The Scythian commander pointed forward toward the Spartans with his sword. Leonidas could see the fear on the men’s faces. He could hear muttering in his own ranks as his men realized the enemy infantry was approaching; yet the arrows still came down.
The Scythians were halfway across the open space. Some arrows, their range short, began to fall into their ranks. Leonidas saw one of the warriors in the front rank collapse to his knees and fall forward, a shaft sticking up out of his back.
When the Scythians were less than twenty meters from his men, Leonidas rose to his feet, bringing his shield from the up to forward position. His heart pounded with pride as the entire two lines of Spartans immediately rose and did the same, ignoring the arrows that showered down upon them.
The Scythians slammed into his lines, both sides jabbing, hacking and slashing as they fought among the arrows still being fired by the Persian archers. The missiles struck without regard for the side one was on.
Leonidas neatly sliced the head off of a Scythian right in front of him, then pointed the Naga Staff blade up into the air and pumped up and down three times, before bringing it down to parry a thrust from a Scythian officer.
Hidden in the bushes above the pass, a skiritai saw the signal and passed it along. Over two hundred squires and skiritai were hidden on the slope, crouched under bushes and behind piles of rock, clinging to the steep slope in small hollows they had dug the night before.
Released, they sprang into action, shoving forward stones that had been laboriously carried up the slope from the Middle Gate the previous evening. The heavy rocks tumbled down, smashing into the clusters of archers below.
The squires and skiritai were too high as the archers tried to turn their weapons against them. The arrows reached their apex fifty feet below, then many arched over and caused their own mayhem among those that had loosed them.
And at that moment, Lichas and his archers arrived. They announced that by a line of men stepping up onto the Middle Gate and firing point blank into the Scythians, just over the heads of the Spartans. At such close range their powerful bows could punch through armor and the effect was devastating.
The arrows from the Persians had stopped as the archers reacted and died under the rock assault from above, which was becoming a literal avalanche as the hundreds of head sized rocks that had once been half of the Middle Gate that had been carried by the Spartans up the slope the previous night showered down upon them.
The front rank of Scythians were fighting bravely even as the ranks behind them were spitted by the Greek arrows. Leonidas moved forward and the Spartan line surged, the men actually happy to be free to move, even if it were toward the enemy, after so many hours under their shields. Their heavy sandals snapped the arrows stuck in the ground as they slashed at the Scythians.
Leonidas howled with the passion of combat as he drove the Naga Staff completely through the chest of a warrior in front of him, the thrust so strong it actually struck the man behind that Scythian, killing him also. The entire Spartan line growled, screamed and yelled as they cut into the Scythians with a vengeance their enemy had never seen and would not see again as they died.
**************
Absolute silence reigned on the hillside around Xerxes throne. Not a single Scythian escaped. Half the archers were dead, crushed by stone or knocked off the trail to fall to their death below. The others were fleeing down the same path taken by the Egyptian and Immortal survivors of the past two days.
Xerxes pulled his dagger out and stalked forward. His master of arms was at the edge of the escarpment. Xerxes slammed the blade into the man’s chest and he tumbled forward. The Persian King spun about. No one would meet his eyes. Except Pandora.
“Go.” Xerxes gestured with the blood-stained dagger. “Check the path. Be back by daylight.”
***************
“Stop.”
Leonidas whirled, Naga Staff at the ready and only managed to halt the sharp blade as it reached Cyra’s neck.
“Stop,” she repeated, placing her hand on his arm. “It is done for today. It is done.”
Leonidas blinked.
“It is done. You have won.”
Leonidas slowly nodded. “For today,” he whispered, looking at the blood on the blade of the Naga Staff.
“For today,” Cyra acknowledged.
“And tomorrow?” Leonidas looked around in a daze at the dead and dying that surrounded him, lying in a field of countless arrows. His feet were submerged several inches deep into the mud made of dirt, blood and urine.
“Ah,” Leonidas moaned. He staggered several feet to the right and sunk to his knees, ignoring the muck as he dropped the Naga Staff and cradled the head of a wounded man in his arms. Cyra joined and recognized Polynices.
“You led well,” the old man whispered, blood flecking his beard.
Leonidas was looking about. “We have lost many.”
“But as long as there is one Spartan standing--” Polynices paused to take a deep breath, before continuing—“the Persians will not have the pass.”
“You fought bravely,” Leonidas said. “I saw—” he stopped when he noted that the blood was no longer bubbling out of the old man’s mouth. He reached up and closed the lifeless eyes. “He was my first instructor in the agoge. He was the first to teach me the basics of phobologia.”
Cyra placed her arm across the King’s shoulders. “Perhaps—just perhaps—fear is a good thing. Perhaps there are things we should fear. Things we don’t understand.”
Leonidas shook her arm off. “Can you respect the dead?”
Cyra stood. “We are doing this to respect the living.”
CHAPTER 25 THE SPACE BETWEEN
“This is ridiculous,” Stoke’s executive officer muttered.
“You have a better idea?” Stokes asked as he leaned over the edge of Deepflght toward Rachel. In his hand was a snapshot of the Connecticut. The dolphin raised herself halfway out of the water, leaning toward the image. Then she went backward, hitting the water with a splash that soaked Stokes.
