Underworld: Bandit

Just as deadly, just as cold.

This is Chapter 3 of the serialised novel ‘Underworld’, a reimagining (not a retelling) of the myth of Persefóni. Use the buttons below to skip back a chapter, or begin at the beginning.

Chapter 3

Long after dawn, it is still quiet in the valley. The villagers always sleep late after a feast, and I sleep late too. I eat a breakfast of fruit and stale flatbread in the mouth of the cave. Ánitos is long gone, into the forest or the mountains, but he returns when the sun is high and we spar with knives up on the rocks, testing our speed, agility and balance on rough terrain. Ánitos is obsessive about self-defence, and he never goes easy on me. Our kind can live forever, he is fond of telling me, as long as no one kills us.

That is why he waited so long to let me join him when he rode out to deal with raiders and bandits. I asked and asked, but for years he told me that I wasn’t ready. I realised later that he had been afraid for me - afraid that, if I let my guard down for too long, he might lose me forever. But I am quick. I am strong and skilled. Eventually, over-protective as he was, Ánitos conceded that I would be more of a help than a liability.

We started small. I remember the first time he took me with him. We went to a track outside the valley, a well-used one that winds right through the mountains to the city-state of Tegéa. Three shaggy-bearded, barrel-chested men had made a camp there, lying in wait for travellers on the road. Ánitos and I approached soundlessly, watching the men from the shadow of the trees for a while. To my disappointment, we didn’t ambush them. Instead, Ánitos stepped out and hailed the men, asking them to leave our lands and return to their homes.

“Don’t fancy that,” replied the first man, glancing at Ánitos and then back to the fire he was building. “Pickings are better out here.”

“Lots of folk on the road,” added a second. “And who’s to stop us? One man and his little mistress?”

I bridled at this, but took care not to let it show on my face. Ánitos only smiled.

“I would watch your tongue, bandit,” he said, his tone good-natured. “There is more to her than meets the eye.”

The second bandit snorted with laughter. “I’m sure there is - eh, boys?” he addressed the others. “More to her than meets the eye, he says.”

The third one laughed, leering at me. “Wouldn’t mind an eyeful of that - or a handful.”

I knew they could never lay a hand on me, but I recoiled nonetheless from their vulgar words. It was the first time I had heard anyone speak about me like that.

“Yes, she’s a pretty one,” said the man who had been building the fire, sitting back on his heels and regarding me with an appraising look, as if I were an animal he was thinking about buying. “Tell you what. Hand her over to us and we’ll clear off. It’s a fair trade, wouldn’t you say? Our little bit of pleasure for your little bit of peace.”

Ánitos sighed heavily. “I’m afraid that’s not an option -”

“I’d rather kill you,” I cut in.

This time, all three of the bandits laughed.

I drew my sword.

“Look,” said the first man, getting slowly to his feet. “I don’t want to hurt a woman -”

“Don’t worry, you won’t,” I returned flatly.

The man glanced at Ánitos, who folded his arms and said nothing, the smile still on his lips.

I fixed my eyes on the bandit. “Draw your sword,” I told him fiercely. I was getting angrier with every second that passed, and I struggled to control it. Ánitos had always taught me to fight with a clear head, but the man’s condescension enraged me. “Go on! Draw your sword. Fight me!” I shouted.

It was a problem that we encountered again and again. Men would fight Ánitos, but, in spite of being convinced they could kill me with a stroke, none of them wanted to engage me in combat. We found, eventually, that it was better for me to stay hidden until the fighting began, and then drop into the centre of it.

But we hadn’t perfected that technique back then. The bandit simply stared at me. I advanced on him, sword raised. Tentatively, the man drew his own blade and made a lazy swipe at me when I got too close. I parried easily and returned like lightning. The man’s eyes flew open as he barely blocked the blow.

“Will you leave now?” I asked him, taking a step back, trying for something like Ánitos’ mercy.

But despite the fact that I had just proved I was faster than him, despite the shaking in his forearms when our swords crossed that must have warned him I was stronger, the bandit attacked again.

I dodged and countered, and he made a clumsy slash at my chest. I blocked it with my sword at an angle, pointing down towards his neck. I looked him right in the eyes - one last chance. He only bared his teeth at me, and I sighed.

