Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (24 page)

Thalassia met the verdict with indifference,
and her ship designs went otherwise unseen.

The winter solstice came and went, and so
did Athens' plethora of festivals large and small. At one of them,
the Lenaea, the poet Aristophanes entered into competition a comedy
which skewered Kleon while portraying in a rather flattering light
a character by the name of Demosthenes. The poet himself played the
demagogue, the powerful and popular object of his ridicule, and
thus well earned, if for that brave act alone, the first prize
which the jury awarded him.

In the month of Elaphabolion the sun was
eclipsed, and soon after an earthquake struck the coast, causing
the sea to rise and swallow the land bridge connecting Euboea to
the mainland, making of it an island. Thalassia had forewarned her
two partners of both events, rather needlessly, since neither
entertained any doubts when it came to her knowledge of future
events. Apart from such occasional oracles as these, and the
semi-regular meetings of the three conspirators in Alkibiades'
garden, Thalassia might well have been no more than the domestic
slave she seemed to outsiders, and even seemed to Eurydike, who was
kept in the dark about her friend's true nature.

Given the deception, it seemed only logical
that Thalassia avoid bringing public attention upon herself.
Demosthenes, at least, saw the logic in this, and so was less than
pleased on learning that Alkibiades, having scoured Athens for an
artist willing to sculpt an unclad female form in life-size, had
commissioned a man by the name of Kallimachus to produce a statue
for his garden of Thalassia as a nude Pandora, with box in hand.
Upon its completion and proud display in front of Alkibiades home,
the city was divided on the work, with many thinking it
distasteful, just as many more a masterpiece. In either case, fame
came quickly to Kallimachus, who found himself deluged with
commissions, and to Pandora herself, whose body became sought after
by scores of young men who lined up at Alkibiades' gate, clutching
their chisels.

Some were actually sculptors.

"Should Eden come to Athens, or if she is
already here, you are making it rather easy for her to find you,"
Demosthenes warned, and his words went ignored.

None who viewed the marble Pandora suspected
that the woman who was its model possessed also a mind and
abilities far exceeding her beauty. With Alkibiades as her tutor on
horsemanship, Thalassia became as skillful a rider as any member of
the citizen cavalry. Or perhaps she only humored her playmate by
pretending to let him teach her. Hardly a month after learning to
ride, she became the instructor, training her two partners in the
use of improved riding tack which, once one grew accustomed to it,
offered all the advantages she promised. Here was a being of more
wiles and travels than Odysseus, Demosthenes thought, a woman whom
he had no doubt could, if she so desired, single-handedly bring
cities to their knees, just as she claimed. Instead, she designed
ships and saddles, shopped and laughed with Eurydike, posed for
statues, and tutored a kidnapped Spartan girl. Demosthenes did not
understand her, not because she was 
not
 human...
but the opposite.

The plan to track down and eliminate Eden
dissipated like smoke, leaving no trace of its passing. Alkibiades
had no inkling of her existence, of course, and for his part,
Demosthenes almost wished that Eden would appear and that the two
enemies would destroy each other. Thalassia never raised the
subject herself. Demosthenes suspected she was afraid, for Eden was
after all one of two beings in the world capable of killing her–or
worse, bringing her back to face Magdalen, the leader who had
already given her wayward servant one second chance too many.

They did not speak of Magdalen, either, but
Demosthenes conceived of her as some dark goddess of serpents from
the world below, like those deities whose altars ran black with the
dried blood of captives in tribal lands like Thessaly. He shuddered
to imagine what power Magdalen must have to set her above one such
as Thalassia, who walked this world of mortals as a
demigoddess.

With the snows came elections to the office
of strategoi, the only office of Athens not chosen by random lot in
order that those who led the city's armies be those deemed to be
most proficient at it. It was likewise the only annual office to be
filled before the summer solstice ushered in the new year, since
the city had learned in the early years of her democracy the folly
of replacing generals in the middle of the campaigning season
simply because that was when other offices changed hands.

