Memnon (5 page)

“It’s not for the squeamish,” he heard his brother’s voice resonate in his skull. Years ago, he had asked Mentor what his first battle was like, how it differed from the poesy of Homer. The elder son of Timocrates answered him with unaccustomed gravity. “Forget fancy tactics and
paeans
to the gods. To kill a man, you must face him eye to eye and plant your spear in his guts before he does the same to you. When the blade goes in, you’ll see his eyes change—anger, fear, pain, grief—a whole range of emotions that would do Euripides proud. You’ll hear him scream, an animal sound like nothing you’ve ever heard, and you’ll feel hot blood spurt out over your hands. Then, as the stink hits you, you realize the worst of it.”
What could be worse than that?
Memnon muttered, his face pale. Mentor draped his arm around his young brother’s shoulder and gave him a gruff hug. “What’s worse is realizing it could have been you.”

“What would you do tonight, brother?” Memnon said aloud. He crossed through the breach in the barricade. More bodies lay on the other side, victims of a barrage of rocks and hunting arrows, though only one caught his eye. Memnon stopped. In the lee of an overturned produce cart, a white-haired old man lay supine, his face a mask of blood from where a lead sling bullet had sheared through his forehead. For the span of a heartbeat, the icy talons of Deimos clawed at Memnon’s lungs, freezing the very breath in his chest.
Is that you, Father?
Shaken, he stumbled to his knees. With a strip of cloth torn from the old man’s robe, Memnon wiped away the blood obscuring the corpse’s visage, peered closer, and gave an explosive sigh of relief. The face of an old soldier stared back at him, his oft-broken nose and gaping eye socket the trophies of long-ago campaigns. Memnon closed his eyes, his shoulders bowed as relief turned to sadness, then guilt.

“I’m sorry, old one,” he whispered. “Be at peace.”

A commotion caught Memnon’s attention. He glanced up as a half-dozen men barreled through the now useless barricade. A pair of them held torches aloft; the rest carried makeshift weapons—oar shafts fixed with iron spikes, harpoons, and sickles of hammered bronze. Seeing Memnon crouched over a corpse, they took him to be one of their own. One of them lingered, a toothless jackal stinking of piss and rotten onions.

“Hurry!” he said. “Hurry, before we’re too late!”

“Too late for what?” Memnon rose.

“Have you not heard? A bounty’s been offered: ten
drachmas
for the right hand of every democrat, a hundred for the head of the man who leads them! Hurry,” he said. “They’re about to break through!”

Memnon ground his jaw in fury, but followed in their wake. Others, too, joined their cortege as it gained momentum. Excited, they brandished their hammers and cleavers and chattered in low voices. As they crested a final ridge, Memnon saw their destination. He slowed, letting the others jostle past him.
Zeus Savior! Father!

From this distance, Timocrates’ home resembled a besieged fortress rather than a villa. An army of scavengers and riffraff clogged the street, each man hoping to claim the bounty the oligarchs had placed on Timocrates. Torches flared, casting bizarre shadows across the makeshift siege lines. Lining the walls, a handful of loyal democrats sent flight after flight of arrows down into the press of bodies clamoring at the gate. In response, slingers rose from the mob, their lead bullets punching into the heads and chests of the defenders.

Nothing he had read in the past—not Homer or Herodotus or Thucydides—offered even the slightest amount of insight into what his next move should be. Patron was right. This was a fool’s errand. Still … still …

Memnon left the street, crouching just inside the portico of a
nymphaeum,
and watched the chaos swirling around his father’s house. He studied the mob, noting how they formed up and charged the gates, how they fell back and regrouped into their ragged platoons, their resolve fueled by the promise of gold. For his theory to be correct, Memnon knew there had to be a rhythm to their actions, a sign that, despite having a hundred heads, this Hydra possessed a single controlling intellect. If he could identify it, he could strike at it. Slay the brain and perhaps the Hydra’s heads would turn on each other, providing enough of a respite for his father to be spirited away.

