by Noble Smith
Thirty years ago this Polykarpos had married off one of his daughters to a Plataean citizen, and she had borne him a son named Kiton who had spent much of his youth in Tanagra, where the boy had been coddled by his grandfather. Kiton had grown up to be a fearsome Plataean warrior, and had been given a nickname based on his favorite weapon.
“Axe” was what the Plataeans called him.
Axe hated the Athenians and was loyal to his Tanagraean grandfather. And he had been one of Eurymakus’s spies inside the Plataean citadel on the night of the sneak attack. Eurymakus had been surprised to find Axe still alive and taking refuge in Polykarpos’s house, for he had thought the Plataean had perished during the battle. Eurymakus had been even more astonished when, a few days later, Axe’s cousin, a young man who guarded the gates, had burst into Polykarpos’s house, breathless and excited with news: Nikias of Plataea had arrived in Tanagra!
Axe had slipped out of Polykarpos’s house before Eurymakus could stop him, and the great oaf had nearly been spotted by the young Plataean in Tanagra’s public square. But Axe had ducked back into Polykarpos’s house before Nikias had seen him. Eurymakus had quickly sent Nihani to follow Nikias through the citadel. The clever woman, still in the guise of a man, had trailed him to the Three Thieves, pretending to be a male prostitute when confronted by Nikias.
The plan to burn down the inn and force Nikias out of his room had been Eurymakus’s scheme. And Axe and his cousin had carried it out perfectly, smoking Nikias out like a mountain badger from his hole.
Eurymakus heard a sound outside the chamber door and stood up. The door opened and Polykarpos lumbered into the room, followed by Axe bearing a pine-pitch torch that crackled loudly.
The merchant was a big man in his sixties. He resembled a much older, gone-to-seed version of his nephew, for he was corpulent and wore perfume in his hair like an Athenian. The small chamber was quickly filled with its overpowering scent. Polykarpos’s eyes, like Axe’s, were too small for his head, and his bushy beard hid his face.
“Is he awake?” asked Polykarpos, casting a dark glance at Nikias.
“No,” said Eurymakus. “Axe does not know his strength. He hit him too hard.”
“I tried to kill him,” said Axe with a slanted smile. “I don’t care if that sheep-stuffer lives or dies.”
“Oh, he will die,” said Eurymakus. “But he will die slowly.”
“Is this torture necessary?” asked Polykarpos, twisting one of his many rings on his fat fingers. “Why don’t you just extract the information you need and slit his throat?”
“I don’t need any information,” said Eurymakus. “There is nothing about Plataea that Nikias could tell me that I don’t already know.”
“Then why—”
“He must pay for what he and his family have done,” said Eurymakus, trying to keep his voice calm. He despised having to explain himself to this merchant.
Eurymakus watched as Axe walked over and squatted by Nikias, holding the flame close to the young man’s face.
“Be careful,” said Eurymakus. “You’ll set his hair on fire.”
Axe put the torch a little closer with a mischievous grin, singeing Nikias’s hair until it curled and smoked.
“Stop!” ordered Eurymakus. “There will be time for that later.”
“Just checking to see if he’s really unconscious,” said Axe with a shrug.
“Disgusting smell,” said Polykarpos, waving away the smoke.
Axe cleared his throat and spit on Nikias’s face. “There,” he said. “That will put out the fire for good. Or should I piss on him? I say we start in on him now,” he added. “We’re wasting time. My uncle has a big Median slave who’s hung like a donkey. Let’s have him rape Nikias to start. That will give us all a good laugh.”
“We have all the time in the world,” said Eurymakus. “I will not begin until Nikias is fully aware of what is going on.”
Axe stood up and kicked Nikias in the stomach. “Awake or not, I would enjoy it either way. I’ve hated this piece of shit since he was a boy. Just like I hated his worthless father, Aristo.”
Polykarpos scratched his bushy beard with a nervous gesture. “Listen, Eurymakus,” he said, speaking in a lower voice, “we need to talk about what comes next.”
