Heart of Fire

Chapter 2 - Memories in Bronze-3

"Leave me..." Talos croaked, before turning onto his side, his back to his son.

"Father, please. I'm home. I wish to make peace with you and see you well again. I didn't know..."

"You didn't care..." Talos accused. "Leave me. I need to rest."

Stefanos stood up, dizzy from the smell of dying that hung in the small room, and turned to make his way out. In the doorway, he turned back. "I'll be in the other room with Cleo if you need anything."

When he came back into the kitchen, he sat down to a bowl of steaming broth and a plate of bread and cheese which Cleo had set out for him. A small cup of wine had also been put out, which Stefanos took right away, tipping a little onto the floor before drinking.

"How long has he been like this?"

"Two months," Cleo said, sitting down opposite her brother. "He has good days and bad days. Today was a bad one. He's had more of those lately. But tomorrow, once he's registered that you've returned, I think we'll find he has a lot to say...and little time to say it in."

"What does the doctor say?"

"Just that it's the Gods' will, his time to go. The truth is that I think father has lost his will to go on. The best we can hope for is for you two to make peace so that he can go into the Afterlife with a measure of joy in his heart."

She sighed, and seemed to deflate before Stefanos' eyes. It was then that he realized the fullness of her despair, her loneliness, the burden he had left her with while he was away fighting on foreign fields.

"I'm sorry you've had to deal with this, but I can't apologize for following the path that the Gods have set before me."

Her stare was fierce, but only for a moment. Then resignation overtook her anger and frustration, the resentment she had stored away for the brother she had once loved and honoured above all others.

"But, I will make peace with him, whatever it takes," he said, a part of him knowing he would regret it. "How long do you have leave from the Heraion?"

"As long as it takes. The head priestess is very accommodating."

"Because of Mother?" he asked, and Cleo nodded.

Their mother, Hermia, had been one of the the most devout priestesses of the Heraion, a woman whom the goddess seemed to bless every day with skill and foresight, at least until the day she took her.

Stefanos and Cleo were silent, each staring at the table, alone with their own ghosts for a few moments. Then Stefanos stood and went to his satchel which he had deposited near the doorway.

"Well, this should help ease things and pay for a monument when the time comes," he said, removing a heavy leather purse from the satchel and dropping it on the table with a thud."

Cleo nodded but did not smile. "That will help." After a few moments, she rose from her chair. "I'll go and check on him."

Stefanos watched his sister go back down the dark hall to their father's room. "Gods help me in this."

After a few minutes, he finished the last of his broth, bread, and cheese and leaned on the table, his eyes fixated on the fire. He felt warm all of a sudden and rose to unstrap the thorax which he had not taken off, so accustomed was he to wearing it at all times.

He laid it and his xiphos on the floor beside his satchel, hoplon, and doru. After unstrapping his greaves, Stefanos, now cooler in his chiton, went outside into the courtyard.

The stars were out, and as bright as he remembered from beneath the olive tree where he had sat so many years as a youth, contemplating his choices as every young man is bound to do in the life given him by the Gods. With his back to the trunk of the tree, Stefanos looked up at that night sky, the noise of Argos drowned out by thoughts of what he might say to his father the following day, if he yet lived, and what his father would say to him, if he chose to speak to him.

When the c**k crowed in the yard the following morning, Stefanos was still abed, a single ray of sunlight angling its way into his plain room to light his face. The room felt stuffy after so many nights in the open air, lonely after countless nights in the arms of numerous women. He felt an urge for such a woman then, but suppressed it when he remembered where he was, and the situation in which he found himself. He sat on the edge of the small bed, rubbing his eyes and short beard. After relieving himself in the clay chamber pot, he strapped on his sandals and went out of the room.

Cleo greeted him in the kitchen, having laid out a bowl of beans, hard bread, and a cup of water.

"He's feeling better today," she said without preamble.

"Will he see me?" Stefanos asked.

"What do you think?" Cleo answered, watching as her brother began to eat and drink. "All I ask is that you don't upset him overmuch. Remember the man he was before mother passed, if you can."

Stefanos' mind ran over images of his father's workshop then, of beautiful bronzes in various stages of creation, the sweet gleam of the shaped metal, and the sparkle in Talos' eyes as he held his son in his arms and showed him around. The time when Talos had shown the finished statue of Hera to his wife and children stood out among the dusty memories.

That statue, he had told them as their mother smiled proudly, was going to stand in the Heraion of Argos for ages. It was Talos' crowning achievement, and even as a young boy, Stefanos remembered the pride that swelled in honour of his father then.

"I'll stay calm," Stefanos said to his sister, snapping out of his reverie, and finishing his final bites of food.

