Spartan Beast (The Hellennium Book 2)

by P. K. Lentz

  His limbs flew in wild spasm before falling back lifeless on the bed, and in a swift motion, Thalassia was on her feet. She looked to the chamber door seconds before it shook gently with an attempt to enter from without. Then came a soft knock and a woman's voice: “Isodoros?”

  Demosthenes did not wait to hear more, but went to the room's single window, identical to the one by which they had entered, and opened its shutters. Thalassia was right behind him.

  “Isodoros?” the woman said again. “Are you well?”

  As a freshly made widow pounded on the locked door of that room, the pair of tyrannicides vanished into the night, navigated a maze of deserted Athenian streets, mounted their waiting horse, and commenced the night-ride to Corinth.

  * * *

  17. Lord of Wind

  The day after the departure of the expedition to punish Pylos, when no duty pressed and he was reasonably certain that Eris was out of the city, his daughter along with her, Styphon went to a certain dwelling near the center of Sparta. The estate on which it stood was state-owned, having been seized half a generation ago from the family of an Equal sent into exile for embezzling public funds. The exile's house, while no non-Spartan would call it a mansion, was rather larger and better furnished than was the standard to which more honest folk held themselves.

  The dwelling had served a number of mostly diplomatic purposes over the years. Currently, it was where the captured Alkibiades was held under house arrest.

  Oddly, at least to Styphon's mind, no guards were posted at the entrance. Eris, the prisoner's warder, perhaps was thought to be deterrent enough against any attempt to escape. Whatever the reasoning, Styphon was able to walk up the straight path to the door and hammer twice with the worn wooden knocker graven in the image of a gorgon.

  Within a few moments, Alkibiades—Athenian, preener, last leader of his city's defeated army, and the man whom Styphon's own daughter called uncle for his having fed and sheltered and educated her for more than a year prior to Athens' fall—opened the door from within. Smiling as one who after too long had finally laid eyes again upon a friend, which Styphon did not consider himself, he came forward for an embrace not on offer.

  Alkibiades' jaw was freshly shaven, and his oiled hair, worn long for an Athenian, fell in waves framing features which might have been carved in fragile alabaster. Gone were his jewelry and silken finery, but he had not bowed entirely to Spartan tastes: evidently he had somehow come by a chiton, certainly not of local make, embroidered with a red geometric design at the collar and hem and in a vertical line connecting them. The battle-wound to his leg, which gave him a slight limp, did not appear to be seeping through its bandage.

  Strange how the manicured hands of someone who would have looked more at home in the pavilion of a Persian king, if not his harem, than on a battlefield could acquit himself so well on the latter, wielding the weapons of a man.

  But then, much the same could be said, and even more accurately, of Eris and Thalassia.

  Declined an embrace, Alkibiades greeted cheerily, inaccurately, in his effeminate Attic dialect, “My good friend Styphon, to what do I owe the pleasure of your most welcome presence?”

  In addition to continuing to dress frivolously, he apparently had failed to adopt a more Lakonian style of speech.

  Styphon's reply, by contrast, was stripped to bare necessity: “I would share words.”

  “By all means!” the preener returned eagerly. As he stepped back to make way, Styphon noted the presence of a curtain just hanging inside the door, the only purpose of which could be to prevent guests seeing inside until such time as they were invited in. Pushing the curtain aside while Alkibiades stayed to close the door behind it, Styphon learned the reason for the foreigner's unseemly concession to privacy. In the megaron beyond the curtain, near the hearth, on one of many embroidered rugs that covered any trace of the hard-packed earth underneath, were two young Helots, one male and one female. The male stood upright with a water pitcher held in either hand while the female knelt by his feet. The evidence of the former's erection and the latter's placement relative to it lent itself amply to a conclusion of what activity they had been engaged in immediately prior to the guest's arrival. The significance of the pitchers, however, eluded Styphon.

  Entering just behind, Alkibiades provided answer by addressing the pair.

  “I don't recall telling you two to stop,” he said. There was more playfulness than command in his tone.

