Spartans at the Gates

by Noble Smith

  “Where are you going?” asked Menesarkus.

  “To meet your Spartan grandson,” she responded.

  When they entered the upstairs chamber they found Arkilokus staring at the ceiling and gritting his teeth.

  “Arkilokus,” said Menesarkus. “This is my wife, Eudoxia.”

  “I’ve got to piss,” said Arkilokus. “I can feel it coming. But I can’t stop it.”

  Eudoxia shouted downstairs, “Phile! Bring a chamber bowl!” Then she went to the bed, saying to Menesarkus, “Help me get him up.”

  Together they lifted the Spartan to a sitting position. He had a torso like Menesarkus—broad and husky. It was difficult for the two of them to maneuver his bulky, corpse-like form. Phile entered the chamber, breathless and holding a large clay bowl.

  “Hold the pot under his penis,” ordered Eudoxia.

  Phile knelt and held the bowl, wrinkling her nose in disgust as Eudoxia gripped the Spartan’s penis and aimed it into the bowl. A jet of urine shot into the container and Arkilokus let forth a great sigh of relief.

  “He pisses just like Nikias,” said Phile.

  “It’s a good sign,” said Eudoxia. “The fact that he can feel the urine coming.”

  Menesarkus nodded.

  “Good thing it’s such a big pot,” said Phile.

  “I’m paralyzed, but not deaf, girl,” said Arkilokus wryly.

  Phile was so surprised she dropped the bowl and it shattered on the floor.

  “And this is my granddaughter, Phile,” Menesarkus said to Arkilokus with a sardonic tone.

  “Go get sponges, Phile,” Eudoxia said.

  “Do you not have slaves to clean up such a mess?” said Arkilokus, his face red with shame. “Must your own women be forced into this humiliation?”

  “All of our slaves were murdered in the raid on our farmyard,” Eudoxia replied curtly. “Slaughtered in the dormitory.”

  Arkilokus looked at Menesarkus, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  “The Theban Eurymakus did it,” said Menesarkus. “The one whose brother I killed at the Games.”

  Arkilokus dropped his eyes. “I know the man far too well. He’s a viper upon whom I have tried to step many times in the past. But the Spartan Elders see him as a useful tool. And my father esteems Eurymakus’s connection to the Persian court.”

  Menesarkus smiled inwardly. The Spartan had just revealed something about Eurymakus that Menesarkus had not known: he was in league with the Persians! What else would Arkilokus let slip in his vulnerable state?

  “One doesn’t step on snakes,” said Eudoxia, interrupting his thoughts. “You chop them in half with a sword.” And looking at Menesarkus she said, “Now, husband. Help me lower him.”

  Gently they lay Arkilokus back down upon the bed and then Eudoxia set to work examining his body, smelling his breath, and probing different parts of his body with a pin that she wore clasped to her dress, softly poking him from the flat of his feet to the crown of his head. Phile came back during this assessment and cleaned up the mess. Then Eudoxia led Menesarkus and Phile from the room and shut the door behind them.

  “Well?” asked Menesarkus.

  “He flinches when prodded,” said Eudoxia.

  “I saw.”

  “My own father had this happen to him at the Battle of Plataea,” said Eudoxia.

  “I remember,” said Menesarkus. “I helped drag his body from under a Persian horse.”

  Eudoxia frowned. “My father’s paralysis only lasted a week, but he could never really feel his feet again.”

  “He could walk, though,” said Menesarkus.

  “You’ve been starving him,” said Eudoxia. “I can smell it on his breath. He’s living off his muscles.”

  “He refuses to take food,” said Menesarkus. “It’s one of the reasons I brought him here. The doctor has tried to spoon soup into his mouth but—”

  “He needs ox blood,” said Eudoxia. “Phile can feed it to him with a spoon.”

  “Disgusting,” said Phile, who was crouched over, staring at Arkilokus through the crack in the door.

  “Spartans live on congealed blood,” said Eudoxia.

  “Spartan warriors live on black pudding,” corrected Menesarkus. “This man was raised in a royal house.”

  “Well, we have no pomegranates and goose liver in the larder,” said Eudoxia snidely, “so it’s ox blood for him. Phile, go and find Saeed and send him to the smithy. He is to tell Chusor and Leo to bring Kallisto here immediately. Now I’m off to the butcher for the blood.”

