Warrior Heroes: The Spartan's March

by Benjamin Hulme-Cross

  When Argos arrived, it was just as Adakios had said it would be. Finn showed him the stone charm and Argos believed them instantly. The brothers thanked Alexios and explained they had much to discuss with Argos. Alexios took the hint quickly enough, and wandered off with his friends while Argos led the boys away from the hippodrome and then on, away from the temple complex in the opposite direction to the market. They entered a camping field and passed through it until they reached a wooded area beyond. Here Argos gestured for the boys to sit in the shade and offered around a water skin.

  Finn studied Argos as they caught their breath. The family resemblance to Adakios was striking. They shared very strong features, jet-black hair and large, flashing brown eyes. Most of all, however, Argos had the same sort of serious, dignified manner as his father: quiet, reserved, but seemingly ready for just about anything.

  Just as well, thought Finn as he began the tale that Argos needed to hear. The helot’s face betrayed only the faintest signs of emotion as the predicament was explained, his nostrils flaring slightly at the news that Drakon had sworn revenge on the whole family, and his eyes burning when Finn told of Nikodemos’s death. He sat in silence for some time after Finn had finished, staring at the ground.

  “And you boys,” he said eventually, “why have you done so much for my father and me?”

  “Drakon is after us too,” said Finn quickly, praying that his answer would be enough. “We thought we had a better chance with your father on our side...”

  Argos sat in silence a while longer and the boys waited anxiously, all too aware that Argos could still decide he wanted nothing to do with them.

  “You’re right about that,” he said eventually. “We’ll leave at dusk.” The boys’ shoulders slumped with relief.

  “Now listen,” Argos said briskly. “Here is what you must do...”

  * * *

  “Here we go again then,” muttered Finn as he and Arthur shared some bread and dried meat. Just as they had at Thermopylae, the boys found themselves hiding beyond the fringes of the settlement at Olympia, ready to escape the Spartans. Argos had told them to go ahead and wait for him to join them after sunset when his departure would be less obvious. The brothers had split up in the hope that they would be less obvious to Drakon’s roaming eyes, and those of anyone who accompanied him, and they had reunited beyond the market stalls at the bend in the road where they had first caught sight of Olympia that very morning.

  It was there that they waited for Argos, hidden a short way back from the roadside as they had agreed. The wait gave them time to discuss what lay ahead, which was just as well now that the situation had changed so dramatically.

  On the one hand it was good news that Drakon was not slashing and burning his way through Adakios’s farm. This meant that they would probably find Adakios at home rather than on the road to Athens, which made life a little easier. On the other hand they had to assume that Drakon would pick up their scent again soon and come after them, and it would not take him long to realise where they were heading. At that point it would become even more of a sprint, for there was a good chance that Drakon would hear about Argos running away and put two and two together. Then his case for punishing the helots would be much stronger and he might well persuade a group of Spartans to join him in suppressing what he could say was a helot rebellion.

  It was therefore with great excitement that the boys greeted Argos when he appeared leading three horses!

  “Whose are they?” Arthur asked.

  “They belong to Theras and his family,” Argos replied. “It makes no difference taking them, or the food in the saddle bags. As soon as he discovers I have run away he will come after me. Mount up!” He waved the boys over to the horses and they were delighted to obey. The thought of another two or three days tramping on foot across southern Greece had not been sitting easily with either of them.

  Sitting astride a horse was far preferable and they set off at an eager trot into the night, leaving Olympia and the Games behind them.

  * * *

  Finn jerked awake and a low moan escaped his lips as a twig snapped nearby. In his nightmare he had been running, naked and alone, through a pine forest with a pack of ravenous wolves in hot pursuit. They matched his running speed so they were permanently one bound away from sinking their stinking teeth into the back of his neck. He rubbed his eyes and tried to shake off the feeling that he was being watched by an unseen predator. In the grey dawn light, he could see no sign of danger through the thin trees in any direction. Argos and Arthur slept nearby, next to the horses and beneath the blankets they had used as saddles. With a twinge of guilt, Finn remembered that he was supposed to be keeping watch. The feeling of eyes on his back refused to go away, and he crawled over to the others and shook them awake.

