Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  It was Epitadas. An inbuilt instinct to obey made of Styphon's spine an iron rod. The crowd of battered hoplites which had swamped the fort parted to reveal Epitadas stalking up in his old-style Corinthian helmet, its red horsehair crest bouncing with every emphatic step of the his sandaled feet. Behind him walked a retinue of ten or more hoplites who looked like stone statues come to life, all dull gray ash marbled with dark blood. Flanked by these ghosts, the pentekoster drew up face-to-face with his field-promoted second-in-command. He inclined his bronze-clad skull over Styphon's shoulder.

  “Why does that bitch yet live?” The metallic voice might have belonged to the helmet itself.

  In spite the midday summer sun, Styphon's skin went cold inside its shell of stiffened leather. “She is a priestess of Artemis, pentekoster,” he lied plain-faced to his superior, a punishable offense. “We dared not bring down the goddess's wrath.”

  A sharp laugh emerged from Epitadas' mouth, a pink hole framed by an overgrown black beard and the bronze cheek pieces of his encompassing helmet. “We?” he mocked. “Who commands here? And it is true that you have 'dared not'!” He waved an arm at the arrow-riddled army of the half-dead behind him. “Here are the ones who have dared!”

  Though Styphon knew that he and his men could hardly be chastised for having remained at their assigned posts, he held his tongue and accepted the rebuke.

  Epitadas drew a short sword, the blade of which still shone brightly in contrast to the rest of him. There was little chance the weapon had seen use this day, given the way the enemy fought. The sword's tip came to rest on Styphon's breast, at his heart, daring him to move.

  “You!” the pentekoster barked at Thalassia. “Come forward! Remove that cloak! You haven't earned the right to bleed in it!”

  From behind him Styphon heard a soft rustle, and seconds later, Thalassia stood at his left arm. She must have understood that she'd been summoned to her death, but for reasons that could be obvious to no other than Styphon, she seemed unafraid.

  The sword point rapped the stiff leather of Styphon's breastplate. “The sea brought us this cunt,” Epitadas said forcefully, “and then it brought us the Athenians with their spindles. By defying my command to throw her back, son of Pharax, you brought us doom, and for that”—he tried to spit in Styphon's face, but since he'd been breathing soot all day, no moisture flew—“you are demoted. As for you, whore,” he faced Thalassia, “I told you to remove that cloak!”

  Epitadas shifted his sword-point to Thalassia, who neither flinched nor stepped back so much as a hair's breadth. Pale blue eyes unworried, she obeyed. The fingers which had been holding the crimson cloak in place at her neck opened, and it slid from her shoulders to the rock-strewn earth, revealing her nymph-like form in all its golden splendor.

  Spartiates were nothing at all if not disciplined in their public displays, having been trained not even to cheer a victory, since victory was to be expected rather than celebrated. Still, more than one Equal now could be heard to gasp on the fall of that cloak. Brazen-faced Epitadas was not among them. His blade went to the hollow of Thalassia's supple neck, where it would take him less effort than was required to swat a fly to soak the earth with her lifeblood. Still, his victim's hard eyes still showed no fear.

  “Pentekoster, she is beloved by Artemis,” Styphon pleaded. His intent was not to save Thalassia's life but that of Epitadas. “I beg you, reconsider.”

  Epitadas snorted. Around him, the members of his blood- and ash-caked retinue eyed Styphon with hands ready on their own sword handles, daring a demoted phylarch to interfere.

  It was at that moment, with sharp bronze poised to open the throat of a woman who was no mortal woman at all, that the first brutal shower of Athenian arrows fell on Nestor’s fort.

  The tip of one of those countless white-fletched shafts, unshakable in their lust to return to the earth whence they came, found the unshielded flesh at the back of Epitadas’s neck. Pierced between the skirt of his Corinthian helm and the upper edge of his leather corselet, the pentekoster spasmed. His sword swiped wildly and flew from his hand, bouncing off a moss-covered wall to land spinning on the stones of the uneven floor. The blade's movement only ceased when the body of Epitadas crumpled to one side and fell atop it.

  The only move Thalassia made was to take a single step backward to remove her bare feet from the path of Epitadas' crashing head. The soiled red crest of the fallen leader's helmet brushed her knees.

