Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  Pride was a possession of limitless value to a Spartan, and those who would wound it did so at grave risk, for once he was locked in battle, a Spartan's pride would not permit him to yield. But Spartans also had minds and were capable of knowing when to pause and contemplate before leaping over certain thresholds.

  Seated before him, Styphon saw just such a threshold.

  Still, pride did not let him rub the hand that she had squeezed or meet her pale eyes. Staring at a patch of moss blooming between the ancient wall-stones of Nestor's fort, Styphon asked in a humbled whisper, "What are you?"

  She asked as softly, "What do you think I am?"

  Styphon sneered. Spartans had little taste for such verbal games as philosophers and Athenians liked to play. "I know not," he muttered.

  "What do the others think I am?"

  He informed her of the consensus reached by the men of the camp. "A Nereid."

  "They are right," she said. "That is what I am."

  Styphon stared at the stones. At length, he dragged his gaze back up to the self-proclaimed sea nymph.

  She smiled and said, "You don't believe me."

  "You are no more a daughter of Nereus than I am."

  "Tsk," the thing's pink tongue chided him. "You wouldn't want to anger my Father so soon before a battle. Speaking of which," she said with sudden gravity, "I have given you priceless information. I possess much more. What you choose to do with it could have lasting consequences."

  Styphon shook his head. He was trying, short of clapping hands over ears, to block out her voice.

  "I don't think Sparta breeds stupid men," were the next words to flow from her honeyed tongue. "Look at the evidence. I rose from the dead. I am stronger than you. If you didn't notice, I knew your father's name. So if I also tell you that I am an oracle, I dare say you have cause to take me seriously."

  She was right that the Lykurgan agoge did not turn out brainless fools, no matter how loudly and often Sparta's enemies made the opposite claim. And she was right that it would be the height of idiocy to take less than seriously such a being as she.

  Styphon treated her to a resentful glare and grated, "It is no mortal's place to know the future!"

  "What mortals know is for immortals to decide," she said. The creature's once-broken Greek was by now nearly flawless, if still strangely accented. "And one now has chosen to tell you that before dawn on the day after next, the Athenians will assault this island, disguising their movements as the regular changing of patrol ships. Your two commanders will be among the fallen, and you, Styphon son of Pharax, will consign to irons all the Equals who survive."

  "Why tell me this?" Styphon growled. He might have roared it were he not conscious of the need for discretion. His men were in easy earshot and doubtless curious about the goings-on behind the curtain. "The threads of Fate bind me no less for knowing that I am to disgrace myself!"

  The red-cloaked oracle frowned. "The threads of Fate are threads, not chains," she said, "and as easily snapped. Knowing of the attack, you might thwart it. Failing that, instead of yielding you could choose to die with hon—"

  "I have heard enough!" Styphon hissed. "I will take you to Epitadas. You may give him your oracles."

  "You mean the man who ordered me thrown from a cliff? No, I choose you. Tell me, Styphon, does Pharax yet live?"

  His mouth was already open to insist that she meet Epitadas, but his protest died as he realized she could tell the pentekoster anything she liked, easily making Styphon look the fool. Instead he just answered her question. "No."

  "How did he die?"

  "In battle." With resignation, Styphon began to sense the direction of her argument.

  "Good for him," Sea-thing said. "Do you have a family of your own?"

  By now Styphon was responding blankly, mechanically, wishing he were elsewhere, but unable to leave. "Only a daughter. Andrea."

  "There's nothing only about a daughter," she reprimanded him, then asked, "What will happen to Andrea if you are declared a trembler?"

  Styphon's eyes followed the snakes of bright green moss that filled the gaps between the black stones of the fort's crumbling wall, and his mind followed the unpleasant course of Sea-thing's thinking. Were he to disgrace himself here, his daughter would suffer a lonely life of misery and shame. No Equal would ever wed her, for who would wish to plant his seed in a womb through which flowed a coward's blood?

  Perhaps those piercing eyes could see inside his mind, for Sea-thing said next, quietly, "That is what Fate has in store, unless you choose to make it otherwise."

