Spartans at the Gates

by Noble Smith

  Kolax walked backward on shaky knees. It felt as though the bones had been pulled from his legs. The delayed pain from the lash of the whip seared his cheek like fire. He staggered down the street, went around a corner, and collapsed against a wall, growling with exasperation.

  Why had he acted so harebrained? There was no way his papa could have recognized him after these four long years, especially when he was dressed like a slave. He had to show his papa the tattoo. That would fix everything. The instant he saw the gryphon his papa would know who he was and embrace him. All he had to do now was figure out how to get into the jail.

  He walked around the walls of the fort until he came to an empty alley on the opposite side. This uninhabited area—between the wall of the jail and the city bastions—was used as a garbage dump. The reek of rotting food and human feces made him gag, but the benefit of the stench was that there were no guards nearby.

  He found a section of the jail’s wall where the bricks were loose, leaving hand- and footholds. He climbed up the ten-foot-high barricade and dropped down the other side into a small alcove stacked with wood for cooking fires.

  He heard a strange sound: men crying softly … like miserable shades trapped in the Underworld. And mingled with this mournful sound was the caw of a raven.

  He crept around the corner and came face-to-face with a sight that snatched the air from his lungs—a courtyard filled with X-shaped wooden whipping stands on which a dozen men were tied spread-eagled, their backs flayed open like raw meat. Some had been dead for days and were in various states of decay. One was nothing but a skeleton, picked clean by the carrion birds. He realized that this was where the Athenians tortured their prisoners and left them to die. These were “the boards” his papa had threatened to tie the archers to if they had disobeyed him.

  He couldn’t see any guards in the courtyard—they’d left the prisoners who were still alive on these contraptions to roast in the heat of the afternoon sun.

  Telemakos the raven was perched on the top of one of these torture racks, standing guard over a slumped body strapped to the wooden X. The bird stared at Kolax as he approached and bobbed his head as if to say, “Yes, yes, this one!”

  Kolax recognized the bard’s hair and felt a lurch in his guts. The skin of Andros’s back looked like it had been slashed from side to side with a knife five or six times, but he knew the wounds had been made by a Skythian whip.

  He crept to the other side of the wooden X so he could see Andros’s face. The bard’s lids were squeezed shut in agony and he whispered something to himself over and over again. Kolax touched him on the hand and Andros’s eyes popped open to reveal whites that had turned red from burst blood vessels.

  “Kolax?” he asked in a dazed whisper, speaking with great effort. “How did you find me?”

  Kolax pointed at the raven. “I followed your bird and climbed over the wall.”

  Andros clenched his teeth as pain wracked his body. Then he said, “The Athenians are going to kill me.”

  Kolax raised his eyebrows and asked, “Why?”

  “They have mistaken me for someone else,” said Andros. He cocked his head to the side and said, “The ropes.” And a moment later added, “Your knife.”

  Kolax moved without thinking. He unsheathed his knife and cut the cords holding Andros’s hands and feet to the wooden X. The bard slumped to the ground and exhaled—a sound of mingled agony and pleasure. Kolax helped him stand and guided him with the raven hopping along behind.

  “I knew Zeus had sent you to me at the temple,” said Andros, his body shaking as though from chills.

  Kolax led him back to the alcove with the woodpile and stacked some logs to create makeshift steps to the top of the wall. He gestured for Andros to escape over the top.

  “Aren’t you coming?” asked Andros, confused.

  Kolax shook his head. The bard was too weak to argue and crawled on his hands and knees up to the edge of the wall. He glanced down at Kolax one last time.

  “We’ll meet again, one day,” he said. “And I will pay you back for saving me.”

  Then he rolled over the side of the wall and was gone. The raven flapped to the top of the wall and looked the Skythian boy up and down before launching himself into the air and flying away.

  Kolax hoped the raven would lead Andros to safety.

