Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (30 page)

The unwieldy belly-bows, already strung,
were raised and aimed, and enough iron-tipped skewers flew to kill
those four men and ten more besides. The Helot's shields and
battered bodies were pierced, and they crumpled without a sound to
the bridge, surrendering their shades to Hades for a city which had
enslaved their forefathers.

Demosthenes was first to cross the reclaimed
bridge on his path back to town. A thin layer of snow had settled
over the war-churned grass in the shadow of the city walls, the
earth there sown with silent corpses and groaning wounded. The
battle fully at an end now, exhaustion overtook him, making each
step a struggle. He had cheated Fate and a Spartan general this day
in saving Amphipolis, and those two in turn had conspired to cheat
him back by stealing his life.

That they had failed was due in large part
to starborn witchery.

But the witch was gone. Or was she? Whether
or not Thalassia returned, she would claim no share of the
victory's accolades. But somehow the mortal beneficiary of her aid
could not help but feel, as he returned to town, that he would see
her again.

Soon, and to his regret.

Under a cloak of clouds which hid the winter
stars and a cloak of wine which clouded his mind, Demosthenes
walked the streets of sleeping Amphipolis. With war gear bundled
under his arm and slung on his back, he hunted for his rented
dwelling. Soon he would abandon that house to return to his own and
face the tiresome adulation of the crowds in Athens, men who could
never know, never comprehend exactly what he had achieved for their
city this day and so would remain forever ungrateful.

The idea rattled in his muddled mind that
maybe he could make his home here and never return to Athens.

Where was that house? Every few steps, he
forgot exactly where he was and how he had got there, then stopped
and took a moment to get back on track. Damn Alkibiades, and damn
all the citizen cavalry, who had dragged him into the barracks,
where excellent Macedonian wine had flowed in torrents all evening
from two jugs, each as tall as a man, that had appeared as if from
nowhere. Whores had appeared, too, along with Amphipolitan
civilians by the dozen, drawn by the music and raucous cheers and
word of mouth. However indifferent they were to what distant city
wound up ruling them, a party was a party.

The last Demosthenes had seen of Alkibiades,
just before leaving on his last legs, the youth had been sandwiched
between a pair of Thracian twins, his chest stained purple with
wine. Now Demosthenes clambered alone through the unlocked door of
the home he realized he had passed by at least twice already and
shuffled into its megaron, where the hearth crackled in its slow,
overnight burn.

The orange glow barely illuminated a human
shape. No, the shape of a nymph. But Thalassia was not a nymph. She
stared at him in the firelight with those damned awful eyes of
hers, and he stared back. He dropped his war gear. When its
resounding clatter faded, his breath was loud and harsh and filled
the room.

His eyes adjusted, bringing the star-girl
into sharper focus. She wore a dark chlamys thrown over a simple
chiton of some light color, belted at the waist, the hem falling
just above the knee. It was a man's garment, though none with sight
could ever mistake the wearer for a man, or even a boy. Her hair
hung in loose tresses over bare shoulders the flesh of which, like
that of the exposed upper part of her chest, arms and lower legs,
glowed dull gold in the hearth's light.

"You're back," he said in a breathy grunt.
"If you came looking for your fucktoy, he's out fucking other
toys."

"I came to say congratulations," she said.
"And goodb–"

"Congratulations?" Demosthenes sneered. "I
failed, didn't I? Brasidas lives!"

"You wounded him," she said. It came as no
surprise that she knew. "Men can die from their wounds." 
There was perhaps more than just hope in the suggestion.

Scoffing, Demosthenes dismissed her with a
wave that nearly cost him his balance. He recalled what she had
said to him on the day of her arrival in Amphipolis. They had stuck
with him these past five days. "You're tired of 
me?
"
Finally, he had his chance to reply. "I'm tired
of 
you!
 You're not a goddess!"

"I know that."

