Killer of Men (45 page)

I shook my head. ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘And you can all spend a last night with me, until I see it.’

Then he started away, but I caught him easily, put a knife to his throat while the rest of the Phoenicians muttered angrily. I pushed him off to Herakleides and turned back. ‘All four of them are my prisoners until the ransom is paid,’ I said. ‘I am an honourable man, but don’t try me.’

My prisoners were surly now, and I was suspicious. We all slept badly under the hull of our overturned boat. We could hear voices on the Phoenician boat.

Perhaps I should have posted a sentry.

I awoke with the point of a dagger at my throat.

19

‘You did not come when I summoned you,’ Briseis said quietly.

I could see Kylix standing by the embers of our fire.

‘You summoned me?’ I asked, my head full of sleep. Was that
Briseis
? The arm across my chest felt familiar.

‘I brought you a note,’ Kylix said. ‘Please tell her you received the note.’

Paramanos was awake. I could see that he had a blade in his hand, and he was moving very slowly towards Stephanos.

‘I got the note,’ I said. I felt like a fool, ten times over. Of course the note was from Briseis. For a man who brags about his intelligence, I can be stupid. I had wanted the note to be from Archi.

‘Yet you did not come?’ she asked, and her voice was like ice and fire together.

‘
You
sent me fifty darics?’ I asked. ‘I thought that Kylix came from Archi!’

Without moving the knife, she put her mouth down over mine and kissed me.

At some point, the knife vanished and she pushed herself back up and dusted sand from her chiton. ‘Walk with me,’ she said. ‘You still love me. That is all I required to know.’

She looked at Paramanos and he froze. ‘My husband is in league with the men you are ransoming,’ he said. ‘He communicates with the Persians, and the Phoenicians. And he has paid them to kill you.’

Paramanos gave me a look – oh, such a look. The look that older men use when they are laughing at younger men, but when she said
paid them to kill you
he became alert.

‘I’ll watch,’ he said.

I nodded and followed Briseis, and the two of us walked off into the first light of dawn.

She was wearing only a linen chiton – I felt that while she was kissing me. She had light sandals and a wreath of flowers in her hair, the yellow flowers of Lesbos, and she walked with her usual grace, but I could see she was just pregnant.

‘Your first?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Second,’ she said. She smiled at me. ‘You live!’

‘You were closer to killing me than any man since I was a slave,’ I joked.

‘When you didn’t come to meet me, I thought I would kill you.’ She stopped, put her hips against a big rock and tossed her head. ‘Aristagoras wants you dead. Miltiades made him swear to keep you alive, but he’s a liar, and his oaths are worthless.’

‘Why does he want me dead?’ I asked, and she smiled like the dawn.

‘Every time he fucks me, I call your name,’ she said. And she laughed.

‘But—’ Briseis always scared me, as much as I thought that I loved her. ‘But you are
married
.’

‘Feh!’ Her contempt was palpable. ‘I am married to
Aristagoras
. If a fart could become a man, it would be Aristagoras.’ She looked at me. ‘And I thought you were going to kill Diomedes – eh? But he has gone over to the Medes and taken all our property in Ephesus. My brother is all but a pauper.’

I had forgotten what she could be like. Three years had made her more like herself, not less.

‘I thought of you – every day,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘You might benefit from reading Sappho,’ she said. ‘“Some men say a squadron of cavalry is the most beautiful thing, and some say a band of hoplites, and some think that a squadron of ships is the most beautiful.”’

‘But I say it is whomsoever I love,’ I said to her, deliberately warping my Sappho, and she laughed.

‘I hear that you are a great hero,’ she added, and smiled her approval. ‘I hear that you killed more Medes at Amathus than any other Greek. I love to hear men talk of you.’ She rose on her toes and kissed me, and pregnant or not, only Kylix’s heavy cough stopped us from making love right there. I was hard before her mouth was open and her hands – never mind, ladies.

‘There is a party of armed men coming down the beach from the Phoenician galley,’ Kylix said. ‘The guard is being summoned in the town.’

I had my sword, and was otherwise naked except for my chiton. My feet were bare. I had been asleep.

‘Take your mistress and run,’ I said.

‘Run where?’ Briseis asked. ‘There is no entrance to the town from the sea.’

I remember shaking my head. She wanted to stay and see the blood. ‘Just run,’ I said, and turned back towards my own boat.

‘He wants me dead, too,’ Briseis said. ‘He dares not do it openly, but on a beach, where you can be blamed?’