  He stole back into the courtyard and found the door that led to the rest of the prison. He crept down a long hallway, knife held out in front. He smelled cooking and realized that he was near the kitchen. His heart pounded. He was so close to his father. After all these years. All he had to do was show him the tattoo—

  He heard a sound and turned on his heels. A thin slave boy stood behind him holding a bucket. The child took one look at the knife-wielding, bloody-faced Kolax and screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Kolax pushed past him and ran down the hall. An Athenian guard dashed around the corner and Kolax reacted instinctively—slamming his knife into the man’s leg so hard that the blade embedded in the bone. The guard screamed and lashed out with a club, catching Kolax in the back of the head. The Skythian boy swooned and collapsed on the stone floor.

  The next thing he knew, men had surrounded him. They pushed him facedown to the floor so he couldn’t move and tied his arms behind his back so tightly that his shoulder blades were pressed together.

  “Gag the rat so he can’t bite,” ordered a voice.

  The men wrapped his ankles with cord so he couldn’t use his legs. Then they dragged him into a cell and slammed the door shut. Kolax writhed on the floor, screaming and sobbing in frustration, trying to chew through the heavy rope gag.

  It seemed like days passed before the door opened. He looked up to see the dumbfounded face of the blond-bearded Athenian who’d tried to spear him in the glade—General Lukos, Iphy’s master.

  Next to Lukos was Osyrus, peering at Kolax out of the corner of one eye as though the sight of him was poisonous.

  “Is he the one who killed your slave-hunter?” asked Osyrus in Greek. “The one who killed your dogs?”

  “Kronos’s balls,” said the general, awestruck. “That’s the little brute, alright. He’s dyed his hair. Clever barbarian. What was he doing here at the prison, I wonder?”

  Kolax thrashed on the floor, flopping on his stomach. He croaked and screeched, trying with all his effort to speak through the gag.

  “A mystery,” replied Osyrus, replying to Lukos’s question. “The gods love riddles.”

  Lukos said, “He’s probably one of the numberless bastards your men have sired with the whores of Athens.”

  “I think not,” said Osyrus flatly.

  “I’ll be back in a day to take him to the auction,” said Lukos. “I’m going to sell him to the mines of Laurium to make up for my property he butchered. Along with that little bitch, if I ever find her.”

  “You can’t have this one,” said Osyrus. “He set free a Korinthian spy we’d caught today. But my whip will make him talk.”

  Lukos puffed out his cheeks. “The boy won’t do me any good if he’s ruined!” he complained.

  “Not my problem,” said Osyrus with a knife’s edge to his voice.

  Osyrus glanced at Kolax’s face. Kolax pleaded to his papa with his eyes—prayed that his papa would recognize him. But Osyrus said to him in Skythian, “I know you can understand me, little dog. You came to murder me and failed, just like the last assassin. I turned his head into a drinking cup and yours will join his on my shelf. Soon we’ll know who wants Osyrus the Bindi dead.”

  Osyrus slammed shut the oak door and Kolax heard the scraping of an iron bar on the other side. He pressed his face into the dirt floor to stifle his sobs.

  SIX

  It was an hour after sunset and the mariners of the Sea Nymph were still hard at work, doing their best to exhaust the Athenian brothel’s entire staff—both male and female—and getting as drunk as Skythians.

  Nikias lay on a soft bed in the corner of the drink
ing room, resting his aching body after the day of physical punishment. He felt like he did after an all-day pankration event—as though a team of chariot horses had trampled on him. He went through a mental checklist of all of his injuries: ruined shoulder, useless right arm, sore jaw, loose molar, left eye nearly swollen shut, sharp pain in lower back.

  At least Nikias’s cousin had been right about the disguises—they had walked straight up the Long Walls road and into Athens without drawing the attention of Kleon’s whisperers. The Sea Nymph’s oarsmen—the elite warriors of the seas—were untouchable, even if they were drunk and obnoxious and dressed as a gang of rowdy satyrs. Nikias, clothed like one of them and hidden behind the mask of Dionysus, had blended into their group.

  They had made their way to the sex district and taken over a popular establishment, kicking out the stunned patrons with the enthusiasm they showed boarding an enemy galley. Nikias could imagine them slaughtering men with the same wild glee, and he was glad these warriors were on his side—they were the biggest, meanest, and loudest group of walking hard-ons he’d ever been around in his life. Quick to copulate and even faster to fight.