Among the newly elected Board of Ten were
many of the usual faces: Nikias and his staunch old ally Laches;
the glowering plague survivor Thucydides, whose destiny was shortly
to be rewritten in his favor (no longer would he face exile for
failing to save Amphipolis); the pauper Lamachos. But it also
included, by a wide margin, both of the Heroes of Pylos:
Demosthenes and Kleon.

The frosty ground thawed, fields were
ploughed and sown again, and when the summer solstice came, the
annual eponymous archonship of Athens passed from Stratokles to a
sailmaker called Isarchos, whom Thalassia had named well in advance
of his randomly drawing the winning lot.

"Stop showing off," Demosthenes told her,
only half-joking. "We believe you."

***

Though Pylos yet seemed like yesterday,
suddenly Demosthenes looked back and found that a year had
passed.

It was a year lacking in the customary
invasion of Attica by a Peloponnesian army. Instead, the Spartans
sent an army of envoys looking to reach some accord by which the
hostages taken on Sphakteria might be returned to them. The effort
smelt of desperation, and the odor was pleasing to Kleon, whose
public following swelled and swelled as his increasingly warlike
rhetoric in the Assembly ensured that the Spartan heralds were
always sent packing back to Sparta empty-handed.

Thanks in part to Kleon's empty words, the
fickle democracy grew certain that victory was at hand. But their
hopes slammed hard into reality, for Fate yet had setbacks in store
for Athens. Her ordained instrument was the Spartan general
Brasidas, already a bright star rising among his people. The prior
summer, Brasidas had been a trierarch in the naval assault on the
beaches of Pylos, the first to run his ship aground in the failed
attempt to establish a foothold. Brasidas had been thrown back,
bleeding, long black hair and lambda-blazoned shield left bobbing
in the surf. In the thick of that battle, Demosthenes had not known
the man's identity, of course, but armed with it thereafter by an
all-knowing star-born oracle, he recalled the scene.

Every year of the war thus far, Athens had
invaded the territory of its western neighbor and perpetual enemy,
the Spartan ally Megara, and this year was to be no exception. But
this year, as Fate would have it, Brasidas happened to be passing
by Megara on his way north with a small army, and lent assistance
to the city. Demosthenes was fated to participate in the battle,
and he did so in ignorance, since Thalassia steadfastly refused to
tell him the outcome. And she was right to do so, it seemed in the
end, for had he gone to war with foreknowledge of failure, he
surely could not have made as good a showing for himself as he did,
being among the first to infiltrate the city and then later
smashing a band of Theban cavalry against its walls and killing its
leader.

A defeat was a defeat, but at least the
fault could not be laid at his feet.

It was not to be Athens' only defeat of the
year. The next one left a bitter taste. Rather than let him march
blindly into this next failure, as she had at Megara, Thalassia
came to him with counsel.

"Hippokrates might suggest that you join him
in an invasion of Boeotia," she said. "Do not become involved."

"He 
might?
" Demosthenes asked.
"Why the uncertainty?"

Her blunt answer was as much a surprise as
anything she had said in the year of their acquaintance. "Because
if he does not, then it may well have been your idea instead of
his, if not for my having occupied you with other plans."

He did not like to speak of his 'other
self,' the Demosthenes who would have lived a different life had
Thalassia not fallen into it.

Seeing his discomfort, she shrugged her
dismissal. "It doesn't matter now."

"No, tell me. What was to have occurred?

Sighing, she offered up knowledge forbidden
to mortal men. She explained how that other, blissfully ignorant
Demosthenes, after gathering allies from among his friends in the
northwest, would have landed at Siphae, on the west coast of
Boeotia, only to discover that one of those friends had betrayed
him. His intended diversionary attack beaten back by the forewarned
defenders, he would be forced to sail home, leaving his fellow
general Hippokrates to face the might of an enemy ready and waiting
for him at Delion to the east. Hippokrates and a thousand Athenians
would lose their lives, thanks in part to his failure.

After a few moments of stunned silence, the
more fortunate Demosthenes whispered, "We must stop it..."

"If you can, then do," Thalassia said, too
casually. "So long as you do not participate directly and get
yourself killed, I doubt it will affect our purpose."

