Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (33 page)

"Leave us," Brasidas told his guard.

With more than a few choice insults thrown
at Styphon through clenched jaws, the gang reluctantly moved off,
giving the pair about as much privacy as one could achieve in this
crowded place.

Taller than most men, with angular features
anchored by a beakish nose, Brasidas was seated on a stone slab
with his back against the prison's inner wall of brick and timber.
Like his fellow prisoners, he wore an undyed smock bearing a
crimson alpha for 
aichmolotos
, 'prisoner.' His injured
left shoulder was wrapped tightly in linen, and a fresh black scar
ran parallel to his hairline.

"I'll end any doubts you may have," he said
brusquely. "The ephors haven't branded you a trembler yet, but they
will the moment you set foot again in Lakonia. If ever you do."
Face a hard mask, Brasidas glared with utter contempt. "What were
you thinking?"

Styphon answered humbly, meeting his
superior's withering gaze. "I did what I thought was best for
Sparta, not for my reputation."

"The two are one and the same," Brasidas
lectured. "But I have not brought you here to debate whether or not
you are a coward. You are. I want to talk about a woman."

There was no need to explain, no doubt in
Styphon's mind what woman he meant.

Brasidas removed his eyes from Styphon as if
to suggest he was nothing worth looking at. Instead he kept them on
the far wall of the courtyard, which was not particularly far.

"I've heard remarkable things about her from
the men here," Brasidas explained. "They also say that you must
know more than they do. Tell me."

Even while awaiting reply, the general
denied Styphon his gaze. For his part, Styphon was not quick to
answer, for he sensed that much depended on his words. At the same
time, it was never wise to keep a general waiting.

"She came from the sea a corpse, as sure as
you're sitting on that bench, and then, after a day had passed, she
returned to life," Styphon offered plainly. "I gave her the name
Thalassia to replace the barbarian one she gave, which I scarcely
recall."

Obediently, Styphon went on to recount to
the man in whose hands his fate rested the truths of Thalassia's
accurate foretelling of the Athenian attack, of her unearthly
strength, of her assurance that Sparta was destined to win the war
in spite of defeat and disgrace at Pylos, and of his own choice to
surrender in order that the pre-ordained ultimate victory might
come to pass. He told Brasidas how Thalassia had caused the warning
beacon on Sphakteria's heights to be lit, and of the slaying of
Epitadas by a single arrow while his sword hovered at Thalassia's
throat, even if Brasidas surely had heard this last tale already
from other prisoners. And he told of his attempt to secure
Thalassia's passage to Sparta by ransom, so as to keep her out of
Athenian hands.

Left out of his account was his promise of
some future favor to Thalassia in return for her pledge to rescue
Andrea from the miserable existence due her as the offspring of a
trembler.

Lean Brasidas flashed a self-congratulatory
smile at the far wall. If he was pleased with Styphon's explanation
of the events of a year ago, he gave no sign.

"I think you must understand the tenuousness
of your current position," Brasidas said instead. "Not only here,
where any number of men would gladly cut your throat if I neglected
to tell them not to, but also back home. As it stands, the life to
which you'll return will be less worthwhile than the one you have
here in prison. On the other hand, if a polemarch, even one who had
just suffered an honest defeat, were to appeal to the Elders on
your behalf, they might be persuaded to let you keep your property
and a shred of honor. It may not be in their power to prevent other
Equals from spitting on you, but they can do their best. I might be
willing to do you such a favor, if you were willing to work for it.
Rather hard." Brasidas finally spared his disgraced subordinate a
single, contemptuous glance. "What do you say to that?"

"I say that you are a general and I am not,"
Styphon answered swiftly. "I am bound to do whatever you say, with
or without any promise of reward."

"A good answer," Brasidas said. He seemed to
mean it. "But I fear you may not understand completely. What I am
looking for is a 
dog
. Will you be my dog, Styphon?" He
snorted. "I imagine there were many dogs born in Lakonia this year
whose owners called them Styphon."

