‘Why did you not kill me?’ he asked, sitting up.
‘I need a servant,’ Parmenion answered.
The man’s green eyes narrowed. ‘Is this some jest?’
‘Not at all,’ the Spartan assured him. ‘I will pay five obols a day, the payment to be made every month. You will also have a room and food.’
‘This is madness,’ said Epaminondas. ‘The man came to kill you.’
‘He took money and he tried to earn it. I like that,’ said Parmenion. ‘How much were you paid?’
‘Ten drachms,’ the man answered.
Parmenion opened the pouch at his side and counted out thirty-five silver drachms. ‘Will you become my servant?’ he asked. The man gazed down at the coins on the table; he swallowed, then nodded. ‘And what is your name?’
‘Mothac. And your friend is right – this is madness.’
Parmenion smiled and scooped up the coins, handing them to Mothac. ‘You will return the ten drachms to the man who hired you; the rest is your first month’s pay. Get a bath and buy a new tunic. Then gather what possessions you have and return here tonight.’
‘You trust me to return? Why?’
‘The answer is not difficult. Any man prepared to die for ten drachms ought to be prepared to live for twenty-five a month.’
Mothac said nothing. Turning on his heel, he left the room.
‘You will never see him again,’ said Epaminondas, shaking his head.
‘Would you care to wager on that?’
‘I take it the wager is thirty-five drachms. Correct?’
‘Correct. Is it acceptable?’
‘No,’ conceded Epaminondas. ‘I bow to your obviously superior understanding of the human species. But he will make a terrible servant. Tell me, why did you do this?’
‘He is not as those others. They were cowardly scum – he at least was prepared to fight. But more than that, when he knew he could not win he came forward to die rather than take money falsely. That sort of man is rare.’
‘We must agree to differ,’ said Epaminondas. ‘Men who would kill for ten drachms are not rare enough.’
*
The man called Mothac left the house. He felt dizzy and nauseous, but anger gave him the strength to keep going. He had not eaten in five days, and knew this was the reason the Spartan had defeated him so easily. Give back the ten drachms? He had paid that to the doctor, for the drugs that would nurse Elea back to strength. He wandered into an alley and leaned against a wall, trying to summon up the energy to return home. His legs started to give way, but he grabbed a jutting stone on the wall and hauled himself upright.
‘Don’t give in!’ he told himself. Drawing in a great breath, he started to walk. It took almost half an hour to reach the market-place, where he purchased fruit and dried fish. He sat in the shade and ate, feeling strength soaking into his limbs.
The Spartan was a fool if he expected him to come back. ‘I will be no man’s servant. Not ever!’
He felt better for the food and pushed himself to his feet. The Spartan had shamed him, making him look weak and foolish. Three miserable blows and he had fallen. That was hard to take for a man who had stood against Arcadians and Thessalians, Chalcideans and Spartans. No man had ever
laid him low. But lack of food and rest had conspired to see him humbled.
Still, now he had thirty-four drachms and three obols and with that he could buy food for two months. Surely in that time Elea would recover? Returning to the market-place, he bought provisions and began the long walk home, deep into the northern quarter where the houses were built of sun-dried brick, the floors of hard-packed earth. The stench of sewage flowing in the streets had long since ceased to cause him concern, nor the rats which ran across his path.
You’ve come down a long way, he told himself, not for the first time.
Mothac. The name had sprung to his lips with an ease he found surprising. It was an old word, from the grey dawn of time. Outcast. It is what you are. It is what you have become.