  Dumbstruck, the onlookers raised shields belatedly, distractedly, against the incoming Athenian barrage. Styphon didn't bother, entrusting his life instead to Fate and a few paltry layers of stiffened leather. “Goddess...” he whispered.

  He was alone in finding the breath with which to speak, and alone in one other thing, too: the knowledge that Epitadas had not been laid low by the Athenians or even by Thalassia, but by Fate, whose unbreakable chains bound fast even the eternal gods. To the rest, it was clear that their leader had been struck down by the Delighter in Arrows, the virgin huntress Queen Artemis herself.

  Believing their own goddess against them, no man, not even those closest to Epitadas, objected when Styphon—demotion forgotten, since it had been issued in furtherance of a sacrilege—voiced his intent to ask the Athenians for a truce.

  ***

  Word had come. The Spartans, driven back to a final redoubt at Sphakteria's north, wished to talk. Demosthenes was inclined to listen. He stood now at the the edge of a charred forest at the fore of fluid Athenian lines which had only just coalesced in the wake of the enemy's wholesale retreat. The Equal coming to parley was named Styphon, a lower-ranking officer to whom command of the Spartan force evidently had fallen. That was good news, for it meant Epitadas lay among the fallen.

  Would that Demosthenes waited alone for Styphon, but beside him, chewing olives three at a time and spitting their stones to the earth, was his co-commander, Kleon. Technically, Kleon was his superior, but in truth he was a tag-along: a leader from the rear, a man whose fiercest blade was his tongue. Kleon's detractors in Athens (who comprised virtually all of the aristocracy) had coined a new term to describe him: demagogos, a leader of the masses.

  His always-red cheeks were purple with delight as he chattered on about the impending humiliation of his rival Nikias in the Assembly: “Sure, he made me look the fool for a moment, but who will look the fool on my return? I promised them Sphakteria in twenty days, and how many will it have been on my return? Five, including the journey! Ha! And I'll come with hundreds of Equals in chains to boot! Men have said there'll be birdsong in Tartaros before Spartiates condemn themselves to chains. Bah!” He cupped greasy fingers behind his ear. “Do you hear that? Tweet, tweet!”

  Demosthenes let the petty ranting of the politician go unanswered. Looking sidelong at Kleon, still wearing the brightly polished, ivory-inlaid breastplate which would scarcely need cleaning after the battle, Demosthenes failed to see the appeal. Sure, Kleon's rival, leader of the so-called Peace party, Nikias, had let the siege of Pylos drag on all summer, unnecessarily, out of conservatism or even jealousy that seizing the city hadn't been his own idea. Nonetheless, Demosthenes thought, one Nikias was worth three Kleons. Maybe more.

  After too long, a lone figure appeared from out of the burned wood and trudged across the field of ash in a steady, unhurried gait. The man was Kleon's height, which was to say short, and approximately equal in mass, but this man wore his girth in his chest, where Kleon's was in the middle. Like all Equals, the man wore his black hair long, a deliberate disadvantage in close combat meant as a display of contempt for the enemy. No helm covered it, and the leather breastplate was clean of the ash which clung to his legs, greaves, and trailing edge of his faded scarlet cloak.

  The man, presumably Styphon, carried no shield or weapon in hand, but his short sword bounced in its scabbard on his thigh. His left hand rested on its hilt as he drew to a halt within sword's reach of both his enemies. Demosthenes' hand fell casually, involuntarily to his
own blade. Contempt showed in the black eyes which rested between Styphon's heavy brow and at least once-broken nose. He said nothing for some seconds.

  Kleon spit an olive pit, waved an arm, urged, “Well, out with it!”

  Demosthenes failed to stifle a frown. The Spartan’s black eyes, formerly shifting between the two, now selected him as the one more worthy of address, if only by a hair. Eyes fixed, Styphon's right hand crossed his body and its fingers wrapped around the handle of his sword. Resisting the urge to take a step back, an urge to which Kleon succumbed, Demosthenes mirrored the Spartiate's move. He'd never known the Spartans to blatantly violate a ceasefire, but then they weren't prone to surrender, either.

