Hero for Hire (12 page)

“I doubt that.” She took the skillet and gave me the plate with bread and salt. “I have some crab ready if you’d like it.”

I laughed. “No.”

Once I started to laugh it was hard to stop. The perplexed expression on Omphale’s stern face made me laugh even harder, despite the pain in my ribs. A healthy swig of the wine helped dull both the pain and the laughter.

She took the jug from my hands and lifted it to her mouth, tilting backwards to balance the weight. I could have counted to twenty before she took it away.

Her eyes were bright. “What else can I offer you, hero?”

I was suddenly keenly aware that an old rug was not an ideal covering for a naked man. “Another drink?” I said, and hoped my voice stayed steady.

She held the jug against her hip. “Of course.” She made me reach up to take it.

“A very handsome piece,” I said, caressing the thick glaze on the shoulder.

“It was a gift from our late king on the occasion of my grandfather’s fiftieth birthday, twenty years ago.”

“A generous gift. Um...where is your grandfather?”

“Tending to the beasts. He’ll be some time.”

She reached up, her breasts rising against the simple white draping of her gathered dress. Freeing her hair from the thong that held it, the locks tumbled over her shoulders, deep black and so rich it looked moist.

My senses, deadened since my first waking, roared back to life, like a river bursting through a dam. I could smell the oil she rubbed on her skin, the boiling resin in the wood on the fire, the fleabane strewn on the floor. When I took another drink, the sharpness of the wine mingling with the sweetness of the honey rushed through me like a madness.

She touched her shoulders, her fingers fumbling a little, and the bronze clasps that held up her dress fell to the floor. She clutched the fabric to her body. Her eyes were huge as she stared down at me. “What do you want, hero?”

“What do you want, Omphale, and why do you want it?”

“I will never marry now and you will be gone in a day or so. I want to have a memory to take away what I saw today. Every time I close my eyes, I see that thing eating....” She swayed.

I took her hand and pulled her down beside me. She looked startled, surprised that I’d taken her offer. Sliding my arm around her smooth young shoulders, I said, “That isn’t the worst thing I saw today. Believe me, the only cure is time.”

Omphale tilted her head back, her eyes wide, her lips parted. Her hair curled over my arm as cool as water. I struggled to maintain my gallantry. She felt warm and firm against my chest.

“You’re turning me down?”

“Nobody walking in here right now would believe it, but yes, I am. You are young, brave and good. I have no doubt that you will indeed marry one day.”

“And still I must face the night alone,” she said forlornly. The tears gathered and slipped down her golden-ivory cheeks.

“Even if you slept in my arms, you would still sleep alone. I cannot by my strength keep the nightmares away. Have you told your father or grandfather about what happened?”

“I didn’t know how without making Pacci sound like the fool he is. They are so glad to have him back again.”

“How did he behave?”

“He knelt at my father’s feet and begged his forgiveness. How could I say anything after that?”

I could be certain that she’d always protected her brother at the expense of her own soul. Coming from a village not unlike this, I knew how little importance would be given to the feelings of a woman, even one as conscientious and strong as an Omphale.

Now that she was soothed, I gently moved her to a safer distance. I looked into the fire as she refastened her clothing. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I want you to accompany me to the palace.”

“The palace? Me?”

“They need extra help now that the head-housekeeper, Nausicaa, is dead. They pay well and you could use a change of scene, I think. You’ll like Iole or do you know her already?”

“Iole? She’s one of the taverna keeper’s daughters. We’ve met at weddings and such but I don’t know her well. We don’t associate much with the townspeople. And I’ve only ever seen the palace from the outside.”

“You’ll like that too. It’s a handsome building.” I would make a special point of introducing Omphale to Temas. I had a feeling those ‘suitable princesses’ would hear no more of him.

Matchmaking...just another service I offer.

When her grandfather returned, we were playing noughts and crosses on a piece of old slate with half-burned sticks from the fire. Seeing us playing like children seemed to allay his surprise at finding his granddaughter there, alone, with a man not of their family. Nevertheless, as he untied the worn fleece from around his shoulders, he said, “You should not be here alone, child.”

