Spartans at the Gates (8 page)

He realized that his teeth were chattering noisily in his head. But his head was burning. How would he ever make it to Athens?

He got to his feet and clambered down the hill and over the dusty field toward the farm. He could see the figures of women in the distance, balancing tall amphoras on their heads, moving to and fro from a well to the farm buildings. His feet felt as though they were cast of iron. He plodded on, mouth parched, while waves of nausea passed over him. By the time he got to the well only two women remained standing there—two old women in their sixties, veils thrown to the wind with their backs to him.

The sound of Nikias clearing his throat caused the women to turn around with startled expressions. They gasped at the sight of him: pale, covered with dried blood, and his teeth chattering like knucklebone dice in a clay cup.

One of the women pulled a long kitchen knife from a sheath she kept on her hip—a knife for cutting the heads off chickens, though it looked as sharp as any warrior's sword. Nikias saw the blade shining in the sun, and the looks of fear on their faces. He held up his left hand in a sign of peace and slowly sank to his knees, dropping his chin to his chest.

“Mothers,” he said in a croaking voice. “I need water. Please. I can pay.” He tried to grasp the leather pouch at his belt, then swayed. He heard one of the women scream as everything turned to blackness before his eyes.

 

SIX

“As wily as Odysseus,” grumbled Chusor as he climbed the steep goat path that wended its way up the Kithaeron Mountains.

He still reeled from his meeting with the Arkon. He'd known Menesarkus for only two years, but he'd seen enough of the man in action to realize that he was a strategist without compare. Their conversation of an hour ago reinforced this notion beyond a doubt.

“How could he have known my greatest desire?” Chusor asked the stones, the trees, and the birds of the hillside. “How did the Arkon know the one thing that would keep me here in this doomed city? Risking my neck against a Spartan siege?”

If Chusor helped defend Plataea, then he would be granted Plataean citizenship. But only after the Spartans had departed the Oxlands. That was the preposterous stipulation that Menesarkus had presented to him.

It was a ludicrous arrangement … so why had Chusor said yes without hesitation?

He paused and wiped the sweat from his brow, staring down at the citadel five hundred feet below the trail. His gaze wandered from the jumble of hovels in the agora to the overcrowded marketplace, and then to the gates on the eastern wall. One of the great portals had been opened to allow people to exit the citadel, and men and women were heading into the countryside, looking around fearfully for Spartans as they went. Nobody knew how much longer the Spartans would let Plataeans move about unmolested.

Chusor peered to the northeast—two miles from the citadel of Plataea—to where the massive earthen-walled structure of the Persian Fort loomed. This fortification was big enough to hold four citadels of Plataea within its twenty-foot-high bastions. It had been constructed almost fifty years ago by King Xerxes's army of half a million warriors and slaves. It was a marvel of engineering and industriousness, for it had been erected in less than a week. But the place had become a killing ground when the Greek allies had broken through the Persian and Theban shield walls, trapping the invaders inside their own fortress: a battle in which Menesarkus, only sixteen years old at the time, had won renown by slaying the Persian general Mardonius.

The Persian Fort became a tourist destination after that, visited for decades by warriors from all over Greece. Nikias told him that he and his friends used to play inside the fort when they were children, searching in the tall grass for treasures: bronze arrowheads and spear points, pieces of armor, and even Persian gold and rings. For the Persian nobles had gone to battle vainly arrayed in all their wealth—riches that had been divided up between the Greek allies after the Persians were wiped out. The Plataeans had used their share of the gold to make Plataea's walls higher and stronger, and to construct public buildings and temples, turning their city into one of the strongest and most beautiful in Greece.

Two weeks ago, after the Theban reinforcements had been defeated in front of the gates of the citadel, the Spartans had arrived in the Oxlands—too late to help their Theban allies. The Spartans had taken over the Persian Fort as their base of operations, swarming into the place like a flock of predatory birds into abandoned nesting grounds. And now they were waiting silently … waiting for the Plataeans to join them in their war against the Athenians, or suffer the torments of a siege.