A few minutes later, he was filling the door frame of his father's room.

Talos was lying flat, staring at the ceiling, his face pondering some thought or design such as he used to when getting a new idea for a bronze. When he realized Stefanos was standing there, his eyes darted that way angrily and he fought to push himself onto his creaking elbows, to sit up and lean against the wall at his back.

Stefanos rushed forward to offer help, but his father waved his hands away.

"If I can hammer and shape the limbs of a bronze god, I can raise myself from my bed," Talos said, his voice and breathing laboured, though there was fire in its depths, once as hot and strong as the forge which he had pumped himself.

"Father, it's good to see you," Stefanos said, kneeling beside the old man. A lump caught in his throat as he reached out for the hand again, and felt the fragility of the once-strong bones. "I'm sorry I have not been home for so long."

"We all have to deal with our choices, but I am glad that you've returned now, before it's..." a few more breaths, "...before it's too late."

"Don't talk like that," Stefanos said.

"You can't escape your fate, son. When the Gods take me, I will smile at the beauty I have left behind, the beautiful bronzes that decorate sanctuaries, homes, agorae, and shrines from Corinth to Tiryns."

Talos smiled, and seemed to grow in strength a little before Stefanos' eyes, but the latter knew that meant he would be ready to argue.

"So, tell me of your battles then. Where has...where has your life led you?"

Stefanos stared at the aged eyes, the creased brow, and the tangled white beard stained with soot from the forges.

"I've just come from a battle near Eleutherai. A small skirmish. Kratos, and our Spartan friend, Pollux, have been going from job to job for some time during the Nicia's peace and -"

"You fight during the declared peace?" his father cut in.

"Yes, well sometimes. There is always fighting."

"And will you fight during the Sacred Truce that has just been declared?" Talos eyed his son angrily then, making it obvious that such an act would be a disgrace.

"Well...perhaps. King Agesilaus is in Ionia, fighting the Persians. The Sacred Truce does not apply to them. I'm sure Kratos and I will be able to find work there. My skills as a pentekonter in the phalanx are well-regarded."

"I see. You are friends with the Spartans still. I assume the memories of their atrocities at Mantinea and Hysiae have faded then."

"No. But neither have those of the Athenians I fought with on Melos, when they slaughtered the men and enslaved the women and children." Stefanos' face grew hard and angry then, he could feel it contorting at the memory and fought down the urge to yell, or hit something, minding his sister's wish to stay calm. "I set my shield and spear in the line of the side I choose, Father, those that pay well for my skills. The Gods honour prowess on the field of Ares."

"They also punish hubris, and you are dangerously close. I am still saddened that you decided to take up arms with the Spartans under that animal Gilippus."

"We all do things we are not proud of."

"So there is some remorse?" Talos said, coughing loudly, and reaching for the cup of water on the table beside the bed.

Stefanos reached for it quickly and held it to his father's lips, letting him catch his breath afterward.

Talos looked back at his son. "Syracuse was many years ago, and you cannot have been fighting petty battles all this time. If you were not here, where were you?"

"I went to Persia, Father."

"Persia?" Talos was surprised at this, and sat up a bit straighter. "What were you doing there?"

"We took up arms with the satrap, Cyrus, a friend to the Greeks. We were to help him take the throne for himself."

"You fought for the Persians?" Talos turned away. "Son, you have shamed yourself..."

"Against Persians, Father!" Stefanos' said, his voice angry now. "I was fighting against the Great King. Would it be better to go back to fighting Greeks on Greek soil?"

"But you just told me that you have been doing so."

"I'm not going to argue with you about this for the thousandth time," Stefanos stood and leaned against the wall, distancing himself from his father in case he felt like striking the old man.

"You lost that battle in Persia, from what I heard."

"We were betrayed, yes. When Cyrus was killed at Cunaxa, all ten thousand of us had to march out of Persia with their cavalry and archers nipping at our heels the entire way. Only thanks to the skill and determination of a good friend were we able to make the journey home."

"Another Spartan?"

"No. An Athenian, who has befriended Spartans, as I have."

Talos' weakly clenched fist pounded the bedding at his side as if he was back in his forge. "You fought with Persians, eastern animals who burned the Acropolis and artistic treasures that stood there... And you befriend Spartans, a people who don't even believe in the merits of artistic endeavour, and have no art to speak of. They deal only in death, and the belittling of their fellow human beings."

"Glory on the battlefield is enduring, Father," Stefanos stepped closer now, feeling his long-held resentment creeping into his veins like an unstoppable poison. "It is what matters most in this world. We live in a world of war, and only the strong and skilled will be remembered!" His voice was a shout now, and he could hear Cleo's hesitant footsteps in the corridor. Let her listen! he thought.