  "How?" Styphon asked hopelessly. "Epitadas is the only one who can act on your warning, and you refuse to speak to him."

  A hand emerged from her crimson shroud to point at the battered copper horn which hung from the belt of Styphon's chiton. The horn had gone unused these long months, but remained always by his side, lest it not be at hand the moment it finally was needed.

  "That is an alarm, is it not?" she said. "You need but sound it when the time comes."

  Styphon's hand fell to the horn and clutched it tightly. "You said you do not think Spartans stupid, yet you would have me do something only a fool would do: stand against Fate."

  The creature sighed a feminine, nasal sigh of exasperation. It reminded Styphon of Alkmena at times when she had found him too bull-headed to be swayed by her wise counsel.

  "I cannot make the choice for you," Sea-thing conceded. "You can serve Fate and live a life of lasting shame... or serve Sparta, and live or die with some glory that might anger the gods a little. I know what I would choose. But then I like making gods angry."

  Mind reeling, Styphon realized his fingers were white around the neck of the copper horn. He released his grip. "I know not your reason for wishing me to do this thing," he said. "But it hardly matters. Now that you have cursed me with this knowledge, I cannot stand by and watch disaster claim the lives of my countrymen. I will warn Epitadas, on the slim chance he might listen. If he does not... I will consider what to do." Meeting the eyes of the Sea-thing, whatever she was, he swallowed dust and steeled himself. "But I would ask something in return."

  The corners of her expressive mouth turned earthward. "You want more? More than the chance to escape doom for Sparta and disgrace for yourself?" She scoffed lightly. "Fine. Ask, and we'll see."

  "I would see my daughter spared from the consequences of my actions," Styphon said. "Whatever course I take, if I should wind up in dishonor, take Andrea from Sparta and find her a new home. A temple of Artemis or some other place where she will learn to honor the gods. And tell her that her father was no coward, but only tried to do what was best."

  Where Styphon had hoped to find some measure of sympathy light the creature's pale eyes as he finished, he found only hard calculation. "I could do that..." she answered, ominously, "but you would owe me another favor."

  Styphon's heart went cold at the thought of enslaving himself to this creature. Better an Athenian prison, with bars and walls which could be seen and touched, than the invisible cages so often used by human women and inhuman creatures of legend.

  She must have seen the horror on his face, for Sea-thing's features softened. She reassured him, "I may never collect. But when one is new to a world and poor of possessions, it rarely hurts to gather favors."

  Styphon wanted to believe that he would never see her again, that she would never call in his debt. Somehow he doubted it, but it offered a shred of hope to which he might cling as he nodded his assent to the black bargain.

  "I agree," he said. "But I have forgotten your name." She had uttered it just once, in the raking voice with which she had first awakened, and its syllables had been ugly and barbarian besides.

  The raven-haired being whose corpse the ravens would not touch smiled. "I've overheard your men talking about me. They call me Thalassia," she said. "Thing from the sea." Styphon nodded the truth of it. "That will do," she said. "Now, I'm really very hungry, if you could spare some provisions.
Something with honey, preferably. You won't likely be needing food much longer."

  I. PYLOS 5. Horn of Fate

  Styphon gave the men of the camp the story that Thalassia was in fact a priestess of Artemis, whom they dared not harm for fear of bringing down the wrath of the one she served. Though Epitadas' order to kill her was common knowledge by now, the men all concurred, at least outwardly, with Styphon's choice to defy it. Even if some few of them thought it was better to be rid of a woman's unlucky presence, none wished to bear the ritual impurity of having done the deed himself.

  Not that any five of them combined would necessarily be capable of killing her, only Styphon knew. But he did not tell them that, for such a claim would rightly cause them to question his grip on reality. And so Thalassia lived, sitting in seclusion behind her curtain and devouring barley cakes as quickly as Styphon could sneak them to her from the store of rations which, if she was to be believed, would soon be unneeded. Another day passed and another night fell, a night that to all but one Spartan on Sphakteria was no different then the seventy before it. To that one, who knew this night to be their last, little sleep came, and when it did it was plagued by dreams of vengeful gods, and monsters from the mists of legend.

