“You have brought us to the darkest part of the darkest kingdom to land?” Kassandra cried over the howling winds.
Barnabas, hauling on ropes as his men worked the oars and Reza guided the steering paddles, laughed. “You wait—you will see.”
The Adrestia rolled in toward the black wall. Herodotos wailed in a rather high-pitched fashion, Kassandra and Myrrine both backed away up the deck, fearing that they were to be shredded against the bluffs . . . Until the wall of black seemed to slide apart.
Suddenly, the screaming gale fell away. The boat’s flapping, loose ropes fell limp and the lurching vessel settled into a calm drift. Now she saw it: the illusory cleft in the black wall, barely wider than the ship. It led into an oval inlet about an arrow shot wide, ringed by the black heights.
“Few know about this cove,” Barnabas said, his eyes growing distant, his voice falling into an echoing whisper. He looked up at the wide oculus of angry sky above, raised his hands and moved them slowly apart, his face etched with a look of wonder. “I like to call it the eye of the Gods.”
Kassandra, Myrrine and Herodotos gazed around the place.
Reza casually ambled past, coiling up a loose rope. “I call it Kronos’s arsehole.”
Deflated, Barnabas called out to his crew to prepare to dock. They disembarked onto a long strip of black rock that served as a natural wharf. As darkness fell, they made a fire under the shelter of an overhang, while the gale raged high above and the sea slapped and gurgled at the cove entrance.
Kassandra chewed on a chunk of bread, dunking it in a pot of Naxian honey every so often. Barnabas and Herodotos were locked in debate, parts of which she overheard.
“It is a fake!” Herodotos scoffed.
Barnabas, affronted, gasped. “It is not! Look!” He held up the medallion to the firelight, unhooking it from his neck and shoving it under Herodotos’s nose. “A real piece of Pythagoras’s wisdom!”
Kassandra listened keenly now, recalling her chat with Herodotos by the lion statue at Thermopylae, and the talk of the dead legend and his lost knowledge.
“You acquired it on Naxos?” Herodotos quizzed.
“Aye.”
“How much did the peddler charge you for it? What price do they ask for naïveté these days?”
Barnabas leaned back, grumbling a low oath. “I did not buy it,” he said. “Photina gave it to me.”
“Ah, your Naxian mistress.” Herodotos chuckled.
“Aye. It was a sign of our brief love. It used to belong to her husband, Meliton, before he went missing.”
Kassandra’s ears pricked up, the name triggering more memories of the chat at Thermopylae: One summer I came across a wandering man. A short, round little fellow by the name of Meliton who spent his days sailing the Aegean in a tub of a boat . . . He had been shipwrecked in his youth on the black shores of Thera . . .
Herodotos sat up straight, frowning, now snatching the piece and scrutinizing it carefully.
Kassandra caught a glimpse of the medallion now: it was a shard of black rock, etched with a strange symbol. Herodotos’s eyes rolled up from studying the piece to meet hers. She read a thousand questions in his gaze and a thousand more rose in her thoughts.
“How long are we to stay here?” one crewman asked her, breaking the moment.
Kassandra turned to the man and tried as best she could to recall the lay of the land between here and her old home. As a child she had traveled from Sparta to the coast once with Nikolaos to learn to swim in the rough seas. It had seemed like a colossal journey then although it probably only took a day or so.
“We’ll set off tomorrow. I will go alone with my mother.”
Herodotos, Barnabas and the rest of the crew looked up, troubled.
“At least allow some of us to come with you as an escort,” pleaded Barnabas.
“No, it must be Mother and me. Nobody else. We may be gone for some time.”
They had become used to that tone of hers and knew there was no point in persisting.
“Then we must conceal the boat while you are gone,” Barnabas conceded, looking up. “As well hidden as this cove is, the Spartans send land patrols along these cliffs from time to time. If they glance down here and see a boat, they’ll slaughter us.”
“How do you hide a galley, exactly?” Herodotos chuckled.
