Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  Three of the four ships in the first wave were loaded with Athenian citizens in full hoplite panoplies of helmet, round shield, bronze breastplate and leg-greaves. Demosthenes stood among the hoplites on the deck of his own ship, Leuke, but unlike the men around him he had yet to don his helmet. Its cheek pieces gave wide enough berth to his mouth that his voice could escape it unimpeded, but the bronze covered his ears, erasing any hope of hearing a reply. The sea wind whipped his head of sand-colored curls, a feature as distinctive as the red crest of rank adorning his helmet. In youth, boys had mocked him for the 'womanly' attribute, along with his wide, brown doe-eyes, but no longer. Not to his face, anyway.

  "Atraktoi!" Demosthenes yelled in the direction of the fourth trireme. That ship held bowmen, and the word meant Spindles. It was the derisive term by which the Spartans referred to arrows. Why not use it as his command to fire, Demosthenes had decided. Since Athens maintained no formal force of archers, the bowmen were Ionians from cities that paid tribute to Athens. The Ionian captain heard Demosthenes' shouted command, and seconds later his men loosed a volley at the beach.

  Not much could be expected of archers firing in darkness from the swaying deck of a ship, and sure enough, not one of the spear-wielding shadows on the shore crumpled to the beach or wailed in pain. But the bowmen, and soon the targeteers, too, with their iron-tipped javelins, would keep up a hail of missiles until the melee began and the risk became too great of their missiles lodging in friendly backs.

  Demosthenes vessel Leuke was not the first to reach the shore. The chance currents of the harbor bestowed that honor on another ship, Habra. Her hull ground up on the pebbly beach and pivoted sharply to starboard, the rowers shipped the oars on that side, and hoplites began vaulting the topstrake to plunge six feet into the breaking surf. Most failed to land on their feet and had to scramble upright in the knee-deep waters by frantically digging spear-shafts and shields into the sand, even as ten or more Spartans, about a quarter of the total number waiting on the beach, bore down on them at a full run, man-skewering spears held high. The rest hung back to await the arrival of the other ships, lest one be allowed to land unchallenged.

  The first handful of Athenians from Habra, those who had managed to keep their footing against the tide, waded onto Sphakteria. Water still lapped their greaves when the defenders, who by now had gathered considerable momentum, slammed into them. The two sides converged, battle roars going up from both sides alike, and the invasion began in earnest. The fighters became black shapes engaged in a frenzied dance of flashing moonlit spear blades and splashing seawater. For some seconds there was utter chaos, a suspended moment in which Demosthenes and forty other watchers held their collective breath—and then the result became clear: the defenders had got the better of the initial clash. Most of the sharp death groans that pierced the night came from Athenians, whose silent corpses soon rocked back and forth on the breakers.

  The Spartans fell back and regrouped in a line on the shore to meet the next challenge, for Habra was not yet done disgorging her marines. But Demosthenes could not watch what befell those men, for now it was Leuke's turn to hit the beach. At the prow, Demosthenes pulled his crested helmet onto his skull, turned and exhorted his men, "I know you are afraid. These are true Spartans, bred to kill. But look at them! They can hardly stand from hunger, and they come from a city that's too poor to even equip them properly. Instead of helmets they wear metal hats that leave their necks and faces exposed!"

  These things were true, but if they'd yet caused Sparta to lose a battle, Demosthenes did not know of it. Some even said the uncovered faces of modern Spartiates were more intimidating than the encompassing faceplates of bronze their fathers had worn. But this was an exhortation to battle, and it needed not take such details into account.

  "Do not hold back!" Demosthenes continued. "The sooner this island is ours the sooner we put this cursed desert city behind us! There is much Spartan blood in the harbor already. Let us fill it with more!"

  He raised his hoplon of bronze-sheathed wood, with its Pegasos blazon, and a cheer erupted from the sea of brazen helms that their wearers had coated with pitch to prevent them catching moonlight, a stealth measure of no use now. Likewise, to avoid the glinting of their blades, not to mention accidents on the wave-tossed ships, the Athenians' heavy spears had been stowed in a bundle on the deck. While Demosthenes spoke, the spears were distributed, and by the time Leuke began her broadside pivot into the surf, the hoplites aboard were fully armed and waiting to leap the rails, five by five, into the surf. One of the waiting clusters of Spartiates raced down the beach in Leuke's direction, spears raised over long tresses that bobbed under the rims of their cheap bronze pilos caps.

