Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (29 page)

Ahead, to the west, two masses of men, one
screaming and running full tilt, the other grim and still,
collided. The great clash of hundreds of overlapped shields rang
out over the Strymon, and dying groans soared skyward whilst shades
fled into the earth as men on both sides inevitably were cut down.
Brasidas had aimed his charge directly at the Athenian hoplite
center rather than at the weaker flanks which almost certainly
would have given way. It was a risky strategy which required the
Athenian phalanx to collapse immediately, for if they held for even
a few minutes then Brasidas's force risked envelopment by the
light-armed wings, who could then cast javelins at will into his
unshielded flanks.

But if the center broke, the Spartans' way
to freedom would be clear. Demosthenes knew he would have made the
same choice in Brasidas's position, or he wished to think so.

He rode hard toward this freshly developed
Battle of the Strymon Bridge, where the shoving match was on.
Defeated men pushed with all the strength left in their tired limbs
to steal freedom back from the maw of defeat, while their foes dug
in heels to complete a victory already won. The latter had heart,
but the former had cause to fight harder, and they had the
momentum, too.

The prayer that Demosthenes sent into the
bleak Thracian sky on Alkibiades' behalf was a somewhat empty one,
but even had the words been heartfelt, not even a god could have
staved off the inevitable. After holding fast for less than a
minute, the Athenian line shattered.

Maybe the gods did send one small blessing:
knowing that he was beaten, Brasidas gave no pause for slaughter.
The instant the way was clear, his men broke into a run, making a
line straight for the woodland cover which not an hour ago had been
used to deadly effect against them.

But whether they knew it yet or not, their
freedom was far from certain. Pursuit was hard on their heels.
Demosthenes' eyes hunted down Brasidas in the mass of troops, and
found him quickly enough near the rear of the fleeing mass. Having
stood on the eastern edge of the bridge, he had been among the last
to leave it.

Demosthenes craned his neck to shout back at
those comrades who had succeeded in fording the river with him, a
number which was growing as more made the attempt for a second and
third time.

"Brasidas!" he cried. "Kill Brasidas!"

He kicked his heels in the stirrups and
urged Balios on, though the beast could hardly move any faster. The
frosted plain shook beneath pounding hooves, chunky snowflakes flew
past in a blur, and all Demosthenes saw was Brasidas, hair flying
around the rim of the bouncing hoplon slung on his back.

But the enemy general must have felt those
hooves and known what they meant for his chances of escape, for
after shouting orders left and right he stopped short and whirled
to stand his ground, and so did all the fifteen remaining Spartans,
whose shields flew from their backs to form a hasty wall. Those who
had lugged their heavy spears from the bridge were glad now to have
kept them; they dug in the butt-spikes and lowered the shafts to
welcome the oncoming pursuit. Brasidas had only his sword, which he
drew and held ready.

The sight sent a fresh surge of battle
delirium through Demosthenes' veins, but not enough to turn him
into a blind fool. Squeezing Balios' flanks, he veered right, away
from the shield wall, denying Brasidas the engagement he desired,
and raised a hand in the signal for encirclement. The five or so
Athenians immediately behind him obeyed, splitting left and right
and riding a ring around their trapped quarry.

Even now, Brasidas was not one to give up.
He shouted another command, and the wall of fourteen brave freed
Helots disintegrated. Its members, shrieking war cries, charged
their mounted pursuers with weapons held high like so many
sheep-raiding Illyrian hordesmen.

Three of their number—along with Brasidas
himself—came after Demosthenes, easily singled out by his helmet's
white plume. He wheeled Balios away, but the four assailants spread
out with the aim of converging on him from different directions. As
quickly as that, hunters had become prey.

Demosthenes kept what distance he could from
his attackers. An eastward glance told him another handful of
citizens had made the river crossing, while closer still
Alkibiades' hoplites had regrouped and begun to race to help. If he
could stall and avoid Brasidas long enough, he would have numbers
on his side.