  Phoenix had gone off into a private chamber with the mariner Bion and a pair of beautiful young men before emerging sometime later looking like a drained wineskin. He had told Nikias that he needed to dash off on some “errand of great importance,” but not before ordering Nikias to “stay at your bench.” And then his cousin had vanished.

  That had been almost two hours ago and Nikias was growing restless. He closed his eyes and tried to make himself go to sleep above the grunts and groans of the orgy. After a few minutes he felt something tugging at his belt. He snapped open his eyes, grabbing at the wrist of a young slave boy—one of the wine servers—who stared back at him with a terrified look, squirming to be free.

  “I’ve got nothing to steal, whelp,” he said. “Now, get out of here.”

  The boy scampered out of the room like a frightened cat.

  Nikias reached into his belt pouch to make sure the gold ring was still there. He found it and took it out, staring at the signet in the lamplight. It was a red gemstone carved with the image of a kneeling Persian warrior holding a bow. He tried to slip it onto the pinkie of his left hand, but the ring had been made for a man with much thinner fingers: Eurymakus the Theban.

  He stared at his own signet ring, which he wore on his right hand. It had been his late father’s ring and bore his family sigil carved in jasper: a boxing Minotaur. His signet finger had been broken in a fight last year with a warrior named Axe, and the knuckle had swollen so much that he would never again be able to slip the ring from his finger. Holding Eurymakus’s ring next to his own, he compared the two.

  Minotaur against archer … who would win?

  He wondered if Eurymakus was still alive. He hoped so. For he wanted to kill the man with his bare hands. Clutching the spy’s ring in his fist, he forced his aching body off the bench, picked his way through the orgy, found the back door of the brothel, and headed into the moonlit streets of Athens, ever watchful for Kleon’s henchmen.

  He thought of Kallisto as he walked. He wondered if she was recovering from her injuries. If she was gaining strength. He hoped his grandmother and sister had been looking in on her at Chusor’s. His heart seemed to grow heavier in his chest. He’d betrayed Kallisto with the hetaera Helena. But he had not done so willingly.

  Or had he?

  “Love,” Chusor had said on several occasions, “can lift you up like the wings of Daedalus, or bring you crashing back down to earth like a millstone around your neck.”

  He remembered that Chusor’s friend—the hetaera Sophia—lived in this neighborhood near the pottery district, close to the edge of the agora. His friend would be angry if Nikias failed to deliver the message of introduction he’d written to her. And even though the letter had been stolen from him, Nikias had read it so many times he knew it by heart. He could recite it to her word for word:

  My Sophia,

  Not a single day has gone by since we parted that I have not thought of you. I have traveled the known world trying to forget you; and yet you still shine in my memory as brightly as the sun.…

  Nikias saw a slave boy emptying a bucket of excreta into a gutter and asked him for directions to the hetaera Sophia’s. He followed the slave’s instructions and soon found himself on a lane of expensive homes. At the end of the block—where the courtesan’s place should have been—was nothing but the charred remains of several houses that had burned to the ground some time ago. The crumbling shells of the lower walls were still standing. Blackened timbers were stacked neatly in piles, waiting to be taken away by a salvage crew. He thought of his own farm, destroyed by the Theban raiders, and felt sick to his stomach.

  He went to the nearest house that had been unaffected by the fire and knocked on the door to the slave quarters. After a while an old Syrian answered, holding an oil lamp up to Nikias’s face.

  “What is it?” asked the slave.

  “The hetaera Sophia?” asked Nikias. “Does she live on this street?”

  The slave squinted and looked around the lane to see if Nikias was alone. “Who wants to know?” he asked.

  “One of her friends,” said Nikias. “I’ve traveled a long way to deliver a message.”

  “Then you’ll have to go even farther,” said the slave. “Though few have gone to Hades and returned. Those houses burned to the ground six months ago. And her place was one of them. We’re lucky the whole block didn’t go up in flames.” And with that he slammed the door shut.

