Spartan Beast (The Hellennium Book 2)

by P. K. Lentz

  The one whose mark he bore held his eyes for a while and said, “Just say it. You want me safe because you'd miss me.”

  Demosthenes scoffed. “You have ruined me for any other company in this world, so yes,” he freely admitted. “Yes, I would miss you.”

  “And you're not even lying,” she said, and knew. “I've grown on you. Like a... never mind. I'll be safe. Now shut up.” She gestured at the waters. “There's killing to do.”

  * * *

  By mid-morning the Spartan triremes, their decks clogged with marines, pushed off from the white beaches of the far shore. Within a few minutes their course became clear to the owner of the pale, superhuman eyes which observed them from the cliffs. She reported the good news to the one beside her, who evidently would miss her if she were to die.

  The ships' intended landing point was the one hoped for: that small stretch of coastline where the defenses appeared not yet to be complete, and where moreover the beach was smooth and sandy, had proven too enticing for Agis.

  The fortifications in that spot were in fact unfinished, but in their place were other, hidden defenses, including six hundred Naupaktans waiting out of sight to challenge whatever number of invaders succeeded in setting foot on the beach.

  At Demosthenes' word, the morning's diffuse sunlight flashed off mirrors of highly polished bronze, telling men up and down the coast that the time had come. Runners followed the light, just in case. Wherever the signal was seen, Naupaktans flew into action, goading oxen out of sheds on the heights overlooking the sea and leading them the short distance to the cliff's edge, each team hauling behind them either a two-wheeled platform or a heavy wagon. On each platform was mounted a horizontal bow with a span greater than the height of most men; each wagon was filled with the shafts which the bows were designed to launch.

  At twelve sites chosen well in advance, the crews detached the oxen, aimed the great ballistae out over the channel, locked their wheels, turned the cranks of wood and iron which tensed their thick bowstrings, and they waited. The men had been trained in the weapons' use, mostly on the inland hills with trees or logs as targets, and they were eager now to test their skills. Their targets this day would be in motion, but the great distance put the Naupaktan crews out of danger and meant they could take their time and fire at will, missing ten times for every hit if need be.

  The bolts which would rain down on the ships making the crossing would at first be tipped with lead. Descending from such a great height, the leaden projectiles would smash their way through the deck and hull of any ship unlucky enough to be struck, the shaft then lancing to the channel bottom with ship soon to follow. Later, when the invasion fleet drew closer, other bolts would be loaded, ones fitted with clay pots filled with a viscous, pitch-like liquid that could set fire to any ship's timbers, its crew, or even, if the shot missed, make the waves themselves burn.

  Demosthenes had used the stuff himself to burn the siege engines of the Spartan invasion force on Skiron's road as it made its way to Attica. Back then, his small force of raiders had been slaughtered afterward by Eden, and the loss of his siege engines had proven no impediment to Brasidas. The conquest of Athens had come by sea in the form of Sparta's new navy of faster and more maneuverable ships, those which seemed absent this day.

  Instead, trireme oars slapped the waves rhythmically to the faint, shrill sound of piping, while above, on the cliffs, patient ballista crews waited while the enemy's vessels maneuvered into a loose agglomeration, then poured on the speed, plying cold, dark currents on a gently curving line to their intended landing point.

  Into a trap.

  A single, Cyclopean bow loosed a lead-tipped bolt. It vanished into the waves, well short, perhaps even unnoticed. A few brief words of recrimination were shouted, then more waiting.

  Minutes later, another shot, another miss. It fell between hulls, harmlessly, but well inside the amorphous collection of thirty-odd ships. The rest of the twelve ballista crews took it as their cue and followed suit, raining bolts down from the heights onto the clustered ships far below, which looked but for their white wakes as if they barely moved at all. The pipes which timed the rowers' strokes were easily audible by now, and so too were the cries of alarm, the barked orders of trierarchs, even if the words themselves were lost in the wind and crash of surf. Evidently they urged calm and no change of course, for the invasion fleet rowed on undeterred as every bolt of the first volley missed. Likely the Spartans believed this the worst they would encounter until they set foot on the beach, as had been the case in many battles past. The arrows were rather larger, but still only harassment, no deterrent.

