The Wisdom of Zeus

This morning, too, began with a hoof.

THWACK!

The sky spun — once, twice — and I went tumbling across the dirt. The same routine, every single morning. Through the dust, four legs came walking. From the waist up, an old man built of nothing but muscle; from the waist down, a brown wild horse. Put the two together and there he was, my master: the great sage Chiron himself.

"Rise, Diomedes."

THUD! The ash-wood club stamped the earth.

"Let a stance collapse, and the bones pay for it. That is the way of things."

"You're the one who kicked them in! I'm fairly sure about three of my ribs just cracked!"

"They will set all the harder."

"I am not a slab of poured concrete, and that has absolutely no medical basis!"

"I do not know what you are saying. Your spirit has grown lax."

There was no talking to him. With a lower half like livestock, he had clearly left about half his brain back in the stable. Then again, expecting modern human rights out of Greece had been my mistake to begin with.

In my previous life I had been an ordinary office worker in South Korea — the sort who ground through daily overtime under an all-inclusive salary contract, collected a paycheck thin as a mouse's tail, poured it straight into the credit-card hole, and on weekends glued himself to the mattress and ordered delivery. That kind of man. I don't even remember how I died.

I opened my eyes in a cave on Mount Pelion, and I was a boy with golden hair and sharp, distinctly Western features, and everyone called me Diomedes.

Diomedes. The cunning of Zeus, or something to that effect.

The first time I heard the name, I ransacked the memories of my previous life in a panic. Manga versions of Greek and Roman myth, anime, mobile gacha games, blockbuster films — I turned all of it inside out.

Search results:

So what the hell is a Diomedes, nerd.

No idea. I had never even heard the name. He wasn't Achilles, or Odysseus, or Heracles.

Random Citizen A. Perfect.

A nameless extra doesn't get chopped to pieces for wandering into a hero's tragedy. Long live extras. Long live obscurity.

"That is enough training for today. Go and prepare the evening meal with Peleus."

Chiron flicked his tail once and turned his steps toward the cave.

"......One of these days I'm reporting you to the Board of Education."

"Hm? What was that you just muttered?"

"Nothing at all! I said your benevolent guidance and loving correction had moved me until the tears blinded my eyes!"

I glared after the back that walked away on four legs, then planted my hands in the dirt and hauled myself up.

Aigo. Every part of me hurt.

Fat hissed and spat as goat meat dripped over the campfire.

Across from it, the man who had been splitting logs with his bare hands bared his teeth in a grin.

"Hey, Dio. Looks like you got a proper taste of Master's hoof again today."

"The full hoof course. Front kick for the appetizer, back kick for the main, a trampling for dessert. Finished with a diable de jambe."

"Hahaha! No idea what you're saying today, either! Anyway, sounds like they spoiled you rotten!"

This one's name was Peleus. A freeloader lodging in Chiron's cave, and a lunatic who, given the slightest opening, unspooled the story of killing his little brother as if it were a tale of glorious deeds.

"Quit the moaning and give this boar hide a pull. We're roasting it tomorrow."

"Brother, I just popped a dislocated shoulder back in, you know that? I don't have the strength to twitch a finger. The chef can handle it himself."

"A man can't go around whimpering over a thing like that. Back in my day, I tell you, even when my uncles stabbed me in the gut, I shoved the innards back in and finished the fight."

"And that's something to brag about? Congratulations on not dying of sepsis."

I gave up and hauled on the boar's hind leg. Peleus let out a rough bark of a laugh and peeled the hide away with practiced hands.

"Mouth's the only living part of you, I'll give you that. Still, that wild-greens soup you boil is decent enough. Sure was the right call, cracking my little brother's skull and running away from home."

"Brother Peleus."

"Yeah?"

"Half-brother or not, if you beat a man to death with a stone, you go to prison — or at the very least you repent. Waving it off with 'that's just how a man grows up' is not normal. Are you a psychopath with no feelings at all?"

Peleus's hands stopped.

"......You. Are you scolding me? Pointing out the weight of the blood on these hands?"