Styphon hesitated. What he had said already
was true: he was bound to follow Brasidas's orders no matter what,
but that was out of loyalty to his office and to the State, not his
person. Helot slaves were called dogs often enough by their
masters, and were treated as such, but slaves, too, served the
Spartan state rather than any one man.

Was that what Brasidas wanted: an Equal
reduced to Helot?

"Well?"

"Yes." Styphon forced the word out. This was
likely the best and only opportunity he would ever get to salvage
his name.

"Good," Brasidas said. "Now, dog, kneel at
my feet."

Lowering himself to the hard-packed dirt of
the courtyard floor, an act which prompted a chorus of jeers from
Brasidas' honor guard, watching from a distance, Styphon sat on his
haunches before the polemarch's bench.

"Good dog," Brasidas said. "Now let us talk
more of this witch. She was not ransomed."

"No, sir," Styphon offered when Brasidas,
purely by the length of his pause, granted him leave to speak. "She
was brought to Athens by their general Demosthenes. I saw her
myself at Piraeus, where she wore a slave's collar, but walked
freely. Later, Demosthenes came to me here asking questions about
her."

"
Demosthenes!
" Brasidas said, then
purged the name's taste from his tongue by gathering and spitting a
ball of phlegm into the dirt. "What did you tell him?"

"I said he should fear her. That she was a
whore and a liar and a curse who would lead him and his city to
ruin."

"Not bad," Brasidas conceded grudgingly.
"I'd bet my balls the witch is helping him. I dealt the coward a
killing blow at Amphipolis, and my blade stopped cold." His
intelligent eyes burned, his bloodless lips were tight. "Like
magic. The giant spindle-throwers that skewer men right through
their shields are witch's work, too, I guarantee it."

Not wishing to draw any share of the
general's obvious bitterness at the defeat onto himself, Styphon
remained silent. At length, Brasidas's calculating side reasserted
control and he gazed down at his kneeling dog.

"Now it is my turn to tell a story," he
said. "Being privy to the goings-on in the Gerousia," Brasidas
began, looking down his beak at Styphon, "I had occasion to hear of
a certain message sent to our Elders last winter by the leaders of
an Arkadian village near Bassai. I recall it because of the
strangeness of its contents, which I laughed at then, but no
longer. The letter, carried urgently by horse, pleaded that a
detachment of Spartan troops be sent to purge their woods of a
deadly presence.

"The presence was that of a female, the
letter claimed, who had shown up in their town a day earlier with
severe wounds. They described her as white-armed–the one arm she
possessed, at any rate–with hair as snow. Somehow or other, an...
altercation developed involving this female, ending in the deaths
of six men. A force of locals gave chase, attempting to kill or
subdue her.

"All but one man was slain, and he who
escaped did not long survive his wounds. Before dying, he described
an encounter in which the already injured fugitive pressed her
attack even while absorbing fresh wounds that rightly should have
finished her. As you say of the sea-bitch, he described this woman
as possessing the strength of Herakles. That is when the village
leaders sent urgently to Sparta for aid."

Brasidas snorted. "Now, understand that
hardly a month passes in which the Gerousia does not receive a
request for help in dealing with a centaur, a satyr, a serpent, a
minotaur, gorgons–even Kerberos, once. If the village-folk of our
peninsula were to be believed, we live in an age of monsters. Even
were there not a war to fight, such requests as this one from the
Arkadians would go ignored. It only springs to mind now for my
having come to this wretched city and heard tell of your sea-bitch
from Sphakteria. Arkadian sheep-lickers as witnesses are one thing,
thirty Equals another entirely." He raised a scarred brow. "Or just
one Equal, even if he is a 
dog
.

"I cannot say how the tale from Arkadia
ends. Perhaps this woman evaded them and fled. The village still
exists, for I rather think we would have heard of its destruction,
and so it would seem that whatever occurred next, there was no
further slaughter."

Brasidas gave his kneeling dog a look of
impatience, unwarranted since the copious words were flowing down,
not up. "So if you fail to grasp it, dog," he concluded, leaning
forward to set chin on hand, scarred elbow resting on bruised knee
just inches from Styphon's face, "what we have are two accounts of
extraordinary females, both occurring within the space of a month.
One goes to Athens where she helps a coward win battles, the other
vanishes in the woods of Arkadia."