  Menesarkus watched his women go downstairs, then went back into the bedchamber, pulled up a chair, and sat by Arkilokus’s bed. The Spartan was staring at the ceiling, his eyes pools of water. Menesarkus had never before seen a Spartan cry.

  “Why are you crying?” asked Menesarkus bluntly. “Humiliation?”

  “On the contrary,” replied Arkilokus. “Your wife reminds me of my grandmother.”

  Menesarkus saw the woman in his mind’s eye—the fetching and brazen Spartan princess who had climbed into his bed, taken her pleasure of him, and stolen his seed. He felt a familiar rush of shame that he’d never shaken, even after nearly fifty years.

  “Eudoxia and your grandmother look nothing alike,” said Menesarkus.

  “I wasn’t talking about her looks,” said Arkilokus. “Her spirit.”

  Menesarkus crossed his arms on his chest and grunted. “You see why we cannot bend to the Spartan yoke?” he asked. “Our women would cut off our balls.”

  Arkilokus burst into laughter—a surprising sound that echoed throughout the mirthless house.

  SEVENTEEN

  Kolax heard frantic barking in the distance and knew instantly what breed of dog was on their scent—Mollossian hunting hounds. Dogs trained to track and kill men. His father used to tell him that three of these animals could take down a lion.

  “There’s at least ten dogs coming after us,” Kolax thought, ear cocked toward the carrying wind. He didn’t have much time to get the girl someplace safe. The dogs would rip her apart.

  They’d spent the last day and a half hiding in the woods near the place where she had tried to hang herself. Kolax had snuck into a nearby farmyard that evening and stolen food.

  The Skythian boy was not fluent in Greek, but he’d been able to piece together the girl’s story—she was good with gestures and could draw wonderful pictures in the dirt to show words like “warrior” and “city.”

  Her name was Iphigenia, and she was from an island that the Athenians had conquered. She had been brought back to this place by her new master—a Greek warrior named General Lukos—as his war prize. The general had defiled her body every night and beaten her. Iphigenia would rather die than live in constant shame. Her parents had been killed by the Athenians and she longed to join them in Hades.

  But Kolax wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “Up, Iphigenia,” he said, pointing to the gargantuan olive tree under which they sat huddled together.

  “I’m ready to die, right here, right now,” she said.

  Kolax had never been in love with a girl before. But he was now. He’d held her in his arms all through the night. The scent of her hair made him giddy. Whenever she spoke he was transfixed by her bow-shaped mouth. He loved the sound of her voice.

  The decision to keep her for his own—steal her from this sheep-milker of an Athenian—had come to him in a flash. It was exactly how his father had won his own mother! Snatched her from a rival and brought her home in triumph to share his round-tent.

  The sound of the dogs approaching shook him from his thoughts. The Mollossians were calling to each other. Forming up ranks. Closing in on their prey—the runaway slave.

  Kolax got on his knees, bent down, and patted his shoulders. “I lift you up,” he said. Iphigenia reluctantly obeyed and Kolax stood to his full height, allowing her to climb onto a low branch. He kept saying, “Up, up,” and she ascended as far as she could before the limbs became t
oo weak to support her weight.

  “I will come back,” he said in Skythian. “No matter what happens.” Then in Greek he said, “Stay.”

  She nodded and hugged a limb, nestling in the bough of the tree.

  Kolax took out his knife and cut a leafy branch, then slashed a gash on the top of his thigh. He tore a leaf from the branch, smeared some blood onto it, and dropped this on the ground. Then he took off running, grabbing leaves, smearing them with blood, and leaving a trail for the dogs.

  He ran as fast as he could for about half a mile before pausing to listen. His heart pounded in his ears but he could still hear the Mollossians—they were on his trail and gaining.

  He looked around and recognized the surroundings. He’d come this way the other day when he’d chased Nikias’s horse. He remembered there was an old, crumbling temple nearby. He kept running until he came to the place. It was the size of a little hut, with three walls, an altar, and a ceiling of rotting timbers. The ancient holy place stood at one end of a glade.