Barnabas flicked his eyebrows up twice, then nodded to Reza. The helmsman and two others rose and set to work. They lowered the mast, strapped down all the loose fixtures. Next, one man positioned an iron piling against the hull and Reza took up a great hammer and swung it down upon the piling’s end. A mighty crunch of timber echoed throughout the cove. As the noise faded, a rushing, gurgling sound rose in its place.
“Gods!” Herodotos gasped, the bread falling from his mouth as he watched the Adrestia slip calmly under the surface, all but the rail submerged. The two with Reza took turns diving into the cove waters with ropes. Gradually, the galley sank entirely from view into the inky waters.
“They tie rocks to the hull, to take the galley firmly to the bed of the cove. Her timbers will be preserved down there. None will see her from above. And as long as we stay from sight, none will know we are here. When we need her again we can cut the ropes. Once we remove the weights, the ship will float to the surface, then we can bucket-bail and repair the hole.”
Herodotos already had his wax tablet out, stylus scurrying across the surface as he tried to capture this odd and intriguing practice. Reza and his two came back to the fire and settled down to towel themselves dry. Next, they opened a vase of wine and soon the crew were lost in ribald stories of past adventures, ruddy-cheeked and warm.
Kassandra sat with one arm around Myrrine, drinking in the sight of her ragtag band. When a chill lick of wind stole into the cove and touched her neck, she looked up at the dark circle of night sky and the scudding clouds, and thought of the days to come.
* * *
• • •
They bought a pair of sorrel-red geldings from a Messenian stable, paying double to buy the man’s silence when he started to ask questions. The sullen sky cleared and they traveled under a perfect winter blue, trotting across rocky hills, swaddled in woolen blankets against the crisp air and the dogged easterly wind.
After a time, the hills peeled away to reveal the colossal rift ahead: the Hollow Land—a long strip of flat country walled by the Parnon sierra in the east . . . and the Taygetos range in the west. Kassandra felt her emotions rise like a sickness as she stared at the looming heights of Taygetos, hearing the screams and the curses of that wretched night afresh. Ikaros, soaring high above, erupted in a diatribe of shrieking, all seemingly directed at the range. It was only Myrrine’s hand on her thigh that scattered the dreadful memories.
Kassandra let her gaze fall to the plain between the mountain ridges, veined with brooks and tributaries, all feeding the silvery artery that was the River Eurotas. Among the green-gold cloak of thick forest and swaying wheat, the minor villages lay—houses of timber and brick. The five largest villages were clustered near the heart of the plain, gleaming with the famous blue-veined marble of this land.
Sparta, she mouthed.
She and Myrrine kept good time as they rode, but each felt a tightening in her belly, each could not help but balk at the growing closeness of their old home, of the past. They entered the Eurotas Forest midafternoon, falling under its shady canopy of olive trees and gnarled oak. All around them, the golden branches rustled and whispered conspiratorially, the wind spreading gossip of their return. Drifts of fallen leaves crackled and swirled as the breeze followed them, and every pocket of shade ahead seemed to be in league and packed with spies. But on they went, and they saw nobody.
Until they heard the deep, menacing growl of a wolf.
Kassandra threw a hand across Myrrine’s chest, halting them both. Her eyes grew sharp
as blades, seeing through the forest of shadows ahead. Movement. Boys. Three youngsters, heads shaved to the skin, naked bar grubby red cloaks. They leapt and rolled, narrowly avoiding the gnashing jaws of the most immense gray wolf. They were no match for the creature. Two of them were thrown back by the beast’s great swishing head, then it leapt upon the third, took him by the throat.
She felt herself slide from the saddle, heard Myrrine hiss for her to stop. “Kassandra, what are you doing? We are in Sparta and this is Agoge training territory.”
But on she went, until she was at the edge of the clearing. The wolf was shaking the boy like a toy. His face was turning gray; his eyes met Kassandra’s . . .
She stepped into the clearing, brandishing her spear, streaking it across the wolf’s flank. The wounded creature howled in fright, dropped the boy, then turned and ran. She sank to one knee and cradled the fallen lad. His neck was clearly broken.
“Mother?” the boy croaked, his pupils dilating.
“I’m not your mother,” Kassandra said quietly.
