I nodded. 'I just want to go home!' I said suddenly.
Herk looked away.
Cleon put an arm around my shoulders. I've never forgotten that. Cleon stood by me. Later, I stood by him, and if you keep listening, you'll hear. But he said, 'Herk is right. And you can get a ship to Piraeus – in the spring. Stay here a while. Make some money. Go to a priest – find out what you've done. Purify yourself.' The arm tightened. 'Stop killing.'
Aye, I think I wept. Herk was as good as his word, too. Better.
Gortyn sits in the mountains above the sea – a strong place, if not a beautiful one, and it rests on the bones of an older castle, and that rests on stones placed by giants and titans – the past is all around you, at Gortyn, so that when you stand in their Temple of Poseidon Earth-Shaker, you can look down through a hole in the floor at the stones placed by the gods, a thousand lives of men ago or more.
The port town is called Levin. The lord of Gortyn owns all the towns on that stretch of coast, and nowhere have I been in a place where the divide between low and high was so deep. As deep as the sea – as high as the grey-white mountains that rise from them.
Herk sold me, in effect, bragging about my fighting skills and my learning to the king and his leading warriors in the king's mess. The king had a palace but he spent no time there – instead, he lived with nine other rich aristocrats in a fine marble building on the street that ended with the ancient Temple of Poseidon. The building was new-built, but in the fashion of an old-style megaron. The ten men had their couches arrayed around the hearth, and there were more slaves than you could shake a stick at.
I stood silently while Herk talked me up.
'He's a killer,' one of the aristocrats said. 'He killed Laenis down at Hierapytna – that's what we hear. What happened? You – lad, tell it yourself?'
I shook my head. 'Men mocked me,' I said. 'Mocked my friends, mocked the men I stood with in battle. I became angry.'
The king's name was Achilles. He was old enough that his hair was mostly grey – all grey on his chest and back, although he had muscles on his chest like a statue. He nodded.
'My son needs to learn from a killer. But not if the killer can't control himself.' He got up. 'Let us hunt a boar tomorrow, gentlemen.'
They all nodded. Hunting is an excellent way to take a man's measure, and they were going to take mine.
I remember that I slept badly – not from worry, but from shame. Or rather, fear. Was I mad? Had the war god taken my wits?
Tired and red-eyed, I walked out of the guest megaron as the sun rose, found a spring on the hillside and washed. For the first time in many days – perhaps longer – I prayed. I prayed to Heracles my ancestor, and to Athena, because she was the enemy of Ares and I wanted no more from Ares. Then I walked down the hill to where forty or fifty men were gathered with spears. Naked. On Crete, men always hunt naked. The highest fashion is to have a perfect body. And having put in the work to have one, no one wanted to cover that work with cloth.
I got my spears and stood with them. The king emerged from his mess with his officers, and they shook hands with or embraced most of the men there, and then the dog-handlers came, and we were off – up the hillside, past my spring.
The day went on and on, the sun rising hotter and hotter on us. The dogs flushed two pigs – and both evaded us, so that the men began to talk of nets. But the king would have nothing to do with them. I heard one voice, shriller and angrier, demanding nets, and I could see the resemblance. This was his son. He had enough spots to be a fawn.
The third pig that the hounds eventually flushed for us was a little bigger than a dog and not very dangerous. But she was smart enough to keep the dogs off her and fast enough to make us run to keep up, and before long, I was the only man still pacing the front coursers. Those men were all in top shape, but I'd been at war – and at an oar – all summer, and I was half their age. I ran up the mountain and I began to catch the dogs. It was so steep that I knew that if I stumbled I'd have to stop and climb – but for the moment, momentum and pride kept me going, and I could see the pig.
I had no idea about the etiquette of Cretan hunting and no desire to annoy the king. In any case, Lord Achilles had bandy legs and a broad chest and ran slowly, but he was strong as an ox and had the open friendliness that only big men seem to have. Despite his ugly body, men liked him. He was a powerful lord. And he was next behind me on the mountain – the others were way behind us. Slow he might have been – but he wasn't to be stopped. And there I was, love-sick and fury-hounded, sprinting along beside the lead hound, wondering what Artemis would have me do.
The pig lost her nerve when she saw a stand of oak. We were well up the mountain and the ground was rough with stone. The oaks were scrubby things, nothing like the trees of Cithaeron, but I knew what she meant to do. I put on a burst of speed and threw one of my heavy spears – missing the pig, but turning her away from the trees and back towards the hunters.
She lacked the experience of hunting to know what to do. She turned and I stooped, picked up a jagged rock and threw it just beyond her. She turned again and the pack closed in on her.
Achilles came up with his officers and their lovers and there were ten spears in the pig within a few heartbeats. I got my spear wet in her blood out of habit. In some circles, a hunter who does not wet his spear is a coward, or not a man – different hunters have different habits.
Old Achilles – he seemed old to me, although he was ten years younger than I am today – took me by the shoulder. 'Well done. You are a man of courtesy – like a warrior of the old times.'
Achilles' eldest son – I had pegged him correctly – was introduced. He was just a year or two younger than me, a lout named Nearchos, all pimples and straggly black hair and youthful anger. He glowered at me and then turned away, affecting boredom.
'My son is a rude fool. Nearchos! This foreigner is a man. He has killed in duels and in war. Look at him! No need to run a little pig down and kill it when he could share the kill with the rest of us – he doesn't need that little glory for himself, see?' Achilles squeezed my shoulder. 'He needs a man to take him in hand and show him the path.' He winked at me.
Nearchos looked at me from under his eyelashes and then blushed and turned his back, more like a maiden at the well than was quite right.
As we walked back to the hall, Idomeneus took my spears. 'They want you to be his – well, his lover. His erastes. To teach him the ways of the world.' Idomeneus batted his eyelashes at me.
I rolled my eyes. Boys will be boys, and what happens after a hunt is not for a maiden's ears, but I've never understood the peculiar mating of boys and men that some practise, and even if I did appreciate such stuff, Nearchos's face would not have launched a single scow, where Helen's launched a thousand ships.
On the other hand, I was flattered to be treated as a hero in a foreign land. Back at the hall, the pig grew in size with every retelling, and my act of generosity was magnified to near legendary status.
Herk took me aside. 'They love you,' he said. 'I thought they might. Will you stay?'
'Do I have a choice?' I asked.
Herk shrugged. 'Don't be a prick. I'm doing my best for you.' And he was.
I shrugged. Nearchos was leaning against a pillar, whittling a stick with a pretty knife and looking at me when he thought I couldn't see him.
'I could live here for a season.' I shrugged again. 'But sooner or later, they're going to know that my father was a bronze-smith. Not a noble.'