Spartan Beast (The Hellennium Book 2)

by P. K. Lentz

  By the time he arrived at the unadorned timber structure which housed the ephorate, Styphon had concluded, based on nothing more than his own reason, that he was to give the ephors some testimony relating to the defeat at Naupaktos. On being ushered into the meeting place, Styphon was thus not particularly surprised to find its walls lined with what appeared at first glance to be all twenty-eight members of the council of elders. A joint session of the council and ephorate was typical procedure for certain matters of import.

  He was slightly more surprised to see Brasidas in attendance, standing close to the center of the room, facing the ephors on their low platform.

  True surprise came when Styphon noticed two women in the chamber. Even had they been Spartan women, which they were not, they should have been barred from this place. They stood not far from Brasidas, and Styphon recognized both.

  Aspasia was one. The other was one of the two Athenian wives whom Aspasia had helped him procure in fulfillment of Agis's request during the king's stay in Athens. Aspasia looked at ease, the other woman far less so, her face downcast.

  Apart from hers, all eyes in the room, some forty pairs, all told, were fixed on Styphon as he entered. By chance or will, Styphon found himself meeting, alternately, two gazes: those of Agis, whose face was ashen with checked anger, and of Brasidas, who barely restrained a wicked smile. The two stood apart in the center of the ring of observers.

  Styphon came to stand before the ephors' platform and barely managed to feel that the proceedings had the sense of a trial before the chief ephor, a man not yet forty, addressed him.

  “Styphon, Pharax's son,” the ephor said, “you have been called to deliver testimony. You will swear an oath by Zeus to speak only the truth.”

  Hesitating only long enough to wet lips, Styphon recited the well-known formula inviting doom upon himself and his bloodline should he speak falsely.

  “Is it true that while in Athens shortly before the taking of Dekelea, you were recruited by Agis to obtain for him a pair of Athenian citizen females for the purpose of obtaining from them sexual gratification?”

  “It is,” Styphon answered mechanically. He looked only at the questioner, avoiding the gazes of Brasidas and Agis, although he felt them, particularly the latter, whose confidence he was betraying.

  What choice was there?

  “Did you succeed in delivering said females?”

  By now Styphon slipped into a familiar mode of soldierly obedience, surrendering control of his lips, which replied, “Yes, ephor.”

  The ephor indicated the woman shrinking at Aspasia's side. “Is this one of them?”

  “It is.”

  A second magistrate took over the questioning. “Did you join Agis in the sport which followed?”

  “I did.” Since it had not been asked, he did not volunteer that Agis had insisted; best he not appear to be disavowing responsibility for his actions.

  “With one woman or both?”

  Styphon took a fresh look at the Athenian female and glimpsed her face long enough, before she put it to Aspasia's shoulder in shame, to be certain of his answer. “Mostly the other one.”

  “Did you achieve release?”

  Beyond surprise by now, Styphon answered in short order: “I did.”

  “How many times?”

  Styphon cast his mind back briefly and returned with honest answer: “Once.”

  “Where?”

  Styphon swallowed, started to speak, then asked what was meant, lest his answer of 'the megaron of Nikias' set the room to laughter.

  “I mean where was your seed deposited,” the ephor explained humorlessly.

  Just as stiffly, Styphon gave the true answer.

  “Then you planted no seed in this woman's womb?”

  Realization dawned on Styphon, stealing his voice for an instant. He studied the Athenian again and saw for the first time that she kept one hand resting constantly on an abdomen the roundness of which was rather a mismatch for her slender build.

  The Athenian was with child, and Brasidas aimed to prove—

  “Did you witness Agis enter this woman?” the ephor inquired.

  The purpose, if not import, of his testimony becoming clear, Styphon at last spared looks for prosecutor and accused. Both gazed back expectantly, one showing no cracks in a hawklike mask of supreme confidence, the other, with a trace of desperation, urging the witness to give the hoped-for answer.

  But the answer for which Agis hoped was a lie.

