Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (41 page)

"Nikias withdrew his support for our
Arkadian campaign," Demosthenes said quickly, by way of changing
the subject. "His allies followed suit. He believes it is too late
for it to have an effect. He may be right. I pressed the Board
instead for an ambush on Skiron's Road, where Brasidas's army will
be at its most vulnerable before it enters Attica. That, too, met
with refusal. Nikias and his party are too cautious, and Kleon and
his allies are... well, let us say their personal feelings prevent
them from agreeing with me."

"You must go anyway," Thalassia urged. "With
or without an official appointment, you will find no shortage of
volunteers. Those machines must not be allowed within range of
Athens. If they are, and if the Board takes its past strategy of
retreating behind the Long Walls for a siege, then Athens is
doomed. The Walls will not stand."

"My understanding is that they will try to
stop the invasion at the frontier, near Eleusis," Demosthenes said,
"even though the fortifications there will not yet be complete. No
one is ready for a return to the years of starvation and
plague."

"Thank Virgin Athena's tits for that!"
Alkibiades blasphemed. "We could have had this place finished by
now, and the frontier besides, if the engineers would just listen
to 
her
." He nudged Thalassia. "But instead it's 'let's
try this, let's try that!'" He sighed. "But they get there in the
end, Dog bless 'em."

Demosthenes threw a glance at black-clad,
silver-adorned Thalassia and remarked, "Some of us take longer than
others to adjust to change. Now, Alkibiades, if it pleases you, I
would share a few words with my... 
spoil 
in
private."

Alkibiades laughed. "Of course, my friend."
His hand, which had been on Thalassia's back, slid down her in a
sort of parting caress, and he sped off shouting at some laborers
stirring a vat of liquid stone.

"Shall we walk?" Demosthenes asked.

They started away from Dekelea's wall,
heading deeper into the small mountain village which was presently
being circumvallated. Thalassia, a black presence who left in her
wake the scent of jasmine and an ethereal music of tinkling bells,
drew lingering stares from the villagers they passed, and not a few
warding signs against evil spirits.

"It must be her," Demosthenes said in a
hushed tone, as if the mere mention of Eden might summon her into
their presence. "Unless you have another explanation?"

"I know only what you have told me, and
reached the same conclusion. We must assume the worst."

"Why should she aid Sparta? Has she guessed
your aim and begun working to thwart it?"

"No." Of this Thalassia seemed certain, but
the explanation which followed emerged with some hesitation: "By
compounding any changes I have introduced, Eden's helping Sparta...
is more likely to aid my purpose than hinder it.
My 
original 
purpose. My present goal is only the
safety of Athens. I hope you believe that."

"I do," Demosthenes said. Then, mindful that
he could not lie to her, "Mostly. You were ready to fight and kill
with us in Arkadia."

"More than ready," she interjected. "Looking
forward."

"Will you take the field with us instead,
and stand against the invaders?"

"I would consider no other course."

"Your secret will be out," Demosthenes
reminded. "Your existence in Athens will be forever changed."

Thalassia considered this for no more than a
beat, the would-be silence filled with the tinkling of tiny silver
chains as she walked. She concluded, "I like change."

"So I see," Demosthenes agreed.

Their path through the village delivered
them to the stables, in front of which they found Andrea grooming
and watering Maia. Demosthenes thanked the girl, who declined his
offer to take her with him to "boring" Athens, although Thalassia
granted permission, and he mounted for his return ride. Sharing a
last, long look with Thalassia, whom he knew he was not likely to
see again before leaving to battle, but speaking no further words,
he wheeled Maia and kicked her to a gallop, departing through the
unhung gates beneath the kohl-blackened stare of Dekelea's
witch.

In the black of night they set out in four
fishing boats from Eleusis, twenty volunteers cloaked in black or
gray and wearing no conventional arms or armor apart from a short
sword, strapped to each man's back, and these they hoped not to
use. At their head was a two-time general who had twice had lost
the post and who tonight, as at Pylos two years prior, acted as a
private citizen. This time, unlike then, he had no special
dispensation from the Board of Ten strategoi, but acted in defiance
of the democracy. It was a crime for which there might well be a
price to be paid even in victory.