  Kolax dashed inside the temple, pulling down the roof timbers that were hanging down, and made a barricade with them. Now he was fully enclosed except for the open ceiling. He took off his quiver, dumped the arrows on the dirt floor, and stabbed each of the bronze points into the dirt, all of them lined up in a row. Grabbing his bow, he nocked the first arrow but kept the string loose to prevent his arm from getting tired, aiming through a narrow gap in the makeshift barricade.

  And then he waited. The sound of barking got louder and louder. He sang his father’s favorite drinking song under his breath to keep the fear from creeping into his brain.

  “Cut off his head and now it’s mine, gild it with gold and fill it with wine.”

  He saw the lead Mollossian burst through the undergrowth and into the glade, two hundred paces away. It was a big dog. At least a hundred pounds, with mottled brown fur. The cur sniffed the final bloody leaf Kolax had dropped, and raised its big intelligent head to look right at his hiding place. Then it let out a bloodcurdling howl.

  “Pretty drinking cup, my favorite drinking cup.”

  The Mollossian’s shoulder blades went up and its head dropped as the animal hunkered down into its stalking trot, dewlap flopping from side to side. It growled, showing its teeth as it approached the temple at a quickening pace. Three other Mollossians burst into the glade, saw their leader running toward the temple, and barked excitedly, trying to catch up.

  “Don’t put down the skull cup, raise it up, up, up!”

  Kolax let the first arrow fly directly at the lead dog’s head. But the Mollossian ducked at the last second, and the shaft struck the animal behind it, dropping the dog to the brown grass. The lead animal dodged and Kolax’s next arrow went wide. The Skythian cursed and reached for another arrow, darting his eyes to the temple floor for a split second to grab the shaft. When he looked back the leader was no longer in sight.

  Kolax felled two other hounds with perfectly aimed shots. But a few heartbeats later six more Mollossians ran into the glade. When they saw their dead companions they stopped short, looking for their quarry. Kolax held his arrows, waiting for them to get closer. He didn’t want them to scatter and come at him from different sides. He knew these dogs could climb twenty feet up a tree using their sharp claws. It would be no effort for them to scale the crumbling walls of the temple and attack him, dropping down through the open roof.

  His eyes darted around as he looked for the mottled brown leader. He could sense the hunting hound was out there somewhere, trying to figure out the best way to get to him. Some sort of bestial signal had passed between the pack, and the dogs were starting to spread out as if obeying orders.

  Kolax was a natural mimic. He’d been taught to make hundreds of animal sounds before he could speak words. He made one now—a perfect imitation of a terrified fox. All of the Mollossians turned their heads toward the temple and ran at it. They couldn’t resist the idea of tearing apart a fox.

  When they were fifty paces away Kolax let fly a flurry of arrows. He stuck each dog with a bronze-headed shaft. Four of them dropped, but two stayed on their feet, running straight at him, growling with hatred. One was hiding behind the other, using the dog in front as a shield. At twenty paces Kolax took down the one in the lead. The dog following it immediately dropped and hid behind the corpse, waiting there, snarling with fury.

  There was nothing more dangerous, Kolax knew, than a wounded hunting dog. This one had an arrow sticking through its hind end—straight up like a stiff tail.

  Kolax pulled back on the bowstring as hard as he could, hoping to drive an arrow straight through the dead Mollossian’s exposed belly and into the one hiding behind it. But the bow was not strong enough and the arrow merely went into the dead dog halfway up the flights.

  “Stupid Greek bow,” he spat.

  A scrabbling sound on the outside of the temple wall made Kolax jump. He turned just in time to see the head and front paws of the mottled brown Mollossian appear at the roofline. Kolax shot an arrow through the dog’s muzzle, but that didn’t stop it. The hound flung itself over the wall and landed on top of him, snapping its teeth, reaching for his throat, and clawing at his chest with its sharp nails.

  Screaming, Kolax kicked out with both feet, gaining a split second. He grabbed an arrow from where it was stuck in the earth, and plunged it into the dog’s eye—into its brain. The body jerked and slumped.

  Kolax grabbed his bow, nocked an arrow, and looked out through the barricade. The wounded dog with the arrow in its rump was gone.

