Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (2 page)

No cause for panic, he told himself.
 The current, choppy as it was, was bearing him toward his
chosen landing.  He gripped the remaining oar with both hands
and put it to use as a pole to ward off sharp rocks.

About halfway there, a pale shape in the
surf caught his eye.  It poked out from behind some black
rocks a few oar-lengths shoreward, rising and falling gently in a
tangle of undulating seaweed.  Craning his neck for the few
seconds that he could safely divert his attention, he made out
curled fingers attached to a forearm. 

A corpse. The sight was no surprise, for the
summer's naval battle had consigned a great many bodies to the
depths.  Poor men, their shades would drift inconsolable for
eternity, denied entry into Hades' hall.

The Helot had seen his share of corpses in
his lifetime, but never a drowned one, and so as his progress past
the rocks gradually brought more of it into view, he couldn't help
but steal a glance when caution allowed.  Someone had told him
once that a body left at sea bloated up like a fatted pig and
turned just as pale, yet this corpse's skin had pigment yet, or at
least it seemed so in the moonlight.  And it was thin,
slighter even than the average man would be in life.

When at last the wave-tossed corpse stood
revealed from head to waist the Helot gaped in amazement, for this
was no sailor, but a woman.  A scrap of black cloth covered
one of her sea-girt breasts, but the other stood bare, its nipple a
dark crown on a mound of silver-blue flesh.  Tendrils of hair
writhed about her face in a black corona.  He could not make
out the features clearly, but they appeared sharp and serene,
hardly misshapen by violence or bloated by drowning.

Tempted as he was to stare, especially upon
discovering that her lower half too was bare, he tore his attention
away and focused on the nearby beach.  Only a few more rocks
were left to navigate, little danger by the look of them, and he
would come aground.

A wicked thought occurred to him, swatted
down as swiftly as it arose, that if he were careful he might pick
a path back over the rocks by foot from shore and search the corpse
for jewelry.  But no, he had come to Sphakteria for his
freedom, not trinkets of silver and bronze, not even gold.
 Were he to be caught plundering the dead, he might spend his
first day as a free man awaiting execution.  No, he would
simply tell the Spartan garrison what he had seen and be done with
the matter.

At last he ran his little boat aground on
the rocky shore, holing its hull in the process, and thoughts of
the woman fled his mind.  He was alive and soon would be free.
 Throwing his body ashore, he scooped pebbles from the beach
and pressed them to his lips, but he wasted little time in that
enterprise.  He had to unload his cargo quickly, lest the tide
come in suddenly and sweep it away.  There were too many
canvas sacks for him to carry all at once and so he made three
trips, piling them at the top of the beach.  While he was
doing this, a voice boomed over the rush of the breaking surf.

"You there!"

Startled, the Helot looked up to see a lone
figure approaching down the shoreline.  Moonglow turned the
man's bare chest blue, his long hair fell in a cascade over his
broad shoulders, and his dark beard was wild and untrimmed.
 "You bring us provision?"

"Aye, lord!"

Even in the dim light, wearing a coarse
cloak of undyed wool, the speaker was unmistakably a Spartiate, an
Equal, born to fight and kill, just as Helots were born to serve.
 Wearing their armor of leather and bronze, bearing eight-foot
ash spears with blades of sharpened iron, Spartiates were Stygian
beasts who struck fear into the hearts of all men.  Naked but
for his cloak, this one proved that Equals needed no such trappings
to inspire terror.

The Helot waited with two sacks piled on his
back while the Spartiate closed the remaining distance across the
beach, crouched, and thrust a gnarled hand into one of the sacks on
the ground.  It came out with a barley cake, which he examined
in the low light before replacing.  No doubt he was starving,
but discipline forbade him from partaking before his share had been
allotted, even when the sole witness was a Helot whose word was
worthless against his.

"You'll have your freedom for this," the
giant Equal said.  He hefted the remaining three sacks and
balanced them on sinewy shoulders.  

"Thank you, my lord!"  Blood pounded a
triumphal march in the Helot's ears, a wave of euphoria imparting
fresh strength to tired limbs.  As he began to walk behind the
master whose name he did not know, he remembered what he had seen
on his approach to the island and mustered the courage to raise the
matter.

