by P. K. Lentz
Reaching down, she picked him up by his vest of tanned hide and deposited him roughly at the base of a pine.
“Why did you spare him?” Demosthenes asked.
“Answers.” Crouching in front of the Arkadian, Thalassia thrust one sword point-first into the ground and used the free hand to slap the man's cheek until he came to his senses and paid wide-eyed fearful attention.
“I know when men lie. Speak truly, and you will live,” Thalassia said sternly to him. “Is Dekelea still in Athenian hands?”
“A-Aye! L-L-Last I knew... t-two days ago.”
“Where is Brasidas?”
“A-Athens...”
“And a woman with long, blond hair? Scary, like me. You might know her as Eris?”
“I n-never laid eyes on her. She's not been seen s-s-since the conquest.”
Thalassia asked next of Demosthenes, “Anything else you would ask him?”
“No,” Demosthenes answered. “Do you truly intend to let him live?”
“Yes! Yes!” the Arkadian implored. He leaned forward, only to be roughly shoved back by Thalassia.
“He could take a message to Brasidas,” Thalassia suggested.
“I desire no contact with him until our last, when I kill him.”
“Then it's your choice,” Thalassia said, rising. “Someone once said to me that you might as well keep your word when it doesn't matter. That way, people will trust you when you really need to betray them.”
The Arkadian looked up into Demosthenes' eyes, saw written in them what his fate was to be, and began intoning the prayers of the soon-to-die. The names of gods were thus upon his lips when Demosthenes put sword to his breast and ran him through.
“Who was it who said that?” he asked of Thalassia.
“Him,” the Sword of Magdalen answered.
Demosthenes needed not ask who he was. It meant the enemy, and former lover, that Thalassia had come to this world to unmake by preventing his very birth: the man known to the fighters of the Veta Caliate as 'The Worm.'
Minutes later, Thalassia sat again upon the rock, still unclad, pushing blood-gloved fingers through the charred skin of a lamb leg to tear free dripping morsels of meat which she... it... stuffed into its maw.
“You should eat,” Thalassia spewed. “Unless you only eat Spartans now.”
After kicking out the remains of the cooking fire, Demosthenes did partake, accepting portions which Thalassia tore off for him. Blood and fat covered the lower half of her face and ran down her breasts. It had been Thalassia who told him, seasons ago, that humans had not been created in their current state but rather had developed slowly out of lesser forms. Demosthenes did not quite grasp the concept, as was the case with any number of her teachings, but it occurred to him now that here sat the very image of one of those pre-human predecessors.
“What are you looking at?” she asked of him eventually, when her mouth was clear enough of food to let words pass in the other direction.
It asked. Its mouth. The Sword, the machine.
Realizing he had been staring, Demosthenes averted his gaze. “Just... considering your many charms.”
Thalassia shrugged. “I hear that a lot. Should we go to Dekelea?” Thalassia's transitions frequently were jarring.
“No,” Demosthenes replied, angrily.
“It may still stand. We could break the Athenian force out and have an army. Maybe even kill Brasidas.”
“No!”
“It's worth considering.”
“It isn't! If Eden is there, will you fight her again? Die again, or worse? Then where would I be? No, I won't risk it. Now, might you be finished eating soon?”
After a few minutes, Thalassia did finish, wiped face and hands on the cloak of a dead Equal, and wore the white dress which, owing to her foresight, had remained clean. Thalassia did not need to be told that wearing a pair of swords as they traveled would cause her to attract rather more stares than she already tended to receive, and so, helping herself to the dead Arkadian's sailcloth satchel, she stowed inside it the two sheathed short swords.
“Let's move,” she said when she was ready, although it was Demosthenes who had been waiting for her. “Ruthless plans to lay, killer fungus to breed, Naupaktans to charm, city to liberate, beards to shave and such. We'll be busy.”
Only a few paces outside of camp, Thalassia stopped and whirled, putting herself in Demosthenes' path and forcing him to stop short. She laid a palm on his chest.
