by Noble Smith
“Gods!” he bellowed, his legs going rigid. It felt as though Zeus’s bolt had just shot from his loins … as though he had melted inside her.
He fell back, staring at the ceiling of the cave. She laughed softly, toying with him awhile longer, taking her own pleasure while he was still firm. When she was satisfied she pulled away from him and draped herself across his broad chest, stretching like a cat, and purring like one, too, with her hair completely covering her face.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked hoarsely.
“Perhaps I always had that skill,” said Zana coyly. “I was just saving it for a special occasion.”
“You should have done that sooner,” he replied. “I might never have left you.”
“I have you again,” she said softly. “At least one of my treasures is found.”
“So good to see old friends reunited,” cooed a honeyed voice from the darkness.
The sound of that voice, like a chill wind on bare flesh, made Chusor shiver.
“What are you doing, lurking there?” asked Zana, sitting up and glaring. “How long have you been watching us, you little owl?”
Barka crawled into the light and sat at their feet. The eunuch’s black, limpid eyes regarded Chusor with a placidity that unsettled him to the core.
“Hello, Barka,” Chusor said to the creature he’d hoped he would never lay eyes on again. Barka the Sooth—a walking oracle who could look into a man’s eyes and tell him his past as well as predict his death.
“Chusor,” said Barka, “I had a funny dream about you. I think you’ll laugh. You were in a ship laden with treasure … but the hold was slowly filling with water. And you were far from shore.”
“I don’t find that dream amusing,” said Chusor, moving away from Zana and covering himself with his tunic.
Barka pulled a map from his sleeve and dangled it by two fingers. “This is quite interesting.”
Chusor’s skin crawled. Barka had managed to find the map in the secret compartment in his staff. He forced himself to smile back at the feminine, feline face—the pretty face of a Phoenician girl on a boy’s body. “I’ll look forward to hearing about your dream,” he said at length, trying not to betray his unease. “And maybe you can use your skills to see if the treasure exists.”
“Oh, it is there,” said Barka, nodding his head confidently. “I’ve already seen it. Enough gold to buy a fleet of ships.”
Zana sat up straight and her eyes shone in the firelight. Chusor could tell she was already standing on the deck of a new ship, sailing into the unknown.
“Now!” said Barka, setting aside the map and clapping his hands together. “Since Chusor-the-Cunning has already revealed that my darling Diokles is still with him, may we know what happened to our other friend who ran away with you?” The eunuch snickered. “I don’t need the sooth-sight to see what Ezekiel is doing right now: drinking himself into a stupor. But I dreamt that he’d set up the sign of his skull in…” He closed his eyes, shifted his head back and forth, then popped open his lids. “Athens? Am I right? Ezekiel the Babylonian is living in Athens now?”
Chusor did not need to answer, for Barka was smiling confidently. The eunuch knew that his guess was right.
“Ezekiel will meet your young friend,” said Barka in an offhand manner. “Whether good or ill will come of the meeting, I cannot say.”
NINE
Konon drove Nikias to Athens in a mule cart. The young farmer had jumped at the chance to help the Plataean, telling Nikias that he was happy to get away from the farm for a few hours.
Konon was nearly eight years older than Nikias but had yet to serve in a military expedition, and he never would. He’d lost his left arm in a childhood accident—it had gotten caught in the mechanism of an olive press. Without the ability to hold shield and sword at the same time, or to pull an oar, he was useless as either a hoplite or sailor. He devoured Nikias’s stories of battle with a combination of wonder and unconcealed jealousy.
Nikias felt sorry for Konon. He would rather be dead than share a similar fate. Even this injury to his shoulder—an injury he knew would eventually heal—gave Nikias a feeling of impotence. He couldn’t even put a tunic on without an old woman’s help! He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose his shield arm.
