The Hunter

The Mycenaean Greek outlaw Akhaïdes has a position of honor in the Herakleid city of Nafpaktos, but he knows more than he should and figures out more than anyone else could. As plots swirl around a failing kingship, he becomes a focus for resentment and fear until he must take the extreme and irreversible step that might save those he loves most, at his own deadly expense. But the king has brutal redemptive plans of his own.

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In that night’s allcall, Xanos said, “I need arrows. I need bows. And – ” he raised a hand sharply to Kresphontes, already opening his mouth to object, “ – I need my Herakleids to stop reciting family stories as if they were law.”

Aristodemus, leaning back in his chair, said, “It’s not just stories, Lawagetas. It’s our world.”

“You all know how Dorians fight.”

“Like reapers,” Kresphontes said. “Like machines.”

“And are we beaten in battle? Ever?”

Silence.

“We are not Dorians,” Aristodemus finally observed quietly.

“But you’d like to win battles. Maybe your limits aren’t as strict as you believe.”

Temenus asked, “How not? Although a bow killed Hyllus, bows are really only toys, for harvesting birds and the like.”

“And what it did with the Lokrians?”

“Just a toy again. Making noise.” Temenus did not look toward Akhaïdes. “Bows are unreliable. Who knows where an arrow will go? You’re as likely to hurt a friend as an enemy. That’s the other reason the killing of Hyllus was insulting. A bow isn’t for war, even if we accepted its anonymity.”

Kresphontes added, “A true warrior looks his enemy in the eye.”

“But I say,” Xanos answered smoothly, “to succeed in your Return, you have to make some choices you might not like, but which will serve you.”

Temenus said, “Explain, please.”

Xanos thought for a moment. “Wanax, you once said that, to achieve your Return you would not be – I think you used the word, ‘fastidious’ – about using whatever tools came to you.”

“I may have said that.”

Xanos looked around deliberately. “I’m sure I don’t need to set up a demonstration to show how effective an army of bows could be.” He looked around again. “Do I?”

The silence that followed this was suddenly attentive.

“Oh, well. Come outside, then.”

***

“Keep in mind,” Xanos said, “this is only a demonstration.”

Men from the megaron sat on the edge of the king’s porch, their legs hanging, more standing behind them. The Carian messenger stood among his own people. Someone carried out Aristodemus’ chair. On the other side of the open space, ten or more men held torches all along the roadway, against the rising night. Several of the Armorer’s apprentices lay a pile of weapons at Xanos’ feet, then stepped away.

Xanos asked everyone, “Who would say that a spear or javelin is a shameful weapon?”

There was some mumbling. No one was willing to say that. They liked weapons they could throw or thrust.

Xanos found Temenus in the crowd on the porch. The king was already smiling, seeing where Xanos would go – although, Xanos hoped, not seeing all the way. “Wanax, who is your best spearsman?”

“Hippotes, of course.”

Hippotes stepped down and crossed to Xanos. Xanos pointed. “See the marks?”

They all looked. On the flat ground by the end of the porch, three or four of the Armorer’s boys were setting up a row of straw mannequins, the targets Xanos used every day to train the warriors.

“I see them.”

“Can you hit them from here?”

Some of the men murmured disbelief.

“I can.”

“Spear or javelin?”

“Javelin. Too far for a spear.”

Xanos picked a pair of javelins from the assemblage on the ground, and passed them to him. “As quickly as you can,” he told him.

Hippotes hefted the weapons, tucked them under his arm, and scratched a palm across the tip of one blade. He closed his eyes briefly in a prayer.

Then he shifted his stance, flexed his arm and threw. As a mannequin leapt backward off its stand, the shaft in its center, he was already lifting the other javelin, feeling its balance, throwing it. The Armorer’s boys dodged as a second mannequin flipped wildly over the shaft in its knees.

The men all shouted. Hippotes glanced down modestly, but grinned.

When the applause faded, Xanos asked, “Is Hippotes less of a warrior for killing one man and wounding another with javelins at this distance?”

