Spartan Beast (The Hellennium Book 2)

by P. K. Lentz

  Agathokles thought better of finishing, shook his head and smiled sadly.

  “At any rate,” he resumed, “even if there exists scant cause for hope, I shall persist a while longer in clinging to it. Some measure of peace might be bought, even if it is temporary.”

  Nodding, Demosthenes conceded, “You are a better leader of men than I. I hope you are right.”

  With kind words of parting, they took their leaves.

  By day's end, ten Equals and thirty of the so-called 'step-brothers' whose blood was not pure enough to grant them Spartan citizenship had been transferred into the custody of Demosthenes and sat chained in the hulls of two beached enemy triremes, guarded by a few Naupaktan volunteers.

  Nearby was Thalassia's dank witch's den, where soon she would be ready to begin preparing meals for the forty prisoners. She had ever been a terrible cook, or had chosen to be one, since Thalassia could excel at anything she set her mind to, but these meals were sure to be her worst.

  They would be the diners' deaths, and not accidentally.

  At dusk, Demosthenes sat with her and a jar of wine outside the cavern mouth, looking out over the strait separating the Gulf of Corinth to the east from the Gulf of Patras to the west. On the opposite shore, smoke had begun to rise from the cooking fires of the Spartan camp. Styphon would be there by now, reporting to his king.

  “You should eat and rest,” Thalassia said.

  “I was thinking we might row across in the night and kill Agis.”

  She laughed. “I'm up for it. But...”

  “But what?” Demosthenes said testily.

  “Even if his offer was not acceptable in its present form—”

  “Or any form.”

  “Agis is a counter to Brasidas's influence in Sparta,” she calmly continued. “He commands loyal followers, some of whom we can infer have died trying to kill Eden. It behooves us to keep our options open. And seem like reasonable people, even if one or more of us is not.”

  Demosthenes growled into the mouth of his wine jar, but accepted her logic. “'Behooves'?”

  “It means it would be to our adv—”

  “I know what it means, sea hag. Every month you talk more like a sophist.”

  “It's called going native. I like the way you fucking primitives talk. It's elegant. I'm going to be elegant from now on.”

  Demosthenes turned to see pale eyes shining with false sincerity, and he laughed, and so did she. He asked, “Is there such a thing as filthy elegance?”

  She shrugged. “Is now.”

  He lowered the wine to the ground and his head onto her shoulder. “Do you know more unwritten plays?”

  “Many.”

  “Tell me one.”

  * * *

  Damp and briny from sea-spray, arms leaden from pulling oars on his fruitless round trip across the strait, Styphon made his way on foot to the Spartan encampment—which unlike that of the allied contingents lacked tents or shelters of any kind. There he found Agis among a cluster of officers seated on some rocks overlooking the gulf, throwing knucklebones in a subdued, stakeless game meant only to serve as a moment's distraction from the day's devastation. On noting Styphon's return, Agis made the current throw his last and cordially dismissed the gathering.

  As he had earlier in the day, Styphon stood alone with the king and Phaistos the Minoan, his silent seer. The latter sat on the earth, gazing wide-eyed over the waters as though in a trance.

  While Styphon dipped to one knee in line with protocol, Agis asked him, “Their answer?”

  Rising, Styphon likewise wasted no words. “No. Demosthenes is adamant. The witch less so.”

  Consternation briefly showed on Agis's face, then quickly faded. “Worth the trying anyway.” His reflective manner betrayed no sign that he begrudged Styphon his failure. “Three hundred and twenty Equals lost to us today,” he lamented. “Two hundred and eighty more are encamped here, plus five hundred step-brothers and Arkadians. Phaistos tells me the portents bode well for a fresh attack tonight, under darkness, landing well east of Naupaktos in whatever craft we can assemble, then marching overland to appear below the city by dawn. What do you make of that plan, Styphon?”

  In truth, he was somewhat confused by it, for in his final talk with Agis before venturing across the channel, the king had told him a second attack would not be possible.