  Styphon had done much for Agis and been well rewarded. The young king was a friend, perhaps not an entirely genuine one, but close. A better one than Brasidas, to be sure.

  Perhaps a better man and better friend to Agis than Styphon was could stand before the supreme authorities of the Spartan state, under oath, and tell a lie on his behalf. But Styphon was not a better man than himself. He was no ideal citizen, either, but he knew that here, in this place, under these eyes, truth was his only option.

  “I did,” he confessed.

  With his next question, the ephor reached, for all purposes, the interrogation's climax. “Did you witness him planting his seed within her?”

  The room tensed in utter silence, anticipating Styphon's reply. Like many a man before him, he disappointed.

  “I cannot say for certain.” This was the truth, and Styphon was glad that his knowledge stopped where it did.

  The air in the chamber warmed with forty released breaths. The ephor who had asked the question frowned. The presiding magistrate asked his colleagues, “Are there any further questions for this witness?” There were none, and so the ephor went on, “Is there anything more the witness would like to add?” A swift, grateful negative. “The witness is dismissed.”

  Turning to leave, Styphon caught an empty stare from Agis, a look of slender hopes dashed more than ill will to the dasher. Neither did Styphon in turn bear ill will toward the king whom he had followed now through one successful venture, the capture of Dekelea, and two catastrophes.

  He bore no ill will toward Brasidas, either, whatever their differences when it came to Eris. If he felt anything, it was only frustration that Sparta could not simply remain whole, as it had always been, instead of descending into the kind of civil strife, faction set against faction, which had reduced other cities to graveyards. The day had not yet come when Equal slaughtered Equal, and it was not yet imminent if Styphon was any fit judge, but such a day seemed to him to loom just out of sight, past the horizon on this path which Sparta currently tread.

  There must be another path, some middle path, by which unity could be preserved. After today, Agis surely would not be the one to find it. Perhaps Brasidas would.

  If anyone stood a chance, it was him. Styphon wondered if he had not erred after all in letting his allegiance to Brasidas flag. Not that the lapse seemed to have harmed Brasidas any; on the contrary, things could scarcely have gone better for the ex-polemarch had he planned it all himself.

  Which perhaps he had. Styphon did not wish to know.

  Glad to let the wheels of government turn without him, Styphon exited the ephorate into a brazier-lit autumn twilight. A small crowd of perhaps twenty men stood gathered outside the door. Most of them surely had little inkling what was transpiring inside, knowing only that it was something of great import. As small crowds tended to do, it was growing. Styphon was the target of hopeful stares, but questions were withheld on the correct assumption he would not risk punishment by preempting official announcements.

  One man did address Styphon, though, after calling out his name and breaking away from the crowd to accost him.

  “My sympathies, friend,” Alkibiades said with unwarranted familiarity. “I was dismayed to hear of the defeat at Naupaktos. You will have to tell me about it.”

  “Ask someone else,” Styphon growled at the Athenian. He turned away from the man, who only maneuvered to compensate.

  “Is it true?” the preener pestered, his voice low. “The way the fleet was destr
oyed? It was them, wasn't it? Demosthenes and Thalassia.”

  Styphon answered with a sneer meant to tell Alkibiades that his company was undesired.

  Unsurprisingly, and doubtless deliberately, the Athenian failed to take the point.

  He whispered casually near Styphon's ear: “I know what is going on in there. If you told me what I wanted to know, I could tell you.”

  “I was in there.”

  “True. But I wonder if you know Spartan law better than I do. Do you know, for example, what can be done to a king found to have fathered a child on a foreign woman?”

  Styphon looked over to see Alkibiades' arms folded casually, his lips twisted in a smug half-smile aimed at the ephorate door which was also the focus of every gaze present.

  No longer a participant but just another Equal in a crowd, Styphon had little better to do than indulge the preener.

  “There is no child,” Styphon said, for only the Athenian to hear. “Not yet.”

  “True. And it might have been dealt with in a certain distasteful way. Quietly. Without recourse to a trial. But it was not, was it?”

  Styphon knew just what the other meant. The extraordinary session presently underway would not be happening at all if the outcome were in much doubt.

