Kassandra dropped down behind a thicket of gorse and watched as a Spartan lochos—a regiment of some five hundred men, one-fifth of the ever-rarer purebred Spartiates—emerged from the trees. They went with their crimson cloaks flowing, their beards and hair tied tight in braids, jostling like ropes as they marched in barefoot lockstep toward the shoreline. Their helms dazzled in the late-afternoon sun, their bronze-coated shields streaked with blood-red lambda icons, their spears leveled like executioner’s fingers, pointing accusingly at the washed-up Athenians.
They fell upon their prey in silence, faces bent in malice, spears licking out to pierce chests, bursts of blood misting above the fray, screams rising from the stricken. Those Athenians still swimming in or crawling through the shallows on all fours were mercilessly bludgeoned with the bronze butt spikes on the base of the Spartan spears. When a band of seven or so Athenians dared to put up a fight, there was one among the Spartans who moved like a nightmare unleashed. Kassandra saw only glimpses of him, his whipping red tribon cloak, his head and face obscured by an old-style Korinthian helm, his spear flashing in the late-afternoon sunlight. Every one of the seven fell to him, riven. Within moments, the hundreds of survivors of the rammed ship were but a flotsam of cadavers, bobbing in a bloody soup. Silence befell the bay, leaving just the sound of the waves lapping gently on the shore.
She saw him in full at last, and knew it was the Wolf, for he wore the trappings of a general: a transverse plume—blood-red like his gore-sodden cloak. She stared at the T of shadow at the front of the helm, seeking out the face, memories of the past scourging her like whips of fire. Her heart hammered, the Leonidas spear seeming to shudder and vibrate in her grasp.
The men around the Wolf raised their spears to him. “Aroo!” they boomed once, solemnly.
The sheer aura and number of these warriors doused her in cold reality. Now was not the time to strike. She let go of the spear and drew her cloak over it, and the fire within settled. She watched as the Wolf moved toward a younger officer and clasped a hand to his shoulder. “You fought well, Stentor,” she heard him say. With that, the Spartan general, her father . . . her quarry, turned and left the bay, heading toward a path that wound up the coastal bluffs, a few men walking by his side.
Kassandra looked back over her shoulder, seeing Barnabas watching anxiously. Wait here, she mouthed to him, then rose from behind the gorse and approached the Spartan soldiers. The one named Stentor noticed her first and stepped over to block her path.
He was a little older than her: at least thirty, she guessed, given that he seemed to be an officer. He stared at her, impassive, his inky beard ringing thin lips, his nose like a blade. He was strong and lean . . . perhaps too lean—the tolls of battle and hunger? His mouth twitched, loaded with acid words of challenge, until he noticed the Adrestia, moored nearby, then glanced to the dead Athenians, and then across the water at the floating remains of the ship. “You . . . you halved that galley?” he concluded, the statement punctuated by the nearby stretch and snap of sinew as a vulture plucked an eyeball from a dead Athenian’s head.
“It was in my way,” Kassandra replied, matching his laconic tone.
She noticed a glint of respect in his eyes and followed his prideful glance up to the top of the coastal bluffs: up there, the Wolf now stood, looking over the bay, his cloak fluttering in the fiery light of sunset. He rested his weight on a bakteriya staff.
She realized she had been staring at him just a little too long. And so did Stentor.
“What do you want with the Wolf?” he snapped, his voice suddenly dripping with suspicion.
Kassandra feigned nonchalance. “I come to . . . serve him.”
“So you are a misthios. And you think that we need help? Did you not just witness what happened to these Athenian fools? Is Megara not still in Spartan hands?”
“For now,” she replied. “Though I have heard that Perikles of Athens plans to mount a major land offensive on these parts.”
Stentor’s top lip arched at one end.
“I am sure you will win most battles,” she replied before he could curse her, “but could you not use a mercenary for certain things? I ask only for a place in your camp and safe harbor for the men of my boat while I am here.”
Stentor snorted in dry amusement. “You want to serve us? Do you really think I would let a hired blade anywhere near my father?” He shot a look up at the Wolf as he said this.
