Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (48 page)

"The body!" he cried out to any who would
listen. "Retrieve her body!"

He ran, legs pounding the hillside, carrying
him down at breakneck pace. Halfway down, it occurred to him that
he might have been well advised to remount Akmon or Phaedra, but
what was done was done. He could not turn back now, for not far
ahead a small mass of Spartans had appeared. They bore neither
shields nor spears, and by their sudden closeness they could only
have spent the last few minutes crawling on their bellies through
the tall grass of no man's land.

Demosthenes was first to reach the ring of
slick, matted grass in which the two butchered bodies lay. He
picked out Thalassia by the crown of crushed purple iris petals
scattered about her head. Both corpses were riddled with
gastraphetes bolts, which also sprang at varying angles from the
earth all around, like a miniature forest. Two shafts sprouted from
Thalassia's torso while one had passed through her neck, half
severing it before burrowing into the ground underneath. Coming up
to her, Demosthenes grabbed the bolts one in each hand, yanked them
out and set to lifting her. Heedless of the hot gore that
immediately coated his skin, he worked hands under and around
her.

When he heaved, her well-greased body
slipped back to the earth. The oncoming Spartans, eight of them at
least, were seconds away, yet glancing behind him, Demosthenes
found no equivalent motion in the Athenian lines.

"What are you waiting for?" Demosthenes
cried frantically back at them, waving a hand gloved in sticky
blood. Seeing him, Nikostratos turned his cheek and put his arms
out to either side in a restraining gesture, instructing the men on
the hill not to move.

Spitting one of the many curses which, when
she lived, had flowed copiously from Thalassia's dirty mouth,
Demosthenes tried again to achieve a grip on the corpse. This time
he hooked the fingers of one hand under the waist of her Amazonian
corselet and wrapped the other arm around the neck, the skin of
which felt against his bicep like a slice of rare lamb. He heaved,
the body rose up, and blood, if blood was what truly ran in the
veins of the star-born, ran in rivulets down his arms, dripping
from his elbows onto his thighs and coursing down his breastplate
of iron scales.

Thankfully, her enhanced body was no heavier
than a mortal woman's. He threw it over his shoulder and, without
stopping to look at the charging Lakedaimonians who were almost
upon him, he spun and ran.

His first step faltered, sandal sliding on
blood-greased blades of grass, and the body slipped from his
shoulder. He caught it before it hit the earth, recovered his
balance and mounted the slope at a run. He could hear the grunting
breaths of the Spartans, and imagined, at least, that he felt their
footfalls shake the ground. He could hardly spare a look, but knew
they must have reached the battle site by now. One or more of their
number would stop and return to Brasidas with the body of Eden, but
the evidence of Demosthenes' ears said the rest were chasing after
him, and Thalassia's corpse. Their general had no intention of
letting Eden's trophy slip away.

He channeled his every drop of strength into
his thrusting legs, hammering the earth with each step to ensure
firm footing and a strong push up the hill. Up top, at the hill's
crest, a sanctuary still too far off, his countrymen began to cheer
him on, but still offered no help. Seconds later that changed when
Straton pushed to the fore, knelt, and leveled his gastraphetes. A
dozen or more archers followed his lead, but all held their fire
for fear of hitting the comrade they meant to aid. And so, barely
halfway to the safety of the Athenian lines, carrying a load on his
back that the Spartans were not, and wearing iron armor to their
leather, he knew he would be caught. He cursed himself again for
not having mounted Phaedra for this task.

He could think of only one course of action,
and he took it: he dove, landing hard in the grass alongside the
warm, wet sack which was Thalassia, and as he hit the earth, he
heard Straton shout the command to fire. Sharp bolts cut the air
over his head, and from downslope came at least one groan.
Demosthenes scrambled on hands coated in greasy blood to right
himself, rise and draw his sword.

He succeeded in time to face five
long-haired Spartans at a full run, twenty paces off and just now
drawing their own blades and raising a war-cry. Standing astride
the mangled body they came to claim, Demosthenes set himself for
the attack.