  Fresh bolts were plucked from the wagons by two men each and set in place on the stocks of the great bows, whose coiled sinew strings were pulled tight by men straining against the handles of sturdy cranks. Aims were adjusted, wind was gauged, and as each crew became ready, second shots were loosed.

  One of the first was a hit, holing a forward deck. From the cliffs a cheer went up, while the wind carried shouts of the stricken ship's crew, whose oars lost time. Then the oars stopped altogether, the hull listed, and black specks which were her crew and the marines she carried, then more who were the oarsmen emerging by the dozen from below deck, spilled out into the sea or clung to the wreck. The fighters among them were almost sure to die, dragged down by the weight of their war-gear.

  The third volley crippled another ship near the formation's head, forcing others behind to take evasive action. A fourth tore through the hull of one ship and sheared the steering oar from another.

  Still, the remaining ships plowed on toward the beach they hoped to storm, the beach on which Demosthenes stood while the barrage continued, round after round lancing down, unabated and unanswered. It would not destroy the invasion fleet—not even close—only diminish it, but that suited the designs of the two architects, who meant for the fleet to press on, unable to know that the worst was yet to come.

  As the remaining ships rowed nearer the beach in moderate disarray, leaving behind a half dozen triremes and their hundreds of occupants flailing in the waves or vanished under them, the rain of massive bolts tapered off. The weapons would be retargeted now, their leaden projectiles swapped for incendiary ones.

  But even before that fiery rain came, the invaders were to face another obstacle.

  The ships scudded on, beaked hulls splitting the sea, white foam filling their angry, painted eyes. They neared the beach on which they meant to land and disembark the eager marines presently singing war chants on their decks. It was the beach above which the defensive walls had been left incomplete, in irresistible invitation to any straightforward-thinking invader, as King Agis was by all accounts.

  Brasidas might well have attacked by some other route, and stood a chance of winning.

  Standing on a rock with a commanding view, Demosthenes waited for the first of the ships to pass a certain wooden buoy with a bright green flag fluttering on its top. When that mark was reached, he spun and hoisted his spear and cried shoreward, “Heave!”

  At three locations not far from him, at the inland ends of six small channels dug in the sand all the way to shore and lined with set liquid stone, oxen were goaded to motion. Affixed to the beasts' yokes were thick, tarred ropes, and the ropes sat in the channels which went out into the sea, and in that sea, beneath the water's surface, at the ends of those ropes and anchored in place by great cubes of stone, were the trunks of three massive trees lain horizontally. Set into the stripped trunks were tall bars of iron, made by the melting down of a great many objects, such that the resulting construction somewhat resembled the comb of a Titan, its handle of raw wood, its tines of iron. The six ropes were affixed to these three combs such that when pulled, the ropes caused caused the trunk to rotate, sending the iron bars, heretofore lying flat on the sea bed, into an upright position.

  Thus did the invading fleet of Sparta and her allies, rowing at speed for the shore, witness appear suddenly between them and the
beach, with no time left to steer away or back water, a regular array of iron posts spaced such that a trireme could not pass between any two.

  The crashing of wooden hulls, sharp snapping of oars, and cries of alarm filled the air as the first several ships struck the barriers. Prows or sterns were propelled up and out of the water, keels exposed, while other ships spun sidewise like toys, depending on how they struck. Scant seconds later, the sounds of chaos intensified as the vessels following immediately behind collided with the arrested ones to fore, their bronze-sheathed rams doing the very job for which they were built: holing hulls underneath the waterline. Yet the hulls holed today were not those of enemy ships; they held brothers and comrades.

  The swiftly realized result was a packed line of triremes, hardly any two facing the same direction, some slowly sinking, others capsized.

  Not every enemy ship became embroiled; those farthest back were able to steer clear, and some ships of the van had already been sailing west of the traps and avoided the bars. For those not so lucky, a fresh assault waited; it commenced with no need for word of command from Demosthenes. On the heights, the ballistae, their aim adjusted and projectiles changed, let loose once more.

