Killer of Men Read Online Free PDF

effect.
    ‘Hmm,’ he said.
    He poured water on the fire and it made steam and scalded his hand, and he cursed and hopped on one foot. Penelope fetched one of the slave girls and she made him a poultice, and while she nursed his hand, he blew through the tube on the dead fire – and nothing happened except that a trail of ash was blown on my chiton.
    ‘Hmm,’ he said. He relit the fire.
    Inside the forge, the sound had changed. I could hear my father’s lightest hammer – when you are a smith’s child, you know all the music of the forge – going tap-tap , tap-tap . He was doing fine work – chasing with a small chisel, perhaps. I wanted to go and watch, but I knew I was not welcome. He was with the god.
    So I watched the priest, instead. He sent Bion for a hide of leather, and he rolled it in a great tube, and breathed through it on the fire, and nothing much happened. He and Bion made a really long tube, as long as a grown man’s arm, from calf’s hide, and the priest set Bion to blow on the fire. Bion did this in the forge and he was expert at it, and the priest watched the long tube work on the fire.
    ‘Hmm,’ he said.
    My brother was bored. He made a spear from the firewood and began to chase me around the yard, but I wanted to watch the priest. I had learned how to be a younger brother. I let him thump me in the ribs and I neither complained nor fought back – I just stood watching the priest until my brother was bored. It didn’t take long.
    My brother didn’t like being deprived of his mastery. ‘Who cares ?’ he asked. ‘So the tube makes the fire burn? I mean, who cares?’ He looked to me for support. He had a point. Every child of a smith learned to use the tube – as did every slave.
    The priest turned on him like a boar on a hunter. ‘As you say, boy. Who would care? So answer this riddle and the Sphinx won’t eat you. Why does the tube air make the fire brighter? Eh? Hmm?’
    Pater’s hammer was now going taptaptaptaptaptap .
    ‘Who cares?’ Chalkidis asked. He shrugged. ‘Can I go and play?’ he asked.
    ‘Be off with you, Achilles,’ the priest said.
    My brother ran off. My sister might have stayed – she had some thoughts in her head, even as a little thing – but Mater called her to fetch wine, and she hurried off.
    ‘May I touch the lens?’ I asked.
    The priest reached up and put it in my hand. He was down by the fire again.
    It was a beautiful thing, and even if he said it had no magic, I was thrilled to touch it. It brought fire down from the sun. And it was clear, and deep. I looked at things through it, and it was curious. An ant was misshapen – some parts larger and some smaller. Dust developed texture.
    ‘Does it warm up in your hand when you bring down the sun?’ I asked.
    The priest sat back on his heels. He looked at me the way a farmer looks at a slave he is thinking of purchasing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But that is an excellent question.’ He held up the bronze tube. ‘Neither does this. But both make the fire brighter.’
    ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.
    The priest grinned. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Do you know how to write?’
    I shook my head.
    The priest pulled his beard and began to ask questions. He asked me hundreds of questions – hard things about farm animals. He was searching my head, of course – looking to see if I had any intelligence. I tried to answer, but I felt as if I was failing. His questions were hard, and he went on and on.
    The shadows grew longer and longer, and then my father started singing. I hadn’t heard his song in the forge in a year – indeed, at the age I was at, I’d forgotten that my father ever sang when he worked.
    His song came out of the forge like the smell of a good dinner, soft first and then stronger. It was the part of the Iliad where Hephaestus makes the armour of Achilles.
    My mother’s voice came down from the exhedra and met Pater’s voice in the yard. These days, no one teaches women to sing the