Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  A defeat was a defeat, but at least the fault could not be laid at his feet.

  It was not to be Athens' only defeat of the year. The next one left a bitter taste. Rather than let him march blindly into this next failure, as she had at Megara, Thalassia came to him with counsel.

  "Hippokrates might suggest that you join him in an invasion of Boeotia," she said. "Do not become involved."

  "He might?" Demosthenes asked. "Why the uncertainty?"

  Her blunt answer was as much a surprise as anything she had said in the year of their acquaintance. "Because if he does not, then it may well have been your idea instead of his, if not for my having occupied you with other plans."

  He did not like to speak of his 'other self,' the Demosthenes who would have lived a different life had Thalassia not fallen into it.

  Seeing his discomfort, she shrugged her dismissal. "It doesn't matter now."

  "No, tell me. What was to have occurred?

  Sighing, she offered up knowledge forbidden to mortal men. She explained how that other, blissfully ignorant Demosthenes, after gathering allies from among his friends in the northwest, would have landed at Siphae, on the west coast of Boeotia, only to discover that one of those friends had betrayed him. His intended diversionary attack beaten back by the forewarned defenders, he would be forced to sail home, leaving his fellow general Hippokrates to face the might of an enemy ready and waiting for him at Delion to the east. Hippokrates and a thousand Athenians would lose their lives, thanks in part to his failure.

  After a few moments of stunned silence, the more fortunate Demosthenes whispered, "We must stop it..."

  "If you can, then do," Thalassia said, too casually. "So long as you do not participate directly and get yourself killed, I doubt it will affect our purpose."

  Demosthenes knew he had little right to be appalled by such talk, but he was. Too frequently, after her exile from his home, he had found himself vocally at odds with Thalassia, mostly on occasions when he knew full well the wiser choice would be to walk away.

  Foolishly, he ranted, "How can you say it does not affect us? A thousand men! You pledged to aid Athens."

  Her pristine features flashed annoyance, as they always did when he snapped at her. "Don't confuse a city with its people."

  "A city is its people!"

  She dismissed him with a wave and a sneer. "Have this debate with with Socrates sometime, up in the fucking clouds. Meanwhile, down here, I can't protect every man, woman and child of Athens. These are men who would have died anyway if I had never come." Two fingers stabbed Demosthenes' chest, hard enough to force him back. "And who knows, maybe without you there fucking up, they won't die after all."

  Demosthenes let her verbal attack land uncontested, and thereafter managed more often to avoid argument with her, if not avoid her altogether.

  Weeks later, at a meeting of the Board of Ten, over a table built from the planks of a decommissioned trireme, Demosthenes first laid out the vital importance of Amphipolis to Athens: its timber supplies, access to gold mines and control of the lone bridge over the river Strymon. He noted that Brasidas had spent the summer marching north with seven hundred hoplites who were reported to be Helots serving in exchange for their freedom, and even though the purported purpose of Brasidas's march was to aid the Macedonian king Perdikkas against his enemies, the Lynkesti, it begged the question: what could lead Sparta to send one of her stars on such an errand except the expectation of fair return? Surely Perdikkas, in gratitude, planned to provide Brasidas with troops; and once in the region with such a force assembled, what greater prize could Brasidas seek than Amphipolis?

  "And what would stop him from taking it?" Demosthenes posed of his fellow strategoi.

  "Thucydides is at Thasos and can sail to the town's relief if needed," Lamachos grumbled.

  And fail, and be sent into exile! Demosthenes did not reply.

  "It will not be enough!" he said instead, and made what argument he could without insulting the absent Thucydides. "If I am wrong," he finished, "and Brasidas does not come, then I shall be well placed to punish the Macedonian king for betraying us–twice now, by my count."

  "Premature, premature," Kleon declared of the plan with a ponderous shaking of his red cheeks. The demagogue's assignment to the post of City Defender in this, his first year of generalship, was ideally suited to his undoubted aim of leveraging the office into more power to sway the very masses to whom he shamelessly catered.