He told Konon about the Battle of the Gates and his fight with Eurymakus, the Theban assassin who’d led the sneak attack on the city and who’d burned down Nikias’s farmhouse. Eurymakus had tried to kill Nikias with a poisoned blade, but the Plataean had used the invader’s own weapon against him, slicing his hand with the knife. Eurymakus had instantly drawn his sword and chopped off his own arm at the elbow to keep the poison from coursing upward through his veins.
Nikias would never forget the sight of that evil man fleeing the battlefield, blood spurting from his severed limb. He had tried to chase down the Theban, but he’d been thrown from a horse and been knocked out.
“Well, it makes me feel a little better,” said Konon, “to think a Theban now shares my fate.”
“Do you know how to use a leather sling?” asked Nikias.
“Of course,” replied Konon, indignant. “I can kill a hare at a hundred paces.” He paused and smiled. “Well, maybe fifty paces. But I’ve got a good eye.”
“Then you could be a peltast,” said Nikias. “Kill Spartans from the walls of Athens.” He gestured at the mighty western walls of Athens looming a mile down the road.
“I tried to enlist with the Guards,” said Konon and sighed morosely. “But they wouldn’t take me. And you can’t be a knight unless you’re stinking rich and can afford your own mounts.”
“Come to Plataea,” said Nikias, half joking. “We’d welcome a man with one arm. Just so long as he was willing to kill Spartans.”
Konon laughed at this prospect. “My father’s heart would freeze up if I did that. And my poor mother would throw herself down a well. I am their youngest son and still a child in their eyes.”
They were a half mile from the walls of Athens when they passed a long arcaded building that Nikias recognized as the Akademy. He saw fifty or so bearded athletes training in the gymnasium—they were running footraces, throwing the javelin, and practicing the long jump with weights. In an arena next door some prepubescent boys fought in the pankration with padded gloves on their hands. Nikias’s grandfather had never let him train with gloves and would scoff at the “Athenian” style of training their young.
The cart continued on a well-rutted road lined with tombs on either side. In the distance, through the gaps in the plane trees that lined the road on either side, Nikias could see glimpses of the redbrick walls of Athens meandering across the uneven ground.
“Do you think you’ll enter the pankration in the next Olympics?” Konon asked Nikias.
“I will,” said Nikias, staring to his left at the hundreds of tombs and monuments that lined the other road. “I mean … my grandfather and I were planning on it.”
Nikias wondered now if he would be able to journey to the Sacred Games this year. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that the impending Spartan siege might completely disrupt movement to and from Olympia. The Olympic committee had demanded truces in the past. Maybe they would this time? Hopefully, the Spartans would decide that besieging mighty Plataea was a foolhardy option and just decamp from the Oxlands. At least that’s what Chusor thought would happen.
He thought of his best friend Demetrios, whose father had sent him away to Syrakuse two years ago to live with a famous general. Demetrios and Nikias had trained together in the gymnasium since childhood, pushing each other to the edge of endurance, the dream of Olympic glory burning in both of their hearts. Nikias missed Demetrios and wondered if his friend would ever return to the Oxlands. He hoped that, for Demetrios’s sake, he would not. For he would learn how his father, Nauklydes, had been tried and convicted as a traitor and given the dreaded “tunic of stones” as punishment. And Demetrios’s heart would be broken when
he found out that his beloved sister, Penelope, had been raped, tortured, and murdered by the Thebans, all because of his own father’s treachery.
“Please stop here for a moment,” Nikias asked, touching Konon’s armless shoulder and pointing to a little glade where carts could pull off the grooved road.
Konon looked questioningly at Nikias, but pulled on the reins and clicked his tongue. The disconcerted mule, not used to stopping here, looked around with a daft expression and let out a bray.
Konon said, “Come on, you silly beast,” and gave the mule a gentle tap on the rump. As soon as the cart came to a stop Nikias got out and started walking across a patch of grass to the Cemetery Road. Konon followed without speaking.
Nikias had only been here once—when he was ten years old—but he remembered the way. He walked past the marble and limestone miniature replicas of temples and homes that displayed the funeral jars with pictures of loved ones. There were dozens of unveiled and painted women loitering about in this area. They eyed Nikias as he walked past. This was the most popular place in Athens, Nikias knew, for men seeking a quick copulation. These prostitutes were also the cheapest. “Paying my respects to the dead” had a double meaning in Athens.