The twenty beached their craft on the
western side of the Bay of Eleusis, where the black land rose up
sharply from the pebble-strewn shore into rugged mountains which
blotted out clouds awash with starglow. The moment their feet were
planted on solid earth, they began unloading their boats' cargo:
twenty stoppered, liquid-filled amphorae each as big around as a
man's waist and to which had been affixed rawhide straps so they
might be worn on the back, slung from the shoulders. From the
stopper of each jug dangled a length of thin, tarred cord.

Bearing these, along with heavy coils of
climbing rope, the Athenians left their boats on the beach and
struck up the slope to begin the treacherous climb. The ascent up
the sheer rocks took the better part of the night, but by dawn they
were in place overlooking the coastal road which ran from Megara to
Athens. It was the route that Spartan armies had taken into Attica
six times during the current war, and if the Board of Ten's
informants in Megara were correct, then today it was the route by
which yet another Spartan army would come. In ancient times, the
bandit lord Skiron had plagued these mountain passes; this day,
twenty Athenians would play the role of Skiron's bandits lying in
wait, and Brasidas, with luck, would play the hapless trader and be
deprived of the deadly goods he aimed to bring to Athens.

The sky began to brighten. Atop the sheer
ridge, the volunteers spread out in groups of two and three so that
they were spread over a half mile or more of road, and they
anchored three heavy ropes along the span to ease their descent
when the time came. Each group had a blacked-out oil lamp, and as
the sun painted the clouds purple, they lit them, looked down on
the road from their hiding places, and they waited.

Since Megara was a Spartan ally, traffic on
the road into Attica was light. Parties on foot and donkey and mule
passed by oblivious to the waiting ambush, but Brasidas's scouts,
when they came by mid-morning, were easy enough to spot. Spartan
Equals were taught to ride, but their ingrained contempt for
cavalry led them to depend on allies to serve in that role. And so,
unsurprisingly, the six light horse which passed below the rocks on
which the Athenians perched were not Spartans but men from
elsewhere in the Peloponnese. Perhaps if the scouts had been Equals
or Skiritai, they might have been more watchful, might have noticed
that the high, jagged rocks on the seaward side provided the ideal
place for an ambush. Perhaps Equals would have doubled back to
fetch climbers to scale the heights and ensure the way was clear.
But these scouts were incautious allies, and they talked and joked
with one another as they rode by, their voices and laughter echoing
up the canyon walls.

Within minutes of their passage, a dust
cloud became visible in the west. Minutes after that came the
distant, rising thunder of an army on the march. A band of Equals
came at the army's head, red-cloaked in the summer sun with
lambda-blazoned shields on their backs and helmets slung, spear
blades cutting the air back and forth as the butts struck the hard
earth with each step. The road here was wide enough for twenty or
so men to march abreast, and that is how they went, but even
Spartan discipline could not keep them in even ranks all the way
from Megara to Athens, and so they looked more like a mob. After
them came a dozen covered supply carts pulled by donkeys and oxen.
The Spartans always traveled light on their invasions of Attica,
intending to strip their sustenance from their enemy's farms before
razing them.

Next came the Peloponnesian light infantry
of peltasts and skirmishers, then a second, larger troop of Equals.
It was this latter body which guarded the targets of today's
ambush, the first of which Demosthenes and his volunteers watched
in awe as it passed. The lumbering hulk was pulled by a massive
team of oxen, six rows of beasts walking four abreast. Their
burden, shrouded in sailcloth and bound with rope, was four times
the length and height of a typical oxcart, and its eight wheels
were thick and solid rather than spoked, like the wheels on the
platforms on which Cyclopean blocks were transported from quarry to
city. Taller than a house, it lumbered along, filling every ear in
the seaside canyon with creaks and pops and the crunch of stones
being ground to dust under iron-shod wood. A second behemoth
rumbled by, and then a third, and each giant wagon and its train of
beasts swam in a sea of red-cloaked Equals.