“Tell her that she . . . she should be proud of me. I faced the wolf. I was not afraid.”
Kassandra understood all too well.
“I am so cold,” the boy whimpered.
She lifted a fold of her cloak around him. Within a few final, rattling breaths, the light left his eyes. She set him down.
Just then, a new voice spoke. “What are you doing here, stranger?”
She swung to see an adult, red-cloaked Spartiate, bearded and wearing his hair in long black ropes. His glare was like copper rods. “I was passing through. I saw the boys in trouble and tried to help.”
“She lies!” one of the other two boys squealed gleefully. “She tried to slay the wolf and steal the glory for herself.”
“You interfered with Spartan training and then lied about it?” the adult Spartan hissed. “There is more honor in that dead boy’s heart.” He made a throaty noise to beckon the two surviving lads. One of them picked up the corpse, he and the other muttering in unison: “Never leave a comrade’s body unburied.”
The boys shuffled off past the adult, who then offered a parting threat. “You should return to wherever you came from, or you will soon find out just how unforgiving we Spartans are . . .”
She backed through the woods to where Myrrine was saddled. Myrrine glowered at her in a way that made her feel like a seven-year-old again. “You should not have interfered. These woods are used to harden the boys, make men of them, as well you know.”
“They are no good to Sparta if they end up in a wolf’s belly,” she snapped back.
“They are no use to Sparta if they are too weak to kill a wolf!” Myrrine rasped.
They rode on in awkward silence for another hour. At last, Myrrine spoke again. “It is this place,” she said with an apologetic sigh, “the air, the smell, the colors, all of it. I feel the oppression, the demands of what it was to be a Spartan when this was my home.”
“But you were right, I should not have tried to save that boy,” Kassandra countered.
“Why? What are you?” Myrrine asked with a tired sigh. “A Spartan? A Greek? A wanderer?”
“A child of nowhere,” Kassandra finished for her. She met Myrrine’s gaze. “Part of me is Spartan, and I can never change that. But the rest of me? Who am I to deny myself feelings of love, of compassion, of grief?”
Myrrine’s lips bent in a reluctant and sad smile. “You and I think in similar ways. We left our old home as Spartans,” she said after a time. “We return as very different creatures.”
The pair rode on.
Finally, the trees thinned and they came to Pitana, one of the five main villages. Kassandra’s birth town. Like all Spartan towns, it had no walls. One of Nikolaos’s old sayings came back to her: The men of Sparta are her walls, their spear tips her borders.
They emerged from the woods and stepped onto a broad, flagged way, edged with white-walled, red-tiled homes and workshops. Woodsmoke rose, the sweet scent mixed with the coppery stink of Spartan black broth, and the tink-tink of a smith’s hammer lent a rhythm to the low, priestly chant floating from a small temple at the heart of the village. Kassandra recognized it all: the meat-smoking rack by the well where she used to play, the armory with the bronze-strapped door, the tavern with the winged-horse statuette above the entrance lintel. So little had changed.
They rode, staring straight ahead, hiding all expression, burying the welling memories and emotions inside. Helot slaves scampered to and fro, backs bent with burdens, wearing dogskin caps to denote their lowly status. Red-cloaked Spartiates sat around near the long, low barrack houses, whetting their spears. Not one of them went without his weapon.
A woman sat on the porch of her home, grinding grain, draped in a dark peplos gown that covered her from neck to ankle . . . apart from the slit in one side that showed her leg, all the way up to the thigh. A boy—her son, going by his features—crept up behind her, reached out and plucked one of the small bags of flour from the table by her side. He edged away, his face splitting in a grin, when his mother rose and swung around in one motion, the grinding mill, grain and raw wheat spilling everywhere as she seized him by the throat, lifted him and struck him backhanded across the face. Kassandra heard the boy’s nose breaking. The mother dropped the boy to the ground. “You clumsy fool! You oaf! You cannot even steal a bag of flour. You will never be strong or skillful enough!”
As the boy took this verbal barrage, another—the lad’s brother, Kassandra realized, stole up and pinched two of the scattered flour bags, running away unseen. A few of the watching Spartiates laughed in low rumbles of appreciation, slapping their hands on their thighs in applause.
