Sword of the Spartan

by Mike Rogers

  I took her in my arms and felt her fainting. I held her close and kissed her on the head. I murmured sweet words to her, and she came to her senses again.

  And then she said something that I will never forgive nor forget.

  “Anaxis…Oh, Anaxis, I had thought you dead! I'd rather commit suicide than be without you. I could bear the humiliation of rape and slavery, but not to live in a world without you. And your son…”

  My heart shattered. It was as if I could feel every single lash of the whip I had suffered through the years strike me now at once. My stomach turned, my breath stopped, my sweat turned cold and inside my chest something exploded. My soul, the very man I was, changed on the spot. With such a coolness that it even amazed myself I spoke.

  “My son?”

  Minerva didn't look up, she merely hid her tears from me, and said, “Yes, your son Alexander.”

  And as I had thought things could not get worse than just before, they surely did now. Now it was my turn to go limp and I felt my legs giving in. I sank to my knees and realized she was speaking the truth.

  The purchase of Minerva had never been for me. What kind of an idiot was I to believe a Spartan would do something for his slave?

  When we left Sparta, your mother had asked me to take care of Anaxis…

  The times I found Anaxis hovering over your crib, the whole business with the scarlet cloak and the plan to make you his heir…

  The reason he installed Minerva in the royal bedroom…

  All this time I had been nothing more than a slave and had been used like one. Anaxis could never marry Minerva, a slave. A child with her would be impossible altogether. The child would be a bastard and if a Spartan was the father the child would have been tested and if it failed to be healthy it would have been killed, like any other Spartan child. But if the child was of a slave, then who cared if it was healthy or not?

  And the reward on Anaxis' head…What better means to get to a man than by his family?

  Anaxis had done his best to protect his son, even if that meant he had to lie and put his woman into the bed of another man.

  Now I knew…

  And now you know, Alexander. Now you know I am not your father, but that your father was the greatest man of all Greece. You are much more than the son of a mere slave. You are the son of Anaxis of Sparta, the man who nearly brought Rome to its knees.

  But my tale has not yet finished. After Minima’s confession I took off my helmet and revealed my face to her, my heart still filled with rage. Your mother turned pale as she recognized it was I and not Anaxis and her face expressed pure shock.

  She backed away from me and headed towards your crib while she muttered excuses…

  …this infuriated me even more.

  With a single jump I stood between her and your crib, and I pushed her away. She fell and slid across the marble floor, crashing into the desk.

  “You whore!” I yelled at her. “All this time you deceived me! Led me to believe you actually loved me! Made love to me! You whore! Not even a Roman would stoop this low!”

  I turned around and grabbed you from the cradle. I took a blanket, wrapped it around you and then tied it closely to my chest. I was going to leave Corinth with you, my son. No matter what Minerva claimed, you were MY son. I raised you and you called me father, not Anaxis. I know that now my behavior seems strange at best, but you have to understand how things were then. Corinth was about to fall, a madman with a thirst for Roman blood was your biological father, and I had just been revealed my marriage was a sham. The only security I still had was my love for you. So I decided to flee.

  Minerva realized what I was doing and she came at me, screaming and swinging a blade she had found on the desk. I simply slapped it out of her hands and pushed her against the ground again.

  “Stay down, Minerva. I'm taking my son with me and you can't stop me.” I said and walked over to the desk in the room to take some gold coins I knew the priests kept there. I found fifteen Talents, which would be more than enough to get me to the other side of the world, providing I'd get out of Corinth alive.

  Minerva crawled up again and cried out loud. I walked away and heard her say, “You’ll never get out of the city, with all those Romans.”

  I stopped and realized she was right. The city was surrounded, the walls had fallen, soon the last of the defenders would be cut down and then the city would be lost. There was no way to get out of here.

