Sacred Games Read online

  But I should not have been surprised. Sport is the one true god for the men of the genos Timonidae. Timo’s family had a long tradition of pankration. His father, Timonous One-Eye, and his uncle Festianos and his grandfather had all been experts. Among them, they claimed four victories at the Pythian Games, eight at the Isthmian Games, and seven at the Nemean Games, one of which Timo had collected himself. It was an extraordinary tally for any family, but none of them had ever claimed the greatest prize on earth: an olive wreath at the Sacred Games in Olympia. Timo’s father was desperate to see his son crowned a victor.

  I watched unnoticed from the doorway. Timodemus paced back and forth, swinging his arms and jumping about on the training patch.

  The gymnasium at Olympia was a temporary affair made of new-painted wood. There’s no point in a permanent structure when it’ll only be used once every four years. Instead, they use rough planks that are strong enough to last the few days that it will see use and don’t bother with the finishing touches, such as decorative woodwork and frescoes, that you’d see in a city gym.

  The design was the same as you’d find at any gym in any city in Hellas: four walls enclosing a square. The square on the inside formed four porticoes, well-roofed to keep off the sun, with alcoves set aside for masseur tables and places to sit where a friend might rub down an athlete with olive oil. I noticed there were even spaces built into the walls to hold the oil flasks, and hung from hooks were bronze strigils with which to scrape away old oil and dead, dirty skin from the sweaty athletes. Like all gyms, the center was open to the sky, and it was in the sunny middle that Timo paced. The middle ground was dotted with nine training patches of sand, each the right size for an Olympic contest, where the boxers, wrestlers, and pankratists could practice their martial skills. I wondered how the athletes could stand the new-paint smell of red ocher and lime. The builders must have finished mere days before the Games began.

  Timo’s trainer and uncle sat to the side on a bench and watched him pace off his agitation. His father, One-Eye, stood beside the practice ground. The grim expression on his face said it all, but if I needed any confirmation there were his words, repeated in an endless stream. “Idiot. Moron. What were you thinking? No, you weren’t thinking, were you? Idiot. Moron …”

  One-Eye stopped when he saw me at the entrance. This was the father of my oldest friend. He’d seen Timo and me play together when we were children.

  “Nicolaos,” he said. “We haven’t seen you in months.”

  “Hello, sir. You and Timo have been busy with training for the Games, and I’ve been busy, too. I came to see how Timo was.”

  “As you see. As stupid as ever. We will keep him here until this matter is resolved. I leave you now. I must plead with the judges not to disqualify my idiot son.”

  “Could that happen?” I asked in alarm. Timodemus had spent his life preparing for these Games. More than his life: he was born to be here. To be excluded now would be worse than disaster.

  One-Eye turned his single, searing eye on me. It was like facing an angry Cyclops. “What do you think? Timodemus broke the Sacred Oath where thousands of men could see him. I’ll beg, but even so, to dissuade them would probably require the honeyed tongue of Apollo …” He trailed off and stared at me. “Here now, you know this man Pericles, don’t you?”

  “Yes, One-Eye, I do.” In recent times, Pericles had risen to great prominence as the most influential statesman in Athens, largely on account of his honeyed tongue. It was he who had commissioned my first job as an investigator. We had something of an uneasy relationship.

  “You’re a friend. You have influence with him.”

  “Not exactly—”

  “Pericles will help me, won’t he, if I mention your name? Yes, of course he’ll help.”

  “I’m more like an acquaintance,” I said, suddenly worried. Somehow this had gotten out of hand. “One-Eye, with the best will in the world I can’t ask Pericles—”

  “You want to help Timodemus, don’t you?” He said it as if I’d suggested otherwise. I would have been offended if I weren’t worried for Timo’s future.

  “Of course I do, One-Eye,” I hurried to assure him.

  “Then you can have no possible objection to recommending me to Pericles.” His tone was commanding.

  If I demurred, it would sound as if I was scared to help. If I said yes, it would look to Pericles as if I’d claimed the power to command his support.

