The Songs of the Kings Read Online Free PDF

Salamis inspired in him, awe at his enormous strength and stupidity, fear of his erratic temper, a nervous, half-humorous sense of his dangerous absurdity. “How do you mean?” he asked.
    â€œWell, it has ended in a death, hasn’t it? I said that would happen.”
    â€œBut it was a duel to the death, wasn’t it? It was only to be expected that one of them . . .” He stopped short, becoming aware that the eyes of Ajax and those of the whole entourage were intently upon him. “Well, of course,” he said, “it is undeniable that the Boeotian is dead.”
    Ajax continued to look down at him in silence for some moments. He had unusually wide-open eyes, very short-lashed, light greenish blue in color, eyes that looked somehow stunned, as if at some point in the past, perhaps long ago, they had registered a shock of surprise so enormous that it had never been possible to absorb it. He seemed out of temper now and Calchas wondered whether he had been backing Opilmenos to win. Like all exceedingly simple souls and some souls not so simple, he easily set down his disappointments to something that needed mending in the general state of things. More than once he had been heard to say that the smell of shit that lay over the camp was due to faults in the positioning of the army.
    â€œThe waste of a life,” he said now. “This Opilmenos was a good soldier. Even the other chap, the Locrian, has a wound that will take time to put right. In his sword arm too. As a military man, I can’t see any sense in it. It is not quarreling and threatening and bloodletting that we need. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, what we need—”
    â€œHe has said it before and he’ll—”
    â€œWho is that fool interrupting me? I’ll have your guts for garters if it happens again. What we need is something that will bring us together, something that will make us if not exactly friends . . .”
    â€œAllies,” a rash voice offered—despite the fear Ajax inspired, there was always someone among his followers who tried to curry favor by getting in early with the right word.
    â€œBlockhead, we are allies already. Good grief, I am surrounded by cretins. We need something to take the men’s minds off this wind and as a military man I know what it is.”
    â€œHe knows what it is.”
    Ajax raised a hand, extending a forefinger that looked to Calchas the size and shape of the sausages they made in Pergamum from goat guts and corn. “Games,” he said. “I intend to organize a Day of Games. Something never heard of before. It came to me in the form of a dream, which is why I have come to you with it, you being the chap best qualified in the dream department.”
    â€œWell, I am at your service,” Calchas said.
    But some shyness seemed to descend on Ajax now and he did not immediately relate his dream. “There’s bound to be winners and losers, that’s life,” he said. “But we will come out of it, you know, not friends exactly . . .”
    â€œCloser,” Calchas said. “With mutual respect.”
    â€œThat’s it exactly, that’s just the phrase I was looking for. Great gods, what it is to have a head on your shoulders.” Ajax’s eyes were as dazed-looking as ever but a glow had come over his face. “Mutual respect,” he said, drawing out the syllables. “I like that, as a military man I like it a lot.”
    â€œWe could have races,” one of the followers said.
    Ajax turned on him and half raised a fist that was roughly the size of Poimenos’s head. “Numskull, there are races already. Everyone knows what a race is. I am talking about something completely new.” He lowered his hand, it seemed reluctantly, and turned back to Calchas, shaking his head. “Thick as two planks,” he said.
    â€œWhat was your dream?”
    â€œI was throwing a javelin