Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (43 page)

Demosthenes laid a hand on the pious old
man's shoulder. "She is no goddess," he assured. "Trust me to deal
with her." Not a fraction of the confidence that he projected was
genuine.

As survivors eager to return to their
families dispersed around them, Nikias's gaze fell upon a spot in
the middle distance behind Demosthenes. Turning, Demosthenes saw
what the old man did. Thalassia stood with her back against an
expanse of city wall between the ornate, closed Sacred Gate, opened
only for processions to Eleusis, and the larger, plainer Dipylon
Gate which stood open. Dressed in sea-foam green (the black witch
of Dekelea evidently having declined to make an appearance in
Athens) she stood watching intently, gravely. She was out of human
earshot, which meant little where she was concerned.

"Your slave," Nikias reflected. "You told me
that she was an oracle. Or was it a sorceress?"

Surprise and fatigue kept Demosthenes from
producing any reply, much less the whole truth.

"The belly-bows, the fire-pots, the riding
gear," Nikias listed. "And all the rest that you have supposedly
acquired through trade. They came from her?"

Demosthenes' silence amounted to an
admission.

Nikias continued, "I would hide it, too, if
I had something so valuable under my roof."

Demosthenes finally set his tired mind to
work on a denial, but it was too late. Nothing said now would be
plausible. Perhaps it was for the best; the senior general was
receptive and might prove useful.

"Can I count on your discretion?"
Demosthenes asked.

"Indeed. Particularly if she has one or two
more tricks that might be of use." The strategos sighed, a
melancholy look descending upon his lined features. "Witches are
always bringers of evil. In time of peace, I might be inclined to
burn one. But in such a storm as now looms," he nodded toward the
west, "help from any quarter is welcome." He frowned in thought.
"You have done well burning Brasidas's wall-breakers, even if it is
true what the she-daimon told you, that others are yet on the way.
As of today, please consider yourself the first holder of a new
title. Since I have just devised it now, it may have to remain
unofficial. 
Chief of Special Weapons.
 Its mandate
is simple: deploy ours and destroy theirs."

Nikias's gray eyes returned to Thalassia,
who yet waited, less than patiently, near the wall, eavesdropping.
Looking at her, Nikias sighed, and there was weariness and
nostalgia in the sound, as though he longed for simpler times. He
said to Demosthenes, "While we are at it, you may as well be Archon
of Witches, too."

Leaving Nikias perhaps to ponder new ways in
which one or another of the gods might be persuaded to act on his
city's behalf, Demosthenes passed through the Dipylon Gate into
Athens. Thalassia came silently up and walked beside him.

"I should have come with you," she said
penitently.

"I would not have had you. And I would have
been right. Eden might have hurt or killed you, and now Athens
would stand at her mercy. Nikias did not need to know this, but you
should: she said that if you do not face her, there will be
consequences for Athens."

"You say that as if you fear I might do
otherwise."

Demosthenes avoided answering. "You beat her
once," he said. "Can you again?"

Thalassia permitted the evasion. Knowing
truth from lies might at times be a curse. Perhaps she did not wish
to know the truth, which was that he did harbor some doubt, however
small, that she would not now–as she had at at least two vital
junctures in her past–choose to serve herself.

"In strength and speed and by all other
physical measures, we are equal," Thalassia said, somewhat bleakly.
"I could win, or she might."

"Even though you are only a pilot and she...
something else?"

"Hey." Thalassia grabbed his arm, halting
him and prompting him to face her. "Athenians
are 
only 
fishermen and bakers and carpenters, but
you hold your own against Spartiates who do almost nothing
year-round but train for war. I beat her once, I can again."

Demosthenes touched the hand that was
gripping his arm rather too tightly, and he smiled for as long as
the weight of the horror looming over Athens allowed, which was not
long.

"I was rather hoping to hear 'I'll fucking
destroy her,'" he said, "but your answer will suffice."

Thalassia released his arm with a quiet
laugh. "I fucking will," she said.

Demosthenes needed no truth-sense to tell
him she was confident of no such thing.