  Suddenly, Styphon understood what Agis had done. They had used the same manner of deception on Andrea, letting her believe a lie in order that she might pass it unwittingly to Eris under a cloak of truth.

  Had he known a second attack was possible, Styphon could have—would have—given the secret away to Thalassia.

  “It could work,” Styphon said tentatively. He only thought: if Naupaktos had no more tricks in store, and if the sea-bitch chose not to take up arms against them personally.

  Agis laughed. “It is not only these witches who can smell untruths, friend. You can say it: we would stand almost no chance of success. Which is not to say it is not worth considering. I am forced to decide: is it better to return home after one failure or two? Would the second be viewed as tenacity or foolhardiness?” He shrugged, showing that he expected no answer from his present company. He asked abruptly, “Is that the list of prisoners in your hand?”

  Styphon surrendered the folded slip of parchment to his king. As Agis unfolded it, Styphon elected to let him hear quickly aloud, rather than discover by reading, the one name certain to stand out to him.

  “They have Agesilaus, sire.”

  Scowling, Agis perused the list, eyes stopping halfway down, where Styphon knew was located the name just spoken. His gaze grew distant, moving through the parchment and perhaps delving into the past to retrieve some vision of his half-brother from yesterday or a thousand yesterdays ago.

  He blinked and was present on the hill again.

  “A shame,” he said. “A good man. Would have a made a good king, had that been Fate's plan.”

  “He may yet be restored to freedom,” Styphon observed.

  “Yes,” Agis agreed without really agreeing. “He may. But not in any bargain to be struck with by us or any Equal. On that, the ephors are clear and unanimous.”

  He sighed heavily and shoved the list back into Styphon's palm. “Come,” he said. “You are as literate as any man here. Help me compose a reply that completely ignores the fact that our side just lost.”

  * * *

  Every Spartan presently alive has celebrated the deaths of a thousand brothers, went the message sent back by Agis the following dawn in the hands of a second herald who was not even an Equal.

  That morning, the army of Agis army broke camp to march home in defeat.

  Sparta would be back, the folk of Naupaktos knew, but that worry was for another day. This day, laughter rang out over Naupaktos.

  Mostly laughter. Men had been lost, and so there were those who wept or wailed. But most laughed.

  * * *

  1. Beaten

  PART IIII: SPARTA

  They trudged home in gray-faced shame, fewer than half in number than they had been on leaving just eight days prior, on what most had taken for an easy conquest, a repeat of Pylos. Not a word was uttered of defeat on the march; all were too busy preparing for the humiliation of their homecoming, for the inevitable taunting by friends and brothers, the dutiful scorn of mothers and wives. That those coming home had not even seen true combat, not been given the chance to die, only deepened their sense of failure.

  Agis's spirits seemed higher to Styphon than they rightfully should have been, given that he was surely to bear the brunt of blame. He was a king, of course, of divine lineage and subject to different rules than mere citizens. Mechanisms were in place to dethrone or exile a king deemed unworthy, but a single defeat generally did not cost a king his throne.

  Generally, it did not. But as had just been demonstrated at great cost at Naupaktos, times had changed. Opinion was divided within the bodies that ruled Sparta, ruling even o
ver her kings, as to whether Sparta would change, too. Agis might escape serious punishment, but the sort of failure he had just overseen might well change enough minds, it seemed to Styphon, to tip the balance in favor of adaptation and innovation—back in favor of Brasidas.

  Perhaps that concern did weigh on Agis's mind, but he did not let it show that Styphon could tell. Even when the official messenger of the ephorate came out on the broad road to meet the broken army before it had passed the inscribed stones marking the boundary of the unwalled city, Agis appeared light of heart.

  “Off to the crucifixion post,” the king joked straight-faced.

  This was a double exaggeration, for in the unthinkable event that he paid for this failure with his life, his execution would not take a form reserved for slaves and thieves.

  Where Agis's path was to diverge from that of the column, Styphon moved with the rest of the king's guard to accompany Agis. But the king raised a hand.