  Pericles would ignore any reference of mine anyway. He knew my true value for political influence. It came to about half an obol.

  On the other hand, it couldn’t hurt if One-Eye mentioned that he knew me. I could explain to Pericles later what had happened.

  I said, “No, but … well, certainly if it will help Timo.”

  “Good. I’ll tell him that.” One-Eye strode out of the gymnasium without a thank-you or a backward glance. I’d never known a man more difficult to refuse.

  Timo walked across to where I stood and said quietly, “Nicolaos.” He hung his head in shame.

  “Timo. What happened back there? What in Hades was that all about?”

  “You saw. That bastard Arakos kept baiting me until I reacted. He did it the whole time we walked in the procession from Elis.”

  “You know him?”

  “We fought last year for the crown at the Nemean Games. I won; he didn’t.”

  “What did he say to anger you so?” For all he was a master of the martial art of pankration, my friend Timodemus was the mildest of men—unless he was angered, at which point he became one of the Furies.

  Timodemus hesitated. “I’d rather not say.”

  It must have been something very embarrassing to Timodemus, because it could hardly be a secret; the men around them would have heard every word.

  “So you might face him again. Are you worried he’ll tear you apart? The man’s built like a boulder.”

  “Timodemus has nothing to fear from Arakos,” a voice beyond us said. This was Dromeus, from the city of Mantinea, Timo’s trainer, who himself had won the crown for the pankration at the seventy-fifth Olympiad, and now was hired by One-Eye at enormous expense to ensure his son won it at the eightieth. He was a big man, but more than that, he was a wide one. What you noticed most about Dromeus was the way the muscles bulged across his arms and shoulders. I made a mental note not to annoy him.

  “As the young idiot says, he faced Arakos at the Nemean Games and won handily,” Dromeus said.

  “But Arakos must be twice his size,” I objected.

  Dromeus and Timo had a good laugh at my expense.

  “Big means slow, Nico,” my friend explained. “Arakos can flail about all he likes. If I dodge the blows, all he does is tire himself out.”

  “Quite right. The trick against Arakos is don’t let him close on you. Avoid the grapple.” Dromeus glared at Timo. “This idiot has much more to fear from himself. Timodemus is the only man who can beat Timodemus.”

  “It wasn’t Timo’s fault,” I said. “The Spartan provoked him.”

  “Rubbish. The first lesson of any serious fighter is self-control. The moment you react to taunts, you hand control to your opponent, and then you lose. I see you’re not a pankratist,” he said, looking me up and down. “Pity.”

  “Me?” I said, surprised. “No. Why?”

  “Timodemus needs to fight out his anger. We’ll have to wait until the contest for the heralds is over and then see if anyone who can fight is willing to spar with a man who’s on the verge of being banned from the Games.” Dromeus glared at Timodemus again. “I doubt anyone will take the risk.”

  I said, “Let me do it.” Anything to help my friend.

  Dromeus laughed. “You just admitted you can’t fight.”

  “I can fight.”

  “Not the way you have to if you want to match an expert.”

  “Timodemus and I used to spar when we were boys.”

  Dromeus blinked. “You did, did you?” He glanced at Timo,
who nodded.

  Timodemus said, “Nico, are you all right with this?”

  “Sure I am.”

  Dromeus the trainer considered me like a horse for sale. “You’d be doing him a favor, and it’s only for exercise, not even a real fight.”

  I wore an exomis, the short tunic favored by artisans because it leaves the arms and legs free. But even that’s more than a pankration fighter wears. I pulled the exomis over my head and dropped it to the ground. Timodemus was already naked. He was smaller than me and thinner, but what there was of him was all muscle and speed. He stood at the edge of the ring, his face a polite, unsmiling mask, seemingly bored, perhaps even arrogant. I’d seen him wear the same face many times before, whenever a fight was to begin and he was about to demolish someone.