"Shut up! You took my gods away from me, and
left me what? 
You?
" He stabbed a finger at her through
the flickering darkness. "There's just you and me and walking
corpses in this world now. You're no goddess..." He advanced on her
with lurching steps across the floor of hard-packed dirt. "You
might be from the stars, but you are still just a woman, full of...
woman parts, and tears, and lies and-and–" He staggered to within
arm's reach of her. Thalassia stood fast, a statue, even as he put
a hand out, picked a lock of hair from her collarbone and finished,
"and pretty hair, and those... fucking evil eyes."

He pulled on the lock of her hair. Thalassia
twisted her neck, bowing her head to accommodate, her expression
showing no sign of pain or even annoyance. Demosthenes eased the
pressure and she righted her head, but rather than release the dark
locks he buried his fingers deeper in them and yanked again. She
yielded a small step toward him, drawn closer, again without
evidence of pain. She made no sound. There was only the hollow rasp
of his own breath and the faint crackle of the hearth.

He walked, pulling her by the hair, in the
direction of the narrow staircase set against the megaron's rear
wall. She followed, unresisting, body bent awkwardly, and they
ascended into the bedchamber above. It had no fire and was lit only
by cloud-filtered moonglow streaming in through a pair of windows.
He went to the rough bed that he had not shared with any companion
during his stay in Amphipolis, stopped at its edge and turned
Thalassia to face him.

She yet wore the same tranquil, if dark,
expression as she had below. Somehow that fact angered him, and
Demosthenes raised his other hand to cover her face, fingers spread
out wide over her cheek and lips and chin. He shoved her head back,
keeping his grip in her hair. It was a pointless, childish move
with no aim but to express displeasure with the face's owner.

"I could have won without you," he said. The
words came with difficulty on account of his heavy tongue, but he
deemed them understandable. He uncovered her face, but kept his
grip on the controlling reins of her hair. "You're no goddess," he
went on, still to no reply and no resistance. "Just a woman
..."

By her hair and a hand on her back, he
dragged her face down onto the low bed, or half on it, rather, her
knees striking the plank floor. "You're just a woman," he slurred
again, uncertain of whether he had said it once already or not. He
knelt behind her, nudged her knee outward with one of his. "I could
have done it without you!"

Exchanging the clump of her hair in his
grasp for another at the back of her skull, close in to the roots,
he pressed her head down while using the other hand to throw aside
her cloak and lift the skirt of her chiton. When the way was clear,
he used the same hand to part her smooth cleft and thrust his cock
inside her. It had been ready since the stairs.

He took her violently, alternately burying
her face in the wool blanket and yanking her head back by the hair.
She made no sound, offered no resistance, made no move to eject him
from the warm, wet, soft place into which he intruded on an
invitation long expired.

"You're just a woman..." he said, an
accusation. Sure enough, she felt like one.

The planks creaked under his weight as he
braced one foot and one knee against them for extra leverage, even
while jerking the recipient harder onto him. He grunted with each
relentless thrust, ignoring the pain in his bruised ribs until,
rage and arousal spent, he lowered his weight fully onto her back
and drifted into sleep.

Some time later, perhaps it was minutes,
perhaps hours, he regained a shard of consciousness. Finding
himself ready, and the warm body still present and in position
under him, he entered her again. This time, he went not by the
garden path, but thief-like through her back channel. She accepted
it soundlessly, a lump of supple, golden clay bent before him.

"Just a woman..." he breathed on her neck,
and collapsed on her again.

Awareness returned. Demosthenes lay on his
back with timber beams above him. But something was missing,
something warm and soft. Something which should have been pleasant
but was not.

Memories came. One by one, he dismissed them
as irrelevant until only one remained. It sent heart into throat
and dragged him upright in spite of the satchel of rocks someone
appeared to have emptied into his skull. He opened his eyes on
blinding daylight and shut them again, let out a moan and learned
that the night had turned his mouth to sand and ears to linen.

No, not that.
 He could not have
done that. It was a dream, a nightmare. Gods knew he had had enough
of those about her. But denial was futile. The vision fit the
facts. Here he lay at the very scene of the act, dressed as he had
been in the same wine-stained chiton. And there was no mistaking
the sensation of cooled and dried fluids on certain areas of
sensitive, now-shriveled skin.