  …or was there? I suddenly remembered a tale my father had once told me when I was a child. When his own city had been attacked, the dignitaries and priests had managed to flee the burning city by means of an underground tunnel, which departed from the city's temple dedicated to Zeus. The location for a secret escape route made perfect sense: the city's treasury was kept at the largest and best secured temple. So if anyone did have to use it, they could take all the money they could carry. And then I knew what had to be done. I stormed through the complex, looking for the high priest, which I tracked down to the treasury room. I pulled my sword and cut the man in the thigh to make sure he understood I meant business and then planted the bloodied blade on his throat.

  “Tell me where the secret tunnel is to get out of the city, or I'll cut your throat.”

  The high priest cried out in pain and said, “If there was such a tunnel, don't you think I'd be going through it right now?”

  I laughed in his face and punched him in the stomach. The sound of gold coins came from under his tunic.

  “You're a bit heavy on cash for someone who's in a damned city with no secret exit, aren't you?”

  The priest started sweating, and he realized he was lost. He sighed and said, “All right, I'll show you. Follow me.”

  The wounded priest limped in front of me and took me to an ordinary looking storage room, filled with bread and olives, until he found a hidden switch that opened a secret hatch in the floor. Just as I turned around to grab a torch off the wall I noticed someone was standing in the doorway. There were two people standing there, to be correct. One of them was Minerva, who was still crying. She pointed at me and said, “Don’t let him take our baby! Stop him, please!”

  And the other person was Anaxis…

  There he stood, holding a blade that was drenched in blood, forming a puddle of it on the marble floor. His cloak had been torn from his shoulders, his helmet dented and the dyed horsehairs hung limp to the side, heavy as they were with blood. His eyes shot fire and everything about his posture betrayed his intention to strike me down. And then he spoke…

  “Going somewhere, slave?”

  I drew my blade…

  Chapter 15

  If I had not crossed the line before, I had surely done now. Spartan law dictated that any slave who raised arms against his master had to be put to death immediately. And here I was, holding stolen gold—my master's child—and wielding a blade. And on the other side of the room was the greatest warrior since Leonidas. I was a dead man.

  But even in my extremely bad position I could still see a glimmer of hope. I carried the child on my chest, so Anaxis would not dare to cut me there. The room was too small to cleave my head off and Anaxis was clearly wounded. Perhaps I still had a chance. Perhaps I could still…reason?

  I scraped my throat and answered, “The temple priest showed me a secret passage. It can take us out of the city without the Romans ever knowing.”

  Anaxis did not move. He simply stared at you, Alexander. And then his cold gaze fell upon my eyes once more and I felt my legs go weak.

  “I believe I asked where you were going, Trimidites. And more than that, where are you going with my son?”

  I felt my rage return to me and my grip on the sword tightened, “Your son? YOUR son?! What makes you think you have a right to call him that?!”

  Anaxis moved one step closer, and I raised my sword. He immediately stopped, and his eyes shot fire. I knew this was not going to end well.

  “I fathered the child, Trimidites! I and not you
! You already know this; Minerva told me everything! Now it is time to stop with the lies! Alexander is mine, and I order you, slave, to let him go!”

  I laughed. “You call yourself a father, but tell me this, who does he call daddy? Who has been with him on his birthdays? Who played with him? I, not you. I think I am entitled to call myself his father and not you!”

  Anaxis sighed deep and let down his guard. His sword hung by his side, and his eyes reflected something I had not seen in them for a long time: humanity. He, too, suffered under the lies and the deceit. He, too, was in pain.

  “Trimidites,” he said, “I realize how you must feel. I know it hurts, and I am sorry. I never meant to harm you, my friend, but this is simply how it is. I could not risk the Romans to know I had a child, you must understand that.”

  I started crying. “You knew how much I loved her and yet you still took her to your bed! And then Alexander! You'd take him from me as well? You're a monster! You've killed everything in this mad quest for vengeance on Rome! You've killed our friendship! You've killed Corinth! You've killed your own humanity!”

  Anaxis lowered his head and nodded. “Aye. It is true, except for my humanity. The man you knew back in Sparta is long gone. The Romans killed him a long time ago and not I.”

