Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  Demosthenes was first to cross the reclaimed bridge on his path back to town. A thin layer of snow had settled over the war-churned grass in the shadow of the city walls, the earth there sown with silent corpses and groaning wounded. The battle fully at an end now, exhaustion overtook him, making each step a struggle. He had cheated Fate and a Spartan general this day in saving Amphipolis, and those two in turn had conspired to cheat him back by stealing his life.

  That they had failed was due in large part to starborn witchery.

  But the witch was gone. Or was she? Whether or not Thalassia returned, she would claim no share of the victory's accolades. But somehow the mortal beneficiary of her aid could not help but feel, as he returned to town, that he would see her again.

  Soon, and to his regret.

  III. AMPHIPOLIS 7. Not a Goddess

  Under a cloak of clouds which hid the winter stars and a cloak of wine which clouded his mind, Demosthenes walked the streets of sleeping Amphipolis. With war gear bundled under his arm and slung on his back, he hunted for his rented dwelling. Soon he would abandon that house to return to his own and face the tiresome adulation of the crowds in Athens, men who could never know, never comprehend exactly what he had achieved for their city this day and so would remain forever ungrateful.

  The idea rattled in his muddled mind that maybe he could make his home here and never return to Athens.

  Where was that house? Every few steps, he forgot exactly where he was and how he had got there, then stopped and took a moment to get back on track. Damn Alkibiades, and damn all the citizen cavalry, who had dragged him into the barracks, where excellent Macedonian wine had flowed in torrents all evening from two jugs, each as tall as a man, that had appeared as if from nowhere. Whores had appeared, too, along with Amphipolitan civilians by the dozen, drawn by the music and raucous cheers and word of mouth. However indifferent they were to what distant city wound up ruling them, a party was a party.

  The last Demosthenes had seen of Alkibiades, just before leaving on his last legs, the youth had been sandwiched between a pair of Thracian twins, his chest stained purple with wine. Now Demosthenes clambered alone through the unlocked door of the home he realized he had passed by at least twice already and shuffled into its megaron, where the hearth crackled in its slow, overnight burn.

  The orange glow barely illuminated a human shape. No, the shape of a nymph. But Thalassia was not a nymph. She stared at him in the firelight with those damned awful eyes of hers, and he stared back. He dropped his war gear. When its resounding clatter faded, his breath was loud and harsh and filled the room.

  His eyes adjusted, bringing the star-girl into sharper focus. She wore a dark chlamys thrown over a simple chiton of some light color, belted at the waist, the hem falling just above the knee. It was a man's garment, though none with sight could ever mistake the wearer for a man, or even a boy. Her hair hung in loose tresses over bare shoulders the flesh of which, like that of the exposed upper part of her chest, arms and lower legs, glowed dull gold in the hearth's light.

  "You're back," he said in a breathy grunt. "If you came looking for your fucktoy, he's out fucking other toys."

  "I came to say congratulations," she said. "And goodb–"

  "Congratulations?" Demosthenes sneered. "I failed, didn't I? Brasidas lives!"

  "You wounded him," she said. It came as no surprise that she knew. "Men can die from their wounds." There was perhaps more than just hope in the suggestion.

  Scoffing, Demosthenes dismissed her with a wave that nearly cost him his balance. He recalled what she had said to him on the day of her arrival in Amphipolis. They had stuck with him these past five days. "You're tired of me?" Finally, he had his chance to reply. "I'm tired of you! You're not a goddess!"

  "I know that."

  "Shut up! You took my gods away from me, and left me what? You?" He stabbed a finger at her through the flickering darkness. "There's just you and me and walking corpses in this world now. You're no goddess..." He advanced on her with lurching steps across the floor of hard-packed dirt. "You might be from the stars, but you are still just a woman, full of... woman parts, and tears, and lies and-and–" He staggered to within arm's reach of her. Thalassia stood fast, a statue, even as he put a hand out, picked a lock of hair from her collarbone and finished, "and pretty hair, and those... fucking evil eyes."

