As they climbed the mound, they passed an old ashlar shrine. Kassandra had almost forgotten about its existence, until she felt her spear whisper to her, saw the flashbacks from Thermopylae again. A thrill chased over her as she looked at the old tomb and mouthed the legendary name etched on the entrance lintel: Leonidas.
“He walks with us,” Myrrine encouraged her. “His bloodline is good, true, strong.”
They left the tomb behind and the top of the mound rolled into view, the centerpiece being a rectangular royal hall topped with a red-tiled roof and supported by pale blue Doric columns. A warlike statue of Zeus Agetor stood over the high doorway, glaring down at their approach. A song of muffled chaos sounded beyond the tall doors. Two guards stood watch before this entrance. They were encased in ceremonial armor—or as decorative as Spartans could be. They wore highly polished Korinthian-style helms, molded-leather thoraxes, bronze bands on their biceps and fine spears—the blades patterned like the Leonidas lance—and blood-red cloaks. They both carried not lambda shields but stark black ones. The Hippeis, she remembered—the few hundred chosen men who formed the royal guard. They would not move aside for just anyone. Kassandra saw their eyes dart in the eyeholes of their helms as they drew closer, noticed their bodies rock forward just a fraction, ready to challenge.
Brasidas stepped before them and threw out a hand in salute. “Khaire, I bring friends who seek counsel with the kings.”
The guards threw their hands in salute. “Lochagos Brasidas!” they boomed in unison and parted without question.
“Lochagos?” Kassandra whispered as the doors opened. “You now lead one of the five sacred regiments?”
“You are not the only one who has been busy, Misthios,” he said with the barest quirk of his lips.
The doors swung open and the muffled song of strife hit them in full like a dragon’s roar.
Hundreds of men heckled and jostled, roaring, punching the air, spittle flying. Two brawlers rolled across the floor, each bearing spears. For a moment as they stepped inside, Kassandra thought she had been led to a Kephallonian tavern. But then she got a better look at the two on the floor: a young, pleasant-looking man and an older, hoary one, with a mane of dry gray hair and bloodshot, furious eyes . . . King Archidamos?
Just then the two rolled apart. Archidamos leapt up and whirled his spear overhead, bringing the point expertly down to rest on the still-floored younger man’s throat. “Yield, Pausanias?” he snarled through clenched teeth.
Pausanias, chest rising and falling, face etched with a similar malice, growled like an angered mastiff, then waved a derisive hand. “Aye.”
The spear was lowered, the crowds cheered and both kings’ faces changed. Archidamos cackled in delight. Pausanias took his offered hand and rose, grinning. “Archidamos’s edict stands,” he conceded. “We send a levy of Messenians to support the effort in Boeotia.”
Kassandra blinked to be sure of what she had seen. She had never set foot inside this place as a child, but she had heard rumors. She had even heard one drunken Athenian at Perikles’s symposium mocking the Spartans’ primitive means of voting. They opt for the proposal of whoever garners the loudest cheer, that old goat had scoffed. If only he had seen this: opting for the wisdom of whoever was better at kicking the most shit out of the other.
The wild audience retreated then, like a wave drawing back from a shore. They settled on tiered benches lining the hall. Kassandra recognized the biggest group: the Gerousia—twenty-eight ancient things, hunched and bald, but rumored to be laden with wisdom. When the two kings took their plinth chairs at the far end of the hall, the Gerousia stamped their walking canes on the ground in veneration. She also recognized a smaller group: five men in gray robes who stood on the plinth behind the kings’ seats and made no such gesture of adoration. The ephors. Kassandra’s heart turned to stone as she eyed them all, remembering the vulture-like one among them who had thrown Alexios from the mountain . . . before taking the plunge himself. But her hatred eased as she saw five faces of men in their thirties and forties. None had been part of what happened that night. The ephors were not an evil force. It was the Cult, she reminded herself. It has always been the Cult, working their way into any gap in the stonework. Yes, the ephors owed the kings no adoration, but that was their purpose—to keep the monarchs in check. Sparta: the two-headed dog, chained around the neck by a five-headed master!