  “Unless it is that rare occasion on which my instincts are wrong, Brasidas has a majority lined up. Your little provocation of Her Frostiness might have forced him and his supporters into a tactical retreat, but evidently they're back. Sooner than I would have thought. Best not to waste the momentum of the disaster Agis just oversaw at Naupaktos, I suppose.” He shrugged and nudged Styphon. “No offense.”

  Offense, of course, was taken, but since Alkibiades virtually exhaled offense, Styphon had grown used to it by now.

  “I've told you what I know,” the Athenian went on. “Or think I know. Your turn. They were there, in Naupaktos, weren't they?”

  Styphon let his answer double as mockery. “Your vaunted instincts do not fail you. What clued you in? The giant fucking fire-arrows?”

  “For one,” Alkibiades returned, unperturbed. “Is it known for certain both of them were there? Not just one or the other? I would like to know they're alright, if you can forgive my concern for enemies of Sparta. They were my friends not long ago.”

  The question gave Styphon enough pause to let the Athenian deduce the answer himself.

  “You saw them?” Alkibiades said in hushed awe. “How? That means you crossed the straits, but not in battle. Agis must have sent you. As herald, right? Star-girl has a soft spot for you because you named her and gave her a cloak when she washed up, or something. She lived with me for a year, and told me about those days. What did you say to them? What did they say?” He scoffed at himself. “You won't tell me. Never mind. But tell me one thing...” He leaned close, hand on the back of Styphon's neck. “Did they ask about me?”

  Whatever this preener's shortcomings, and they were considerable, Styphon at this moment could no longer deny the man's claims to a superhuman level of instinct. How else had he gathered what he had just gathered from literally nothing?

  “They did not,” Styphon was glad to answer. In fact, he had been the one to bring up the preener's name.

  Alkibiades exhaled a sigh of disappointment. “You're sure? I thought I would have made more of an impression on her.”

  “Go make an impression elsewhere,” Styphon said curtly, tossing his head.

  Alkibiades laughed. “Yes, the ugly do seem to be immune to my charms. No offense.”

  Styphon growled, which earned him a pat on the shoulder, intended as placating.

  “I shall visit you tomorrow, Styphon,” the Athenian threatened. “Likely with some good news. For me, at least.” His bright eyes gleamed with secrets. “Goodbye for now, friend.”

  Alkibiades fell away to resume his former position, nearer the sealed door of the ephorate. Thankfully, none of the many Spartiates present took the Athenian's lead in attempting to strike up conversation, and Styphon was left alone.

  The better part of an hour passed. The crowd swelled as passersby joined and those who had heard word arrived deliberately to add their bodies and quiet speculation.

  At last, the door flew open. It was Agis who appeared. He stood in the door frame for a moment with head high, looking rather older than his thirty years. Styphon knew the look. It was dignity in defeat.

  With one glance each to left and right at the suddenly silent sea of faces before him, Agis waded in, knowing that sea would part before him, and it did. He left through the narrow channel, heading for his home. No word was breathed in his wake.

  Next emerged the five ephors and twenty-eight elders, who filled a space rapidly cleared for them just outside the door. The ephors stood in a line at center, while the twenty-eight white and gray-haired elders massed in two wings to left and right.

  No, not all of the elders formed up: a dozen or so struck off, one behind the other, penetrating the crowd as Agis had, looks of subdued anger on their wizened faces.

  Last out of the ephorate (apart from the women, who evidently were to remain within for now) was Brasidas, who rounded the assembly of officials and took a spot facing them at the front of the crowd.

  The chief ephor, occupying the center spot among his colleagues, delivered at last the pronouncement so eagerly awaited:

  “Charges were brought forth against Agis,” he announced, “son of Archidamus, that he did, contrary to Spartan law as it applies to kings, sire a child on a woman who is not a Spartan citizen. Having heard the testimony and seen evidence with its own eyes, this panel, by a vote of twenty-two to eleven, declares that Agis is guilty of the infraction. By a vote of eighteen to eleven, with four abstentions, the penalty hereby laid down, effective with the coming dawn, is that Agis, son of Archidamus, should be dismissed into exile.”

