Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (52 page)

"I cannot give that order! These men would
not listen to me if I did. I lead here only by consent. Take me,
and take the body. That is all I can give!"

Brasidas drew the sword from his hip and
stepped forward. Demosthenes lunged instinctively, as if he could
step off the high wall and stay the Spartiate's arm. But he could
not. He was helpless, moreso than ever he had been. All his effort
won him was a sharp impact on his hips where they struck the edge
of a battlement.

Drawing up behind the bound prisoners,
Brasidas poised his blade in the air above Eurydike's head.

"I am not without mercy," he said. "I shall
kill only one of them. But which? Most Athenians love their whores
more than their wives, I am told. But not you, I think. Am I
right?" His sword point drifted right to hang over the bowed head
of Laonome. "She has your spawn in her bowels. An heir, if you're
lucky, since you will soon be in need of one." The blade slipped
lower, stopping alongside Laonome's round belly. "Or maybe I'll
just relieve her of the burden."

"Let her go!"

Even as Demosthenes cried out, a Thracian
storm knocked Brasidas back a step. Eurydike, whirling, aimed the
hooked, claw-like fingers of her bound hands at the Spartiate's
throat. Brasidas easily dodged the attack, and a second later the
threat was nullified by a second Equal whose thick arms yanked hard
on the rope fastened to Eurydike's neck. Her back arched
unnaturally, her legs flew out from under her, and she slammed into
the earth. Brasidas came forward, laughing, and he loomed over her,
putting the point of his sword to her cheek.

A pace away, Laonome raised her eyes
skyward. She sobbed, and her imperfect lips moved in inaudible
prayer.

"Goodbye, Little Red."

The latter, a pained whisper, came from
Alkibiades, who like Demosthenes knew precisely what Eurydike had
hoped to gain by her rash action. She had suffered no illusion of
being able to kill Brasidas, but rather only hoped to make herself
the one he chose to murder.

Yet Brasidas's hovering sword did not
cut.

"Styphon!" the polemarch barked, laughing.
Only then did Demosthenes realize that one of the party's
spear-wielding Equals was Styphon. His face had been averted as
though in disapproval. "Do you have any use for this little
beast?"

"No, polemarch," Styphon answered
stiffly.

Heedless of the negative, Brasidas wrenched
Eurydike's rope lead from its holder and thrust it at Styphon.
"Take her anyway. Enjoy her. Tame her if you can, kill her if you
must."

Obediently Styphon accepted the rope, and
Brasidas set his now-free hand on Laonome's neck. She tried and
failed to jerk her head away.

"Will none of you raise a hand to stop him!"
Demosthenes cried desperately over the battlements at Brasidas's
entourage. "What has become of Sparta's honor!"

"You can stop me yourself," Brasidas shot
back. He spared not even a sidelong glance to search for signs of
mutiny among his men.

Coming up behind Laonome, Brasidas yanked
her body in close to his. His hand found her breast and squeezed.
Laonome tried futilely to stop him with her bound hands, but her
struggle ceased when the edge of a short sword grazed the soft
underside of her chin.

"What say you, Athenian?"

"I say why kill her when you can kill me
instead!" Demosthenes' answer was earnest and given without
hesitation. "Why cut a woman's throat when you can cut your
enemy's? She is no threat, but my death means–"

Brasidas's sword arm slid sideward. Blood
gushed around his blade and down over Laonome's dress. Her bulbous
form slumped heavily into the dirt, spindly limbs flopping
lifelessly.

A raw, piercing sound filled the sky over
Dekelea, resounding in the space between Demosthenes' ears. Only
minutes later, with cold stone under him, abrading his skin as he
struggled to escape the tangle of men's limbs fighting to restrain
him, did he realize that the source of the persistent sound was his
own throat.

Silencing the cry, he broke from the
restraining arms and threw himself against the battlements.

"BRASIDAS!" he roared. "Hear me, murderer,
and know this! From this day, I have but one purpose. I will kill
Spartans until it scarcely seems worthwhile to lift my arm to slay
another! And only then, when your wretched kind is all but extinct,
will you kneel before me and become the last! This I swear by every
dark god that lurks in the earth! Do you hear me, Brasidas! You
have doomed your city!"

Whirling, Demosthenes did not watch or
listen for Brasidas to reappear and make reply. He strode off,
shoving men from his path and descended the stair from the
battlements into Dekelea with but one destination in mind.

On his heels, Alkibiades grabbed his arm.
"Demosthenes!"

He ripped his arm from the youth's grasp.
"Take command," he bid him.

"No." Alkibiades grabbed him again, with
both arms, forcing Demosthenes to a halt. "You are not thinking
clearly. I know that you–"

"You know nothing!" Demosthenes broke loose
once more and resumed his march. Alkibiades trailed after.
"Thalassia lied to you. Before she came, you were fated to be
remembered forever, for both good deeds and bad. You want the
chance to make it so again? It is yours. Embrace it. As for me, I
have never been more clear of purpose."

"
Lied
...?" Alkibiades echoed dully.
His steps slowed, and he ceased his pursuit through the dirt
streets of the mountain village. "What will you do?" he shouted at
Demosthenes' back, to no reply.

Hardly a minute's walk brought Demosthenes
to the shed housing Thalassia's corpse. Drawing his sword, he
sliced the thick rope holding it shut, and he entered. The small
room, lit by shafts of light that seeped through the wall boards,
did not smell of death but rather of dirt and olive oil and musty
wood. Thalassia's mutilated body lay on the earthen floor of this,
her mausoleum, shrouded in a white cloth that was pink in spots
where it had soaked through. Kneeling, Demosthenes peeled back her
shroud. In the space around her eye, the lines of her Mark seemed
to eat the light, as did the great, gaping wound between chin and
shoulder that had nearly severed her head. Bridging the gap was the
thick single braid, deliberately placed, which came up from behind
her head to cross her collarbone and end near her heart.