A voice bawled orders; a fresh assault wave hustled toward the gate, this time preceded by men bearing improvised body shields. Memnon traced the voice to its source, spotting a burly figure standing outside the house neighboring his fathers, surrounded by a cadre of his peers. Most were oligarchs, but a few moved with the confidence of trained soldiers. Mercenaries, Carians probably, brought over by Philolaus to enforce the edicts of his new regime. The son of Timocrates proffered a thin, grim smile. There was his target.

He would need to get closer.

Leaving his perch in front of the
nymphaeum,
Memnon used the confusion in the street as camouflage to circle around to his father’s house—and to the men overseeing this piecemeal offensive. The villa adjacent to Timocrates’ estate belonged to a man called Brygus, a political dilettante, and the youngest son of the renowned shipwright Chaeremon. An amiable man, Brygus nevertheless preferred the company of his roses to that of other people. His trellises, with their satiny red and yellow blooms, dwarfed those of his neighbors and were a constant source of pride for a man otherwise unremarkable. Memnon vaulted the low wall bounding Brygus’s property and crept through the labyrinthine garden, past garland-wreathed statues of Demeter and Persephone; a haze of smoke drifted in the air, sweetened with attar of roses. The springy turf muffled Memnon’s footsteps.

At the corner of the house, Memnon stopped. He heard voices ahead, harsh grumbles distorted by the thudding of axes on wood. “Shame we can’t get in there before the others and claim the bounty ourselves. Are you sure there’s no other gate?”

Another voice: “What about it, Brygus?”

Inching to the corner, Memnon peered around. Illuminated by the light of distant fires, two men alternated hacking at the base of an ancient olive tree. Both men paused and turned toward the figure cowering behind them. Brygus knelt in the grass, a slight man clad in a torn and grimy
chiton,
blood staining his face and beard as he watched the destruction of his property through swollen eyes.

“You’ve been his neighbor for a dozen years, is there another way in?”

Brygus shook his head. “Only t-the front gate.”

One of the men spat. “And we need a battering ram for that. You’re a useless bag of shit, Brygus. You know that? We should take one of these axes to your hand and use the money for a skin of wine. How about it, Sacadas? You hold him; I’ll whack off his hand.”

The man called Sacadas shrugged, scratching at a scabby beard that couldn’t hide the scars of a childhood pox. “Do what you will, Dyskolos, but kill him first. I don’t want to hear the little shit-bag screaming all night long.”

Brygus scrambled away from them. “Y-You can’t!”

Dyskolos hefted his axe, grinning as he stalked the smaller man. “Who’ll know? I should have thought of this sooner, Sacadas. Could have saved ourselves—” Dyskolos never finished. He saw a flicker of movement seconds before Memnon’s javelin tore through the base of his throat, its blade nearly taking his head off. Brygus screamed. As Dyskolos toppled, Memnon stepped out into the light, his arm drawn back, his second javelin poised to throw. To his dismay, Sacadas reacted faster.

Time slowed. His senses sharpened by adrenalin and fear, Memnon watched Sacadas lunge, his arm snapping forward, his axe whirling end over end. The clumsy tool missed him by inches, but its proximity caused Memnon to recoil and, from reflex, to throw his javelin.
Too soon!
He knew the second it left his hand that his cast had gone awry. Memnon stared as it soared off into the darkness; when he returned his gaze to Sacadas, the larger man had wrenched the javelin from Dyskolos’s corpse and was in motion.

Memnon fumbled for the hilt of his sword. He’d half-drawn the blade when Sacadas smashed into him, driving the butt of the javelin into his midsection. The young Rhodian’s breath
whooshed
from his lungs; his body catapulted into the air. He struck the ground amid flashes of color and slid across the grass, struggling for breath. Sacadas straddled his fallen body. Memnon caught the javelin shaft with one hand as the mercenary drove it lengthwise across his throat.

Sacadas fought in silence, without taunts or curses, his lips fixed in a businesslike snarl. Memnon’s free hand flailed about for a weapon—a rock, a branch, anything. His sword lay beneath him, its hilt grinding painfully into his back. Memnon’s fingers brushed the handle of his knife. In one motion he dragged it free of its sheath and buried it in Sacadas’s side. It had no effect. The mercenary bore down harder on the javelin shaft, forcing Memnon’s own knuckles into his windpipe and cutting off his air. Memnon gasped, his eyes bulging. Again and again he plunged his knife into his attacker’s flesh. Blood sprayed over his hand.

