Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (25 page)

Suggesting to any man that his son would
yield to the enemy without a fight was a move that risked offense,
but he trusted in Nikias' reputation for fair-minded analysis to
bring him to the proper conclusion.

Nikias gave no quick answer, but there were
signs of deep thought underway behind his sharp eyes. Demosthenes
affectionately clasped his shoulder.

"Think on it, friend," he said. "I ask only
for two hundred of the citizen cavalry and a hundred volunteers who
can shoot a bow. I will raise the infantry myself in Thrace. It
seems to me there is little to lose by sending me, and much to
gain."

Whether it was fear of omens or knowledge of
his son's character which changed his mind, at the next convocation
of the Board, Nikias proposed that Demosthenes, son of Alkisthenes
of the deme of Thria, be dispatched, along with the meager force he
requested, to Amphipolis. Nikias' allies concurred, the nominated
general accepted, and the motion was carried. And so, at the time
when men and women with tall rakes combed the branches of olive
trees so that the fruit fell into the sailcloths spread on the
ground below, marking Athens' first fully successful olive harvest
in eight summers of siege, one of her generals set sail in defiance
of Fate.

END OF PART II

Pyanepsion in the archonship of Isarchos
 (October 424 BCE)

He missed Athens less than usual, enjoying
his time alone in the tiny but lively town on the Thracian side of
the serpentine Strymon.  Athenians, even Greeks, were a
minority in Amphipolis; its population was mostly local, which
perhaps explained why this colony yet existed on the same spot
where all attempts before it had been quickly laid waste by one
Thracian tribe or another.  

There were no signs of such tension here.
 Green-eyed vendors barked a mix of Greek and Thracian from
their stalls, women hoisted laden baskets on tattooed arms, and
children both black-haired and red darted in and out of alleys
waging mock battles.  The war between Amphipolis' mother city
Athens and her perpetual foe Sparta, burning hotly to the south and
west, had not since its earliest days sent a spark sailing in this
direction.

For that reason it was unsurprising that the
residents would be less than thrilled to have an Athenian general
suddenly appear, build a barracks at the foot of their quaint
acropolis with its single stone sanctuary of Apollo, and commence
raising an army from among nearby Greek allies and the Thracian
tribes to the north.  Even Nikias' son Hagnon, the colony's
founder and still its 'first among equals,' radiated an aura of
indifference to the struggle into which his town had been dragged,
even if he gave proper lip service where was concerned his
allegiance to his home city.  

Having now met Hagnon, Demosthenes knew that
he would indeed throw the gates open to Brasidas to spare his
people from slaughter.  Amphipolis would agree with the
choice, and rightly thank him for it.  The men and women who
walked the streets around Demosthenes this chilly afternoon,
shopping and hawking and fetching water from the spring, did not
much care whether the men who ran the day-to-day affairs of their
town gave nominal allegiance to Athens or Sparta.  

Their indifference caused Demosthenes no
annoyance.  He envied them, in fact, and spent as much time as
he could just walking aimlessly among them, trying to absorb some
of whatever made them happy, sometimes halfway succeeding.

At present, his walk was not aimless.
 It took him beyond the city walls and down the wide,
straight, unpaved path down to the town's little port on the
Strymon.  He arrived early and sat on the sandy slope above
the jetties, looking down on the black water sliding lazily toward
the sea, for about an hour until the ships appeared.  This
morning a messenger had ridden north from Eion, on the coast,
bearing word of the three sleek triremes' appearance at the river's
estuary.  There the ships had furled their sails, stowed masts
and dropped oars to push upriver.  Now they were here,
churning the Strymon's dark, placid surface in difficult maneuvers
which the Athenian crews made look easy, pointing their curved
prows toward the shallows.  Demosthenes stood and watched them
come, searching among the standing figures on the decks.

It was but seconds before his eyes found the
one he sought: Alkibiades waved madly at the sandy-haired,
blue-cloaked figure waiting for him on shore.  Demosthenes
raised his hand in return.  As he did, his gaze fell to the
youth's left, where a second familiar figure stood, hooded and
cloaked in a gray chlamys for which she had no earthly need, since
the limbs it concealed suffered not even from extremes of cold.
 Thalassia looked back at him, her expression indiscernible at
this distance.  Why had she come?  He searched for sign
of Eurydike, too, but found none.

