Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (9 page)

He had not forgotten—how could
he?—Thalassia's baleful words inside the house, that Athens was
doomed to defeat in the this war.  But she had said much else,
too, and nearly strangled him besides, leaving his mind cluttered
and his tongue confounded.

Demosthenes tried, aloud, to sort some
things out.  “First,” he began, “I accept that you are more
than what you appear to be.  But when you say Athens is
doomed, why should I believe you?  Across that harbor, three
hundred Spartan Equals sit in chains.  To recover them, their
leaders will come begging us for a treaty.  We are nearer to
victory than ever we have been.”

“Oh, there will be a treaty,” Thalassia
conceded.  “But tell me this: what's a treaty worth among
Greeks?”

Demosthenes gave no answer, for he knew the
shameful truth.  Treaties were worth very little.  Few
ever lasted out their set duration.

“This war will not end in exchanges and
envoys,” she said with confidence.  “It will end in total
victory.  Sparta's.  But, lucky you, you won't have to
live to see it.”  The road split, and Demosthenes pointed down
the leftward branch they were to take.  Several steps down it,
Thalassia correctly observed, “This way is not the most
direct.”

“It avoids the 
agora
,”
Demosthenes said.  “I am not unknown here.  I'll be
accosted.”

“I thought you wanted witnesses.”

He shrugged.  “And you are clearly a
fugitive.  You tell me, do I need to be seen more than you
need not to be?”

Fingering the handle of her palmed knife,
Thalassia proceeded up the deserted route Demosthenes had chosen
for her sake.

“Why Sicily?” he asked as they got underway,
recalling the prophecy of inglorious death Thalassia had earlier
thrown so casually at him across the table.

“Does it matter?  It's more than ten
years away.”  Her watchful, wintry eyes flashed a
conspiratorial look.  “A lot could happen before then... if
the right alliance were made.  This war could be over in,
let's say, two years?”

“Alliance?” he asked with interest.
 “With what city?”

“No city,” she said.  “You and me.
 Us.  We win the war for Athens.”

The path increased in grade, and Thalassia
began to get ahead of him, her fine, high-laced sandals crunching
an unflagging rhythm on the dry road.  On either side of them
stood a series of decrepit buildings which were among those
abandoned earlier in the summer, when thousands of frightened
Messenians had chosen to flee the city rather than risk suffering
reprisals when the Spartans—as was inevitable in their
minds—returned.

“Ally with 
you
?” Demosthenes
said scornfully.  “I do not even know what you are.”

Thalassia looked over her shoulder at him
and smiled.  “I'm a good luck charm,” she said. 

When again she faced the road ahead, she
halted suddenly.  Twenty paces in front of them stood a woman.
 She wore a gray traveling 
chlamys
, its hood
thrown back to reveal long, golden hair tied in a single braid
which fell over one shoulder.  At her waist, their hilts
peeking out from behind the cloak, hung not one but two sheathed
short swords.

An unwomanly word passed Thalassia's lips as
Demosthenes drew up beside her.

“Fuck.”

“Who is she?” Demosthenes asked.  He
put hand to sword, strange as such action felt when facing a
female.  He could not recall ever having seen a woman bear a
sword; it was a sight he surely would recall.

“
Eden
,” Thalassia said loudly.
 It was less an answer to his question than a chill greeting
directed at the other.

The woman returned a short, harsh string of
syllables in a foreign tongue.  Her tone was less cold, but
the ghost of a smile which touched her lips more than compensated.
 She spoke a few more fluid, non-Greek words, then glanced at
Demosthenes.  Her smile reappeared, and she continued in an
accented Attic similar to Thalassia's, “—or perhaps we should
converse in Greek for the benefit of your new friend.  No
doubt you have told him many lies.  Perhaps he will learn
something.”

She turned her eyes upon Demosthenes.
 If Thalassia's eyes were the color of a winter sky, this
newcomer's were that of summer: a rich indigo that seemed deeper
still for being set in a pale, aristocratic face.

“For instance, do you know, Athenian, that
you presently stand beside one of the universe's most vile
traitors?”  Eden's gaze swept back to Thalassia, and
Demosthenes was glad for it, for this woman's look had frozen the
breath in his chest.  “For reasons beyond me,” she continued,
“and beyond all who ever knew her, Geneva was forgiven.  Yet
the moment she resumed her place of trust—”

“Get out of our way, Eden,” Thalassia said
evenly.