He took her just-lowered hand in his and
said, holding her pale-eyed gaze, "I do not understand what death
means to you. But it is not lost on me that you are willing to risk
it, not to bring us victory or alter the course of Fate... but only
to keep my city safe."

Thalassia regarded him silently, strangely,
for a moment. Then her lips twisted in a good-natured sneer.
"Idiot," she said softly. "It's my city now, too."

She patted Demosthenes' shoulder in mock
condescension and turned to resume the walk into town.

"I'm not needed at Dekelea," she called
back. "Is there somewhere else I might spend the night?"

Demosthenes caught her up and took to
walking side-by-side in the streets of Athens with his spoil of
war. "Always," he answered, and managed to add in jest on this day
of doom, "even were it not required of me by law."

***

Two dawns passed from the burning of
the 
katapeltai
, and a third saw the Spartan invasion
force of thousands massing on the western frontier, while the
defenders of Athens, as many or more in number, arrayed themselves
on the plain of Eleusis to meet the threat. The defenders might
have enjoyed some advantage had the proposed defenses of liquid
stone not been delayed by squabbling in the Assembly over what to
build and where. With the fortifications incomplete, the rival
cities would meet on more even terms, army against army, shield
against shield... machine against machine, star-born witch against
star-born witch.

Today was surely the day of battle.
Laonome's eyes were dry now, but her cheek was still cold to the
touch where the night's tears had cooled and dried. In his megaron,
Demosthenes held her close, forehead to forehead, nose to nose,
palm cupping her jaw and thumb rubbing the tiny white scar on her
upper lip.

"For luck," he said, and kissed the scar,
prompting the mouth which bore it to form a sad smile.

He embraced Laonome again and again, wishing
that a layer of iron-scale armor did not separate their bodies so
he might carry her off up the stairs and curl unclothed with her in
the marriage bed as they had done each morning for the four months
of his arrest. But such days belonged to the past for now, and, he
dared hope, to the future. And so he contented himself to lay a
hand on the belly that had begun to swell with his seed and kiss
the smooth expanse of white skin between Laonome's silver fillet
and hairline.

"I shall return, my love," he promised, as
they separated.

His wife's eyes slammed shut to bar fresh
tears. Eurydike, more used to such partings, laid a tattooed arm
about her mistress and drew her in until their temples touched.
Demosthenes parted a curtain of fiery curls to touch the cheek of
his slave, who said nothing, only smiled. He smiled back. They had
done this enough times that words were not needed, not even a late
reminder that in the event that no one was left to defend them, she
was not to employ the blunt Spartan dagger, his gift to her, which
hung at her waist, but instead throw herself and Laonome on the
questionable mercy of Athens' conquerors.

The sound of the door opening made
Demosthenes look that way. As he did, a figure stepped into his
megaron out of forgotten verse.

The mansion of Alkibiades contained many odd
things. Among them was a corselet of stiff leather, studded with
discs of highly polished bronze and trimmed in gold brocade, which
was, according to its owner, the armor of Penthesilea, the last
great Amazon, beloved of Achilles, he who had slain her with tears
of regret on the plains of Troy. While Alkibiades claimed to have
stripped the armor from a woman warrior in Scythia (where he surely
had never traveled), it was far likelier that he had bought it,
along with the story, from some less-than-honest dealer in
antiquities.

Whatever the truth of the armor's origin, it
was worn now by Thalassia, who stepped into the megaron geared for
war like a man-killing Amazon. Two short swords hung down her bare
thighs, the bronze tips of their scabbards scraping the rims of
ivory-inlaid leg-greaves. Her forearms were wrapped in leather, her
lustrous black hair woven into a thick braid that began at the
center of her forehead and followed her hairline to the right,
falling over her right shoulder, one of the more pragmatic of the
styles she favored. She lacked shield and helm; either they were
outside with the horses she had brought or she saw no use for
them.

The three other members of the oikos to
which she belonged spent some seconds staring in awestruck silence.
Demosthenes was first to recover, and he looked over to find his
wife and Eurydike agape. Both had been told a day ago, by
necessity, what perhaps they already suspected: that Thalassia once
had been a warrior among her people. Indeed, neither had quite been
surprised, yet neither could have been prepared for a sight such as
this.

