Sword of Apollo (4 page)

“Thebes is that way!” blurted Mula in Persian, pointing in the direction of Plataea. “We are Theban. We can show you the way over the river and through the forest. Over the stone bridge that spans the Asopus!”

“So you speak my tongue?” said the Persian, peering in the direction that Mula pointed. “Good, very good. You'll lead us there when we're done.”

“The boy—he is right,” said Nikias in halting Persian, bobbing his head deferentially. “Follow us now, Anusiya. We take you to Thebes.”

“Come with us,” said Mula. “We show the way to the bridge. Very dangerous spot here. Plataean scouts come, maybe.”

“No good for making like the bull with us now,” said Nikias, affecting a dumb laugh.

The Persian envoy looked Nikias up and down. He scratched his beard and squinted toward Plataea with his obviously defective eyes.

“Anusiya,” said one of the Medians. “We should wait here for the guide.”

“Silence!” erupted the Persian, holding up his right hand imperiously. He put his face close to Nikias's again and asked abruptly, “What is your age?”

“I have twenty years and six months,” answered Nikias.

“Have you been in battle? I've been admiring the many scars on your body.” The Persian put his hand on a scar that ran across Nikias's left pectoral and held it there, then looked up into Nikias's eyes.

Nikias glanced down at the Persian's hand on his chest and saw that his nails were painted with gold. “Yes, Lord,” he said. “I have been to war against the Plataean sheep-stuffers. I kill many Plataeans.”

“Can you fight the pankration?” observed the Persian. “I hear this region is famous for breeding pankrators.”

“Oh, no,” said Nikias sheepishly. “I only punch my grandfather's cows when they disobey.”

“Ha!” said the Persian. “I like you, lad. I hope that you will come and visit me when I'm ensconced at my residence in Thebes. I will buy you a pretty tunic and a belt.”

“I would be honored,” said Nikias, affecting a demure tone. “And happy to show my thanks in other ways.”

The Persian put his hand on Nikias's shoulder and nodded his head. “A well-built lad. I like this one,” he added, as if speaking to an invisible peer standing by his side. “If this is what Thebans are made of, I'm going to like living in this country for a while.”

He patted Nikias on the cheek, then turned and walked briskly to his horse, mounting it with agility. Once he was seated and his scabbard and the various pouches and bags upon his person were arranged just so, he gestured with a flick of his wrist at Nikias. “Lead the way.”

Nikias pulled on the cow's rope and started walking quickly down the hill with Mula at his heels. The bull snorted and lurched forward, sidling up to the female and rubbing his nose on her neck, keeping pace.

“Don't say anything else,” Nikias whispered to Mula, taking a sidelong glance at the Persian and his bodyguard riding close behind. “We're going to walk these goat-rapers right up to the gates of Plataea.”

“Yes, young master,” said Mula, and stifled a giggle.

“Quick thinking back there,” said Nikias.

“Thank you,” replied Mula, beaming.

Nikias stole another glance over his shoulder—the Medians had fanned out behind and were looking about warily as they rode. But the Persian trotted off to the side, seemingly oblivious to any danger, picking something from between his front teeth with a gilded finger.

When he was young Nikias had been told that Persian boys were taught only three things: riding, shooting, and telling the truth. Fortunately, he mused, they had not been given lessons in reading maps as well. “The hubris of the Persians,” thought Nikias, “is unbounded.” Had they learned nothing from their crushing defeats in Greece? At one time the Persians had controlled all of the Greek city-states in Ionia, but then those people rebelled, incurring the wrath of the Persian kings. But the Persians had lost all of their Greek vassal states, and their invasions of Attika and the Oxlands had utterly failed.

“Have you ever heard of Arshaka the Eye Snatcher?” queried the Persian, catching Nikias's eye and trotting up beside him.

“Of course,” replied Nikias. “A famous pankrator who died here during the big war. He was killed by Menesarkus of Plataea.”

“The Bull of Plataea,” said the Persian with a mocking tone. “I heard he cheated in his bout with the great Arshaka,” he added with disdain. “A tiny blade hidden in his fist. He slit the artery in Arshaka's neck.”