“You are the Wolf’s . . . son?” Kassandra said, her voice breaking up.
“He adopted me not long after both of his children died,” Stentor explained. “He mentored me and trained me. It is thanks to him that I am a lochagos, leader of this regiment. He is everything to me, and he is everything I want to be. I would follow him to the gates of the underworld.”
“I ask only the chance to do the same,” she said.
He looked at her askance, eyeing her from head to toe like a merchant evaluating a nag, before chopping one hand into the palm of the other, decision made. “No. No misthios will enter our camp or set foot near the Wolf,” he insisted. “Enough of your kind lurk inland as it is, working for the Athenians . . .” His nose wrinkled. “Hyrkanos and his hired rogues have been smashing up our supply wagons, denying our men their bread. Others seek my father’s head and the purse it will bring. Too many thorns in the Wolf’s paw already. No more. For all I know you could be one of them—here to kill my father.” He stared hard at her for a time. “So go, sleep on your boat and be grateful that I let you keep your head, stranger.”
A gentle clank of spears being leveled behind her told her it was time to leave. She half bowed and backed away, toward the fragile sanctuary of the Adrestia.
* * *
• • •
Having eaten a meal of salted, roasted sardines and bread, washed down with well-watered wine, Kassandra lay down to sleep near the boat’s prow. An eerie silence descended over the bay. She could not find rest, despite her aching muscles and foggy mind, and so she sat up on the rail, hugging her knees to her chest, Ikaros preening himself beside her in the light of a sickle moon that illuminated the waters. She watched the ring of torchlight out on the Athenian galleys, and the glow of orange up on the bluff, where the Spartans were camped. Here in this netherworld of the beach, she was surrounded by a deckful of snoring sailors, and the still, stinking corpses of the Athenian dead a stone’s throw along the sands. They had been stripped of their armor but left unburied.
Her heart froze when she heard a lapping of oars out on the water. A night attack? But she saw just a small rowboat coming toward the shore from the blockade, and watched keenly as two unarmored Athenians disembarked and headed up toward the Spartan camp. Brave men, dead men, surely, she thought. But they returned a short while later, and then a larger team of unarmed Athenians rowed ashore to join them and helped dig graves in the sand and bury their dead, granted amnesty to do so by their fiercest enemies.
Kassandra stared up at the Spartan camp. The Wolf was at the bluff’s edge again, looking down upon the burials, framed by the inky sky and a silvery sand of stars. You no doubt congratulate yourself for showing such a crumb of honor, she mouthed hatefully. Yet where was your honor that night on the mountain?
For the next moon, the Adrestia remained beached near Pagai, and Kassandra set about winning the Spartans’ trust. By day, she shadowed the ranks as they marched to and fro, defending the few good bays and docking sites whenever the Athenians tried to land or driving off the infantry assaults from the north. Twice, she helped turn the fray. First, by perching on a rock near the shore and sending blazing arrows over the heads of the waiting, battle-ready Spartans and into the sails of the approaching Athenian triremes, the vessels going up in flames before they even reached the shore. Stentor had glowered at her like a vulture robbed of his corpse. Then, a few days later, she had entered the edge of battle again, springing from the woods to defeat an
Athenian champion. Stentor had rewarded her with a tirade and a quarter-drawn blade. “Stay away from my soldiers. Stay away from my father,” he had spat. But she could see the black rings under his eyes and the flagging steps of the Spartan soldiers. Despite their pride and reputation for laughing in the face of hunger, the missing supply wagons meant many had not eaten solids for nearly half a moon.
Spartan trust was like a thick iron lock. Grain was the key, she realized. She rose, slipped silently from the boat and headed inland.
* * *
• • •
Up on the bluff, a circle of torches delineated the Spartan camp. Sentries stood, watchful and expressionless, the butt spikes of their spears dug into the earth so the shafts stood upright like pickets. A few Skiritae—expert javelin marksmen and outlying night watchmen, not purebred Spartans, but soldiers held in some esteem nonetheless—sat in trees and on elevated ground in the surrounding countryside. Inside the camp, Spartan soldiers sat by fires rumbling with deep laughter, slurping painfully thin black broth from their kothon mugs or whetting their spears. A few stood naked, their Helot slaves carefully oiling their gaunt bodies and strigilling them clean.
