The Last King of Lydia Page 5

  In the morning, a new decree was announced in the city. Croesus commanded that all iron weapons outside of the armouries were to be taken from the men’s quarters and hung up in the women’s quarters. All the armouries were to have their guard doubled, and no weapons were to leave them without his permission. Soon after, the palace guards were rearmed with bronze weapons. The guards complained to their captains when the soldiers of the city jeered at their inferior, effeminate weaponry, but the edict stood.

  The fear was choking at first. For weeks afterwards, he would spend much of his free time in one armoury or another, touching each spear and sword and arrowhead in turn, trying to locate his dream self, his iron double. But, gradually and inevitably, the fear receded. He had been granted a vision, and surely no vision would come without the ability to change that future. The Gods would not be that cruel.

  The absence of iron weapons soon became nothing more than another strange custom of the Lydian court. Rumour spread in the neighbouring countries that it was an aesthetic choice, that Croesus, in his vanity and his love of glittering wealth, found bronze more pleasing to his eyes than iron. The king enjoyed this rumour, and began to spread it himself.

  In time, he almost came to believe it.

  5

  The priest brought two sets of hands together, pronounced the old words, and they were married. The watching crowd cried out, and Croesus tried to give his voice to the celebration. But no words came, only air – a soft sigh of relief.

  Five years had passed, five years in which Lydia had grown stronger. Tribe and city, island and township – all people west of the Halys river soon came under the power of Croesus. Some fought or endured siege for a time, others surrendered as soon as the flag of bull and lion was seen on the horizon. After the wars, the eastern tribes brought Croesus offerings of honey, necklaces of gold beads, patterned silver bracelets. The Ionians gave him red wine in black and brown amphorae, the black the colour of Nubian skin, the brown the colour of wet earth, the deep red wine like blood and water.

  Five years of conquest and prosperity, and only now had his son chosen to take a wife.

  He had made countless introductions to the daughters of the Lydian nobility, but his son, smiling shyly, had rejected each one. Croesus could have forced his son to respect his wishes, but found he did not have the heart for it. He wanted more than anything for his son to be married, but, it seemed, was powerless to bring it to pass. The king waited, and each day he woke and prayed for his son to fall in love.

  He looked around the temple, at his family. Atys sat drinking wine with the other young men as they pledged countless toasts to the health of the new couple. Occasionally one of them would lean in close to Atys to whisper something in his ear. Obscene suggestions, judging by the way Atys blushed and shook his head. Amongst them, drinking quietly, was Adrastus, the man who had thrown himself on Croesus’s mercy five years before. Croesus remembered how the priests had poured pigs’ blood over Adrastus’s hands, reading the spooling gore as it ran down to the floor and pronouncing the omens to be good, the blood guilt cleansed. The priests had received a gold statue four cubits high from Croesus in return. Good omens did not go unrewarded, and Adrastus had been taken into the royal household without complaint.

  He looked at the women. Danae moved through the crowd, mollifying disappointed fathers, entertaining visiting ambassadors and diplomats. He looked at Iva, the woman his son had chosen at last to be his wife. She had a delicate beauty, and it was not difficult to see why Atys had been drawn to her, though she was thinner than Croesus would have liked, and shy too. She was the daughter of a minor nobleman, and it was a match that gave no political advantage, but to the king that no longer mattered. He saw Maia sitting with the new bride, talking quietly. He supposed she was telling Iva of what would happen in the night ahead, telling her not to be afraid. Beside them both, Gyges sat with a bewildered expression on his face, looking in on a strange ritual from this other world. He had, at least, understood enough to remain quiet during the ceremony. The king wanted no ill omens on this day of all days.

  Croesus turned away from the wedding crowd, and found Isocrates at his side, waiting silently for orders.

  ‘Isocrates.’

  ‘Master.’

  ‘Everything is well with our guests? No trouble from the Ionians?’