“Look,” he said.
Rachel raced off about a hundred meters, then paused, looking back as if waiting.
“Let’s go,” Stokes said as he slid inside the submersible, joining the rest of the survivors of his crew.
BEYOND THE SPACE BETWEEN
The scale of the Shadow sphere was overwhelming as Dane, Earhart, and Ariana got closer. Even though it was over half buried, the curving side loomed high over their heads and to the left and right. Ariana didn’t hesitate when she reached the craft but began floating upward, along the side. Dane and Amelia Earhart followed, the black surface just a couple of inches underneath their suits.
Ariana was angling to the right and came to a halt about fifty meters short of the top. There was a thin line in the surface that extended as far as she could see. About four inches to the left of the line was a strange-looking indentation.
Ariana pointed at that spot. “Use the Naga Staff.”
Dane had almost forgotten about the pole strapped to his pack. Earhart removed it for him, and he took it from her. He realized the indentation was the opposite of the Naga heads. Making sure to keep the blade away from his suit, he slowly pressed the Naga end into the hole. A golden glow suffused the hole and staff, and Dane felt a shock pass through his body.
He let go of the staff and was buffeted back several feet as a loud noise filled the air. The crack slowly opened several inches along the top half of the sphere. A quarter of the way around to the left and right, similar cracks had opened.
“More,” Ariana said.
Reluctantly, Dane took hold of the staff and pressed. He was ready when the shock hit him, and he kept his hold. The crack widened until it was five feet wide where they were narrowing to the joint at the bottom.
“Come on,” Ariana said.
“Just leave it?” Dane indicated the staff.
“I don’t think anyone is going to come along and do anything t
o it,” Ariana slipped into the opening. Dane followed with Earhart right behind him. He could see that the skin of the sphere was over three feet thick. The interior was lit by a dim golden glow coming, from numerous unseen sources. The inside was as magnificent as the outside. It was completely open, with a floor that bisected the diameter in the exact middle. The floor was canted slightly. Indicating the sphere wasn’t resting with the top straight up.
“This is what my plane was drawn into,” Earhart said.
Dane had seen the video from the USS Revelle when it was captured by a similar-or could it be the same?—sphere. Ariana was descending, floating downward. Dane wasn’t sure how to do that, but the suit seemed to sense the direction he wanted to go, and he followed. Ariana touched down in the exact center of the floor, Dane landing a second later, followed by Earhart.
“It still has power.” Dane noted.
“Some,” Ariana acknowledged.
“Have you been in here before?” Earhart asked.
“In the vision,” Ariana said. She bent over and placed her rumored hand on the floor. She quickly stood and backed up as a hatch iris opened. It was five feet in diameter, and she didn’t hesitate as she slipped down into it. Dane followed, and they went down a long tube for almost a minute before it opened into a circle, about fifty feet in diameter. Floating in the exact center was a golden sphere that took up about a fifth of the space. The surface shimmered, and Dane was certain the exterior wasn’t solid.
Dane felt drawn to it and innately knew this was the control center for the sphere. But Ariana was moving past it. Dane now saw at least a dozen opening tubes, leading out of the place he was in. Ariana disappeared down the lowest hole. Dane checked to make sure Earhart was with him, then followed.
They descended for several minutes, then entered another large opening. Dane’s ‘best’ guess was that they were at the very bottom of the massive vehicle. This chamber was about five hundred feet across and very dimly lit so that it was hard to see. Poking up from the center was a thick rod with a globe on the top. He could make out that the walls were lined with couches. Strapped into almost half the couches were bodies. Human bodies.
“The Shadows are human?” Earhart whispered.
Dane had seen something like this before. He approached the nearest couch. There was something strange about the body. Then Dane saw it. The head was half solidified—not quite crystal, more a dullish gray mixed with crystal. Turning slowly, he could see that all the couches were oriented toward the center—toward the globe on top of the rod.
“I don’t know if the Shadows are human,” Dane said, “but their fuel for this thing was.”
“Not the fuel,” Ariana said. “The channel for the power.”
Dane remembered the Theran priestess Kaia going into the portal and disrupting the power. “So we can use the skulls to disrupt the Nazca portal if we can get to it?”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 26 480 BC
“If the words of your Oracle were true, this is my last night.” Leonidas was lying on his back, his head resting on his rolled up cloak, his eyes staring up at the stars.
“Yes.” Cyra was seated on a small stone to his side, her own cloak wrapped tightly around her body.
“It’s strange. Before every battle I have felt fear—of being maimed; of being killed; of being defeated. But no matter how dire the fight appeared, or how terrible the odds, I always believed deep inside that none of those would happen.” He turned his head toward her. “I mean, I knew one day I would die. Either in battle or some other way, but it always seemed sometime in the future. But that future is here, now. It is very strange.”
Cyra said nothing, overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the camp. There was a low murmur in the air, many men talking in subdued voices to each other. Telling each words that only the prospect of imminent death could bring a man to say.
