“We should not have abandoned the mountain camp,” a Spartan officer advised.
Stentor, head aching from a night of little sleep, bit his lip to cage his initial response. “Yet here we are.”
He tried once again to sight a weak spot in the earthworks and assembled Athenian troops. Some of them had boomed and roared when the dawn had revealed the Spartan’s descent from the mountains: five hundred men facing some five thousand. What if this was the misthios’s final joke—luring him and his lochos into a poorly defensible position like this?
Be ready at dawn, she had implored him as she set off with her lone Helot. For a time, he had wished he had not been so mule-headed as to give her only a slave.
“Lochagos,” the Spartan by his side hissed. “The Athenians are moving, look!”
He saw it for himself: their long line, bristling, as if readying to march forth and smash his lone regiment here. Shame and ignominy awaited. His heart plunged.
“Lochagos!” another Spartiate yelled. “Look!”
Stentor turned toward the southern end of the Athenian line. There, he saw something strange, ethereal. It was as if a god had grabbed the land like a rug and shook it, sending a slow, mighty ripple northwards. Dust rose. The southern end of the Athenian line became a frantic scattering of men, turning to face the south. Turning to face the armies of Korinthia, landed, marching.
“She did it,” he growled in envy and delight. “Spartans, ad-vance!”
* * *
• • •
Under the red banners of Korinthia, Kassandra marched with the allied Strategos, Aristeus, and his high guards. The Korinthian divisions moved like a great sickle, driving at the southern end of the Athenian line.
“Savage their flank, roll up their line,” Aristeus bellowed. A drummer thundered out a rapid tune.
Kassandra tapped her helm, causing it to slide down from her brow to cover her face. She stepped up the closest earth mound in time with the royal guards, holding her pike firmly. One Athenian commander rose to point at her and no doubt mock her as the cur at the Megarid had. He did not manage a single word before her spear punched through the center of his face, crumpling helm, skull and brain. Dozens of Athenians fell as the Korinthian advance crunched up and over a carpet of fallen, capturing the mound. Glancing west, Kassandra saw a red swell emerge from the heat haze, coming this way from the lower slopes of the Helicon range.
“The Spartans march from the west. Now signal the Thebans,” she cried.
Trumpets blared in rapid song, whistles blew and the undying cry of war grew louder and louder as first Stentor’s Spartans smashed into the western side of the disrupted Athenian line, then—from the east—a vast wing of silver Theban riders exploded into view. Led by the magnificently armed Pagondas, they came in a huge wedge, faces shaded from their wide-brimmed bronze-and-iron helms, their huge pikes trained on the disordered Athenian line’s eastern side.
“Áge! Áge! Áge!” they trilled, bringing their steeds into a wedge in perfect time, then exploding into a full charge. They speared into the Athenian midsection with a terrific boom like a thunderstorm, the flanges of the wedge hitting home with successive peals of iron upon iron. Blood whorled above the battle line in sudden bursts. Severed limbs flew into the air, heads spun and bounced through the dust and the screams seemed to tear the very ether. Kassandra kicked away the first of a band of Athenians who tried to recapture the captured mound, then braced behind her shield when more came for her. She saw the great Athenian line now coiling and thrashing, like a snake that had been bitten on its tail and both sides by dogs . . . but the moment of surprise was over—and the Athenian numbers were still more than the allies combined.
A Korinthian guardsman streaked his spear across the chest of one Athenian, opening him to his lungs. The foe fell away, yet scores more foes came for the mound. “Protect the strategos!” the guardsman screamed. They clustered with Kassandra around Aristeus, shields interlocked. The Athenians came at them with a forest of spears, then a rain of arrows. Kassandra speared one in the guts and smashed the knee of another, but the world darkened as they surrounded her in an ever-thickening surge. Arrows rained down on her helm; the wet sighs of stricken Korinthians sinking into silent deaths rose around her. The circle protecting the king was growing smaller . . . smaller.
“Bring the device,” she screamed through it all, knowing not if anyone would hear above the dreadful song of war. “Bring it!”
