‘What lies will he tell your father?’ Kadous wondered. ‘Blame some cloak-snatcher lingering after the festival?’
The Phrygian was staying directly behind the wrestler. Iktinos scowled, shifting from foot to foot as he tried to keep both me and the Carian in view. He knew Kadous was behind him, but attacking any one of us meant turning his back on at least two other enemies.
‘He’ll say Nikandros came here on his own,’ I suggested. ‘He’ll swear he followed the boy to keep him safe, but he tragically arrived too late to save him from these Carians’ revenge.’
‘He’ll probably say Nikandros killed Xandyberis,’ Sarkuk observed, ‘to put himself beyond suspicion.’
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ I agreed. ‘But there’s one thing he’s forgotten.’
I raised my voice to be quite sure I was heard. Iktinos whirled around as the door to my would-be dining room opened.
Kallinos stepped into the courtyard. He was grinning. ‘I know this one. Public slaves can testify in Athenian courts without being put to torture.’
Nikandros recognised the Scythian’s uniform of linen and leather. He collapsed, sliding down the wall as his knees gave way. Burying his face in his arms, as though that could make all this horror disappear, he wailed like the spoiled child he was.
Iktinos had more backbone, and he knew it was time to flee. Kadous stood between him and the gate. He sprang at the Phrygian, slashing low and wide, seeking to spill my slave’s guts on the ground.
Kadous had been in enough knife fights to avoid that fate. He might even have got the knife off the wrestler if he’d been given the chance. I’d seen him do that in the past. Mus and Ambrakis hurried out of the dining room. We’d agreed not to take any chances when it came to bringing Iktinos down.
Only Tur decided to help, and it seems that Caria needs wrestling trainers as much as it lacks teachers of rhetoric. The idiot Pargasarene threw himself onto Iktinos’s back, crushing the wrestler’s arms to his sides in a ferocious bear hug.
In fairness, if Iktinos hadn’t been so experienced in competition as well as brawling, Tur might have succeeded. The Carian was big and strong. But Iktinos simply bent his knees and dropped his shoulder in one swift, smooth move. That lifted Tur clean off his feet and hurled him over Iktinos’s head to slam into Kadous.
The two men collapsed, entangled. Blood splashed over them both. Tur was screaming like a sheep savaged by a wolf. I saw Iktinos had thrust his knife right through the boy’s forearm, in between the bones. The bastard hadn’t just stabbed him. He’d twisted the knife as hard as he could.
Sarkuk ran to his son’s aid, ripping off his tunic to staunch the fearsome wound. With all these men in the way, none of us could reach Iktinos. No one could stop the murderer as he dragged the gate open and fled down the lane.
Kallinos considered the carnage unmoved. ‘Dados?’
The sleepy-eyed Scythian emerged from the dining room’s shadows. He already had an arrow ready. I followed him to the gate, skirting Sarkuk and Tur as Kadous ran for bandages from Zosime’s stores.
Ambrakis and Mus pursued the killer but neither man was a sprinter. Iktinos had a good start on them and showed an unexpected turn of speed. He was running for the main road. If he reached the corner, I knew we would lose him. He’d keep on running all the way to Piraeus. He’d be on board the next ship sailing anywhere before anyone could find him.
Dados contemplated the fleeing man for a long moment. Then he drew his bow and loosed his shaft in a single fluid motion.
The arrow took Iktinos in the back, to the left of his spine and just below his shoulder blade. He collapsed by the Hermes pillar, screaming as he writhed in agony. By the time we reached him, his cries were fading and bright red blood frothed on his pallid lips.
‘I’d have brought more men if I’d known we’d be carrying another corpse all the way back to the city,’ Kallinos remarked.
‘I’m sorry to make so much work for you.’ I watched Iktinos’s struggles for life and breath fade until his eyes glazed in death.
I was content to see the bastard pay the ultimate penalty for his crimes. He would have died sooner or later. He’d been marked for the Furies’ vengeance, ever since the Scythians heard his confession. It wasn’t as though Megakles would have paid for his defence if Iktinos had been brought to trial before a citizen jury. He wouldn’t have let the murderer implicate his son Nikandros. The best the wrestler could have hoped for was an anonymous gift of hemlock to cheat the public executioner, as payment for his silence.
On the other side of that coin, I would much rather he had died later than sooner. Now we had no chance of getting vital answers out of him in return for that cup of hemlock. More than that, without him in the Scythians’ custody, there was no case to take to court, to make the conspiracy the talk of the agora. Kallinos had heard Iktinos confess to murdering Xandyberis, but Nikandros had denied it. Now that the wrestler was dead, he could shoulder all the blame. The plotters would retreat into the shadows and bide their time before another attempt to profit by dragging Athens into war.
‘He’s going to drip blood all down my back,’ complained Dados. He hauled the dead wrestler up all the same, hoisting him over one shoulder.
I watched them walk away and returned to my house. As I reached the gateway, Kadous was binding up Tur’s wounded arm and reassuring Sarkuk.
‘It looks worse than it is. He can still use all his fingers. See? Show us, lad.’
Frozen-faced with shock, Tur nevertheless managed to oblige. I winced.
Still huddled in a heap, Nikandros was wading incoherent entreaties.
‘Get up!’ Suddenly furious, Azamis seized his
