by P. K. Lentz
Remarkably, wickedly, Agis smiled. “You are an Equal without equal, but you would scarcely survive a day as a king. The reward offered will not be for the sea-bitch at all, but for that very Demosthenes who despises us so. I dare say there is one man upon whom he desires vengeance more than any other.”
Styphon had thought he could no longer be shocked, but not for the first time in the present conversation, he found himself proved wrong, if he correctly understood Agis's proposal.
Worse, it seemed Styphon would shortly be charged with presenting that proposal in person to a man whose wife, heavy with child, had been slaughtered while Styphon stood by. A man who had, by all appearances, just orchestrated the defeat of an invasion. A man whose closest ally was every bit as much an unstoppable force as was Eris, whose terrible fury he had witnessed first-hand.
Agis turned to him, set a hand on his shoulder, and said quite casually, “Go find a boat with two oars and cross to Naupaktos. By the time you arrive, the fighting should be finished. Find sea-bitch, find Demosthenes, and put my proposal to them. Offer in return anything they desire which is within reason, short of guarantees for Naupaktos, plus that one unreasonable thing. And see that they accept.”
“Yes, Sire,” Styphon said dutifully, heavily.
Privately, he knew this was far from the first time that an Equal had undertaken a mission which he personally found unwise to the point of absurdity. Neither would it be the first time, or the last, that an Equal had marched knowingly to his own likely death by a king's command.
A good thing, then, that Spartans were not raised to be lovers of life.
* * *
12. Beachhead
The first Spartan trireme to hit the beach was within seconds swarmed by defenders. Demosthenes was there among them, knee-deep in seawater that lapped at the tops of his greaves. Thalassia was not beside him, but satisfying her own urge to kill among another group of Naupaktans. He would not fight this day watched over by a higher power, but like any other man, with his life in his own hands.
Charging into the surf in the front line, round shield raised to keep it clear of waves working to shove him back, he was among the first to meet the enemy and first to spill blood in an overhand spear-thrust which took an Equal in the jaw. The blade no sooner escaped that's man's flesh than it found rest in his neighbor's neck. Both splashed down, to float or sink, Demosthenes did not stop to see; he only saw the gap created by their absence, and he waded into it behind his shield.
A wave shoved him back: the benevolent finger of the sea god, some believer might say, for just ahead of him two Equals converged, and the spear of one whipped past Demosthenes' ear, spraying it with cold droplets. Unbalanced, Demosthenes fell back, legs leaden in the deep water, footing unsure in the shifting sand, but he struck back anyway. He missed once, then drove the point of his spear under the waterline, where it met resistance in his target's groin. New blood clouded the water.
The second, meanwhile, trudged forward, posing a challenge which Demosthenes met by charging under a spear thrust to smash the man in the face with the bowl of his shield. As the man fell, Demosthenes struck him twice more about the head and neck with the hoplon's rim, causing his opponent's spear to fall loose and slice water, after which he was easily dispatched.
All around, Equals leaping from the deck came down into death, skewered or sliced by spears, then finished off in the surf if they still lived. Demosthenes himself killed four more thus, surrendering to the battle delirium which took away one's zeal for life and replaced it with lust for the blood of enemies. It was often better suppressed, but today Demosthenes found little will to do so. Today he wished only to kill, and kill he did.
During the frenzy, Demosthenes grasped that the ship had disgorged rather too many fighters. One or more banks of oars had been manned by light infantry, swordsmen ready to storm the beach behind the hoplites after lending their arms as rowers. These were not Equals but more probably, like the mariners, mothakes, Spartan cousins of less pure blood and accordingly lower social standing.
Equals they were not, but neither were they cowards. They died alongside their step-brothers to become warm corpses tossed by cold, red waves. By the time only defenders remained on their feet, bodies bobbed in the surf like driftwood or lay beached in dark puddles on the sand.
