Halo by Zizou Corder

Author:Zizou Corder
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141931005
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Xαπτερ 19

On the road, Arko and Halo fell to chatting with five brothers herding a pack of mules over the mountain. Manticlas, sitting in a tree, watched them pass beneath him, and cursed.

They slept the night surrounded by thirty-five warm smelly animals.

Manticlas wrapped his cloak around him, thinking evil thoughts, and carried on. In the farmlands, down the other side… his moment would come.

The next morning, Halo, Arko, five muleteers and thirty-five mules emerged from the snowy mists of the mountain. Starting to come down Mount Kithaera, they stopped short to stare.

Halo halted Arko with a touch. ‘What is that?’ she said, her eyes shining.

‘I think it’s Athens,’ said Arko.

Before them lay the great flat plain of Attica, rippled with a blanket of olive trees as far as they could see, and dotted with straight deep black cypresses. To the east and north were high embracing mountains, and stretching out to the south was a gleaming sliver of sea. Right in the middle of it, far away, stood a mighty rocky outcrop, a tiny mountain almost, rising above a scattering of red roofs and white buildings, and on top of the outcrop they could clearly see racks of rosy-white columns glowing in the bright sunshine, miles away.

Halo smiled.

‘Athens,’ she said. ‘Arko, that’s my city. If I have family – human family, I mean – they are there. Aiella and Megacles. Arko, I’m scared.’

He put his arm around her shoulder.

‘It’s your city,’ he said. ‘It will love you. Plus, even if it doesn’t, Athens loves visitors. It’s not like Sparta. In Athens, everybody likes things. Even if they complain about them, it’s because they like complaining.’

‘How do you know?’ Halo asked. ‘Have you spent many years in Athens, O wise one?’

‘Centaurs know everything,’ he replied, with his nose in the air. ‘You know that.’

She made a face at him, and started running down the hill. ‘Come on!’ she cried. ‘Let’s get there then!’

Unfortunately, she wasn’t looking where she was going, and she ran straight into the back of a wagon. The wagon’s owner, once he had stopped yelling at her for a billowing fool and a troublesome frog-child, said he quite understood she was keen to get to Athens, but the festival didn’t start for two days, so there was plenty of time, assuming that time would continue to pass in the normal way, which of course it was a risk to assume, but not a risk one could do anything about.

Halo thought about this for a moment, then decided that ‘What festival?’ was the simplest response. And he rolled his eyes at their ignorance, and said, ‘The Great Dionysia, you turnip. Dionysus’s festival. When the Dionysus from here gets paraded round Athens.’

‘Why’s the Dionysus from here in Athens?’ asked Halo.

‘The Eleutherians gave him as a gift years ago,’ said the wagoner. ‘And us stupid Athenians rejected him, so he sent the plague on us, so now we give him a big festival every year so he won’t do it again. Excuse me for mentioning it, but aren’t you a Centaur?’

‘Well spotted,’ said Arko.

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