“Brasidas,” Pausanias boomed, extending his arms in greeting. “What do you bring for us today?”
Brasidas led Kassandra and Myrrine to the foot of the low plinth upon which the kings sat. As he began to introduce them, Kassandra noticed that for all Pausanias’s eagerness, Archidamos sank back into his throne, his mane settling on his shoulders, his face melting into a look of suspicion and disdain, and those blood-veined eyes searching Kassandra and Myrrine like a butcher judging a cut of meat.
“. . . they come to lay claim to an ancestral estate. One that lies unoccupied.”
“Who are they?” Pausanias asked, intrigued. “What line, which estate?”
Just then, Archidamos’s bloodshot eyes flared as he at last recognized Myrrine. “You,” he roared, rising, the legs of his throne scraping on stone. His glower turned upon Kassandra, seeing the resemblance, the puzzle clicking together. “And you!”
With a guttural roar, he snatched up his spear and took a lunge down the few steps toward them. It was only Pausanias’s swift reactions that halted him.
“Unhand me or by Zeus Agetor, I will skewer you,” Archidamos snarled.
“I don’t understand. Why do they anger you so?” Pausanias complained.
“Because they are of the line of Leonidas . . . the shamed bloodline.”
Pausanias’s face paled. He stared at Kassandra and Myrrine. “The Taygetos disaster, all those years ago?”
Kassandra said nothing. The glassy film that rose across her eyes was answer enough.
“And they dare to return,” Archidamos confirmed. “I thought you both dead, and better for you had it been that way.”
Pausanias stepped down between the malevolent king and the two women. “Yet they come humbly before us. Brasidas vouches for them, yes?”
Brasidas nodded once. “Kassandra has performed unsolicited and heroic acts for Sparta in these years of war. She helped me free Korinthia from the brigand who had seized that city.”
Pausanias turned back to Archidamos. “And they are of the line of our most famous king. Perhaps we should not be so quick to turn upon them . . . aye?” He reasoned further with the older king, cagey and respectful. It took an age, Archidamos’s eyes still blazing over his shoulder at Kassandra and Myrrine. But, at last, the older king stepped back, slumping once more in his throne. “If you want your estate back,” he grunted, “then you will have to do something for me. Chase away your past shame. Prove to me you are worthy.”
Kassandra waited, watching as the fire in his eyes rose, a grin of yellowing teeth spreading across his face.
“Travel north in the spring, aid the effort in Boeotia, help secure that land for Sparta.”
The onlooking Gerousia gasped at this—surely a measure of the task.
Pausanias pounced on the sliver of accord. “That seems to be a fair balance, aye? And while you winter here in wait of spring, I will arrange a place for you to stay.”
He clapped his hands. A Helot hurried to him with a wax slab. He muttered something to the slave, who scratched the arrangement onto the slab, before Pausanias pressed his ring into the wax to approve the requisition.
A signet ring! Kassandra’s breath halted and her senses sharpened as she and Myrrine stared at the ring. It bore an emblem of . . . a crescent moon. No lion seal? she thought. Then it must be . . . Her gaze rolled toward Archidamos, who continued to glare back, eyes hooded. She glanced down at his callused hands, folded, covering his own seal ring.
�
��It is a small home, but one I think you will find comfortable,” Pausanias continued, snapping the tablet closed. “And over the cold months, you can help our champion, Testikles, to prepare for the coming Olympics. He needs as many training partners as he can find.”
“So, scion of Leonidas,” said Archidamos, his grin growing, “you accept my task?”
He unfolded his hands and Kassandra stared as the seal ring was exposed. Her heart thumped . . . and then she saw that it bore the image of . . . a soaring hawk. What, how?
“Is something wrong?” Archidamos chuckled.