“Only two drachma for you, love,” an older woman said with a ghastly smile. “I’ve a nice place for us to lie down in the shade.”
“No, thank you, mother,” replied Nikias politely.
“I’m nobody’s mother, you Oxland bumpkin!” sneered the prostitute. “And I’m not old enough to be yours either.”
Nikias crossed the Cemetery Road to the other side and saw a marble signpost that read, I AM THE BOUNDARY OF THE TOMBS OF HEROES. This was where the war monuments stood—bronze statues of men fallen in battle for Athens with the names of the dead carved in the plinths.
Nikias knelt in front of a base of black marble—Plataean marble—upon which stood a statue of a warrior holding a notched shield of the Oxlands. Nikias found the name carved on the base and ran his finger over the letters. ARISTO, SON OF MENESARKUS, NEMEAN TRIBE. Lichen had grown in some of the letters, obscuring them.
“Your father?” asked Konon with a tone of reverence.
Nikias nodded. “Killed by Thebans at a battle near Koronea.”
Thebes had been the only Greek city that offered earth to the Persian king Xerxes when he invaded fifty years before. After the Persians had been defeated at Plataea, Thebes was punished severely by the Greek allies and put under the control of the Athenians. Fourteen years ago, the Thebans had revolted and thrown out the Athenians, defeating them and their Plataean allies at the Battle of Koronea. And that is where Nikias’s father had breathed out his life into the dust, speared in the guts after the Plataean shield wall had broken and the hoplites had run for their lives.
Nikias picked the lichen out his father’s name with his fingernail. When he finished cleaning all the letters, he started working on the other Plataean names that had become obscured. Konon squatted down beside him and started rubbing the marble with his wet tunic. The dirt and lichen came off quickly, soiling Konon’s shirt black and green.
“There’s a fountain just over there,” said Konon. “Bring me some more water in your cupped hands and we’ll have this clean.”
Nikias could not hold back his tears as he walked to the fountain. He knew there was no shame in crying for the dead. But he felt so raw, and Konon’s small act of kindness had put him over the edge. He dipped a hand into the fountain and wiped the tears from his face. Then he made a cup with his hands, filled it, and walked back to the monument, splashing the water onto the memorial stone. He got down beside Konon and rubbed the names with his tunic until his clothes were stained.
“Looks like the day it was carved,” said Konon, smiling broadly.
“Thank you,” said Nikias.
“I’m embarrassed for my fellow citizens,” said Konon with disgust. “Letting moss grow on the names of heroes who died for Athens.”
They went back to the cart and found the mule was asleep and hadn’t budged an inch. Konon had to scratch the animal’s ears to wake it up. Soon they were back on the cart path and within minutes they’d arrived at the mighty Dipylon Gate—one of the fifteen entrances to the walled city, and the biggest.
It was an awe-inspiring sight, Nikias thought. A vision to make any invaders turn on their heels and go away. Two square towers stood on either side of two open portals. Patrolling the flat tops of these massive towers and the walls directly beside them were Skythian bowmen and Athenian spearmen who kept a watchful eye on the road below. The foundations of the walls were made of huge rectangular blocks of limestone with bricks on top. The battlements were over four times the height of a tall man.
The wall followed a curve to the north and Nikias could see more towers in that direction. To the south the wall went as far as the eye could see, curving and then connecting with the Long Walls—a protected corridor that linked Athens with the walled port city of Piraeus. All along the top of the wall he could see warriors.
Konon left the mule and cart in a roped-off area outside the wall. An attendant pinned a metal disk to the mule’s ear—a disk inscribed with numbers. Then he handed an identical disk to Konon.
“You have to give up your sword,” Konon said, pointing to a brick building with barred windows. “None are allowed inside the gates.”
Reluctantly Nikias handed over his sword at the weapons depository and received a numbered disk just like Konon’s. He put it into his belt pouch.