From the center of the Persian Fort a gray haze rose toward the blue sky—smoke from hundreds of campfires. And on the parapets of the walls, moving about like ants, Chusor could see hundreds of Spartan sentries. The noise of hammers and axes pounding and chopping wood carried faintly on the wind. Thousands of Helot slaves were hard at work, building the equipment to besiege Plataea: scaling ladders, mobile towers, and battering rams. The northern road leading from the Persian Fort to the city of Thebes six miles away was alive with activity: oxcarts and riders moving back and forth between the two strongholds. The Thebans were Spartan allies, and had been responsible for the unsuccessful sneak attack on Plataea two weeks ago. If the Theban plan had worked, Plataea already would be occupied by the Spartan invasion force. But Plataea's ancient enemy had failed, and the Spartans had arrived too late to defeat the citizens of Plataea.

Citizenship!

The word echoed in Chusor's brain. Citizenship would change his life forever. He could go back to Athens without fear of reprisal. As a citizen of Plataea, independent democratic city-state and an ally of Athens, he would be on equal footing with even a man as lofty as Perikles himself—the leader of the Athenian Empire!

Twenty years ago Chusor had been the apprentice of the great architect Phidias—a kindly genius who had recognized Chusor's talent for mathematics and had purchased him from his first master and taken him into his own household. For the next ten years Chusor had helped Phidias construct the new Temple of Athena atop the Akropolis. The architect had treated Chusor like a son and the young apprentice had been allowed to attend gatherings hosted by wealthy Athenians. At one of these salons Chusor had fallen in love with a regal courtesan named Sophia. She and Chusor had started an affair, incurring the murderous wrath of her lover, a politician named Kleon. Chusor had been forced to run. For the next seven years he'd traveled the Mediterranean Sea, from Byblos to Carthage and beyond. In Sicily he became the student of the great inventor Naxos, and learned the secrets of the sticking fire and siegecraft. But after running afoul of a wealthy Syrakusan he'd fled that island's chief citadel. He fell in with a band of pirates, journeying with them beyond the Pillars of Herakles to the western shore of Africa.

On this extraordinary and eventful odyssey he'd discovered that half of what Herodotus had written in his book was true, and the other half was pure horseshit.

But something had always drawn Chusor back to Greece. He could never return to Athens—he would be imprisoned and tortured—and so he'd headed north to the Kithaeron Mountains: the place where the god Dionysus had been born.

And now here he was. Standing on a cliff, peering down at a doomed citadel. Everything looked so peaceful. But Plataea was like a town built upon the edge of a volcano … a volcano that was about to erupt.

He picked up a stone and threw it in frustration against the trunk of a weather-beaten olive tree nearby. It made a satisfying crack as the missile found its target. A flock of crows that had roosted in the branches took flight, squawking angrily.

He saw something move in one of the tree's upper limbs. At first he thought he was looking at a great bird. Then he realized it was a human head. The shape of a body materialized before his eyes—a body that had been hidden amongst the leaves. He picked up another rock and tested the weight, cocking his arm to hurl it at the man who was spying on him.

“I know you're up there, Ji,” said Chusor. “You can come down now. Or shall I knock you down with this rock?”

The man in the tree made a ludicrous imitation of a crow. Chusor smiled and watched as the diminutive figure climbed quickly down to the ground and walked over to Chusor. A lithe, brown-skinned man of indeterminate age, he wore a smile across his round face, his almond-shaped eyes squinting with delight. He bowed and said in the Phoenician tongue, “Greetings, Big Man.”

Chusor bowed back, speaking the same language. “You look well, Ji, my old friend.”

“And you look nearly the same,” said Ji, “even after these four years.”

“
Nearly
the same?” asked Chusor with a laugh.

“Your body has not aged,” said Ji, staring at Chusor's bald scalp, “but it seems your hair has died.”

Chusor rubbed a hand over his shaved skull. “An experiment,” he said.

“She won't like it,” said Ji, showing his teeth and squinting as he laughed amiably. “She'll say you look like an Egyptian scribe.” He mimed the actions of a scribe, holding one hand out like a piece of papyrus, and pretending to write on it with the other.