  On hearing it, the male hoisted the two pitchers in well-formed but trembling and unsteady arms above the female, who settled in to resume her prior activity of fellating him. It became clear to Styphon, though he wished it had not, that a game was underway, with the female engaged in a race to bring the man to release before his strength gave out and he was forced to douse her—assuming the spasm of climax itself did not achieve a similar result.

  The male Helot's wet hair bespoke a round of the game recently played in reverse and lost. Or won. In this house, it seemed rather likely that the only winner was Alkibiades.

  “You can stop,” the pair's unrightful master told them a moment later. “Go into the back rooms and finish, or not, as you see fit.”

  Relieved, the male set down his burden and went with the female, who rubbed his arms for him with some affection as they walked.

  “Husband and wife,” Alkibiades explained in a low voice. “Ask them, if you want, whether they would prefer their usual labors. I'm sure they would elect to stay.” He chuckled. “I punish them, but not as harshly as you lot.”

  In fact, many Helots of Lakonia were largely well treated, but it was ever the way of Athens to equate all Helotry with its more brutal Messenian incarnation. Nonetheless, Styphon had not come to correct his misconceptions. Nor had he come to find out how Alkibiades treated the sex puppets to which a prisoner ought not be entitled.

  When they stood alone in the megaron, Styphon began to broach the one subject which did interest him enough that he willingly suffered his present company.

  For caution's sake, some preamble was unavoidable.

  “I would have this conversation remain between us.” When Alkibiades started to offer assurances, Styphon cut him off. “They involve a certain individual whose name I prefer we not speak, one who evidently cannot be deceived. Thus I would not expect you to succeed in lying to her, in the event she were to ask you directly about our conversation. What I ask is that you not offer up such information to her willingly. Can you make such a promise?”

  All trace of Alkibiades, self-important lover of excess, now vanished. In his place there stood Alkibiades, lover of being important. “I swear it,” he said earnestly.

  “Then I would have you speak to me on a subject in which I know you have an interest: my daughter, particularly with regard to the intent and motive of her tutor.”

  Alkibiades' look, especially his pair of expressive brows, said he was unsurprised by the request, but found it a difficult one. He gestured at a soft couch (another foreign indulgence), then walked there in his uneven gait and lowered himself upon it. Accompanying him, Styphon squatted to bring himself level, but declined to sit.

  “I possess no sure knowledge,” Alkibiades said. “But I can offer you insight and informed speculation. I will give it freely, too, with nothing asked in return.” He shrugged. “Although... should you find yourself in a position to recommend me to anyone of influence, be it Brasidas or the king or some other, the favor would not go amiss.”

  Styphon cleared his throat loudly in the hope it might put the other back on track.

  It did. “Forgive me if anything I may say is already familiar to you, but I shall start by telling you about Thalassia, since in at least some ways she and the other one”—he obliged Styphon's half-superstitious desire to avoid Eris's name—“are alike. They served in the same army, the Veta Caliate, which was led by a woman, and from what I understand, almost exclusively female in membership. They hail from nowhere on this earth or under it
, but from other worlds among the stars, although they are humans, or claim to be. Their bodies and minds have just been improved in relation to ours on account of their also hailing from elsewhen. What is the present and future to us is the past to them, already written.”

  “Andrea,” Styphon interrupted, making of his daughter's name a command.

  “I will get there,” the blowhard returned, undaunted. “Our futures to them are written, but not immutable. Their actions already have changed the fates of our cities and all who dwell in them. Where our war was to have raged for another generation, instead it is already ended, albeit with the same victor. Thalassia lied to me about my own fate. She told me history was due to forget me, but Eden... Shit! Sorry, won't happen again... informed me I would have been a hero of my people, the last great champion of Athens, who failed only in the last days to turn the war around. Hektor, if you like, to my city's Troy. Achilles would have been—”

  “I do not have all day!” Styphon snapped.