“Dee...” she said, the look in her wintry eyes growing suddenly earnest. “Thank you for keeping me safe. I know you didn't do it for me, but you did it, and I'm grateful. I'll make sure you don't regret it. We both have enough regrets.”
The palm slid from his breast, and Thalassia turned and strode on, calling back, “What the fuck are you standing around for? Keep up!”
And so Demosthenes struck west and south for the city of Naupaktos following behind the Sword of Magdalen, the star-born creature of chaos, the deadly and beautiful machine who already was convincing him once more, against his better judgment, to conceive of her as a human... and a friend.
* * *
8. Ares Descends
The darkness was like that of Erebos itself, but the trek through the Parnes mountains under the new moon had gone without incident. Now Styphon stood, as daylight broke, among the silent ranks of Spartiates north of Dekelea, just out of sight of the town's walls. Each was panoplied for war: greaves of bronze, breastplates of stiffened leather, eight-foot ash spear in right hand, bowl-shaped, lambda-blazoned hoplon affixed to the left.
Ahead, on the broad north-south road, a detachment of Sparta's Theban allies wheeled as though to depart in the direction of the sea. They would march only a short distance, however, before halting and turning to pounce on the Athenians from the east, taking them by surprise.
Ambush was not a tactic to which Equals were accustomed, and none found it particularly tasteful, but most recognized the necessity of sinking to it from time to time. Not every battle could take the ideal shape, in which two sides squared off shield-to-shield while pipers played Castor's Air and the paean sounded, and when it ended, the gods who looked down upon the field were left in no doubt of which city was the more deserving. On the contrary, an unannounced assault represented, to most in Sparta, particularly the elders, the coward's path—the Athenian path. But times were changing, more rapidly now than ever, thanks to Brasidas and his blond witch.
The trap shortly to be sprung had been conceived and laid by Brasidas, but King Agis, thanks to his traditionalist supporters on the Gerousia, would be the one to spring it. Ten days prior, in the deep of night, an Athenian citizen, a tribemate to Alkibiades, had been allowed to sneak up to the walls of Dekelea. Easily confirming his identity, the Athenians inside had hauled him up and over the walls, where he had delivered a story: the Athenian general Kleon had rounded up a force of allies which he planned to land on the nearby shores of Oropos. From there, he would relieve Dekelea and perhaps even march on occupied Athens.
When it came, Kleon's force would set ablaze a signal fire in the mountains to the east, and thence begin its advance. On learning of the new threat, the Theban allies of Sparta, in charge of maintaining the northern half of the siege of Dekelea, would have little choice but to march out to meet it. This was the moment when the Athenians trapped inside Dekelea were to move, bursting out from the town's northern gate to attack the Thebans, catching them from behind and in disarray. The terrain around Dekelea, being mountainous, scarcely allowed for quick reinforcement from the Spartan forces to the south, thus allowing the Athenians to make their escape and join up with Kleon's army.
Kleon's army, however, did not exist. It was the invention of Brasidas, who had supplied the story to the Athenian messenger by means of turncoats, who had also been the ones to convince the messenger to accept this task. Being known to Alkibiades, the man was an obvious choice, since his word would be trusted. Moreover, he had no inkling of the dec
eption, thus foiling Thalassia's ability to separate truth from lies, if she remained inside Dekelea and had recovered.
What would in truth await the Athenians, if and when they burst out from Dekelea's northern gate, was not only a Theban force ready and waiting for them but also a phalanx of Equals under King Agis, who had spent the night slowly advancing from the south over treacherous terrain
Agis had offered Styphon a place near to him in the ranks, an honor so great that only a fool would accept it. None but the champions of festival games were afforded the privilege of defending their king's life in battle, and there were more than enough such champions present to do the job. The name Styphon had only just risen above the level of curse; no need to cast it back down into the depths by taking honors which he had not rightfully earned.
That offer, and Agis's behavior toward him, suggested that the king was courting him to some end. Spartans would be called upon to choose sides soon, Agis had warned him. It was easy enough to see how winning over a close associate of Brasidas would mark a coup for the traditionalists in Sparta who supported Agis and opposed Brasidas's reforms.