  As the shore approached, Demosthenes spared a swift glance down the shore to where Habra had landed. He had no time to discern detail, but the fight there did not seem to be going well, for it was still taking place in the surf. The Spartans further back, meanwhile, seemed to have lost a man or two to the archers' white-fletched arrows, and now javelins, as the Ionians' ship drew nearer.

  "Pallas!"

  Screaming the name of the goddess, Demosthenes went first over the rail. He plunged for a stomach-churning second, then his sandaled feet struck wet sand with a jarring force that buckled his knees and might have toppled him were it not for the spear whose butt-spike he drove hard into the ground for balance. He sprang up and ran, barely conscious of his fellow fighters splashing down to his left and right and following, if their feet stayed beneath them. Screaming, he went to meet an onrushing foe doing its level best to make Sphakteria's invaders unwelcome. He went straight for the foremost Spartan, who even in the dark could not have missed the red crest adorning the helmet of his opponent. A general. Here was his chance to be a hero, he would be thinking.

  The chance was lost, for Demosthenes braced his left foot abruptly in the shifting pebbles, pushed off to his right and slashed his spear in a wide arc that tore out the Spartan's throat, sending his body headlong to the rocks and his shade into the mist-cloaked fields of asphodel. Two of the dead man's countrymen were right behind. Twisting and ducking behind his hoplon, Demosthenes took the first of them in the groin. Another Athenian fresh from the surf took the second in his bare thigh, which gouted black blood onto the beach. He shrieked in agony, but only for as long as it took Demosthenes drive his spear's butt-spike, the lizard-killer, as some called it, down the man's throat.

  By now Demosthenes was flanked by at least three of his countrymen, perhaps more, with others close behind, judging by their piercing wails. They had a chance of success, but only if they survived the imminent arrival of a half-dozen more Equals just paces behind their fallen brothers.

  "Hold fast!" Demosthenes said left and right to whomever was there to hear. He crouched behind his shield and dug in his heels just in time. One of the charging defenders, slowing in his full-tilt run to avoid collision, brought his own spear blade down in an overhead attack which Demosthenes deflected with the rim of his shield before trading back a short jab with his own spear. The enemy dodged, but was unprepared when Demosthenes, seeing he was in no danger from left or right, let go of his spear and launched his body forward, putting all his weight behind the bowl-shaped hoplon on his left arm.

  Their two shields glanced off one another, but it was the Spartan's which was flung aside. Demosthenes' shield struck him a body blow, and as he fell back the Spartan's right hand lost its grip on his own spear, which scythed away to clatter on the pebble beach. Atop his foe, Demosthenes yanked his short sword free from the scabbard on his hip and drove it sidewise up and under the Spartan's leather breastplate. The man still lived, flopping about on the ground and screeching like a stuck boar, but he was out of the fight. Demosthenes worked his blade free and readied it for the next challenger.

  None came. The absence inspired a moment's triumphant exhilaration, after which Demosthenes turned and went to the aid of a comrade by stabbing his opponent in the spine. He cut a
nother down behind the knees, and within moments the only men standing in the corpse-littered stretch of shore were Athenians. More were coming up behind every moment, while not far off, the men of Habra were relieved by the arrival of marines from the third and fourth ships, finally overwhelming the beach's defenders.

  Soon Kleon, Demosthenes' distasteful partner in this venture, would arrive with a second wave of troops to take advantage of the foothold just gained. But this was no time for self-congratulation or even for taking count of the fallen, those silent or groaning lumps on the dark earth. It was no time even to wonder how the Spartans had seen through what had seemed so clever a ruse. There were plenty of Equals left, eager to avenge those who'd just died, and more killing yet to be done before Sphakteria was taken.