The pair came to a fork in the road. Right led to Sparta’s marble centerpiece—an unwalled citadel on a low mound where the roads to the five most ancient villages converged and where the kings were to be found . . . and this treacherous “Red-eyed Lion.” But both looked instead to the left, to the sad, forgotten home on Pitana’s outskirts. Wordlessly, they guided their horses that way and came to a halt before the iron gates, long since chained shut. Kassandra remembered the innocent beginnings of that night: sitting with Mother, Alexios and Nikolaos by the fire. Ikaros, though he had never been in this home, seemed to sense Kassandra’s sadness, and he cried plaintively through the gates and toward the door.
“It is ours by rights. It shall be ours again,” said Myrrine, “once we have rid Sparta of the parasite king.”
“This estate is Stentor’s,” a voice spoke, behind them.
Kassandra swung around, seeing the shape of a tall, strapping Spartiate. For a moment she wondered if she might have to fight. Then she saw the man’s brooding expression, framed by his smooth, collar-length hair. “Brasidas?” she whispered.
Myrrine threw a hand across her chest when she tried to step toward him. “No, Mother, Brasidas is a friend. He helped me kill the Monger.”
Brasidas’s brow bent. “Well, I like to think you helped me to kill him, but anyway.” He nodded over their head at the forgotten villa. “The state holds the house for Stentor. He is ever away at war and so it has lain like this, ever since the Wolf disappeared.”
Myrrine and Kassandra did well not to flinch or look at one another.
“But I know who you two are. I know the place is yours as much as it is Stentor’s. The thing is, it’s not me you have to convince.” He shot a quick look over his shoulder toward the low, marble citadel.
“We came to see the kings anyway,” Kassandra said.
Brasidas tried to read her for a moment, then quarter-bowed. “Then perhaps I should introduce you. It has been some time, after all . . .”
* * *
• • •
The citadel region was nothing like Athens’s acropolis. The mound was no higher than a single story, and the slopes were gentle, paved or blanketed in gra
ss and cypress stands. They walked by an open gymnasium, where naked men raced around a track. Women stood at the side, swearing at the slowest, spitting upon them as they passed. When one stumbled and fell, a woman cursed in derision, vaulted the wooden fence and tore off her robe, then broke into a sprint. Her face bent with effort as she caught up with the males, who looked momentarily ashamed and searched for more speed from their tired limbs. The onlookers roared in delight, cheering as the woman runner kept pace and challenged for the lead. Off to one side, men were having their bodies oiled by Helots, while an already-gleaming pair tied each other in knots in a bout of pankration. They passed a theater, the pale stone steps dotted with Spartiates who cheered and drummed their fists in applause as an actor played out the legend of Kadmos. The man leapt and rolled in a display of martial excellence around three Helots draped in a gaudily painted costume that was supposed to be the Theban Dragon. From another direction, they heard the pained bleating of a sheep, the sound rolling down from a nearby hillock. Up there, the sheep sighed its last on the altar to Venus Morpho, as a bloodstained priest held up the beast’s shining heart to the skies and sang some ancient prayer.
When they came to the base of the central mound, they passed by two young, shaven-headed men lashing their bakteriya staffs at a poor, grounded Helot.
Kassandra’s stomach twisted. The two were of the Krypteia, she realized: graduates from the Agoge, not yet allowed to grow their hair or beards, but permitted to terrorize the slave underclass, to keep them in a perpetual state of dread.
“Look me in the eye, would you, dog?” one screamed in the downed Helot’s nearly pulped face. Other Helots stood nearby, heads bowed, doing nothing. When the beaten slave fell unconscious, the perpetrator strode over to one of the nearby Helots and thrust out an expectant hand, not even looking the slave in the face. The slave handed him a towel without hesitation, and the Spartan wiped his hands of blood then threw the towel at the Helot’s feet. For all the Cult was responsible for the terrible things that had happened here in her youth, Sparta herself was a cruel and unforgiving creature, red in tooth and claw.
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