But no. A day might be won by stalling and
avoidance, but not a war. Certainly not a war against Fate herself.
Ignoring all else, he set his doe eyes on Brasidas, grit his teeth
and surrendered to the battle delirium. A few pounding hoofbeats,
and his long cavalryman's sword, already held poised, swooped in a
flat arc aimed at Brasidas' neck.

The Spartiate's blood-streaked, hawklike
face vanished behind his hoplon and the sword's edge bit not flesh
and bone but bronze-shod wood. Demosthenes wheeled round and
attacked again and again, forced to fend off attacks from the
Helots as he went–he stabbed the face of one who tried to drag him
down–but always he fought toward Brasidas. Only with the general's
blood soaking the frozen earth of Amphipolis would today's victory
be complete.

Help came to his side in the form of a pair
of citizens driving off the Helots, and the way to Brasidas was
clear. Demosthenes charged. Brasidas dropped down onto one knee and
set his sword and battered hoplon to meet it. As he galloped past,
Demosthenes' blade sheared a corner off of the Spartan's shield.
Balios screamed, and soon enough Demosthenes saw why: black blood
streamed from Brasidas's sword. Horse blood.

Stricken Balios' forelegs buckled, sending
Demosthenes tumbling to the ground. Thankfully, his scale armor
bore the brunt of the landing, but the wind was knocked out of him
and he knew he had scant seconds to catch it if he hoped to live
long enough to fight for his life.

He had hardly sucked one shuddering breath
before the gore-caked, soiled figure of his Spartan counterpart
filled the empty expanse of clouds between the cheek pieces of his
helmet. His hands were empty, he realized, his sword nowhere to be
found. At least not quickly enough to matter. Yet if he made no
move, he would be dead and the laurels due him in Athens would
crown his corpse here in distant Thrace instead.

Forgoing a frantic search for his weapon,
Demosthenes set his hands and feet instead to getting upright, but
he barely made it into an unsteady crouch before Brasidas was on
him. Pain lanced through his midsection on the left just below his
ribs, where any hoplite worth the price of his panoply, not least a
Spartiate killing machine, was trained to aim the death blow. The
back of Demosthenes' head struck the cold ground, bounced and
struck again. The earth rose up to swallow him, and a winter sky
the color of a goddess' eyes faded from view. Laughing at himself
for having had the gall to challenge Fate, the chains of which
bound even the gods, Demosthenes surrendered himself to the grip of
death.

The chill, uneven surface rumbled under his
back. His own breath rasped in his ears, overwhelming the din of
frantic shouting from somewhere outside the bronze shell encasing
his head.

He opened his eyes, looked up on an expanse
of winter sky, and he remembered.

At once, all the muscles of his body sprang
to life. He scrambled upright, or tried to. In a clatter of iron
and bronze, he lost his balance and tumbled onto one knee before
rising and whipping his head around in search of Brasidas.

His eyes found instead the hulking forms of
horses and their riders swirling around him. One of several
unmounted cavalrymen he discovered standing closer to him cried
out, "Demosthenes lives!"

Yes, so it seemed. But how? He remembered
the killing stroke, still felt its spider-like ghost on his torso
just under the ribs. And where was his killer? He cast urgent looks
about, still half expecting attack, but Brasidas was nowhere to be
found, only fellow Athenians. Accepting that the danger was past,
Demosthenes struggled to remove his heavy helmet. As he did, a
supporting hand appeared under his arm.

"If you're looking for Brasidas," the arm's
Athenian owner said with a smile, "he is on his way to Amphipolis
via the ford to the north, slung over Leokrates' saddle and roped
like a goat!"

"Captured?" Demosthenes asked, perhaps
stupidly. "How?"

"Leokrates struck and wounded him just after
you fell, only minutes ago. A few other Spartans were captured,
too, but we thought it best to get our prize safely behind the
walls as quickly as possible."

Demosthenes nodded instant approval, even if
privately he would as soon have left Amphipolis without such a
'prize.' Once captured, an enemy general could not safely be
killed, lest the same treatment befall the next Athenian of high
value who fell into enemy hands.