Men who didn't know Ji would have been lulled into thinking he was a gentle buffoon. But Chusor wasn't fooled by the man's good humor. He'd been raised as an assassin in a Chinese governor's house and had been trained to kill his lord's enemies around the same time he'd learned to wipe his own arse. Not even young Nikias would stand a chance against Ji. He was the fastest man Chusor had ever seen.

“I care not if your mistress likes my looks,” said Chusor. “Take me to her.”

Ji grinned, nodding, and then turned on his heels, walking quickly up the slope. They continued on the goat path for a hundred paces, and then turned left through a stand of pines. Chusor knew where they were headed. The Cave of Nymphs. It was a grotto the Plataeans believed to be inhabited by
daimon
s—evil spirits who were neither gods nor men. He glanced back over his shoulder, down the slope, toward the citadel of Plataea shining in the sun. A voice in his head told him to turn back. That he was in danger.

Ji glanced over his shoulder and asked, “Does the Helot live?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Chusor.

Ji didn't press Chusor to explain this cryptic reply. Instead he said, “The Sponge is dead.”

“Pity,” said Chusor in a monotone.

“She killed him,” said Ji. “They got in a fight. It was a mess.”

“I'm sure the Sponge got what was coming to him.”

“Oh, and Barka has returned to our crew.”

Chusor stopped dead in his tracks, his heart sinking to his knees. The world seemed to shift as his mind reeled from the shock of this news. Barka the eunuch. Barka the Soothsayer. Barka the murderer. He thought he would never again see the wretched man again. But the evil little creature had returned.

Something on the trail up ahead caught his eye. It was a sun-whitened goat's skull moving slightly, as though it were alive. Shreds of its hide and tufts of wool were scattered about the path—the goat must have been killed and eaten by some animal. But what was making the skull move? Then he saw a large tortoise on the other side of the path. It had become entangled in a long tuft of the dead goat's wool. This strand of brown fleece was wrapped around its neck and hooked onto the jagged bottom of the goat skull. The tortoise struggled in vain to free itself from this trap. Chusor went over and untangled it and the tortoise moved quickly away—at least, Chusor thought, quickly for one of its kind.

He realized Ji was scrutinizing him with a half-mocking expression, scratching his head contemplatively.

“A strange sign,” said Chusor.

“Barka could tell you what it means.”

“I no longer wish to ask Barka to interpret anything for me.”

Chusor wanted more than anything to turn and flee. To run down the mountainside to the citadel. But he knew he couldn't outrun the little man who stood before him, gesturing with his dagger in the direction he wanted Chusor to go—toward the mouth of the cave above. “Where is the ship?” asked Chusor, stalling for time. “The Bay of Korinth?”

“I'll let Zana tell you, Big Man,” Ji said flatly. The twinkle in his eye had vanished. “Let's go. We've kept her waiting long enough.”

Chusor clenched his teeth and nodded, then forced his feet to move up the flinty slope toward the Cave of Nymphs, looming in the hillside above like the gaping mouth of a beast.

 

SEVEN

“A handsome face once the blood is off him,” said a woman's kindly voice.

“And the dirt,” replied another.

“Look at all the scars on his body.”

“He's seen battle before.”

Nikias had been listening to the old farm women chattering for a while with his eyes closed. He felt so exhausted he could barely move a muscle. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious. The chills had subsided. But his body felt strangely heavy, as though it were carved from marble. He forced himself to open his eyes and saw the faces of the two old women staring down at him with concern.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” he muttered.

The old women smiled and laughed gently. “Of course you're not,” said one of them and patted him on the cheek.

“You couldn't fight a kitten in the state you're in,” added the other.

“What happened to you, lad?”

“Fell off my horse,” said Nikias. “Then I was attacked by Dog Raiders.”

“Achh! These days are sad days!”

“Sister, you said the very words that I was thinking!”

“How did you survive?”

“Where are you from, sweet love?”

“Plataea,” said Nikias, and the women dropped their jaws in unison.