“You did this!” I shouted. “I don’t know what you said to Ione, but you’re the reason why she hasn’t left me alone for a moment all these days!”
“You look mad enough to throw a rock at my head,” Glaucus said calmly. “Did you think I was going to make this easy for you, princess? You say you want to learn a fighter’s skills. Well, patience is one of them, cunning’s another, and no one can give those to you but yourself. If you’d rather have gifts fall into your lap, go back to the palace and put on a skirt, but if you still want to learn from me, let’s see you throw something besides a rock.” Instead of giving me the sharpened wooden practice spears he gave my brothers, he handed me his own weapon, a beautiful, bronze-headed spear made to fly to the target with a hawk’s clean grace.
It wasn’t as massive as the great hunting spears the men used to kill wild boar, but it was heavy enough. I envied my brothers, armed with sharpened sticks. They had no trouble hitting the bales of barley straw at the far end of the training ground. Meanwhile, I spent more time struggling to lift the genuine spear than I did throwing it. Hit the target? I was happy when I finally managed to fling that cumbersome weapon more than five paces away from me.
I’d come to the training ground with sore arms. As that day wore on, they felt ready to drop off like dead vine leaves. Still I kept at it, hoisting the spear, throwing the spear, fetching the spear, until I wanted to howl from the pain. Part of my staying power came from fear that if I quit or even complained, Glaucus would decide that I wasn’t worth teaching after all. Then what? My brothers loved me, but they’d never agree to teach me the ways of weapons. They’d just point to my failure as proof that there really were some things boys could do that girls shouldn’t even try.
I needed Glaucus. I needed to show him that Castor was wrong, that I could keep up with my brothers after all.
“Well,” Glaucus said when at last he took the spear from my shaking hands. “That was awful. Next time you’ll practice with the same equipment as your brothers do.”
I was aching so badly that I could have kissed his hands for those words, but I didn’t want to let him know that. I had to make him see that I was strong enough to hold my own on the training ground, so I put on a brave show. “This was only my first day. I want to go on using the real thing. I don’t want to learn how to throw some stupid stick.”
Glaucus’s scowl was downright terrifying. “What you will learn, princess,” he said grimly, “is obedience. Or you’ll learn nothing more from me.”
I was tired and sore and frustrated. My mouth was dry, and my head was beginning to ache along with my arms. Glaucus was a famous warrior, the one man Father thought worthy to teach princes, but he was also the man who’d agreed to teach me, then made it almost impossible for me to come to my lessons, and now, now he was scolding me about obedience! I was so exasperated that I forgot his very first lesson. Keep your temper under control or it’s going to control you.
“I know all about obedience.” I spat out the words as if they were sour pomegranate seeds. “Obey my nurse, obey my parents, obey the gods. If the gods love obedience so much, why didn’t they fill the world with sheep?”
I stamped my foot for emphasis. The sharp-edged bit of stone on the training ground wouldn’t have hurt my foot if I’d only trod on it, but stamping drove it into my flesh like a dagger. The sudden pain took me by surprise so that I gasped instead of yowling. When I picked up my foot to see what I’d done, there was a lot of blood.
I felt the tears rising, but I also felt Glaucus’s eyes on me, and my brothers’ as well. I clenched my hands and screwed my eyes tight shut, biting down hard on my lower lip, all in a mighty battle to hold back my tears. Soldiers never cry, I thought. Soldiers never cry.
I lost that battle. The pain was too great, and my breath tore out of my body in a bone-shaking sob. I expected to see Glaucus turn to my brothers and say, “There, now you see the real difference between men and women. No man would ever act like this over a little blood.”
Instead, I was startled out of my tears by the sight of the broad-shouldered warrior kneeling beside me and taking my wounded foot in his hand as gently as if he were my mother.
“Let’s see that,” he said. “Mmm, this isn’t going to be easy to hide from your nurse. That was a stupid thing to do, princess, but I’ve seen worse. We’ll find a way around it. Men! Are you going to stand there like deadwood or have you got any brains to bring to this problem?”
I stopped sobbing as I watched my brothers scramble all over one another like a pair of big-pawed puppies in their haste to help me.
“It’s not such a bad wound, Helen,” Castor whispered, trying to give me comfort. “It’ll heal quickly.”
“You actually managed to lift that spear,” Polydeuces murmured. “Amazing. Wasn’t that something, Castor?”
Castor agreed, echoing Polydeuces’s pleasure in my accomplishment. I would have hugged them for their kindness then and there, but I didn’t know if that would have embarrassed them in front of their teacher. They did love me, even if they’d have to be convinced that a girl’s place was beside them on the training ground.
In the time it took for my tears to dry, Castor and Polydeuces managed to wash my wound, ruin their clothing by tearing strips from the hems for bandages, and wrap my foot as thickly and tightly as if they were swaddling an infant in wintertime. Polydeuces had even been able to scrounge up some spiderwebs to help stop the bleeding. When they were done, they stood back and gazed at Glaucus with happy, expectant faces.