“I told you already,” said Eurymakus. “We wait until the Spartans destroy Plataea. In the meantime we start bringing together all of the Tanagraeans who are ready to kill the Athenian loyalists in the citadel. When the time is right we take over the city and then send emissaries to the Spartans.”
“We ally ourselves with the Spartans?” mimicked Axe. “You are not a Tanagraean, Eurymakus. You’re not even a Theban anymore from what I can gather.”
“You are not a citizen of Tanagra either,” replied Eurymakus icily. “But I still have the ear of the Persian king as well as the Spartans, and I will be the bridge that connects Tanagra to them both. I can bring Persian gold to Tanagra. Enough to buy armor for a thousand men. Can you say as much, Axe? The Persians would indeed be willing to finance Tanagra, just as they had given gold to Thebes.”
Eurymakus turned to Polykarpos and said, “You cannot hope to remain independent from the Spartans unless you have the backing of Artaxerxes and the Persian Empire. Otherwise the Spartans will make you their vassals.”
By the looks on their faces his words had worked, for Axe shrugged and turned away as if accepting defeat, and Polykarpos nodded contritely.
“What about Thebes?” asked Polykarpos. “Won’t the Spartans give Thebes the power to rule in the Oxlands once Plataea is destroyed?”
“Thebes is like a one-legged man,” said Eurymakus. “We lost too many warriors in the battle against Plataea. We…” Here he paused and rubbed his hand on the stump of his arm. “… they are now powerless. Thebes will fall under the Spartan yoke. Tanagra has the opportunity to become the most powerful city-state in the Oxlands. But only with my help.”
Eurymakus turned and saw that Nihani now stood beside him, staring at Polykarpos and Axe with her haughty gaze. Eurymakus noticed Axe ogling her. Nihani saw this, too, and stepped closer to Eurymakus’s side.
The room was silent except for Nikias’s mumbling.
Polykarpos put a hand on his chin and stared at Nikias, thinking for some time. “I don’t want this Plataean to be alive much longer,” he said at last. “There are men in Tanagra who are still loyal allies of the Plataeans. They would have me sharded for torturing the heir of the Plataean Arkon. I say we kill him and bury his corpse in the forest.”
“I agree with my grandfather,” said Axe. “The sooner, the better.”
“I need a week,” said Eurymakus. “That is all that I ask.”
“You shall have three days,” said Polykarpos. “You can do whatever needs to be done with this poor lad in three days. ‘Death is a terrible discharge that we all must eventually pay,’” he recited with a sigh. He cast another glance at Nikias, then exited the chamber.
Axe followed after his grandfather, saying over his shoulder, “Don’t start the fun without me,” then slammed the door shut behind him.
After the two men were gone Eurymakus stood for a long time staring at Nikias.
“I don’t like either one of them,” said Nihani.
“I would gouge out Axe’s eyes for undressing you with his eyes that way,” said Eurymakus. “But we need him. And we need Polykarpos, even though he is as spineless as a snail. We will use them for as long as we can.”
“We should go to Persia now,” said Nihani. “Kill Nikias and be done with him. Your revenge is in your grasp.”
“No,” replied Eurymakus. “Death is not enough. He must suffer. Only then will my brother’s spirit find peace.” He chewed on a nail, pulling it off, causing his finger to bleed. “The game has shifted, my love,” he said. “We have been shown the path by Ahura Mazda. If I can bring Tanagra to the Spartans, I will be back in their good favor. I can’t run away to Persia like a dog with its tail between its leg
s. Not when Plataea is so close to being destroyed.”
“God be praised,” she replied in a wooden voice. “Come now.”
She led him to the corner of the chamber with the makeshift bed.
“Take off your tunic,” she commanded him. “Get on your hands and knees.”
As they made love Eurymakus kept his eyes locked on Nikias the entire time, and exploded in the most violent of orgasms. He lay next to Nihani, breathing hard, and then fell into a deep slumber. When he awoke she was kneeling next to him, staring into his face, smiling impishly.
“My love,” she whispered. “The Plataean is awake.”