Stentor sat by the fire at the heart of the camp, tired, famished and irritable. Unable to rest, he had risen in the darkness and brought a few other insomniac warriors with him to the fire to while the hours of night away. “Sing the verses of Tyrtaios for me,” he grunted. “One of his war songs.”
The two gaunt Spartiate warriors sitting across from him coughed and shuffled, then began a dreadful rendition of a song written some three hundred years previously by Sparta’s greatest poet. Stentor’s face melted with dismay. “Make it stop, before the shade of the great man rises and rips your tongues from your mouths.”
He gazed down at the Adrestia, clinging to the shores like a limpet. The irksome misthios had been here for nearly two moons now—all throughout the stinking-hot summer. Her interference in recent battles had stolen the wind from their victories, and once with her use of the bow—such an un-Spartan weapon! One day he had walked down to the bay to watch his men training on the sand. They lined up in opposing phalanxes and marched at one another in mock battle. He had laughed gruffly and applauded as one by one the lines picked each other apart, knocking their opponents down or scoring mock kills. In the end, one soldier remained standing after an imperious display, the rest dazed and groaning. He had roared in ovation as he approached the champion . . . until he saw that underneath that red Spartan robe and bronze helm was no man of Lakonia. It was her. Her!
He had berated his men like a vengeful titan for letting her train with them, for giving her a Spartan spear and shield. But she merits them, sir, one soldier had countered. She has been expertly trained in the Spartan ways, by whom she will not say.
One of the men she had beaten later tried to woo her, by way of grabbing her and trying to kiss her. That one now sat in the corner of the camp, still nursing a broken jaw and bruised testicles. More strangely, in the last moon, the Skiritae had reported her odd night movements—roving far inland under darkness. What are you, Misthios? he wondered.
In any case, there were darker troubles approaching. The misthios’s claims had been accurate: Perikles of Athens was moving a strong force of hoplites south in an attempt to break the Spartan hold on this land, and so the Spartan lochos would soon be marching north to intercept them—indeed, the allies had already been summoned. He wrung his fingers through his hair: talk of Athenian heroes, of vast enemy numbers, of what many whispered was sure to be a famous Spartan defeat, gnawed at the edges of his morale, just as the hunger clawed at his empty belly.
Crunch-crunch-crunch. Footsteps, fast, coming through the tents toward him.
His head whipped up. “Guards!” he snapped.
A shadow appeared near the fire, striding purposefully toward him. He rose, going for his short sword, when the shadow halted and tossed a heavy object in his direction. The object landed near the fire and burst. Precious wheat spilled from the sack. All eyes fell upon the wheat as if it were gold. Stentor looked up as the shadow came into view. Kassandra wore the look of a huntress, her brow dipped and her eyes fixed on him.
“Misthios?” he growled.
“Hyrkanos is dead. For the last moon I have tracked him down. Tonight, I infiltrated his camp, killed him and his men. A dozen more wagons of stolen grain lie there: you and your men can eat and regain your strength—in time for the arrival of the Athenian land assault.”
He stood, elated and enraged. “So you bring us salvation again?” he seethed. “You wish to have us bow and praise you?”
“I ask for nothing other than an audience with the Wolf,” she said quietly.
Stentor’s ire faded, and a sparkling jewel of an idea began to glimmer in his mind. They needed every spear they could gather. “Very well. There is one way to secure such a meeting. When we march north to face the Athenian phalanxes”—he stabbed a finger at her—“you, Misthios, will march in my enomotia, my sworn band. I will vouch for you. You trained well on the bay. But mock fighting on the sand is no way to measure a warrior. You must prove your worth as a hoplite, as part of the wall of steel, in true battle.”
The two Spartans sitting by the fire rumbled with laughter at the idea.
Stentor willed her to crumble at the prospect of true battle. Run, Misthios, be gone!
Kassandra held his gaze. “Give me a spear and a shield, and I will fight as a Spartan should.”