  Nikias concurred with his arch-rival; Laches followed, and the answer was sealed.

  "It is just as well," Hippokrates said next. "For I was hoping you might aid me, Demosthenes, in a venture I have conceived. You have friends among our allies in the northwest, do you not?"

  The venture was as the star-born oracle had ordained: a two-pronged invasion of Boeotia by land and sea, and Demosthenes rebuffed it with a prepared list of reasons why the actually quite reasonable-sounding idea was flawed. In the end, he succeeded to a degree: Boeotia was to be a target of attack this season, but using some other strategy to be determined at the Board's next gathering.

  On the way out, Demosthenes caught gray-haired Nikias by the arm.

  "I did not wish to say so in front of the rest," he lied to the old man in a conspiratorial whisper, "but the slave I took at Pylos is a servant of Isis and a keen reader of omens. She predicted the eclipse of the sun last year, and the earthquake which caused the sea to rise, and knew that Isarchos would be archon. I do not want it to get out, lest she be labeled a witch or an oracle and my house be swarmed with suppliants, but if she says that Amphipolis is threatened, I cannot stand idle, do you understand?"

  The deep creases around superstitious Nikias' lined mouth grew deeper still as he scowled, more in consternation than disbelief, it appeared.

  "Hagnon, your son, is there," Demosthenes said, pressing a second line of attack without waiting to see if the first had met with success. "Ask yourself: if Brasidas appeared outside the walls of Amphipolis, absent defenders within, what would Hagnon do to save the town he built with his own blood and sweat?"

  Suggesting to any man that his son would yield to the enemy without a fight was a move that risked offense, but he trusted in Nikias' reputation for fair-minded analysis to bring him to the proper conclusion.

  Nikias gave no quick answer, but there were signs of deep thought underway behind his sharp eyes. Demosthenes affectionately clasped his shoulder.

  "Think on it, friend," he said. "I ask only for two hundred of the citizen cavalry and a hundred volunteers who can shoot a bow. I will raise the infantry myself in Thrace. It seems to me there is little to lose by sending me, and much to gain."

  Whether it was fear of omens or knowledge of his son's character which changed his mind, at the next convocation of the Board, Nikias proposed that Demosthenes, son of Alkisthenes of the deme of Thria, be dispatched, along with the meager force he requested, to Amphipolis. Nikias' allies concurred, the nominated general accepted, and the motion was carried. And so, at the time when men and women with tall rakes combed the branches of olive trees so that the fruit fell into the sailcloths spread on the ground below, marking Athens' first fully successful olive harvest in eight summers of siege, one of her generals set sail in defiance of Fate.

  END OF PART II

  III. AMPHIPOLIS 1. A Few Shots

  Pyanepsion in the archonship of Isarchos (October 424 BCE)

  He missed Athens less than usual, enjoying his time alone in the tiny but lively town on the Thracian side of the serpentine Strymon. Athenians, even Greeks, were a minority in Amphipolis; its population was mostly local, which perhaps explained why this colony yet existed on the same spot where all attempts before it had been quickly laid waste by one Thracian tribe or another.

  There were no signs of such tension here. Green-eyed vendors barked a mix of Greek and Thracian from their stalls, women hoisted laden baskets on tattooed arms, and children both black-haired and red darted in and out of alle
ys waging mock battles. The war between Amphipolis' mother city Athens and her perpetual foe Sparta, burning hotly to the south and west, had not since its earliest days sent a spark sailing in this direction.

  For that reason it was unsurprising that the residents would be less than thrilled to have an Athenian general suddenly appear, build a barracks at the foot of their quaint acropolis with its single stone sanctuary of Apollo, and commence raising an army from among nearby Greek allies and the Thracian tribes to the north. Even Nikias' son Hagnon, the colony's founder and still its 'first among equals,' radiated an aura of indifference to the struggle into which his town had been dragged, even if he gave proper lip service where was concerned his allegiance to his home city.

