Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (37 page)

Demosthenes forcefully preempted both:
"Bring them their shields."

Red-faced Kleon scoffed. "Not a chance!"

The captured shields, still on display in
the Stoa Pointile, were his treasure.

"Half an hour is ample time to ready an
assault," Kleon went on. "We shall take them alive and save as many
women and children as we can. To which end, dearest Demosthenes,
you must take him up on his offer. I have no doubt that any one of
us would do the same in your place. But since it
is 
you 
he has asked for..."

In the air above Melite, a infant's droning
cry arose, and then abruptly, by some means or another, was
silenced.

"Give them their shields!" Demosthenes
repeated through gritted teeth. "And their safe passage. It makes
no difference if Sparta gets them back. We will win this war all
the same. You must trust me. Holding onto them is not worth one
Athenian's life!"

"Of course it is!" Kleon came back testily.
"How many Athenian lives have I saved already by bringing them
here? And how many more might continue to be saved so long as
they–"

"Shut your fat fucking mouth," Demosthenes
said, and he looked impatiently to Nikias for a decision.

But Nikias remained silent, and the
demagogue was not done.

"I am City Protector and the final word
is 
mine 
to give!" Kleon raged. "No shields! No
passage!
Nothing!
 We will recapture them, and if in the
process they kill the helpless, the blood-guilt will
stain 
their 
souls, not–"

Kleon did not finish. Instead he fell
reeling to the ground, sent there with blood streaming from his
ruddy face by the clenched fist of Demosthenes.

Rubbing his knuckles while his victim
twisted and crawled, barely conscious, on the cold earth,
Demosthenes said, "Seeing as the chief of homeland defense is
incapacitated, do any object to my assuming his duties?"

No one did. The hard, gray eyes of Nikias
showed neither approval nor remonstration. He could hardly have
felt much grief on seeing Kleon, the constant thorn in his side,
laid low.

Demosthenes' eyes sought a trustworthy face
in the gathered crowd and found one in Leokrates, the man who had
subdued Brasidas at Amphipolis, and won for it the prize for valor.
He told Leokrates, "Round up as many able men as you need, collect
the shields from the Painted Stoa and bring them here."

With a proud nod Leokrates raced off to
comply, tapping a dozen men to accompany him.

"I need a priest and a clerk of the
law-court!" Demosthenes called out over the crowd. "Tell both to
bring their seals."

He wasted no breath declining the trade that
Brasidas proposed, mostly so as not to call attention to the fact
that he had given no thought to accepting it. The lives of the
families trapped in Melite were precious, but he had sworn a pledge
to his own new family that morning, and it was one he would keep.
He would not trade Laonome's happiness for that of others, for he
knew with near certainty that his walk down that street would end
not in captivity but sacrifice.

Well before Brasidas's deadline had passed,
stacks of battered lambda-blazoned shields began arriving on
handcarts pushed by slaves and citizens alike. In with the first
cartload of shields to be sent down the captured street went a
sworn document signed by six generals, four priests and
the 
archon basileus
 promising the escapees safe
passage to Megara. Minutes after the guarantee went in, women and
children began streaming out. Some walked, looking as shades
escaped from Hades, but most, especially the young, raced up the
street into freedom and into the arms of waiting relations. The
reunions were both joyous and tearful, but as the last cart laden
with shields went in and the trickle of freed hostages dried up,
there remained a dozen frantic men in the plaza yet to greet their
missing loved ones.

A citizen woman who was among the last to
emerge told why.

"They will take twelve wives with them to
the border," she said. "Unless Demosthenes takes their place."

Her fearful eyes found the man she named.
The gazes of the other strategoi swiftly followed, insistent on a
response.

"He has his freedom and his guarantee,"
Demosthenes said, stifling shame. "Send word that his revenge for
Amphipolis will have to wait. Tell him that every able man in
Athens will shadow them to the border in full arms, and the first
woman's death scream will be their call to charge."