Nikias bristled. This was a lie. He had heard the true story of the fight many times from his grandfather, sitting by the hearth in their farmhouse during the rainy season. Fifty years ago Menesarkus had been sixteen years old and an Olympic fighter in training. He'd been chosen by the Greeks to fight the Persian Arshaka in a combat of heroes to precede the commencement of the battle: a fight to the death. Menesarkus had not been chosen for his abilities as a fighter, however. Rather, he had been selected as a sacrificial offering to Ares—the god of war—and a means to put fire in the blood of the Greeks. Nobody had expected the sparsely bearded lad to actually defeat the terrifying Arshaka.

“The story that I heard,” said Nikias, “was that Menesarkus surprised Arshaka by breaking his knee, and then put him in the Morpheus hold.”

“What is the Morpheus hold?” asked the Persian, with an indifferent air.

Nikias smiled. “Morpheus is the god of sleep. The pankrator wraps his arm around his opponent's throat and cuts off the blood to his brain. If he holds him long enough, then he sleeps forever.”

“We call that move ‘Azi,'” explained the Persian. “The Snake.”

“A better name, Anusiya,” said Nikias with deference.

“Too bad this Menesarkus is dead.”

“He yet lives,” replied Nikias.

“In truth?” asked the Persian, impressed. “He must be ancient.”

“The men of the Oxlands live long. A citizen of Plataea or Thebes must bear a shield until they are in their seventies. That is the law.”

“Hardy men. When Plataea has fallen, I will send Menesarkus back to Persia as a gift for Artaxerxes. He can fight for the king's amusement until he is dead. Or perhaps the king will skin him alive and bury him in a pit of insects.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth and grinned. “That's the sound the bugs make as they nip at the flesh. There are worse ways to die, though. I've also seen men forced to eat themselves alive, starting with their own cocks and then—”

“Then we are to invade Plataea again?” asked Nikias, mustering a false tone of enthusiasm. “Does the great Artaxerxes send men to aid Thebes in our war?”

The Persian smiled and patted his dispatch bag. “I bring important words. And sometimes words are much more powerful than men and swords.”

They walked for a quarter of a mile without incident. But as they approached the stone bridge spanning the swiftly flowing Asopus River, Nikias heard a distant voice calling out anxiously from behind:

“You're going the wrong way!”

Nikias snapped his head around and saw a horseman galloping toward them, waving one hand wildly, calling out in Greek.

“Come back!”

“What's this fool of a Tanagraean about?” asked the Persian, turning his horse around. The Medians turned their horses, too, with their backs away from Nikias and the bridge.

“Give me your dagger,” Nikias commanded Mula in a harsh whisper. Mula always wore a thin blade on his belt—a gift that Nikias had given him. It was a weapon that had been crafted by a clever smith named Chusor who had once lived in Plataea. Mula slipped him the dagger and Nikias held it behind his back. “Now run, boy. Run all the way back to the city gates. Don't stop.”

Mula nodded obediently, but the anguished look on his face said that he did not want to leave.

“Now,” hissed Nikias.

 

FOUR

Mula dashed over the bridge and sprinted across the ground as fast as a hound, vanishing from sight in the tall grass. Nikias looked back toward the approaching Tanagraean rider, who was almost on them.

Nikias's grandfather had told him when he was a boy never to be captured by the enemy. “Slit the artery in your neck,” he'd said. “Death will come swiftly.” He clutched the dagger and felt that vein throbbing in his neck.

“Come on, girl,” he said to the cow. He quickly turned her around—with the enraptured bull still glued to her side—so that both animals now faced the Persian and his riders. He dropped the rope and slunk back so that he stood next to Asterion's rump. The flies buzzed round the bull's arse, and he swished his tail with irritation.

The Tanagraean guide charged up to the other riders and slid awkwardly off his horse. He shot a glance at the bridge and scowled at Nikias. The man's face was ashen and covered with sweat, and even from fifty paces away Nikias could see that the Tanagraean was very ill. Nikias recognized him at once. He'd met him at the gates of Tanagra two and a half years ago: a guardsman with sly eyes who'd recalled how Nikias had fought his brother in a pankration tournament and broken his arm. Sly Eyes shambled over to the Persian and bowed clumsily.

“Anusiya,” said Sly Eyes. “Forgive me. I had to stop. My bowels … I am not well. But you are going the wrong way. That man there is a Plataean”—he pointed at Nikias with a trembling finger. “He is leading you to the enemy citadel.”

