Killer of Men by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

more cups, including the fanciest of the lot, with a ploughman, for Epictetus. And he made a Corinthian helmet – simple in design but perfect in execution. Even in the summer of my seventh year, I knew perfection in metal when I saw it.
    Pater had no patience in him to teach the young, but he let me put it on my head. He laughed. ‘You’ll be a big man, Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘But not yet.’
    He made bronze knives for me and for my brother, fine ones with some work on the backbone of the blade and horn scales on either side of the grip.
    I worked like a slave that summer, because we were poor and we had just Bion’s family as slaves – and Bion was far too skilled to waste his time putting air on the fire or punching holes in leather, or any of the other donkey work. And though my brother was too small to plough, he ploughed anyway, with help from Bion’s son Hermogenes. Together they made a man.
    Occasionally men like Myron would appear out of the air and take a turn at the plough, or repair a wheel, or perhaps sow a field. We had good neighbours.
    When I wasn’t in the forge, I was in the fields too. I loved that farm. Our land was at the top of a hill – a low hill, but it gave a view from the house. In the paved yard, where men stood to talk, you could see mighty Cithaeron rising like a slope-shouldered god, and you could see the walls of our city just across a little valley. Up on Cithaeron, we could see the hero’s tomb and the sacred spring, and if we looked towards Plataea, we could see the Temple of Hera clear as a lamp in a dark room. The trees of Hera’s grove were like spears pointing up the hill at our little acropolis, even though they were stades away. We had an apple tree at the top of the olive grove, and I went up and trimmed the new growth in the spring and again in the autumn. We had grapes on the hillside, and when we had no other work to do, Hermogenes and Chalkidis and I would build trellises to carry the vines.
    There was a small wood by the stream at the base of the hill, and the old people had dug a fish pond. I could pretend that we were great lords, with our own hill fort and our own woods for hunting, although we didn’t have an animal larger than a rabbit to hunt. But there’s no memory dearer to me than walking home from the agora in Plataea with Bion – we must have just sold some wine, or perhaps some oil, and I was allowed to go to town – walking home past the turning where our road went down to the stream and then up the hill to our house, and thinking, this is my land. My father is king here.
    Most nights, unless Mater was raving drunk, we’d meet in the courtyard after dinner and watch the sun set. We had a swing in the courtyard olive tree. Pater showed me the grooves in the branch that bore it, sunk into the wood the way chariot wheels will cut ruts even in stone. The swing had been on that tree for many lives of men.
    It may sound dull to you, dear, but to watch a sunset from a swing on your own land is a very good thing.
    It must have been after the festival of Demeter – because all the harvest was in – that Epictetus arrived with his wagons. He had two. No one else we knew had two wagons.
    ‘Well?’ he said, when his wagons were in the yard.
    Pater and Bion had all the bronze laid out, so that our courtyard looked as if it had been touched by King Midas.
    Epictetus walked around, handled everything and finally nodded sharply. He picked up his cup – snatched it up – and then looked at Pater for confirmation that it was, indeed, his.
    ‘Don’t get many requests for a plough and oxen,’ Pater said.
    Epictetus looked at it, then hefted it in his hand.
    Bion stepped forward and poured wine into it. ‘You have to feel it full,’ he said with a smile.
    Epictetus poured a libation and drank. ‘Good cup,’ he said. ‘Pay the man, boy,’ he said to his son.
    ‘I’d rather have it in bronze, from Athens,’ Pater said.
    ‘Less a quarter for cartage?’