Victory ascertained, the Naupaktans around Demosthenes sent up a brief cheer in which he did not participate. A few feet from him, a Naupaktan was bleeding into the sea from a wound at his hip. Wading over, Demosthenes lent him a shoulder for support for the walk to shore while sounds of battle continued to echo in the air over the crash of waves.
Once they had passed the hulk of the defeated trireme in their landward trudge, he was able to look down the shore and see how the fight had gone elsewhere. Three more of the invaders' ships had been emptied; a fourth had been capsized by grapples and lay on its side, half submerged. Several other ships had successfully backed water, oars beating reverse rhythm in a very un-Spartan retreat.
They would not get far; so declared the three white triangles glinting in the sun south of them on the Channel. These were sails, and they hung from the masts of new, oarless vessels freshly built in the renowned shipyards of Naupaktos. Aboard the three ships, each twice the size of a trireme, were a hundred swordsmen and archers waiting to board the enemy vessels if they surrendered, and put fire to them if they did not.
On land, up the shore from Demosthenes, a contingent of Equals and light infantry, perhaps fifty men, had managed to battle its way onto the beach, leaving the damp sand behind them littered with the bodies of fallen Naupaktans. More Naupaktans, having repelled opponents in their own sections, presently raced over to avenge the dead. But spelling more certain doom for the attackers than any of those defenders was the lone figure already standing in their path, unhelmed with a short sword in either hand.
That Thalassia's arms and bare thighs were clean of blood said she had not killed yet this day. But for the weapons, greaves, and corselet of leather and bronze, she might have been attending a festival drama, for she shared in common with Spartiates the odd habit of grooming her hair before a battle. But where they merely combed out their characteristic long locks, she pinned or braided or otherwise formed it into whatever shape she might find pleasing that day. One might think her reason might be to give her victims a remarkable sight to carry with them into death, but one who thought such of Thalassia did not know her.
She did not do it for them at all, but only for her own amusement.
Today her loose waves were straightened and oiled and pinned up on one side while left to fall free on the other. Scarcely a strand was out of place now as she strode down the sand and became first to engage the band of fifty which had broken through. They must have known they were doomed, or something like it, for the invaders at the fore slowed in their swift advance, causing the loose formation to bunch up briefly before the attackers overcame their hesitation and resumed their headlong run.
They did not all engage Thalassia, of course; only the unluckiest near the center did, while those on the left and right sped past, flowing around her in a stream of brined leather and bronze. But in the spot where she stood, the loose-knit formation may as well have struck a temple column for all that she shifted.
That was the only way in which she resembled marble; her twin blades moved in swift arcs, and invaders groaned as their blood flew then spotted the sand.
Having safely deposited on higher ground the wounded Naupaktan hanging on his shoulder, Demosthenes raced toward that breakthrough, where by now scores of Naupaktans had joined Thalassia in putting a stop to the hopeless venture.
Too late he arrived at the crush of bodies. Before he could find any enemy to kill, a cheer went up. Demosthenes worked his way through the crowd to learn that the remaining invaders had thrown down first their arms and then their bodies onto the sand in supplication. The allies and Spartan cousins among them had, at least. By the look of it, no Equ
als had betrayed their city's code by surrendering.
Elsewhere on the beach, perhaps a dozen wounded Equals had survived to be captured. In the absence of the helms and lambda-blazoned shields now littering the beach, they were easily picked out by their long hair. While other, more numerous prisoners willingly sat docile under threat of Naupaktan blades, several of the disarmed Equals continued to wrestle with captors who struggled to keep them pinned down.
Demosthenes had more than half a mind to stalk over and grant those Spartans the death for which they longed, but it suited both Naupaktos and his own designs to take as many prisoners as possible today. Even now, the Naupaktan navy was pulling a great many more of them from the sea or from the sinking and burning hulks of triremes. Others combed the shore and found enemies, conscious and not, face down in the sand, clinging to rocks, half-drowned, mostly unarmed, almost entirely drained of fighting spirit.
