Blood of an Empire: Helen of Sparta

by catt dahman

  “Not to infringe upon your business, I assure you,” I said. Most noble women would have been frightened to meet up with such a lowly, dangerous creature. She would be just as prone to rob and kill, as she would be to prostitute herself. My lack of fear made her curious.

  “I swear by Aphrodite, you could with your beauty,” she said.

  I almost laughed. She saw me only in a dull light; what would she had thought had she seen me in full glory? “I’ve better things to be about.”

  She cackled and coughed and asked, “Is that so? Oh, princess lady, will you open your loins to the rabble here with their filthy breath, lice, and diseases? Will a roll and toss with you cure them of drunkenness, slothfulness, and grime? Oh, by Zeus’s fine prick do I want to see such a thing, grand lady.”

  Her crudeness made me blush. “If I did, they’d never pay you even a penny again.”

  “Go on with you, noblewoman, looking for a bit of fun; you have no place here. Go on, or I will call the guards and report you for being here in the squalor.”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” I demanded, always used to being minded.

  “I said go on!” she raised her voice.

  A rustling interrupted her before she could yell, and she pointed for me to go before she called out. I didn’t move. What had made the movements in those deeper shadows? As I hesitated, she opened her mouth full of dark, ruined teeth to cry for the guards.

  While I had always been a fine athlete, I moved faster than ever before.

  With one hand, I yanked her off her feet and pulled her to me, and with the second, I pulled her chin so her neck was exposed to me. Lightning fast, I slid my fangs into her and gulped.

  Whereas the other blood had tasted fresh and healthy, this liquid was much too gamey, too old, and not as clean. After a few swallows, I tossed her away, her skin tearing in my mouth as I did; she fell into an untidy heap on the dirty ground.

  The little scratching noises revealed themselves to be a young boy dressed slovenly. His doe-soft eyes quivered with tears as his rosebud lips trembled with fear of me. “Please….” he shivered.

  “Shhh, Epistomizo. Who was she?”

  “A girl from the baths. They take turns watching over me.”

  “Have you no mother?”

  “Not that I can remember,” he said. He was older than I had first thought, just small for his age and very thin. “What are you?”

  What? He didn’t ask who.

  “A nightmare. A dream. Maybe I am the cold mist or the sound of whispers,” I said.

  “She’s hurt. Will you hurt me, too?”

  No, of course, I won’t….” But I froze. I knew I was lying to him and to myself. I had to know. There was no oiktirmos within me. And so, I grabbed for his arm and bent over him, my curiosity overwhelming me. He slapped at me, but I waved his arms away even as I dodged his ineffectual kicking.

  I savagely bit into his neck, and he cried out as he had moved when I lunged; his flesh tore raggedly as he sobbed and fought for a few seconds, but I drank deeply of the fine blood-wine delicate, promising of hidden mysteries and passions. His neck from our fighting was ripped and torn deeply, the flesh and muscles parted.

  So it seemed that a person’s life source took on the person’s experiences and history, so he could drink of it and know little things about the person. I knew so much, if I paused to think: about the helot who tended the sheep, about the whore, and about this child who had such a horrible young life. I somehow knew their happiness and miseries.

  I stood there long enough that the child’s blood ran down my bosom and dripped onto the stone road. I had torn his neck wide open in my greed, and the wound gaped widely, flesh-ruined, neck and chest filthy with gore, and muscle beneath ripped jaggedly.

  To the side, the whore’s bowels ruptured unpleasantly and released, and I heard her vomit. The smell was bitter. She was still alive.

  And the child was, too. I dropped him beside her and tried to run away, but I was bloated a little and felt clumsy as I tried to ease into a sprint, so I walked as fast as I could, down the roads and then into a field where I wouldn’t be found.

  I felt some regret about the child.

  I lay under a small olive tree so that I could rest a while and think of this, but I dozed fitfully, my head filled with horrible images of dirty people and ugly, or áschimi, bath-goers.