  I felt my grip on the sword loosen. I started crying harder and felt weak. His words had struck home. The events of the days were becoming too much for me, and I was falling apart. Somehow I managed to hold it together and blurted, “What the hell happened to you? Where did you disappear to that year you vanished? To Rome? How?! Tell me!”

  Anaxis changed. His eyes showed rage once again and his voice went so cold it brought chills down my spine.

  “When Perseus and Paullus met at Pydna with their armies I was there. I was travelling through the region by horse and had planned to head for Thrace, to visit some old friends. But I found myself trapped between the two armies. I was fully aware that the Romans would kill me if I approached them so I decided to side with Perseus. I joined his army, and he even gave me the command of some of his Hoplites. But it was all for nothing. Despite our brave resistance we were annihilated. I fought bravely in the front lines, but in the end I, too, was surrounded and beaten unconscious. They chained me like a slave and dragged me with them to Rome as a prisoner of war. I had forsaken whatever rights I had as the subject of an ally of Rome the minute I joined Perseus. As of that moment, I was no longer a Spartan, I was a Macedonian. At least to the Romans. After a month we arrived in Rome, where I was sold to a man you already met.”

  “Consul Lucius Mummius.” I muttered.

  “Aye. Mummius. But he was only a Praetor back then. A very ambitious Praetor. He had just returned to Rome from Hispania, where he had crushed a rebellion of the Lusitanians. He had become rich off the spoils of war and wanted to become a consul. He had tried twice before and failed miserably. He lacked the support of the people and of the senate to do so, and the usual bribes were always overbid by his opponents. So he thought of a new strategy.”

  “Games. Gladiator games.”

  “Exactly. Mummius was no fool. He visited the slave markets himself and picked out his future gladiators himself. When he found a prisoner of war, still dressed in the traditional Spartan clothes but barely alive, he knew lady Fortuna had laughed upon him. And he bought me to fight for him.”

  “And you did it? You actually fought for the Roman bastard?”

  Anaxis nodded. “That I did. And how. It does not matter how he got me to fight, only the outcome matters. Once a week, for the duration of a year, I fought in the wooden arena he had constructed in Rome. And I won. Everything they threw at me I won. I killed, maimed, slaughtered, and butchered. Men, women, children, animals. It didn't matter. Fight after fight I felt my hate for everything Roman grow and fight after fight I became more popular. And so did Mummius, as the organizer and manager. Within months he had all of Rome in his pocket and had finally the support needed to become a consul. And after a year, when he had his election celebration, I managed to escape. I left Rome on Mistra's boat, and upon arrival I passed through Epirus. And it made me hate Rome even more! I cried as I walked over the corpses of Epirus and the burnt ruins, and I made an oath to the gods that day, Trimidites! I vowed to the gods to be the man who'd end Rome! And no sooner had I spoken the words when a lightning bolt erupted from the sky and struck between my feet! The gods had received my request…and had approved.”

  And then it all became clear to me. This was never about a free Greece. It had all been about his quest for personal revenge. Here he was, the great general to trash Rome…

  …no more than a pitiful gladiator, one of the "damned" as the Romans called them. He was no Spartan. He was an insult to Sparta. He was not the savior of Greece, he was to be the end of it. A madman.

  “You are the one who brought Mummius to office?” I asked rhetorical.

  “Yes,” Anaxis replied. He looked like a broken man. His shoulders hung limp, his sword dangled aside him, and he stared at the floor with bowed head.

  I sighed and lowered the sword, feeling sorry for my master. And that was the biggest mistake I could have done…

  Anaxis noticed the opening in my defenses and before I knew what was going on he had clutched my wrist in an iron grip and planted his own blade on my throat.

  “Drop your sword or I swear to Zeus that you'll be dining in Hades this evening.” He hissed to me, while his eyes were filled with hatred.