  “What is it?” said Argos, instantly alert.

  “There’s someone out there watching us,” Finn replied. “I can feel it.”

  Argos sprang to his feet. “We should get moving – come on.”

  They roused and untied the horses and moments later they had resumed their journey, trotting through the woods and out onto a wide, open plain as light from the rising sun began to warm the air and ease their nerves. Not that Drakon would have any problem killing us in broad daylight, thought Finn, but he kept the thought to himself.

  Argos told them that they should reach the farm before nightfall, and this thought perked everyone up. It felt as though they had covered more ground in the previous five days than in the whole of the rest of their lives. What was more, the thought that they might soon reunite with Adakios was a great comfort.

  Throughout the morning they encountered little by way of traffic on the road towards Sparta, but as the sun reached its full height in the middle of the day and the heat forced them to pause and find shade, they saw a small group of exhausted-looking soldiers trudging towards them. They were clearly helots, protected as Adakios had been by leather armour not bronze, and although Argos and the boys would sooner have been left alone, the men came and rested with them in the shade by the side of the road.

  “Are you returning from battle? Thermopylae?” Argos enquired.

  “Xerxes is coming,” one man replied bluntly. “We fought for three days. A few thousand of us against a hundred times that many of the Persians. But Leonidas chose the battlefield well. The pass at Thermopylae is narrow and we were holding them back.”

  Arthur was looking away all through the conversation. As soon as the soldier had confirmed he and his comrades were returning from Thermopylae, Arthur had realised there was a danger he would be recognised.

  “So what went wrong?” Argos asked.

  “Someone must have betrayed us and shown the Persians a way over the mountains so they could outflank us,” the man replied. “Leonidas and the Spartans stayed behind. The rest of us retreated and now, thanks to Zeus, we are returning to our homes.”

  The conversation moved on to the question of how Xerxes and his army would treat the people of southern Greece when he marched to Athens. There seemed to be little belief, or hope even, that the Persians would be merciful, particularly when it came to Athens, the heart of Greece.

  All through the afternoon they heard the same nervous warning: Xerxes is coming. The more they heard it, the more desperate they grew to see Adakios, for if Xerxes and the Persians were advancing on Athens, then their planned escape route simply led from one death to another.

  CHAPTER 9

  The sun was beginning to sink into the horizon as Argos, Finn and Arthur stood knee-deep in a fast-flowing river. They were close now, Argos told them as they washed and drank. The farm lay less than an hour away downstream.

  “We will arrive after nightfall,” said Argos quietly. “That is good – we do not know what we will find when we get there.”

  Finn had been thinking the same thing. Drakon had not been seen since Olympia and they assumed he was behind them. But it was possible he had overtaken them if he had acquired a hors
e of his own, or worse, sent word to others in the Crypteia.

  “Adakios might not even be there!” said Arthur. “What if he’s already left for Athens?”

  “My father will know that is not a good plan by now,” said Argos. “But if he has gone he will leave us a sign of some kind, I am sure. Come, it will be dark by the time we find out.”

  So they mounted their horses for the final part of the journey. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, then stopped abruptly. Little else besides the horses’ hooves and the droning of cicadas disturbed the dusky peace, and none of them felt like talking.

  The first stars were piercing the night sky by the time Argos, who was up front, brought them to a halt. They climbed down, following the youth’s lead silently, and tied the horses to a tree by the river. Proceeding on foot, they followed a path that hugged the riverbank and took them away from the main road. They could see a clutch of small houses up ahead. All seemed to be well. Firelight could be glimpsed through gaps in walls, and the sound of muffled conversation escaped with it.

