Sacred Games by Gary Corby Read Free Book Online

destination now. A group of men clustered among the trees, easy to spot because two or three carried torches despite the moonlight.
    I discerned a lump on the ground. The lump became a man, the man a body, lying all too still.
    A body large enough to look like a mound.
    A man with his back to us turned as we stepped into what I now realized was a small clearing.
    “You’re too late,” said the Chief Judge of the Games. “Arakos has died.”

    T HE FLICKER OF the torchlight across his face made the Chief Judge look like one of the Furies, and he was approximately as angry. He held in his right hand the badge of his office: a long staff, which forked into a Y, and this he stamped into the ground.
    “Who are you?” he demanded of me.
    “I am Nicolaos son of Sophroniscus, of Athens,” I said.
    “This is the man Timodemus requested, Exelon,” said one the guards. “You said to bring him.”
    “Oh. So I did.” Exelon the Chief Judge studied me for a long moment. “You’re a young man. Why?”
    “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll grow out of it.”
    “I mean, why did Timodemus call for you? Why not a responsible older man?”
    “Is Timodemus also dead, sir?” I asked, anxious for my friend. “Is he hurt? Where is he?”
    I looked around. I counted at least thirteen men within the clearing, in various states of visibility, depending on their proximity to the torches and their obscurity behind the thick vegetation. The moon was bright above us, so that the clearing itself was well lit. Yet the coverage of leaves upon the surrounding trees was such that in some parts of the perimeter I couldn’t see if anyone was there. The body lay in one of those shadows.
    The Chief Judge of the Games said, “You are here at the request of the accused. It seems only fair to give him a chance to explain, if he can.”
    “Timodemus is accused?”
    At that moment Pericles bustled into the clearing, accompanied by One-Eye, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I agreed with Exelon the Chief Judge on one point: this was no place for a young man to represent Athens.
    “One-Eye’s told me what happened.” The usually elegant Pericles was unkempt by his high standards. His hair was uncombed. He wore no himation—Pericles owned one made of the finest Milesian wool, and he normally would not be seen deadout of doors without it. He did wear a formal chiton, but it was smudged and crumpled. Was it possible that Pericles, like any normal man, dropped his clothes on the floor when he went to bed? He’d forgotten to put on sandals.
    Exelon banged his forked staff on the ground again and said, “I blame Athens for this disaster, Pericles. Your man attacked Arakos this morning, and now Arakos is murdered.”
    “A scuffle in the morning does not necessarily mean murder in the evening,” Pericles said.
    “There’s more,” said the Chief Judge. He moved a step to the side.
    Over the shoulder of the Judge I saw Timodemus with his head bowed and a guard to either side of him. The guards held his arms tight. It was the second relief for me for that night. I’d been afraid that Timodemus too lay dead or dying.
    Timodemus looked up at that moment, and our eyes met. His were unreadable. The expression on his face was identical to the one he wore in the pankration, the same expression I’d seen right before we’d fought that very morning.
    Pericles said, “What do you have to say about this, Timodemus?”
    “There’s nothing I can say,” Timodemus said. “I didn’t kill him. I haven’t even seen Arakos since this morning.”
    I said to the Chief Judge, “Did you find Timodemus here?”
    “Close by, in the women’s camp. Hiding.”
    “Hiding?” That didn’t sound like Timodemus.
    “Guards found him in the tent of Klymene, the High Priestess of Demeter,” the Chief Judge said grimly.
    Uh-oh. The Priestess of Demeter was an integral part of the Sacred Games; the contests could not be held without her. If Timodemus had hurt or polluted the