‘And you thrust yourself into this lion’s mouth?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘You’ll save me,’ she said. ‘Or we’ll die together.’

Paramanos wasn’t caught napping. As I watched, he bundled the prisoners aboard the fishing boat and put to sea. The Phoenicians came down the beach to find the birds flown.

They were all in armour and I was unarmed, which gave me an advantage – I knew that I could outrun any of them, and they didn’t appear to have a bow among them. I hailed Paramanos and he ran the fishing boat down the beach to us. I put my love in the boat and pushed it off, then walked up the beach as if I had nothing to fear.

‘You’re up early,’ I said. ‘I’m Arimnestos. Have you come to pay the ransom?’

The two best-armoured men halted the rest, and they formed a small phalanx on the beach.

‘The men of the town will be here in the time it takes to sing a hymn,’ I called in Persian. ‘And they will kill all of you and take your ship.’ I pointed up the hill. ‘The lord of the town is my friend – any bribe you paid the guards was wasted.’

They were arguing among themselves.

It’s a lesson you learn early – plotters never trust anyone. I was nearly certain that the town garrison were going to watch me butchered and not raise a hand – but the Phoenicians didn’t know that.

I pointed out to sea. ‘My prisoners are out there, in that fishing smack,’ I called. ‘And if you don’t pay up, they’ll have their throats slit and be pushed over the side.’

The two men in bronze armour argued, and finally, when I could see the new sun shining on spear points in the town, they turned and went back to their ship. ‘We’ll pay,’ one of the men said. Honey, I’ve seldom heard those Persian words invested with so much hate.

They stacked bars of silver on the sand.

I ran off down the beach to Paramanos, and I didn’t look back.

The exchange went well enough. I rolled the silver and gold in my cloak and carried it to my boat. Then we released all four prisoners, well down the beach, almost as far as the threshing floor where the goats play.

We were gone around the point before the freed men joined their friends. Briseis asked me to take her around to Eresus. How could I refuse?

Eresus is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Briseis had made that fart Aristagoras buy her a house there, on the back side of the acropolis, good land with figs and olives, like a little piece of Boeotia in the desert of eastern Lesbos. The jasmine on the slopes of the acropolis perfumes the air, and the sun is bright on the cliffs over the town.

The people came down to meet us, then Briseis took me up to the acropolis, where I met Sappho’s daughter – an old, old woman. She was strong, the lady of the town and still fully in command.

‘You are her husband?’ she asked.

I shook my head, no, but she smiled.

‘You are her true husband,’ she said.

She was an odd woman, a priestess of Aphrodite, and the lady of the Aeolian goddess, and a famous teacher. I was a tongue-tied killer in her presence, but I saw another Briseis that day – a witty, educated woman who could sing a lyric as well as an Olympic competitor.

That night we lay together in her house, with the doves cooing and the jasmine smell, and I have never forgotten it. It was the first time we had been together without an element of fear. It was different. She was different. I knew love that night – not the maddened, half-angry love of the young, but the gift of the Cyprian that turns your head for ever.

I would have stayed a second day, but Paramanos came to me, pounding on her door, and his words were hard.

‘You are mad!’ he said. ‘And she is no better.’

And that is what is wrong with the world, thugater. Because I accepted his words. We shared a last drink of wine under her fig tree.

‘You are Helen,’ I said to her.

‘Of course I’m Helen,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t Achilles have Helen? Why can’t Helen have Achilles?’

‘I have to sail away from you for a time,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, one of us will die, or I’ll kill Aristagoras and be an outlaw.’

She put her arms around my neck and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. ‘When I’ve had my way with the world, I’ll call you to me and we will make love until the sun stops in the sky,’ she said. ‘I’ll send you a copy of Sappho’s epic to pass the time.’ She laughed.

I kissed her. ‘I love you,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘How could I have doubted you? Listen, Achilles – when you have a chance, kill my husband. If you don’t, I’ll have to do it myself, and men will talk.’ She laughed again, and ice touched my spine.

There was never anyone like Briseis. And if you know your
Iliad
, you’ll know that it was on that very beach that Achilles took her.

She made me feel more alive.

She climbed the cliff while I walked down to the beach, and then she watched us sail away from the top.

I never promised you a happy story.

Miltiades was waiting for me on the beach at Mytilene. I hadn’t learned, yet, that he was the greatest spymaster in the west, and knew of every event long before it happened. Indeed, his reach was long.

He embraced me as I stepped ashore, but he was curt. ‘Walk with me,’ he said.