Kassandra had never been certain of anything in her life. But here, now, she felt an iron assurance that Archidamos was the traitor king—that she was being sent north into Boeotia to die. If a trap awaited there, then so too perhaps, did evidence of his Cultic ties.
She sensed the Gerousia, the ephors and the Hippeis guards all staring at her, awaiting her answer.
“I will do as you ask.”
THIRTEEN
“Come back,” Testikles roared. “Oil me!”
Kassandra lifted her cloak and slung it over her naked body. “Oil yourself. You’re drunk . . . and in terrible condition.” She paced away from the gymnasium, leaving the wayward champion rolling around in the dust where she had knocked him for the third bout of pankration in a row. He was an idiot, but she liked him—possibly because he was a rather un-Spartan Spartan, fond of humor and pranks . . . and wine.
It had been a long winter, marked with drunken nights of epic Spartan poetry, games, races and craft. She had even managed to convince Pausanias to allow Barnabas, Herodotos and the crew to come here from their grim cove, and now they lived as guests of the young king. The citadel ward was cloaked in a thin shell of frost, but the first snowdrops sprouted on the meadows around the temples, and birds sang in the cypress trees. Spring was all but here. Tomorrow, she would set off for the north—a misthios once more—to turn the struggle in distant Boeotia. One thing she had learned in winter was just how ensconced the Spartan and Athenian forces were in those lands. She felt like a fool for agreeing to Archidamos’s demands. One thing she certainly had not found over the winter was proof of Archidamos’s secret. The man was a snake, she was sure. Yet she could not accuse or attack him as a Cultist until she had proof that it was so.
She passed their still-chained estate, then stopped off at the small two-room house they had been granted by Pausanias. There she washed and sat in the doorway of the home, drinking a long draft of berry water. Her gaze slid across Pitana—to Leonidas’s ashlar tomb. It was almost noon, she realized. With a tired sigh she rose and walked over there.
“Why here, Mother?” She sighed absently, wondering why Myrrine had asked to meet her at the tomb come midday. Brasidas and Myrrine were to leave Sparta tomorrow also. They had arranged to travel to neighboring Arkadia over the spring and summer, Mother having found evidence suggesting the Archon of Arkadia was a Cultist too. If he was, then he could surely be “convinced” to betray the identity of the rogue Spartan king.
She stepped inside the ancient tomb. Myrrine was kneeling by a lit sconce under the solemn, ascetic statue of King Leonidas, naked bar helm, spear and shield. Kassandra knelt beside her mother.
“Leonidas was Sparta’s last true hero,” Myrrine said. “We would all be under the Persian yoke were it not for his courage.”
“What has that to do with me and my journey north—where Greek will slay Greek?”
“Do you know why Leonidas went to the Hot Gates, despite the odds?”
“Because he was strong, heroic, unlike me,” Kassandra snapped.
“Hold out your spear,” Myrrine said calmly.
Kassandra narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but did as asked. “The last time anyone asked me to do this was when Herodotos—”
Myrrine moved the spear toward the statue and a jolt of lightning shot through Kassandra.
* * *
• • •
I was in the Kings’ Hall—but it seemed different: the ancient thrones brighter, less worn . . . and empty.
“Sparta will not go to war. The Pythia has spoken,” screamed a skeleton of a man behind one throne. An ephor, I realized. The four others bayed in agreement. Some of them wore or clutched those foul masks. Kneeling in their midst was a shriveled old hag, muttering, rocking. She recognized the diaphanous robes, the dripping trinkets. The Pythia! They had the Oracle at their heel like a dog!
The lone figure at the foot of the throne-plinth steps, back turned to me, broadened. “All of this talk about the Pythia! The Pythia! Well the Pythia says only what you tell her to say. She has been your puppet for far too long. The time has come to cut her strings.”
“Oh, Leonidas, the days of heroes are over. You think your blood makes you special? If we opened your veins it would spill to the ground and disappear through the cracks. You are no one.”
I realized where I was now, and when.
Leonidas lifted his spear and pointed it at the ephor. “Nothing, am I? Step down and face me; you are more than welcome to find out.”