An Athenian giant cleaved the head of the Korinthian next to her, then ran the strategos’s personal bodyguard through. Kassandra leapt into his place, throwing down her hoplite spear and drawing the Leonidas half lance. The Athenian giant struck out at her. She blocked, but felt her entire body shake, such was the force of the blow. Two more coming in for her from the sides. Not enough time to react. And then . . . the most colossal roar.
It came with a hard slap of heat and sudden weltering of the air right in front of her. She screamed, so intense was the heat, stinging her skin, burning her eyes. The smell too—the stink of burning flesh and singed hair. As if the sun had fallen to the ground and burst across the plain, a wall of orange rose behind the Athenians fighting her. The rearmost one fell away, shrieking, his back ablaze. Behind him, hundreds more pitched over and rolled to and fro like human torches. Almost all others nearby dropped weapon and shield and ran from the flames. The giant before her, deserted by the two at his sides, now suffered the point of the Korinthian strategos’s lance, right through his throat.
Kassandra gasped for air in the midst of the choking tendrils of black smoke that scudded across the land. She saw the huge ironbound copper pipe, on the back of a wagon, and the three Korinthians working the leather bellows at one end. With every strained compression of the bellows, a great whoosh of air spewed from the far end of the pipe, lending fresh rage to the small cauldron of resin-fueled fire hanging from a cradle there, sending a new breath of flame across the Athenian ranks. It had been her suggestion to take the device from the port and bring it here. Villainous acts for a greater good, she reassured herself.
The Athenians were in full flight before the sun had fully risen. The Theban horsemen raced after them, spearing down the most reckless among them. Korinthian bowmen too gave chase, raining arrows on the retreat. The day was won.
Kassandra stabbed her half lance into the dirt mound. Ikaros swooped down to settle on her shoulder. The handful of remaining Korinthian royal guards escorted the strategos from the worst of the carnage. “I will not forget what you have done for my army, Misthios, or what you have done for my city in the past,” he called back to her. A time passed, the rising songs of victory filling the Boeotian plain, along with the hum of flies and shrieking of crows. The stink of death and burning men would never leave her, she realized. But the day was over. She tied her lance to her belt, staggered down the mound, her skin black with smoke, dirt and dried blood. She saw then the most pathetic sight: Lydos the Helot who had made this all possible. He was waiting for her, cowering, at the edge of battle. He held a bowl of water and a flask of oil—an offer to wash her. She stepped over to him. “You have done enough for today. Gods, you have done enough to earn freedom, I would claim.”
He trembled where he stood. “I . . . I would not dare dream of such a right,” he said, anxiously tucking his hair behind his ear.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I will see that your part in this land’s salvation is not overlooked, Lydos.”
Turning from him, she looked across the battlefield, and the many small victory stelae taking shape along the broken Athenian line. She heard a throaty cry of many Spartan voices together: “Aroo!” She saw the red-cloaked soldiers, spears raised in salute to their commander. She saw Stentor then, a mask of blood worn like a wreath of victory. He was coming toward her in a hurry.
“You led the lochos well. Victory is Sparta’s. Victory is yours,” she said as he
approached.
But he kept up that strident pace, coming right for her. “And now King Archidamos’s victory is secured, I can finally deal with my true enemy . . .”
She saw his spear flash up like a rising cobra, licking through the air. She leapt clear of it. “Are you mad?”
“I have never been clearer in my thoughts,” he rumbled, swiping at the air as Ikaros tried to attack him. “You will die for what you stole from me in the Megarid.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she rasped, dodging his jabs as he circled her.
“No, it didn’t. Things would have been very different, had you not marched into the war. Ruined the war. Slew my father, you fucking murderer.”
“I did what I had to,” she growled, drawing her half lance.
“And so will I,” Stentor raged. His body tensed like a lion about to pounce . . . and then he slackened, stepping back once, twice and again, face falling, eyes fixed on a point just beyond Kassandra’s shoulder.
