Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  “You know nothing, Eden,” Thalassia said. “Go. Follow Lyka. Sleep and wait for rescue. I will never trouble you again. I'm sorry for stranding you here. If there had been any other way—”

  Eden scoffed and lifted a long, pale finger. “There is one small problem with your suggestion... and that is that you serve the Worm!”

  She smiled, reining in the simmering anger she had briefly allowed to surface. These two women were more alike than they would ever admit, Demosthenes silently concluded. He had caught a glimpse of Thalassia's temper, could still feel its mark on his neck.

  “I serve Magdalen,” Thalassia asserted.

  “Bullshit!” the other screamed. She set eyes once more on Demosthenes and asked, “Has Geneva told you what she is called by her own people, women and men who were once her friends but now are loathe to speak her name? It is the name I have been calling her by. Let me see if it translates...” Eden smiled a spiteful smile. “Wormwhore. Yes, I think that serves.”

  “I do not serve him,” Thalassia asserted plainly. “I hate him more than you do. Now get out of our way.”

  Unsurprisingly, as with the previous two iterations of Thalassia's request, Eden showed no sign of complying. “What say you, Athenian?” she asked next of Demosthenes with a smirk. “Surely you know respect for such things as law and loyalty. What do you think must happen?”

  Suddenly, Demosthenes found himself the object of both women's attention. He could see in Thalassia's pale eyes, in the mouth drawn into a tight line, that she dearly hoped he would take her side. If one of the two women repelled him more than the other, it was doubtless Eden, yet... more than that, he wished to see them both ushered out of his life by the swiftest possible means. In just this one morning, the hard-fought victory which he had every right to savor had been all but soured.

  “I think...” he began, and cleared his throat. He addressed Thalassia without looking directly at her. “I think that... perhaps it might be best if you went with her.”

  Eden grinned. “A credit to his city,” she said. “Come, Whore. For the moment, I am still willing to let you walk. But if I must cut you to pieces and carry you away in a bloody sack instead, so be it.”

  While Demosthenes' mouth hung agape in uncertainty as to whether this threat might be a literal one, he caught a sidelong glance from Thalassia in which she made abundantly clear the depth of her disappointment in him. Then, suddenly, moving as quickly as he had seen her do one time before, she was upon her enemy.

  Eden foresaw the attack and had time to draw one of her two swords, but only just. Thalassia avoided its first swing. The table knife flashed in the palm of Thalassia's raised right hand, on course for Eden's face, but Eden's free hand shot up and blocked it while she brought her own blade back for a second swing. Thalassia twisted, and the blade missed her head by a hair's breadth—and then the wrist of Eden's sword arm was locked in Thalassia's iron grip, the same grip that still felt fresh on the skin of Demosthenes' neck. The two took to grappling, each trying yet unable to drive her blade into her opponent's flesh. They whirled together in a swift, deadly dance of whipping dark and golden locks, of gray cloak and pale orange dress.

  The dance ended as few others did, with one of the partners, Eden, slamming her forehead into the other's nose, a headbutt which left her forehead streaked with Thalassia's blood. She tried to land another, but Thalassia dragged the woman's sword arm up between their faces, obstructing the blow.

  Three paces away, Demosthenes stood unsure whether to intervene. Apart from temple friezes of Amazons, never before had he seen such a sight as this, of women locked in fierce combat. And even in the friezes, the women's opponents were male.

  “Ladies, surely there is a better way...” he said feebly.

  By choice of one or the other of the women, their struggle went to the ground, where they rolled in the dust with legs entangled. The orange linen restricting Thalassia's lower body rode up, exposing her thighs, while the other's paler legs were already bare under a high-hemmed slave chiton. Somehow Thalassia came out with the advantage, slamming her attacker's sword hand repeatedly against a rock embedded in the roadside. The rock grew slick and dark with blood, and Eden's sword fell free, clattering on the ground. Thalassia went for it, but the other woman's injured hand clapped onto Thalassia's forearm, stopping her. Their other hands meanwhile fought over Thalassia's table knife, the point of which Eden had managed to turn toward its wielder's face, its tip biting Thalassia's cheek.