“I’m not alone; I have a hero. Besides, now that I have won again...”

“What?” I exclaimed, studying the board.

“I’ll be on my way home.”

“You’d best stay here tonight,” the old man said gruffly. “Strange portents in the air tonight. I saw yet another star shoot low across the sky, a ball of fire trailing a golden vapor. There have been many such of late. It is a bad omen.”

“Did you hear anything?” I asked. No wonder no one had reported the harpy glowed in the dark. They hadn’t realized what they’d seen.

“Nay, naught but the wind. Yet there has been so much evil walking abroad in this island, it is best to be cautious. I have warned the others not to go home alone. You have done much, good sir. But there is more yet to do.”

I reported to King Temas first thing the next morning.

Well, first I borrowed a tunic from Demos, Omphale’s father, the blacksmith and largest man in the village. It covered the essentials but hardly anything else. Many Greek men will walk around wearing only their himation, the long length of cloth that serves as cloak, scarf or what have you. I remember my surprise and shock the first time I saw a man swaggering around Athens dressed in little more than his skin. We Thracians are more modest or, as we prefer to think of it, sensible. Besides which, it is far colder in my northern country. I hate drafts.

Nobody in the village had sandals big enough.

The smith greeted me civilly, holding a metal bar in his hands, not in a threatening way. More as though he found the feel of the metal to be a comfort. “I am grateful to you.”

“You have little reason. No doubt Omphale would have taken care of matters herself given a few more minutes.” He’d asked me what had happened yesterday and I felt I owed him the truth. If he didn’t know his son was weak and his daughter strong, it was time he learned.

“She has always been a good girl. She got her head turned, that’s all, and without a mother to talk sense into her,” Demos said, running his finger over the metal. “That Yanni....” He spit into his bosom to ward off ill-luck.

“Do his people still live here?”

“His mother married again when Yanni was a boy. There was the timber yard to run. She has other sons, steady lads. Yanni was wild, wild as his father. He was just such another, sending all the girls mad about him. Blood runs true.”

Tactfully, we neither of us made any further mention of Pacci. I hoped his fright-fueled reformation would stick, for his family’s sake as much as for his own. Yet I wouldn’t be shocked to return to Leros someday, only to find that he’d been lured away into the train of the first stronger character he met.

Demos reluctantly agreed to my idea of taking Omphale from this high village down to the palace. “They’ll look after her well?”

“There’s some sensible women there. Another Yanni wouldn’t make it past the front door.”

“That’s what we all need in this life, isn’t it? A sensible woman. If her mother were still alive, maybe things would be different.”

He shook his head, a burly, grizzled man who could beat hot iron into submission but had no notion how to handle anything delicate like hopes or dreams. He probably hadn’t talked about anything deeper than chores to be done with his children in their lives. Like so many of his kind, he was content to leave those seemingly unimportant matters to his wife. With her gone, he had no idea how to cope.

“You’ve done a fine job with the girl,” I said. “I’ll see her safely down to the palace.”

Demos nodded. I pretended to be absorbed in some unassembled kettles while he knuckled his eyes like a child.

“Shall I bring her here to say farewell?” I asked.

“No, you say it for me. You’ll know what to tell her.”

“Very well.”

I’d gone not much above twenty steps when I heard Demos call my name. I turned as he came hurrying up. In one hand, he held a small bag. In the other, a short sword threw back the light of the torch burning outside his forge. I raised an eyebrow as I waited for him, toying with the idea that he’d changed his mind and had decided to kill me. A strange ambush, to call a man’s name, in order to stab him and leave a gift of money behind.

He held out the small bag first. “A few coins for the girl. She’ll see things she’ll want to buy, fancy goods, hair combs...um...things.”

I realized he’d probably never been more than a couple of miles from his forge in his life. The simple village by the ocean where I’d first landed must seem like Athens itself in terms of riches and variety to a man like this. My own father had been just the same. He knew the valleys and hills of his home like the face of his mother, but the thought of visiting a large town turned his stomach inside out.