Kassandra turned, seeing a shape walk through the injured and the clouds of scudding smoke. Dressed in a simple brown robe, he looked like neither a Spartan nor an Athenian nor anything other than a simple man of Hellas.
“She has nothing to answer for, Stentor,” Nikolaos said gently.
Kassandra’s skin tingled with a shiver as he passed her, offering her a knowing nod. She realized now that she had been followed, all throughout her time in Boeotia. The Wolf had watched her every step.
“Father? I . . . I thought you were dead?” Stentor croaked.
“I was dead to the war, for a time,” he replied. “When Kassandra confronted me in the Megarid, I knew I could not lead men with such . . . shame upon my back. I knew also that you were ready—ready to take the mantle of leadership. I did not want to leave you without saying farewell, but I knew that if I came to you that night, I would not be able to leave at all.”
“She killed you, on the bluffs,” Stentor stammered.
“She could have. Some might say she should have. But she did not. She took my helm to claim her reward but left me there, weeping. Her words, as true as Apollo’s light, cut deeper than any blade. I died a thousand deaths as I walked the lands for a time. At last, I made peace with my past. And then I came back to your side: for nearly two summers I have been watching you and your forces. I have done what I could to divert enemy spies, and to leave clues for you as to the best routes to take.”
Kassandra slid her spear into her belt. She met Stentor’s eye, feeling not a crumb of righteousness.
“But the truth is you did not truly need my help. You will be a greater general than I ever was, Son,” Nikolaos said, stepping close to Stentor.
Stentor offered Nikolaos a brisk and manly salute.
A father returns from the dead to a frosty soldier’s salute from his son, thought Kassandra. The iron shell of a Spartan is thick and cold indeed.
But then Nikolaos responded by extending his arms.
Stentor’s face sagged. His spear slid from his hand and he fell into Nikolaos’s embrace.
The two remained locked like that for an age, the warriors looking on.
Kassandra felt her heart swell with a fond sadness. The flame flickers, deep within the iron shell, she realized. This was all I ever wanted for myself. Love. Between father and daughter. Mother and brother. Now, Stentor, the gift is yours. Enjoy every moment of it.
After a time, Stentor made a strangled, sobbing noise, and a rivulet of tears sped down his cheek. He momentarily opened one baleful eye to glower at all watching and swept the tear away, insisting that it was merely the smoke stinging his eyes.
Kassandra’s top lip twitched in a brief and wry smile. With that, she turned from the pair and walked from the battlefield, Ikaros gliding alongside her.
FOURTEEN
She rode back to Sparta as summer faded into autumn, Nikolaos’s parting words in her ears all the way: Be careful. I once warned you of snakes in the grass, but it is much, much worse than that. Something evil hangs over the Hollow Land. I did not see it when I was in the army and in the throes of the war, but from the outside, I saw it well enough—like a crawling black shadow.
She knew what he meant. Even to one without full knowledge of the Cult of Kosmos, there was a certain chill in the Spartan air—a sense of impending disaster. She pulled her cloak a little tighter and rode on. Nikolaos had listened as she explained that Myrrine still lived as he had hoped, and that she was now back in her homeland. He had fallen silent for a time upon hearing this, then quietly said: Perhaps a day will come when once again I can sit with her, break bread and drink wine. The sad look in his eyes suggested it would be a dream and no more.
She rode along the Eurotas’s western banks, passing the Temple of Lycurgus and the Babyx bridge. At a parting of the trees ahead, she saw them: her new family waiting to greet her. Myrrine stood with Barnabas, Brasidas and Herodotos. The messenger she had paid to ride ahead had brought word to them. Mother’s eyes were wet with tears. Herodotos and Brasidas beamed like proud uncles. Barnabas blubbed like an old hen.
Memories of Nikolaos and Stentor’s reunion flashed through her mind as she slid from horseback and into Myrrine’s arms. She drank in her mother’s warm-petal scent, and felt the thick bear hug of Barnabas swaddling them both. They parted after a time, Kassandra and Myrrine both adopting tall, proud stances as if suddenly aware of their Spartan surrounds.