Now the Oracle stopped muttering and lifted her ancient head. She placed a gentle hand on Leonidas’s spearhead, pushing it down. “Why do you fight certainty, Son of the Lion? Xerxes will unite us. He will bring Order to Chaos.”
My blood ran cold. Why were the Oracle and the ephors asking the Spartan King and his army to meekly stand aside for Xerxes, King of Kings, Master of Persia, and his vast armies?
The ephor’s face peeled open in a gleeful grin. “You see? Defy the Pythia and everything you stand for will fall.”
Leonidas stared at them all for a time, then swung on his heel. “Prepare the men,” he thundered as he strode away from the plinth. “If Xerxes wants Sparta then he will have to go through me.” He passed through me like a wraith, and in a flash of white, it was over.
* * *
• • •
She found herself on her knees beside Myrrine.
“You see?” Mother said. “Leonidas went to war to save Sparta from Persia . . . and from the Cult.”
“They were here, weeded into Sparta’s foundations, even then?”
“Even then,” Myrrine confirmed. “Our return to Sparta has allowed me to find out much. All of it grim. But now you must go north, Kassandra. Think not of Archidamos or the past. Simply survive . . . and find the proof we need—to tear the black roots of this vile weed from our homeland for once and forever.”
* * *
• • •
The lonely clop of the gelding’s hooves lulled Kassandra into misty reveries of the past—of the recent few years and the storm of war she had been drawn into, and of the older times, still lodged in her heart like rusting hooks. Suddenly, she heard the clopping of many hooves and looked up, startled. But the Boeotian hills were deserted—just gray scrap and green brush, shimmering in the early-summer heat. The valleys were growing high around her, she realized, and the ghost riders were merely echoes of her own mount. I’m nearly there, she realized, eyeing the path ahead that rose into the mountains, silvery and magnificent against the cobalt sky. She smiled, seeing Ikaros gliding up there, her forward scout. No sound from him—a good sign. She slid an apple from her saddlebag and crunched through it absently, the cold, sweet flesh pleasant. She slowed a little to slide forward and feed the core to the gelding. That was when an odd thing happened. The echoes of the beast’s hooves slowed in a strange way—as if the echoes behind her had taken a little too long to slow. Her back, slick with sweat, prickled with a sense of unease. She twisted in the saddle to look back whence she had come. But now, with the gelding at bay, there was no sound other than the frantic chatter of the cicadas, the playful gurgle of a stream and the hollow drumming of a woodpecker in a pine grove.
She sneered with a confidence she did not feel, then set off on her way again. The whole time, the echoing hooves so
unded . . . wrong. For every part of the remaining journey, she rested one hand inside her cloak, upon the haft of the broken lance.
But the phantom echoes never took the shape of any real threat, and by late afternoon, she beheld the argent peak ahead: Mount Helicon. She spotted a ring of spears up on a plateau, and the red-cloaked sentries and white tents within. She moved her hand from her spear and to the hide scroll, then clicked her tongue to gee the gelding into a canter uphill toward the camp entrance. When the two Spartiates flanking the gate saw her, they swung their spears level and raised their shields, murder in their eyes. She drew the scroll as if it were a weapon. They saw the markings on it and let her through.
She dismounted, tethered her gelding near a feeding trough, then set off on foot. As she moved through the soldier tents, she combed her gaze across every detail, using her peripheral vision to take it all in. All I need is the smallest of clues, Archidamos. All will know you are one of the masked ones, and your false reign as King of Sparta will end. The Cult will surely crumble too. Eventually, she came to the command pavilion—an off-white tent a little larger than the rest, with the sides rolled up so the many Helots and soldiers could come and go with news and refreshments to fuel what looked like frantic talks. She saw the Spartan commander standing over a table, shoulders broad and head stooped, sweeping over a map again and again. The others around him cawed and brayed with contradictory advice. For a moment, she felt sympathy for the leader . . . and then he looked up.
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