  I. PYLOS 7. Dirty

  By mid-morning, Helot runners bore word of defeat to Nestor's fort. First, defeat on the island's southern tip, the outpost there slaughtered to the last man, just as Thalassia had warned.

  Fate could run its course, it seemed, without regard for the blowing of a horn.

  Hours later, defeat came at the isle's center. The Athenians were refusing to do battle like men and instead relied on weapons which killed from afar and drew no line between brave men and cowards. By all accounts, the island was now flooded with bowmen and targeteers whose stock of spindles seemed unending.

  Looking south from atop the front wall of Nestor's roofless fort, Styphon watched the volleys arc up and over the distant, fire-ravaged landscape of the island, hang momentarily in the air and then slash earthward, vanishing into the great cloud of gray ash kicked up by the heels of Epitadas' main force of Equals as it shuffled this way and that, advancing and falling back in a desperate effort to engage its elusive, womanly foe.

  No, to call the Athenians womanly was an offense to women. Spartan women would never behave thus in love or in war.

  A Spartiate's leather breastplate could only half the time could stop an arrow, and even less often a javelin. The bronze pilos caps were little better. The elders of Sparta said 'the poorer the equipment the braver the man,' to justify the melting down of the old heavy Corinthian helms, now only worn by officers. Whatever truth there was to that adage, it could scarcely be put to the test against an enemy which refused to stand face-to-face.

  Only the lambda-blazoned shields of Lakedaimon had never changed, and today more than ever, beneath a rain of missiles, the lives of Spartans would depend on their round shields. All that any of the twenty Equals at Nestor's fort could do now was pray that under cover of the great ash cloud Epitadas would make some brilliant move which would catch the too-clever Athenians by surprise and drive them back into the sea they loved so much. But all knew, none better than Styphon, that such hope was in vain. Discipline forbade any Equal from saying so, but all knew that the best they could hope for now was that some number of their comrades would succeed in falling back to the fort rather than dying where they stood and leaving twenty alone to face a thousand. A Spartiate might say that such odds sounded good, but he'd only be boasting to cheer his fellows' spirits for the imminent trek to Haides.

  It was past noon when a fresh Helot runner burst out of the line of charred trees. Panting and sweating in the space below Styphon's perch atop the roofless fort's south-facing wall, he shouted up his report.

  “Epitadas comes with three hundred!” the Helot said, and Styphon's spirits sank, for even though he knew this must be counted as good news, he had secretly harbored hope for a better showing. “Hippagretas is among the fallen.”

  The death made Styphon second-in-command on the island. It was one more thread thus woven on Fate's vast loom, leaving only Epitadas standing in her inexorable path, one life separating a phylarch from the curse of command. It seemed that the song sung by Fate as she worked was an angry and pompous march, not some quiet lamentation so delicate as to be thrown off tune by the single misplaced note of a copper horn.

  Dismissing the Helot, Styphon addressed the men arrayed in a defensive line ten paces in front of the fort. The rears of their inadequate helms gleamed in the late morning sun, so many times had their bored owners and Helot shield-bearers polished them with mud and sand over the last seventy days.

  “Battle comes at last!” Styphon cried. The hoplites knew better than to turn their backs on the distant enemy in order to look at him. “It is battle such as the feeble Athenians know it, but mark my words, they'll run out of spindles before we run out of blood. If you keep your shields high and heads down, then before this day is done we'll have our chance to show these fucking sons of whores how real men fight!”

  The Spartiates answered with a chorus of roars, pretending they believed the empty words any more than did their speaker. The exhortation given, Styphon dismounted the stockade wall and crossed over the scattered stones of the fallen interior walls on a straight path for the fort's rear corner, where dwelt, assuming she'd not flitted away on whatever current had brought her, Thalassia. He threw back her rag curtain and found her still there.

  “Could you defeat the Athenians?” Styphon demanded without preface.

  Thalassia reclined with her back against the corner, one bare arm resting on a bent knee just as bare. Her scarlet cloak hung open, only just obscuring her femininity. Judging by her open posture, which changed not a bit on account of Styphon's entrance, she didn't much care about what was covered and what wasn't. In that, at least, she reminded him of a Spartan woman. Scattered around her were kernels of barley and clusters of honeyed poppy seed, the shrapnel of her bestial, daylong rampage through what was left of the camp's provisions.