  I dropped the blade and heard it smash into the marble floor. The loud sound woke you up and you started crying. Anaxis untied you and handed you over to Minerva, who sank to her knees and cried out loud.

  Just as I felt the blade dig into my flesh we heard this rumbling sound. The entire temple was filled with it and pieces of white plaster started falling off the walls. Anaxis was the first to realize what it meant and let me go. He ran to the nearest window, and I followed.

  What we saw was a scene of such magnitude that even today it is hard to comprehend.

  From the last defensive position in the city, the fortified temple on the top of the hill, a thousand horses crashed through the gate into the streets of Corinth. A thousand lancers stormed directly onto the main path into the breach. They were led by a boy who wasn't even old enough to grow a beard…

  …Krateros.

  Even above the deafening thunder of the horse hooves we could hear the young general roar to his men, “Into the breach! Drive the Roman dogs out of the city!”

  Anaxis and I held our breath as we watched the tight body of horses and men crash into the first Roman lines, trampling the legionnaires as if they were no more than dirt under their feet.

  Unchallenged and irresistibly the cavalry pushed the Romans out of the narrow streets and back to the breach in the walls. Where the horses had passed there was only death, blood and limbs left. Anaxis sighed and said. “I guess making him a general wasn't so stupid after all.”

  I nodded. “But will it suffice? Will it save the city?”

  Anaxis shook his head. “No. But by Zeus, what a sight!”

  He turned around and headed for the opened secret tunnel. He took Minerva by the arm and guided her into the tunnel while he took a flare off the wall.

  I turned around, surprised he had forgotten about me and said, “What do you mean ‘no’? He's mopping up the streets, man! Just look at them go!”

  Anaxis halted and looked at me with pity in his eyes. “He has just cut through the first and second line. Once he reaches the breach he'll encounter the Roman's third line. Then he'll be lost.”

  I did not understand what this had to do with anything. “What? What's so special about their third line?”

  Anaxis took a second flare of the wall and lit it. “Their third line is spearmen. Krateros is leading his men to the slaughterhouse. As soon as they come storming out the city, they'll crash into a wall of spears.”

  And no sooner had Anaxis said it that it was so. I looked through the wi
ndow and much to my horror watched Krateros and his men grind to a deafening halt as they ran into the Triarii, the spear carriers. Within minutes the assault had been blocked and annihilated. Krateros was the first to fall and soon his head arose from the Roman crowd…on a stake.

  The Romans began shouting, “The Spartan is dead! We killed him! Here is his head to prove it!”

  In their blood frenzy the Roman soldiers had only paid attention to the uniform and the insignia, not the youth of the young man's face. Krateros had worn the same Spartan armor as all the higher officers had done and thus their mistake was easy to understand. Soon enough Mummius would examine the head and see that it was not Anaxis.

  With the walls taken, our men scattering and folding and the cavalry charge annihilated, the city was lost.

  Corinth would fall that evening.

  To my surprise Anaxis held out the second flare to me and said, “Let’s go.”

  I was startled and unable to reply.

  “Let’s go, Trimidites. The Spartan law says I should kill you now, but I have no desire to do so. You will follow me to Athens so that I can at long last destroy this Roman filth. That is an order. Despite all of this I am still your master and you are my slave.”

  I was still furious about the whole deceit and my fake marriage and couldn't think straight.

  I felt the hatred burning through my veins and wanted to pick up my sword again.

  “Why? Why do you persist on taking me along? Who says I won't try to kill you after all?”

  Anaxis sighed deeply and nodded. “I know that is a risk I will have to take. Besides, should this war turn out bad for me after all then I will need you to raise Alexander. If you will not come with me for my sake then at least come along to care for Alexander.”

  I spat on the floor. “I want my marriage annulled as soon as we arrive in Athens!”

  Anaxis shook his head no. “No, the façade must stay. Your marriage will not be absolved and you will officially remain Alexander's father. If we win this war and destroy Rome, then you can have your divorce. But not before that.”