“When you take this map,” Leonidas’s voice was stronger, “will you stay with it or do you just deliver it somewhere?”
“I deliver it,” Cyra said.
“And then?”
“I do not know my fate.”
“If you live and are in Greece, will you do me a favor?”
“Yes, if it is within my power.”
Leonidas smiled. “I believe it is indeed within your power. Go to my home. Tell my wife how I died.”
“I can do that—“
“I’m not done yet,” Leonidas said. “I want you to teach my daughter.”
Cyra frowned. “What would you like me to teach her?”
“To be like you.”
***************
Pandora cursed as she stumbled over an unseen stone and fell to her knees, gashing one.
“Silence, whore.” The voice was harsh and low. The warrior that Xerxes had sent with her was a man who had no name in the court. He was simply known as Xerxes’ Dagger. While the master-at-arms carried out public executions for the King, Xerxes’ Dagger was known as the one who worked in the dark, executing those who the King desired dead, but could not risk publicly killing.
Pandora had memorized the track as well as she could before they left the Persian camp and so far the trail was following the thin line that had been etched on the map. It was narrow, only one person wide and went up the mountain at a steep angle. At times she had to cling with her hands to the mountainside. But the bottom line was that so far, the trail was passable.
***************
Leonidas slapped Lichas on the shoulder, startling the old man who was watching over the Middle Gate, toward the glow from the Persian camp.
“1 would ask you to fight until noon,” Leonidas said. “Then you are free from any obligation.”
“What happened to two days and reinforcements?” Lichas didn’t appear surprised by Leonidas’s words.
“Today is the last day. You just arrived, and you know it. I’ve been here three days, and I know it.”
Lichas slowly nodded. “You are at half strength. Your men, brave and stout though they be, are exhausted. I would recommend you pull back now, under the cover of darkness. Once you are engaged, you will not be able to withdraw.”
“We won’t be withdrawing,” Leonidas said. “I will send a courier in the morning and halt the six lochoi, sending them to defend closer to home.”
“You have done more than anyone could have dreamed. Another day won’t make much difference in the larger scheme of things. The Athenians still sit and argue. The other cities obviously don’t care much about the Persians, even though they will be destroyed once Xerxes gets through the pass.”
“That is where you are wrong,” Leonidas said. “It will make all the difference.” He smiled. “I have been told so by the Delphic Oracle.”
Lichas spat over the wall. “Oracles.”
‘There is more than that,” Leonidas said. “Wars are won by more than just force of arms. There are other factors.”
“Such as?”
“The will of the people. That is why we--the Spartans—are here. And why we will stay.”
***************
Xerxes glanced up from his breakfast to note Pandora being escorted into the Imperial tent by his executioner.
“My lord”-she began, but he waved his knife, silencing her.
“You would not be alive if the path did not exist.” He jabbed the blade at his general. “I want four divisions of Immortals to take this track. Pandora will be their guide.” He turned back to her. “How long will it take?”
“It is a narrow track. One person wide. We will be over the mountain and behind the Spartans by noon at the earliest, King.”
“Attack as if we must break through the pass, while my Immortals march,” he ordered the general. He wiped his chin with a silk cloth, then stood. “I will be on the hill, watching.”
***************
Leonidas found Cyra slowly walking in a circle in front of the Middle Gate. The sun was just above the eastern horizon, and Leonidas had all his armor on. Cyra
appeared to be in a daze, her eyes half closed.
“What are you doing?” Leonidas asked.
Cyra held up a hand, hushing him as she continued to walk. She halted about twenty feet in front of the wall and opened her eyes. ‘’This is the spot.”
“For?”
“Where the map will appear.”
“And once you have it?” Leonidas asked. “Do you know yet where you take it?”
“I have seen a vision that I will need to confirm with the wall today.” A ranger came running up to him from the north trail.
“The Persians are coming;’ the scout reported. “ Assyrians are in the lead. Swordsmen.”
“Archers?” Leonidas asked.
“Just infantry.”
The king turned to Cyra. “You must wait behind the wall.”
“But”-she began, but he cut her off.
“When your map appears. I will get you to it. I will detail some men to get you down the pass.”
***************
Trumpets blared and drums throbbed, the sounds echoing off the mountain. The entire Persian army was preparing to move. Assyrians were heading up the trail into battle, while Xerxes had issued orders for all the rest of his massive force to be prepared to cross the pass. Tents were struck, pack animals loaded, and troops lined up in formation.
And high above the pass, in the folds of the mountain, Pandora led four thousand Immortals along the single track.
***************
Leonidas arrayed his diminished forces along the western cliff wall, perpendicular to the killing field. Along the Middle Gate were Lichas’s archers, stacks of Persian arrows at the ready but their bows were hidden, and they wore the armor of those Spartans who had been killed or severely wounded. When the first rank of Assyrians came up the path and into sight, they paused at this unusual arrangement, but the pressure of thousands of men moving from behind forced the officers to deploy their men as best they could. The problem was, they weren’t certain whether their front should face the wall ahead of them or the Spartans arrayed against the base of the mountain to the right. There wasn’t enough room to form two lines at a right angle.
Atlantis: Gate Page 25