  Early the next morning, Styphon heard by way of messenger that the Athenians had sent to the island with a demand for surrender in exchange for mild treatment of all prisoners until such time as a general settlement could be reached between their cities. Thalassia had foretold that just such an offer would be made. Naturally, as no powers of oracle were needed to foresee, Epitadas refused. Styphon chose that moment to send his own messenger from Nestor's fort to the main body of troops at the island's center with the suggestion that the demand for surrender, coming so soon on top of the arrival of reinforcements, erased all doubt that an attack was imminent. The runner returned Epitadas' terse reply: "The phylarch's opinion is noted."

  Night fell on the second day since Thalassia's arrival, and the gods and glittering stars looked down upon Sphakteria and dared a mere mortal man to stand alone against their divine order. Laying on his back on the cold earth, Styphon gazed up with heavy eyes and heavier heart. As night wore on, meager rations combined with lack of sleep caused his thoughts to meander. In his visions he saw Alkmena, smelled the scent of sage in her dark curls and looked down upon the shallow white depression in the small of her bare back as she lay face-down on their marital bed, awaiting him

  He saw Alkmena's grave, white as her skin but far colder, a block of stone set atop a mound of distant Lakonian earth, watered with women's tears. As Alkmena hadn't died in childbirth, her stone was unmarked, as any man's would be if he died outside the battlefield.

  Realizing he was drifting off, he roused himself. His hand went instinctively to his waist in search of the copper horn which tonight was to be Fate's unlikely instrument.

  It was gone. He sat bolt upright and searched around him in the darkness, palms frantically brushing the rocky soil, but to no avail. There was nothing around but the scattered bodies of slumbering Spartans, dark hulks barely distinguishable from the weathered rocks which jutted up all over camp. Rising, Styphon picked a path through both sets of obstacles in the direction of Nestor's fort. Sleep fled his limbs, and he moved with the speed and urgency of a man certain of his destination.

  Seconds later, he thrust back the curtain of rags. Behind it, wrapped in her cloak, Thalassia perched owl-like on a fallen wall stone, all of her weight on the ash-coated toes that peered out from beneath the crimson cloth's tattered edge.

  Sudden as his arrival had been, he failed to surprise her. Not only that, she knew why he was there, and proved it by opening the cloak and exposing a hand blue-tinged by moonlight. In it was clutched the copper horn.

  "Give it to me!" Styphon lunged at her. To his surprise, Thalassia made no effort to thwart him, allowing him to snatch the instrument from her open palm. She might as well have been part of the ancient masonry for all that the flurry of motion affected her balance.

  "Why?" Styphon demanded in a harsh whisper.

  "It's time." Thalassia's face was expressionless in the moonlight. "Blow it."

  Anger fled Styphon. "Just a little longer," he said. "If the men wake and see nothing, how will I explain? Let me climb to the heights and look for myself."

  Even as he spoke, he knew it was only an excuse to delay the his first step down an irreversible course, the defiance of Fate.

  "By then, it will be too late," Thalassia said. She reached down into a corner of her sanctuary, where Styphon now noted the presence of provisions in excess of what he had brought her. She must have crept through the camp, stealing food. From a pile large enough to feed three men for three days, she plucked two cakes of honey and poppy seed and pushed them one after the other into her mouth.

  "You have told me how this siege is meant to end," Styphon said, ignoring her breach of the common good. "But what of the war? We are but a few hundred, of no significance. If we fall today, what becomes of our city? "

  Thalassia finished chewing and hung her head. "I could lie to you," she said. "If you were a less decent man, I would. But the truth is... you'll win. Twenty years from now, and at such terrible cost that other cities will eclipse yours within a generation."

  Styphon's heart, briefly stilled, took halting and tentative flight. "But Sparta will be victorious?" he asked in disbelief.

