’t usefully do anything so late in the day, even if I went to his house at once. He could hardly send messengers out to make enquiries or slaves to knock on doors with spurious excuses in the dead of night.
I nodded at Kadous. ‘Let’s go home. Lend me that stick to lean on.’
Chapter Nineteen
I didn’t sleep well. Not because of any row with Zosime, she was too relieved to see me safely home to berate me. Not just because of my second beating in three days. It was realising what lay ahead of me this morning that had me staring at the ceiling in the dead of night. I’d rather face the labours of Heracles.
We sat in a subdued circle to eat our breakfast. Kadous was desperate to explain why he hadn’t reached my side any sooner. ‘Menkaure had a real struggle to find me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I assured him. ‘It really wasn’t your fault.’
I’d tell the Egyptian the same, when he woke up. For now, he was still asleep in the end room, staying the night after seeing Zosime