  He pulled on the lock of her hair. Thalassia twisted her neck, bowing her head to accommodate, her expression showing no sign of pain or even annoyance. Demosthenes eased the pressure and she righted her head, but rather than release the dark locks he buried his fingers deeper in them and yanked again. She yielded a small step toward him, drawn closer, again without evidence of pain. She made no sound. There was only the hollow rasp of his own breath and the faint crackle of the hearth.

  He walked, pulling her by the hair, in the direction of the narrow staircase set against the megaron's rear wall. She followed, unresisting, body bent awkwardly, and they ascended into the bedchamber above. It had no fire and was lit only by cloud-filtered moonglow streaming in through a pair of windows. He went to the rough bed that he had not shared with any companion during his stay in Amphipolis, stopped at its edge and turned Thalassia to face him.

  She yet wore the same tranquil, if dark, expression as she had below. Somehow that fact angered him, and Demosthenes raised his other hand to cover her face, fingers spread out wide over her cheek and lips and chin. He shoved her head back, keeping his grip in her hair. It was a pointless, childish move with no aim but to express displeasure with the face's owner.

  "I could have won without you," he said. The words came with difficulty on account of his heavy tongue, but he deemed them understandable. He uncovered her face, but kept his grip on the controlling reins of her hair. "You're no goddess," he went on, still to no reply and no resistance. "Just a woman ..."

  By her hair and a hand on her back, he dragged her face down onto the low bed, or half on it, rather, her knees striking the plank floor. "You're just a woman," he slurred again, uncertain of whether he had said it once already or not. He knelt behind her, nudged her knee outward with one of his. "I could have done it without you!"

  Exchanging the clump of her hair in his grasp for another at the back of her skull, close in to the roots, he pressed her head down while using the other hand to throw aside her cloak and lift the skirt of her chiton. When the way was clear, he used the same hand to part her smooth cleft and thrust his cock inside her. It had been ready since the stairs.

  He took her violently, alternately burying her face in the wool blanket and yanking her head back by the hair. She made no sound, offered no resistance, made no move to eject him from the warm, wet, soft place into which he intruded on an invitation long expired.

  "You're just a woman..." he said, an accusation. Sure enough, she felt like one.

  The planks creaked under his weight as he braced one foot and one knee against them for extra leverage, even while jerking the recipient harder onto him. He grunted with each relentless thrust, ignoring the pain in his bruised ribs until, rage and arousal spent, he lowered his weight fully onto her back and drifted into sleep.

  Some time later, perhaps it was minutes, perhaps hours, he regained a shard of consciousness. Finding himself ready, and the warm body still present and in position under him, he entered her again. This time, he went not by the garden path, but thief-like through her back channel. She accepted it soundlessly, a lump of supple, golden clay bent before him.

  "Just a woman..." he breathed on her neck, and collapsed on her again.

  III. AMPHIPOLIS 8. Appointment

  Awareness returned. Demosthenes lay on his back with timber beams above him. But something was missing, something warm and soft. Something which should have been pleasant but was not.

  Memories came. One by one, he dismissed them as irrelevant until only one remained. It sent heart into throat and dragged him upright in spite of the satchel of rocks someone appeared to hav
e emptied into his skull. He opened his eyes on blinding daylight and shut them again, let out a moan and learned that the night had turned his mouth to sand and ears to linen.

  No, not that. He could not have done that. It was a dream, a nightmare. Gods knew he had had enough of those about her. But denial was futile. The vision fit the facts. Here he lay at the very scene of the act, dressed as he had been in the same wine-stained chiton. And there was no mistaking the sensation of cooled and dried fluids on certain areas of sensitive, now-shriveled skin.

  He sank back into the bed and wished for sleep to envelop him again, so that when next he opened his eyes this nightmare world might be vanquished and reality restored. If that did not happen, he would return home to public glory and private shame. According to the courts, Thalassia was his slave. To them, he had done no wrong. But the heart in his breast told him otherwise. For the last year, he had not particularly wanted to look into Thalassia's eyes, but now... could he, if he tried?