But now was not the time for such distant concerns. A lookout on a nearby hill signaled to the waiting Spartan army: the gates of Dekelea were opening. The bait was taken.
The air vibrated with the shock of hooves pounding earth, the Athenian cavalry taking the lead, and it did not move tentatively but galloped boldly into the unknown. The Spartan phalanx behind the hill held, every man's limbs tense and ears alert for the command to advance.
At last King Agis gave it, and as if the six hundred men of the phalanx were one body, they got underway. Across the broad north-south road, the Thebans sounded their own command, and their formation, four thousand strong, halted its false march to the sea to face an imagined challenge, and it turned (with rather more chaos and confusion than the same number of Equals would have produced) to face its true target.
Wheeling left, the Spartan phalanx cleared the hillock which had concealed it. The mountain road leading into Dekelea came into Styphon's sight, and then so did the Athenian cavalry, until then nothing more than an invisible thunder. The horsemen's gallop slowed to to a canter, and then they stopped at the wildly waved command of the hipparch at their head. The momentum of a charging body of cavalry was difficult to break, and therein lay its strength, but the Athenians, renowned as skilled riders, managed it.
They stood still, unsure what to do next on their two hundred or so snorting, restless mounts, staring down a slope at two armies, Spartan and Theban. The latter was far larger in size, but the former was arguably more deadly.
Behind the Athenian cavalry came the first of the thousand or so Athenians who had followed, having crossed by means of a pre-built plank bridge the encircling siege-trench which the horses preceding them had simply leaped.
The Athenian hipparch, a man in armor polished so brightly it rivaled the white sun which was just rising, made no move. Either he was carefully studying his options or was so struck with fear as to be completely at a loss for what to do. One option he might consider, it occurred to Styphon, was to lead his cavalry into the still sizable but shrinking gap between the two enemy forces. He might just make it, but the men on foot would doubtless be left behind to surrender or die.
The Theban force let loose a cheer as if they had already won, and Agis ordered the Spartan phalanx to tighten its ranks against the possibility of a suicidal Athenian charge, while on the road the resplendent hipparch—Alkibiades, almost certainly—hoisted his lance and addressed his men in inaudible speech.
Turning his mount, Alkibiades led the charge along the road, on course for the open space between the two opponents. He had made his choice. He would leave his unmounted countrymen to face their fates, it seemed, and without hesitation or protest, the two hundred riders fell into formation behind him. Little surprise such treachery, given what every Spartiate boy was taught about Athenian society: the cavalry of Athens was made up of men from its aristocracy, whose very existence came at the expense of the common man. It was only natural that such men would feed the less fortunate to beasts when the need arose.
There was no possibility of closing the gap between the Theban and Spartan forces in time to block the escape, not without breaking ranks, and so Agis ordered the pace held, and the Spartan advance continued steadily over rocky, rolling ground which might have broken the cohesion of lesser infantry. Meanwhile, the four thousand Thebans opposite, in spite of their commanders' loud entreaties, moved more like a horde of half-civilized plainsmen than a disciplined army.
Unopposed but for an erratic hail of javelins from the Theban side, which flew far from true, the Athenian horse threaded the needle and made good its escape. There was yet a good chance they could be stopped: a hundred and twenty Theban cavalry, which was by many accounts superior to a greater number of its Athenian counterpart, lay in wait to the north against just such a contingency.
Again, the plan of Brasidas.
Boldness, if unmixed with caution, might make disaster of any triumph, or so the Spartan saying went. Thus did Agis order the Spartan left to turn and face its shields to the passing enemy cavalry. Styphon was on the right, and did not turn his head to watch the horse flee, although while it was in his line of sight, he did scan it unsuccessfully for any sign of a man riding with a corpse slung over his saddle.
