She rose, the helot scurrying to keep up with her, and walked over to the chariot, and had a quick chat with Polypeithes. He bowed, and drove off. She shrugged and tossed a comment to her slave, who laughed.
I liked her instantly. Any man or woman who has laughing slaves is probably favoured of the gods. Trust me, thugater, I’ve been a slave.
That night we had another fine feast. Our food was already running short, and I was told there was nothing to hunt for ten miles — so my ill-got Illyrian gold went to buy mutton and kid. The farmers of Elis must be the richest shepherds in the aspis of the world.
That’s not really what this story is about. But old men like to complain.
At any rate, I was the host, and I had half the famous men in Greece at my fire that night, and it was a delight — Polypeithes the owner and charioteer chatting with Brasidas, and Narses, the Corinthian charioteer, chatting with Ka. We had a dozen pankrationists with an admiring audience of amateurs listening to their every word, and for an hour we had two of the finest poets and their musicians singing comic elegies to non-existent athletes. Simonides of Ceos, whose verses I had always admired, was in sometimes friendly competition with my friend Aeschylus of Athens, and the two of them mocked each other — and everyone else — as the wine flowed.
It was a good night.
I fell asleep sober, and woke just as the first rosy fingers of dawn touched the sky far to the east. I remember — and the whole history of the Long War probably pivots on this moment — I remember that I had a desperate urge to piss. So, cursing the chill of dawn, I threw off my cloaks and rose from my warm bed and, disdaining even sandals, pushed out of my little tent and went to the latrine.
Of course, to reach the latrine, I’d have to traverse about half of our camp, and I’m sure I’d have set a bad example, except that other men were just rising, and I didn’t want to be seen to disobey my own strictures.
I used the carefully dug trench and straightened my clothes and went back across the camp, still determined to see whether there was any warmth to be discovered deep in my cloak, when I saw. . Well, I shan’t go into much detail, but I saw Gaia and Sekla, doing what men and women will do in the first light of dawn.
That was the end of sleep. Or perhaps it was the will of the gods that I wander out of our camp. But a glimpse of a couple making love — the expression on her face — and I was suddenly desolate. It wasn’t that I desired Gaia.
It was that I desired not to be alone.
I think I probably groaned aloud, like some tormented soul in Homer. And then, embarrassed lest they had heard me, I ran.
And having started to run, running a good distance in the dawn seemed as logical a pursuit as any. I think I decided to run off my woes and start the day with good exercise. I pulled my chiton over my head and tossed it into my tent and ran down towards the river and then east into the rising sun, running along the valley of the Alpheos. There wasn’t much water in the river, which left a perfectly flat flood plain clear, and in the cool of the early morning, it was easy running.
I was not the only one to think so. By the time I was breathing hard and having to concentrate a little on my run — perhaps six stades or so — I heard hooves behind me, and in about as long as it takes for a man to recite a hundred lines of Homer, a pair of horsemen passed me — naked, but already wearing big patassos hats to protect them from the sun. They waved and rode on — both entries, as it turned out, in the young horse events.
After they returned — with further salutes — I had the valley to myself. I ran along, avoiding the occasional goat, for another ten stades, and I felt better. In fact, as I turned at the base of a breast-shaped hill, I felt so good that I determined to run back to camp and find myself a porne. A flute girl.
So I was running west along the edge of Alpheos — I won’t call it a bank, because there’s almost no channel in Hekatombaion, a full nine moons after the New Year. I probably had a broad smile on my face.
I heard hooves.
I had time to think that whoever it was, was a fool for pushing his animals at full gallop this close to the races, and then the low dust cloud at the edge of the river disgorged a racing four-horse chariot without a driver.
I think I ran six or seven more paces at it before I realised that the driver was still in the chariot. The gods had decreed he not die — he was fallen in a curled ball in the base of the car, his head lolling dangerously over the back lintel.
Chariots are very light. The base of a good racing chariot is nothing but sinew woven as tightly as possible to provide a springy floor for the charioteer, who, if trained the way I was trained, drives standing with his toes on the yoke bar and his heels on the sinew.
Something had gone wrong. And the horses were utterly panicked — eyes wide, flecks of spittle all over their chests, sweat pouring down.
And it was the Spartan chariot.
Runaway chariots were a steady part of my young life on Hipponax’s farm. We actually practised boarding and recovering galloping chariots. It happened all too often. One moment’s inattention — horses are the dumbest brutes in all creation — and you are flat on your back on the dirt, and your team is vanishing over the distant horizon.
So I turned and ran south, away from the river — and then made a tight turn in, so I was running east again, into the rising sun, parallel to the river but ten horse-lengths away. The team was galloping right along the bank — horses can be like that — and while the offside leader knew I was there, the rest of the team was too busy being afraid of their own shadows.
While the chariot was still behind me, I ran — diagonally — across its front. I timed it well — by Zeus, I’d done it often enough — and the horses were tired already and slowing. I put up a hand, got a fistful of mane, caught the leather of the collar and leapt. In a heartbeat, I was astride the surly bastard — I mean the horse.
I had them walking in twenty strides. I was worried for the charioteer — I’d never seen a man fall inside his own chariot — but I was worried for the team, too. I turned them on the flat plain — from astride the offside horse. They were as happy to halt as I was to halt them, and then followed a fairly ludicrous time as I sorted out the reins and tried to calm them. All before I could look after the poor charioteer, who was, of course, young Polypeithes, the Spartan.
He had a bruise the size of an egg on the front of his forehead and he was breathing badly, and I discovered he’d swallowed his tongue. I got it out — I’d seen it done — and laid him on the grass by the river and splashed him with water, which accomplished nothing but getting him wet.
After a wait, I lifted him carefully — I still thought he might have a broken bone, or, worst of all, a broken back — and put him on the floor of the chariot, and then I drove it — slowly — back towards camp.
I came to the place where the valley really widens, just east of the hippodrome, where I could see — and smell — the camp, and it looked as if someone had kicked an anthill. The entirety of the Lacedaemonian delegation was out — a dozen on horseback, and the rest running or walking into the hills or along the river.
The one who found me was Gorgo. She was astride a horse like a man — or a Scyth — and she cantered easily along the river bed as soon as she spotted me, and reined in half a horse-length away.