by P. K. Lentz
He could not tell and so just took a chance with his life. With only a rail and ten feet or so separating him from the rushing waters, he declined to flatter a being capable of tearing him in two. "I will be sure to fix that the next time I tell it," he said.
Thalassia's eyes, vibrant in this space between sea and sky, flicked toward him, and her easy smile confirmed he had chosen his words well.
With her help, for better or worse, he was learning not to fear her.
His half-laugh, half-sigh was lost on the wind. "I have an interesting life," he observed.
"It's good that you can laugh about it," Thalassia said. "Very good."
***
Spartan command structure was a complex beast with bones of pitted iron. Where most cities knew but two ranks of officer, lochagos and strategos, Sparta counted ten, and that time-tested structure did not simply dissolve in an enemy prison. Thus, for the year-plus of his imprisonment, Styphon had retained nominal command over the men captured with him on Sphakteria, even if most singled him out for resentment as the direct cause of their disgrace. If not for him, they might have died warrior's deaths instead of languishing in chains.
Now something had changed. Brasidas had come, made prisoner in Thrace by the very same general who had seized Pylos and filled the walls of this Athenian prison to bursting. Since taking part in the naval assault on Pylos, Brasidas had risen to become one of Sparta's five polemarchs, and from the minute of his arrival in Athens there could be no question who ruled the cell blocks and yards of the jail complex. Upon the minute of the polemarch's arrival, it had become more likely than not that, whether on direct orders from Brasidas or just with his tacit approval, some violence, possibly death, would befall the phylarch, the trembler, accursed Styphon who had led all present to their miserable end.
Having arrived wounded, Brasidas was kept for three days in a cell by himself, three days in which Styphon's countrymen grew bolder in showing their contempt. But thanks to the forty or so who remained loyal to their present commander and ready (at least for now) to defend him, the displays rarely went further than an icy glare or muttered insult.
Strangely, on the day that Brasidas entered into the general population, nothing changed.
On the next, Styphon was summoned. Duty-bound, he answered the call and went unafraid, for his life and his fortunes meant far less now, in disgrace, than they had in times past.
Twelve Equals formed a curtain of thick, tanned limbs in front of Brasidas in the cell block's small exercise yard. These were the general's freshly picked honor guard, and among their number were several of those men who had long made no secret of their desire to see Styphon deposed as leader, if not worse. Some now wore triumphant smirks, others glowering looks with which they tried, and failed, to intimidate the summoned. Some moved aside only when Styphon shoved them, and then only forewent retaliation for lack of permission from Brasidas.
Piercing the curtain of flesh, Styphon stood face to face with the general.
"Leave us," Brasidas told his guard.
With more than a few choice insults thrown at Styphon through clenched jaws, the gang reluctantly moved off, giving the pair about as much privacy as one could achieve in this crowded place.
Taller than most men, with angular features anchored by a beakish nose, Brasidas was seated on a stone slab with his back against the prison's inner wall of brick and timber. Like his fellow prisoners, he wore an undyed smock bearing a crimson alpha for aichmolotos, 'prisoner.' His injured left shoulder was wrapped tightly in linen, and a fresh black scar ran parallel to his hairline.
"I'll end any doubts you may have," he said brusquely. "The ephors haven't branded you a trembler yet, but they will the moment you set foot again in Lakonia. If ever you do." Face a hard mask, Brasidas glared with utter contempt. "What were you thinking?"
Styphon answered humbly, meeting his superior's withering gaze. "I did what I thought was best for Sparta, not for my reputation."
"The two are one and the same," Brasidas lectured. "But I have not brought you here to debate whether or not you are a coward. You are. I want to talk about a woman."
There was no need to explain, no doubt in Styphon's mind what woman he meant.
Brasidas removed his eyes from Styphon as if to suggest he was nothing worth looking at. Instead he kept them on the far wall of the courtyard, which was not particularly far.
"I've heard remarkable things about her from the men here," Brasidas explained. "They also say that you must know more than they do. Tell me."