"Lord!" the Helot called out.  He bore
only two sacks to his master's three, yet he practically had to run
to keep pace with the far-striding Equal.  "I saw a body
washed up on the rocks!"

"That's common enough," the soldier said
without stopping.  "We'll send someone."

"But lord, this was a woman!"

Now the Spartan halted and turned.
 Even bent beneath his greater burden, he stood taller than
the Helot, at whom he gazed down curiously from the shadowed pits
of his eyes.  "A woman?"

"Aye, lord.  She looks... fresh."

The Spartiate sighed, shrugging the sacks
from his back onto the rocky sand.  "Show me."

Forever had the men of Lakedaemon,
descendants of Herakles, been a superstitious lot, and never more
so than in times of great success or deep misfortune.
 Currently, for the over four hundred Spartiates and as many
Helot shield-bearers trapped on barren Sphakteria, it was decidedly
the latter.

One of those Spartiates, Styphon, son of
Pharax, who presently walked down from a mountainous lookout post,
was perhaps less inclined than most to fret over omens.  That
quality, he liked to think, helped to make him a
good 
phylarch
. One day, if he lived, it might serve him
well at higher ranks.  Yet even the fiercest of skeptics,
which he was not, would have had difficulty denying an omen such as
the one facing them today, a sign that had sent the twenty
long-haired Spartans under Styphon's command scrambling to
prostrate themselves in prayer.

The omen was a woman.  Persian, by the
look of her, and despite being stone dead and cold to the touch she
had golden skin as pure and unblemished as that of any aristocrat's
freshly bathed virgin daughter.  She was everywhere depilated
from the neck down in the manner of whores and Athenians, which
made her, in Styphon's mind, more likely than not some man's
mistress drowned to keep her quiet.  But then it was possible
that all Persians plucked.  It seemed probable enough, given
that even their men were womanly.  Spartan women sure didn't
go smooth, and their men were glad for it.

Princess or slave, Persian or Greek, her
presence was an ill omen, and ill omens sapped men's confidence,
which in turn made them more likely to die.  Already the Helot
who'd discovered the corpse in the surf had suffered a slit throat
in the night, and hungry as they were, the soldiers had decided to
burn as an offering to Zeus and Artemis a third of the good barley
cakes the unlucky slave had brought.

In that impractical action the men had been
unanimous, but they were split on whether to bury the woman's body
properly or cast it back into the sea.  Until the matter could
be decided, it sat on the ground outside the bounds of their
encampment.  Helots had been assigned to watch over it and
keep the crows away, but strangely they had not been forced to cast
a single stone, for no crows came.  This was seen among the
ranks as an even worse omen, notwithstanding that crows themselves
were harbingers of doom.  Still, Helots continued to watch the
body in case any birds did come, not so much for the sake of
preserving the corpse, but because birds could be cooked and
eaten.

Styphon rounded a great stone outcropping on
his descent of the mountain and caught first sight of the
moss-encrusted stone fort which was the camp under his command.
 Its roof had long ago collapsed, making the structure more
stockade than fort.  The walls that remained were hardly the
height of a man.  It was said that old Nestor had built the
thing, and perhaps he really had, but whoever had put it there had
positioned it sensibly on the highest part of the island where the
sheer cliffs were impassible on three sides.  Should the worst
come to pass, Epitadas, the 
pentekoster
 in charge
of the island and currently commanding the main body of troops at
the island's center, had designated Nestor's fort as the site of
their final stand. 

Whatever fate lay ahead for the Spartans
besieged on Sphakteria, victory or death, it would surely arrive
soon, for atop the mount which he now descended, Styphon had
witnessed a sight which made it all but certain: seventeen Athenian
heavy triremes spilling fresh troops onto the beach at Pylos.
 A runner would bear the news on to Epitadas, who would say
something on the order of, "Let them come."  