  Argos barely slowed, all thoughts of caution forgotten now that he could see his home, and Finn turned to Arthur. But Arthur was nowhere to be seen. Finn was about to call out to his brother when a hand clamped roughly over his mouth and a huge arm pinned his own arms to his chest and hoisted him off the ground. Feet bicycling wildly in the air, Finn was dragged off the path and into the bushes. He sank his teeth into the hand over his mouth, and received a bone-crushing squeeze across the chest in reward. Blinking back tears, Finn started to panic. How had they been so stupid? They knew the Crypteia might be waiting for them and they had walked straight into a trap anyway!

  Somewhere close by, Argos cried out in alarm, and then in anger, “It’s me, you fool! And where are the two boys? They’re my friends.” To his great relief Finn was set back on his feet and he turned to give his former captor a pained stare. The man smiled a little and motioned Finn back to the path, where Argos was standing with a small group of strangers.

  “I’m sorry, Argos,” one of them was saying. “But if you are with the boys then you will have heard what happened to Nikodemos and your father. We are watching for the Crypteia.”

  “Is Adakios harmed?” said Argos shakily as Arthur emerged with another man and took his place next to Finn.

  “No, no, he is well enough, though he will be better now that you are here. Let’s go to him.”

  “Who’s here?” came a familiar voice, and then Adakios was with them, hugging his son long and hard and clapping Finn and Arthur on the backs. Argos began to talk of Thermopylae and Xerxes, but Adakios told him to wait, and led them all inside one of the houses.

  The boys slumped gratefully down onto the floor cushions, while Argos’s mother hugged her son and refused to let him go.

  “Release me, Mother!” said Argos, laughing. “You should meet our guests.”

  Adakios introduced his wife, Kassandra, who tearfully thanked each of them for helping to reunite the family. Next the men who had ambushed them were introduced as Nikodemos’s father and brothers. The father, in particular, wore a haunted expression.

  “Drakon!” said Finn, reminded of the danger they faced from the Crypteia. “He followed us, Adakios, not you. And he will have followed us here if his dogs have our scent.”

  Nikodemos’s brothers muttered dark threats, but their father silenced them. “Justice means nothing to the Spartans!” he snapped. “If one of the Crypteia has sworn us dead, then he will soon have his wish if we stay to face him. And if you kill him? How many other helots will the Crypteia kill in retribution? Adakios is right – we have no choice but to run.”

  “All the same,” said Adakios, “perhaps you and my nephews could go back and watch the path once more, in case Drakon is close by.” The younger men were only too happy to take up their watch again in the hope that they might have the chance to take revenge on Drakon, and they left the house immediately.

  Meanwhile Kassandra handed out bowls of rabbit stew. It was the first hot food that the boys had eaten since their arrival at Thermopylae, and it was enormously comforting. As they ate, Argos relayed the warnings they had heard from the soldiers on the road.

  “Athens may not be the best place for us, Father,” said Argos.

  Adakios nodded slowly. “I was doubting the plan in any case. It’s another long journey, and there’ll be plenty of Spartans between here and there.”

  “How close are we to Sparta now?” Finn asked, and then nearly choked on his stew when Adakios told him that the city was less than twenty miles upstream. What if Drakon had followed them as far as the river and then turned towards Sparta to find comrades from the Crypteia? They could track them to the farm and launch an attack at almost any moment!

  “The danger will still be great,” Adakios was saying, “but our best course may be to take the boats downstream to Gytheum, and then take our chances on the open sea and try for the biggest of the islands. The sea’s twenty miles in the other direction,” he clarified, nodding at Finn.

  “Father, all we have are two river rafts...” said Argos, round-eyed.

  “People have crossed the seas on rafts before,” said Adakios. “It’s that or we try and evade the Crypteia as a group of ten people from here to Athens...”

  Argos nodded, though Finn and Arthur remained unsettled by his initial reaction. Their thoughts were interrupted by the sudden noise of an animal screaming, soon joined by others.

  “The horses!” cried Argos. “Something has spooked them. We must hurry!” Everyone leapt into action. Kassandra grabbed some bags that were waiting by the door. Argos and Adakios snatched up their weapons.