  As the sword flew free, Demosthenes' wits and his instincts, briefly absent, returned. He moved in long strides toward the sword and kicked it out of either woman's reach, then drew his own blade and leveled it at the combatants on the ground.

  “Stop!” he cried—not too loud, lest he draw onlookers. Again, when they didn't desist: “Stop this madness, now!”

  They rolled, and Thalassia came out on top with one hand free. Consequently, Eden had a free hand, as well, and she sent it toward her waist where her second sword awaited. Thalassia's hand, meantime, grasped a smooth stone half-buried in the earth, wrenched it free and hefted it over Eden's head.

  Demosthenes watched in horror as, without hesitation, Thalassia brought the stone down with tremendous force into her opponent's face, smashing the skull. Eden's hand flew from her half-drawn sword and came up, too late, to block the blow. Thalassia wrenched her knife hand free of Eden's grip and stabbed Eden's blocking arm in the wrist, clearing a path that the blood-smeared stone might find its way for a second time into Eden's half-crushed face. Blood and brain matter smeared cloak and dress and skin and ground, yet incredibly Eden's limbs fought on. Of her two deep blue eyes, the one which was not buried in gore stayed open and retained the spark of life.

  Straddling her beaten foe, Thalassia struck Eden a third time in the head before reaching for the half-drawn sword at Eden's hip. Statue-like, his own sword still pointed ineffectually at the pair, Demosthenes watched aghast as Thalassia plunged the short sword over and over into her victim's neck and face, so hard that the tip could be heard scraping ground underneath. Blood splashed from each new wound like libations poured on an altar to some dark god.

  Seeing the savage fury which lit Thalassia's face, Demosthenes knew he had to act, had to end this. He took two long steps forward, and reaching the scene of battle, he thrust his sword with all the force he could muster into mad, golden-skinned Thalassia's back. It slid between her ribs, grating on bone, through her heart, and out the other side, under her left breast.

  Thalassia's head whipped round, dark tendrils of shoulder length hair partly obscuring the crazed, unearthly eyes, knit brows and bared teeth which came together in a look not of surprise or pain, but of undiluted rage. She hissed, and then ignored him, turning her crazed attention back upon her victim.

  Demosthenes backed slowly away, leaving his sword embedded in Thalassia's torso. He saw that the single eye within that mutilated head on the ground stood open still, and not just with the empty stare of a corpse. This mutilated being was alive and fighting, and it did not let the momentary distraction offered by Demosthenes' interference go to waste. One of Eden's blood covered hands found the very rock which had caved in her skull, picked it up and hurled it at Thalassia, who was forced to raise an arm to ward it off.

  The respite thus achieved was brief, but it was enough to let Eden slip free. Having done so, the scrambling, blood-covered thing which had moments ago been a woman had but one clear goal in mind: escape. Getting her feet under her, the near-headless Eden ran off at speed, gray cloak and blood-soaked braid trailing behind her. She ran west to where, beyond two or three rows of houses, the land fell off sharply into the sea.

  Leaping to her feet, Thalassia ran after. As she went, she reached around behind her, grabbed the handle of Demosthenes' blade and slid it from her chest to wield it as though she had just drawn it from a scabbard. Two swords in hand, showing no sign of flagging in spite of her fatal wound, she vanished around the back of a row of
empty houses.

  Both women ran at exceptionally high speed. Even were Demosthenes so lacking in good judgment as to attempt chase, he could not have kept up, much less overtaken them. Left alone, he stood silent and frozen, watching the place where they had vanished. Slowly his gaze went to the blood pooled in the road, proof that what he had just witnessed was no delusion. He looked down at his hands and found them trembling, glanced around to see if anyone else was near. Thankfully, no one was.

  Should he flee? He quickly decided there was no point. If her spun bronze and iron grip had failed to convince him entirely of the truth of Thalassia's claim not to be of this world, now there was no room for doubt. If a being such as she judged that he had to die, there was no escaping it. Better to face his fate like a man than run away and be hounded to his death by a seething Fury while hoping in vain for some merciful god to step down from the heavens and save him.

