In at the Death

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It’d been three years since I’d last visited the Greens’ stables. Nothing had changed. The place still looked like a fortress: high, smooth-faced wall topped with pottery shards set in cement, a gate that would’ve stopped a charging elephant, and just in case visiting punters still hadn’t got the message a door-slave outside with biceps and pectorals that your common-or-garden gorilla would die for.

The scowl wasn’t exactly welcoming, either. I should’ve brought a bunch of bananas with me as a peace-offering, but it was too late now. I stepped up to the guy and gave him my best smile.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Remember me, pal?’

The slave stood up, his little piggy eyes under their mat of tangled hair narrowing as he gave me the once-over. It was like watching a titan off a pediment getting ready for round two of a theomachy. He nodded slowly and spat to one side. I swear the gobbet of phlegm sizzled on the cobbles, and in October that has nothing to do with temperature.

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