  I dreamed I was the whore and then the child, with patrons looking upon me as if I were meat for sale in a market, leered and salivated, their filthy bodies making my nose burn with the bad smells. The men with money always won.

  Their hateful eyes promised terrible things that they desired, and I rolled miserably on the grass, perspiring and mumbling. The children they took for the baths were terribly abused, though well fed and kept clean. Perversions filled my mind.

  When I awoke, sunrise wasn’t long off, and I had to hurry back; luckily, I was able to run now, and so I made it back safely, unobserved, to where my nurse waited and wrung her hands as she worried about me.

  She undressed me quickly, bathed me with barley water just enough for me to be mostly clean, and tucked me into my bed where I slept dreamlessly and deeply for all the next day, the next night, and until the morning.

  I finally had a proper bath, and she covered me in olive oil and used the wooden instruments to scrape it and the dirt away. I also had to be stringently rubbed with sea salt.

  Not even to my nurse could I share what I had felt when I was a glutton for wine-blood. It was a lesson I had learned for myself and would remember. I simply told her I had become tired and stopped for a nap, and though she might have asked questions or pried, she was too happy that for this month, my cravings were gone.

  She called for the hottest water I could stand, filling the silver bathtub with generous amounts of mint, a little rosemary, sweet sage, and some oil that was musky and dark with sweetness.

  As I bathed, she washed my hair and oiled my tresses until they curled like spun gold about my shoulders. And when I was dry, she rubbed my skin with a mixture of milk steeped in figs and lavender and grape seed oil so my limbs shone like white marble.

  She dressed me in a soft, finely woven wool peplos in one of my favorite colors, a deep, rich purple, dyed from snails so the vibrancy would never fade. I showed off for her, twirling, and she smiled in pride as if she had given me birth.

  I asked after my brothers. Where were Castor and Pollux?

  They were in a nearby village, purchasing horses. Everyone said there were no better horsemen than my brothers, and they would bring home good stock.

  Still, I fretted. Clytemnestra had her own friends that she spent time with, and she was more interested in activities such as spinning and weaving since she was a married woman, while I wanted to be racing about on foot or riding horse back, often with my brothers or alone.

  Today, I wanted to run along the hills and down to a spring where I could swim. I wasn’t even out of breath when I got to the glade, the light flickering in shades of green and yellow on the water at one end. A rabbit darted into the trees as I approached, only his cottontail showing as he vanished into the thicket. I laughed aloud. “Where are you off to?”

  To my astonishment, a male voice answered.

  Chapter 6

  Theseus

  “I am off to my home at Athens," one of the men said.

  “What do you want?” Helen asked. The men aggravated Helen by intruding on her time at the glade. Could they not just go away and be about their business?

  On the other hand, she was curious by nature, and one of the men was quite handsome, well-built but with the voice of a stranger.

  “I am here for katapheugo and wish to be alone.”

  “By Zeus, she is lovely indeed,” the second man said, “ómorfi.”

  “You must be Helen.”

  “Of course, I am. Who else could I be?” she asked peevishly and a little proud as the men stared at her, already taken by her beauty, eyes glazed with love
and lust.

  “It is true. No other maidens speak as do Spartans.”

  Helen tossed her hair and asked, “Why would we not? Our men don’t feel they must lasso our tongues and wit but appreciate that we are intelligent and good conversationalists.”

  “I fear I may enjoy this task more than I had anticipated,” the handsome man said, “I am Theseus of ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Athens, fair Helen."

  Helen allowed her jaw to drop a little. Theseus was a popular topic when the bards sang, and everyone knew the stories about him. He was a great hero who had been on many adventures in many kingdoms.

  One was a very good story. It was said that years before on the island of Crete, lived a king named Minos who was huperephanos in that he thought he was the most brilliant, handsome king in all the land. He was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman.

  His wife was Queen Pasiphae; she was very beautiful and had a lot of parresia in herself, and felt she could always get her way since she was the daughter of Helios, or the sun. They lived in a glorious castle that Daedalus, an inventor and architect, had designed.

