Sword of Apollo (16 page)

Nikias glanced into the cart and realized, with shock, that Phile was the one huddled there with the girls and not Kallisto, for his sister had slipped off the shawl from around her face and was staring back at him with a worried look.

“Where's Kallisto?” Nikias blurted out, craning his neck to peer around the other side of the cart, searching for his wife amongst the many faces of the refugees. “Why isn't she riding? And where's Grandmother?”

“Kallisto had to stay in Plataea,” said Phile. “She started to cramp and bleed. The baby would have died if she had come.”

The world seemed to tilt before Nikias's eyes. He had to suppress a wild urge to take off running back in the direction of Plataea. “How bad?” he asked.

“Grandmother is with her,” Phile said.

He gazed at the sleepy faces of his daughters in the cart, blinking at him from the folds of the scarves wrapped around their faces to protect them from the smoke. One of the girls started cry, “Mama!” and the other began to wail. Phile held her closer and made a shushing sound.

“Auntie is with you,” said Nikias in a quiet voice, walking beside the cart. “Don't worry, daughters.”

He took Saeed by the arm and led him off the road away from the others, but they continued moving, keeping pace with the wagon.

“What should we do?” asked Nikias.

Saeed chewed on his lip. “Close to six thousand men, you say?”

“Armored hoplites,” said Nikias. “And five hundred Spartans amongst them.”

Saeed cursed again. “Those of us at the front of the line could make a run for it,” he said at length. “The enemy would fall upon the stragglers. Some of us might make it.”

“The enemy controls all of Attika!” replied Nikias. “These Megarians and Dog Raiders will follow us all the way to the gates of Athens.”

“We can't let them fall upon us when we're spread out on the road,” said Saeed. “That would be the worst thing that could happen. That would be a slaughter. And we're too far past the Three Heads to retreat back there.”

“That wouldn't do any good,” said Nikias. “Everyone can't fit inside the fortress. And we can't go back to Plataea. There's a Theban army waiting on the other side of the pass by now.” He crossed his arms on his chest and ground his teeth with indignation. How had things fallen apart like this? The plan had been so beautiful. The smoke had worked perfectly. It was simply bad luck that the Megarians had been planning this attack on the Three Heads. The Plataeans had tried to escape from the Oxlands one day too late. He thought of Kallisto back in the citadel. He wondered if she was still alive or if she had already hemorrhaged and died. The thought brought him low.

The dog, Nestor, barked excitedly. Teleos and Ajax were feeding him hunks of meat, and the hound gobbled them happily, dancing around and wagging his tail, which made the boys laugh.

“What happened to Mula?” Saeed asked.

“We were attacked on the summit,” said Nikias. “Dog Raiders surprised us. Mula fled with Kolax.”

Saeed said, “He was with Kolax? Thank the Great God! Then there is hope for my son. Kolax is wily. And he loves Mula like a brother. He will protect him. That barbarian is the best archer I have ever seen.”

Nikias stopped dead. “Our women can shoot better than the men,” he said in a preoccupied voice, and glanced at his sister, who was now singing to the girls.

Saeed was puzzled. “What are you talking about, Nikias?”

“The Tower of Theseus,” said Nikias, naming the ancient and abandoned watchtower that stood a bowshot off the road, two miles south of the Three Heads. “We should be close.”

“It's just up ahead, I reckon,” replied Saeed.

“We must gather everyone there!” said Nikias as he ran over to Photine and mounted. “Come on, Saeed!”

“Where are you going?” asked Phile anxiously. “You're not leaving again, are you?”

“Let me come with you!” said Teleos.

“And me!” said Ajax.

“Both of you stay with the oxen,” said Nikias firmly. “You have an important duty.” He caught Phile's gaze. “Is your bow strung, Sister?”

“Yes, but—”

“I'll be back soon,” Nikias interrupted. Photine tossed her head as Saeed mounted his own steed. “You go north and round up the stragglers. I'm going to the front of the line to start leading everyone to the tower.”

Saeed nodded. They wheeled their horses about and charged down the side of the road in opposite directions, the dog chasing rowdily after Photine.

 

NINETEEN

“The Skythians are gone, Commander!”