Mentor’s voice thundered through his brain. “To kill a man, you must face him eye to eye and plant your spear in his guts before he does the same to you. When the blade goes in, you’ll see his eyes change—anger, fear, pain, grief …”

The eyes staring down at him were as cold and dead as a shark’s. The pressure at his throat vanished; Memnon felt a warm wetness spreading over his midsection as Sacadas’s body voided itself at the moment of death. Memnon thrashed and rolled, toppling the body, vomiting both at the stink filling his nostrils and at the overwhelming sense of mortality.
It could have been me.
He lay for a time, his body shaking, his face pressed to the ground as he inhaled the clean smells of soil and grass.

Memnon heard movement. “Are you d-dead?” Brygus. Memnon had forgotten about him.

“Greetings, Brygus,” Memnon croaked. He crawled to his knees, recovered his javelin, and used it to clamber to his feet. “Have you seen my father?”

Brygus’s eyes narrowed. “M-Memnon? Is that you?”

“Aye. Have you seen him, Brygus? Do you know if my father’s still safe?” Memnon took a step toward the smaller man. Brygus, though, backed away from him, edging toward the gate leading to the street. He glanced over his shoulder, licked his lips. “Brygus?”

With a squeal of panic, Brygus turned and darted through the open gate. “He’s here!”

“Damn you, Brygus! What are you doing?” Memnon followed him only a handful of paces before skidding to a stop. Outside the gate, he saw a throng of men turn toward the commotion. Brygus gestured at him, his voice a feminine shriek.

“Here! He’s the son of Timocrates!”

A dozen eyes turned on Memnon, eyes brimming with hatred and lust. Patron called them feral beasts; now Memnon knew why. They stepped toward him. A hastily loosed arrow sliced the air, striking the wooden gatepost with a loud crack. An enraged scream followed in its wake. Triumphant, Brygus capered about.

“How much for the bastard’s son? How much—”

With a howl of rage, Memnon’s javelin streaked from his hand to transfix the body of his betrayer. He didn’t pause to watch Brygus’s death throes. Memnon spun on the balls of his feet and sprinted back through the gate.

Baying like the hounds of Atalanta, the mob gave chase.

 

P
ANTING,
M
EMNON PAUSED A MOMENT TO GET HIS BEARINGS.
H
IS NECK
throbbed; his legs were rubbery from the exertion of running through the benighted streets of Rhodes-town. Through alley and garden the mob had followed in relentless pursuit, convinced that the son of Timocrates was a prize worth dying for. Twice, they had almost cornered him; twice, Memnon had escaped by the narrowest of margins, his sword swaying the balance to his favor. Still, his luck couldn’t hold out much longer.

Memnon glanced back the way he had come. Farther up the hillside, the light from fires outside his father’s house smudged the heavens with angry reds and oranges. He could hear the sough and sigh of the ocean, which meant the harbor was near. Unlike the main harbor, this one was little more than a sandy strand, a perfect beachhead for smaller boats. Memnon knew the area: as a boy he had played among the ship sheds and fishing shacks lining the strand. He stared again at his father’s house, a lance of ice piercing his heart. What started as a noble endeavor had degenerated into a race against time. He—

“There!”

A voice split the night. The most persistent of his pursuers, torches held aloft, poured into the street. Leather whirred. Memnon ducked and ran as a sling bullet cracked on stone behind him, peppering his shoulders with fragments of lead. Down the alley and around a corner, he leapt a low retaining wall and nearly fell as sand shifted underfoot.
The strand!
He crouched, his back to the wall, and waited. Moment’s later, a body hurtled over, wheezing, a staff of fire-hardened wood clutched in his fists.

He never knew what killed him.

Memnon struck his head from his shoulders, turned, and impaled another man as he vaulted the wall. Wrenching his sword free, Memnon loped along, following the circuit of the wall, his body in a half-crouch. Behind him, he heard the others stumble over the corpses of their companions. If he couldn’t lose them, perhaps he could demoralize them, sap their interest in him by killing them one at a time. Memnon stopped. Too late, he heard the crunch of a foot on sand, the whistle of wood swinging through the air. He half-turned …