  Stuffing his remaining arrows into the quiver as fast as he could, Kolax kicked aside the barricade and started walking cautiously. Which way should he go? He was surrounded on all sides by trees. He knew the Mollossian would be at an advantage in the woods. It could be hiding anywhere. The best thing to do was taunt it—bring the creature into the open where he could get a clean shot.

  He stopped and stood in the center of the glade. He could hear something coming through the brush behind him—footsteps. He put an arrow to his string and turned.

  “Zeus’s eggs!” said a stunned man, staring in shock at the dead dogs everywhere. He looked at Kolax with wonder. “Who are you?”

  Kolax noticed the man had a net in one hand and a cudgel in the other. Slave-hunter. He glanced behind him and saw the man’s mount standing at the edge of the glade.

  The slave-hunter’s eyes flashed at something behind Kolax. Without hesitating the Skythian put arrow to bow, turned, and pulled the gut-string.

  And the bowstring snapped.

  The wounded Mollossian with the arrow in its hind end was ten paces away, running at him at full speed, blood and saliva dripping from its mouth.

  Kolax drew his long dagger and fell flat on his back, holding the blade with both hands at his loins. The Mollossian leapt on him and Kolax thrust upward, gutting the dog and spraying his chest with gore.

  The moment Kolax got to his feet something wrapped around his neck like a snake. He clawed at his throat and felt leather—a whip! It was cutting off his air and crushing his larynx.

  “Bastard!” yelled the slave catcher, pulling tighter with his powerful arms and shouting, “There’s a wild Skythian boy over here! Help! He’s killed all the dogs!”

  Kolax’s vision started to go black at the edges. He knew he didn’t have much time. Only a couple of seconds. He lifted his leg and grasped the handle of the small Theban dagger he kept strapped to his ankle, pulled it from the sheath, and jabbed backward with all the strength left in his body. The whipcord went slack and the slave-hunter fell backward.

  The Skythian boy rolled over and yanked the dagger from the dead man’s heart. He wiped the tears from his eyes and tried to swallow, but there was a lump in his throat that made him gag.

  He heard horses galloping toward the glade and the shouts of men. He turned at a sound coming from the opposite direction and saw a lone rider burst through the thickets not twenty paces away. The horseman was a
blond-bearded Athenian with a jagged scar running the length of his face. Kolax knew the man the instant he saw him—General Lukos. Iphigenia had described her tormentor’s scar.

  Kolax watched as the Athenian’s gaze danced from the dead dogs, to the corpse of his servant, to the bloody dagger in Kolax’s hand. Then Lukos’s expression shifted from astonishment to outrage.

  The barbarian boy stared down the Athenian and started walking slowly backward toward the dead slave-hunter’s horse tethered at the edge of the glade. General Lukos raised his short spear and flung it at Kolax, but the Skythian was too quick and jumped aside. The spear stuck in the ground, vibrating like a plucked bow.

  Yanking the spear from the earth, Kolax turned and flung it at the general’s chest with a lightning-fast motion. But the wily Athenian pulled back on his reins, making his horse rear, and the spear struck the animal in the breast. The beast screamed and Lukos was thrown.

  Kolax sprinted to the other horse, undid the tether, jumped on its back, kicked it hard, and took off. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Lukos climbing onto another mount, shouting furiously at his men to give chase.

  “Follow me if you can!” Kolax cried out in Skythian. “Follow me to your deaths, you rapers-of-sheep!” He let forth a croaking war whoop and laughed with wild joy, turning his horse toward Athens, leading the slave-hunters in the opposite direction of the girl in the tree.

  EIGHTEEN

  The bay was swimming with dozens of double- and triple-decker galleys with huge eyes painted on their prows and bronze rams jutting from their cutwaters like the teeth of peculiar and deadly ocean creatures. Nikias had never seen so many of the powerful warships in one place at one time, and the sight was awe inspiring.

  He’d followed the old mule driver’s instructions and ridden cross-country to the port city of Piraeus, situated six miles southeast of Athens. As far as he could tell he’d left the spies who’d been chasing him in the dust. He’d abandoned the mount outside the city walls and entered on foot, making his way along the dock road to the first of the two harbors—a place swarming with shipbuilding activity. The noise of adzes and hammers, furiously shaping and fitting timbers, filled the air with a cacophonous music. The smell of brine, fir, and pine pitch filled his nostrils.