Before it could come, the earth rumbled with
a rhythmic pounding that his ears knew well. His eye caught motion
and he threw a glance toward it in time to witness a stream of
horsemen: the citizen cavalry of Athens, spilling out from the
Athenian right and thundering along the slope.

Two of the charging Spartiates slowed in
their headlong rush, fell to silence and hung a moment in
equivocation before rejecting their city's warrior code and taking
flight. When yet two more fearless Equals opted to turn tail, a
fresh war-cry came from behind and Demosthenes risked a second look
over his shoulder. A line of spears was surging forth from the
Athenian center, in defiance of Nikostratos' orders, charging
headlong down the hill to the aid of the countryman whose actions
they must have thought crazed. Battles over corpses were fought in
the bard's songs, but not on today's battlefields.

The last two steadfast Spartans, realizing
they were alone, bent their paths to loop back and flee at top
speed, but for them it was too late. The foremost rider of the
citizen cavalry rode one down and skewered him with his lance. Two
more horsemen pursued the second fugitive, who eventually turned to
face them in a futile stand which ended with his body crumpled on
the hillside, a pair of lances protruding from his chest.

The four Equals who had fled were run down
next, an easy sport given the distance from their lines. But the
ones who had quickly borne Eden away were long gone by now, and her
body with them.

As Athenian hoplites converged on
Demosthenes' position, swarming around to set up a belated
defensive wall, the leader of the horsemen brought his mount to a
halt a few feet away. The look on the finely sculpted features
visible between the gleaming cheek pieces of Alkibiades' helmet was
uncharacteristically grave. His glittering eyes mourned as he gazed
down on the butchered remains of the body he had lusted after from
the moment he had first seen it in his friend's megaron.

"Star-girl." He spoke the made-up word not
mournfully, but as if gently reprimanding his playmate.

Alkibiades had only learned of Eden's
existence days ago, but had not begrudged his two partners the
secret they had revealed to him only when it could be kept no
longer. Even now, he remained unaware of the existence of the third
of their kind, Lyka. However faithful a friend he seemed to be,
however useful he proved himself, there was an indelible blemish
upon Alkibiades in the form of an act of betrayal which might now
never occur, but would have had Fate been allowed to run its proper
course.

Of course, of that blemish he knew nothing
either.

"Thank you," Demosthenes said to him
blankly. The danger past, he stooped, found his grip at the edges
of Thalassia's corselet and heaved her corpse onto his shoulders.
Gummed and drying blood caused his arms to itch, while fresh
streams of it rolled hot down his neck.

"You want help?" Alkibiades asked.

"I have her."

They started walking together up the hill
toward the Athenian lines, Demosthenes slowed by his burden and
Alkibiades keeping pace astride his mount. Around them, the men who
had rushed to their aid returned to the lines, too, not a few
throwing questions which Demosthenes was forced to ignore.

He posed a sullen question of his own to
Alkibiades. "How fared your mission?"

Alkibiades tossed his head at Brasidas's
host. Pausing and twisting, Demosthenes followed the gesture and
picked out against the sky a sight he had failed to notice while
engrossed in Thalassia's death and the retrieval of her corpse:
three plumes of black smoke rising from somewhere behind the
Spartan lines.

"Well done," Demosthenes commented absently.
But his mind was elsewhere. Only now, as mayhem faded to quiet,
could he begin to process Nikostratos' dire pronouncement of
minutes ago.

Spartans were inside the Long Walls.

It meant they had found some way to foil the
world's foremost navy, the foundation on which Athenian empire was
built. There could be no doubt as to who had helped them to achieve
such a feat. Seasons ago, he had seen with his own eyes drawings of
strange ships which were an improvement on current designs, and he
had rejected them. Yet, even had he foreseen the necessity of
making the trireme obsolete, the democracy would have scoffed, and
Athenian shipbuilders would have considered even the suggestion an
affront.