They walked over to the nearest gate and got into line behind three woodsmen with blackened hands and forearms who toted enormous bags of charcoal on their shoulders. Nikias became nervous, wondering if the gatekeepers would turn him away. They were sure to ask him why he’d come to the city. Would they know that he had run away from home? Would they send him back to Plataea? But when he and Konon finally got to the entrance, one of the guards merely said, “Stay out of trouble, lads,” and waved them both through with a casual gesture, and Nikias smiled, feeling foolish for having been so worried.
They passed under the narrow arch and entered the citadel, making their way down the road of the inner graveyard—a pathway lined with more tombs and markers for the dead. To the right, standing atop a little hill, Nikias saw the handsome shape of the Temple of Hephaestos. The columns, pediments, and friezes had been completed but the roof had yet to be added on to the temple, and it made Nikias think of a bald man without a hat, standing in the hot sun.
Up ahead and to the left he caught sight of the Painted Stoa—an open colonnade that was filled with paintings of famous battles and gods. Thirty years ago his grandfather had proudly posed for an artist who had depicted him as Herakles slaying the Nemean Lion. When they got to the gallery Nikias stopped and peeked in at the painting and saw the lifelike image of his grandfather scowling back. He shuddered slightly and peered across the busy agora to the courts of law and the jail and other public places. Wooden cranes and scaffolding showed where new buildings and temples were under construction all around the perimeter of the agora. Directly in front of them lay the paved street that led up to the Akropolis. The high limestone plateau, capped by its sturdy walls, seemed to rise from the ground like a majestic ship that had been crafted by Gaia, the goddess of the earth.
Nearly fifty years ago, after the defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Plataea, all of the Greek allies had sworn to let lie in ruins any temples—like the old Temple of Athena that once stood atop the Akropolis—that had been destroyed by the invaders. These ruins were to be eternal reminders of the war and its cost. But after the Athenians had started to grow rich from taxes, they had begun this rapid program of rebuilding, ignoring their vow.
Nikias’s grandfather had always told him, “A man should love and protect Plataea as though the city is his child. The Athenian men, however, love their city as if it’s their sweetheart.” Nikias, who hadn’t been to Athens in four years, finally understood what his grandfather was talkin
g about. Almost every single building in the city, including the walls themselves, had been built up in the last fifty years—after Athens had been razed by the Persian invaders. The agora, like the rest of the city, was a festival of alluring colors, sounds, and smells that made Nikias’s heart swell.
They started walking again, moving into the marketplace. Thousands of men were shopping at the open-air stalls and eating in wineshops and food booths. There were magicians and flute players, acrobats and seers. It seemed as if everything in the world was for sale in the place, from fancy scabbards to spindles to lobsters. The noise of voices and music was so loud it made Nikias’s already sore head ache even more. The woodsmoke made him a little queasy.
He turned his gaze again toward the Akropolis—and the almost impossibly beautiful building that stood on top: the Temple of Athena. The brightly painted temple was one of the most remarkable things he’d ever seen in his life. The beauty of it all made him proud to be Greek. Old vows about leaving temples in ruins be damned! He hoped that the Athenians would keep on building their shining city until the world’s ending.
“Come on, Oxlander,” said Konon with a smile. “You’re going to wear out your eyes.”
Nikias followed Konon as he weaved in and out of the crowds of men and stalls and barbershops filled with customers getting their curly hair and beards trimmed short. Nikias was struck by the lack of women in the market—so unlike Plataea, where women worked and shopped alongside the men. The few women that he saw were heavily veiled and covered with long shawls.
“Hey!” Nikias shouted as a hand snatched his felt traveling hat from off his head. He whirled and saw an urchin dashing through the crowds. Nikias started to take off after the boy, but Konon grabbed his arm.
“You’ll never find him,” said Konon. “Leave him.”
“But that was my lucky hat,” growled Nikias, brushing the hair from his eyes.
“You stood out too much with it on,” said Konon.