I’m not sure quite why Gilpatrick saying ‘I’ll read it to you’ sounded like flirting, but it sure as hell did. Not that I minded, but it distracted me enough that I didn’t quite catch the first couple words he said.
“Uh, could you repeat that bit, please?”
He looked up at me over his cracked reading glasses, then glanced past me to the table where the party of women still sat chatting and sending surreptitious glances our way. He did a kind of sideways eye roll toward me, but his smile took any sting out of it. Almost like he didn’t mean to belittle me, but rather found my lack of focus amusing. Then he looked back into my eyes, smiled, and none of that mattered.
“So, you ready yet?”
I nodded, not quite willing to trust my voice.
His smile softened, he looked over his reading glasses at his phone again, and when he spoke, it took all I had to hear the words rather than just his voice.
***
“To my dear and close friend Typh,
I hope this missive finds its way to you and finds you well.
Since we last met in person, I have continued my research into the Persian unit that defeated the Spartans at Thermopylae. These ‘Immortals’ as you call them must have seemed a sea of enemies to Leonidas, his Spartans, and the levies who stood with them. If all were armed with bows, as my research shows they were, their arrows must have indeed ‘blotted out the sun’. Obviously they could not bring the full might of their number to bear in the narrow passage of Thermopylae, but given that the Immortals were far from the only Persian unit on the field, they had the options of both pulling back to rest while others pushed the siege, or reinforcing to keep their number at ten thousand.
That ten thousand seems hard to believe as a cohesive elite unit, rather than an army entire, but it lends credence to the idea that their enemies never saw them weakened; with so many, they could act as their own reserves, a new Immortal stepping forward whenever one fell. As well, I’ve been told that they regularly recruited replacements from the elite of other units of the Achaemenid Empire the moment they determined that a casualty was unfit to return to the front. For those of us looking back, it may seem cruel, especially to a man whose only crime was to give his health for his liege-lord, but at the time it must have made fighting the Immortals that much more frightening, as every morning they would march forward ten thousand strong, no matter their casualties from the day before.
I have also discovered that the unit was, despite your claims to the contrary, a cavalry unit, the men carrying lances and shields to strike down their opponents from horseback. They also carried swords, both for when their lances shivered and when their horses might be struck down, so they might continue the fight unhindered by the loss of weapon or beast.
It beggars the imagination just to think of a single cavalry unit ten thousand strong. Their charges shaking the earth under their enemies’ feet, their battle cries deafening and disheartening any who heard them. Had any men less than Leonidas and his Spartans stood at Thermopylae, they might have broken and run upon the sight, sound, and fell feel of their charge.
Still and all, you cannot be blamed for those minor inaccuracies of description. You are a fighting man first and foremost, your academic pursuits simply a hobby to pass the time between wars. Your muscled body, etched about with scars both new and old, is testament to your prowess on the field of battle, for how could one acquire so many scars without dying, unless they were to triumph against their foes.
I long for the day you visit Halicarnassus once more, and even now ponder what new scars, what new tales of battles fought and victories won you might bring with you to delight my eyes and ears.
Should you find the time and it please you to do so, it would please me greatly if you were to respond to this missive in kind.
Your dear friend,
Hero
***
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Gilpatrick looked up at me, humor dancing in his eyes. “That’s all there is to the original letter, but there is in fact a response, written on the back of one of the original letter’s pages.” Smiling at me, at the ladies at the other table, who had gotten much quieter while he declaimed the letters contents, then back at me, he asked, “want me to read the reply?”
I nodded, “if you would, please?”
He chuckled. “No problem.”
***
Hey Hero,
Got your letter. I hate to break it to you, because ‘Immortals’ sounds way cooler than ‘Companions’, but we both know I’d had enough ouzo to kill an elephant that night. No such unit in the old Persian army as ‘Immortals’. Just the Emperor’s Companions, who kept themselves at strength because the fuckin’ Achaemenid Emperors refused to stay the fuck at home and let their generals do their jobs. So instead, they got a ten-thousand-man bodyguard, with a thousand of them under strict orders to keep the sovereign from getting skewered, smashed, or otherwise fucked up.