Prince Arkilokus the Spartan stood on the narrow and rocky path leading to the fortress of the Three Heads, shaking his helmeted head in consternation. “How long?” he asked his subordinate—a winsome, narrow-hipped, and broad-shouldered youth by the name of Hippios.

“No more than two hours. At least by the looks of the embers of their fires. They left them burning in their haste to depart.”

Arkilokus stared at the twenty-foot-tall bastions that appeared and reappeared before his eyes like a phantom fortress in the smoky haze. The gray limestone-block walls were thick with scaling ladders. His army had waited outside the walls for over an hour before venturing to attack, only to make this mystifying and anticlimactic discovery. The Megarian warriors who'd climbed the ladders stood languidly on the tops of the battlements, more than one of them pissing over the edge. Above the nearest guard tower Arkilokus could just make out the circle of the sun shining dimly behind the forest fire's smoke.

He looked over his shoulder at the thousands of men milling about in disarray on the slope behind him—the force of Megarians and Dog Raiders that King Arkidamos had cobbled together for this raid. The prince's own five hundred Spartiates stood off to the side in a neat phalanx, as still as statues, their faces glistening with sweat from their fast march up the steep hill to the small plateau where the fortress stood, guarding the entrance to the pass. His men were full-blooded Spartiates and not this other rabble.

“The king will be happy,” said Hippios, and suppressed a cough.

Arkilokus took off his helm to reveal his head of sandy-colored hair and grim but handsome face. The smoke had blackened the area around his gray eyes and mouth where his skin had been exposed by the mask's horizontal and vertical slits. “Yes,” he replied distantly. The king, Arkilokus's great-uncle, would indeed be pleased with how easily this had all come about. The Three Heads was an important piece of territory in the coming siege against the Plataeans. With the fort taken, the citizens of that city would be trapped in the Oxlands with no hope of escape over the mountains. But there was a nagging voice in the prince's head telling him that something was wrong. “How had the Skythians been warned?” he wondered aloud. And thought to himself, “And where have the barbarians gone?”

He started moving with his stiff-legged gait, a jerking walk that was the result of an injury he had suffered in a fall from a horse outside the walls of Plataea more than two years ago—a fall that had resulted in his capture by the enemy. For a time he had been paralyzed from the neck down. At first he'd thought that he would never walk again, but then the sensation in his limbs returned. He was kept in Menesarkus's own house and tended by the women of his family. Including the ravishing teenager, Kallisto. He was released after a brief imprisonment … traded for Nikias—the Plataean whom Arkilokus resembled as though he were an older brother.

“My
cousin
,” he mused, and rubbed the stump of his missing ring finger on his right hand—the finger Menesarkus had cut off when he threatened to kill him when the exchange with Nikias started to go bad. Now he and the Plataean not only shared their looks: they both had the same mutilated sword hands. A warrior with a missing digit or even a limb was given great respect because that man had given his flesh for Sparta. But a Spartan baby that was born with the tiniest flaw would be thrown off a cliff after birth: no defects were tolerated in Spartan newborns.

“A paradox fit for an Athenian philosopher,” Arkilokus mused.

He moved through the open doorway of the fort's only gate and entered the inner courtyard. There were the remains of smoldering fires here and there, and heaps of garbage. Some of the Megarians who had scaled the walls were picking through the debris left behind by the barbarians, searching for prizes. The place stank.

“Skythians,” muttered Hippios with disdain.

“We'll leave five hundred Megarians to man the fort,” said Arkilokus. “All of their archers will remain here.”

“The Dog Raiders will protest,” said Hippios. “I've heard them grumbling about who would take control once the Three Heads was captured.”

Arkilokus smiled wryly. “Do you think I care what a pack of whining mountain marauders have to say?”

“No, my prince.”

Arkilokus put his hand on Hippios's shoulder and smiled. “We captured a fortress,” he said. “It doesn't matter if the enemy was not here to defend it. This is a good day. We'll celebrate tonight, you and I, when we're back at the king's camp.” He thought back to the night before in his private campaign tent and the extremely satisfying bout of love play with the acrobatic and enthusiastic Hippios. Perhaps this evening he would invite that dashing Korinthian emissary he had met at the king's feast to join them.