  Styphon drew his sword. The move was ponderous and as such conveyed little threat, and so Demosthenes let his blade remain sheathed while the Spartan shifted his grip to his sword's neck and held the weapon aloft horizontally. It hovered for a moment in the space between the three leaders, while over it intersected the narrow, black gaze of a Spartan and that of the Athenian mockingly called 'Doe Eyes' in his youth.

  The sword plunged groundward, landing with a feeble thud in the ash at the sandaled feet of the day's victors. Its owner followed the symbolically dropped blade with a gob of spit—or he tried anyway, but his cracked lips failed to produce enough moisture.

  “Fate is on your side today, preeners,” Styphon grated. “Next time, we shall see.”

  Demosthenes nodded grimly, Kleon cackled, and the hours which followed were consumed by the dispatching of messengers to and from the Spartan force besieging Pylos as Styphon sought and received permission from that force's commander to turn the truce into surrender. There were to be no conditions, but one strange request was made. Among the trapped Equals was a priestess of Artemis whose return to Sparta they wished to arrange.

  “A priestess fights with them!” Kleon scoffed. “Sparta is harder up than we thought!”

  I. PYLOS 9. False Priestess

  Just after dawn, Demosthenes left his headquarters in the squat, crumbling citadel perched atop the acropolis of Pylos and descended into the town. The priestess captured on Sphakteria had requested an audience with him. He could come up with no reasonable explanation for why any woman, priestess or otherwise, should have been present on the island. It was laughable to think the Spartans might have brought her there deliberately. Why then had she come, and for how long had she been among them? Her request for audience suited Demosthenes well enough to consent to it, if for no better reason than to satisfy idle curiosity.

  The streets he walked were narrow and winding. Until recently, Pylos had been a city of slaves, and it showed. The roofs of the Messenian Helots' modest homes were thatched, the temple columns made of porous stone or even wood, and there was scarcely a public garden to be found. Even at this early hour Demosthenes was accosted at every turn by men and women rushing up and shouting barely coherent praise. Potters, weavers, carpenters, jewelers, sandal-makers and hawkers of every ware emerged from their stalls as he passed, offering up second-rate goods as gifts of thanks to the man they called Liberator.

  Diplomatically refusing, Demosthenes managed to lose the fawning crowds and reach his destination, a little whitewashed cottage on a quiet side street of a southern neighborhood. It was of fresher construction than most in Pylos, with a terra cotta roof and a small but parched garden in front. A Messenian guard by the entrance offered him a cheerful greeting then rapped on the wooden door. It swung inward, and a mousy girl appeared.

  “I would see your mistress,” Demosthenes said.

  The Messenian girl answered with eyes downcast, “Perhaps you might wait until she has taken her breakfast, my lord.”

  Demosthenes smiled impatiently. “She is the one who sought audience with me. I promise not long to delay her.”

  Probably accustomed to serving harsher masters, and unwilling to risk further offense in protecting her lady’s privacy, the girl stepped aside, and Demosthenes passed within. The cottage's main room was furnished with a low couch and a scattered assortment of cushions in gaudy hues. The soot-blackened corner hearth, gently aglow, was well stocked with bronze cooking pots and utensils. The Messenian girl vanished through a faded turquoise curtain into the rear of the house and spoke some words in an urgent whisper. A second female voice answered curtly, and the curtain was shoved aside.

  “Welcome, lord general,” said the second voice's owner, an older woman who bowed her head in servile Helot fashion, beckoning Demosthenes in.

  Smiling gratitude, he ducked under the doorway's low lintel. The rectangular inner room, decorated with a woven rug and a pair of matching wall tapestries, was well lit by a north-facing window. Against the leftmost wall was a neatly made sleeping mat, while to the right sat a low wooden table flanked on either side by long sitting-cushions. At the table, seated on a cushion and facing Demosthenes over a breakfast of bread soaked in dark wine, was the priestess. Behind her knelt a third young Messenian girl who was focused intently on an effort to craft some elaborate hairstyle out of the priestess's dark hair, in which effort she appeared to be hampered by the insufficient length of said hair, the ends of which barely grazed the preistess's shoulders.

  “Leave us, please,” Demosthenes said.