"It's common sense, from one civilized person to another. If ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this were a nation under the rule of law, you'd be serving life without parole by now. There isn't an acorn's worth of mitigating circumstance."

"Hah."

The rims of his eyes flushed red. His fists trembled.

Ah. This is the part where I get hit, isn't it. Second dislocation of the day?

He flung the boar hide aside and clamped a hand onto my shoulder.

CRACK!

"AAAGH! Brother, the bone! My bone!"

"Every last man alive either spat on me and called me a cursed murderer, or fell over himself flattering me as the hero who would accomplish some great labor......!"

"No, I was just calling you a criminal piece of shit??"

"To think I would meet, here, a sworn brother who looks the very essence of my sin in the face and still stands at my side......! O great Zeus!"

The conversation was not getting through. Everyone in this region had definitely had one corner of the brain scorched by Olympian lightning.

"Quite a voice on you. You'll set the whole mountain ringing."

A woman came walking out from the inner cave with a basket of herbs in her arms.

Chariclo. The nymph who was Chiron's wife. The only rational being in this rough mountain country with whom a person could actually hold a conversation — provided you turned a blind eye to the peculiar taste of having married a male whose lower half was a horse.

"Peleus, go split some more firewood, dear. If that fire dies, supper is raw acorn meal."

"Ah—! Yes, ma'am! I'll go right now!"

Peleus snatched up the axe and shot off into the forest like an arrow.

"Thank you, ma'am. That man is nothing but surplus strength. I can't handle him."

"You really are a peculiar child."

"Me? I'm just an ordinary private citizen."

Chariclo crouched and tapped the dry leaves out of the herb basket.

"That ignorant boy Heracles, on his very first day, picked up a boulder and blew the entire outer wall of the cave clean off. The other heroes' sons were all busy fondling sword hilts and strutting. But a child who scours the soot off the bottom of a pot with sand, and dries the herbs sorted kind by kind — you are the first."

"Hygiene is the foundation of survival. Get dirt in a wound and you die of tetanus."

"And that, dear, is exactly why it seems girlish."

"I'll take it as a compliment."

Chariclo laughed and set the lid on the pot.

"Honestly, though, I would like to keep you for the rest of my life."

"Works for me. I was planning to spend the rest of mine at your side anyway, scrubbing pots and digging herbs."

"My. A face that pretty, and words just as pretty to match. If you had been a centaur, I might have fallen for you."

Chariclo laughed, and then the corners of her eyes dipped, just slightly.

"But what is one to do. It isn't a thing that goes as we please. Chiron's school keeps a strict rule."

"A rule?"

"Any disciple who surpasses the master's teaching even a single time must leave this mountain at once and go down into the world."

The corner of my mouth crept up.

Surpass the master?

My master was Chiron, the deathless great sage who had raised hero after hero. Loose an arrow and he could put it through the eye of an eagle on the wing; break into a run and he was faster than the wind. That centaur — surpassed by me, a soft little civilian?

Not in this lifetime. Not if I died and woke up again!

I was qualified to guarantee it. Dying and waking up again was already on my résumé.

Which meant I could never graduate. Which meant I could freeload for life as a young man whose status would forever read resting.

The world outside was a hell, packed with monsters that chewed people alive and gods who toyed with human beings whenever they grew bored. Here, by contrast, was Mount Pelion National Park. Fine water. Fine air. I would live out my natural span as a lazy, well-behaved lodger, and in time find myself a gentle wife without a jealous bone in her body and take up a bit of olive farming.

That was the plan for my second run at life.

......It had been the plan.

Three days later, in a clearing on Mount Pelion, morning sparring came around again.

"Lower your stance, Diomedes. Today you learn how to meet a blow."

Chiron held the ash-wood club and raked the dirt roughly with a forehoof.

"Master, I tell you every time, I am an aspiring farmer! Meet a blow? Meet what!"

"Fill what you lack by being struck. Bone must break before muscle ripens."

"Bone and muscle are separate tissues, I'm telling you??"

He didn't let me finish.

KR-THOOM!

Hooves hammered the axis of the earth. A centaur's charge.

