Dangerous Games

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He was known throughout Greece as The-Tree-That-Would-Not-Fall, but his real name was Miros. His arms were as big around as most men's legs, and his thighs were as thick as a horse's throat. He was forty-four years old, but he had tasted neither wine nor woman and the lumpy muscles of his stomach jutted through his skin like half-submerged stones rippling the surface of a slow-moving stream.

He was a hero, not only in his own village of Ares-tines but throughout all Greece. Still, as a child, his life had been dedicated to the glorification of the great god Zeus who, legend said, had begun the Olympic games in a battle against a lesser god for possession of the planet Earth; so, instead of living the life of an honored wastrel with a marketable skill, Miros lived a life normal to Arestines. Every day he went down into the caverns and brought up giant buckets of coal for the people of his village, to help warm them against the chill Aegean winters. The only break from this routine, day in, day out, summer and winter, was his visit to a fertile Greek plain every four years, to defend his Olympic wrestling title.

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