  "Yes." Her admission was reluctant. "Barely. Only barbarians benefit when Greeks slaughter each other. A victory here might shorten the war and—."

  "'Might'?" Styphon echoed, receiving in reply only a dismissive flick of Thalassia's starlit features.

  Thalassia groaned. "With my help, victory will be all but certain. I can give you ideas, weapons, that will put you far beyond any who might challenge you. I am a weapon," she added with sudden ferocity. "The most dangerous fucking weapon on this earth, and you sit there looking at me like—"

  She drew a sharp, calming breath, and smiled.

  "Never mind," she said sweetly. "Just blow the horn like we agreed. You won't regret it."

  "I will not," Styphon said. He had seen and heard enough. The glimpse of rage he had just witnessed escape through Thalassia's carefully controlled facade made him even more certain what his decision must be. Yes, this creature was dangerous, he was sure of that. She would be the ruin of every man who came in contact with her.

  Styphon pulled the horn from his belt, drew back and hurled it into the darkness over the fort's half-crumbled wall.

  Thalassia's head hung once more. When she looked up, she said calmly, "I was afraid you might do that. That's why I climbed the heights a while ago and a had a chat with your watchmen. They're much more superstitious than you."

  Breathless, Styphon demanded, "What have you done?"

  Instead of answering, she craned her neck to the north and up to the crown of the heights which loomed black against the nighttime sky. Styphon followed her gaze and saw what she saw: a spark of light, a thin finger of smoke cutting the cloudless sky. It was the watchmen's flame, the signal of an Athenian assault.

  Her pale eyes returned to him, and Thalassia said, tauntingly, "If you don't sound the alarm now, you'll be shirking your duty, no?"

  "You bitch..." Styphon said, but there was little fire in his voice. She was right, of course. The warning beacon having been lit, it was his responsibility to raise the alarm.

  He knitted the fingers of one hand into his long, unkempt locks and tugged them in frustration before clambering over the wall to hunt for the horn.

  To a Spartan, duty trumped even Fate.

  I. PYLOS 6. Invasion

  Well before dawn's glow obscured the dome of stars over Pylos harbor, four red-beaked, angry-eyed Athenian triremes churned black water in innocuous maneuvers meant to disguise their true, less innocuous intent: attack.

  The island was still a black shape in the distance when a low, clear wail split the air from the direction of the island. Demosthenes, son o
f Alkisthenes, standing on the deck of one of the four Athenian ships, loosed a bitter curse. How had the Spartans known?

  It mattered not. The invasion would go forward regardless; it just would not be the one-sided slaughter for which he'd hoped.

  "Auloi!" Demosthenes cried. Spear-points.

  To the soldiers cramming the triremes' decks, it was the code which meant their landing would be contested. Athenians would only set foot on Sphakteria behind the lowered points of their spears. He repeated the cry, and his voice competed with a second blast of the Spartans' alarm.

  Shifting his weight constantly against the tossing of the trireme that had him, like all the closely packed men aboard, constantly bouncing off shoulders and shields and rails, he gazed out over the prow. On the moonlit beach of the island's southern shore, dark blots were already darting about: Spartan soldiers spotting the long-awaited invasion and hurrying to arm. A Helot runner would be on his way inland by now, bringing word to the main body of Spartan troops, probably somewhere near the island's center, where sat Sphakteria's sole source of water, the one thing which which kept the tenacious enemy alive. Demosthenes had stared out over the harbor at the ugly island all summer from his quarters on the acropolis of Pylos, and he had dreamed of the day he would capture it. Today.

  The four triremes drove for shore, while on the beach fully armed Spartans trickled out from the tree line. The polished iron blades of their tall spears caught the moonlight. From this distance, in the dark of night, their shields were dark circles, but soon enough the feared crimson lambda would show.

  Rather than forming up in the conventional wall of shields, the Spartans spread across the beach in loose clusters, poised to descend on the ships as they beached. That was just how his own force had repulsed the Spartan marine assault on the city of Pylos months ago, their attempt to recapture the city, the very engagement which had left this Spartan force trapped on Sphakteria.