Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  Staring into the night, Thalassia remained expressionless, a serene beauty. In this light, her flesh was nearly the same pale blue as were her eyes in the day. Eventually she directed those eyes at him, smiled with her dark, thin lips and answered, "I would like that. But you will have children by then. If they change your mind, I won't hold it against you."

  There was a coldness in her voice as she spoke of children. He conjured an image of Thalassia with one infant on her angular hip and another growing in her flawless belly, and the absurdity of it almost twisted his lips in a smile. Never had he witnessed a glimmer of the maternal in her soul, in spite of the fondness with which she treated her pupil, the Spartlet Andrea.

  Thalassia would not be tamed in that way, not ever.

  He could be, though, or so her words implied.

  "Time will tell," he conceded.

  Before another silence could descend and make things awkward, and before he could talk himself out of it, he proceeded to do something with vastly greater potential for awkwardness than any mere silence. Mindful of the greeting he had failed to give her on the bank of the Strymon, he set a hand on her shoulder, atop the thin, sharp pleats of her dress, he pulled her into a parting embrace.

  "I shall miss you," he said softly, genuinely.

  Slowly, woodenly, Thalassia's arms came up. Halfheartedly, as though from obligation, she reciprocated. His cheek near to hers but not touching it, Demosthenes waited for her to melt against him, as Eurydike and Laonome always did.

  He waited in vain. Just as he gave up and lowered his arms in defeat, the hard body in his arms softened. Thalassia bowed her head and let their temples touch. Demosthenes restored his arms to the small of Thalassia's back and left them there for all of the heartbeat that its recipient allowed the embrace to endure. Long hair scented with iasme, jasmine, brushed his neck, warm, linen-covered breasts withdrew from his chest, and they were separate again. Her face angled downward, Thalassia looked up at him past her perfect brows.

  "Idiot..." she said. She made it sound almost as a term of endearment. "You won't have time to miss me. We'll still see too fucking much of each other."

  IV. ARKADIA 9. Late

  The remainder of the winter put the lie to Thalassia's prediction. Within half a month, she had moved with Alkibiades to a village of Attica in the mountains north of the city. Like Amphipolis, Dekelea was an undefended place with a size and appearance that were all out of proportion to its vital role in Athens' might-have-been history. A collection of wooden structures with more passers-through than residents, Dekelea sat in the mountain pass through which poured vast quantities of the imported grain on which Athens depended. And just like Amphipolis, it was a town which Fate would have seen, and may yet see, captured by the enemy. Once seized, Thalassia said, Dekelea would be fortified by the Spartans and used a base from which to strike all over Attica, not to mention helping to starve the city by interrupting its grain supplies.

  But Fate would be foiled in that design, or so it seemed. Demosthenes, by means of intermediaries, had managed to convince the Board of Ten to fortify the place in recognition of its importance. In that other world which, thanks to Thalassia, could never be, the Spartans would have taken the idea of seizing Dekelea from a certain Athenian turncoat by the name of Alkibiades. Now that very man, blissfully unaware of his own capacity for treason, instead oversaw the fortification of Dekelea for his own people.

  Perhaps more than the Board was interested in protecting a remote village, it aimed to test Thalassia's 'liquid stone,' which they believed to have been brought from India or beyond by traders who had sold it on to the crew of Demosthenes' ship. It was a powder, comprised mostly of limestone, which when mixed with water became a viscous, mud-like substance. Poured into wooden molds and left to dry, it grew as hard as stone, or nearly so. Athenian state engineers and architects were only just discovering its many uses, and since the best way to learn was by doing, the construction of an encircling wall at Dekelea served all well as a test.

  From Sparta, there was silence. They sent no more heralds with proposals for a truce, since their main goal in seeking peace, the return of the hostages, had already been achieved by Brasidas. Snows and the elections came, and the name Demosthenes was not listed among the ten winners of a generalship. Kleon's was, and so were those of Nikias and eight others who were mostly holdovers who had failed to disgrace themselves enough in the prior year to warrant being deprived of another opportunity to fail.