  “What good does it do me to bring witnesses to my censure?” he asked. “No, go home to your own judges and take whatever beating they have in store.”

  Some Equals smirked. It was every wife's and mother's duty to make husband or son suffer on return from defeat, but it was also an unspoken truth that behind closed doors, most doors anyway, reunions were a joyous thing whatever the outcome of battle. Styphon knew it would be thus with Hippolyta, who might derive some pleasure from letting a neighbor or two overhear her berating him, only to clamp thighs around him shortly thereafter. If not during.

  And so as Agis struck off alone with the ephorate's man, Styphon picked his own path home among the other returnees. Wearier from the long march home than they would have been from the same march following victory, they shambled like a listless wave breaking on the rocks of Sparta and dispersed among its broad streets in search of respite which might at least make the next day seem a little brighter.

  Styphon's world brightened before he reached his door, for Hippolyta had come to the property's edge to meet him. She gave a misty-eyed look of consolation and set a gentle hand on his cheek.

  “I intended to spit on you and call you a spineless half-man, but count yourself lucky. I cannot bring myself to do it.” She set her cheek on his chest, and they embraced before she walked him inside. Something bubbling in a pot on the hearth filled the megaron with a savory aroma. Hippolyta went and stirred it, regarding the pot's contents with a strange, almost vacant look.

  The look was what reminded Styphon that it was odd that his wife would prepare a meal, much less alone, without Eurydike or at least Andrea in attendance. Their absence and Hippolyta's distraction, he felt certain, were not unconnected.

  He asked, “What is wrong?”

  In Hippolyta's answering look, he sensed gratitude for the attention offered to her concerns, whatever they were, on such a dismal day as this. “Eurydike,” she said. “I sent her on an errand hours ago, and she has yet to return.”

  Styphon frowned. Here was just what he had feared when it came to his wife's affection for Eurydike. A shame he could not have broken them up sooner, before Hippolyta was forced to learn, as she was now, that 'affection' shown by a slave was only ever self-serving.

  Sensing his very thought, Hippolyta said fervently, “She has not run away.”

  With a shrug, Styphon conceded that she could be right. Eurydike had run afoul at least once in her tenure in Sparta of the law allowing for slaves to be punished as any citizen saw fit. Someone would return her, if not today, then tomorrow.

  “Where is Andrea?” he asked, ready to leave the matter behind.

  “She rarely shows her face here,” Hippolyta said distractedly. “When she does, I plead with her to stay, but she only vanishes again.”

  She crossed from the hearth to where Styphon had just lowered weary bones to the floor of hard-packed earth. His wife knelt and set a hand on a forearm still glazed with sweat and trail dust.

  “Please help me find her,” Hippolyta asked with eyes downcast in embarrassment, for either or both of the inconvenient timing of the request or the womanly sentiment behind it.

  After the defeat and the long march, it surely was an inconvenience. But what was a spouse if not someone to daily inconvenience?

  He took her hand, kissed its knuckle, and together they rose. By the time he stood, Hippolyta was meeting his eyes and girlishly smiling. “Thank you,” she said, nuzzling him. “What woman is luckier than I? I promise to repay you later.”

  “If you can keep me awake,” Styphon half-joked.

  His wife had changed, he noted, as Hippolyta carefully removed the pot from the fire and then together they left the house. Marriage had tamed the one whose cousin called her theria, wild girl. It was not an unwelcome change. What, after all, was the purpose of marriage if not to tame?

  They walked arm-in-arm, Styphon treating the search as a pleasant walk down country lanes. It resembled those walks by the Eurotas they had taken during their courtship, and on another day, when he had not already walked endless stadia, he might have enjoyed it more. Even still, the feeling of his wife's hand as it stroked his arm in affection, of her cheek on his shoulder as she made a convincing display of being unworried, succeeded in dragging his spirits up from the depths. He had not returned from his latest deployment a hero, but in someone's eyes at least, he still was one.

  The day's light fading, they followed the path that Eurydike would have taken on her errand, the fetching of a jar of honey from a nearby farm.