  Then it occurred to me Timo was not merely my friend but also a highly trained machine for hurting people. All of a sudden I was nervous. I told myself it was a friendly fight and jumped from spot to spot, flexing my arms as if that would somehow help me.

  A few men had trickled in as we spoke, like me not interested in the heralds. They’d come to the gymnasium to watch the athletes exercise, to compare the form of this one versus that, and no doubt to lay a few side wagers. More than one of these spectators glanced at Timo with obvious curiosity. They were bursting to ask him what had happened on the steps of the Bouleterion. None dared approach him, but when they saw a practice fight about to begin, they quickly crowded around the border of the training patch to watch.

  Two of these men offered to act as referees. They seemed to know what they were about, so Dromeus nodded. Each picked up a short whip, walked around us, and called, “Start.”

  Timodemus and I advanced to the middle of the ring, crouched low, knees bent. He pushed one straight hand forward for attack and kept the other behind for defense. His left foot was forward and his right behind; from that position he could advance quickly. I kept both hands in line, hoping to deflect a blow and riposte.

  I knew Timo liked to attack, and it came almost immediately: a blade-like hand slashed at my face. It was almost perfect for my plan. I blocked the attack with my open left palm and grabbed his wrist with my right. I exulted; his attacking hand was out of action already, and I had the better of a top pankratist. All I had to do was hit him with my left, and I had plenty of options. I could punch his nose or his throat, or grab his balls and twist.

  This was the pankration: the roughest, toughest, most brutal, and frequently the most fatal of the Olympic sports. There are no rules in the pankration, except it’s illegal to gouge eyes or bite, and many a desperate pankratist has broken even those few strictures. The only punishment for an offender is a whipping from the referees. A match ends when one man is unconscious or dead or raises his arm in defeat. At Olympic level, to raise an arm is considered shameful.

  Pain sheared down my right shin. He’d kicked me. I realized too late his attack had been a feint to keep my hands occupied while he came in low. I looked down in time to see him lift his foot again and in a lightning movement slam it into my kneecap. It didn’t crack, but the pain was searing. My right leg collapsed.

  There was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad situation. I held on tight to his wrist and let myself go down, landing flat on my back. His kick meant he’d been leaning slightly, so when I twisted his arm down and to his left, he overbalanced. Normally it’s very bad for an opponent to fall on top of you, but I was ready. The knee of my good left leg shot up into his groin precisely as he fell, for some satisfying revenge. He grunted, and I felt his hot breath.

  Feet stepped around my head as we grappled in the dirt, the referees watching to see we did nothing illegal.

  His right hand was still caught by mine, so I tried pushing back on his fingers. He was far too smart to let me do that. He pulled back his right hand to protect the fingers while snaking his left up underneath my armpit, over my shoulder, and across my throat. That was bad; if he got a firm grip on my throat, I was done for.

  I rolled us over to get on top, then pushed myself up to an unsteady crouch, putting all the weight I could on my left leg. The right was in agony.

  I wanted to kick him while he was down, but he jumped up in the blink of an eye. He held his fists before him, knees bent, head down, and punched me hard—one, two, three—in the diaphragm. I bent over and coughed all the air from my lungs. He aimed a flat, open palm straight at my nose. I panicked and swerved my head. His palm glanced off my cheek, but in a trice he kicked my feet out from under me. I went down once more, face-first, and he threw himself on my back. His forearm locked around my throat. I couldn’t breathe. Both my hands scrabbled upward. I had to prize off his arm, but it was like trying to bend an iron bar. I could feel my carotid artery throbbing. I flailed about, hoping for a miracle that wouldn’t come. Little black dots appeared in my vision. They grew larger. The lack of air could kill me at any moment.

  In desperation and despair I raised my arm high as I could.

  The pressure on my throat eased at once. Timodemus rolled away, leaving me to flop over on the ground. He breathed hard, and there was a sheen of oily perspiration on his sandy body, but otherwise he looked at ease when he sprang to his feet. I felt like I might die at any moment. Had the fight broken anything inside me?