He sank back into the bed and wished for
sleep to envelop him again, so that when next he opened his eyes
this nightmare world might be vanquished and reality restored. If
that did not happen, he would return home to public glory and
private shame. According to the courts, Thalassia was his slave. To
them, he had done no wrong. But the heart in his breast told him
otherwise. For the last year, he had not particularly wanted to
look into Thalassia's eyes, but now... 
could 
he,
if he tried?

At length he managed to drag his eyelids
open, but the nightmare persisted. Morning light streamed in
through the rustling, gauzelike curtain in the window of his plain
Amphipolitan bedchamber. How long he could hide here in bed?

Not long at all, for fresh memories surfaced
and caused alarm. Thalassia–proud, vindictive Thalassia–had wanted
Brasidas dead. If she got it in her mind to make that happen, a
lock on a cell door and a few guards were scarcely enough to stop
her. But if she carried out an execution, Sparta would surely
retaliate by doing likewise to the any Athenian strategoi who might
be captured in future battles.

Driven by a fresh sense of urgency,
Demosthenes stood upright, in defiance of the lurching floor, his
battle injury and the wild throbbing of his temples. He descended
the stairs, hugging the roughly plastered wall, and crossed the
megaron, passing the cold hearth to reach the door. Exiting into
bright light, he shielded his eyes and made his way, half-blind at
first, to the nearby barracks complex, where the enemy general was
held. Fellow Athenians sought to speak to him as he passed, some
addressing him as strategos, others just offering cordial greeting.
He ignored them all and pressed on to his destination.

Brasidas's prison was a long, narrow shed of
rough-cut timber; the other prisoners were kept in a stockade
outside the city walls. On sighting the structure, Demosthenes
called urgently to the Athenian guard by its door, "Is the prisoner
safe?"

The guard comprised six men, all of whom,
reassuringly, were accounted for and looked unalarmed. "Yes,
general," one answered, though not without raising a brow in a show
of puzzlement, if not mild offense.

"Let me see him."

Demosthenes held his breath, which only
exacerbated the ache in his head, and noticed as the guard turned
to comply that the thick wooden post meant to bar the door from
without sat uselessly on the ground.

"Why is the door unb–" he began angrily, but
before he could finish, before even the guard could set hand on the
door, it opened on its own from within.

Thalassia emerged. She saw Demosthenes, and
her eyes locked on him, but her face was blank. Her plain white
chiton was smeared all over with blood.

Demosthenes managed to speak through his
shock, but not to that vision in red.

"What is she doing in there?" he asked the
guard, who appeared not to share his general's surprise.

"Treating the prisoner," he said casually.
"She's been tending our wounded all morning. As she did yesterday.
On your orders, I thought."

Thalassia stepped out of the open door, the
guard closed it behind her, and she came forward, a red-smeared
hide satchel slung on her shoulder, wintry eyes giving nothing away
about what might lie behind them.

"Bar that door," he instructed the guard
unnecessarily. Then, abruptly, he turned and stalked away, from the
guard, from the shed, but mostly from her. Not out of anger or fear
but impotence, a loss for words and inability to meet her
stare.

He had taken a few long strides when her
voice sailed after him: "Really?"

Guilt slowed then halted his hasty
retreat.

"Are you really going to walk away from
me?"

She drew up behind him, circled around, and
they stood face to face, though not eye to eye. His were on the
muddy grass under his sandaled feet.

"Will he live?" he asked.

"He'll be fine. You thought I would kill
him? I could have killed him ten times before he even reached
Amphipolis."

This exchange exhausted the catalog of words
Demosthenes had on hand to share with her. Fortunately, Thalassia
was better prepared, even if she seemed no more enthused about the
encounter than he was.

"I want to take you somewhere," she
said.

Demosthenes gave it a moment's thought and
nodded agreement, partly out of guilt but mostly to avoid
lengthening the conversation. "Where?" he managed.