Nikias swiftly departed with his aides to
see to the promised escort, which he would have no trouble raising.
The remaining Board members present were doubtless all disappointed
to some degree, either simply at what they saw as a display of
cowardice or else the lost opportunity to be rid of a political
rival, but (perhaps mindful of Kleon's bloodied face) they kept
their feelings to themselves.

There was little chance Brasidas would kill
the hostages. To avenge his humiliation, he might dare to cut the
throat of one general on the Megarian frontier, but he was not
bloodthirsty enough to begin slaughtering women, not with such an
unprecedented success in sight. He would return home to even
greater glory as the rescuer of his countrymen than he would have
won as the conqueror of tiny, remote Amphipolis. The loss of so
many of their best men at Pylos had frustrated the Spartans for
long seasons and now, thanks to Brasidas, they would get their men
back bloodlessly, with nothing given up in exchange.

While others attended to the Spartans'
departure from Athens, Demosthenes remained in the rapidly emptying
plaza. Thalassia had foreseen nothing like this occurrence. But she
had labeled Brasidas as clever and dangerous and pressed for his
death. Now it became clear why. Demosthenes did not look forward to
informing her of the day's events. Thalassia was not likely to
reprimand him, but then she did not have to; the lesson was well
taken that no warning of the star-girl was to be dismissed, lightly
or otherwise.

There was another lesson, too: Fate would
not consent to stay down after one blow. She was in a fighting
mood.

Still, not even the prospect of delivering
bad news to Thalassia was enough to make him dread returning home,
for Laonome was there, and solace.

The Spartans were filing triumphantly into
the street to form up in orderly rows for the march to the Dipylon
Gate, and their freedom, when Kleon, earlier carted away insensate
by a gaggle of his devoted followers, returned.

"You will regret this, Demosthenes!" the
demagogue fumed, pointing a meaty finger. His lips and chin still
were crimson with smeared blood. "I will have your generalship and
every obol of your patrimony for this!"

There was a fair chance he was right.

Gamelion in the archonship of Isarchos
(January 423 BCE)

Dressed in his war gear and a shabby winter
cloak, Styphon stood on the frost-hardened road in the shadow of
the Temple of Apollo, waiting. He waited for Brasidas and for news,
news of whether or not the Gerousia of Sparta had branded Styphon,
son of Pharax, as a trembler.

Already he had been denied the homecoming
granted his fellow prisoners. Instead, Brasidas had sent his dog to
Bassai, in the thickly wooded hills of western Arkadia, to gather
what information he could on the supposed witch who had reportedly
slain men by the dozen more than a year ago.

Most men here, he had learned, did not call
the woman a witch. They called her Eris, the slaughter-loving
sister of Ares, She Whose Wrath is Relentless

Three days Styphon had spent in Bassai, and
now the day had come on which Brasidas was due to arrive with a
detachment from Sparta. Styphon awaited them in the appointed place
in front of the modest sandstone facade of Bassai's temple to
Apollo. Hours passed and the sun sank, taking with it what little
warmth it shed, before the shadows on the road to the south finally
coalesced into a band of crimson cloaked Equals on the march. They
came traveling light, their lambda-blazoned shields and ash spears
and helot servants left behind.

Styphon went out to meet them on the road,
finding his master at the band's head.

"What news, dog?" Brasidas asked. "Have you
learned the ending to our tale of the White Witch of Bassai?"

"I have, polemarch," Styphon reported. "And
I know where she is located, although I have not yet been to the
place."

"You have found her already!" Brasidas's
scarred face veritably glowed. "Quite the hound you are. Where is
she?"

"A half-day's march into the woods," Styphon
answered, conscious of the hateful stares directed at him from the
band of ten Equals at Brasidas's back. A few had come from the
prison, while others were fresh from Sparta; all seemed to despise
Styphon with equal intensity.

"We shall camp and embark at dawn," Brasidas
said, resuming his stride. The band of Equals followed, some
grumbling obscenities at Styphon as they shoved past with
unnecessary roughness. Ignoring them, Styphon joined the general's
retinue, and to the cadence of crickets they walked past Bassai's
timber houses, drawing anxious stares from their occupants. Men
here had no love for Sparta. Their grandfathers' fathers had been
conquered by her, and their own fathers had risen in rebellion. Now
the place was more loyal to Sparta, but still fiercely proud of its
Arkadian heritage.

