I used to hate paperwork back home. A lot people think that lawyers must love paperwork and red tape, more the merrier. But contrary to popular believe, lawyers are human too and hate paperwork and bureaucracy. It just that we are good at, so people think that we enjoy.
But for the first time of my live, I can say that I’m enjoying paperwork, or should I say clay tablet work or papyrus work since paper hasn’t been invented yet?
When I’m doing this, I have to concentrate on reading and I don’t have to think about my situation and what is going to happen in my future. It just me and a letter that needs to revised. Nothing that makes me wonder why I keep going.
I finish checking the tablet for errors and put it in the pile of things that need to be revised later.
As usual there is a lot of minor errors, nothing to serious but clearly the person doing the math didn’t care very much about accuracy so he did a sloop work. I write on my personal tablet what needs to be correct later.
In the beginning it was hard for me to write in a clay tablet, but a few weeks using and it’s like I was born to do this. Papyrus is too expensive to everyday use, so I only use for fancy stuff like a important contract or to send a letter to a nobleman or a wealthy person.
I pick a new clay tablet and start to read, something about a defect in one of the products that were sold last week. Since my owners are selling everything that is not nailed down, we have a lot of cases of unhappy costumers, since a lot of what is being sold is basically crap.
I look for whoever wrote the tablet and see the name Hiero. The bastard like to buy useless stuff and then complain that he is being cheated. I think he sends a letter every day to complain, the worst part is that he always come back to make a new deal.
I take my eyes from the tablet and look to my side to see the Fat Bastard. Also know as the worst teacher ever, he only did two things for me, the first was to throw me a book and ordered me to memorize all the letters and the second thing was to speak the letters out loud and then read some words.
How the hell he wanted me to learn like that? Bastard, luck for me, whatever the Corgi Gods did to me, made it super easy to learn new languages. Even then, took me almost two months to learn how to read and write in Mycenaean.
-“ Hiero just send another letter, he wants a refund or he is going to take us to court.”
-“Like he would waste the coin for that, he just bought some trinkets. Just send the usual response that we are innocent and will see him in court.”
Where there is a complex society there is some form of legal system. The one here is super confuse and corrupt so nobody uses besides as a threat. Normally they ask for mediation between both sides patrons.
But according to the Fat Bastard, even if the person really wants to take his case to the courts, they are so expensive that a huge investment is needed and only the extreme wealthy have the means for that. I pick a clay tablet that was made just this morning and with a sharp metal pen I write the replay.
The clay tablet is really small, about the size of my hand and I need to be very carefully to not get anything wrong.
When the Fat Bastard realized I could be used for office work, he put me working as his secretary.
Saying that I needed to pay back all the time that he wasted teaching me. I suppose that he did waist a full 5 minutes teaching me, so a lot of his work got delayed. In the beginning I was angry about helping him, but after a while I realized that the job was a great way for me to learn about this world and forget about my problems.
The first thing a learned was that Lebos is governed by a group of four wealthy merchants who call themselves the Councilors. The city is divided in four districts and the docks, the docks are neutral ground while each district is own by one of the leading figures.
Each district has their own laws and guards. Each, councilor is basically a petty king of his district. In theory, in case of invasion they would all band together to protect the city. But according to the Fat Bastard, is more likely they would fight to see who can sell the city first and get more power in the new administration.
The whole system is just stupid and I can see thousands of problems, it’s a freaking miracle that the city didn’t descend into a civil war yet. The only thing holding this house of cards together is the fact that no one is powerful enough to try to grab power alone and they hate and distrust each other too much to make a alliance that would last long enough to size power.
But more important, I learned about the political situation in the region that I’m living. Lebos is part of thousands of city states that share the same culture and language. There is some local differences, but there are not very big.
They are all part of the Mycenaean civilization. Mycenaean is also the name of the language, not very creative, but then again, languages are normally named after the people that spoke them.
Their homeland has very poor agricultural land and the only thing that they have in great quantity is mountains. So when the population grow too much, they started to colonize islands and territory close by, so that the people didn’t starve to death.
Lebos was one of the first cities to be funded and apparently, they are very proud of that for some reason.
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In the beginning the city states were all fierce independents and loved to make war against each other, but continue warfare started to take a tool and some week city’s states started to be annexed or forced to make a alliance with a strong neighbor.
Long story short, now there is two super powers the Alliance and the Confederation. According to rumors, both are very close to starting a war for supremacy. And that’s where I enter.
The city state of Argos where both of my owners are from is the leading city of the Alliance and they have an oligarchic government. Which is a elegant way to say that poor people have no say in the government, just like a regularly democracy.
Most important for me, they have a special unit of slave’s soldiers called Skiritai, the training is brutal and most candidates die within the first few months. But the graduates are considered the finest light infantry in the whole world.
Since slaves are expense, each senator must send every year a number of slaves to be trained. They want to use me as gift for a senator so he dosen’t need to waste his money.
In the case that I graduate, the senator will own a favor to my owners, since its very rare to survive the training and whoever senator send more slaves that survive, he will get a special gift basket or something like that.