  ‘They seem to be behaving themselves. Do not worry, all is as it should be. It is a fine wedding.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose it is.’ Croesus smiled.

  ‘You are happy, master?’

  ‘Relieved. It’s a difficult thing, having one’s happiness depend on those one cannot control. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, master.’

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t.’ Croesus turned away, but did not dismiss his slave. ‘I’d like you to do some investigating for me.’ He gestured to the milling crowd. ‘Talk to the Athenians. They have a small delegation here. Afterwards, send our messengers and emissaries to the city.’

  ‘Yes, master. And what am I to enquire about? The state of the Athenian army perhaps? Or their relations with Sparta, with Delphi?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. I want you to find out about Tellus.’

  ‘Tellus?’

  ‘Yes.’ Croesus looked closely at his slave. Few would have noticed a change in the man, for he had given no obvious outward sign. The slightest tensing of the slave’s body, a particular flatness to the eyes – it took a man as familiar with him as Croesus to notice this response. ‘You have heard of him?’ the king said.

  ‘I do not think so,’ Isocrates replied. ‘Whom do you mean?’

  ‘A man of some fame. Dead now, or so I have heard. Killed in battle against Eleusis. Solon spoke of him. It shouldn’t be hard to learn more of him. Not for a man of your talents.’

  Isocrates bowed low to hide his eyes. ‘As you wish.’ He turned to walk away.

  ‘Isocrates?’

  He looked back at his king. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are sure you have not heard of Tellus?’

  ‘No, master,’ Isocrates said.

  It was the first lie he had ever told his king.

  6

  Far north of Sardis, the woods of Mysia sprawled across land that lay beneath high mountains. They were dense, broken only by the path of the great Macestus river, and the occasional natural clearing where the trees would not grow. It was in one of these rare clearings, at the same moment that Atys’s marriage was taking place in the great city to the south, that a hunter lay on a bloodied patch of earth. He lay, quiet and still, and waited to die.

  It was a monster, larger than any boar he had ever seen or heard of before. They had heard the rumours, he and his friends, and had gone out into the woods to hunt it. To protect their lands. In pursuit of glory. They were all experienced hunters, careful and skilled. It hadn’t mattered. The boar had killed them all.

  He had set the spear perfectly as the boar charged at him. Again and again, he re-created the moment in his mind, trying to think what he could have done differently, but there was nothing. The spear had been positioned without error, but as soon as the point touched flesh, the shaft had shivered and snapped as though the beast’s hide were made from stone. It had carried on its charge at full force, and for an instant, when it was only a few spans away from him, he had seen himself reflected in the boar’s eyes. He had seen his death there. Then the sharp pain as the tusk entered his stomach, the taste of wet dirt in his mouth as he rolled against the ground again and again until he came to rest against a tree.

  Then, he lay still and listened to his friends as they died.

  He was alone now. Distant but growing closer, he could hear the thud of the boar’s hooves against the grass, the angry snorts that escaped its nostrils. He had pulled himself upright, his back against the tree. His skin was cold, cold enough to make him shiver in the heat of the midday sun, but he could feel a thick warmth seeping down into his groin and to the top of his thighs. Hesitant, h
e reached down to touch his wound. His fingers brushed against a hot wet coil. A piece of himself exposed to the air, and he pulled his hand back as though it had been burned, and turned his head away. He didn’t want to look at his wound.

  His eyes fell on the high mountain that loomed in the distance. He wondered if that was where the boar had come from. He had heard it said that gods lived there.

  As he lay dying, he hoped that the boar was a god. It would be a good thing, he thought, as the padding and snorting of the boar grew louder behind him, to have been killed by a god.

  Again, he smelled the stench of the boar. He felt its hot breath against his neck.

  Rumour travels faster than horses. By the time a delegation from Mysia had arrived in Sardis to plead for help, the city was already alive with stories of the boar.

