Warriors in Bronze Read Online Free PDF Page B

seventeen-year- old whom Hercules took at Pylos and sold in the Nauplia market. Though still a little shaken by the shock of a violent sack in which her family perished, Clymene became in time much more than a sheath for tumescence; she stayed for years my counsellor and friend. She was the first of a long procession of concubines, and the only one whose memory I cherish to this day.
    On a windy dawn in spring we departed for Rhipe, a long column of men and carts and animals. I rode with Diores in a travelling chariot, for he had not yet chosen a Companion. 'Nice to be made a Hero, though I almost feel ashamed to wear my greaves. Everything has happened in a rush,' he explained, smacking his whip at a fly on the offside horse's withers. "I've barely had time to collect a household, let alone find a decent driver who's willing to live in Rhipe.' He wriggled his shoulders beneath a new and shining cuirass. 'Damned bronzesmith has boxed the job: shoulder plates don't fit. Cost me forty fleeces and eleven jars of oil. Take me years to breed enough sheep and press enough olives to pay him.' We followed the road till noon - a military way between strongholds, and therefore paved - and diverged on a stony track which led to Rhipe. Derelict byres and tumbledown walls signified the outer fringes of Diores' new estate. Glumly he surveyed the evidence of neglect: winter-withered weeds chok­ing the vines, olive trees unpruned, ploughland smothered in deep rank grass, undrained pastures reverting to marsh. 'Enough work for a multitude,' he declared. 'I'd hoped to teach you driving, but there won't be a chance for moons. We'll all be labouring from dawn till dusk.'
    Diores touched a sore point. His promotion and my relega­tion to Rhipe had ended for a time my training as a warrior at a most important stage: the art of handling a chariot in battle. Any fool can drive on a road; to swerve and turn and check at a gallop and lock your wheel with an enemy's is a different slice off the joint. But I was old enough to realize the transition Atreus ordered likewise belonged to a Hero's education. From boyhood they herd flocks on the hills, graduate later to care for precious cattle and learn the skills for tending vines and olives, ploughing and planting and reaping wheat and barley.
    Husbandry is really a Hero's life; to the end of his existence he spends more time in shepherding than riding battle chariots. During daylight hours in peacetime it is hard to find a Hero; they are all away working the land or watching flocks. By nightfall at any season your Hero, like his peasants, is gobbling lentil broth in a ramshackle stone-built farmhouse and wonder­ing where the blazes his missing wethers have gone. Royal household men fare better, of course; they can use the palace amenities. But this humdrum side of a Hero's career the bards don't often sing.
    Rhipe proved to be an extensive domain. We marched till sundown before reaching Diores' manor perched on a rocky hillock protruding from a plain. Forested ranges cleft by val­leys surrounded the plain; beyond them soared the mountains. A massive wall of rocks girdled a two-storied house hugged by thatch-roofed hutments like a hen among her chicks. The place resembled a minor fortress, an appearance common to every settlement sited far from a citadel.
    Diores looked more cheerful. 'Solid defences at least; no one will break in easily.'
    We led our retinue through a gate whose oaken doors sagged tiredly on the hinges - 'That's the first job,' Diores commented - and assembled in a crowded mass in a courtyard before the house. Diores stamped through the buildings and allotted quar­ters. 'Offload baggage, turn the animals out to graze, mount guards. Clear the place up. Get moving!'
    Before darkness fell we were fairly well settled and eating a meal. Robbers had ransacked every building. All metal articles the former holder may have left were gone - cauldrons, tripods, pots and pans - but a scattering of