  She raised her head from the stone and looked up with interest. Styphon hung on the movement of dark lips that stood pregnant with promise.

  When finally they moved, their speech disappointed.

  “Possibly...” Thalassia said. “Probably. But there would be no honor in that for Sparta, would there? And if I'm going to continue helping you, that's not how it will work. I can't do everything myself.”

  It was just as well, Styphon thought. He had felt shame in even asking, having been driven to it by the desperation of seeing defeat looming so near. Who knew, anyway, if she really could fight an army? She might claim so, but then laughter-loving Aphrodite had joined battle on the plains of Troy only to swiftly wing her way back to Olympos in tears.

  “But you can still win,” Thalassia said.

  Styphon tried not to let hope swell in his breast. Like Thalassia's every promise, he knew it could not but come with some heavy price attached.

  Still, he could not help but ask, “How?”

  “Fight dirty,” she said matter-of-factly. “Ask the Athenians for a truce, then use it to find and slaughter their archers. Agree to meet with their generals, and when you get close to them, cut their throats.”

  Were Styphon's mouth not bone dry, he might have spat. Instead he hissed his disgust through clenched teeth. But in truth, he wondered. Instinctively, such a course was repellent, but Spartans were not above, as Thalassia put it, fighting dirty. Had not Kleomenes burned a sacred grove when thousands of fleeing Argives took refuge there, with no harm done to his reputation? But then Styphon was no king and had no other glorious deeds to his name to overshadow the inglorious.

  The choice between being remembered as the first Equal ever to consign his comrades to chains and one who had dishonored a sacred truce to assassinate enemy generals was not a particularly hard one. Yet questions of Fate muddied that water. A battle was not a war. Could Sparta win this day, instead of losing, as Fate demanded, but still emerge victorious in the greater conflict? Thalassia might claim to know, but only the gods did.

  If Styphon could be certain of just one thing when it came to this creature before him, this golden-skinned bitch that the sea had belched up, it was this: she was no fucking goddess.

  “Whatever happens, do not forget the thing you have promised,” Styphon reminded her. “Andrea. She dwells with the widow of her mother's brother.�
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  “I will not,” Thalassia said. “But if you make good choices today, there will be no need.”

  She suddenly looked up over the low inner wall of the ancient fort. Styphon did likewise and saw nothing, but soon heard the shouts of greeting which told him Epitadas and the survivors of the rout at the island's center had come.

  “Fight dirty,” Thalassia urged one last time.

  I. PYLOS 8. The Goddess's Wrath

  Epitadas' men came in their hundreds, shuffling and limping from the tree line, mixing with and vastly outnumbering the polished inhabitants of Nestor's fort. The forlorn retreating force's mood was grim, its lips tight, its shields bristling with arrows. Some men walked with white-fletched shafts lodged in their backs or breasts, and almost all leaned heavily on their spears. Reaching the stockade, Helot attendants among them slumped to their knees against walls to grab a moment’s rest before being kicked or spat upon by masters in a mood to inflict harm on someone, anyone. Behind them all, somewhere invisible as yet in the distance, an inexorable tide of death was surging north up the island's length to swallow the men of Lakedaimon, shields and all.

  It did not take long for the new arrivals to begin taking note of Thalassia's presence. Soon a cluster of ash-encrusted refugees had gathered at the curtain of rags, and they pushed it back, revealing her. Styphon knew some of the men as close confidantes of Epitadas, and their grumbled words and black expressions bespoke displeasure at this proof that the pentekoster's command had gone ignored. Styphon inserted himself between those men and the red-cloaked Thalassia, whose perfect, foreign features remained placid.

  “She is a priestess of Artemis,” Styphon lied. “Killing her would turn the goddess against us.”

  Largely, if not only, because Styphon outranked them, the men yielded. But they were still whispering their dissatisfaction when a deep voice bellowed in rage from somewhere behind. “Styphon!”