Even while awaiting reply, the general denied Styphon his gaze. For his part, Styphon was not quick to answer, for he sensed that much depended on his words. At the same time, it was never wise to keep a general waiting.
"She came from the sea a corpse, as sure as you're sitting on that bench, and then, after a day had passed, she returned to life," Styphon offered plainly. "I gave her the name Thalassia to replace the barbarian one she gave, which I scarcely recall."
Obediently, Styphon went on to recount to the man in whose hands his fate rested the truths of Thalassia's accurate foretelling of the Athenian attack, of her unearthly strength, of her assurance that Sparta was destined to win the war in spite of defeat and disgrace at Pylos, and of his own choice to surrender in order that the pre-ordained ultimate victory might come to pass. He told Brasidas how Thalassia had caused the warning beacon on Sphakteria's heights to be lit, and of the slaying of Epitadas by a single arrow while his sword hovered at Thalassia's throat, even if Brasidas surely had heard this last tale already from other prisoners. And he told of his attempt to secure Thalassia's passage to Sparta by ransom, so as to keep her out of Athenian hands.
Left out of his account was his promise of some future favor to Thalassia in return for her pledge to rescue Andrea from the miserable existence due her as the offspring of a trembler.
Lean Brasidas flashed a self-congratulatory smile at the far wall. If he was pleased with Styphon's explanation of the events of a year ago, he gave no sign.
"I think you must understand the tenuousness of your current position," Brasidas said instead. "Not only here, where any number of men would gladly cut your throat if I neglected to tell them not to, but also back home. As it stands, the life to which you'll return will be less worthwhile than the one you have here in prison. On the other hand, if a polemarch, even one who had just suffered an honest defeat, were to appeal to the Elders on your behalf, they might be persuaded to let you keep your property and a shred of honor. It may not be in their power to prevent other Equals from spitting on you, but they can do their best. I might be willing to do you such a favor, if you were willing to work for it. Rather hard." Brasidas finally spared his disgraced subordinate a single, contemptuous glance. "What do you say to that?"
"I say that you are a general and I am not," Styphon answered swiftly. "I am bound to do whatever you say, with or without any promise of reward."
"A good answer," Brasidas said. He seemed to mean it. "But I fear you may not understand completely. What I am looking for is a dog. Will you be my dog, Styphon?" He snorted. "I imagine there were many dogs born in Lakonia this year whose owners called them Styphon."
Styphon hesitated. What he had said already was true: he was bound to follow Brasidas's orders no matter what, but that was out of loyalty to his office and to the State, not his person. Helot slaves were called dogs often enough by their masters, and were treated as such, but slaves, too, served the Spartan state rather than any one man.
Was that what Brasidas wanted: an Equal reduced to Helot?
"Well?"
"Yes." Styphon forced the word out. This was likely the best and only opportunity he would ever get to salvage his name.
"Good," Brasidas said. "Now, dog, kneel at my feet."
Lowering himself to the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard floor, an act which prompted a chorus of jeers from Brasidas' honor guard, watching from a distance, Styphon sat on his haunches before the po
lemarch's bench.
"Good dog," Brasidas said. "Now let us talk more of this witch. She was not ransomed."
"No, sir," Styphon offered when Brasidas, purely by the length of his pause, granted him leave to speak. "She was brought to Athens by their general Demosthenes. I saw her myself at Piraeus, where she wore a slave's collar, but walked freely. Later, Demosthenes came to me here asking questions about her."
"Demosthenes!" Brasidas said, then purged the name's taste from his tongue by gathering and spitting a ball of phlegm into the dirt. "What did you tell him?"
"I said he should fear her. That she was a whore and a liar and a curse who would lead him and his city to ruin."
"Not bad," Brasidas conceded grudgingly. "I'd bet my balls the witch is helping him. I dealt the coward a killing blow at Amphipolis, and my blade stopped cold." His intelligent eyes burned, his bloodless lips were tight. "Like magic. The giant spindle-throwers that skewer men right through their shields are witch's work, too, I guarantee it."