  The new shafts fell upon the closely packed enemy hulls like the fire-arrows of Apollo himself. Where they struck, fire spread in bright tendrils of orange, setting alight decks and oars and men, and filling the sea winds with a thick, black smoke and screams of agony. The soft, waterlogged pine of the hull and deck did not burn well, but the black burning ooze was its own fuel.

  More than half the fleet stood shattered, sinking, burning, but some credit was due to the stricken mariners; only three ships, the contribution of one allied city or another according to their fluttering standards, turned prows and beat oars for the far shore. One trireme flying the red lambda even pressed on with fires burning on its deck, its crew racing up from below with filled bilge buckets in an effort to extinguish the persistent blaze.

  Waves of the acrid smell produced by the liquid fire reached shore and stung Demosthenes' eyes. He wiped them and continued to watch with a bitter smile fighting to curl his lip.

  Here was the start of his vengeance, proof that one man... give or take.. could smash a city.

  The start. This was but the start...

  He directed a look at the other party responsible for the death this day, standing geared for war down at the base of the rock on which he stood. Thalassia detected his satisfaction, of course, but the look inhabiting her own pale eyes was darker. It warned him: This is but the start.

  Demosthenes climbed down to the sand and shared no words with her as he went to join the Naupaktan force positioned out of sight, ready to spill down onto the beach to contest the landing.

  He arrived to hear Agathokles delivering to them final words of exhortation.

  “These Spartans come thinking they will face an army of slaves!” he cried. “Men of weak will, craven heart, broken spirit! They think they have nothing to fear, that they are as giants at whose thunderous footfalls on our shore we must tremble and run. But look out there! Those are men going to the sea god! Listen! Those screams are wrenched from men's throats! Inhale! That stench on the wind is that of men's flesh burning. They are no giants, no gods. They are men just like us! The difference is that we fight this day for our liberty, for our existence as a free people, for the very lives and dignity of our wives and mothers, while they fight only so that when they march home, their mothers won't spit in their faces and their wives won't snap their thighs shut for a season!”

  A chorus of light laughter arose behind the dune, briefly subsuming the song of waves and wind and screams and beating oars. A little laughter was a good thing before battle, so long as laughter did not come at the expense of lust for victory, for glory, for blood.

  To feed the latter, Agathokles loosed a roar. “For Naupaktos!” he cried, unsheathing his sword and raising it. His men echoed back the same invocation. Likewise the next: “For Messenia!” And the last: “For Pylos!”

  Turning, sword in hand, red helmet-crest whipping behind him, heels kicking up sand, Agathokles ran toward the beach. As one, six hundred of his countrymen and one Athenian followed.

  * * *

  On a hill on the channel's southern shore, standing at his king's side, Styphon watched the sea fill with fire, with the helpless hulks of sinking ships and the bodies of doomed men whose bones would never rest in cold earth, their shades consigned to drift on the tides. He watched in silence, now and then glancing at Agis, who likewise kept his mouth shut apart from a few terse commands delivered to his aides. Many of the commands were for silence, and so the cluster of Spartiates surrounding the king just looked on, with no words spoken or action taken to aid their countrymen, specks in the distance, who had embarked short hours ago with the invasion force led by Agis's own half-brother Agesilaus. What aid could be offered, anyway, by mere men, and ones lacking ships at that?

  Only the gods could be of assistance now, but even the individual arguably best equipped to beseech them was silent, a small, black-shrouded figure standing well apart from the Equals in their red cloaks, leaning on his tall staff, encompassing hood drawn over his hairless head.

  He was Agis's seer, the so-called Minoan, Phaistos. This dawn, he had cut open a calf and declared the day a propitious one for the success of a seaborne assault. Agis, being no fool, did not make military decisions strictly on the advice of a soothsayer, but he did put great stock in the Minoan's communication with gods and spirits—and likely would again, in spite of the apparent disaster unfolding.