Brasidas raised his right hand, its little
finger twisted from some long-ago injury, to tap Styphon's
forehead.

"So let me ask you this," he said in time
with the taps. "Did your sea-bitch mention having any friends?"

"No," Styphon answered. "Not that I can
recall, at least."

Brasidas's reaction to his dog's memory
lapse was surprisingly gentle, just a slight increase in the depth
of disgust in his sneer. He sighed, settling back on his bench.
"Nevertheless. There is enough evidence, in my mind, that in this
one case, at least, the sheep-lickers might not be wrong, and
Hellas may be stricken with a plague of witches. Since you're the
only one among us to have shared words with one, in addition to
being my dog, you can be my..." He snickered and finished, "witch
expert!"

In the polemarch's eyes shone the excited
gleam of a deposed king dreaming up his return to the throne.

"The minute we are free of this place, which
will be 
soon
," he declared defiantly, "you and I will
go to Bassai. If we can find her, and if this snow-haired
woman-thing is capable of reason... we will convince her to fight
for Sparta."

In Athens, after Demosthenes endured the
usual pomp of a general returning in triumph, there was Eurydike to
deal with. He could not forget, nor did he want to, what he now
knew of her and how she had come to Athens from her homeland. His
heart fell and appetite fled for hours every time his mind conjured
up, usually of its own accord, visions of the Thracian's young
self, green eyes wild with anguish as her raped and ravaged
sibling's half-dead body was ripped from tattooed arms and tossed
into a gorge, worthless, a used-up, discarded item, food for
beasts.

How had she carried on after that? His
frequent term of endearment for Eurydike was 
bright
eyes
, but how was there any brightness left in them?

He did not even know her real name.

Eurydike raced out to meet him, and he
greeted her with the usual warmth, or perhaps more. They went
inside, and before long (once Thalassia knowingly excused herself)
fell to fucking by the hearth. In the days which followed, his new
perception of Eurydike was ever-present at the back of his
thoughts, but since it was always easier to say nothing than to say
something, he chose nothing.

He continued thus until the morning of the
fourth day after his return, the day on which he was slated to pay
a visit to the wife-candidate which the two women of his household
would see added to their number. Even then, he said nothing
directly.

Usually the mood in the bath chamber behind
the megaron was light, but today when Eurydike had slipped pale and
naked into the water beside him, he spoke to her earnestly. "I
would have expected you to be upset at the idea I might marry," he
said. "Yet you do not seem bothered."

Her freckled features twisted in
consternation. "You think I only think of myself?"

"Hardly. But you must admit, in the past you
have been less than eager to see me wed. And no one could blame
you."

Eurydike took up a square of Thalassia's
olive oil soap and began lathering his skin. "That's your own
fault. You let me think a wife had to be one of those pasty,
hollow-eyed little ghost girls you see in the agora, who can barely
balance the babies in their bellies. Laonome's different. I liked
her long before Thalassia ever brought up that you could marry
her."

"So you approve?"

Eurydike's green eyes glazed like the tiny
soap bubbles into which she stared. "Laonome says she wouldn't make
you get rid of me, and I believe her."

Suddenly, almost angrily, Demosthenes
grabbed her arm, surprising her enough that her instinct was to
jerk away. But she fell still, and her emerald eyes were
expectant.

"I will never get rid of you for anyone," he
said. His lips hugged close around every word, and he meant them.
He was, in effect, chastising her.

Then he softened, determining in that moment
that this would be the day, the time, when he revealed what he knew
of her past.

But not yet. There was a secret of his own
that he could reveal first.

Seated, with water lapping at the purple
bruise under his ribs, he pulled Eurydike's naked body against him.
"Maybe you guessed this," he said, "but I never told you. Seasons
ago I put you in my will. If anything should happen to me, you will
have enough to live out your days, assuming you are wiser with
money than you pretend to be. No wife, no heir will change that.
You are not a piece of property to be disposed of. Even while you
wear that collar, you are... free here. Do you understand?"