Not wishing to draw any share of the general's obvious bitterness at the defeat onto himself, Styphon remained silent. At length, Brasidas's calculating side reasserted control and he gazed down at his kneeling dog.
"Now it is my turn to tell a story," he said. "Being privy to the goings-on in the Gerousia," Brasidas began, looking down his beak at Styphon, "I had occasion to hear of a certain message sent to our Elders last winter by the leaders of an Arkadian village near Bassai. I recall it because of the strangeness of its contents, which I laughed at then, but no longer. The letter, carried urgently by horse, pleaded that a detachment of Spartan troops be sent to purge their woods of a deadly presence.
"The presence was that of a female, the letter claimed, who had shown up in their town a day earlier with severe wounds. They described her as white-armed–the one arm she possessed, at any rate–with hair as snow. Somehow or other, an... altercation developed involving this female, ending in the deaths of six men. A force of locals gave chase, attempting to kill or subdue her.
"All but one man was slain, and he who escaped did not long survive his wounds. Before dying, he described an encounter in which the already injured fugitive pressed her attack even while absorbing fresh wounds that rightly should have finished her. As you say of the sea-bitch, he described this woman as possessing the strength of Herakles. That is when the village leaders sent urgently to Sparta for aid."
Brasidas snorted. "Now, understand that hardly a month passes in which the Gerousia does not receive a request for help in dealing with a centaur, a satyr, a serpent, a minotaur, gorgons–even Kerberos, once. If the village-folk of our peninsula were to be believed, we live in an age of monsters. Even were there not a war to fight, such requests as this one from the Arkadians would go ignored. It only springs to mind now for my having come to this wretched city and heard tell of your sea-bitch from Sphakteria. Arkadian sheep-lickers as witnesses are one thing, thirty Equals another entirely." He raised a scarred brow. "Or just one Equal, even if he is a dog.
"I cannot say how the tale from Arkadia ends. Perhaps this woman evaded them and fled. The village still exists, for I rather think we would have heard of its destruction, and so it would seem that whatever occurred next, there was no further slaughter."
Brasidas gave his kneeling dog a look of impatience, unwarranted since the copious words were flowing down, not up. "So if you fail to grasp it, dog," he concluded, leaning forward to set chin on hand, scarred elbow resting on bruised knee just inches from Styphon's face, "what we have are two accounts of extraordinary females, both occurring within the space of a month. One goes to Athens where she helps a coward win battles, the other vanishes in the woods of Arkadia."
Brasidas raised his right hand, its little finger twisted from some long-ago injury, to tap Styphon's forehead.
"So let me ask you this," he said in time with the taps. "Did your sea-bitch mention having any friends?"
"No," Styphon answered. "Not that I can recall, at least."
Brasidas's reaction to his dog's memory lapse was surprisingly gentle, just a slight increase in the depth of disgust in his sneer. He sighed, settling back on his bench. "Nevertheless. There is enough evidence, in my mind, that in this one case, at least, the sheep-lickers might not be wrong, and Hellas may be stricken with a plague of witches. Since you're the only one among us to have shared words with one, in addition to being my dog, you can be my..." He snickered and finished, "witch expert!"
In the polemarch's eyes shone the excited gleam of a deposed king dreaming up his return to the throne.
"The minute we are free of this place, which will be soon," he declared defiantly, "you and I will go to Bassai. If we can find her, and if this snow-haired woman-thing is capable of reason... we will convince her to fight for Sparta."
IV. ARKADIA 2. Widow-Maker
In Athens, after Demosthenes endured the usual pomp of a general returning in triumph, there was Eurydike to deal with. He could not forget, nor did he want to, what he now knew of her and how she had come to Athens from her homeland. His heart fell and appetite fled for hours every time his mind conjured up, usually of its own accord, visions of the Thracian's young self, green eyes wild with anguish as her raped and ravaged sibling's half-dead body was ripped from tattooed arms and tossed into a gorge, worthless, a used-up, discarded item, food for beasts.