Brasidas had his life, but so did
Demosthenes, and he was determined that it had not only been saved
so he could do Thalassia's will. Who cared if her plans were better
served by Brasidas's death? She had run off to who knew where,
perhaps forever.

Good riddance
 was surely too
harsh a thought, but 
So be it 
seemed apt. Athens
had a chance to rise now because of her, and it would be mortal men
who squandered that chance or made good on it. That was as it
should be.

"I'll see Leokrates gets the prize for
valor," Demosthenes said of the comrade who had saved his life,
then asked, "What of the bridge?"

"Still held by half-dead slaves. Perhaps
once they hear of Brasidas's fate, they'll yield."

Thanking his comrades as he broke from them,
Demosthenes went first to the crumpled corpse of black Balios, whom
someone had had the decency to put out of his misery. He knelt
beside the fallen beast, touched his mane and thanked him for his
part in bringing victory. Then he started for the Strymon, learning
along the way that the Athenian casualties of the breakout had been
light. Only eleven men, and Alkibiades not among them.

He had not forgotten, of course, that Athens
that day should have counted Demosthenes among its dead. So why did
she not? He surely had not imagined the blow. As he walked, his
hand kept going to the spot where there should have been a wound.
Instead there was only a dull throbbing which flared to mild pain
with every breath. He searched among the iron scales of his armor
in search of the spot where the sword had entered and at length
found a split in the leather and worked a finger through it.

No matter how it turned and twisted and
pushed, the finger never met bare flesh. And neither, he realized,
had Brasidas's blade. Smooth and pliable, the layer of fabric
between leather and skin stretched and conformed to any attempt at
penetration, then snapped back.

Spun bronze
, he had called the small
scrap of her clothing which Thalassia had brought with her to
Pylos, and she, without his knowledge it seemed, had affixed it
inside the leather lining of his armor at precisely the spot he was
most likely to be run through.

Already his city owed her, as did he
personally for naming the time and place of his appointment with
death so that he might avoid it. Now, in an even more meaningful
sense, he owed her his life.

Shit.

He came at last to the bridge where the
grim, blood-streaked faces and demonic eyes of fourteen steadfast
martyrs were as hard as the blades of their set spears. Alkibiades'
men had begun to gather on the western bank, forcing the bridge's
defenders to split in half to face either side. Those facing west
could hardly have missed the defeat of their comrades, but if so,
the sight seemed to have made them no less determined to die.

A voice called to Demosthenes from the
opposite bank: "Strategos, we have more than enough bolts to kill
them! Shall we?"

It was Straton, and after a moment's thought
Demosthenes signaled him the negative and descended the bank to
take up a spot hardly two spear lengths from the west-facing line
of Brasidas's rear guard, the fourteen men who were all that yet
stood of the force which was to have taken Amphipolis.

"You men are Helots, no?" Demosthenes said
to them. "The leader who brought you to this place will be my
prisoner, if he survives his wounds. Those of you who wish may
leave here as free men. We will even do our best to treat your
wounds. Any who choose to stand fast and die, we shall oblige, but
I fear you will have to settle for death by spindles. I would be
glad to starve you, but unfortunately we need to use this bridge.
You have as long as it takes me to step out of harm's way and give
the command to fire."

With that Demosthenes turned his back on
them and began withdrawing to the Athenian line at a leisurely
pace, confident that at least some of the slave-born fighters
behind him would question their loyalty to their distant masters,
even as they wondered whether word of the decision they made here
could somehow reach home and affect the fates of their
families.

A cheer suddenly erupted among the
Athenians, and Demosthenes turned to see a bowl shaped shield
rocking on the planks of the bridge. The owner who had cast it down
ran for shore with one stiff, bloodied leg dragging behind him. His
example made it easier for the others to choose life, which they
proceeded to do almost to a man. Within the space of a minute, only
four men remained on the bridge, one of them standing in such a
pool of blood that it streamed off the planks and into the Strymon.
Another likely remained upright only thanks to his spear shaft. The
four were given one final opportunity to stand aside, which they
refused, before Demosthenes signaled gravely to Straton on the
opposite bank.