  Three quarters of the the way there, they found her.

  It was Styphon who spotted her, off to one side of the road: just a pile of red curls barely visible through tall yellow grass.

  “There,” he said, gesturing. He scowled, for his first thought was that the girl had fallen asleep. He was wrong.

  Racing through the grass to reach the spot ahead of him, Hippolyta shrieked and fell to both knees. Styphon came up behind and saw what she saw.

  Eurydike's green eyes were open, and there was life in them, but barely. One half of her jaw was swollen and purple, the eye on the same side likewise. Half-dried blood from her nose coated split lips. Finger-shaped bruises encircled her neck above the thin iron ring of her slave collar.

  She was naked, her torn and bloodied chiton snagged on the twigs of a nearby shrub. More dark bruises stained her thighs, back, and arms, and a bite mark marred the side of one freckled breast. Beside her, a honey jar was smashed on the ground, ants swarming in a black mass over its former contents.

  It was clear to Styphon, to anyone: she had been beaten, raped, and left behind without regard for whether she lived or died. One man might have done it to her, but instinct told Styphon it had been more. Probably Spartiate boys, a pack of under-twenties coming back from a day's hard training. Such acts by them were not uncommon, and even if it was technically a crime to damage communal property without provocation, only rarely was any effort put toward catching the culprits.

  Tears streamed down Hippolyta's cheeks as she clung to Eurydike's unresponsive form, kissing her bruised face, brushing hair from her eyes, begging her to move or speak. But the slave did neither. There was sight in Eurydike's eyes and a flicker of life in her limbs, but the will to live was absent.

  “I will kill them!” Hippolyta hissed, cradling Eurydike's head to her breast. “I will slaughter whoever did this to you!”

  Styphon knelt behind his wife, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Be calm,” he urged.

  Hippolyta shrugged him away. “I will not! Go! Find who did this!”

  “They are long gone. We will never know. We can only—”

  “If you are a man, you will find and kill them! If you won't, I will!”

  Styphon forgave her the outburst, persisting calmly, “We must tend to her injuries. I will carry her.”

  With a last kiss on the slave's forehead, Hippolyta let Eurydike be hoisted into her husband's arms, where she was borne as one might bear a sleeping child to bed. Hippolyta wept as they walked
in the direction of their home, holding Eurydike's limp hand which, like all her limbs, fell wherever it may. She was a dead weight in Styphon's arms, a living corpse.

  Styphon's mind was less on the slave's welfare than that of his wife. As they walked, he voiced his concerns, knowing they were likely to win him only antipathy.

  “It is unhealthy to have such strong feelings for a slave,” he ventured.

  Hippolyta answered with an icy silence which was impossible for anyone, even a man, to misinterpret. He could take his fucking opinions with him across the Styx.

  * * *

  2. Trial

  They took Eurydike home and laid her on Styphon's own bed. While Hippolyta warmed water with which to clean her, Styphon went to fetch the district's slave-healer.

  “Not the one who serves Helots,” Hippolyta admonished him with a glare that promised consequences if she was ignored. “She will have the same care I would. Lie to the man if you must.”

  Without argument, he went and did as asked, racing to the healer's home and dragging him from dinner with a few words which conveniently omitted that the party in need of urgent care was a mere slave.

  The old man appeared a trifle annoyed on learning the truth, thinking perhaps that he might have finished his dinner first, or even bid Styphon take his request to the proper place. But given that his summoners were the king's cousin and a member of the royal guard, the healer set to work applying poultices and bindings to his conscious but catatonic patient, enlisting a teary-eyed Hippolyta as assistant.

  The work had but begun when Styphon glanced out his open door to see a cloaked figure making haste up the trail. Going closer, he recognized the man as the very messenger who had earlier fetched Agis to the ephorate.

  Now Styphon was summoned to the same place, the messenger informed. Wondering what the purpose might be (for the summons declined to specify), Styphon stuck his head into the bedchamber and announced his departure to the no one who was listening, and then set off.