  Lying still took the least effort. I opted for that and stared up at the sky.

  The crowd dispersed now that the fun was over.

  After a while a face appeared, upside down, blotting out the blue. I didn’t recognize the face but had no doubt he needed to wipe his nose.

  “Are you Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus?”

  My diaphragm hurt too much to speak.

  The face studied me in mild curiosity. “His eyes are open, but he’s not moving. Is he dead?”

  A voice replied, “Nah, he went a pankration round with Timodemus.” It was Dromeus the trainer.

  “Ahh.” That was explanation enough. The face with the nose thought about it, then asked, “How come he ain’t dead then?”

  “Only a practice round, it wasn’t a serious fight.”

  “Ahh.” He prodded me with his foot. “Can you hear me?” The nose dripped on me.

  This was one indignity too many. I nodded slightly, tried to speak, and instead gasped at the fire in my throat. It felt like acid had been poured in. “What do you want?” I rasped, pushing myself off the ground.

  “Here, let me help you.” Timodemus grabbed my arm and hauled me up.

  I winced for a moment when I put pressure on the injured knee, but it took my weight. I tried a few practice steps, limping with Timo’s support, that took us away from the group of spectators. I said, “At least the kneecap isn’t broken.”

  “I deliberately hit you slightly to the side so it wouldn’t break.” Timo shrugged. He seemed embarrassed.

  And there I was thinking I’d been lucky.

  He slapped me heartily on the back, and I almost went down again. “Good fight, Nico. It’s lucky you never trained, or I might be facing you at these Olympics.”

  “The Gods spare me that,” I said hoarsely but with a grin. I rubbed my throat. “I pity any man you face in a real fight.”

  Timodemus suddenly looked serious. “They all practice the way I do. Even if they let me stay in, it’s going to be rough.”

  “Not too rough for you,” I assured him. “All of Athens says you’re the best pankratist in a generation.”

  “They would,” he replied, glum. “They expect me to win for them.”

  “Hey!” The man with the dripping nose begged our attention.

  Timo and I both turned to look at him.

  “I got a message for Nicolaos. My master, Pericles, son of Xanthippus, requests a meeting at your earliest convenience. He says to emphasize ‘earliest.’ ”

  “What does he want?”

  “How should I know? I’m only a slave.” He turned to go but halted for a moment and said to my friend, “Good luck, Timodemus. I hope they let you fi
ght. All of Athens is behind you.”

  “That’s just it,” Timo muttered as the slave departed. “They’re all behind me.”

  I hobbled over to a bench where we sat down.

  “Feeling lonely?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He put his head in his hands. “I’ve trained all my life for the Olympics, Nico. It was fine when I was doing it for myself; I enjoyed the challenge. If I failed, the only person I’d disappoint would be myself. Now that I’m here, I feel I’m fighting for everyone, and if I fail, I fail for everyone, not only my family but all of Athens.”

  “Is that why you attacked the Spartan? Looking for a way out?”

  “No. That was my anger speaking. Maybe a touch of nervousness too. But here we are talking only of me, when I’ve barely seen you these many months. How have you been, Nico? What’s been happening to you?”

  I grinned. “That’s my big news. I can’t wait to introduce you to Diotima!”

  Timo looked puzzled. “Who’s Diotima?”

  “My wife,” I said.

  “Your what?”

  “My wife. Well, fiancée, I suppose, I’m not sure. It’s not official yet; there are still one or two little details to sort out, but as far as Diotima and I are concerned, we think—why are you laughing?”

  “Who is this lucky girl?”

  “She’s the stepdaughter of Pythax, chief of the city guard of Athens.”

  “Perfect. He can help you with your work as an investigator, or an agent, or whatever it is you do these days.”

  “No, he can’t. Pythax probably wants to kill me.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Nico, you’ve only just married his daughter. What could you have done to upset him so quickly?”

  “I married Diotima without his permission. That’s the little detail I mentioned.”

  Timo’s laughing halted abruptly. “You’re a dead man.”