  He steadied himself, spoke a few words aloud to Pallas, and he waited for judgment.

  Within a few minutes Thalassia reappeared, walking slowly with just one sword in her right hand. In the left was what looked like a fat, bent branch. A bright red stain covered nearly the entire midsection of Thalassia's orange dress, centered on the wound Demosthenes had inflicted on her, and her golden skin was everywhere spattered with blood. She was as something stepped straight from the depths of Tartaros, and her icy stare, like her slow but inexorable march, had but one object: Demosthenes.

  Without breaking her gaze on him, Thalassia stopped five paces away and threw down the bent branch, which landed with a strange, soggy flop.

  It was no branch. It was her defeated adversary's arm, severed midway between shoulder and elbow.

  There was no time to stare in fresh horror at that sight, for Thalassia raised the sword's tip and aimed it at Demosthenes. “Stay.”

  She did not bother to imbue the word with any tone of command. None was needed.

  Dropping to her knees before the severed arm, she clasped its wrist in her free hand and plunged her sword's tip into its bicep. From there she proceeded to slice down its length, opening the flesh from one end to the other, cutting down to the bone, as if gutting a fish. When that was done, she set down the sword and used her fingers to peel back flesh and muscle and sinew. She worked methodically, going from wrist to bicep, digging through the bloody mess as if... searching it.

  The sight forced Demosthenes to put the back of one hand to his lips against a stream of acid rising from his stomach. Thalassia glanced up and delivered a malign smirk before resuming her bloody endeavor.

  “Fuck!” she cursed when her fingers had traveled from one end of the severed limb to the other and back again, leaving it an unrecognizable mass of meat at the center of a dark red pool.

  Would that she had found whatever she was seeking, for it was now in an even fouler mood that she retrieved her sword in blood-covered hand, rose to her sandaled feet and approached the object of her anger. She gazed down her tapered nose at Demosthenes and said nothing for a time, only eyed him with the kind of look a judge might give a defendant accused of patricide or some other unspeakable blood-crime. Demosthenes did his best to meet the look unflinchingly.

  At length, Thalassia exhaled loudly and declined her chin.

  “Are you fucking serious?” she asked. “Did you really just stab me instead of her? What the fuck is wrong with you? What do you have for brains? An olive?” Her blade cut an invisible line back and forth between them. “I thought we had a connection!” she lamented.

  Suddenly baring gritted teeth, Thalassia balled her left hand into a fist with which she made to strike Demosthenes. But she held back as if in deliberation.

  “I'm sorry to have to do this,” she concluded. Then, with an almost apologetic look, she punched Demosthenes square in the stomach, doubling him over. “You dumb...”—a linen-veiled knee connected with his sternum—“dumb...”—her foot hooked behind his calves, sweeping his legs out from under him—“fucking...”—he fell hard into the dirt, where Thalassia screamed a final, made-up word into in his face—“FUCKWIT!”

  Knowing it futile, he chose not to defend himself. Leaning down, the raven-haired Fury gripped a handful of sandy curls at the back of his head and pulled, forcing him to face her.

  “I could have destroyed her,” she grated. “Instead, she escaped into the sea, and all I got was an arm. That's your fault.” She released her grip on his hair and with the same hand began to stroke it. “But you know what? I forgive you. Why? Because we're friends, aren't we, and you're going to take me to Athens...right?”

  “R-right,” Demosthenes said between labored breaths.

  Helping him up, Thalassia presented to him the gore-coated sword—his own, which had pierced her—handle-first. He took it, and she set to straightening and brushing off his chiton.

  When she was done, she warned him darkly, upraised finger in his face, “Don't you ever, ever stab me again. Understood?”

  I. PYLOS 12. Gash

  Demosthenes cleaned his blood-smeared sword the best he could on a nearby tuft of tall grass before sheathing it. "You can't be seen in town looking like that," he observed to the woman whom he now viewed less as his prisoner and more as a captor.

  Looking down at her utterly ruined dress, Thalassia frowned. "True. We'll separate. I'll meet you tonight at the fort."