  Having now met Hagnon, Demosthenes knew that he would indeed throw the gates open to Brasidas to spare his people from slaughter. Amphipolis would agree with the choice, and rightly thank him for it. The men and women who walked the streets around Demosthenes this chilly afternoon, shopping and hawking and fetching water from the spring, did not much care whether the men who ran the day-to-day affairs of their town gave nominal allegiance to Athens or Sparta.

  Their indifference caused Demosthenes no annoyance. He envied them, in fact, and spent as much time as he could just walking aimlessly among them, trying to absorb some of whatever made them happy, sometimes halfway succeeding.

  At present, his walk was not aimless. It took him beyond the city walls and down the wide, straight, unpaved path down to the town's little port on the Strymon. He arrived early and sat on the sandy slope above the jetties, looking down on the black water sliding lazily toward the sea, for about an hour until the ships appeared. This morning a messenger had ridden north from Eion, on the coast, bearing word of the three sleek triremes' appearance at the river's estuary. There the ships had furled their sails, stowed masts and dropped oars to push upriver. Now they were here, churning the Strymon's dark, placid surface in difficult maneuvers which the Athenian crews made look easy, pointing their curved prows toward the shallows. Demosthenes stood and watched them come, searching among the standing figures on the decks.

  It was but seconds before his eyes found the one he sought: Alkibiades waved madly at the sandy-haired, blue-cloaked figure waiting for him on shore. Demosthenes raised his hand in return. As he did, his gaze fell to the youth's left, where a second familiar figure stood, hooded and cloaked in a gray chlamys for which she had no earthly need, since the limbs it concealed suffered not even from extremes of cold. Thalassia looked back at him, her expression indiscernible at this distance. Why had she come? He searched for sign of Eurydike, too, but found none.

  The ships' drafts scraped gravel, stone anchors were thrown, Amphipolitan portsmen caught thick, tarred ropes and secured them to deep-driven mooring posts, and gangplanks were dropped. Alkibiades was among the first to set foot on shore, carrying an unwieldy wooden cross half his own height. Demosthenes went to meet him, and they embraced, while nimble, cloaked Thalassia descended the gangplank as though her soles never touched it. In similar fashion she glided over the pebbles and came to stand at her playmate's shoulder. Demosthenes met her pale eyes and returned the nod and the paler smile that she offered. Hers was not an unwelcome presence in Amphipolis, but neither was it one he felt compelled to receive warmly. They had fallen to hardly speaking in the last year, and to be sure, he had not missed Thalassia. He felt that way not on account of her personality, which apart from a tendency to fly into anger without warning was not all that unpleasant a thing. Well, there was her arrogance, but that was common enough in the circles he traveled. No, Thalassia was unwelcome for what she represented: the encroachment of dark, barely comprehensible forces upon what until now had been his remote, pastoral Thracian sanctuary.

  He had spent a month in the clear, fresh air of reality, away from the intoxicating vapor of her madness, and here it was again, caught up with him in a fragrant, beautiful cloud.

  Alkibiades raised the gastraphetes he had set down to offer greeting and stood the device in the sand on its tau-shaped, leather covered butt-end. Its wide, curved arms jutted out an arm's length to either side.

  “Fifty belly-bows,” Alkibiades said with a grin, announcing the ships' cargo. “Plus thirty more men to train at using them and eight hundred skewers ready to taste Spartan meat.”

  “Well done.” Demosthenes spoke dully, but the sentiment was genuine. This shipment brought the total number of belly-bows with which they would meet Brasidas to one hundred. The number of volunteers to train in the weapons' use, men from both Athens and Thrace who had proven their ability with bow or javelin, was even greater.

  Looking down at the fencepost-like weapon with its metal rails and catches and currently unstrung crosswise bowstave, Alkibiades lamented, “I've not yet had the chance to play with one. What say we let off a few shots?”

  “Let me gather the new volunteers and see to the unloading first. Then we will go to the range.”

  “No need,” Alkibiades returned. He hefted the unloaded weapon and leveled it at Thalassia. “Star-girl, care to act as target?”

  “Try it and see,” she answered coldly.