  Nikias did not look forward to bringing this news to Chusor. His friend would be crushed. He wondered if Kleon had had anything to do with the fire. Nikias knew that Kleon had tried to have Chusor murdered for sleeping with the hetaera. Perhaps this Sophia had done something worse to provoke his anger.

  He walked aimlessly down a narrow lane into a small square. He recognized the wineshop where he and Konon had eaten dinner the night before.

  The sad-looking, skinny drunk with the prominent nose was at the same table, but there was no sign of his bitter wife and their two children. Nikias sat down on the stone curb and propped up his head with his one good hand, overcome with depression.

  His adventure to Athens was a complete failure. He’d been robbed, drugged, and beaten. He’d lost his horse and the Skythian boy. And for what? Nothing. He felt like dashing his brains on the stones beneath his feet, but he was too weary to move.

  “What’s wrong with your shoulder?” asked the drunk in his strange accent.

  Nikias glanced at the man and shrugged. “Fell from my horse.”

  “I noticed it last night when you were here,” said the man, his voice thick with alcohol. “The way you held it. I could tell it was bad. You should wear it in a sling to take the pressure off the sinews.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” said Nikias in a tone that said he wasn’t thankful in the least. He opened his clutched hand and stared at Eurymakus’s ring, then tossed it spinning into the air, catching it as it fell.

  “My wife left me,” said the man and let forth a tremendous sigh. He got up and stumbled over to Nikias, and sat next to him on the curb, offering him his wine cup. “She went back to her village. Took the children and what little money we had left. I deserved it, though. I am a terrible husband.”

  Nikias glared at the foreign-looking man—peered into his dark eyes with hostility. But all he saw there was abject despair, bitterness, and defeat. He felt a kinship with the drunk and his heart softened. On this night, at least, they were two of a kind. Hamstrung by the Fates. He took the proffered cup and drank.

  “Thanks,” said Nikias, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He spun the signet ring on the smooth curbstone, watching it until it came to a stop.

  “I see you’ve taken a bad beating since I saw you last night,” said the man. “That eyelid needs to be slit to let the blood drain, otherwise it will just keep closing. You’ll be a on
e-eyed Cyclops soon.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “I’m sure of that! I can tell by your ugly ears that you’re a pankrator. And your nose has been broken several times. Let me see the knuckles of your hands. Ah! Yes. The hands of a man who has spent his life punching other men in the face.”

  “You a fight trainer?” asked Nikias with a laugh, knowing the man was the furthest thing from serving in that profession.

  “No,” smiled the man. “I’m a physician. Though I’m sure you’d hardly believe me, looking at my sad appearance. I studied in Babylonia, where the skills of those illustrious doctors make your Greek physicians look like drooling barbarians. I came here several years ago to practice my trade. But I was never accepted here, being a tax-paying foreigner—or a metic, to use your ugly Greek word.” He peered into Nikias’s eyes for several seconds, then raised one brow. “You’ve had a blow on the head recently. I can see it in your pupils and the way you hold yourself. You need to be careful and get some rest. Have you been vomiting at all? Unable to keep your thoughts straight?”

  Nikias smiled and laughed softly. “May I ask your name, Doctor?”

  “Ezekiel,” he replied, “son of Solomon the Babylonian. And I am a Jew—do you, by any chance, know what a Jew is?”

  “Not in the slightest,” said Nikias, grinning. He’d found Chusor’s friend the doctor. The Fates had finally led him in the right direction.

  “It is nothing funny to be a Jew,” said Ezekiel, apparently taking Nikias’s smile as an insult. “My people were enslaved by the Egyptians. We escaped because of a miracle. And then we were sent packing from Babylonia. We have no city-state to call our own.”

  “I’m not laughing at your predicament,” said Nikias. “Forgive me, Ezekiel. My name is Nikias. And I would shake your hand but I can’t lift my arm. I am a friend of Chusor. He gave me instructions on how to find you if I became injured. He said you were a great healer.”

  Ezekiel rubbed a hand across his face and stared suspiciously at Nikias. “Chusor told you to find me?”