“Don't touch that!” warned Arkilokus, for Hippios was reaching for a sword sticking from a pile of arms and armor that the Skythians had left behind. Hippios withdrew his hand as if it had been stung.

“Skythians leave poisoned traps,” said Arkilokus. “Now, I'm going to take a walk around the walls. Find the Megarian commander and tell him to choose his men who will remain behind.”

He exited the fortress and made a circuit around the outside of the walls. The bastions were well made—a knifepoint wouldn't fit between any of the well-cut rectangular blocks. He stood on the southernmost promontory of the little plateau on which the fortress sat, gazing in the direction of Athens, which lay over the rugged hills beyond, twenty miles or more as the raven flew—but the landscape was completely obscured by the smoke. The forest fire had died down on the mountains, but not before burning down nearly the entire northern slope, and part of the southern side as well. Because of the prevailing wind, the forest near the Three Heads had been spared.

He wondered why Menesarkus had set the fire. The obvious answer was so that the king's army could not use the timber to construct siege towers or a countervailing wall. The forest fire was a clever albeit destructive plan. Now they would have to haul trees from the southern side of the mountain—a great labor that would take much longer than had been planned. But that was what Helot slaves were for.

If the girl Kallisto survived the coming siege, he mused, he was going to take her back to Sparta as his own prize—like Akilles and the beauty Briseis. She would make an excellent breeder for him, for she was as fine a specimen of womanhood as he had ever seen. She would produce good children.

He walked down the steep slope, lost in thought, and found himself on the roadway. He spotted something lying there and froze. Was it a body? He drew his sword and approached it warily, then smiled when he realized that it was just a sack. He poked it with his sword's tip, cutting it open, and some things spilled out: a child's clothing and a clay doll. He picked through the bag and found other things—a mirror, a brush, and some sandals.

He made his way down the road a few hundred paces, scrutinizing the ground. When his army had crossed the road earlier, they rushed across it in great haste. But now he noticed signs that made his heart start beating faster. There were animal droppings, and other things—a crust of fresh bread. And cart wheel ruts dug into the side of the road, as if a huge number of people had passed this way—a throng that marched right past the base of the Three Heads several hours ago in the direction of Athens.

The skin on his neck prickled with excitement.

And then … an agonized scream erupted from the fort.

“Hades's hot prick!” he barked, thinking that the Dog Raiders had started fighting with the Megarian warriors. He sprinted back up the hill, around the wall, and to the gate, pushing his way through the crowd of men milling about the entrance to the fortress. Then he saw a sight that made his blood run cold, for lying on the ground, squirming spasmodically, was Hippios. The young warrior stared back at Arkilokus with terrified eyes—eyes that wept blood.

“Hippios!” he cried.

“He stepped in a hole,” said the Megarian commander standing over him. “And then started to scream.”

One of the Dog Raiders knelt by the hole in question. “Old trick,” he said indifferently. “The hole is covered with straw. And a poisoned arrowhead embedded at the bottom to pierce through the sandal.”

Hippios raised his hand beseechingly at Arkilokus and let forth an animal shriek with his tongue sticking from his red lips. His body convulsed violently and his jaws snapped together, biting off the tip of his own tongue.

Arkilokus knew there was no cure for the poison of the Skythians. Hippios would die only after his body had drained itself of blood through every orifice. He reached for his sword handle, fumbling for the hilt. When he found it, he clutched it firmly with his four remaining fingers and drew it, stepping forward and slicing clean through Hippios's neck with a powerful stroke.

The prince focused on his duties to prevent himself from going mad with rage. First he sent a Spartiate messenger on horseback to the king's camp at Aigosthena with news of the capture of the Three Heads along with a message: that he believed the Plataeans were on the march toward Athens. He didn't dare suggest that the king send horseman to head off the Plataeans in Attika. He would never presume to make suggestions to a monarch. He hoped, however, that the canny king would issue just such an order. After the messenger departed, he ordered four of his men to bear Hippios's remains back to the camp—warriors who bore the head and body on the fallen man's shield. Finally, he commanded the hundred Dog Raiders—the only mounted men in this small army other than his Spartiate and Megarian messengers—to ride down the road, scout out the situation and then report back.