“Why did you do it?” Eden said, and she
addressed Thalassia again by the same harsh, alien word she had
first spoken on their meeting.  It was a word that seemed
subtly to sting Thalassia, if Demosthenes judged correctly.  
“Explain to me why you brought us here, to this shit layer nowhere
near our objective and
 blew up our fucking ship in the
atmosphere!
”   By the time Eden finished, she was speaking
through clenched teeth that were as white as frost.  “
Tell
me why!
” 

“Get out of our way,” Thalassia
repeated.

Eden chuckled, coldly.  “Or what?
 You know I am superior to you.  I will not let you pass.
 Nadir exists on this earth.  Lyka has gone there.
 Her beacon is active—as yours was until two days ago—so you
know that.  You and I will follow her, await extraction and
return to Sprial.  I trust Magdalen will not forgive you a
second time.”  She lifted a snowy brow.  “I may suggest a
few punishments.”

 Thalassia's demeanor remained
outwardly calm, but Demosthenes knew it for what it was: the sort
of calm that one adopts when cornered by a salivating wolf.

“You know nothing, Eden,” Thalassia said.
 “Go.  Follow Lyka.  Sleep and wait for rescue.
 I will never trouble you again.  I'm sorry for stranding
you here.  If there had been any other way—”

Eden scoffed and lifted a long, pale finger.
 “There is one small problem with your suggestion... and that
is that 
you serve the Worm
!”

She smiled, reining in the simmering anger
she had briefly allowed to surface.  These two women were more
alike than they would ever admit, Demosthenes silently concluded.
 He had caught a glimpse of Thalassia's temper, could still
feel its mark on his neck.

“I serve Magdalen,” Thalassia asserted.

“Bullshit!” the other screamed.  She
set eyes once more on Demosthenes and asked, “Has Geneva told you
what she is called by her own people, women and men who were once
her friends but now are loathe to speak her name?  It is the
name I have been calling her by.  Let me see if it
translates...”  Eden smiled a spiteful smile.
 “
Wormwhore
.  Yes, I think that serves.”

“I do not serve him,” Thalassia asserted
plainly.  “I hate him more than you do.  Now get out of
our way.”

Unsurprisingly, as with the previous two
iterations of Thalassia's request, Eden showed no sign of
complying.  “What say you, Athenian?” she asked next of
Demosthenes with a smirk.  “Surely you know respect for such
things as law and loyalty. What do you think must happen?”

Suddenly, Demosthenes found himself the
object of both women's attention.  He could see in Thalassia's
pale eyes, in the mouth drawn into a tight line, that she dearly
hoped he would take her side.  If one of the two women
repelled him more than the other, it was doubtless Eden, yet...
more than that, he wished to see them both ushered out of his life
by the swiftest possible means.  In just this one morning, the
hard-fought victory which he had every right to savor had been all
but soured.

“I think...” he began, and cleared his
throat.  He addressed Thalassia without looking directly at
her.  “I think that... perhaps it might be best if you went
with her.”

Eden grinned.  “A credit to his city,”
she said.  “Come, Whore.  For the moment, I am still
willing to let you walk.  But if I must cut you to pieces and
carry you away in a bloody sack instead, so be it.”

While Demosthenes' mouth hung agape in
uncertainty as to whether this threat might be a literal one, he
caught a sidelong glance from Thalassia in which she made
abundantly clear the depth of her disappointment in him.
 Then, suddenly, moving as quickly as he had seen her do one
time before, she was upon her enemy.

Eden foresaw the attack and had time to draw
one of her two swords, but only just.  Thalassia avoided its
first swing. The table knife flashed in the palm of Thalassia's
raised right hand, on course for Eden's face, but Eden's free hand
shot up and blocked it while she brought her own blade back for a
second swing.  Thalassia twisted, and the blade missed her
head by a hair's breadth—and then the wrist of Eden's sword arm was
locked in Thalassia's iron grip, the same grip that still felt
fresh on the skin of Demosthenes' neck.  The two took to
grappling, each trying yet unable to drive her blade into her
opponent's flesh.  They whirled together in a swift, deadly
dance of whipping dark and golden locks, of gray cloak and pale
orange dress.