That night, Barnabas fell into a snoring slumber at the corner of their small abode in Pitana village while Brasidas sat in the doorway, whetting his spear. Herodotos busied himself making a sketch of Ikaros, who preened himself in an eave nest above the doorway. Myrrine and Kassandra—having enjoyed a bracing swim in the Eurotas and a good strigilling clean—sat around the hearth wrapped in freshly washed woolen blankets, drinking cups of hot, black broth. She told her mother everything about Boeotia, and about Nikolaos’s reappearance. “I never told you I spared him. I wasn’t sure you would forgive me that.”
Myrrine ladled more of the broth into both of their cups, breaking a second small loaf between them. “You once told me about the flame inside, Kass,” she said quietly. “I told you to hide it, to keep it a secret. I was wrong,” she said softly. “We are Spartan . . . but we are more than that,” she said, clasping Kassandra’s hand.
Kassandra half smiled and supped on the hot soup, the flavor strong and warming. “Yet it was not Nikolaos I set out to find. Of the Cultist king—the Red-eyed Lion—I found nothing. No clues, no whispers.” She stared into the flames and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I am due to report to the Kings’ Hall tomorrow, to detail my efforts in Boeotia. I had planned to use that moment to expose Archidamos . . . but he has covered his tracks well.”
“I too found nothing,” said Myrrine. “Arkadia is a strange land, and I was glad of Brasidas’s company. He and I made use of our spears more than once.”
Kassandra saw the recent scars on her mother’s hands.
“Archon Lagos was, as I feared, one of them.” She set down her broth mug as if suddenly losing her appetite. “He had a troop of masked ones with him. Brasidas and his hand-picked guards fought like a lion to slay them. Finally, I had Lagos pinned at spearpoint on the floor of his palace. He thought himself invincible: as if his wretched Cult would burst in and save him. Then I told him who I was, who my daughter was. His confidence fell like a rock. Forty-two of them, there once were,” she said, squeezing Kassandra’s knee, “and now only six remain. Mainly thanks to you.”
“But one of those six sits on the throne of Sparta,” Kassandra said flatly.
“I tried to get him to confess the traitor king’s identity.” Myrrine sighed. “Before I ran him through, he wailed and pleaded. Yet I got nothing. Nothing but another script.” She shrugged, drawing from under her blanket a tattered scroll. “From the Red-eyed Lion, once again.”
Kassandra he
ld it up to the firelight, staring at the same lion-head seal as was stamped on the Parian script. She rolled the scroll out and scanned the Cultic script, understanding none of it—again, just like the one from Paros. Worse, this document was soiled too—part of the text obscured by . . . The breath caught in her throat. Realization rose within her. She barely heard the sound of her broth cup falling to the floor, or of Barnabas waking, startled, or of Brasidas dropping his now-honed lance, or of Mother shaking her. “Kassandra, what is it? What is it?”
* * *
• • •
The prattle of the Gerousia filled the Kings’ Hall as two Spartiates yelled and remonstrated their cases: one man claimed the olive orchard on Taygetos’s lower slopes as his own thanks to his tending of the estate; the other insisted it was instead his by birthright. The pair screamed until their faces were red, and it was only when the one claiming birthright drew the loudest wail of acclamation that the matter was deemed settled. The two were shepherded from the doors by the spearpoints of the Hippeis guards. Now, all eyes settled on the trio who were up next for judgment.
Kassandra stepped forth and beheld the two kings and the five ephors.
“Ah,” grunted Archidamos, “I heard that Boeotia was secured. You didn’t die in the struggle then?”
The Gerousia rumbled with dry laughter.
Kassandra stared at him. His tousled mane and beard, his bloodshot eyes, his foul, menacing mien.
“You have Sparta’s gratitude,” he muttered at last.
“And your estate,” added King Pausanias quickly. “I will see to it that the chains are taken off and the place is cleaned for your return there.”
Two Hippeis guards moved as if to herd Kassandra from the chamber, but she did not move.
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