Maybe not a gift basket, but most of the information that I discovered was from reading letters, from the few books that the Fat Bastard own and over hearing some talks. Meaning that I have a lot of knowledge gaps. I would love to ask the Fat Bastard, but he refuses to answer any of my questions that dosen’t involve his work. He is such a great teacher.
I finish the letter and put to dry, tomorrow I will send a slave to delivery. I see my Little Teacher at the door and I realize that must be time for lunch and then my physical training.
-“I will be leaving, it’s time for my other training, Dominus.”
-“I will be reviewing your work later. If I find a single mistake you will be punished.”
“Yes, Dominus.”
He only revised my job in the first week and since he didn’t find any mistake, he stooped checking and the only thing that he does is threaten me that he will be looking for mistakes. I committed a lost of mistakes, I won’t deny that, but the quality of these people work is so terrible, that my job looks perfect. It’s all about perspective
Lunch is the usual fare. The others slaves continue to hate me but that dosen’t matter anymore. Since I started to work as secretary last month I sleep in different quarters, the slaves that work with the administration get a better treatment.
My new room has only four other slaves and I even have my own bed! Nothing liking climbing the corporate ladder. And since we are selling everything so the owners can go back to their home, a few of my old roommates were sold, the leader is still around. I heard the Fat Bastard saying that he is too old to receive a good price so they don’t know what to do with him.
Too old do sell and no quality that makes worthy to take him to Argos. They will probably sell him for a few coins when they decided to leave, I hope that he will suffer a lot in his new house. When lunch is over, I leave to train my body.
In the beginning the training was hell, now it’s just bad. At least he started to training me in boxes and wrestling. I asked if he would show me how to use weapons. But he just laughed and said that my future school has a very specific train regime for that. And anything that he thought me would just give me bad habits, making hard for me in the long term.
As usual the Brute is already training, I learned a while ago that he is a pretty good athlete, to the point of having participated in a few games. There is no Olympics here, but every city state has some competitions and sometimes they call people from allied cities to participate.
The reason that he is always training is that in half a year there will be a big game in the city and he decided that he will be the champion in running and wrestling. I hope that someone will beat the living shit of him, I have not forgotten or forgiven what he did to me and the people from my home island.
I put some oil in my body, because if I don’t he will complain for a while that even thought I’m a barbarian, I need to follow some rules or he will beat me. The oil has a lot of cultural importance.
Apparently the God’s have their own games and they use the oil, why? The Brute said something about looking good to the Goodness. Which means that he dosen’t know the reason but people been using for centuries so it must be important.
When I finish putting the oil and stretching the Brute comes close to me.
- “The last few days, I have been teaching you how to take a punch, a very important life lesson. In a fight the one that can take more damage without falling in the ground tend to win the fight.”
Very nice of him, to call beaten me with his fist a life lesson. On a intellectual level I know that he is right, but is hard to admit that when my body is still hurting. I will give to him; he did make sure to not break any of my bones or give me any intern bleeding.
- “Today we are going to be training your foot work. Remember, sometimes you are going to fight people who can knock you out with one punch, so you need to avoid being hit as much as possible. Try to imitate my foot work.”
He starts to dance and I look at him with what I assume is a weird expression because he stops and grins at me.
- “Is there something wrong?”
- “Yes, you are dancing, I don’t think I can win any fights doing that. Unless the other side dies from laughing.”
I would never say something like that to the Fat Bastard, if he didn’t had a heart attack when I sad something like that and die, he would make sure to punish harshly. The Brute is made of different material, he dosen’t care about me being a smartass as long I don’t insult him personally.
- “That’s your problem. You don’t understand that everything that I’m teaching you have been perfected for years, generation after generation does this because it works. I’m not saying that in a real fight you would do the same. But this is the basis for a more practical method that I will teach in the future. But only when you learn this.”
He goes back to dance, I think it’s stupid, but I know him, he may let me speak some stupid stuff but if I refuse to do something that he orders he will beat me later. I start to dance; I try a few steps and fall on my ass.
Ok, not so easy. I pretend not see the Brute laughing and I try my best to copy him and after a few steps I think I’m getting the idea.
- “By the God’s, you are the worst dancer that I have ever seen. God thing that the Skiritai are given a woman after a few years of service, because no woman would want to sleep with you after seen something like this.”
Now he knows what consensual sex is?
- “It’s my first-time dancing, give me a break. Besides, what is the name of this dance?”
Better change the subject, I don’t want him start another runt about how bad I’m doing athletic stuff.
- “This are the first steps in the war dance, they are the first thing young citizens learn when they start practice to become a hoplite. But it’s also useful for sports. I will do very slowly, do your best to follow.”
He starts again, and I do my best to follow him. He stops me every few seconds to correct me. He is restless in his criticism, I thought that we would only do this for a while before starting to run and do other exercises but he keeps making me dance until it’s time to stop.
When he finally gives me permission to stop, I’m exhausted and I need to crawl to have my massage before going to eat something.