  All about the palace were paintings and tile work and statues that depicted bulls, as this was what the people of Crete worshiped since Zeus had taken the mortal woman, or Minos’ mother while in the guise of a bull, which made the king half-diety.

  So, even though a god had been in disguise as a bull, he was able to cuckold Minos’ father and lay with the man’s wife. Instead of taking offense or being shocked, the people of Crete worshipped and revered the bull because that was what had given them their great king.

  One day, the god of the ocean, Poseidon, sent a snow-white bull to Crete and asked that the bull be sacrificed in his honor with festivities. He knew the people would be enamored of the beautiful, big bull.

  Unfortunately, the Queen found the white bull so beautiful and perfect that she fell into a strong desire, or boulomai for the animal. He begged her husband not to sacrifice such a good-looking animal, and thus she spent time on the prassino lo'fos, looking down from the soft grasses and admiring the creature.

  Aphrodite, in a fit of mischief and to aggravate Poseidon, caused Pasiphae to fall in love with the while bull; gods and goddesses were always making mischief to be entertained.

  Pasiphae couldn’t control her lust and instructed Daedalus to build a hollow wooden cow covered with cowhide that looked very real; she climbed into wooden cow and positioned herself in it. Men rolled it into the pasture so that she could love the bull in a womanly manner and satisfy her lust for the great beast for some time. It was said Aphrodite laughed loudly at the woman’s folly.

  Poseidon was furious and made the bull go mad and act fearsome so that it destroyed parts of the castle and island, injured many, killed some, and chased the women.

  Since no one could best the bull, it might have ruined everything in Crete except that Heracles came to capture the beast as the seventh labor of his twelve labors he had to perform for his cousin.

  But Poseidon caused Pasiphae’s dalliance to bear fruit, and in time, she gave birth to a most loathsome creature who was half-man and half-bull called Asterion, the Minotaur.

  When he was tiny, she nursed him, but then he got bigger and preferred raw meat. He was still controllable and only acted like a difficult child; he didn’t learn to speak.

  When he grew more, he had hooves and shaggy legs, a man’s large anatomy since he stood upright, a muscular man’s body and hands, and terrible horns on a head over a face that was both man and bull. He was enormous.

  Asterion began to bully others, to fight, and try to touch women. His mother chastised him, but it did little good. One evening, Asterion went down the roads of the city and spied a woman in her garden, unclipping sheets to be brought in to her mistress.

  “Ah-he,” he bellowed in his language.

  She hid behind a sheet, quivering.

  Thinking it was a game. He ran to grab her, tumbling with her in his arms. The poor woman’s neck broke. Asterion tried to get her to stand again and play, but her arms and legs didn’t work. With her chiton raised, Asterion stared at her female parts, curiously. He knew he had parts like the dogs, horses, and yes, the bulls, and he knew how they utilized those parts on females; he had even tried a mare once and had been kicked hard as a warning not to try again.

  He grabbed the girl, and because she was limp, he had trouble, but finally positioned her for sex. He was too large, and there was a mess, but in a little while, he did get a relief that was pleasant. No, It was wonderful. He wanted more.

  At a hovel in the village, he found three women that he frightened so badly they couldn’t even scream. One tried to, but he smashed her in the mouth. The old crone sat in a corner and wept as Asterion took the young one and satisfied himself, but as he plunged into her, he had a chance to have his mouth next to her neck. Because he was clumsy by nature, he ended up taking a chunk of flesh out of her neck; he had meant to kiss her or lick her. Blood sprayed. And he experienced ecstasy.

  The perversion was set.

  Asterion chewed at the neck of the woman whose mouth he had crushed as he took her and then he chewed on her back, happily swallowing strips of flesh and fat.

  Like the other one, he had raped this girl to death, rupturing her delicate female insides, but he chewed the skin from her face and then buttocks. The floor of the hovel was gore-stained, awash in blood, and smelled like death and bowels. He not only ate of the flesh, but also he drank the blood like wine because those Aphrodite touch are always blood-tainted.

  He left after that, not bothering the old woman.