How had she carried on after that? His frequent term of endearment for Eurydike was bright eyes, but how was there any brightness left in them?
He did not even know her real name.
Eurydike raced out to meet him, and he greeted her with the usual warmth, or perhaps more. They went inside, and before long (once Thalassia knowingly excused herself) fell to fucking by the hearth. In the days which followed, his new perception of Eurydike was ever-present at the back of his thoughts, but since it was always easier to say nothing than to say something, he chose nothing.
He continued thus until the morning of the fourth day after his return, the day on which he was slated to pay a visit to the wife-candidate which the two women of his household would see added to their number. Even then, he said nothing directly.
Usually the mood in the bath chamber behind the megaron was light, but today when Eurydike had slipped pale and naked into the water beside him, he spoke to her earnestly. "I would have expected you to be upset at the idea I might marry," he said. "Yet you do not seem bothered."
Her freckled features twisted in consternation. "You think I only think of myself?"
"Hardly. But you must admit, in the past you have been less than eager to see me wed. And no one could blame you."
Eurydike took up a square of Thalassia's olive oil soap and began lathering his skin. "That's your own fault. You let me think a wife had to be one of those pasty, hollow-eyed little ghost girls you see in the agora, who can barely balance the babies in their bellies. Laonome's different. I liked her long before Thalassia ever brought up that you could marry her."
"So you approve?"
Eurydike's green eyes glazed like the tiny soap bubbles into which she stared. "Laonome says she wouldn't make you get rid of me, and I believe her."
Suddenly, almost angrily, Demosthenes grabbed her arm, surprising her enough that her instinct was to jerk away. But she fell still, and her emerald eyes were expectant.
"I will never get rid of you for anyone," he said. His lips hugged close around every word, and he meant them. He was, in effect, chastising her.
Then he softened, determining in that moment that this would be the day, the time, when he revealed what he knew of her past.
But not yet. There was a secret of his own that he could reveal first.
Seated, with water lapping at the purple bruise under his ribs, he pulled Eurydike's naked body against him. "Maybe you guessed this," he said, "but I never told you. Seasons ago I put you in my will. If anything should happen to me, you will have enough to live out your days, assuming you are wiser with money than you pretend to be. N
o wife, no heir will change that. You are not a piece of property to be disposed of. Even while you wear that collar, you are... free here. Do you understand?"
She melted into the embrace, her skin warmer even than the water surrounding them. She sighed, "Thank you."
He put a palm alongside her face, compressing dry red curls that were yet to submerged. She sat quietly in his embrace, business of the bath forgotten, but not with the usual distractions. He sensed disquiet in Eurydike. He raised her chin to look upon her face and perhaps kiss her lips and silence the scream that echoed from her past, heard by his ears alone. But when she raised her eyes, that bright place where true sadness was so rarely seen, they were liquid with checked tears.
One slid free, and it might has well have been her blunted Spartan dagger sliding into her master's breast. Before he had recovered from the wound, Eurydike said in an apologetic whisper, "I know she told you."
He affirmed it, with nothing more than a look, and pulled her head close under his chin.
She did not resist. "I'm glad," she said. Her breath licked the skin of his throat. "But I don't want to talk about it. About her. It hurts." Her voice was choked as she finished, "She would understand."
She. The nameless sister now dust and bones in a valley of Thrace.
What is your true name? he longed to ask, but held back. If she was happier in silence, and in being Eurydike, then let her be silent Eurydike. She was hardly the only one in this oikos to have left a name and a life behind her.
"Pfft!" Eurydike said suddenly. She sank from his embrace, submerging her whole body. An island of floating coppery curls was last to slip under, and then she rose up, a slick, speckled fish with head thrown back and straight, sopping hair trailing behind.
She cleared her face and brow of water and accused with acrimony that was wholly feigned, "You fuckwit! You made me cry!" Her tears, rare as Thalassia's, rare as his own, were gone now and would drain with the bathwater.
With a look of disdain as false as her own display, Demosthenes growled back, "I see the mistake in letting you be taught to read and write by someone with such a foul mouth."