  Alkibiades frowned and nodded, then continued. “I do not begrudge Thalassia the lie. We all need to look out foremost for our own causes. She never let me in on what hers was, but I can tell you it is not democracy, nor the welfare of Athens. Ede—I mean the one I will henceforth call Frosty, which is how I think of her—does not even know. I don't know that Thalassia's aims matter much to her compared to her rage at being trapped on our world because of her. Demosthenes knows her aims, I should think. If not, he is a far greater fool than me.”

  Of course, there was little chance Alkibiades actually believed himself a fool, or anything short of a demi-god, for that matter.

  He might well be Aeolus, lord of winds, it seemed at this moment to Styphon.

  “By Zeus, you blather too much, even for an Athenian!” Styphon grated. Surrendering to a longer stay than he wished, Styphon consented to sit, albeit on the floor rather than a cushion. “The next word from your lips had best be my daughter's name.”

  “Andrea,” Alkibiades obeyed pointedly, but not fearfully, “was a pupil of Thalassia in Athens. And of Sokrates, may the Maiden shelter his gentle soul,” he inserted, a brief shadow falling over his features. “I am not privy to what Frosty has in mind for your daughter, but I have at least a guess as to what Thalassia's intent was.”

  “A guess?”

  “She never actually told me, but it is more than a guess. Having been the star pupil of Sokrates myself, I never guess, only draw reasoned conclusions based on the available evidence. Instinct, too, but mostly evidence. Now, may I continue?”

  The preener had the gall to sound perturbed. Under Styphon's answering glare, he resumed.

  “My reasoned conclusion is that Thalassia aimed to plant in Andrea, and the school for girls that she and I hoped to found, a seed which might grow over time into something not unlike her own Veta Caliate, an independent army of warrior-women with brains to match their blades. 'Pythagorean Amazons' one might say.”

  He seemed proud of the description, which did not mean much to Styphon.

  “What end the existence of such an army might serve, I know not, but I can say with certainty that it would amount to a force for change. Even not knowing the aim, I supported the effort out of a personal fondness for Thalassia and a more general fondness for perverse ideas.”

  Styphon scowled in disgust that his daughter might have been used in the furtherance of what the preener correctly labeled a perverse idea. But he checked any other expression of displeasure and asked instead, “You believe that the other”—not being a child, Styphon refused to refer to Eris as Frosty—“may possess a similar intent?”

  “I cannot be as sure as I was with Thalassia, for the simple reason that I have not”—quite transparently, he smirked—“been fucking her for as long. But it is my initial guess. I mean conclusion.”

  “Would that it had been your initial utterance,” Styphon lamented aloud. Complaining was not the Spartiate way, but he could scarcely help himself. “Is that truly all you can tell me of that creature's designs on my daughter?”

  “No,” Alkibiades said coolly. “There is yet the matter of my instinct.”

  For the sake of dragging words, whatever their value, more quickly out of the man, Styphon played along. “And what does instinct tell you?”

  “It tells me...” Alkibiades paused theatrically and smiled to himself as though at some inner joke. “It tells me,” he resumed slowly, “that Her Frostiness likes Andrea. For one reason or another, she simply enjoys her company. Maybe she just likes being a teacher, and Andrea is the right student. Or maybe your girl reminds her of someone from her past, or herself a hundred years ago. Yes, she is quite old. She might even want Andrea as a lover. I just sense that where Thalassia took no particular pleasure in being Andrea's tutor, this one does.” His exquisite brows rose in a facial shrug. “That's all I have, except for one last impression I will offer not knowing whether it is relevant or not.” Again Alkibiades adopted his most serious look as he warned, “I would not envy the man who tries to insert himself between that woman and what she wants.”

  With that, the Athenian exhaled in a sigh and sat forward.

  “Help me up, would you, friend?” he asked. Styphon got to his feet and offered the preener a thick forearm which Alkibiades used to rise. “I would ask you to stay and share wine and some more talk,” Alkibiades went on, “but I have discovered that no one ever says yes to that in Sparta.” He chuckled. “Or maybe just not to me. I will detain you no longer.”