The dance ended as few others did, with one
of the partners, Eden, slamming her forehead into the other's nose,
a headbutt which left her forehead streaked with Thalassia's blood.
 She tried to land another, but Thalassia dragged the woman's
sword arm up between their faces, obstructing the blow.

Three paces away, Demosthenes stood unsure
whether to intervene.  Apart from temple friezes of Amazons,
never before had he seen such a sight as this, of women locked in
fierce combat.  And even in the friezes, the women's opponents
were male.

“Ladies, surely there is a better way...” he
said feebly.

By choice of one or the other of the women,
their struggle went to the ground, where they rolled in the dust
with legs entangled.  The orange linen restricting Thalassia's
lower body rode up, exposing her thighs, while the other's paler
legs were already bare under a high-hemmed slave chiton.
 Somehow Thalassia came out with the advantage, slamming her
attacker's sword hand repeatedly against a rock embedded in the
roadside.  The rock grew slick and dark with blood, and Eden's
sword fell free, clattering on the ground.  Thalassia went for
it, but the other woman's injured hand clapped onto Thalassia's
forearm, stopping her.  Their other hands meanwhile fought
over Thalassia's table knife, the point of which Eden had managed
to turn toward its wielder's face, its tip biting Thalassia's
cheek.

As the sword flew free, Demosthenes' wits
and his instincts, briefly absent, returned.  He moved in long
strides toward the sword and kicked it out of either woman's reach,
then drew his own blade and leveled it at the combatants on the
ground.

“Stop!” he cried—not too loud, lest he draw
onlookers.  Again, when they didn't desist: “
Stop this
madness, now!
”

They rolled, and Thalassia came out on top
with one hand free.  Consequently, Eden had a free hand, as
well, and she sent it toward her waist where her second sword
awaited.  Thalassia's hand, meantime, grasped a smooth stone
half-buried in the earth, wrenched it free and hefted it over
Eden's head. 

Demosthenes watched in horror as, without
hesitation, Thalassia brought the stone down with tremendous force
into her opponent's face, smashing the skull.  Eden's hand
flew from her half-drawn sword and came up, too late, to block the
blow.  Thalassia wrenched her knife hand free of Eden's grip
and stabbed Eden's blocking arm in the wrist, clearing a path that
the blood-smeared stone might find its way for a second time into
Eden's half-crushed face.  Blood and brain matter smeared
cloak and dress and skin and ground, yet incredibly Eden's limbs
fought on.  Of her two deep blue eyes, the one which was not
buried in gore stayed open and retained the spark of life.

Straddling her beaten foe, Thalassia struck
Eden a third time in the head before reaching for the half-drawn
sword at Eden's hip.  Statue-like, his own sword still pointed
ineffectually at the pair, Demosthenes watched aghast as Thalassia
plunged the short sword over and over into her victim's neck and
face, so hard that the tip could be heard scraping ground
underneath.  Blood splashed from each new wound like libations
poured on an altar to some dark god.

Seeing the savage fury which lit Thalassia's
face, Demosthenes knew he had to act, had to end this.  He
took two long steps forward, and reaching the scene of battle, he
thrust his sword with all the force he could muster into mad,
golden-skinned Thalassia's back.  It slid between her ribs,
grating on bone, through her heart, and out the other side, under
her left breast.

Thalassia's head whipped round, dark
tendrils of shoulder length hair partly obscuring the crazed,
unearthly eyes, knit brows and bared teeth which came together in a
look not of surprise or pain, but of undiluted rage.  She
hissed, and then ignored him, turning her crazed attention back
upon her victim.

Demosthenes backed slowly away, leaving his
sword embedded in Thalassia's torso.  He saw that the single
eye within that mutilated head on the ground stood open still, and
not just with the empty stare of a corpse.  This mutilated
being was alive and fighting, and it did not let the momentary
distraction offered by Demosthenes' interference go to waste.
 One of Eden's blood covered hands found the very rock which
had caved in her skull, picked it up and hurled it at Thalassia,
who was forced to raise an arm to ward it off.  

The respite thus achieved was brief, but it
was enough to let Eden slip free.  Having done so, the
scrambling, blood-covered thing which had moments ago been a woman
had but one clear goal in mind: 
escape
.  Getting
her feet under her, the near-headless Eden ran off at speed, gray
cloak and blood-soaked braid trailing behind her.  She ran
west to where, beyond two or three rows of houses, the land fell
off sharply into the sea.