Ah, damn it. There go the ribs again.

I had just given up, and was about to close my eyes, when it came.

Ding!

"What is this."

In the corner of my vision, a pink window of text spilled open in a rush.

Did you just say host? You started to say host and then you stopped. I heard you.

"Uh— wha—?"

My body moved ahead of the thought. I drew my right foot back and twisted my upper body.

WHOOSH!

The tip of the club grazed my chest. The blast of air whipped my bangs wild.

"......Hoh? Have your eyes opened? And yet your feet have stopped!"

The horse half pivoted on its axis. A hind hoof rose.

"WAAAAAH!"

I rolled across the ground with no dignity whatsoever. I had dodged it. Me? Chiron's attack? Twice?

Who are you! Who are you!

Master's upper half is a person, so it's a person's head, thank you!

I kicked off the ground and got to my feet. Fight? Hit back? I would have to be insane. There was no way to beat an immortal centaur. Running was the only way to stay alive.

"Not bad, Diomedes! Go on — see if you can flee all the way to the end!"

Chiron drove off the earth and leapt. His shadow swallowed the sun.

I stepped on the root and sprang, then tumbled through a thornbush, over and over. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Branches tore my clothes to rags, but I didn't stop. Down below, the ravine water twisted in a violent current.

Then what do you want me to do! Die?

"That is seriously the only way??"

I kicked off the lip of the cliff.

SPLASH!

The ravine swallowed me whole. I thrashed in the torrent, caught the edge of a rock, and shoved my head up into the air.

"Pwah—! Cough— hack!"

I was soaked through and freezing, but my bones were intact. A few scratches from branches, and that was all. I hadn't been hit. In more than ten years of eating dirt, this was the first sparring that had ended without a single blow landing on me.

I looked up the cliff. Against the backlight, Chiron was staring down at me without so much as a twitch.

Why is he just standing there?

A bad feeling slid down my spine.

Don't tell me he's furious that I ran instead of charging him to the bitter end. He isn't about to throw me out for cowardice, is he?

"M-Master......?"

"Splendid. You pass."

"......Pardon?"

"Descend the mountain now."

Shaaaa— The roar of the ravine hammered at my ears.

"Wait! There's been some kind of mistake! I didn't beat you! All I did was run away like a sneak!"

Chiron came down the slope to the water's edge. I scrambled out after him, clinging to the rocks.

"To surpass does not necessarily mean to win. Today you let every one of my blows slip past you, and you lived. If you can flee even from me, then wherever you go, you will not die a futile death."

He looked down at me.

"I have watched the heroes and champions who passed through my school. Arrogant little hero-whelps, every last one of them, clenched a fist and charged my hooves. Babbling of honor and of glory, they threw themselves in without even noticing their own bones crumbling, and in the prime of youth they were left strewn across battlefields."

"Which is exactly why I don't need the honor or the glory!"

"Flight is nothing to be ashamed of. Only the one who knows how to keep his life before a true death can see a labor through."

"I am not doing any labor! Starting tomorrow I'll eat less — I'll barely eat at all! I'll water every bit of ma'am's herb garden myself, and I'll boil the laundry and scrub it! Just let me stay here and wash the dishes!"

I let what pride I had wash away in the ravine and clung to his foreleg. There hadn't been much of it to begin with. I wasn't really losing anything.

"Go forth into the world and face your fate. As your master, I bestow a new name upon you."

Chiron laid his hand upon my head.

"You are one who cannot pass by another's wound, and who saves himself by enduring humiliation and taking flight. A healer of the world. One who cradles a wound until it mends."

A holy voice filled the ravine.

"......Jason?"

I had heard that somewhere.

Ding! Ding!

Text windows came pouring down.

An extra is not supposed to come with this many titles. This was not the stat sheet of Random Citizen A.

Wait. Wait, wait, wait.

Cold sweat poured off me like rain.

I wasn't an extra?

An hourglass spun and spun inside the text window.

"This is a dream, right? Tell me it's a lie!"

"Oh, Zeus have mercy."

SPLASH!

I went straight back into the ravine.