"Sir," Styphon dared to address his
master.

"Yes, dog?" Brasidas taunted. "You wish to
ask something of me?"

"No, sir," Styphon lied. He would not show
weakness by asking to know the elders' decision on him. "I thought
you might wish to know what else I have discovered concerning the
witch."

"You may tell me after camp is made."

Said camp, in the wood on the edge of
Bassai, consisted of little more than a crackling fire, which the
Equals would have done without were it any earlier or later than
midwinter. As purple dusk turned to night, a party of Arkadians
appeared–the Spartan-appointed governor, some city officials and a
troop of servants carrying food. Unchecked by any order from their
general, Brasidas's men had fun at the Arkadians' expense,
threatening and insulting them, stealing their torches and shoving
a few to the ground before taking by force the food that had been
brought as a gift and chasing the givers off into the night. The
band dined on roast lamb that night, all but Styphon who made do
with barley cake and boiled onions rather than even try to take the
portion of meat his tormentors would have derived great
entertainment from denying him.

Brasidas, seated on a log, face stained with
the dripping blood and grease of his portion, summoned Styphon over
and bid him speak of the witch.

"First, the name by which men call her here
is Eris," Styphon began.

The polemarch scoffed, shreds of meat flying
from lips. "Yes, just as the poets describe her: One-Armed Eris,
Slayer of Sheep-Lickers!" Some other Equals nearby took to
laughing. "However," Brasidas went on, "lacking any better name for
her, that one will do. Go on."

"It was in a village to the west of here
that this... Eris first appeared, killing several men. After those
who gave her chase were likewise slaughtered, the villagers
appealed to Sparta, but they also sent a rider on to Bassai, which
lay in the direction she was last seen traveling. The leaders of
Bassai were convinced to raise their infantry as if an invasion
force had suddenly appeared.

"The next morning, they sighted her in the
woods and engaged. Of the nearly four hundred men who opposed her,
fifty-six were slain and thirty wounded before Eris fell. Her
corpse was further mutilated, but left on the spot where it had
fallen. A tomb was dug and lined with cut stones. They pushed the
remains in and spent three days carting in every heavy stone they
could find to pile atop it. The locals now count the place as
cursed and are loath to go near it."

"Hmm," Brasidas intoned. "The prospect of
recruiting her seems... less than promising. Still, if your
sea-bitch managed to cheat death, this one may yet live. Tomorrow
we shall visit this cursed place and learn what we can."

Tearing off one last chunk of meat with his
teeth and grinning as he chewed, Brasidas held the almost-stripped
bone toward Styphon. "A bone for the dog."

Having no choice, Styphon took it from him.
"Thank you, polemarch." But he did not, would not, eat from it.
When Brasidas waved him away, Styphon rose and walked away, casting
the bone into the fire.

"Dog!" Brasidas called out. Styphon turned.
"The elders have delayed their decision on you until next year,
pending my report on your behavior. So if you've a brain in that
thick skull, you will serve your master well until then."

Styphon nodded and resumed walking. It was
good news, considering. It meant at least another year of
humiliation and servitude, but at least there was hope that at its
end Brasidas might deliver on his promises. The elders of Sparta
gave a polemarch's word great weight.

***

Before first light, Styphon was awakened by
a kick in the ribs, and as dawn broke, the band of Equals struck
off into the woods. Along the way, an Arkadian youth was compelled
to act as guide. Though frightened of the cursed place, their boy
knew well enough to fear Spartans more, and so he led the party
without complaint or misstep.

They hiked all morning, until the winter sun
reached its zenith. Then the youth halted abruptly and pointed
ahead, to where a gray mass was visible through the thin, bare
trees. Brasidas clapped the boy on the shoulder and passed him a
few coins of the currency that Equals were by Lykurgan law
forbidden to possess, and the boy sped off back the way they had
come.