  The audience persisted in its silence, surely as much because no one quite knew what to say as because the ephor clearly was not yet finished.

  “As there is no heir of age present in Sparta who might reasonably claim the throne, by our laws a regent must be appointed. This body has voted to install in that capacity Brasidas, whose former rank of polemarch is hereby restored and all restrictions on his movement rescinded.”

  The chief ephor scanned the crowd once more with narrow, hard eyes which dared any to protest. Though the announcement doubtless had put a chill into the hearts of some, none raised his voice in dissent. The exile of kings was not a commonplace occurrence, but hardly an unthinkable one. Agis's co-king Pleistoanax had, after all, only lately been recalled from his own exile—purely to satisfy an oracle, and for no greater purpose than to sit in his home, unliked and untrusted, barely listened to, reigning over few but his family. Even if their blood carried a spark of the divine, the kings of Sparta were men.

  The act of banishment itself therefore was no great shock to the Equals gathered round. But with both thrones of the dual monarchy now effectively suspended, what put looks of bewilderment onto the faces of many of those listening was a sense of uncertainty, shared by Styphon, as to whether the gods, or Fate, would continue to look kindly on a Sparta which had rendered itself kingless.

  They could set aside their doubts, Styphon knew, if reassured by a strong voice, an iron hand. Equals were born and bred to take orders, to relish them, and what blood was in the giver's veins ultimately mattered less than his outward qualities.

  Brasidas had such qualities. But would Sparta follow him into uncharted realms... or, rather, realms known only to a witch, a she-daimon, a slayer of Equals?

  The answer would soon be learned. Styphon only hoped that he would be among those to learn it, for it occurred to him that this moment of Brasidas's triumph might also be the moment at which Styphon outlived his usefulness, having borne witness against Agis and helped depose him.

  After a moment's silence, the chief ephor recited the formulaic ending, “It has been decided, and so let it be for the greater glory of Lakedaimon.”r />
  Immediately, the ephor to the chief's right bellowed a salute: “Hail the regent!”

  The crowd, which by now numbered well over a hundred, wasted no time in repeating. The ephor led the refrain through ten, twenty more iterations, each greater than the last in volume and fervor: “Hail the regent! Hail the regent! Hail the regent!”

  Only when the chant had gone on for some time did Brasidas acknowledge the acclaim, a smile on his lips, the satisfaction in his shrewd eyes of ambition fulfilled.

  With proclamations made, formality faded. Elders and ephors and plain citizens intermingled in an atmosphere of high spirits and hope for the future. Already the defeat at Naupaktos and the exile of a king seemed distant things. The sun's next passage would light a new Sparta.

  Hail the regent.

  Styphon eyed the crowd with suspicion, fearing that the new regent's first, unofficial act of office might well be to dispatch a handful of his most loyal men to dispose of an asset no longer required—a disloyal one, at that.

  But he found no glaring eyes set upon him with ill intent. What he did manage to notice was the emergence from the ephorate of Aspasia and the impregnated Athenian, the latter sticking close behind the former and looking as though she would rather sink into the earth than walk upon it, if given that choice. He saw movement near the two women, and it was Alkibiades, reaching them and falling to one knee before Aspasia, clasping her hand in both of his and kissing it.

  The sight spawned a realization in Styphon, one he would have made earlier had he not been so focused on more pressing matters. Aspasia had been the consort of Perikles, the Athenian statesman to whom Alkibiades had been ward. It would make her something like a step-mother to him, and judging by the greeting they presently shared, their relationship was one of affection.

  Styphon lacked a mind for conspiracy, but he began to see the shape of one before him. Brasidas had watched the King's path with his hawk's eyes and positioned himself to deliver the killing stroke. His accomplices were, to greater or lesser extents, Eris, Alkibiades, Aspasia.

  And Styphon, unwittingly, from the very day Agis had arrived at Athens.