  It had killed a dozen men already, it was said, and every village and town for a hundred stades around lived in fear of it. Crops remained unplanted, and animals wandered wild in the fields whilst their keepers remained barricaded indoors. It was like a monster out of the old myths, and the people of Sardis argued endlessly as to whether it was merely an overgrown monstrosity or the child of a god. Auguries were taken by priests throughout the city to try and provide some answer to the mystery, but their results were inconclusive and contradictory, and each night the air in the city was alive with the scent of burning fat from a dozen different temples. The stray monster of a distant land had come to obsess the Lydian people. Perhaps, invincible as their empire was, they wanted an enemy to be afraid of, a threat against which to unite. If so, they found it in the beast haunting the woods in the north.

  After the Mysians arrived at court, Croesus let them make their plea in front of a public crowd. After they had finished speaking, he threw up a hand to quiet the room.

  ‘My honourable subjects,’ he said. ‘I grieve for the sons that you have lost, and am dismayed that your people have been reduced to fear and terror. No doubt the Gods have seen our prosperity, the great wealth and strength of our kingdom, and have chosen to test us.

  ‘You all remember the story of Heracles, do you not? He fought against the Erymanthian boar. Perhaps this boar we hunt is a descendent of that monster. Heracles captured the boar, but we live in harsher times, and we will not be so merciful. This monster’s head will hang from the gate of the palace, and his pierced hide will become one of my greatest trophies.

  ‘I will dispatch my own hunters to kill the beast. Any man of Lydia may join them, as servant or huntsman. The man who strikes the killing blow will be awarded ten talents of gold, with another talent for each man who proves himself valiant. We will end this terror, and our country will be at peace once again.’

  Croesus paused for a moment, looking out over the crowd to judge the impact of his speech. He could feel, in the air, the particular silence that the actor and the politician both crave. Whatever happened next, whether the boar were taken or not, his part in the drama would not be faulted.

  ‘Who will go with them?’ he said.

  A voice, familiar and strong, came from the crowd. Croesus recognised its sound and tone, but his mind refused to believe it at first. Then a man pushed to the front and advanced beyond the others to stand alone, and the king could deny the truth no longer. It was Atys.

  His son had grown into a striking man, skilled with horse and spear, and yet Croesus could not help but see a child standing there. And he fancied that in his son’s eyes he could still see a child’s desire, the desire to win his father’s pride.

  Croesus said nothing for a time, his face impassive. Several times he parted his lips to speak, but each time he swallowed his words. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘You shall not go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It would not be fair to our people, to risk their future in this way.’

  ‘I will be protected by the very finest, travelling through the lands of our allies. There will be no danger.’

  The king shook his head. In the past, whatever challenge confronted him, the words had always come without effort, entire speeches conjured from nothing. Now, no matter how eloquently he tried to shape his thoughts, they distilled themselves down to a single word.

  ‘No,’ he said again, not much above a whisper.

  ‘Why,’ said Atys, ‘then I shall sneak from the palace at night to join the hunters.’

  ‘My son—’

  Atys turned to the people who packed the hall. ‘What do you say, people of Lydia. I will be guided by your will. Shall I go with them?’ A roar broke out from the crowd, loud enough to fill the throne room, and Atys turned to his father, triumphant. The crowd roared again, surging forwards past the guards towards the prince. They brushed the backs of their hands against his hair, placed their fingertips to his forehead and the nape of his neck. A few were bold enough to clasp his hand, all hoping for a touch of their champion.

  Feeling the hunger of the crowd, knowing that now, truly, it could not be undone, Croesus descended the steps of his throne and advanced into the mob. The people parted before him, and he embraced his son tightly.

  ‘Atys, my brave son, let me congratulate you.’ His voice dropped. ‘But in private.’

  ‘Father—’

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘My father—’

  ‘No, don’t tell me. I know it all already.’ Croesus paused to breathe, his face white with anger. ‘You think it a sport to humiliate your father.’

  ‘I meant no disrespect.’