As the morning wore on, the beach became filled with prisoners seated in the hot sand, bound hand and foot and separated into clusters by citizenship. The most important category, held in the smallest groups lest they entertain thoughts of mass escape, were the Equals: sixty-eight of them, by current count. Of mothakes, the Spartan cousins whose blood was too impure to grant them full citizenship, there were about twice that number, plus about the same again each of Spartan allies and Helot rowers.
The Naupaktan dead were tallied and recorded, too, and put at just twenty-nine.
Just past noon, when his path crossed that of Agathokles, Demosthenes hailed the Naupaktan leader and his aides and stood in conference with them on the sands.
“I would claim half of the mothakes and twenty Equals as my prisoners,” Demosthenes said after the exchange of niceties. “I think that fair.”
Agathokles' expression bespoke reluctance. “It is a difficult proposal even to consider, good friend, when you will not tell me your purpose in wanting them. I do not suppose you have changed your thinking on that matter?”
“No. The lives of the defeated lie by rights in the hands of the victors. Your hand would not have been victorious this day without my considerable aid.”
He did not mention the aid of the other standing a pace behind him; but then, he knew Thalassia scarcely minded whether men other than himself gave her the considerable credit she was due.
Demosthenes added, “I should think the custody of a handful of men who might as easily have drowned or burned this morning is a small price to ask in return.”
“Aye, it is,” Agathokles conceded, if less than genuinely. “The step-brothers, I should think, pose little difficulty. You may have thirty or so of them. But the Spartiates...” He scratched his beard uncomfortably. “You know better than anyone their value as hostages. Sparta might hesitate to launch a fresh assault knowing that the throats of seventy Equals would be cut before battle even was joined. Agis might be persuaded to discuss terms.”
“He might,” Demosthenes agreed, taking his turn to speak less than genuinely. “Yet if he is, I find it unlikely that fifty throats will differ from seventy in that regard. Or sixty, for I will accept ten Equals. But I must have them, and they will be no part of any treaties or exchanges. Where Sparta is concerned, they simply will no longer exist.”
Agathokles bowed his head heavily, perhaps attempting to imagine his friend's dark purpose, then sighed in the same manner before tersely delivering his decision. “Very well. Take your ten.” He sighed again, and there was a trace of sadness in his eyes on this momentous day of victory for his beloved city.
“If I may,” Thalassia interjected, addressing Agathokles. “Will the Helot prisoners be given their freedom?”
Looking to her, Agathokles brightened. He got on well with her, as most humans tended to, so long as she lacked cause to end their lives.
“They will be offered the choice to become Naupaktans, yes. But most will elect to return to Messenia, where their labor provides not only for Sparta but also their own wives and mothers and sons. They would not abandon family for the sake of freedom.”
“May I assist in screening them? We would not wish to welcome potential spies into our midst.”
“Naturally,” Agathokles agreed, far more readily than he had to Demosthenes' request. “I am greatly obliged for your concern, and your service.”
Just as Thalassia received the leader's gratitude with a nod and smile, a man on the beach cried out, “A craft approaches!”
Demosthenes, with Thalassia, the Naupaktan leader and his entourage, descended the beach and looked out to sea to spy upon the waves a two-oared boat, the single occupant of which—by his dress, an Equal—evidently had battled strong currents to row across the strait. Attached to the prow was a laurel-wrapped herald's wand which obliged the Naupaktan navy to let him pass.
The boat's approach was slow, but Demosthenes made sure that when the time came, he stood with Agathokles and other officials of the Naupaktan democracy on the stretch of coast on which the craft was set to land.
Thalassia stood there, too. Her eyes being what they were, she was first to recognize the lone Equal at the oars. She whispered his name into Demosthenes' ear.
Styphon.
* * *
13. Kill the messenger
The sound of the name ignited in Demosthenes a white-knuckled hatred which he quickly fought to suppress in favor of calculation. If he showed his intentions too soon, he might lose his chance to kill a man who had stood by and watched the murder of Laonome.