The two attacking forces joined up, the Theban right lapping like waves on the cliff which was the Spartan left, and together they advanced south along the road, reaching in no time the crest on which the Athenian horse, minutes ago, had paused in shock. Dekelea was visible now, and before it a shallow bowl of grass and crags in the middle of which a thousand Athenians had formed a ring of spears. Behind them the gates of Dekelea stood shut, and blocking those gates were the ones who had shut them: fifty Theban cavalry that had raced in behind the Athenian breakout to cut off any quick return by the enemy to the safety of the walls.
On the crest, Agis's trumpeter called a halt, which the Theban general echoed, and both armies stood united and facing the circle of trapped Athenians. King Agis broke from his place in the second rank and went forward to address them.
“Athenians, we give you one last opportunity to yield! I know you have refused terms from Brasidas already, but now you face Agis! If you will not trust a polemarch, trust a king! Your own leaders have left you! Throw down your weapons now, and you may return to your homes and submit to your new leaders. But if you resist, the family of every man identified as being present on this field today, whether he lives or dies, will be reduced to—”
A lookout bellowed from a hill to the north: “Cavalry! Cavalry!”
The air and earth began to vibrate with the familiar thunder of hoofbeats. Aborting his speech, Agis raced back to his place in the ranks, shouting orders for the rear three ranks of the six which made up the Spartan phalanx to turn to face the new threat from behind.
The rearmost ranks of any army were made up of its lesser troops, which in Sparta's case meant men at the beginning or end of their military careers, men of twenty years or sixty, and it was they who now were to face the returning enemy cavalry.
This was not the best choice, Styphon knew, not while there remained ample time to shift the best men rearward. The Equals surrounding Styphon in the first rank, still facing Dekelea and the lesser enemy, realized it, too, and they threw him questioning glances. As enomotarch commanding the thirty-six men on the formation's extreme right, his duty was to relay orders from above, not give his own.
There was no time to ponder, barely to act.
“Cycle!” Styphon screamed, and in the space of seconds, the neat six-by-six square of hoplites over which he presided disintegrated, its rows shifting out and back in a dance of spears. Just as quickly, the body reassembled, and when it did, Styphon and the men of what had been the front two ranks facing Dekelea stood facing down the more immediate threat from behind.
Formed up in a wedge, t
he Athenian citizen cavalry charged full tilt around the base of the same hill which had earlier concealed their ambushers. At the tip of the wedge, shining Alkibiades raised his lance high overhead, its point agleam with the pink of daybreak. There was no telling just where on the Spartan line they would strike, but all along its length a double row of spears were set and ready. The Spartiate to Styphon's left, Diphridas, cackled with black delight at the coming massacre of beasts and men.
“Shut your hole,” Styphon snapped at him.
A roar, a chorus of battle cries, erupted from the east, followed by a roll of thunder that eclipsed the pounding of the horses' hooves: the Thebans' patience had run out, and they were attacking the encircled Athenian infantry.
And Ares, the lord of slaughter on high, descended shrieking upon Attica to slake the mountain plain with blood.
The Athenian wedge entered the final approach, its target picked: Styphon's right-wing-turned-left. Mere instants from certain death, the hipparch at its head lowered his lance and veered abruptly. Spear blades barely grazed the horse's flank, but that hardly mattered, for its rider did something almost unthinkable. He threw himself to the ground, straight at the enemy line, three men down from Styphon.
The mad Athenian tumbled in a clatter of polished bronze, and before any Spartiate could bring his unwieldy eight-foot spear to bear, Alkibiades' lighter cavalry lance was swinging. He slashed two Spartiates behind the knees, and they stumbled back onto their comrades, even as the Athenian's blade swept upward into a third Equal's groin.
Styphon's mind filled with curses, and not a little admiration, for he saw Alkibiades' deadly purpose. His mad assault had opened a gap in the front rank, just three shields wide, but enough for the horseman following just seconds behind him to hit the phalanx without being skewered.
The second rider slammed into the Spartan line, then another and another, side-by-side, the thin end of a widening wedge. The third row of cavalry hit within spear's reach of Styphon, and his blade found the rider's neck. The man tumbled into the press of horses and hoplites to be trampled.