That was another thing I hadn’t known back then: a man would never surrender to me, no matter if it cost him his life.

A moment later, I took his.

It was quick - I simply slid my blade down across his neck, across the place Ánitos had shown me so many years ago. The man fell to his knees, dropping his sword, then keeled over with no more dignity or ceremony than the birds I shot from the sky for our supper. His companions fled at once, and Ánitos let them go. I didn’t look up - I watched the man’s blood spill out dark and wet over the dry ground, saw his body twitch and go still, his glassy eyes wide open to the darkening sky. I was surprised at how easy it was - such a momentous thing as death should have been harder to inflict on someone, surely; it should have taken longer.

As I stood there staring, Ánitos came towards me and put his arm around my shoulders.

“Breathe deep,” he told me. “Focus on your reasons. The first one gets inside your head and under your skin. I know it - I was almost sick the first time I killed a man. Sick like a mortal, can you believe it!”

I nodded, my eyes still on the corpse - but in truth I felt nothing at all. When I shot birds or rabbits, killed deer or boar for the festivals, I felt a sadness inside me for the life I had taken. The fact that they had been, just moments before, so graceful, so innocent wounded me somehow. But this man had been neither of those things. I understood his intentions - what he would have done to me had Ánitos given me to him, had I been the defenceless girl he took me for. There was no honour in him, and I did not regret his death. It didn’t matter to me at all. I knew, instinctively, that it would be wrong to tell Ánitos this. He clearly thought I should feel something. I turned away and cleaned my sword.

Then, Ánitos and I buried the bandit. Before we filled in the shallow grave, I saw a shadow bending over it: Plútonas. It was the first time I had seen the god of the dead, pale and insubstantial, come to carry away a mortal soul. I stared at him, but he didn’t glance at me, and a moment later, he was gone, the bandit - or a shadow of him, at least - at his side.

Up on the rocks, I shake the memory of that day from my mind as I narrowly avoid Ánitos’ blade. I skip back to the boulder behind me, eyes fixed on him. I know better than to let my mind wander, but it is getting hot and hard to focus. I wipe sweat out of my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Enough,” says Ánitos shortly.

Afterwards, we go to the stream and throw cold water on our faces, cupping handfuls of it and gulping it down. It is too hot. I retreat to the cool of the cave and begin knapping arrowheads in the shade of the entrance. At first, the knapping stone is cool in my hand, but soon that too becomes heated to the temperature of my body, and hard to hold in my sweaty fingers. I lay it down, leaning my head back against the rough rock wall and closing my eyes, remembering how I had eventually confessed to Ánitos that killing the man had made little impression on me. He had looked at me, sadly I thought.

“You are good, Persefóni,” he had told me, “but there is something hard in you - a kernel of indifference, like a shard of ice in your heart.”

It was after that that Ánitos encouraged me to accompany the women to births. Indeed, I instantly felt a strong emotional connection to the labouring women, to the tiny scraps of humanity they birthed - sometimes pink and squalling, sometimes grey and limp. My heart ached for those stillborn babies more than it did even for the majestic deer, for they never had a chance at life. I saw Plútonas again and again in the birthing room. He would lift the shadows of their still, silent forms gently from my hands, never speaking, never looking into my face. I always stared after him, unseen by the weeping mortal women, and wondered where he took them.

The deep regret I learnt to feel when I held a stillborn child in my arms, or witnessed the death of a mother I couldn’t save, or someone who had sickened and couldn’t be healed, gradually bled into my experience of skirmishes and ambushes, just as Ánitos intended. When we buried the dead after a fight, I began to look at their faces and wonder what had brought them to raid and pillage, what their names had been, and whom they had loved.

But I still did not regret the death of the first man I killed.

And there is something else that I haven’t told Ánitos. It is only afterwards, after the fight, that I feel anything like regret. When I am in the midst of it, when I kill those mortal men, there is still a blankness inside me. No, not even blankness - a strange, detached exhilaration. I am my sword, my knife - glittering and precise; just as deadly, just as cold.

Perhaps it is the fault of my training; it has been done backwards. Ánitos’ mistake was to teach me to take life long before I learnt how to help it into the world.

To be continued …