  “Leave me,” Agis said to the men around him as the rain of destructive bolts from the opposing cliffs subsided. The surviving third or so of the invasion fleet beat steadily onward toward the beach they were meant to storm. “Not you,” he added to Styphon, who had been about to depart with others. He turned instead and reported to Agis's right hand.

  Phaistos evidently was likewise exempted from the order to disperse, for he remained a black shadow a few paces off, probably out of earshot unless the meandering sea wind turned just so. But then, Agis did not seem to care if his seer heard the words he shared privately with Styphon once the green hill was bare of Equals.

  “You have met her,” he said.

  It was not a question, and there was no need either to speak her name. All who had watched from this hill knew who must be here in Naupaktos: the other deathless one, Eris's enemy, the sea-bitch Thalassia.

  “Do you think she might help us?”

  This truly was a question. The king's eyes were fixed hawk-like on the far shore, as if he might pick her form out from here.

  Help us what? Styphon wondered for all of half a second before understanding dawned: help us to do what earth-born men had failed to do. Kill Eris.

  “It is... possible,” Styphon said after a moment's inconclusive thought. “I met her only once, before her association with Demosthenes.”

  “That is more than any other Equal can say. Living ones anyway.” Agis flashed annoyance. “Come on, man, it's no time to keep your lips in check. You have knowledge shared by no other. Use it for king and country. Give your honest opinion, even if it is not what I wish to hear.”

  Styphon's mind reached back two years, to Sphakteria, where he had consigned his countrymen to chains. He visited those memories infrequently on account of the shame they inspired.

  “Before aligning with Demosthenes and Athens, she offered her services to Sparta,” Styphon observed presently. “I cannot imagine her loyalty is great, either to man or city. Like Eris, she has her own agenda, whatever it may be.” He joined his king in squinting at the far shore. “She and Demosthenes were still together, last I knew, in Attica. Perhaps she is here, but I would not discount the possibility that what we witness today is only her influence, through Demosthenes.”

  “She is here,” the king said with certainty. “Of course you recall the incident at the jail of Athens last month. You were present for
the burial of those killed. And the assassination of our tyrant there, whatever his name was.”

  “Aye,” Styphon said.

  “That was her. And him.”

  This came as news to Styphon, but in retrospect, it had crossed his mind, on hearing of it, how unlikely it seemed that the feeble Athenian resistance he had known during his time in Athens should be able to achieve such a feat as the massacre of twenty-four Equals.

  “Does Brasidas know?” Styphon asked.

  “No doubt. He has his agents, as I have mine, and the ephors have theirs. And Brasidas was still polemarch then.” He waved his hand with its iron ring. “It seems clear we must fail this day, but we may not need leave empty-handed.”

  It seemed to Styphon that Agis was reacting rather philosophically to his defeat, but then, it was the way of Spartiates never to give way either to impotent rage or to despair. Surely he considered, as he stared out over the Gulf, into the distant haze of black smoke, how to make the most of a defeat. This, too, was the Spartan way, and surely the way of wise kings.

  “They remain in league together against Sparta, those two,” Agis remarked. “But I wonder if the right offer might not persuade one or both to give up that fight.”

  Into the pause which followed, Styphon cleared his throat. “Sire,” he began, “with utmost respect and apologies if I overstep, any truce which leaves Naupaktos with its freedom will... or I should say might... meet with extreme opposition back home. Again, with all respect, it could mean...”

  “Exile?” Agis finished for him with a smile.

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Worry not. You will not offer them a truce.”

  Agis's words took a moment to sink in. Then Styphon blurted, “I?”

  “Who better than one who has spoken to her previously and lived to tell it?”

  “Sire, if what you have in mind is persuading her to kill Eris for us,” Styphon pointed out, knowing it was not enough to dissuade the king, “what exactly is it within our power to offer her in return? It will not be freedom for Naupaktos, which it seems anyway she already has every chance of winning. On top of that, she is Demosthenes' ally, and he despises us and wants vengeance. I cannot imagine he would have an interest in aught but killing as many of us as possible.”