The ships' drafts scraped gravel, stone
anchors were thrown, Amphipolitan portsmen caught thick, tarred
ropes and secured them to deep-driven mooring posts, and gangplanks
were dropped.  Alkibiades was among the first to set foot on
shore, carrying an unwieldy wooden cross half his own height.
 Demosthenes went to meet him, and they embraced, while
nimble, cloaked Thalassia descended the gangplank as though her
soles never touched it.  In similar fashion she glided over
the pebbles and came to stand at her playmate's shoulder.
 Demosthenes met her pale eyes and returned the nod and the
paler smile that she offered.  Hers was not an unwelcome
presence in Amphipolis, but neither was it one he felt compelled to
receive warmly.  They had fallen to hardly speaking in the
last year, and to be sure, he had not missed Thalassia.  He
felt that way not on account of her personality, which apart from a
tendency to fly into anger without warning was not all that
unpleasant a thing.  Well, there was her arrogance, but that
was common enough in the circles he traveled.  No, Thalassia
was unwelcome for what she represented: the encroachment of dark,
barely comprehensible forces upon what until now had been his
remote, pastoral Thracian sanctuary.

He had spent a month in the clear, fresh air
of reality, away from the intoxicating vapor of her madness, and
here it was again, caught up with him in a fragrant, beautiful
cloud.

Alkibiades raised the gastraphetes he had
set down to offer greeting and stood the device in the sand on its
tau-shaped, leather covered butt-end.  Its wide, curved arms
jutted out an arm's length to either side.  

“Fifty belly-bows,” Alkibiades said with a
grin, announcing the ships' cargo.  “Plus thirty more men to
train at using them and eight hundred skewers ready to taste
Spartan meat.”

 “Well done.”  Demosthenes spoke
dully, but the sentiment was genuine.  This shipment brought
the total number of belly-bows with which they would meet Brasidas
to one hundred.  The number of volunteers to train in the
weapons' use, men from both Athens and Thrace who had proven their
ability with bow or javelin, was even greater.

Looking down at the fencepost-like weapon
with its metal rails and catches and currently unstrung crosswise
bowstave, Alkibiades lamented, “I've not yet had the chance to play
with one.  What say we let off a few shots?”

“Let me gather the new volunteers and see to
the unloading first.  Then we will go to the range.”

“No need,” Alkibiades returned.  He
hefted the unloaded weapon and leveled it at Thalassia.
 “Star-girl, care to act as target?”

“Try it and see,” she answered coldly.

“Bah!” Alkibiades lowered the bow.
 “You are so lucky you got to run her through, Demosthenes.
 I'd love to have seen that!”  He added quickly to
Thalassia, “No offense.”

She answered with a facial tick that left
ambiguous whether offense had been taken.  To one who could
read her, as well as one so alien could be read, it was apparent:
she was in a mood.  Demosthenes wondered if he was the cause,
but only wondered for a moment before accepting it for a
certainty.

When he had rounded up the thirty men and
given instructions to the sailors on the unloading and removal of
the cargo, he joined his two fellow conspirators for the walk to
Amphipolis.

“What news is there?” he asked either of
them, but really Alkibiades; he had not yet fully reconciled
himself to the other's presence.  Though he declined to
specify, there was really only one bit of news from home in which
he was interested.

Knowing that or not, Alkibiades addressed
it:  “Defeat and six hundred dead at Delion.”

The blow landed softly.  Some restless
nights of worry had prepared Demosthenes for worse.  “And
Hippokrates?”

“Among the living.  But Thucydides may
yet face exile for his part in the failure.”

That news provided more of a chill, evidence
that perhaps a determined Fate could fight back after all.