  Demosthenes took the news well, less because it was expected than because he was happy. He awoke every morning beside his chosen bride, or the bride well-chosen for him, and every morning his love for her burned as brightly as it had the night before. The walls did not close in on him, his prison felt like no prison, and he saw no sign of marriage becoming the ordeal it was taken for by Thalassia and so many others.

  He was fortunate, and knew it.

  Eurydike felt the absence of the friend and sister she had found in Thalassia, and missed Alkibiades, too, who had not given up his Little Red as a playmate on account of taking on Thalassia (how intimately connected were the two female legs of that tripod, Demosthenes did not quite know, and let it be their concern), but she mitigated the loss with regular visits to the pair at Dekelea. While at home, Eurydike got along well with her new mistress, partly owing to their acquaintance prior to the union, but even more because Laonome, having been on the bottom in her former oikos, was not one to lord it over a slave. She was regularly on the bottom in her new oikos, too, but in a more enjoyable way, by all accounts, in sessions which often enough found Eurydike joining them.

  It might have been in one of those sessions that seed finally found purchase in her womb.

  Laonome whispered in Demosthenes' ear one night while seated in his lap on their bed, nothing separating their two skins but a sheen of sweat: "I should have bled by now."

  The declaration took him by surprise.

  He asked, "How late is it?"

  "Very," she answered, laughing. Demosthenes laughed, too, crushed her in an embrace and rolled playfully on top of her. Her shriek summoned Eurydike, who knew already, of course, for this was the kind of news women eternally shared with one another first. She joined the pile and screamed with them as spiritedly if the child to come were her own. She was all the more enthusiastic, perhaps, for not having to bear the burden in her own hard, flat belly.

  He was to have an heir! Possibly. Or a daughter. The former would be more practical, of course, but either was an equal blessing, but for one consideration. If the gods, whom he now doubted, saw fit to give him a girl, the influences most certain come to bear in shaping her seemed as likely as not to be ones which would turn her into an outright menace: an oversexed, foul-mouthed, strong-willed, probably lethal, fucking beautiful menace to Athens and the world.

  But she would be his menace, and born of love, and loved.

  IV. ARKADIA 10. Engines of Destruction

  Mounichion in the archonship of Isarchos (April 423 BCE)

  The four cold winter months of his sentence passed in what seemed as many heartbeats. He spent it not only lazing and laughing and fucking, of course, though there was plenty of all that. Demosthenes sent letters to influence the Board and other key citizens seeking support for the war plans laid during Thalassia's businesslike visits to Athens. He would lead a force of Athenians, Argives, and Messenians–this last group eager to repay the Liberator of Pylos–into wooded Arkadia. All would be light infantry and archers, and their ostensible purpose would be to disrupt and distract the enemy by destroying supplies, burning crops, slaughtering herds and horses, making roads impassible, inspiring Sparta's slaves and allies to rebellion, ambushing their detachments. Damage done, they would melt back into the woods whilst avoiding ever going shield-to-shield with the enemy in pitched battles they could not win.

  The force's arms would include two hundred of a new weapon, a lighter version of the gastraphetes which men had come to call a
khiasmon–loosely, "cross-bow,"–sure to prove more useful in close combat than any traditional bow.

  They would be raiders, marauders, saboteurs, pirates of land. Demosthenes had led some fighting of this sort in Aetolia. It had ended badly there, to say the least, but until disaster had befallen, such tactics had worked extremely well in allowing a small, light force to challenge a much stronger foe.

  The Spartans did possess such fighters of their own: the feared and elite Skiritai, Arkadian mountain men who, when summoned to Sparta's defense, would have the added advantage of operating in their homeland. So highly regarded were they by their Spartan masters that to the Skiritai alone went the privilege of scouting ahead of the King.

  Thalassia would see to them. Going ahead of Demosthenes' main force, she would assassinate as many Skiritai as she could before Sparta even knew a threat existed. Thereafter, she would remain in the Arkadian wood, shadowing Demosthenes' force and acting on her own to spread terror and havoc, employing her skills to making it appear as though Sparta faced an army of shades capable of striking at will in ten places at once.