  “Bah!” Alkibiades lowered the bow. “You are so lucky you got to run her through, Demosthenes. I'd love to have seen that!” He added quickly to Thalassia, “No offense.”

  She answered with a facial tick that left ambiguous whether offense had been taken. To one who could read her, as well as one so alien could be read, it was apparent: she was in a mood. Demosthenes wondered if he was the cause, but only wondered for a moment before accepting it for a certainty.

  When he had rounded up the thirty men and given instructions to the sailors on the unloading and removal of the cargo, he joined his two fellow conspirators for the walk to Amphipolis.

  “What news is there?” he asked either of them, but really Alkibiades; he had not yet fully reconciled himself to the other's presence. Though he declined to specify, there was really only one bit of news from home in which he was interested.

  Knowing that or not, Alkibiades addressed it: “Defeat and six hundred dead at Delion.”

  The blow landed softly. Some restless nights of worry had prepared Demosthenes for worse. “And Hippokrates?”

  “Among the living. But Thucydides may yet face exile for his part in the failure.”

  That news provided more of a chill, evidence that perhaps a determined Fate could fight back after all.

  In silence but for some idle chatter from Alkibiades, the trio walked at the head of the band of eager, laughing recruits to the barracks complex at the town's eastern edge, just inside its limestone wall. There, in the shadow of the steepest face of the acropolis, a space had been designated for gastraphetes practice. A dozen of the wielders were taking aim and letting loose iron-tipped, javelin-like bolts—launched two at a time, side-by-side—at man-sized targets built from old planks and bailed hay. To one side of the targets sat a heap of debris which prominently included old hoploi, each round shield so full of holes as to be rendered unrecognizable. After a first round of experiments, the users had abandoned using real armor, even retired pieces, for there was no further need for such waste. They knew what they needed to know: the bolts of the belly-bow could punch through both shield and bronze breastplate at up to three hundred yards. It could also do considerable damage to flesh even at its maximum range, which well surpassed that of any hand-drawn bow.

  They were met at the range by the captain of the belly-bowmen, an Athenian hunter by the name of Straton. Demosthenes handed the fresh recruits over to Straton and informed him of Alkibiades' desire to 'play' with one of his weapons. All too happy to oblige, Straton had a gastraphetes fetched and told a lieutenant to instruct Alkibiades in its use before leaving to shepherd his recruits through the start of their training regimen.

  While the lieutenant demonstrated for Alkibiades how to draw the bowstring by setting his stomach against the propped weapon's butt-end and throwing his weight onto it,
Demosthenes suddenly found himself alone beside the silent shadow which had crossed a sea to haunt his life anew.

  She was not long silent.

  “I don't rate an embrace?” she asked.

  Bitterness was imperfectly concealed in her voice. Almost surely the lapse was by design, a silent observation which inspired a moment of rage which Demosthenes contained.

  He scarcely knew how to answer, and so just silently watched Alkibiades take his lesson, as did Thalassia. Alkibiades knelt and held the gastraphetes level with his shoulder, took aim at the straw man downfield and, shrugging away the close guidance of his trainer, squeezed the trigger mechanism. With the brief but harsh sound of iron scraping iron, twin bolts let fly.

  Both missed the target by wide margins, but the shooter turned to share a wide-mouthed laugh with his two observers, who smiled faintly back.

  “Another go,” Alkibiades said to his patient trainer. “I want that thing dead!”

  As Alkibiades reloaded, Demosthenes found words with which to break the heavy silence.

  “Why did Eurydike not come? Did she not wish to see her homeland?”

  “No,” Thalassia answered coldly. “I'll tell you why later, if you' have a moment and are interested.”

  “Of course I am interested,” Demosthenes snapped. Still he stared at Alkibiades, who seemed to have all but forgotten his observers as he fired bolt after bolt at the target, finally grazing it once.

  “Why did you come?”

  Thalassia scoffed. “You really expected me to stay in Athens? I did half the work that brought us here. More,” she added quietly. “Much more.”

  Demosthenes, exercising discretion and the muscles of his jaw, gave no reply but stared out over the training ground.