  ‘It was very clever. Cornering me like that. Very sharp.’ He lifted a finger and held it in front of his son’s face. ‘But don’t ever do it again. Ever.’

  Atys bowed his head and said nothing.

  ‘Why do this?’ Croesus said, his anger ebbing.

  ‘For glory, father. For the glory of it.’

  ‘Of course. Why else?’ Croesus hesitated. ‘I am afraid for you, Atys. I am afraid.’

  Atys nodded. ‘There will be danger. But the prize is worth the risk.’

  ‘You talk like an epic’s hero. This isn’t you. Talk like my son.’ He paused. ‘Stay here.’

  Atys said nothing for a moment, weighing his answer carefully, the way he had ever since he was a boy. ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘when I was young, when we spoke in the garden after you had seen that man from Athens? Solon was his name.’

  ‘Yes. I remember.’

  ‘I said I must have been the happiest of us all. Because I had you as a father.’

  ‘Atys—’

  ‘How can I become a king like you when you hide me away in the palace like a woman? When you make me run from the sight of iron because of some dream?’

  Croesus did not speak for some time. He had told his son of the dream, soon after iron had been banished from the palace, and as a boy Atys had believed it with the trust of a child for a father who cannot be wrong. Now, as a man, he did not. ‘Do not mock my dream,’ Croesus said.

  ‘Then think it through. This prophecy is a blessing. I cannot be killed by this boar.’ Atys tried a smile. ‘He isn’t going to come to battle with spear and shield, is he? That’s what your dream means, that I cannot be killed by a beast, no matter how terrifying it is. Please, let me go.’

  The king leaned in close to his son, and stared at him in silence for a time. ‘I hate that you put me through this,’ he said. ‘I hate you for this.’ He turned his back on Atys. ‘You may leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry I displease you, Father.’ Croesus could hear the pain in his son’s voice, but he would not turn around.

  ‘Go then. And send Adrastus to me.’

  He waited for a time, his mind empty, and listened to his son leave. Then he heard the sound of another pair of feet against the stone, and the soft noise of Adrastus’s robe as he bowed.

  ‘Adrastus,’ he said, ‘you did not volunteer for the hunt?’

  ‘No. A man with my poor luck has no place on a venture like this. Have I displeased you, my king?’

  ‘No,
no.’ Croesus voice grew hesitant, absent. ‘Have I been kind to you, Adrastus?’

  ‘My lord, you have given me back my life.’

  ‘I see.’ Croesus dropped his head and looked at the ground. ‘I think you must be the most loyal man I know, since you owe me the most. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Go with the hunters, Adrastus. Protect my son.’

  Once again, Adrastus bowed low. ‘With my life, my lord.’

  7

  Late at night on the plains of the north, the hunters gathered around a fire. They passed around a heavy wineskin, trading stories and crude jests. They were not too crude – Atys’s presence tempered their language. They sat and talked and looked at the stars for some sign or omen that might guide them, for there are few who need the luck of the Gods more than hunters.

  After the wineskin had made its way around the circle several times, one of the men produced a small skin drum and began to beat a syncopated rhythm. The others, yelping and whooping, staggered to their feet and began to dance. Atys smiled and waved them off as they implored him to join them, but insistent hands dragged him up, and soon he was moved amongst them, his quick feet picking up the step.

  The drum sang faster and faster, and the men danced with it, all knowing that the first man to stop dancing would be no man at all. They expected Atys would be the first to cry off, but he was strong and determined, and kept up with the best of them. They danced at a furious pace, until finally one man’s legs shook and gave way and he fell to ground. The others collapsed only a moment later, laughing and howling insults at the man who had fallen first. The drummer slowed his rhythm, allowing them to recover. Soon, the beat would bring them all to their feet again.

  Out on the edge of the camp, Adrastus sat alone. He watched the dancing, waiting for the noise to die down so that he could return to the fire and sleep in the warmth, for he knew he would not be welcome at the camp until then. He looked out to the east, towards Phrygia. The distant home he would never see again.