  Before dashing off down a deserted alley, she gave Demosthenes a look with her pale eyes which promised the appointment would be kept whether he wished it or not.

  He nodded as though he had a choice.

  ***

  As he resumed his day's duties, Demosthenes tried to put out of mind Thalassia's imminent return, as well as the appetite-stealing sights of one woman mutilating another and butchering her severed limb. Not surprisingly, he failed. Still, he accomplished what had to be done: loading the prisoners and the spoils of war onto the ships, overseeing the construction of a trophy on Sphakteria, helping the city's Messenian leaders and their cousins of Naupaktos plan how best to preserve Pylos' newly-earned freedom, and enduring the political prattling of the demagogue Kleon, who made clear his intention to claim all the credit for the victory just won upon their return to Athens.

  By the time the sun sank and he retired to his private chamber in the citadel, Demosthenes had arrived at a quiet, reluctant admission. He believed Thalassia. After what he had seen, how could he not? What to do about her proved more elusive...

  She did not keep him waiting. As the first stars made their appearance in his window on the fort's third story, so did she, via the same aperture. Climbing in cat-like, Thalassia stood against the wall in the light of an oil lamp.

  "Hello again," she said. Her manner was subdued, her head hanging at an angle of humility heretofore unseen. Before he could wonder why, she explained.

  "I'm sorry about earlier," she said. "I should not have..." She searched for words and gave up. "I just shouldn't have. I'll try not to do it again."

  Demosthenes sat on a stool facing her across the wool- and reed-stuffed mattress of his simple timber bed. "Try?"

  "Try," she repeated with a self-deprecating smirk.

  She advanced toward the bed, got on it, crawled to its center and settled back onto her haunches. She still wore her tattered orange gown, but she appeared to have washed it in the sea, since around the faded bloodstains, in swirls like the tendrils of a sea creature, were lines of dried salt.

  "I have given much thought to the things you said... and did." Demosthenes told her.

  "And?"

  "Lacking any other explanation, I am forced to take you at your word. More or less."

  "Good." Bringing one leg out from underneath her, Thalassia began unlacing her sandal. "Part of me thought that when I came here, you'd have twenty armed men waiting for me. I'm glad you didn't."

  "What would have happened?"

  "Twenty dead men," she said plainly. She tossed the sandal on the floor and started removing the other. She flashed him a co
ld look and amended, "Twenty-one."

  "I stand here willing to believe," Demosthenes said. "Can we not dispense with threats?"

  She smiled. "Yes. Yes, you're right. As we come to trust one another, I'm sure I'll stop that."

  "If I am to trust you, I must know more. Not only scraps that you see fit to throw to me, as though I am some dog lapping at your heels, but everything worth knowing. I will not ally myself with an enigma, nor will I stake my city's future on one."

  Thalassia's look was one of disappointment. She shrugged and said, "So ask me something."

  There were many questions in Demosthenes' mind, a roiling sea of them, all begging answer, but if forced to choose but one...

  "How do you know these things?" he asked. "About the war's outcome? About..."–it was hard to say aloud–"my death."

  "That's easy," Thalassia answered. "Well, perhaps it is, depending on... never mind, we'll soon find out. Imagine that every bit of recorded knowledge from every city you have ever heard of could be compressed to fit on the head of a pin. All the literature, art, music, speeches, civil records, land deeds, account books–everything, all of it. And then the pin could be stuck into your flesh where you would have all of that information at your disposal, to access as quickly as you can think about it. Are you with me?"

  "I... I suppose so."

  "You're half lying, but I'll go on anyway. Now imagine that the knowledge on that pin was recorded not today but fifty years from now. A hundred years. A thousand years. Ten thousand years. From where you stand, the people who inscribed the pin are not yet born. To them, what happens here today, what happens tomorrow and every day for the rest of your life, including how you die, is–"

  "History," Demosthenes finished for her.

  Thalassia rewarded him with a pleased nod.

  "And you have such a... pin inside of you?"

  "So to speak."

  "Where are you from that such things are possible?"