Demosthenes knew he had little right to be
appalled by such talk, but he was. Too frequently, after her exile
from his home, he had found himself vocally at odds with Thalassia,
mostly on occasions when he knew full well the wiser choice would
be to walk away.  

Foolishly, he ranted, "How can you say it
does not affect us? A thousand men! You pledged to aid Athens."

Her pristine features flashed annoyance, as
they always did when he snapped at her. "Don't confuse a city with
its people."

"A city 
is
 its people!"

She dismissed him with a wave and a sneer.
"Have this debate with with Socrates sometime, up in the fucking
clouds. Meanwhile, down here, I can't protect every man, woman and
child of Athens. These are men who would have died anyway if I had
never come." Two fingers stabbed Demosthenes' chest, hard enough to
force him back. "And who knows, maybe without you there fucking up,
they won't die after all."

Demosthenes let her verbal attack land
uncontested, and thereafter managed more often to avoid argument
with her, if not avoid her altogether.

Weeks later, at a meeting of the Board of
Ten, over a table built from the planks of a decommissioned
trireme, Demosthenes first laid out the vital importance of
Amphipolis to Athens: its timber supplies, access to gold mines and
control of the lone bridge over the river Strymon. He noted that
Brasidas had spent the summer marching north with seven hundred
hoplites who were reported to be Helots serving in exchange for
their freedom, and even though the purported purpose of Brasidas's
march was to aid the Macedonian king Perdikkas against his enemies,
the Lynkesti, it begged the question: what could lead Sparta to
send one of her stars on such an errand except the expectation of
fair return? Surely Perdikkas, in gratitude, planned to provide
Brasidas with troops; and once in the region with such a force
assembled, what greater prize could Brasidas seek than
Amphipolis?

"And what would stop him from taking it?"
Demosthenes posed of his fellow strategoi.

"Thucydides is at Thasos and can sail to the
town's relief if needed," Lamachos grumbled.

And fail, and be sent into
exile!
 Demosthenes did not reply.

"It will not be enough!" he said instead,
and made what argument he could without insulting the absent
Thucydides. "If I am wrong," he finished, "and Brasidas does not
come, then I shall be well placed to punish the Macedonian king for
betraying us–twice now, by my count."

"Premature, premature," Kleon declared of
the plan with a ponderous shaking of his red cheeks. The
demagogue's assignment to the post of City Defender in this, his
first year of generalship, was ideally suited to his undoubted aim
of leveraging the office into more power to sway the very masses to
whom he shamelessly catered.

Nikias concurred with his arch-rival; Laches
followed, and the answer was sealed.

"It is just as well," Hippokrates said next.
"For I was hoping you might aid me, Demosthenes, in a venture I
have conceived. You have friends among our allies in the northwest,
do you not?"

The venture was as the star-born oracle had
ordained: a two-pronged invasion of Boeotia by land and sea, and
Demosthenes rebuffed it with a prepared list of reasons why the
actually quite reasonable-sounding idea was flawed. In the end, he
succeeded to a degree: Boeotia was to be a target of attack this
season, but using some other strategy to be determined at the
Board's next gathering.

On the way out, Demosthenes caught
gray-haired Nikias by the arm.

"I did not wish to say so in front of the
rest," he lied to the old man in a conspiratorial whisper, "but the
slave I took at Pylos is a servant of Isis and a keen reader of
omens. She predicted the eclipse of the sun last year, and the
earthquake which caused the sea to rise, and knew that Isarchos
would be archon. I do not want it to get out, lest she be labeled a
witch or an oracle and my house be swarmed with suppliants, but if
she says that Amphipolis is threatened, I cannot stand idle, do you
understand?"

The deep creases around superstitious
Nikias' lined mouth grew deeper still as he scowled, more in
consternation than disbelief, it appeared.

"Hagnon, your son, is there," Demosthenes
said, pressing a second line of attack without waiting to see if
the first had met with success. "Ask yourself: if Brasidas appeared
outside the walls of Amphipolis, absent defenders within, what
would Hagnon do to save the town he built with his own blood and
sweat?"