Free Salamis by Christian Cameron Page A

the capital to put up the building.
    ‘Where is Tiraeus?’ I asked. He had not come out to fight at Artemisium. No shame to him – the town picked five hundred men by lot to stay.
    ‘He took the first mule train towards Corinth, the night Idomeneus arrived.’ Styges frowned. ‘Why do I know all this and you do not?’
    ‘I’ve been with my sister,’ I said, and explained.
    At any rate, I went to the bellows and pumped while he packed fine engraving tools into a leather bag. I told him about Xerxes mutilating the bodies and we both cursed. Probably helped me make the fire hot. When the fire was fierce enough, I rooted around the floor looking for some scrap bronze.
    ‘This place is too clean,’ I joked.
    Styges shrugged. ‘You haven’t been here,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Patching greaves,’ I said.
    He nodded, looked at mine, and admired the perfection of the workmanship. ‘You made this?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘A man named Anaxikles, as young as you are yourself. The best armourer I’ve ever seen.’
    Styges sniffed. ‘Not so good that you didn’t take a spear point through his work, however.’ He tossed me a rectangle of neatly hammered bronze plate, thinner than parchment. I bent it back and forth between my hands and decided it was suitable.
    He grinned. ‘I reckon anything right for mending pots will mend armour.’
    I spent a happy hour shaping and planishing my patch. It was a simple process, but soothing. I marked a line right on the greave with a scribing tool for the lower edge of the patch, so that it would always go to the same place as I tried it. Then I began to shape it, first with a simple crease down the middle to match the central ridge on the greave – see here, thugater, where the front of a good greave is like the prow of a ship? The prow of the ship turns water, but the sharp angle at the front of the greave mimics the line of a man’s shin and turns the points of weapons, too.
    But of course, the blow had struck where the sharp line of the shin bends away into the soft curve of the top of the foot – a very complex shape, and one that requires forming both by pushing and pulling the metal.
    But it was a small patch and soon enough I had it where it would drop over the original like a mask on an actor’s face.
    Then I had to planish it to make it as smooth and nice as the original. Anaxikles had been a master at planishing whereas I always found it a little dull, but that night, in an empty Plataea, I worked the bronze willingly, tapping away to make it smooth with my best flat hammer, and then cutting the patch with a file and then polishing it again with a linen cloth full of pumice, and again with ash until it glowed.
    And then I punched fourteen holes around the edges and used them to mark fourteen more in the damaged greave itself. By then, Styges was done and his two slaves were waiting for me while I drove the tiny rivets home, nipped them short and widened their ends into conical sockets I’d made with a tool. It was not master work, but it was good, solid work, and when I polished the rivets so flat that they were nothing but faint circles against the bronze, I felt that I had done honour to my god and to Anaxikles who made them. I poured a libation to Hephaestus, and sang one of his hymns, and then I sent a prayer that Lydia and Anaxikles were happy and healthy.
    I looked at that greave with real satisfaction. I remember the darkness, the silence, the smell of the burning charcoal, and the spilled wine and the bronze.
    Styges was the last man left. We had a ceremony to put out the fire.
    ‘The Persians will no doubt destroy the town,’ Styges said.
    I nodded. ‘Styges,’ I said. ‘I don’t plan to come back. If – when Athens loses – I won’t stay alive to see what comes after.’
    Styges nodded. ‘Idomeneus said the same, last night,’ he said.
    ‘Just so you know.’
    Styges nodded again, his young face silhouetted against