Not so in Sparta, whose navy rarely ever
matched the success of her land forces. In retrospect, the plan of
Brasidas and Eden was almost shamefully obvious. He should have
seen it. The lumbering 
katapeltai 
were a threat,
certainly, but not the most dire one, and Brasidas's march across
the Megarid, the expected path of attack, was not quite a
diversion, but almost. And it had worked: nearly every able body
that Athens could field stood here, ten miles from the city.
Perhaps some or all of the cavalry could swiftly withdraw, but that
was a decision for a general to make. And as that bitch Fate, who
refused to accept defeat idly, would have it, Demosthenes was not a
general this year.

Perhaps seeing defeat written on his face,
Alkibiades urged, if somewhat spiritlessly. "It's not so bad. Sure,
star-girl is gone, but no more siege engines, right? And we still
outnumber Brasidas, even when the Thebans are counted.
Probably."

Under his load of dripping, leather-clad
flesh, Demosthenes laughed bleakly. "You have not heard."

"Heard what?"

They crested the hill, reaching the spot
where a silent Nikostratos and the rest of the Athenian line had
turned as one to stare east at a dark line which slashed the sky
from horizon to clouds. Billowing smoke.

Athens was burning.

The sight failed to shock Demosthenes.
Perhaps he had seen and learned too much to be shocked anymore.
Instead he felt numb as he secured Thalassia's corpse over Akmos'
saddle, her sopping, disheveled braid pelting the earth with
crimson droplets. He heard Nikostratos issuing orders. They were
the right orders, at least: stand fast here, the whole army staying
intact on the plain of Eleusis. The other choice was a tempting
one, to split the force and send relief back to Athens, but that
was likely just what Brasidas wanted. Almost certainly, the moment
those maneuvers began, his army would surge across the frontier.
The Spartan attackers' ready spears and lambda-blazoned shields
would then meet an enemy line in disarray, and defeat for Athens
would be all but assured.

There was no choice but to stand firm for
now, then fall back to the city only when victory was won here on
the frontier. In the best case, if victory were swift, which it
would not be, that meant leaving homes and loved ones at the mercy
of whatever force had penetrated the Long Walls for, what? Four
hours, probably more.

From the evidence in the eastern sky, at
least one fire burned already, though the smoke was too sparse to
represent a general conflagration. But four hours, four hours spent
at arms with backs turned on wives and offspring, was a long time.
A great many fires could be set in that time. The temptation to
race home and protect one's own was strong, in Demosthenes no less
than in any other man. Gods, how he longed to go to Laonome's side,
to sweep her and Eurydike onto Akmos's back and take them to
safety, wherever that was. But down that path lay certain disaster.
The army of Athens would be run down piecemeal and dashed against
the very gates it had failed to defend. The horde on the frontier
would be the hammer, the city walls the anvil.

All that prevented that outcome now was
discipline, and already that was showing cracks. Demosthenes,
standing among the commanders on the hill's crest, saw the army
begin to unravel well before messengers started bringing news that
city-dwellers were falling back from the line, first by ones and
twos, and then in droves. Emboldened by that sight, or perhaps
giving up hope because of it, or maybe just drawn into the herd in
a phenomenon well known to any observer of democracy, others
followed. A trickle soon swelled into a flood, and within half an
hour the road home was awash with bronze helmets and brightly
painted shields moving east in a chaotic but determined swirl.

At Nikostratos' urging, Demosthenes and
others of the cavalry rode into the seething mass to try rallying
men back to their posts. Some were persuaded, but the greater
number were beyond reason. When words failed to stop the tide, the
would-be shepherds of men resorted to lashing out with flats of
swords, but it was a hopeless fight. The numbers overwhelmed them.
Short of killing friends and cousins (as indeed a few raging
country-folk urged) there was nothing to be done.

It was the reverse of the first seven
summers of the war. Then, it had been the rural citizens whose
homes and farms were ravaged while city men led by Perikles urged
restraint on them. Now, as then, the city held sway. The retreat
was unstoppable. Accepting that, Demosthenes extricated himself
from the throng. Over the swirl of heads and spear blades,
Alkibiades called out to him, but whatever few syllables he spoke
were lost in the din of the bronze snake clattering its way to
Athens.