These could be nothing else but
the 
mechanimai
, Brasidas's siege engines.

A fourth came into sight, and then it was
time. Demosthenes pushed the cord of his giant amphora into the
flame of the blacked out lamp and held it there until the
pitch-soaked fuse was well alight. The two Athenians beside him did
likewise and signaled down the line of ambushers that the rest
should make their payloads ready. Demosthenes heaved the heavy jug
onto his shoulder, took careful aim down the steep, jagged slope at
the foremost of the lumbering engines, and he heaved. The amphora,
lit cord spinning, sailed out into space.

For a moment, time ceased. Then came a pop,
barely audible over the din of the giant wagons' wheels. The
amphora smashed into a thousand shards, and its viscous contents,
the witch of Dekelea's recipe, formed an irregular black blot
centered on the front right wheel of the second-to-last engine.

Spartans cried out in alarm, and
Demosthenes' racing heart ceased beating. The black blot burst into
flame. White hot, sizzling, intense, the fire engulfed the front of
the engine and shot up the sailcloth covering it, just as two more
amphorae flew down. One struck higher up than the first and doubled
the blaze, the second landed just short, setting red cloaks alight
and sending up screams of pain and terror.

All down the line, the scene was repeated. A
second engine caught fire, along with the ground beneath it and a
number of its escorts. Further back, a yoked pair of blazing oxen
ran amok through a swarm of panicked soldiers. That put all the
other snorting, braying beasts of burden were to fright, and they
began pulling in every direction. The burning shroud fell away from
the most immolated of the engines, revealing a complex wooden
frame, toothed wheels, and a long, stout timber arm. It was a
throwing arm, if Thalassia was correct, as she doubtless was,
capable of heaving wall-smashing missiles over great distances.

In half a minute or less, all the Athenians
on the heights had sent their deadly pots into the valley, and in
as much time, the orderly advance of an army was transformed into
fiery chaos. Six of Brasidas's great stone throwers,
katapeltai
, had been set alight to varying degrees. Perhaps
more followed further back, but twenty men had done all they could
today, and now all that remained was to retreat. The volunteers
raced along the ridge to whichever of the three escape ropes was
nearest them, and once there, each clipped on an iron ring that
fastened his belt to the rope. Then, with as much haste as due
caution allowed, he shoved off backward into the void.

Demosthenes, like the others, had practiced
this means of quick descent on cliffs nearer Athens, and now, when
it mattered, it came as second nature. Suspending the altogether
natural fear of throwing oneself off a cliff, he plunged at
stomach-churning speed from jagged rock to jagged rock, lighting
for less than a heartbeat on each before shoving off again. He
controlled his speed, barely, by means of rawhide straps covering
his palms. Beside him, above and below, the band of volunteers
likewise fell. At least one undisciplined soul let loose a
triumphant wail which echoed over the bay, but declarations of
triumph were premature in Demosthenes' mind, even if there was no
sign yet of Spartan pursuit on the rocks above. There would not be,
since even were enemy climbers to have sprung to action at the
moment the ambush began, they would arrive at the top to find
nothing but a few discarded oil lamps.

The ascent had been measured in hours; the
return took but minutes. By the time Demosthenes' feet struck earth
with bone-jarring force, others were already dragging the waiting
boats down to the waterline and setting oars to oarlocks. In no
time, and with no instruction needed, all four craft pushed out
into the surf and rose and fell on the gently rolling waves on a
return path for Eleusis.

While men around him congratulated one
another and roared in exhilaration, Demosthenes' eyes continually
checked the heights from which they had just come. They were empty
still, and he hoped they would stay that way. A mortal man would
hard-pressed to scale the height in time to achieve any result, but
as he alone among the Athenians present knew, Brasidas' army did
not consist entirely of mortal men.

Just as the four escaping craft reached
cruising speed on the bay, the heart inside him sank. A lone,
crouching figure stood up and was outlined against the bright sky,
sunlight glinting off what at first appeared to be a polished helm
until a gust of wind off the bay showed it for what it was: a crown
of flowing, golden hair.