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate having some extra money.”

“And this is for you.”

He popped it up into the air and caught it so he could present it to me over his arm properly, hilt first. Any smith who didn’t know the rudiments of sword-fighting probably didn’t make very good weapons.

This was a very good weapon indeed. The blade was as long as my forearm but as light as the harpy’s feather. I could see the keen edge as I squinted along the straight strength of it. No marks of the hammer that had forged it showed even when I turned it back and forth to catch the light. Instead, a ray-like pattern seemed to have been woven into its very making.

“This is a princely weapon,” I said. “You should be making these in Athens, not hammering housewares.”

“I didn’t make it,” Demos said. “It was left here in payment of a debt.”

The hilt was handsome as well, leather bound with silver-gilt wire to give a slip-proof grip, while the cross-guards had a curling shape that reminded me of clouds without really looking like clouds at all. The leather was dark as with sweat but not cracked or flaking. The pommel had an indentation on the top, where it would be seen only when worn on the hip. Perhaps a jewel had once resided there, now long gone. A tiny nick, hardly noticeable to the eye, lay half-way up the blade.

“Who left it?” I asked. “And is he coming back for it?”

“I doubt it. It’s been hanging up in the shop for Gods know how long. My father remembers when it was left here. He was no more than a lad.”

I am not often seized with possessiveness but I very much wanted to keep hold of this short-sword. Partly because I’d lost my own, a good blade but nothing near this good, and partly because to see it was to wish to own it. It fit my overlarge hand as though it had been designed for my use alone.

“What does he recall?”

“My father remembers his father talking about a man passing through here but where he came from and where he was going, no one ever knew. Only that he said he was running late and his chariot had lost the pin that held the wheel on.”

“Had he crashed?”

“No. He had good horses. My father remembers hearing more about the horses than about the man.”

“Men are all the same but horses are unique,” I agreed.

“My father’s father was also smith here. He fixed the chariot but the man had no money. He offered this as surety that he’d come back to pay up. My grandfather was doubtful. So the man took it and threw it at my grandfather’s feet. It sank in more than half its length just under its own weight. We think that’s when it got the nick.”

He came with in a thumb-nail’s width of touching the blade but he knew better that to smudge that gleaming surface. “The man laughed, jumped in his chariot and drove away. No one saw him come or go; no one except my grandfather and my father who was peeking out the door, as children do. My grandfather would have thought he dreamed it all. Only it took him all day to dig the blade out for pulling it did nothing at all. It was his blisters that convinced him that it had all really happened.”

Maybe it had happened that way, though to me it sounded like a mash-up of several other stories I’d heard in my travels. No doubt the man was Phaethon, who had begged to take his father’s sun-chariot for a spin around the heavens only to be refused again and again. Having stolen it and in a sweat lest his father should discover that the pin had fallen out, adding damage to theft, no doubt Phaethon had stopped in this remote place to have it fixed. Only Phaethon had been killed by Zeus for driving so close to the earth that Africa had turned to desert and had never returned to claim his sword.

I liked my tale so much that I thought I’d spread it around when I got home again. Plenty of places attract tourists on slimmer connections with the gods than this. A few extra drachmas spent by tourists, extending their journey from Artemis’ famous temple, could come in very handy in this village, especially if the harvest had been bad.

“I can’t take it,” I said. The tourists would be much more interested if they could gawk at the actual sword. “Keep it as an heirloom of your house.”

“You must,” Demos said. “My father said it is yours.”

“I don’t want you to go against your father’s wishes, of course, but it’s too good for me.”

“You don’t understand. Father recognized your name the moment he heard it," Demos said, his troubled eyes meeting mine. “The man in the chariot also said that if he did not redeem it, Eno the Thracian surely would by some act of courage."

* * *

Sometime later, before the sun had come out behind the clouds that veiled it, I turned to Omphale, walking two steps behind me. She looked pale but clear-eyed. I didn’t admit, even to myself, how much I regretted my virtuous refusal of the night before.