Of course, that arrogant asshole Xerxes insisted on meeting Leonidas face to face. If Leonidas hadn’t been just as big of a cocky son of a bitch as Xerxes, and an even bigger asshole, they could have ended the whole fuckin’ campaign right there. Xerxes was a big motherfucker, yeah, and had all the best gear money can buy, but he was born and raised to be a King. Hell, the King of Kings even, where Leo? The Spartans weren’t the sort that would tolerate a ‘King’ who couldn’t kick all of their asses.
Never understand the kind of dumb shit who wants somebody dead, but won’t do it because of ‘honor’ or some bullshit like that. Reminds me of a mercenary chick I ran into a couple weeks back. “Honor is a dull blade,” she said. You’d hate her. All fight, no fiction. She had a nice house, though.
Oh, yeah, before you go all in on the ‘cavalry’ thing, those weren’t lances. They were fuckin’ spears. And while the thousand man ‘protection unit’ of the Companions rode horses, because of course Xerxes did, and of course he’d have just galloped off ahead of the army if his bodyguard weren’t mounted. Their spears were anti-cavalry weapons designed to brace against a charge, not make one. The ‘swords’ as you call them, were just fighting knives they carried as backup if their spear or gods forbid their shield get fucked up. Some of those guys were pretty good with them, but I don’t care how good you are with a knife, if you’re on horseback all somebody has to do is fuckin duck, and you can’t reach them unless you dismount.
Yeah, sorry for bitching at you, but I’ve hit a dry spell, and sleeping outdoors down here is cold as shit at night. Might come up to visit just to have a warm place to lay my head, y’know?
Try not to listen to too many drunk idiots,
‘Typhon’
***
“That’s it. What do you think?”
He looked up at me over his cracked reading glasses, and I blushed as I realized I’d been staring at his eyes rather than thinking about his question. Yellowy brown, too light to be amber, his eyes practically sparkled when he smiled. I cudgeled my brain for something coherent to say. My historian brain came to my rescue, tossing up a bit of trivia that might be relevant.
“Typhon? Isn’t that another name for Set? The brother of Osiris who killed and dismembered him?”
He rolled his eyes, but his smile never wavered. “Yeah, that’s the story. Of course, if the dude writing the letter had some kind of history he was running from, or just wanted to make himself sound better, he might have used it as a pseudonym. Y’know, like Plato.”
“Plato?”
“Broad,” he chuckled. “Dude straight up went into the history books referred to by his luchador name. Not that Greek wrestlers were luchador, but you take my meaning, yeah? Only makes it better that over time his nickname became a slang term for women. Oh, he would have hated that so much.”
I laughed a little myself. “You say that like you knew him personally.”
His smile got a little smaller, secretive almost, and he raised one shoulder in a gallic shrug. Right before I said anything else he burst out laughing. “C’mon,” he forced through his laughter, “weren’t we just talking about how even the word ‘Immortal’ itself is almost a meaningless myth?”
I shook my head as I realized he’d been playing with me, then pushed my brain back to academics. If ‘Agent of Karma’ was even close to the superhero historian he claimed to be, I really wanted to hear as much as he would tell me about the history he’d studied. On the other hand, I wanted to make sure that his sources were at least nominally valid. “Do you happen to have the original of that letter?”
He shook his head sadly. “Lost it in a fire. Two fires, actually, but with both up in flames does that really matter?”
I sighed. “Can I get a copy of the image file at least?”
“You got it. Give me just a second,” he tapped at his phone. “There. Done, it should be in your email soon.”
“You know, a lot of the phrases in there sounded kind of idiomatic?”
He winked at me, “aw, c’mon, what kind of a question is that?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes word for word translations are better.”
“Yeah, but are you gonna catch the subtext of a language you don’t even speak academically, let alone conversationally?” He raised an eyebrow as he said it, then glanced aside to nod and wave goodbye as one of the women rose to leave the party next to us.
“I suppose I wouldn’t. But your translation makes it sound like this ‘Hero’ character and ‘Typhon’ had more than an academic relationship.”
He just stared at me silently, his smile going a little lopsided. Behind me the women giggled a little, I’m not sure if they were laughing at my suggestion, his response, or something in their own conversation, but I can catch a hint when it’s tossed underhand.
“Really? You collect old love letters?”
“Is there anything else really worth collecting?”