Themistocles, as is often the case, said it best that night. Aristides gave a dinner — note that I could afford to give men free wine, but Aristides could afford to have two hundred men to dinner — and when Themistocles spoke, it was about what it was to be a Greek. He was funny — there are, I promise you, many comic aspects to the Greek race — and sometimes trite or bigoted, but in the end, he said:
‘Look around you, brothers! Where else will you find this — the contest of men against men, for nothing greater than honour — judged not by kings, but only by men like we ourselves. Here we are, at the shrine of the gods, and what we do here — this is who we are.’
He was a little drunk, but I thought it was well said.
And yet — I suspect the Persians said the same, when they raced their horses and shot their bows.
We all lay on rented kline in the oil-lamp-lit darkness and swatted the voracious insects and complained about the wine. I remember I was lying with Cimon, and we were debating whether to press our forward naval plan on Themistocles one more time, when a breeze made the lamps flicker and a group of Spartans approached. I was delighted to find that the young man who wished to speak to me was Polypeithes himself, and that he had made a full recovery.
‘I owe you my life. We take this seriously, in Lacedaemon,’ he said.
It is the special gift of the Spartans to give every utterance a spin that makes other men angry. I was tempted to tell him that we took such things seriously even in Plataea, but he was young and earnest and I merely pressed his hand.
‘Will you race tomorrow, or use a charioteer?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Sir, I would rather come in sixth in control of my own team than win the laurel with another’s hands on the reins.’
Cimon applauded. ‘That’s a proper spirit,’ he said. ‘If you go on in this vein, I’ll have to cheer for you and not for Athens.’
While he was perched on my couch, I leaned forward. ‘Any idea who hit you with a sling stone?’
Spartans are dreadful liars. He looked away and said, ‘No!’ and hung his head.
‘Have you spoken to the queen?’ I asked him.
He nodded. ‘That is a Spartan matter,’ he said stiffly, and rose from my couch.
I waved goodbye and let him go. His friends bowed respectfully — oh, it is such a pleasure to be a famous man! — and withdrew.
Later, at my own fire, I asked Ka to make some enquiries, and I raised the whole matter with Moire and Harpagos and Paramanos, all of whom agreed. I suggested to them that it was in our interest to figure out who had done it.
Paramanos’s beard had a lot of white in it, suddenly. He looked old and wise. He sat back, accepted more wine from his own boy, and met my eye. ‘Twenty thousand suspects,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘More like fifty thousand,’ I said. ‘Slaves can use a sling, too. Even girls.’
They all shook their heads like the chorus in a tragedy.
‘On a positive note, whoever did it is probably within half a mile of us right now,’ I said. ‘We know a few things. The guilty person was up very early, and went out along the river — that has to limit our potential group. I assume the attack was paid for by people who want Persia to triumph — or who want Sparta to submit.’
Harpagos grinned like the Chian fisherman he really was. ‘Or someone who wants Athens to be defeated,’ he said.
Moire laughed. ‘Well — that’s about everyone here.’
I already knew who I suspected. But I had no desire to poison their efforts — I knew that none of my captains could resist such a challenge, and I knew that all of them had rich resources in friends and business partners and foreign contacts.
Before I went and rolled into my cloak — alone, again, damn it — I had a whispered conversation with Sekla, Brasidas and Alexandros. We made our plans — to protect Polypeithes. It was — and is — funny to consider the four of us plotting to protect a Spartan, but something told me that not all Spartans were united in this.
In the morning, I took a staff and went for a long walk. I went up into the hills and talked to some sheep and came home by a roundabout course intended to put me on the plain in time to meet the Queen of Sparta out for her morning ride. I am as male as most men, and sometimes more so, and I won’t deny that I looked forward to seeing her, but I had some business to transact, as well.
I saw her in the distance, already done and turning back, and I came down into the valley to meet her, as if by chance. I waved and she rode to my side.
‘Good morning. You look like. . one of the more equestrian goddesses.’ I smiled too broadly, and she frowned.
‘Wouldn’t it be a better compliment if you named one?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No — that would only offer you more opportunity to disclaim the compliment and the giver. Aphrodite? No. Hera? Too presumptuous. Athena? Un-Spartan. Artemis?’ I shrugged. ‘In truth, you do not remind me of Artemis.’
Gorgo laughed. ‘You are not like most Greek men,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘I travel. Listen, o Queen. Do you have an idea who tried to kill Polypeithes?’
She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Will he try again?’ I asked.
She shrugged.
‘You don’t care?’ I asked.
She looked away. ‘I cannot be seen to care,’ she said. ‘For some very complicated reasons that have little to do with the matter at hand.’
I nodded, although in truth I didn’t understand. ‘Adamenteis of Corinth?’ I guessed.
She blushed. Almost all of her.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
I shrugged. ‘I don’t, but I saw the look he gave your chariot the other day, I saw his charioteer talking to Ka and asked Ka to ascertain a few things — and I saw the glare he levelled at your husband.’
‘He hates Themistocles ten times as much as he hates my husband,’ she spat. ‘He wants his team to win any way he can arrange it, and he has accepted a fat bribe from the Medes.’
I nodded. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘My second question is purely personal. Why do you want me to take your heralds to Susa?’
She looked at me as if I were a fool. ‘So that they won’t be killed, of course,’ she said. She smiled — it changed her expression from serene self-possession to a nymph-like wonder. ‘Do you really think that a pair of Spartan gentlemen who can make themselves disliked merely by walking are going to be a triumph at the court of the Great King? They are my friends, and my cousins. They are my husband’s friends. They are making a brave sacrifice for our city — I’d like to keep them from paying too high a price.’
I looked into those laughing, nymph-like eyes, and somehow failed to say ‘no’.
By the time we were entering the main valley, Gorgo and I, it was plain that something had happened at the edge of the encampment. Gorgo raced away — for the Spartan tents. I ran as best I could.
The cluster of men in the early light proved to be gathered around a corpse — a dead man with three feet of black arrow protruding from his head. He was quite dead. A pair of Olympian priests were already mourning him, and complaining that the blood shattered the truce and defiled the games. Even while I stood there, more priests came, and some of the judges. They were angry — even fearful.
A killing in the Olympics was no small matter. The impiety — the sacrilege — was so intense that men in the crowd spoke of the games being cancelled.
No one knew who the dead man was until one of the Argosian trainers identified him as one of the Corinthian grooms.
I said as little as possible and kept moving after that, because the dead man had a heavy south Egyptian arrow in him, and it virtually had to be one of Ka’s. I jogged back to my camp, cursing my wounds, and found Sekla directing operations.
‘I’m releasing the last two amphorae of wine,’ he said. ‘I’ve sent Ka to the coast to buy more.’
I understood immediately — Ka was out of camp and thus difficult to catch or question.