  At length he managed to drag his eyelids open, but the nightmare persisted. Morning light streamed in through the rustling, gauzelike curtain in the window of his plain Amphipolitan bedchamber. How long he could hide here in bed?

  Not long at all, for fresh memories surfaced and caused alarm. Thalassia–proud, vindictive Thalassia–had wanted Brasidas dead. If she got it in her mind to make that happen, a lock on a cell door and a few guards were scarcely enough to stop her. But if she carried out an execution, Sparta would surely retaliate by doing likewise to the any Athenian strategoi who might be captured in future battles.

  Driven by a fresh sense of urgency, Demosthenes stood upright, in defiance of the lurching floor, his battle injury and the wild throbbing of his temples. He descended the stairs, hugging the roughly plastered wall, and crossed the megaron, passing the cold hearth to reach the door. Exiting into bright light, he shielded his eyes and made his way, half-blind at first, to the nearby barracks complex, where the enemy general was held. Fellow Athenians sought to speak to him as he passed, some addressing him as strategos, others just offering cordial greeting. He ignored them all and pressed on to his destination.

  Brasidas's prison was a long, narrow shed of rough-cut timber; the other prisoners were kept in a stockade outside the city walls. On sighting the structure, Demosthenes called urgently to the Athenian guard by its door, "Is the prisoner safe?"

  The guard comprised six men, all of whom, reassuringly, were accounted for and looked unalarmed. "Yes, general," one answered, though not without raising a brow in a show of puzzlement, if not mild offense.

  "Let me see him."

  Demosthenes held his breath, which only exacerbated the ache in his head, and noticed as the guard turned to comply that the thick wooden post meant to bar the door from without sat uselessly on the ground.

  "Why is the door unb–" he began angrily, but before he could finish, before even the guard could set hand on the door, it opened on its own from within.

  Thalassia emerged. She saw Demosthenes, and her eyes locked on him, but her face was blank. Her plain white chiton was smeared all over with blood.

  Demosthenes managed to speak through his shock, but not to that vision in red.

  "What is she doing in there?" he asked the guard, who appeared not to share his general's surprise.

  "Treating the prisoner," he said casually. "She's been tending our wounded all morning. As she did yesterday. On your orders, I thought."

  Thalassia stepped out of the open door, the guard closed it behind her, and she came forward, a red-smeared hide satchel slung on her shoulder, wintry eyes giving nothing away about what might lie behind them.

  "Bar that door," he instructed the guard unnecessarily. Then, abruptly, he turned and stalked away, from the guard, from the shed, but mostly from her. Not out of anger or fear but impotence, a loss for words and inability to meet her stare.

  He had taken a few long strides when her voice sailed after him: "Really?"

  Guilt slowed then halted his hasty retreat.

  "Are you really going to walk away from me?"

  She drew up behind him, circled around, and they stood face to face, though not eye to eye. His were on the muddy grass under his sandaled feet.

  "Will he live?" he asked.

  "He'll be fine. You thought I would kill him? I could have killed him ten times before he even reached Amphipolis."

  This exchange exhausted the catalog of words Demosthenes had on hand to share with her. Fortunately, Thalassia was better prepared, even if she seemed no more enthused about the encounter than he was.

  "I want to take you somewhere," she said.

  Demosthenes gave it a moment's thought and nodded agreement, partly out of guilt but mostly to avoid lengthening the conversation. "Where?" he managed.

  "Outside the city. No place in particular."

  He agreed, in spite of the very obvious potential danger of going into the wilderness alongside a living weapon with of the strength of several men and an ax to grind. Thalassia's manner gave no particular cause for alarm, but then she was a consummate deceiver.

  "Meet me by the north gate an hour past midday," she said.

  Still unable to squarely meet her eye, he gave another nod. It was not conventional for a general of Athens to vanish into the hills the day after a major victory when there was yet work to be done, but then neither had it been convention to drown himself in a vat of wine the night prior. He would manage to slip away.

