Bronze Summer by Stephen Baxter Page B

let them escape before the final assault, the fire. I’m not sure where they ended up. From what he’s said I think it might have been Patara.’ A city on the southern shore of Anatolia, in another Hatti dependency. ‘He doesn’t talk about that much. Anyhow he always seems to have been a tough kid.
    ‘As soon as he was old enough to steal one of his father’s horses, he rode out of there and made his way back to Troy. That’s where he’s been based ever since, as far as I can tell – making a living by trading, mercenary fighting, sailing—’
    ‘Piracy. Banditry.’
    ‘That’s the nature of the times.’
    ‘Tell me how he met you.’
    ‘He saved my life.’ He paused. ‘There was a fight in a tavern. I was fourteen. I was on the losing side. But when Praxo waded in, he was only sixteen but already twice my size, the odds changed. We’ve been friends ever since. At first he was dominant, of course; he was older, more street-tough, stronger. But with time—’
    ‘You hesitate. What haven’t you said? Go back. This “tavern”. Was it really a tavern?’
    Suddenly he feared her, her sharp mind, her probing words.
    ‘Praxo told me what you had to do to survive. There is no shame—’
    ‘It was a brothel.’ The words came in a rush, but softly, so the others could not hear. ‘One man refused to pay me. He—I was thrown out into the street, for I did not have the bit of silver that was the barman’s usual fee. The man was waiting, with his friends. They grabbed me. Five or six of them. They were farmers, I think, strong as oxen. They got me in a ruined house. I . . .’
    ‘They took it in turns, I suppose.’
    ‘They were crushing me. I could not breathe. They would have killed me, I think, before they finished. But Praxo had seen me, saw the men pull me into the house.’
    ‘He saved you.’
    ‘I think he just felt like a fight. They were drunk and foolish, and, though strong, they were farmers, not warriors. He pulled them off me, broke the arm of one of them, the rest ran off. One against five or six, and he won.
    ‘I was barely conscious. He sat me up against a wall until I could breathe properly.’ He remembered the ache in his bruised chest, the burning pain of his ripped rectum, the foul taste of semen. These were memories he had put in a sealed pot and buried in the dark undersoil of his mind. How had this woman dragged them out of him so quickly?
    She was staring at him as she walked, studying his face as he scrutinised his periplus, squeezing meaning out of it. ‘You shouldn’t be ashamed. You couldn’t help any of it. You were a victim.’
    ‘No.’ He hated the word, and anger flashed. ‘Not a victim.’
    ‘All right. But that’s not all . Is it? What else happened? Go back again. Praxo sat you against the wall. You were recovering. What then?’
    ‘He was laughing. Full of fire. He’d just won a fight that he would talk about for years. The men had brought some mead, and he took that and he drank it. And he said I should pay him for saving me. Years later, you know, he spoke of that night. He apologised, he said we would never speak of it again, that no man would know, and that . . .’
    ‘How did you pay him? . . . Ah. With your only coin.’
    ‘He doesn’t lie with boys, not Praxo. Not to his taste. But that night, he was full of himself, he said the fight had made him hard. I used my mouth. He closed his eyes, and shouted the names of women he had lain with.’
    ‘So that’s it,’ she breathed. ‘And yet you stayed with him?’
    ‘He was ashamed, I think. Well, he was once he’d slept off the drink. He said I could go with him. I didn’t have to go back to the brothel. I could stay beside him, learn to fight. I think he meant this as a gesture of pity, he thought I wouldn’t last. But I learned fast, and bulked up, and we were soon an effective team. Then we rowed our first ship together.’
    ‘And that’s the hold he has over you.’
    ‘No. He has no hold!