The Persian turned and squinted at Nikias with astonishment. “A what? A
Plataean
, you say?”

The Medians turned their horses back to face Nikias. Two of them drew their swords while the others adjusted their spears.

“His name is Nikias,” said Sly Eyes. “Heir to the Arkon of Plataea. We must bring him back to Thebes. Which is that way,” he added, shooting his arm northward with an exaggerated expression. “There's a Theban guard tower a mile from here.”

Nikias gripped the dagger. The flies swarming on Asterion's back buzzed in his ear, and the bull's tail swished gently across his face.

“I'm not going to
bring
him anywhere,” the Persian said slowly, his face twisting with rage. “I'm going to cut him open and hang him by his own guts here and now. Take him!” he shouted at the Medians.

The riders charged, weapons lowered for the kill.

Nikias plunged the dagger into the thick hide of Asterion's haunch. The animal reacted to the stabbing pain as though he had been struck by a lightning bolt. He bellowed and sprang forward with his head lowered. He gored the lead rider's horse in the chest and lifted it off its front legs with a single motion, such was the strength of that beast when powered by a red rage. The horse and rider flipped over in a backward somersault, crashing into another rider.

The other horses reared and neighed with terror.

But Asterion did not stop. He plunged ahead, spearing one of the fallen riders through the head, his horn passing through the warrior's skull with the ease of a sharp skewer passing through a piece of cheese. Without hesitating, he attacked another horse, plunging his horns deep into the animal's side, sending the rider tumbling. The bull shook himself loose and charged another, breaking the horse's forelegs as though they were nothing more than dry sticks.

An arrow struck Asterion in the neck. But this did not slow his progress. He roared with an unearthly sound and ran at the Median who'd just shot him, bowling over the warrior's horse before he could unleash a second arrow. The moment the Median hit the ground, the bull impaled the fallen rider on his bloody horns, flipping him into the air like a clay doll.

Nikias watched in awe at this killing storm he had unleashed. It was like a whirlwind made of muscle and horn. Three of the Medians were down. The three remaining horsemen did their best to stay out of the bull's way, trying to spear the beast. But Asterion was faster than a cat, bucking and leaping, kicking out with his back legs and twisting his gigantic head this way and that. He leapt upon the back of a horse as though to rape it, slamming his terrible horns through the rider's back and out the other side of his torso.

“Do something!” the Persian cried to the Tanagraean. His frightened horse danced in a circle on the outskirts of the melee. He threw his spear at the bull, but his aim was poor and made worse by his rearing horse, and his weapon passed through the breast of one of his own men, killing him.

“Anusiya!” yelled Sly Eyes. He had remounted in the confusion and had ridden an arrow shot away. “Come this way!”

The bull flipped another horse onto its back as Nikias ran past. He sprinted straight for the Persian, leaping up and knocking the warrior off his horse. Nikias landed hard on top of him, slamming his forehead onto the Persian's nose with the force of a hammer blow. The Persian gasped and clutched his face, blood spurting through his hands. Nikias kicked him in the side, then rolled the stunned and gasping Persian onto his stomach. He grabbed the warrior's left ankle and sliced clean through the tendon. The Persian let forth an animal shriek and squirmed to free himself.

“Stay!” ordered Nikias, his voice harsh and full of command. He was no longer playing the deferential farmer—he was a hardened warrior, a reaper of men. “Stay, or I'll cut your other tendon and you'll never walk again.” He stood over the Persian, brandishing the bloody dagger.

He looked to the right. He saw the Persian's horse bolting across the grass, hard on the heels of the Tanagraean now riding toward Thebes. Sly Eyes held a hunting horn to his lips and blew forth a call as he rode. The sound continued to blare even after he had crested a hill and disappeared over the other side.

Nikias snapped his head toward the bridge. He saw dead horses and men on the ground. A horse with two broken legs was struggling to roll over. Another fallen Median had managed to stay on his mount, but he had taken flight, galloping along the river with the rampaging bull pounding the turf behind him. Only one Median was still moving: a warrior on his knees amongst the carnage of horses and men, clutching a wound to his abdomen, looking about with a dazed expression.