  The frustrated hairdresser loosed a petulant sigh, but followed the two older maids out of the chamber. The curtain fell behind them, swaying gently.

  Demosthenes' subordinates had seen to the priestess's removal from the island, and so the present encounter marked the first time he had laid eyes upon her. Her eyes were cool and pale like the surface of a mountain lake, and they fixed him with a measuring stare. Above them were perched delicate brows and freshly washed black hair descending from a central part in two lustrous waves that ended in a collection of loose curls around the nape of her neck. Her skin was of a light gold complexion, the Eastern hue which Greeks called 'dark' but which in reality was lighter than that of most sun-blasted Greek islanders. Her features were harder to place. Certainly she was pleasing to behold, her jawline delicate, small nose tapering to a point. Since her capture, the Messenian girls assigned to her service had bathed her and dressed her in a finely pleated, floor-length chiton of light orange gathered under the breast with a braided rope.

  The fact of this woman's physical perfection was impossible to deny, even less to ignore. Hers was the sort of beauty which seemed to transcend reality, that which inspired the tongues of poets and twisted those of other men.

  Demosthenes had never been a poet.

  The palely intense eyes never left him as he took a seat across the table from her. “Don't let me interrupt your breakfast,” he managed to say. “I hope you find our hospitality sufficient.”

  The lower half of her face formed a smile, patently false, whilst higher up, her pale eyes observed him with guarded interest. She seemed not yet to have touched the food on the terracotta charger, and made no move to start. Something about the fast-fading smile, and not least those pale eyes, filled Demosthenes with disquiet. Why should that be?

  He purged his unease in a chuckle, though he felt no amusement. “If you've no wish to exchange pleasantries, I suppose it's up to me. You must know my name, since you asked to see me. You, I am told, are called Thalassia.” His laughter was as forced as her smile had been. “Where I come from that is how we refer to a piece of driftwood. Not exactly a name many men would give to their daughters. Of course, we pronounce it with a double-tau, Thalattia, where you use the Doric sigma.”

  He realized he was babbling, and the priestess's slightly bemused look suggested the fact was not lost on her either. He sank into silence, after a moment of which he found himself forced to avert his eyes from hers. He had walked into this room a conquering general of Athens, Liberator of Pylos, a man who, as of yesterday, had achieved what no other had in history, compelling Spartans to consign themselves to irons. Yet now he sat cowed by some barbarian female, exquisite as she was, who had yet to speak a word to him.


  Something was not right about her. He could not think what it might be, but it made him long for a swift departure from her presence. Since pride did not allow for flight, he instead lifted his gaze and started the encounter over with a fresh resolve to dispense with chatter.

  “The Spartans have agreed to your ransom,” he declared. “As soon as they produce the agreed sum, you shall be on your way.”

  “I don't wish to be ransomed,” Thalassia said. This, her first utterance, was no plea. Her tone matched his own in authority. It also served to revealed that she spoke with an accent, no surprise given her appearance.

  Her eyes were hard. Demosthenes looked into them and wondered if he had yet witnessed them blink. He certainly was blinking now, rapidly, in surprise at what she had said.

  He laughed, nervously. What was it about her? “I fear that is for men to decide, not you.”

  Amusement betrayed itself in a corner of Thalassia's thin, dark lips. A golden hand appeared and set a scrap of black cloth upon the tabletop.

  “Take it,” she said.

  Frowning, Demosthenes knelt on the cushion opposite her and did as she requested. The black fabric was as soft and supple as silk in his hands, but when he pulled it taut, it stretched like no textile he had touched before. When the tension was eased, it snapped back to its former shape and size.

  “An intriguing novelty,” he said, “but—”

  Thalassia pushed toward him a bronze table knife. “Cut it.”

  “I am not here to play games.” The unexplained current of unease welling in his stomach kept Demosthenes' tone mild.

  “It's no game,” she returned. “You'll see. Just cut it.”

  Demosthenes sighed. That it seemed more of an invitation than an order allowed him to indulge her with pride undented. Taking knife in one hand and fabric in the other, he brought the two together. As it had done in his hands, the cloth stretched around the blade. He pushed and pushed, and then gathered the fabric at the edges and tugged hard on it.