Satyrus knew this as well, and he was tired — pleasantly tired, but with enough fatigue in his muscles to restrain him. He circled; sidestepped, and subsided again. For several long moments, both men were perfectly still.
‘This is the last touch. I want a massage,’ Satyrus said. It could be hard to be the king, all the time. Even Anaxagoras, who had the artist’s ability to be any man’s equal, deferred to him in matters of training. Anaxagoras would spar until he dropped of exhaustion — it was always left to Satyrus to call quits.
Anaxagoras nodded slightly.
He stepped to the left again, as Satyrus expected him to, and Satyrus launched a slow attack — so slow as to be almost languorous. His wrapped cloak flew off his arm like a live thing, fluttering out to snap, the cloak weight dragging the heavy cloth out flat for a fraction of a heartbeat.
Anaxagoras pivoted on both feet, rotating his hips to avoid the weight with his face, and his own cloaked arm snapped out to bat the incoming sword, but found no weapon, and dropped lower, seeking it.
Satyrus’s blow was so slow that Anaxagoras’s parry, blinded by the swirl of cloak, missed it entirely, and the wooden blade smacked him in the side of the neck — a trifle too hard. He dropped to one knee, his hand to his neck.
Satyrus was at his side, sword dropped. ‘Apollo! A thousand apologies, Anaxagoras!’
The musician shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. Or rather, it is a fitting accompaniment to my sense of humiliation. How, exactly, did you land that blow?’
Assured of his friend’s health, Satyrus was suffused with pride. ‘It is a timing blow. It would never work without the cloak — it simply baffles the opponent’s notions of the speed of the fight.’
‘Devastating!’ Anaxagoras said.
‘Not if your opponent strikes fast — expects the blow, cuts at the sword arm,’ Apollodorus commented from the colonnade.
‘Look who’s recovered from his wine!’ Anaxagoras said, clearly piqued that the other man had seen him hit so easily.
Satyrus smiled inwardly at the ease with which men — men who were friends and comrades — could nonetheless cause each other offence. Satyrus was almost never offended by Apollodorus and his abrasive commentary on all fields of martial endeavour — the man was a professional, and his comments were meant only as professional criticism, no more. But the small, sharp-featured man had never mastered the art of giving criticism.
‘Let’s fight a bout and see,’ Apollodorus said, coming onto the sand. He pulled his chlamys off and wrapped it around his arm, disclosing a body laced with scars the way barbarians wore tattoos. Satyrus had never counted them, but he expected that his captain of marines had at least a hundred scars, most of them on his forearms and lower legs, a few on his back, and one that indented his neck, where his heavy shoulder muscle met his collarbone, and ran, red, shiny and deep, across his chest to his hip.
Apollodorus was a small man, but neatly built, heavily muscled, and fast. Satyrus tossed him his practice sword, and he and Anaxagoras began to circle.
Anaxagoras remained cautious and defensive, which Satyrus read as a sign of anger. In combat, Anaxagoras was dangerously aggressive, almost as if he knew the hour of his fate and had little care until that time. Apollodorus was usually the cautious fighter — a man only survives as much combat as Apollodorus had seen by virtue of some caution. But today he was the one committed to attack.
‘We are at the end of our workout,’ Satyrus said. ‘Wine-bibbers have to take the consequences of their excess.’
‘You’re next,’ Apollodorus said. As he spoke, his chlamys-arm snapped out in a feint, and his sword followed, a fraction of a heartbeat behind.
As fast as thought, Anaxagoras parried, the two swords clicking together hard.
But Apollodorus didn’t maintain the pressure. Instead, he dropped his weapon, stepped in, and grappled, his now free sword-hand seizing Anaxagoras’s wrist expertly, his cloak over the musician’s head.
Anaxagoras raised his left hand, indicating he’d lost, and Apollodorus unwrapped him from the folds of his cloak. ‘I needed last night,’ he said. The words held no apology, but the tone did.
‘I have been thoroughly put in my place,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I’ll go back to the lyre and leave the sword to you two.’
‘Nonsense,’ Apollodorus said. ‘If you could beat me, I’d be a pretty poor specimen. I’ve fought for twenty years — and practised ten years before that.’ He nodded to Satyrus. ‘Your turn.’
Satyrus caught the sword that Anaxagoras tossed him — and found that Apollodorus was on him immediately, sword and cloak weaving like a pair of dancers. He reacted without thought, ducking, backing — got his cloak on the other man’s sword and tried for a seizure and missed, tried snapping a kick to the other man’s shin and connected — a glancing blow, but it put him in the pattern and Apollodorus fell back, and Satyrus snapped his chlamys, his sword hidden behind it, and stepped back himself to breathe — and Apollodorus’s sword hit his wrist hard enough to cause him to drop his own sword.
Anaxagoras clapped his hands together. There were other men standing under the colonnade and they applauded as well. ‘Splendid!’ called a younger man — Satyrus couldn’t remember his name, but the man had been an Ephebe during the siege. He was still thin. Satyrus wondered if any of them would return to their full weight after a year on starvation rations.
He rubbed his wrist and smiled at Apollodorus. ‘You are still the master,’ he said.
Apollodorus rubbed his shin. ‘If you had kicked for real, I might never have launched that blow,’ he said.
Satyrus found his hands were shaking — muscle fatigue and the daimon of combat together. ‘I’m done,’ he said, showing his shaking hands.
Other men went out onto the sands, wrestling or boxing, and Satyrus realised that they had all been waiting for him — giving him the sand, as men said of someone they respected. He smiled around, trying to catch every eye — thanking them for their good opinion of him.
It was good to be a hero.
He went in to get a massage and a bath.
Later, after a review of his accounts with Abraham’s steward, he met Anaxagoras in the courtyard, his lyre tucked under his arm as a much younger man would.
‘Revenge is sweet,’ Anaxagoras said with an evil smile.
Indeed, Anaxagoras was the very best of teachers — endlessly patient, his voice carefully modulated, slow to praise and slow to anger — so that when he did praise, a student knew he had done well indeed, and when his cheeks did mottle red, a student knew he’d been very foolish indeed.
Nor was this in any way a reversal of their bouts on the palaestra. Anaxagoras was a competent wrestler, an excellent boxer, a quick study at pankration, and now a brilliant swordsman. Satyrus was, at best, an indifferent musician. He loved to play — enjoyed any music, was constantly and pleasantly surprised that he could play anything at all — but seldom practised hard, so that simple fingerings were still the limit of his powers, and it was rare that duties — and pleasures — allowed him the time or the inclination to take a complete lesson.
‘Play the scale again. This time, every other note,’ Anaxagoras said.
Satyrus did as he was told.
‘Now again, with regard to the tempo. Every note exactly the same length,’ Anaxagoras said.
The control of his face suggested he was hiding a smile. Satyrus tended to play all the notes in a tune, but without the strict adherence to time essential to make the music correctly.
‘And again,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Your habit of resting your thumb on the sound board is part of the reason you cannot make your transition correctly.’
Satyrus turned his head sharply, a retort on his lips. And relented, reason telling him that anger at a teacher who was trying to help him was unworthy — foolish and boyish. Besides, his teacher’s carefully controlled face suggested that this was, in fact, a form of revenge.