Hippotes raised his head again, offended. Xanos laid a hand on his arm.

“Did he look his enemies in the eye?”

More mumbling. For them all, Temenus answered, “No, Lawagetas.”

“Does that make him less of a warrior?”

Silence.

Xanos saw that Hippotes was still beside him, and said, “Thank you.”

Hippotes returned to the porch, accepting admiring slaps with satisfaction.

Xanos said, “Remember what the king said about tools? Consider this one.” He picked up the bow from the pile at his feet, and raised his voice. “Hunter?”

At the farthest end of the throng of men, Akhaïdes twitched in alarm.

“Come and help me here.”

Akhaïdes came to him and stopped.

Xanos raised his voice to address everyone. “At this same distance – ” Then he stopped and asked Akhaïdes, “What?”

“Send someone for the horse.”

“Really?”

Satnios jumped down from the porch and ran. He came back in only a few minutes, leading the gray horse. Behind him followed the Aetolian drivers, cowed by such company but still bright-eyed, eager to see this.

Akhaïdes took the bow and strung it, then slid a ring out of a pouch on his belt, onto his thumb. He spoke with one of the Armorer’s boys, took the arrow case, mounted, and rode back and forth, letting the horse get used to torchlight. The boys hauled mannequins onto the porch and set them along the edge, between living men.

Kresphontes asked, “What’s this?”

With a certainty he did not feel, Xanos guessed, “This is what we could do with chariots if we would use bows as well. And if we didn’t believe we have to know the ancestry of every enemy – which our Hippotes has already admitted.”

It was Hippotes who understood first. He said, “Great god. If he can…” The rest of it was lost in other men’s rising exclamations.

Xanos stood beside one of the mannequins, facing the street. Temenus came to stand at the other side. Across the straw replica, he murmured, “Lawagetas, I can’t tell you how much I hope that you haven’t made a mistake.”

Xanos shaped his face into a confident smile and showed it to the king.

Alone in front of everyone, Akhaïdes said, “Rousa?”

The boy raised a hand: the mannequins were ready.

Akhaïdes rode to the end of the street, into the near dark where the drivers clustered. Then he turned, made the horse back up one, two, three steps and laid the rein on its neck. Xanos saw him open the case, pull out arrows, take four in his teeth and grip four in his hand, a finger between each, so they bristled out separately. He made no sound, no visible signal, but the horse suddenly sprang forward, reaching full gallop in the second stride. The drivers shouted all together.

And then he was shooting. One, two, three – the horse swept past. Xanos saw his intense focus, the flash of his hands, the flick of his sleeves. An arrow slapped into the mannequin between Xanos and Temenus.

Slap, slap, slap, slap, five, six, seven, eight. Xanos let out his breath, then heard the same sound all the way down the porch.

Akhaïdes stopped the horse and loosened the bowstring. He handed the  case and the bow down to Rousa.

He would not come back for the applause he deserved. Xanos didn’t bother to think he might. He called, “Hunter, are they all dead?”

Akhaïdes’ voice came back to them. “Yes, Lawagetas.”

“Did you know their names or families?”

“No, Lawagetas.”

“Thank you.”

Akhaïdes turned the horse and vanished between buildings.

Xanos exchanged glances with Temenus, who murmured, “Put in these terms, your argument is almost irrefutable.”

Xanos climbed down and crossed into the open space again. From here he could see that every one of the mannequins held an arrow in the center of its chest. Not a single missile had strayed by more than the width of a finger. Even Kresphontes was simply shaking his head. Aristodemus, rare these days, was smiling from his chair. Behind Satnios, the Aetolian drivers beamed. Xanos heard Hippotes somewhere saying, “Why should I mind? I’m good at what I do, he’s good at what he does.”

Xanos looked from end to end of the array of men. “Imagine the value of a bowman riding in a chariot at that speed, a bowman not concerned with staying on the back of a horse, controlling its pace and direction, any of that, but shooting from a firm platform with all his attention on his targets.”

Everyone watched attentively, even Kresphontes.

“Now, may we reopen the discussion of arrows?”