Andrea had cleaned and anointed the corpse,
but there was not much anyone could do to make the star-girl look
whole again. She made a grisly sight: head hanging on by a shred of
flesh, one arm a dark red stump, and much of her formerly smooth
skin sliced to ribbons, such that little skin even was visible. Her
appearance was little changed since her death three days prior, but
that in itself offered hope, for her body had not gone the way of
normal corpses, growing pale and stiff. But for her horrific
wounds–which had begun to ooze a sort of clear liquid–Thalassia
might have been merely asleep. She was healing, but her recovery
would clearly be slow, likely much longer than Dekelea could hope
to hold out in a siege.

Thalassia's face was largely intact, and it
was to this that Demosthenes addressed his words, delivered as he
lay down beside her on the dirt floor.

"You are a weapon," he said, "unlike any
this world has known. You chose me to wield you in my war, as you
would wield me in yours. 
Exairetos
, you called me once
in my dreams. 
Chosen One
. But I was hesitant. I wielded
you badly. No man possessed of a heart should ever wish to wield to
its full potential a weapon such as you are. But now... now, I have
no heart. Laonome–" His throat clenched around the name, as if to
squeeze her tight in denial of her absence. "Laonome has taken it
with her to Hades. Unburdened of it, I can do what must be
done."

He raised a hand and touched Thalassia's
cheek, which was not warm, but neither as chill as a corpse's
should be. His finger traced the sinuous, black curves of her Mark.
"When you rise again, we shall wield each other and each take our
righteous vengeance. We shall become that terrible, beautiful,
destructive force of which you spoke on the day you died. I will
rip out Brasidas's heart, just as he did mine, and squeeze the
blood down the throats of Sparta's ephors. I will see his unburied
corpse fed to dogs while his restless shade is raped by Furies. You
will strip the meat from Eden's bones and smash her every Seed.
Sparta shall be erased from this world, and after it Roma, that
future generations will not live under her yoke. And then..." He
exhaled through tightly clenched teeth. "And then I shall let
myself sink into Hades and rest with Laonome."

He raised himself from the floor and set to
preparing for the chosen course of his fate. Some time later, he
exited the shed, stripped of the black scale armor with its patch
of spun bronze that had saved his life at Amphipolis. His sword
remained belted at his hip, and a coil of rope was slung over his
shoulder. He dragged behind him Thalassia's body, which he had
wrapped tightly in canvas and strapped to a makeshift bier. He
walked west with this burden, and his passage did not go unnoticed;
word began to spread, mostly in whispers, of poor, bereaved
Demosthenes' emergence. It must eventually have reached Alkibiades,
perhaps on the new commander's own instruction, for he came running
up, dressed in his glittering armor, just as Demosthenes reached
Dekelea's western wall.

"Where are you headed, my friend?"
Alkibiades asked, his voice filled with condescension. "I fear you
may plan something rash."

"How often has someone said exactly those
words to you?" Demosthenes returned, without halting.

"Quite often," the youth conceded. "Usually
they are right."

Reaching the base of a bastion, Demosthenes
entered and began dragging Thalassia's bier up the stairs.

"You aren't leaving town, are you?"

"Yes. Try to stop me, and I will kill
you."

"If you do, the Spartans will kill you."

"I will get past them."

Alkibiades took the dragging end of
Thalassia's bier and lifted it, helping to carry her up the stairs.
"And what can you accomplish?" he asked. "There are two of you, and
one is dead."

"Two are dead," Demosthenes corrected. "And
she is Athens' only hope of regaining freedom. She must not fall
into Spartan hands. It is too dangerous to keep her here."

At the top of the wall, they lay down
Thalassia's body. "I see the folly of arguing with you at present,"
Alkibiades conceded. "Where will you go?"

Demosthenes sank to the rough surface of the
liquid stone, his back against a battlement. "Even if I knew, I
would not say," Demosthenes answered. "When and if this town falls,
you could be made to talk."

Or you might elect to
, he declined to
add.

"Very well," Alkibiades said glumly. "I
suppose all that remains to say is, 'May Zeus protect you, my good
friend.'"

"And you," Demosthenes responded
hollowly.

With a smile full of pity, Alkibiades, in
his shining armor inlaid with ivory and gold, vanished down the
stair to resume command of the tattered remnants of Athens' army.
Demosthenes sat on the wall for hours, now and then choking on
tears but mostly only staring blankly, waiting for full darkness to
descend, that he might more safely make his escape.

When it came, he secured his rope to a
battlement, tied the other end to Thalassia's bier and lowered her
down. Then he descended the rope himself, untied the bier and began
dragging it west at a run over the rocky ground, making for the
thickest part of the wood that surrounded mountainous Dekelea. The
invading army would soon fully invest this countryside, dig an
encircling ditch, and put the town fully under siege. But Brasidas
had only arrived today, and so, apart from a small Spartan patrol
that forced him briefly into hiding, Demosthenes found his passage
unopposed. He reached the woods and continued into the mountains,
into hiding, bearing behind him the weapon with which he intended
to achieve nothing less than the total annihilation of the man and
city which had stripped him of all in his life that had been good.
Although Demosthenes of Athens was dead, he walked on, while from
the distance, soaring over the battlements of a doomed mountain
refuge, came the raised voices of Spartans singing hymns to
victory.

END

===================================

The story continues in SPARTAN BEAST.

===================================

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Sincere thanks for reading
Athenian
Steel
. I am an independent author with no professional
marketing wizards working to convince people to read my books.
Therefore, if you enjoyed this book and would like to see many
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–PK Lentz
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