He was my commander. I walked away with him, thinking of Briseis. I saw the cloud on his face and wondered how I could next see her.

‘You had Aristagoras’s wife in your boat,’ he said.

‘The bastard tried to ambush me.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

‘He tried to ambush you when you sneaked off to fuck his wife,’ Miltiades said. He turned to face me. ‘That’s what he’s going to say.’

‘She’s two months pregnant!’ I said – which was not, strictly speaking, a denial. ‘I went to get my ransoms!’

‘What ransoms?’ Miltiades asked me, and he was as shrewish as a woman buying fish in the agora.

I hadn’t told him, and suddenly I realized that this, not Briseis, was the real matter. ‘I had Phoenicians to ransom after the fight at Amathus,’ I said.

‘You thought to take the money for yourself?’ he asked, and his voice was dangerous.

I stopped walking. ‘What?’

‘The ransom for the Phoenicians,’ he said. ‘You sought to sneak away? You thought that I wouldn’t know?’ This was a different Miltiades – a sharper, more dangerous man.

‘What?’ I asked, foolishly. And then, ‘What concern is it of yours?’

‘Don’t try that on me,’ he said. ‘Half of anything you take is mine. You expect me to squander political capital to save you from Aristagoras and then you try to steal my money?’

I stepped back. ‘Fuck off,’ I said. I shook my head. ‘Those are my ransoms from Amathus. Nothing to do with you.’

‘Half,’ he said. ‘Half of every penny you take. That is the price of being my man. I pay the wages on your ship. You agreed to the contract.’ He spat. ‘Don’t act like a fucking peasant. You got more than a
talent
.’

I think that my hand went to my sword hilt, because he looked around – suddenly the great Miltiades was afraid to be alone on the beach with me. It wasn’t the money, thugater. I am a killer and a lecher, but I have never been a greedy man.

But I thought that he was cozening me, and I can’t stand to let other men get the better of me. ‘This is my money from before the contract!’ I said. ‘I’ve promised part of it to my men!’

‘That will have to come from your half, then,’ he said. He crossed his arms. He was a little afraid – even then, men saw me as a mad dog. But he was bold, and he must have needed the silver.

If you want to know how great a man truly is, see him talk about money.

I sighed. ‘Why didn’t you come to me – like a man?’ I might have said,
like a friend
, but I had just discovered that pirates have no friends.

‘If you ever speak to me that way again, I’ll have you killed,’ Miltiades said. ‘Now pay up your half, and we can forget all about this.’ He was shaking with fury, and yet he was above mere insults of manhood. He didn’t point at the boat behind me, but he did jut his chin at it. ‘You think it’s going to be easy to keep you alive after this?
He hates you.
And you come sailing back from a rendezvous with
his wife
.’

Oh, I can be a fool.

I paid. Perhaps you’ll think less of me, but Miltiades was the only anchor I had in that world. I had no family and no friends, and I was living far above my birth. So I walked back down the beach, took the rolled cloak out from under the floorboards of my boat and I paid Miltiades half of the ransoms that I had earned without him.

Paramanos watched me do it without a muscle moving on his face, but I knew who the sycophant was by watching. Herakleides wouldn’t meet my eye.

I couldn’t believe it. He was such an upright man.

But he was an Aeolian, and such men can be bought.

Cheap.

I cursed.

Miltiades counted it out and threw me back a gold bar – an enormous sum of money. ‘That’s to take the sting out,’ he said. ‘I’m going to assume you misunderstood. Don’t let it happen again, and let’s just forget.’ He grinned and offered his hand.

I took it and we clasped.

Miltiades looked over his shoulder. Then he looked back. I think he was measuring my value to him. I met his eye.

I trusted Miltiades. As I heard it from him, Aristagoras had plotted to kill her, and me, and that was enough.

Later, he came back and told me. ‘I earned every penny of the ransom you tried to hide from me, ungrateful boy,’ he said. Then he waved, always the great man. ‘Forget it,’ he chuckled. ‘We’re going to have some wonderful times together.’

I never forgot, though, and I assume he didn’t either.

He sent me to sea immediately, that evening, with orders to haunt the Asian coast. It should have been a happy autumn, but the politics of the Ionian camp were vicious, and I would have done better to enquire more closely from where my fountain of gold had come. Now that I served Miltiades, I was tied to the faction that favoured the war. There was a peace faction led by none other than the author of the revolt, Aristagoras, who now espoused a peaceful solution. Men said that he had been bought by the Medes with golden darics, and other men said that he feared the Great King.