Debi Orton's Editor's Pick
I Am An Arrow
by William Davis
Even after I'd reviewed this, I kept re-reading it, enchanted by the use of language and the timeless sorrow of death in battle. The last line is truly haunting.
I am an arrow.
I am an arrow, drawn on a bow.
Xenander, on my right, looks over. "What's that, boy?" he asks. "Petitioning Apollo? It's Ares's day for us."
"A pretty thing like our Phillipus ought to call upon Apollo--if not Aphrodite, like well-made Aeneas did. Perhaps she'll carry him off to safety in a cloud of musk," says Archilochus, to general laughter. "But Ares is the same for all men."
"Don't worry about him," says Xenander, "but about them, you can worry." He indicates the top of the hill. A group of barbarians are shouting at each other. It sounds like cranes. I hold my spear more tightly, to stop it from rattling. I am an arrow.
"They're about to come join us," Charmides interprets.
"Charmides speaks the language of every boy he's ever slept with," says Archilochus.
"Here's a trick, boy," says Xenander. "When they come, make it so they're not coming down the hill to us, but we're coming down the hill to them." I am afraid to speak, but he sees my confusion. "You've been on boats? Remember how the shore seems to slip away? It's the same thing here. It doesn't matter who's moving. Just tell yourself that we're the ones charging."
With a many-voiced scream the barbarians start down the hill. Their legs are like chariot wheels.
"Wear themselves out that way," someone says.
I close my eyes. When I open them the barbarians have covered half the distance. I try to turn the hill over so that I am charging them. I am an arrow. Xenander is swearing quietly, and Archilochus is singing when they hit our line.
I raise my shield and reel back when a blow hits it, then a body. I reach over the top and jab with my spear, which catches in something. Hide? Flesh? I yank it back and stab again, nearly losing my grip when I make no contact. How is it possible for me to miss when the world is nothing but struggling men?
"Back!" someone says, and we all shout it in answer. We've already been stepping backwards a little at a time, and now we're steadily losing ground. I lift my feet high, to avoid tripping on whatever might be lying behind me. Xenander is nowhere to be seen, and Archilochus has taken his place to my right. He is still singing. My spear clatters sideways across the breast of a barbarian, like a badly-shot arrow against the target. The barbarians are close enough that I can see each tooth, white and large as a river stone.
"Run!" someone says, and the shields on either side of me disappear. I turn too, and run, still holding my spear and shield. I am an arrow, I remind myself, as my breath comes in hot gasps. Something hits me in the leg, like a goat's kick. I stumble, recover, and limp as quickly as I can. The barbarians seem content to have the bottom of their hill back. I collapse among the other men. We are all gasping like beasts. My hearing is strangely acute, but my eyes won't focus and the color has run out of everything, even my purple belt, which my father gave me. I feel drunk. The men are talking around me.
"Where's your shield, Archilochus?"
"Some barbarian is showing it off. Damn him anyway. I'll get another, just as good."
"By the dog! Look at the boy." Someone turns me over. "One of those broad arrows, right in the thigh. He's emptying out like a broken jug."
Bios, I think, means bow. But also life.
"The name of the bow," I say. Someone leans over me. Archilochus. His breath smells like anise.
"What's that?" he asks.
"The name of the bow," I say, "is life. But its work is death."
"A lover of wisdom," someone else says, "is not afraid of death."
"A soldier," says Archilochus, "does his best to make the other fellow afraid of it." I want to tell him that I am not a soldier. I am not a lover of wisdom.
I am an arrow, drawn on a bow.
William Davis is a New Mexican transplanted into Oregon soil who lives in his head. When not writing, he and his wife are building a straw-bale home.