Slowly Eurydike cracked a smile, a reluctant
shadow of which Thalassia returned.

"You look better in it than I did," Eurydike
said.

Blinking out of her own stupor, Laonome
flicked her gaze to her husband and declared softly, confidently,
"A goddess fights with you."

In the smile he returned, Demosthenes gave
neither confirmation nor denial. He certainly would not burden her
with the knowledge that the enemy possessed a goddess of its
own.

Giving his wife what he hoped would not be
their last kiss before Hades, he preceded Thalassia out the door
and, exerting an effort not to look back, walked the corridor of
palms that bisected the garden. He secured his helmet and hoplon to
the saddle of Balios's successor, a war-horse named Akmos, then set
sandal in stirrup and threw himself astride the beast. Behind him,
Thalassia mounted soundlessly on a mare called Phaedra which, like
her armor, was borrowed from Alkibiades, under whose tutelage she
had learned to ride at least as well as any plainsman.

Turning, Demosthenes saw the women of his
house standing in the open doorway, Laonome's face buried in a
curtain of Thracian curls. He raised his hand in a final farewell
which only Eurydike returned, and he kicked his mount's flanks and
set off for war.

"You were cold to them," Demosthenes
observed to Thalassia as they rode the empty street.

"Was I?"

"There is a balance to be struck when
leaving a loved one, for their sake more than yours. If you are
either too emotional or too distant, they will know you are
preparing for death." He added deliberately, "You might bear that
in mind for next time."

Whatever Thalassia's thoughts were on that
matter, they remained private, and the focus of her pale eyes was
distant as they cantered side-by-side. As they progressed north
toward the city gate, the streets grew less empty. Not
unexpectedly, Thalassia drew stares from all they passed. By mutual
agreement they had determined that this day would mark the end of
all efforts to conceal Thalassia's true nature from the public.
What counted now was the city's safety, and anyway Eden was
unlikely to exercise discretion. From now on, whatever the public
of Athens saw, it saw.

What it saw right now was an Amazon riding
to war on behalf of the city which in a time long past, but hardly
forgotten, had suffered invasion by her people. Not far from this
very spot sat the graven stone which marked the point where
tradition said the Amazon invasion had been thrown back under the
leadership of Herakles and Theseus. By trick of time, those two
saviors of Hellas, one-time allies, were the patron heroes of the
opposing cities set to clash today.

The stares grew thicker when they reached
the broad thoroughfare called the Dromos, on which traveled a heavy
stream of armed and armored men on foot. The banks of that stream
were lined with women, children, and grandfathers showering their
sons and brothers and husbands with well-wishes, prayers and cut
blossoms. When Akmos and Phaedra turned onto the street and joined
the stream, a hush fell over the onlookers. Even the eyes of the
fighting men turned to see what had caused it. Thalassia paid the
scrutiny no mind, and Demosthenes, beside her, acted as if nothing
were amiss, merely guiding Akmos at the slow collective pace of the
procession. The crowd's curiosity proved impermanent; few devoted
any more than a handful of heartbeats to gawking at Thalassia.

When they were halfway to the Dipylon Gate,
via which the river of flesh and bronze and towering canvas-wrapped
spear blades was to exit the city, a young girl pushed through the
crowd to come up alongside Akmos and walk in pace with him. She was
brown-skinned, the child of a slave or resident alien, and her
small, outstretched hand held aloft a purple flower, an iris, which
she waved by the stem. Demosthenes smiled at the girl, reached down
and tried to pluck it from her hand, but before he could, the
offering was withdrawn. The girl shook her head and pointed past
him. Nodding understanding, Demosthenes anchored himself tightly to
his mount, leaned down and hoisted the girl from the ground,
setting her carefully on Akmos' neck. Thalassia looked over and,
briefly letting a smile pierce her gloom, she leaned her head
closer to let the girl insert the bloom's stem into her braid. That
done, Demosthenes returned the flower-giver to the earth.