  “Argos!” his father barked from the doorway. “Get everyone to the rafts! I’ll fetch your cousins.”

  “With me!” Argos cried, putting an arm around his mother and leading her through the door. As Finn and Arthur followed they heard the screams of the horses intensify, accompanied, not far enough away, by the barking of dogs.

  “It must be Drakon!” cried Arthur breathlessly as they scurried after Argos. They dashed the short distance from the houses to the river and onto a rickety wooden jetty, Argos guiding his mother onto the larger of the two rafts and waving the boys onto the other. Finn followed Argos’s example and untied the raft he and Arthur were on before looping the rope around one of the jetty’s legs so that they were still moored, but ready to cast off in an instant.

  Nikodemos’s brothers came running towards them, and Finn waved them onto Argos’s raft. He and Arthur were there to help Adakios look after his family, Finn reasoned.

  “Go!” he shouted. “We’ll wait for your father.” Argos did not hesitate. He shoved off from the jetty, lifted the steering pole high in the air and then thrust it down into the water, propelling the raft out into the middle of the river where it caught the current and accelerated away silently into the night.

  Moments later Adakios was with them on the jetty.

  “They’re too close!” he hissed. “They’ll know we went downstream and they’ll catch us unless we leave the raft here to throw them off.”

  Finn was about to protest but the look in Adakios’s eye made him think better of it. He quickly retied the raft.

  “The horses are upstream,” said Arthur. Adakios nodded and slipped into the river. The boys did the same, gasping as they adjusted to the temperature. Then, holding onto the roots and rocks that projected from the riverbank, for the boys at least were chest-deep in the water and it was moving fast, they pulled themselves quietly forwards against the direction of the current. In a moment they had rounded a boulder and were out of sight of the jetty. Already they could hear shouts, barks and the crashing sounds of the houses being ransacked. Soon they noticed the smell of smoke and moments later the night sky was lit up by the blaze of a thatched roof going up in roaring flames.

  They made their way in grim silence along the bank until they reached the spot where the horses were tethered. They had calmed down no
w that the dogs had passed them by, and as Adakios and the boys stepped out of the river to see the horses alive and well, it seemed for a moment that they just might be able to escape the Crypteia.

  “Just where have you crawled out from, helot?” someone asked in a loud, gruff voice. Standing on the path, a short way back from the horses, was a group of around ten men. Not young men these, and not from the Crypteia: they were fully fledged Spartan soldiers.

  “And what’s burning up that way?” one of them demanded.

  “Masters,” said Adakios respectfully, “I am just returned from Thermopylae. And that up ahead is my farmstead being burned to the ground by Drakon of the Crypteia.”

  All of a sudden the sound of barking, which had been there in the background all along, grew louder and closer, until two wolf-like canines sprinted around a bend in the path and came to a snarling stop in front of Finn, backing him up against a tree. They were unmistakably similar to the dog they had injured back in the mountains.

  “Looks like it was you they could smell all along!” said Arthur, smirking at Finn despite the danger.

  Finn wasn’t listening. He was too busy staring at the man who had been hunting them all this time as he ran into view and skidded to a confused halt in front of the Spartan soldiers.

  “Explain!” barked the leader of the soldiers.

  “He’s a deserter from Thermopylae,” said Drakon breathlessly. “The boys too.”

  “I fought for Sparta, and when you unjustly swore to kill my family, Drakon, I went to protect them as any man would.” Adakios couldn’t keep the hatred out of his voice. “Did your superior, Aristodamus, not tell you that the helots at Thermopylae were to be left unharmed? Did he not have you whipped for arguing?”

  Drakon turned pale with rage. He leapt forward and swung his sword wildly at Adakios, who saw him coming and ducked neatly out of the way.

  “Enough!” shouted the Spartan, waving at some of his soldiers. “You three men, keep the helots here tonight and then take them to the barracks tomorrow. If anyone tries to escape, kill him instantly. Drakon, you will come back to Sparta with us tonight. Tomorrow we will let the king decide who is to be punished.”