  As they walked to the door, Alkibiades set a hand on Styphon's bicep, turning him.

  “There is actually one matter I would put to you,” the preener added. His bright eyes were sincere. “A request, in fact. You needn't reply now, merely keep it in mind. Assuming I am not executed, if one day I should be allowed a return to Athens, I should like to take Eurydike with me. I was never her master, but she and I do share a bond.” He raised an open palm. “As I said, no answer is expected, and the day when one will be needed likely remains far off.”

  “Even if that day comes, the answer may not be mine to give,” Styphon said, proceeding past the privacy curtain to the exit. Alkibiades hobbled along behind. “There are two others whose permission you will need. Brasidas... and my wife.”

  “Wife?” Alkibiades echoed after a moment. He laughed. “Congratulations!”

  Without responding to the well-wishes, Styphon turned on the house's threshold and defied, just this once, his tendency to keep his thoughts to himself when they were unasked for.

  “I will offer you an observation of my own. Call it instinct, or whatever you like.” He set his hard, black eyes on those of Alkibiades. “When you lie with either of those two... you are not fucking them. They are fucking you.”

  Feeling a touch of pride that a Spartan had had the last word with an Athenian prattler, Styphon turned and departed.

  * * *

  Returning to his home after evening mess, he found Hippolyta and Eurydike, mistress and slave, partaking together of a meal from the same platter, in breach of long-held custom. The latter looked up at him showing guilt mixed with fear for the instant before her gaze darted elsewhere. The former, his wife, smiled at him knowingly. Her plans, it seemed, were proceeding apace.

  “Andrea has not returned?” Styphon asked.

  She had not, and as night fell, that did not change. While Hippolyta was in bed, asleep after their obligatory, if pleasurable, efforts toward conception and Eurydike was huddled by the hearth, Styphon sat outside under a swath of stars, watching for a small shadow on the long path to his door.

  At last Andrea came, walking the final stretch with her head bowed in one or all of shame, annoyance, or fear on discovering that her father had waited up. Styphon had never beaten his daughter, but plenty of fathers did, and most would for this offense, even here in Sparta where boys were expected to be boys and girls could be boys, too.

  Styphon stood to meet her. “Tell me all you did with your tutor today, Andrea,�
�� he demanded as she drew up in front of him, avoiding his gaze. Her bowed head gave him a clear view of the red ribbon, his gift to her, that spiraled down the length of a thin braid hanging amidst the locks of her long, straight hair.

  “Lessons,” Andrea said lamely.

  “On what? Loosen your tongue or have it loosened. I will have details.”

  “Nature,” she said, avoiding her father's gaze. “Mathematics... cosmology … anatomy.”

  “Those are subjects, girl. What did she actually teach you?”

  Shifting uncomfortably, Andrea offered nothing.

  “If you are too ashamed to repeat it,” Styphon lectured, “then it was not worth learning. Now, swallow your shame and answer.”

  “I am not ashamed,” she said quietly, and Styphon believed her. “Please just let me be, father,” she begged. She had yet to meet his gaze.

  “Leave you be? You are my blood. That means something to me. Does it to you?”

  She came back quickly, resignedly, “Yes, father.”

  “If I ordered you to stop seeing your tutor,” he asked, “would you heed me?”

  Head hung, she said nothing.

  “The truth, girl! Would you obey me, the one who put life into your flesh?”

  “No!” Andrea came back, raising a face in which fire suddenly burned alongside fear. “I could not. Eden teaches me what no other man or woman on earth could. She teaches me Truth, about this world and others! She cuts a trail for me through the mire of ignorance and lies in which we wallow, every one of us in every city!”

  Looking down upon his daughter, Styphon listened calmly to her passionate, un-Spartan outburst and what followed.

  “Thalassia... Geneva started me on the path, but she held back,” Andrea said. “She concealed things. Eris does not. She trusts me. She sees greatness in me. She wants what is best for me, and I...” Suddenly the fire in her flickered, still burning but with reduced intensity as she said to the earth, “And neither will I settle for anything less than what is best for myself.”