Four runners regularly trained with Polynikes: two brothers, Malineus and Gorgone, both victors at Nemea in the diaulos sprint; Doreion the Knight, who could outrun a racehorse over sixty meters; and Telamonias the boxer and enomotarch of the Wild Olive regiment.

The five would take their marks and a trainer would clap the start. For thirty meters, sometimes as long as fifty, the elite field remained a pack of straining bronze and flesh, laboring beneath the weight of their harness, and for a span of heartbeats the watching Peers would think, maybe this once, maybe this singular time, one will best him. Then from the fore, as the runners' accelerating power began to break the bonds of their burdens, Polynikes' churning shield would emerge, twenty pounds of oak and bronze sustained upon the pumping flesh and sinew of his left forearm; you saw his helmet flash; his polished greaves extended next, flying like the winged sandals of Hermes himself, and then, with a force and power so magnificent they stopped the heart, Polynikes would catapult out of the pack, blazing with such impossible swiftness that he seemed to be naked, even winged, and not belabored by the poundage upon his arm and across his back.

Around the turning pole he flew. Daylight burst between him and his pursuers. He vaulted forward to the finish, four hundred meters total, no longer in his mind competing with these lesser fellows, these pedestrian mortals, any one of whom in another city would have been the object of adoration, mobbed by throngs of admirers, but who here, against this invincible runner, were doomed to eat dust and like it. This was Polynikes, No one could touch him. He possessed in every pore those blessings of feature and physique which the gods allow to combine in a single mortal only once in a generation.

Alexandros was beautiful too. Even with the broken nose Polynikes had gifted him with, his physical perfection approached that of the peerless runner. Perhaps this, in some way, lay at the root of the hatred the man felt for the boy. That he, Alexandros, whose joy lay in the chorus and not on the athletic field, was unworthy of this gift of beauty; that it, in him, failed to reflect the manly virtue, the andreia, which it in Polynikes so infallibly proclaimed.

My own suspicion was that the runner's animus was inflamed further by the favor Alexandros had found in Dienekes' eyes. For of all the men in the city with whom Polynikes competed in virtue and excellence, he resented most my master. Not so much for the honors Dienekes had been granted by his peers in battle, for Polynikes, like my master, had been awarded the prize of valor twice, and he was ten or twelve years younger.

It was something else, some less obvious aspect of character which Dienekes possessed and which the city honored him by recognizing, instinctively, without prompting or ceremony.

Polynikes saw it in the way the young boys and girls joked with Dienekes when he passed their sphairopaedia, the ball-playing fields, during the noonday break. He caught it in the tilt of a smile from a matron and her maids at the springs or an old woman passing in the square. Even the helots granted my master a fondness and respect that were withheld from Polynikes, for all the heaps of honors that were his in other quarters. It galled him. Mystified him. He, Polynikes, had even produced two sons, while Dienekes' issue were all female, four daughters who, unless Arete could produce a son, would extinguish his line altogether, while Polynikes' strapping swift lads would one day be warriors and men. That Dienekes wore the respect of the city so lightly and with such self-effacing wit was even more bitter to Polynikes.

For the runner saw in Dienekes neither beauty of form nor fleetness of foot. Instead he perceived a quality of mind, a power of self-possession, which he himself, for all the gifts the gods had lavished upon him, could not call his own. Polynikes' courage was that of a lion or an eagle, something in the blood and the marrow, which summoned itself out of its own preeminence, without thought, and gloried in its instinctual supremacy.

Dienekes' courage was different. His was the virtue of a man, a fallible mortal, who brought valor forth out of the understanding of his heart, by the force of some inner integrity which was unknown to Polynikes. Was this why he hated Alexandros? Was it why he had splintered the boy's nose that evening of the eight-nighter? Polynikes sought to break more than the youth's face now. Here in the mess he wanted to crack him, to see him come apart.

You look unhappy, pais. As if the prospect of battle held for you no promise of joy.

Polynikes ordered Alexandras to recite the pleasures of war, to which the boy responded by rote, citing the satisfactions of shared hardship, of triumph over adversity, of camaraderie and Philadelphia, love of one's comrades-in-arms.

Polynikes frowned. Do you feel pleasure when you sing, boy?

Yes, lord.

And when you flirt around with that trollop Agathe?

Yes, lord.

Then imagine the pleasure that awaits you, when you clash in line of battle, shield-to-shield with an enemy burning to kill you, and you instead slay him. Can you imagine that ecstasy, you little shitworm?

The pais is trying, lord.

Let me assist you. Close your eyes and picture it. Obey me!

Polynikes was keenly aware of the torment this was causing Dienekes, who held himself controlled and impassive upon his bare couch, just two places down.

To plunge a spear, blade-deep, into a man's guts is like fucking, only better. You like to fuck, don't you?

The boy doesn't know, lord.

Don't toy with me, you twittering sparrow.

Alexandras, on his feet for an hour by this time, had steeled himself utterly. He answered his tormentor's questions, frozen at attention, eyes riveted to the dirt, ready in his guts to endure anything.

Killing a man is like fucking, boy, only instead of giving life you take it. You experience the ecstasy of penetration as your warhead enters the enemy's belly and the shaft follows. You see the whites of his eyes roll inside the sockets of his helmet. You feel his knees give way beneath him and the weight of his faltering flesh draw down the point of your spear. Are you picturing this?

Yes, lord.

Is your dick hard yet?

No, lord.

What? You've got your spear in a man's guts and your dog isn't stiff? What are you, a woman?

At this point the Peers of the mess began rapping their knuckles upon the hardwood, an indication that Polynikes' instruction was going too far. The runner ignored this.

Now picture with me, boy. You feel the foe's beating heart upon your iron and you rip it forth, twisting as you pull. A sensation of joy surges up the ash of your spear, through your hand and along your arm up into your heart. Are you enjoying this yet?

No, lord.

You feel like God at that moment, exercising the right only He and the warrior in combat may experience: that of dealing death, of loosing another man's soul and sending it down to hell. You want to savor it, to twist the blade deeper and pull the man's heart and guts out upon the iron point of your spear, but you can't. Tell me why.

Because I must move on and slay the next man.

Are you going to weep now?

No, lord.

What will you do when the Persians come?

Slay them, lord.

What if you stand on my right in line of battle? Will your shield protect me?

Yes, lord.

What if I advance, defended by the shadow of your shield? Will you hold it high at port before me?

Yes, lord.

Will you bring down your man?

I will.

And the next?

Yes.

I don't believe you.

At this the Peers rapped more vigorously with their knuckles upon the tables. Dienekes spoke.

This is no longer instruction, Polynikes. This is malice.