  The effect, Demosthenes had told the Board, would be to put Sparta so off balance that they would not feel secure in mounting any assault on Athens, but would instead keep their forces in Arkadia dealing with this threat so close to home. In the best case, a general uprising of the helots–an everpresent Spartan fear–might be achieved. In truth, he and Thalassia intended even more. If all went well, then by harvest time, Sparta itself, a city which lacked walls, might find itself at the mercy of a few hundred lightly-armed troops–and one fighter not of this world.

  Demosthenes' son or daughter would be born in a city at peace.

  Would have been. Might have.

  Now, those plans were as dust.

  On this, his first day of freedom, Demosthenes had attended the Straegion expecting to be granted the special dispensation from the Board of Ten which would allow a private citizen to lead an armed force, as he had done at Pylos. That was not to be. There was fresh news, and it was of a kind which must be delivered immediately to Thalassia's ears, by him alone. And so he left the city by the Acharnian Gate and rode Maia north for Dekelea at a gallop, halfway wishing that he could slow and savor the air and the open sky and the plains. He savored instead speed, something else which had been denied him during his term of house arrest. In short order, he traversed the arrow-straight road across the plains, dodging rattling ox-carts both coming and going, and the ground ahead began to rise up into the peaks of the Parnes range in which Dekelea sat nestled. Now he was forced to slow Maia, letting her rest and choose her footing on the rockier, more sinuous path.

  On the final approach, he found his way blocked by a lone Spartan. This Spartan bore no shield or spear, wore no armor and stood a good three heads shorter than shortest Equal ever to take the field. Still, the hard glare of two coal black eyes left Demosthenes with no choice but to rein in Maia and take notice.

  "Good morning, Andrea," he said.

  The eleven-year-old glared. Her brown hair was braided back, and the bare legs showing below the hem of her short chiton were caked with dried mud.

  "Why didn't you bring Eurydike?" the girl demanded. Andrea had developed something of a bond with Eurydike during the latter's regular visits to Dekelea.

  "Laonome needs her help these days," Demosthenes answered. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I"

  The Spartlet tossed her head in rejection of the excuse and put herself once more in the way when Demosthenes made to guide Maia around her.

  "If Alkibiades agrees," he offered in the hope of winning passage, "then I shall take you to visit Eurydike on my return to the city. Now, I"

  "The city is boring," Andrea scoffed. "Tutors had taken the edge off of her coarse native Doric, but her origins were plain enough when those tutors were not around.

  "Ride with me the rest of the way to Dekelea," Demosthenes offered.

  "I'm used to riding on my own."

  "Then you give me a ride," Demosthenes proposed, "and after you drop me off, you can take Maia out."

  With a petulant sigh, wiry Andrea stretched up an arm to be pulled into Maia's saddle. Demosthenes set her in front of him, gave the girl the reins, kicked Maia's flanks, and together they rode the short distance to Dekelea's stout walls. The walls were freshly built from giant blocks of Thalassia's liquid stone, poured on site, and so were uniformly dull gray but for embedded gravel of irregular shapes and hues. This last was a concession to the engineers of Athens, who felt that the unadorned liquid stone was simply too ugly. The resulting effect was similar to what a tile mosaic might look like if no subject were depicted, just swirling chaos.

  Dekelea's gates had not yet been hung, so they entered the village by passing between two empty pylons. Silently, Andrea guided Maia to a bastion on the northern side, where the walls were incomplete.

  Reining the horse, she cried out, "Uncle!"

  Alkibiades appeared up at the tower's edge, leaning over its low wall. He looked down and beamed. "Demosthenes! Welcome back to the world!"

  Demosthenes dismounted, leaving Andrea in the saddle. No sooner was there soil beneath his sandals than the Spartlet wheeled Maia and sped off.

  "Feed and groom her!" Alkibiades yelled after his charge. Then, to Demosthenes, "Freedom at last! How does it feel?"

  "Would that I could enjoy it. I bring grave news freshly gained from"

  A faint tinkling sound, then motion, drew Demosthenes' eye to the base of the sixteen-foot bastion on which Alkibiades stood. There, in an open, timber-framed portal stood a familiar figure, unfamiliarly clad.