He did not consult Thalassia, verbally or otherwise, for he knew with certainty that she would back him in whatever action he took. In a series of seemingly casual movements, he began steadily to maneuver closer to the water line. To attack Styphon, he would need to be first to reach him as his craft approached the shore. The Naupaktans surely would try to interfere: not only was an assault on a herald a desecration of sacred law, they would hope he came bearing some offer from Agis.
When Demosthenes judged the boat was close enough, well before any of the gathered Naupaktans had thought of going forward to meet it, he charged headlong into the shallows. The breaking waves and shifting, wet sand underfoot, combined to slow him to a trudging crawl, but no more or less than it would slow any who pursued him. Heedless of such impediments, gaze fixed firmly on the flat-nosed profile of his target, recognizable when Styphon cast a glance over his shoulder at the shore, Demosthenes pushed on relentlessly.
Grasping his intent, Naupaktans cried urgently from shore, and there followed splashing footfalls as some number of them entered the sea to stop the Athenian guest from ruining whatever chance might exist for a negotiated peace. Demosthenes did not worry, for he was not alone. They would be prevented from reaching him in time.
He was nearly shoulder-deep when he drew close enough to lunge at the side of the craft, narrowly dodging an oar-stroke. With hate-fueled strength infusing water-heavy, battle-weary arms, he grabbed the craft's topstrake and pulled. He roared, a primal sound which reverberated off the nearby cliffs. The boat rocked, oars flew off time, Styphon slipped from the bench, and Demosthenes, reaching out, seized a handful of long, damp hair. With all his weight, he used the locks to pull Styphon overboard and into the cold waters which were to serve as both site and instrument of the Equal's death.
Demosthenes' sandals found footing on the sea floor, and he shifted his grip from the ends of his victim's hair to the scalp while his other hand restrained a wrist. Downward he pushed, locking his elbow to hold Styphon's head under some three feet of water. Styphon thrashed with his free arm and both legs, but impeded by the water, even those blows which landed could scarcely be felt.
Having never drowned a man, Demosthenes knew not how long it would take. Voices and splashing that grew steadily louder behind him suggested he would shortly have to contend with Naupaktan intervention, barring interference on his behalf. Maintaining the firm grip which denied Styphon breath, he spun to face the shore in time to witness the hoped-for arrival.
Feet
away, well ahead of five or six onrushing Naupaktans, Thalassia exploded from the waves like brine-born Thetis herself to bar their path. A toss of her long hair sent up a rain of seawater, and she leveled twin blades at the surprised Naupaktans to ensure there could be no misunderstanding: they were not to pass.
Confident in her protection, Demosthenes carefully shifted his grip on Styphon to renew downward pressure. A storm of bubbles broke the dark surface of the water, which seemed to Demosthenes a likely sign of impending death.
His gaze was downward on the barely visible form of his victim when Thalassia, having backed closer to him while continuing to ward off Naupaktans who were wise in their reluctance to face her.
She spoke just loudly enough for him and no other to hear.
“Let him go,” she urged. It was no demand, but an emphatic suggestion.
Demosthenes ignored her, and intended to continue to do so until it was too late.
She backed closer, until their shoulders touched, leaned her head to his and spoke in soothing tones: “Naupaktos needs him. We may need him one day. Trust me.”
“He watched!” Demosthenes returned, not looking at her. “He needs to die!”
“He will. Another day. Please.”
Thalassia had spent some days with Styphon on Sphakteria before coming into Demosthenes' 'possession' as a spoil. Later, she had tutored Styphon's daughter Andrea. Maybe she felt some misguided fondness toward the man or simply did not wish to see Andrea orphaned. Yet there was nothing pleading about her tone, no emotion in the entreaty. Only calculation.
“Will you stop me?” The Equal had all but ceased struggling.