Eurymakus got up very slowly and turned to face Nikias. The young pankrator stared back at him, hair and face wet with sweat, struggling against the chains, an expression of horror on his pale but lucid face.
“Zeus, no,” hissed Nikias.
NINE
When Diokles the Helot was a child he had found a puppy cowering in a ditch—a stray that was near death. He had cared for the animal in secret, feeding it milk from a goat, and the dog had grown strong.
But then the tall, lean, noseless Spartan master who owned the village and all of its inhabitants came for an inspection and discovered what Diokles had done. Helots weren’t allowed to have dogs. Dogs could be used to hunt and Helots were forbidden to hunt. Or a dog could act as a sentinel—to alert Helots engaged in secret meetings that their Spartan masters were in the village. So the master killed the dog by smashing its head against a wall, and then he ordered his men to hang Diokles upside down by his ankles and whip him until his skin was in shreds.
Diokles had lived. But just barely. And he had never stopped hating the masters. Especially the one with the face like a skull: Master Drako.
Diokles had asked his father if the Helots had ever been free of the Spartans. His father hadn’t known. But he had said that the Spartans were good masters. His father had told him a story. “Long ago, when the beasts could talk, a sheep said to her master: ‘We sheep do so much for you. We give you wool, lambs, and cheese. But we get nothing except what comes from the land. Yet you share your house and home with your dog who gives you none of the things we give you.’ The dog heard this and replied: ‘Stupid sheep! The master and I protect you from thieves and wolves. Without us you would not even be able to graze for fear of being killed.’”
As he had grown into manhood Diokles had come to realize that, not only were his people exactly like the sheep in the story, but the Spartans were the wolves. The word “Helot” in the Spartan tongue meant “the captured ones.” Each year at the summer harvest, Master Drako would come to the village with his small army of soldiers and read from a scroll: “As we have done every year since conquering this land, we the Spartan people declare our everlasting war upon the captured ones.” This “war” was enforced with the krypteria—the Spartan initiation into manhood. Every so often a Helot man would be taken from the village and marched high into the mountains, where he was released … and then hunted down by a Spartan boy. Diokles’s father had been one of these butchered men. Diokles was ten years old at the time.
Over the years he had heard rumors of some Helot slaves who had run away during a great earthquake that had shaken Sparta. It was said they had started their own city on the top of a volcano, and had beaten back an army of Spartans who had come to take them back. He vowed to find that city one day.
Perhaps his Spartan masters had known how to read his mind. For when he had entered the breeding age, they had picked him out as a troublemaker and sold him off to a slaver. And that’s how he’d ended up in a Spartan mine, where twenty thousand men pounded the earth to bring up the ore to make iron. Somehow he’d survived the agonizing labor, the cave-ins, the beatings, the poor diet. The guards at the mines had given him the name “the beetle” because he was so short and squat, dark-skinned and sturdy. His body was suited to crawling into tight crevices to search for ore. It was as if the weight of the earth he toiled under had compressed him, packed him together.
He had worked in shafts so deep, the only light came from sooty lamps, the only smells the ore dust and the smoke of burning wicks. He had pounded holes in the solid rock for hours on end. He had fantasized about killing himself many times. All he would have had to do was anchor the digging spike into the rock and impale his neck on it. But he hadn’t been able to stand the thought of dying underground, in the darkness.…
“And how did you finally escape?” asked Ajax and Teleos at the same time.
Diokles stopped hammering for a moment and glanced at the faces of the brothers staring back at him, illuminated by the lamplight of the dark tunnel. He had been telling them his story as they dug under the streets of Plataea in the tunnel entrance beneath the ancient marker called Zeus’s Thumb—the place where Barka had told them that the treasure was sure to be found. The eunuch had come to the tunnel an hour ago to inspect their work, and then he had disappeared. But where had his pretty Lylit gone?
“Diokles?” urged Teleos.
“Eh?”
Diokles had become so lost in his own tale that he’d forgotten he had been speaking his thoughts aloud to the brothers.
“What happened next?” asked Ajax.