Indeed, let them, Styphon agreed.  Far
better to face one's fate head-on than to sit hammered by the sun
against an anvil of barren stone, sipping brackish water by the
handful, breathing clouds of oily soot and forever waiting.
 Sphakteria by now would have broken a less disciplined force.
 The womanly Athenians wouldn't have lasted a week, let alone
three months at the height of summer's scorching heat.

Before Styphon completed the trek into camp,
a scream reverberated over the rocks.  The screamer appeared
below, a Helot running toward the camp from the south.
 Styphon quickened his pace, hurtling over loose rocks and
flirting with a neck-breaking spill while in his pounding ears rang
the mad Helot's persistent shrieking.  Hardly a minute later,
Styphon arrived at the rear wall of Nestor's fort, nearly slamming
into it, then raced around the corner to where the camp's entire
population, forty men and slaves in all, dressed like Styphon in
ragged chitons that clung with sweat to their chests and sunburned
thighs, had gathered around the wild-eyed screamer.  

Styphon penetrated the human curtain just as
another Spartiate belted the Helot in the face, silencing his
crazed shouts and sending him sprawling.  When the slave
managed to drag his head upright, it was to cry out, face twisted
in terror, "
She moved!
"

There was no need to ask who, for there was
only one female on this cursed rock, and she was stone dead.
 Knowing that, the twenty Spartiates who had just been
grumbling or laughing at the slave's fright fell instantly to
silence.

"Someone is playing a trick on you, donkey!"
Styphon hissed.

The look of terror on the Messenian's face
did not fade.  He insisted again in a whisper, "
She
moved...
"

Styphon was drawing back a sandaled foot to
kick the man in the head when he froze and realized in the same
instant as did his comrades that the slave had not lied at all.
 If trick this was, it was an elaborate one, for there at the
crest of the ridge, not thirty paces off, the woman stood, naked
but for a scrap of black cloth over her left breast.

Staggering, she fell hard onto her knees,
set one hand on the earth and rose again.  The men gasped and
invoked the names of gods, and Styphon barked at them, without
taking his eyes from the risen corpse, "Spartans, are you men or
little girls!?"

The woman, or shade, or whatever it was,
having regained its feet, stood swaying gently, arms held out in a
search for balance.  Its head was bowed, tangled dark hair
hiding its face.

Some citizen or slave whispered, "We must
leave this place."

Styphon bellowed, "Lashes and demotion for
any Spartiate who runs!"

The warning was meant for his men, but
theirs were not the only ears to hear it.  Up on the ridge,
the dead thing picked up its head and turned eyes toward them.
 A score of grown Spartan citizens, death dealers all, gasped.
 Styphon himself, whose faith in the creatures of legend was
not strong, half expected to see under the black hair a grinning
skull or harpy's beak, but there was only a face.  Its
expression could not be read from this distance, but Styphon sensed
on it an emotion he had witnessed many times before and knew well.
 
Fear
.  The shade was afraid.

Styphon ordered over the muttered prayers of
others, "Catch her!"

As if she had heard, which perhaps she did,
the corpse-woman turned and made to flee the camp.  She
stumbled, knee striking the rocky soil, but she bounced to her feet
again in a flash and ran.  

Still, no Spartan moved.  No wonder,
since neither had their leader.  Styphon remedied the lapse by
taking off at a full run.  As he went, he pointed and shouted
out the names of his men in small groups and told each where to go.
 For a moment they all stood bewildered, but soon enough they
became Spartans again.  A superior had spoken and could not be
disobeyed.  The hunt was on, its aim to prevent their quarry
from reaching the wall of trees (blackened stumps, mostly, since
the cursed Athenians had lately set fire to the island) which
marked the arbitrary southern boundary of their mountain
encampment.  In the end it could hardly matter if she made it
there, of course, for there was no true escape to be had for anyone
on tiny, besieged Sphakteria.  
If only
.

Stumbling every five steps, the corpse-woman
proved easy to catch.  Rather, she proved easy to surround;
after that, no man was willing to go near her.  Thus what
resulted was a sort of moving cordon, within which the prey was
free to move about as it wished.

After some minutes at this impasse, Styphon
called out, "Kneel and let us approach!"