Stentor’s sneer faded into a cold glower.
* * *
• • •
Dust clouds rose over the Megarid like rival serpents, drawing closer, as the two great armies marched toward battle. Barnabas had been like an old hen that morning, trying to give Kassandra extra bread and making sure she had enough water.
Now, a half morning’s march north of Pagai bay, she wondered if she would ever see him again. Inside the helm, the blood thundered through her ears, her breath crashed like waves, and the stink of sweat laced the air. The bulky shoulders of the Spartan on her left brushed against her arm with every step, the shield roped across her back chewing into her shoulders and the haft of the hoplite spear grating on her palm. She had left the Leonidas spear on the Adrestia, knowing that she could not be seen with it lest the Wolf recognize it and her. She glanced along the front of Stentor’s enomotia: thirty-two bearded men with faces set like stone. The Wolf marched with them too. The rest of the bands marched like the trailing tail of a great crimson snake. Reinforcements had been summoned from the Peloponnesian allies: Thebans, Korinthians, Megarans, Phocians, Locrians—swelling the Wolf’s force to nearly seven thousand strong. The Skiritae roved ahead like a vanguard, along with a contingent of Boeotian horsemen. The rolling countryside ahead peeled away as they marched mile after mile. Rocky hills, wooded uplands.
And then they saw the iron wall awaiting them on the great dust bowl ahead.
Steel, bronze, blue-and-white robes and banners. Athens’s brigades stretched out like the horizon itself. Nearly ten thousand, Kassandra guessed. They erupted in a din of cries and songs of derision.
Terse commands rang out along the Spartan column. The tail of the column swung forth, forming a broad front to match the Athenian line, leaving the Wolf’s Spartans on the right, the allies in the center and the Skiritae anchoring the left. The din of boots faded away, replaced by a shush of wood and metal as every man brought his shield forward to present a wall of bronze and bright-painted emblems—the Peloponnesian allies with blazons of thunderbolts, snakes and scorpions. Kassandra swung her shield from her back likewise, slipping her left forearm through the bronze porpax sleeve on the inside and grasping the leather strap at the cuff end. It felt like part of her body now.
Suddenly there was silence, broken only by a gentle sigh of wind. Then came a strained bleat. A white-haired Spartan priest dragged a goat through the lines, stopping in f
ront of the Wolf. Kassandra stared at the withered old man: the laurel wreath wrapped around his head and the bony, bare shoulders. Memories of that night came streaking back. He chanted to the sky, holding a blade to the terrified animal’s neck, beseeching the Gods for their favor, before yanking his arm back. The goat thrashed and fell, blood leaping from its gaping neck in spurts.
When the animal fell still, the priest declared that the Gods were pleased. The Wolf raised a hand, and every single spear fell level, like iron fingers pointing across the plain at the Athenians.
An unarmored Spartan behind Kassandra lifted a set of auloi—forked pipes that jutted down from his mouth like the tusks of an elephant—then sucked in a breath and blew. A low, dreadful moan poured from the pipes and across the plain. Kassandra’s flesh crept, the sound of the “Hymn to Castor” shifting the earth from long-buried memories: of childhood feasts, of better times. As she looked over the field to the Athenian lines, she realized her mouth had drained of all moisture, and her bladder had swollen to the size of an overripe melon. She knew she could face and defeat any of the men there, one to one. And damn, had the Wolf not trained her endlessly in the art of phalanx fighting during her childhood, showing her how to stand, how to be strong and immovable, when to push, when to strike? Had she not shown those Spartans training on the bay just how skilled and worthy she was? Yet true warfare like this was new to her, strange . . . unsettling.
“Afraid, Misthios?” Stentor asked, posted by her right side.
She did not look at him.
“Marching into battle is like running with chains on your ankles. You cannot turn and run, lest you covet shame. You cannot dodge and duck as you might when you fight a lone foe. You are part of a wall, part of the Spartan machine. And part of the wall you will remain. This is no mere training bout. You will fight and win on this field . . . or fight and die.” He sighed and chuckled. “But you should rejoice, for those who live on the edge of death are the ones who live the most.”
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