In silence but for some idle chatter from
Alkibiades, the trio walked at the head of the band of eager,
laughing recruits to the barracks complex at the town's eastern
edge, just inside its limestone wall.  There, in the shadow of
the steepest face of the acropolis, a space had been designated for
gastraphetes practice.  A dozen of the wielders were taking
aim and letting loose iron-tipped, javelin-like bolts—launched two
at a time, side-by-side—at man-sized targets built from old planks
and bailed hay.  To one side of the targets sat a heap of
debris which prominently included old hoploi, each round shield so
full of holes as to be rendered unrecognizable.  After a first
round of experiments, the users had abandoned using real armor,
even retired pieces, for there was no further need for such waste.
 They knew what they needed to know: the bolts of the
belly-bow could punch through both shield and bronze breastplate at
up to three hundred yards.  It could also do considerable
damage to flesh even at its maximum range, which well surpassed
that of any hand-drawn bow.

They were met at the range by the captain of
the belly-bowmen, an Athenian hunter by the name of Straton.
 Demosthenes handed the fresh recruits over to Straton and
informed him of Alkibiades' desire to 'play' with one of his
weapons.  All too happy to oblige, Straton had a gastraphetes
fetched and told a lieutenant to instruct Alkibiades in its use
before leaving to shepherd his recruits through the start of their
training regimen.

While the lieutenant demonstrated for
Alkibiades how to draw the bowstring by setting his stomach against
the propped weapon's butt-end and throwing his weight onto it,
Demosthenes suddenly found himself alone beside the silent shadow
which had crossed a sea to haunt his life anew.

She was not long silent.

“I don't rate an embrace?” she asked.

Bitterness was imperfectly concealed in her
voice.  Almost surely the lapse was by design, a silent
observation which inspired a moment of rage which Demosthenes
contained.

He scarcely knew how to answer, and so just
silently watched Alkibiades take his lesson, as did Thalassia.
 Alkibiades knelt and held the gastraphetes level with his
shoulder, took aim at the straw man downfield and, shrugging away
the close guidance of his trainer, squeezed the trigger mechanism.
 With the brief but harsh sound of iron scraping iron, twin
bolts let fly.

Both missed the target by wide margins, but
the shooter turned to share a wide-mouthed laugh with his two
observers, who smiled faintly back. 

“Another go,” Alkibiades said to his patient
trainer.  “I want that thing dead!”

As Alkibiades reloaded, Demosthenes found
words with which to break the heavy silence.

“Why did Eurydike not come?  Did she
not wish to see her homeland?”

“No,” Thalassia answered coldly.  “I'll
tell you why later, if you' have a moment and are interested.”

“Of course I am interested,” Demosthenes
snapped.  Still he stared at Alkibiades, who seemed to have
all but forgotten his observers as he fired bolt after bolt at the
target, finally grazing it once.

“Why did you come?”

Thalassia scoffed.  “You really
expected me to stay in Athens?  I did half the work that
brought us here.  More,” she added quietly.  “Much
more.”

Demosthenes, exercising discretion and the
muscles of his jaw, gave no reply but stared out over the training
ground. 

“You should kill Brasidas if you can,”
Thalassia observed at length.  She might have been remarking
on the chill in the air.

Now it was Demosthenes' turn to scoff.
 He had been on his own for a month now, captain of two
thousand men and not used to feeling second-in-command.  He
returned acidly, “Is there any particular spot where you would like
his fucking corpse to fall?”

Thalassia's harsh sigh was the very voice of
frustration.  She took her pale eyes off of the practice field
to frown at her rebellious pawn.

“I know you want to be your own man,” she
said.  “That's a good thing.  You are.  But I am on
your side, idiot, and Brasidas is dangerous.  That's all.
 He's smart and clever, and to be honest, if I had gone to
Sparta, I probably would have picked him.  So just kill him if
you can, all right?”

She turned her attention back  in time
to see Alkibiades, a grown child with a new toy, finally score a
hit and raise the heavy gastraphetes skyward in triumph.

“I am so tired of you,” Thalassia whispered.
 Her eyes were on Alkibiades, but it wasn't him she
addressed.

She fucked Alkibiades that night in a room
above the megaron of the modest, vacant home Demosthenes had rented
from its owner for the duration of his stay in Amphipolis.  He
doubted that the sounds of slapping and groaning and laughter that
drifted down through the thin floor of oak planks—Amphipolitan
houses were built almost entirely of timber, on account of its
abundance—just as he returned from meeting with a band of Thracian
recruits represented any deliberate effort by Thalassia to spite
him.  But neither did he put it past her.