Memnon by Scott Oden Read Free Book Online

The face of an old soldier stared back at him, his oft-broken nose and gaping eye socket the trophies of long-ago campaigns. Memnon closed his eyes, his shoulders bowed as relief turned to sadness, then guilt.
    “I’m sorry, old one,” he whispered. “Be at peace.”
    A commotion caught Memnon’s attention. He glanced up as a half-dozen men barreled through the now useless barricade. A pair of them held torches aloft; the rest carried makeshift weapons—oar shafts fixed with iron spikes, harpoons, and sickles of hammered bronze. Seeing Memnon crouched over a corpse, they took him to be one of their own. One of them lingered, a toothless jackal stinking of piss and rotten onions.
    “Hurry!” he said. “Hurry, before we’re too late!”
    “Too late for what?” Memnon rose.
    “Have you not heard? A bounty’s been offered: ten
drachmas
for the right hand of every democrat, a hundred for the head of the man who leads them! Hurry,” he said. “They’re about to break through!”
    Memnon ground his jaw in fury, but followed in their wake. Others, too, joined their cortege as it gained momentum. Excited, they brandished their hammers and cleavers and chattered in low voices. As they crested a final ridge, Memnon saw their destination. He slowed, letting the others jostle past him.
Zeus Savior! Father!
    From this distance, Timocrates’ home resembled a besieged fortress rather than a villa. An army of scavengers and riffraff clogged the street, each man hoping to claim the bounty the oligarchs had placed on Timocrates. Torches flared, casting bizarre shadows across the makeshift siege lines. Lining the walls, a handful of loyal democrats sent flight after flight of arrows down into the press of bodies clamoring at the gate. In response, slingers rose from the mob, their lead bullets punching into the heads and chests of the defenders.
    Nothing he had read in the past—not Homer or Herodotus or Thucydides—offered even the slightest amount of insight into what his next move should be. Patron was right. This was a fool’s errand. Still … still …
    Memnon left the street, crouching just inside the portico of a
nymphaeum,
and watched the chaos swirling around his father’s house. He studied the mob, noting how they formed up and charged the gates, how they fell back and regrouped into their ragged platoons, their resolve fueled by the promise of gold. For his theory to be correct, Memnon knew there had to be a rhythm to their actions, a sign that, despite having a hundred heads, this Hydra possessed a single controlling intellect. If he could identify it, he could strike at it. Slay the brain and perhaps the Hydra’s heads would turn on each other, providing enough of a respite for his father to be spirited away.
    A voice bawled orders; a fresh assault wave hustled toward the gate, this time preceded by men bearing improvised body shields. Memnon traced the voice to its source, spotting a burly figure standing outside the house neighboring his fathers, surrounded by a cadre of his peers. Most were oligarchs, but a few moved with the confidence of trained soldiers. Mercenaries, Carians probably, brought over by Philolaus to enforce the edicts of his new regime. The son of Timocrates proffered a thin, grim smile. There was his target.
    He would need to get closer.
    Leaving his perch in front of the
nymphaeum,
Memnon used the confusion in the street as camouflage to circle around to his father’s house—and to the men overseeing this piecemeal offensive. The villa adjacent to Timocrates’ estate belonged to a man called Brygus, a political dilettante, and the youngest son of the renowned shipwright Chaeremon. An amiable man, Brygus nevertheless preferred the company of his roses to that of other people. His trellises, with their satiny red and yellow blooms, dwarfed those of his neighbors and were a constant source of pride for a man otherwise unremarkable. Memnon vaulted the low wall bounding Brygus’s property