“Earthquake come,” said Diokles. “Biggest earthquake ever. Wall around slave quarters split open. And we run. All of us. I don’t know how many make it to the sea. Maybe I the only one. I find a ship on a beach in a little cove. A pretty ship full of pirates. They getting water from a spring. I beg them to take me on board. I cry at them. Big tears.”
“And that was Chusor’s ship?” asked Ajax.
“Zana’s ship,” replied Diokles and started hammering a spike in between two rocks. The first blow made a strange hollow sound and he cocked his head to the side. He struck the spike again and frowned. This was a wall. A wall of stacked stones.
“But Chusor was there,” said Teleos. “Right? He brought you on board.”
“Chusor was one of the sailors,” said Diokles. “Barka who kept them from killing me. My Lylit ask Zana to take me on ship.”
“Why?” asked Ajax.
Diokles pounded the spike several more times, driving it into the rocks. The blockage crumbled suddenly and filled the tunnel with debris. For an instant Diokles thought the roof of the tunnel might collapse, but the wooden supports they had installed held. Once the dust cleared he held up the lamp and thrust it into the darkness. He wiped the sweat and dirt from his face and said under his breath, “Barka tell me I going to save her life one day.”
“And did you?” asked Teleos.
Diokles ignored the question. “Clear this,” he ordered.
The boys went to work, hauling the mound of debris up the tunnel and out of the way.
Gripping a large stone that jutted from the floor of the tunnel, Diokles pulled on it with all his might and it came from the earth like a rotten tooth. Now there was enough room for him to squeeze into the dark space on the other side. He held the lamp out in front of him and crawled on one hand and his knees into some sort of man-made chamber.
“What do you see in there?” said Teleos from the tunnel.
“Stay out,” said Diokles.
On the other side of the chamber, leaning against the wall, was a decayed wooden shield and a rusted bronze corselet.
“Diokles?” said Ajax. “Can we come in too?”
“Stay out,” said Diokles. “Not enough room for you monkeys.”
“Did you find the treasure?”
He ignored the boys as he crawled around the chamber. He found the skeleton of a dog, curled up as though in eternal sleep. And stone boxes. Diokles pulled off the top of one of these and held up the lamp to peer inside. He couldn’t tell what was contained in it. A black substance. He reached inside and took out a clump of something and sniffed it.
Grain. To sow in the afterlife.
At the other end of the chamber he found a narrow alcove with a body stretched out on the floor, and skeletal hands
clutching a sword in a rotting wooden scabbard. On the dead man’s head was a helm fashioned from the curved tusks of boars. A shelf had been carved into the alcove, and on it were arrayed dusty objects that reflected the lamp flame with a pale yellow gleam.
He put the lamp next to the corpse’s head and saw a metallic face smiling back.
“Forgive me for disturbing your sleep, warrior,” said Diokles, and reached for the golden mask with a trembling hand.
TEN
Nikias laughed, even though doing so caused him immense pain—like knives stabbing into his lungs. He laughed because he couldn’t figure out why his blood floated upward, toward the low ceiling a few inches above his head. He felt the blood pooling in his mouth and let another gob of it out, and watched curiously as the red stream flowed up rather than down, joining the pool of fluid and vomit and piss.
And there was a voice in the back of his mind—a nagging voice that wouldn’t stop. It kept saying over and over again, “Remember the name.” He could picture the fellow. Dark eyes, curly beard, plump—strange accent.
Remember the name, Nikias.…
“What name?” Nikias said aloud. “I told you, I can’t remember.” He laughed again and winced. He realized that his ribs were broken. That’s why it hurt so much to laugh. He tried to move his arms but they were pinioned behind his back. Everything seemed so strange. Where was he? Why couldn’t he move his arms? Why couldn’t he walk?
The ring. The stone. The angel. She will save you.…
“What’s he doing?” asked an annoyed voice—a cruel voice that was so different from the kindly one in his head.
“He’s hallucinating,” came a silky reply. This second voice had a Theban accent.
“I need to rest my hand. My knuckles ache from punching him.”
“Axe, you surprise me. I reckoned you could punch a defenseless man all day.”