  Doubtless she knew all the reasons for his current discomfort. She chose to address one.

  "I promised never to hurt you," she said, "and I won't. We will only talk."

  The reassurance did put his mind at ease, even if that same dark part of himself which last night had acted unforgivably urged him to press thumbs to the hollow of her throat and demand that she just say whatever she wished to say now and be done with it.

  But once again, he only nodded silently, impotently.

  "Good," she said. Her features showed no sign of either pleasure or gratitude.

  Without further word, she departed his presence, leaving Demosthenes to wonder, while attending to the building of a trophy, deciding the fates of prisoners, dividing spoils, composing a dispatch to the Board, and doing the dozen other things that needed doing, what her intentions were.

  He did not finish wondering, or completing the tasks at hand, before the appointed time arrived. Outside Amphipolis' northern gate he found Thalassia waiting with one horse which they were to share. He mounted it, moving delicately on account of the bruise under his ribs, after which Thalassia hoisted herself into the saddle in front of him. They struck off on the wide, well-worn trail, less than a road, deeply rutted by the wheels of carts which seemed to be absent this day, heading northeast toward the low, gold-bearing mountains on the horizon.

  "It would help to know the destination," Demosthenes suggested blandly.

  "Just follow the trail. I'll tell you when to leave it."

  He did as she bid him, trying to keep his hands on the reins from brushing the hips of body in front of him, the warmth and undeniable allure of which penetrated her cloak. But there was no preventing that contact which, but for a few layers of linen and wool, was almost as close as that they had had last night. There was plenty of friction, too, as their bodies jostled.

  The silence grew quickly awkward, and after some minutes spent penning up the desire to say something, anything, the pressure in his chest became too great and a question burst forth.

  "Where did you go?"

  He could not see Thalassia's expression, only waves of dark hair, the hair that he had...

  By the quickness of her answer, he gathered that she welcomed the breaking of silence.

  "Macedon," she said, surprisingly. "Do you know of Arrhidaeus?"

  Demosthenes had heard the name. "Some prince or other."

  "King Perdikkas' nephew," Thalassia clarified. "His line was removed from succession when Perdikkas took the throne."

&nbs
p; Her words thus far had not seemed ominous, but the pause which followed was.

  "What about him?" Demosthenes prompted innocently.

  "I lured him to his death."

  "What? Why?"

  "In that world where Amphipolis falls and you die in Sicily, Arrhidaeus's grandson Philip would have conquered Greece. And Philip's son Alexander would have conquered everything from the Nile to India, spreading Greek culture and the worship of your gods. And himself."

  "Conquered...." Demosthenes echoed, incredulously. "Spreading Greek culture? But Macedonians are... barbarians."

  "They style themselves Greek. Or they will. Or would have," Thalassia said dismissively. "In one day, with one act, I have done vastly more to change this world than I have in the last year helping you alter the outcome of your little war."

  Demosthenes pursed his lips, sealing them against those words which belittled his city's struggle–indeed, all men's struggles.

  "Then why have you bothered with our war?" he asked through grit teeth.

  She said nothing for a short while. Then, "Turn off the trail here."

  III. AMPHIPOLIS 9. Thracian Idyll

  They rode in silence for a while, the Thracian countryside rolling past them at a leisurely canter. Skeletons of trees stood naked in pools of their shed leaves beneath the shadows of pines, while in the distance low hills rose and fell like the backs of mating serpents. When at last they crested one of these hills, the mirror-smooth surface of a lake came into view, reflecting sunlight into the vault of winter sky above.

  Near its edge, Thalassia slid from the saddle, landing in the grass as though her weight were barely enough to bend a blade. Demosthenes followed with somewhat less grace and stood with reins in hand, ready to walk the horse to the lakeside where he would hobble her forelegs and let her drink. Before embarking on that task, he paused to let Thalassia remove a linen-wrapped bundle from the saddlebags. It clanked slightly as it moved. Her instruments of torture, perhaps?