  Thalassia was a vision in black. At the top, her black gown left exposed an expansive patch of skin above her breasts, where hung an elaborate necklace of dangling silver pendants, matched by bracelets on her smooth forearms, all barbarian creations, as the dress itself must have been. The garment's pleated skirts flared out below a waist marked by a belt of interlocking silver rings, many segments of which hung down, tinkling like tiny bells with each movement of the pleats. The skirt ended abruptly at mid-calf, leaving it a mystery how much farther up the wearer's shapely legs climbed the vine-like laces of sandals as black as the cloth. Her long hair was unbound and tumbled over her shoulders in chaotic spirals, the twisting edges of which screamed a playful violet, like unmixed wine, where they were struck by rays of midmorning sun. The sun caught silver, too, in her hair, threads of it binding a multitude of tiny braids anchored in the depths of that dark, roiling sea.

  Most startling of all were Thalassia's eyes: bounded all around and artificially elongated with a thick application of kohl which managed, impossibly, to render the already striking pale irises more arresting still.

  Mind and breath momentarily stolen, Demosthenes stared in stunned silence for a time while she hung there, suspended in the door. Then she lifted both arms, bracelets sliding in a clatter, and casually set the palms of ring-adorned hands on the timber frame to either side, filling the portal with her dark, foreign presence.

  A name flew to mind. She surely had not set out deliberately to emulate that most famous and deadly of witches, but the sight of Thalassia emerging from the base of that tower could not have more fully resembled what the ancients must have seen when sharp-hearted Medea stepped ashore from Argo. Perhaps Jason's first reaction on seeing his future bride, and the slayer of his sons, had been such a chill burst of fear of the unknown as Demosthenes felt now. But, likewise, that storied hero must have quickly acknowledged the primal allure of such a creature as this, a stirring of something deep within which certainly included, but was not limited to, a flowing of blood to the groin.

  The ghost of a smile played on the witch's lips. She saw what magic she had wrought.

  "You... look..." Demosthenes sputtered after some time, but he failed to finish.

  "For fuck's sake!" the voice of Alkibiades sailed down from above. "A compliment costs you nothing. Doesn't obligate you to fuck her, either!"

&n
bsp; "Thank you! You are a credit to Socrates!" Demosthenes yelled back sharply, dragging his eyes from those of the sorceress.

  Upon this exchange between ground and tower, Thalassia stepped out from the doorway, and said with a smile, proving herself a merciful witch, "Grave news?"

  "Aye," Demosthenes said, his sober mood instantly returning. He bid Alkibiades descend so that he might not be forced to shout information to which the public was not yet privy. While he waited, Demosthenes stared at Thalassia, holding her kohl-rimmed eyes as much as he could, but also looking her all over with a feeling that he hardly knew her. She had never looked thus on her visits to Athens. How many aspects of her existed? She was assassin, lover, tutor, sister, sorceress, immortal, oracle, physician, engineer, betrayer, matchmaker, artist, vengeance-seeker. She seemed to shed and adopt guises with abandon, settling not quite on any, or else on all. How could any man hope to keep up?

  "How is Laonome?" she asked when Demosthenes persisted in but staring and thinking.

  "A faint breeze and she vomits," he answered. "The herbs you gave her help."

  Behind the seamless gray wall of liquid stone, echoing footfalls scraped a timber stair. Alkibiades leaped down the final few steps and set a hand on the bodice of Thalassia's barbarian gown, a gesture which the recipient subtly appeared to forbear more than relish.

  "Out with it," Alkibiades said eagerly.

  Demosthenes obliged: "Sparta's invasion force has already marched. It is not led by King Agis this year, but by Brasidas. Since his escape and return with the other prisoners, the ephors reportedly grant him leave to do almost as he pleases. His army travels with some number of extremely large, wagon-borne burdens of which nothing is known by our sources except for a name: mechanamai."

  He let the word hang ominously. It might refer to a literal device of some sort, a machine, but more idiomatically, it could mean any complex contrivance, or a trick, such as those used by Odysseus.