It was not Euphoria. It was Mater. Mater had died in the gateway, sword in hand.
My mind couldn’t accept it — couldn’t take in the loss of the three of them in one blow. In truth, all my being had been aimed at Euphoria, and I had forgotten how many people I loved were in this farm.
Mater.
I lifted Bion off her legs and laid him down with dignity, although his intestines trailed behind him as I dragged him across the yard.
I lifted Cleon too, and now I was weeping, because he had died like a great man, and there were dead enemies at his feet.
And Mater — how I had hated her for so many years. Yet here she was, sword in hand, like any hero you might name. Ares, she died well. And sober.
I rolled her corpse over, and she had that smile on her face — that smile she wore when she saw that I could say the verses of Theognis, or when I brought Euphoria under the roof, or when she met Miltiades.
That she wore that look with a spear in her guts made her seem very great to me.
But when I went to lift her, two other hands reached beneath her shoulders — bloody hands, but smaller.
Euphoria’s hair was wild, her chiton was unpinned at one shoulder, so that one breast showed on the right, and there was blood on her feet. She took Mater’s shoulders and lifted, and we laid her down with the other heroes who fell defending the dooryard.
‘She locked me in the basement,’ Euphoria said. She wasn’t crying. ‘She said it was my duty to live.’
Tiraeus and Styges had held the door to the forge. The hired warriors had given up after they lost two men, then went and fired the house and ran off. So Styges had let my wife out of the basement before the house collapsed into it.
And more, Mater had saved so much — wall hangings, gold and silver — all thrown into the forge building. Bion and Cleon held the gate while she did it, and then she joined them, and they all died together. Or that’s how Styges told it, who had stood in the door of the forge and held it.
Euphoria held me, crooning. She was strong, and I was suddenly unmanned. It was everything — Bion’s death, Cleon’s, Mater’s — and Euphoria being alive. And fatigue, I suppose.
Styges asked me if we had fought. I must have told them something, because the women stopped screaming for vengeance. And then Euphoria brought me wine — neat — and I drank a cup, and passed out like a drunkard.
When I came to, it was night and I could scarcely move. My thighs hurt so much that I had trouble rolling over. I was lying on gravel in my forge yard, and I had a blanket of my wife’s weaving over me, and she was snuggled to my side, her head against my shoulder.
‘I thought you were dead,’ I said.
She shook her head and her arm embraced me, a good, long squeeze.
In the morning, my legs still ached as if I was an old man. My shoulders and arms weren’t much better, and one of the cuts on my thigh was deeper than I had thought and wept pus.
The bastards had raped any female slave they caught and killed three of my male slaves. So my yard had the mourning of defeat, along with the dreadful fear of my slave girls that they were pregnant. I went to the stream and washed myself, with a prayer to the stream itself for the filth I was putting in her, and then I went back up the hill carrying water, and Euphoria began to wash the women clean, which is the only kindness you can do for a raped woman.
I got Styges and Tiraeus, who both had small wounds, to bind mine, and then I helped with theirs, and then we began to take stock.
We hadn’t lost an animal — the byres were up the hill, and the bastards never made it past the yard. They’d burned the one barn they reached, which was full of barley and hay. It was a loss, but it only held the ready stores for the house and the animals. The house was gone, though. A house that my great-grandfather built of stone and mortar — the best house in all of south Plataea. The home of the Corvaxae, great and small.
Simon burned it, destroying the work of his own family, and he killed his own step-mother in the courtyard. May the furies rip his liver for ever. May every shade in Hades treat him with the contempt of a matricide and a traitor.
I was standing in the yard, looking at the wreck of the house — rubble and not much more — when men came through the gate. Teucer and Hermogenes, Idomeneus and Alcaeus and all the men of the epilektoi.
I walked over to Hermogenes and put my arms around him. ‘Bion died in the yard,’ I said.
I took him by the hand to where his father was laid out. The women had already bathed his body with the water I brought them, and anointed him with oil, and put coins on his eyes. Hermogenes fell to his knees, wept and poured sand over his head.
Other, smaller steadings had also been hit. On the way back to Thebes, the hired men had lost their discipline — if they ever had any — and they’d killed and raped whatever they could catch. So I was not alone in my mourning.
But Teucer took me aside. ‘Are you blind with rage?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘Euphoria is alive, and the unborn baby,’ I said. ‘I have my wits about me today.’
Teucer led me outside the old house wall. ‘This man was with them,’ he said. ‘I took him alive. He is my slave now.’
Fair enough. A hired man was nobody’s — not a citizen anywhere. Capture meant enslavement. I had played by those rules — I knew the game.
‘I won’t kill him,’ I said.
The man met my eye for a moment as I approached him. Then he looked at the ground.
‘You fought for my cousin Simon?’ I asked.
‘Simon?’ The man spat. ‘Cleitus paid us. Simon came along for the ride, the incompetent fuck.’
You think he should have held his tongue, friends? But why? He was our slave, and he knew what he had to do if he wanted to live. We needed no threats. Nor would I have done any differently, had I stood in his shoes.
I nodded. I looked at Teucer.
‘Ask him why they came,’ Teucer prompted.
‘Okay, I’m game. Why did you come?’ I asked.
‘We were fucking paid to kill you, mate.’ The man shrugged. ‘Nothing personal.’
Teucer kicked him so hard he fell to the ground. ‘Lord — Arimnestos is called “lord”.’
The man got himself upright. ‘We were paid to kill you, lord,’ he managed. ‘Could have just told me.’
‘Can I buy him from you?’ I asked Teucer.
‘You will kill him?’ Teucer said.
I shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Buy me a good working man, then. This one will be a lazy fuck.’ Teucer put the man’s rope in my hand. ‘All yours. Now ask him what signalled them to start.’
I looked at the captive. He was squatting in the dust, but his eyes still had the glint of — pride, or resentment, or just stubbornness. I liked him a little for that. He was beaten, but not defeated.
He nodded. ‘We was told to wait until we saw fires at Chalcis,’ he said. ‘Runner came in yesterday morning.’
Teucer nodded. ‘See?’ he asked.
I did see. If there was smoke rising over Chalcis — why then, the Persians must be in Euboea.
If the Persians were in Euboea, then the attack on Attica was close — two or three weeks away, at most.
If the Persians were about to attack Attica, then Athens would be paralysed, and it was safe for Simon to attack Plataea.
Secrets inside secrets, like the boxes which nest inside other boxes, smaller and smaller, until there’s a tiny nut or a silver bell in the centre of seven or eight of them. Someone had plotted this very carefully — as I had suspected.
‘Want to be free?’ I said.
‘You bet,’ he said.
‘Hmm. We’ll see. That corpse is my mother. That one is a man who saved my life fighting. That’s my best friend’s father. Those women? My slaves.’ I looked at him, and he grew pale.
‘I-’ he sputtered.
‘Do as you’re told,’ I said. ‘I know you’re a hoplite. Somewhere, you are probably a gentleman.’ I looked around. ‘Right now, you’re a slave, and if you fuck up, someone will kill you. Now — truth now — did you rape?’