  In a house where girls and boys were sold, he at first was puzzled by how he would take the plump boy he chose. Then, he worked it out and had him and devoured the meat from his bones. The last he took was a scrawny female, but by then, he was mostly stuffed and about satisfied for sex.

  For enjoyment later, he picked up a boy and three girls, carrying them by their feet like chickens. Threatening them with his eyes, he stopped and found little sticks. He made holes in the ends of each.

  Then, he took the first girl by the foot, raised it, ran his knife right through the skin over her heel, and shoved the stick through. It couldn’t come out because of the bone behind it.

  Next, he threaded a wire into each hole on each side, pulled it taut behind her foot, and then entwined the wires.

  One of the girls tried to run, and he hit her hard enough to knock her out cold. Then, he continued. As the first girl screamed and fought, Asterion threaded another stick into the area behind the girl’s second heel. Once those wires were entwined, he entwined all four securely and gave the girl a little wine to recover.

  She tried to stand once but fell to her knees, as the pain from the stick being shoved through her foot was too much for her.

  He experimented on the other girl as well. He used his knife and plunged a stick into her hands right past the last two fingers so the stick couldn’t be yanked out without destroying her knuckles and tearing her hands apart; he did this to both of her hands while she wept and begged.

  For the boy, Asterion put the sticks with their wires into both of his cheeks as far back as possible so the boy couldn’t close his back teeth except to close them on the stick and wired jutted from the ends in his mouth.

  Asterion was curious to see which method would work best. The last girl whom he had knocked out was still dizzy, and with her, Asterion was most creative. He placed two sticks, smaller ones through her nose, one through the septal cartilage, and the other through the columna, where a bull might wear a nose ring.

  Asterion bade them to rise and not weep but walk with him over the hills so they might see sheep. Seeing this grisly sight, the first sheep herder cried out in fear as he saw Asterion, the Minotaur with a girl with a harness on her bloody feet, barely able to hobble, a girl with bloodied hands that she held like bird claw, a boy with wood and wires from his blood-covered cheeks, and a girl with gore all over her face an
d a harness fixed to her nose. “What is this blasphemia?”

  Asterion used a massive fist to drive the man to the ground, walked past him, and went to the pond. Sitting on a rock that jutted over the deep pool, Asterion motioned one girl to bathe her feet. The other two, he ignored.

  Asterion took the girl with sticks in her hands and lowered into the calm water. Her face was one of sheer terror. He let her go, and she sank like a stone. In a second, he reeled her in with the wires and laughed heartily as she coughed and cried. He enjoyed that game until she was almost dead.

  The girl with the injured feet could walk no more, and so she was dragged, screaming over rocks, thorns, bushes, and anything else.

  After a while, Asterion found another stream, washed the girl off who had been dragged and used her to satisfy his lust several times. And then he carved on her and ate her. He found that the heart and liver were especially tasty.

  Word had reached King Minos and Queen Pasiphae, and the latter took guardsmen to find her son. They found Asterion the next morning, but it was too late for the boy because as the Minotaur abused him, the boy suffered too much pain and humiliation and had tried to get away; he had managed to run, but he fell off a steep slope, and Asterion still tightly held the wires.

  The sticks were ripped from each cheek, leaving crude, torn, huge holes. The boy felt the wounds and knew how disfigured he was and how debased he had been at the mercy of the Minotaur, so he ran on until he found a taller cliff and dived from it head first.

  Asterion roared and dragged the two girls with him and found the boy’s head broken like an eggshell. Consequently, that was how Asterion found that human brains were delicious.

  “Asterion! O gio's! Kakia!” Pasiphae had addressed him by name as her son and as being wicked. “You will let them go immediately. Daedalus has made you a wonderful gift, and you are out here doing this? Do as I command,” she ordered. She was aware that he might be past her authority and might harm her.

  He dragged both girls and threw them across his shoulders. “Mine,” he managed to say. But he was willing to follow his mother and the guard to the palace. Daedalus and Minos greeted them with relief. Minos offered goblets of wine all around. “He’s just being a boy.”