“Tell me, is your grandfather...?”

“Is he what?”

“Quite all there?”

She laughed. “Completely.”

“Just sometimes when men get old, they get confused.”

“Not my grandfather. He’s sharp with eyes that can still tell a black thread from a white one long before dawn. He can throw a hammer farther than anyone else, young or old.”

“How’s his memory?”

“Long. He’s told me many tales of his boyhood. He talks about things from fifty years ago or more as though they happened yesterday.”

There was a convenient tumble of boulders nearby. I motioned for Omphale to stop and sit. I unwrapped the sword from the hemp cloth I’d picked up on my way out of the cottage. “You’ve seen this before?”

“That’s the sword from the forge. So he did give it to you,” she added in surprise. “I heard them talking about it early this morning. Grandfather was determined that you should take it, that it was yours. Father wasn’t so sure but he doesn’t argue with Grandfather, ever.”

Omphale touched the hilt gingerly as if worried it would turn and bite her. “It always hung in the forge, above the chimney, ever since I can remember. My father would stand in front of it, studying it. I’ve seen him there, oh, so often, his hands behind his back, just watching it. I think he used to try to copy it.”

“Not an easy thing to copy, I’d guess.”

“He never kept any of his attempts. Then, about two years ago, he took it down and put it in the back, among the junk that always collects, no matter how tidy you are.”

That explained why Demos had to go rummage for it. The blade showed not a speck of rust, despite having been intentionally ‘lost’ for a few years. In the dimness of the morning, the shining blade had bathed in reflected fire.

Here, in the open with the sun coming out, the blade seemed to drip with liquid sunlight. The bright bronze of the curving hilt glowed and tiny colorful flashes radiated along the curves of the cross-guard. I ran my finger over it and felt tiny gemstones set into the metal. They were the same color as the bronze, like stitches in a rich golden seam.

Omphale squinted. “I’ve never seen it shine so brightly.”

I went to wrap it up again in the hempen cloth, though as soon as the sun went in behind a cloud, the dazzling light faded too. I’d have to find a leather worker to make me a scabbard. Something simple to conceal the sword’s quality. A weapon that was also a treasure was bound to be used.

“Just a reflection,” I said reassuringly. But there had been a surge of power up my arm that had left it fizzing. I decided not to mention it.

“It troubles me,” she said. “It always has. My mother thought it came from the Gods.”

“Hephaestus’ own handiwork?”

“Don’t scoff. There are such things. I’ve heard that the warriors in Troy carry magical weapons.”

“There are always rumors about such things in a battle zone. It heartens your allies and frightens your foes. But I have been in many kingdoms and I’ve handled a lot of weapons. I’ve never seen one yet that came from Heaven. The Gods are like careful merchants; they know where each piece of their stock lies.”

“But this one is so magnificent.”

“Not too much so for the hands of a master swordsmith. No offense to your father.”

“He never claimed mastery, though he makes some beautiful things.” She fished in the neck of her cloak. “See this?”

She had pinched up a chain from within her dress. I took the loop in my hand. The links were smaller than the tip of her little finger, gleaming like silver but heavier by far. “Is this iron?” I asked.

“He made it for my mother when they wed. See how every other link is twisted?”

I looked more closely at the details. “It must have taken him a very long time.”

“Yes, he said once....” Suddenly she gasped and clutched my arm. Her lovely face contorted with pain.

I dropped the chain and took her by the shoulders to hold her up as she almost collapsed. “What is it?”

“Can’t you hear it? The harpy!”

“Where?” Still holding her, I scanned the sky over her head. I still didn’t understand the effect the harpy’s scream had on everyone but me. I’d heard it more than once now and, despite Temas’ warning at our first meeting, repetition didn’t turn my knees to water.

“It’s flying around up there somewhere. I can feel it!”

I put my arm around Omphale’s slender waist and picked her up. I thought it best to get her into some kind of shelter but the nearest bank of trees was half a mile away at least.