by P. K. Lentz
Thalassia vanished into the grass, but mad Eden, living up to the name of the goddess by whose name Sparta knew her, let up not a bit. Blood flew in a mist from Eden's silent lips as she cast aside one of her swords, took the other in both hands and stabbed down into the waving grass, again and again and again.
Though victorious, gore-soaked Eden had not come through the combat unscathed. Where once she had moved like a cat or a nymph, now she jerked about like a red-painted puppet dangling on invisible strings.
Makellon, Demosthenes prayed, would cut her strings.
As Thalassia was falling and Eden beginning her butchery, Straton ushered the plan, if belatedly, into effect. The hoplites arrayed in front of the line of gastraphetes-wielding archers sank into a crouch to allow three hundred belly-bows, each loaded with two giant bolts tipped with razor sharp Athenian steel, to take aim over their shoulders, helmets and shield rims. Straton, taking aim down the stock of his own gastraphetes, uttered the command to fire, and the hillside filled with the sound of twanging sinews and of wooden shafts scraping iron rails. Six hundred javelin-like missiles let fly from the hill's crest and sliced straight down the grassy slope to converge on the spot where the single combat had just concluded.
A volley like that could not miss, and it did not. In her moment of triumph, Eden was cut down. At least a dozen shafts struck her, some running her through, others ripping great gashes in her limbs, while one opened up a skull that was already so slick with blood, hers and her enemy's, that only a single wisp of long, golden hair remained visible. Butchered, Sparta's champion dropped into the grass alongside the rival she had slain, the rival whose service to Athens shone no less for her defeat.
V. ELEUSIS 6. Battle for the Bodies
Demosthenes let no cumbersome feelings slow him, neither ones of mourning for she who had offered up her life (one of them, anyway) for Athens, nor feelings of relief at the elimination of a dire threat in the she-daimon Eden. He spared not even a thought for gentle Laonome and playful Eurydike, no longer safe back home in threatened Athens. He thought of nothing but the immediate task which must be accomplished.
"The body!" he cried out to any who would listen. "Retrieve her body!"
He ran, legs pounding the hillside, carrying him down at breakneck pace. Halfway down, it occurred to him that he might have been well advised to remount Akmon or Phaedra, but what was done was done. He could not turn back now, for not far ahead a small mass of Spartans had appeared. They bore neither shields nor spears, and by their sudden closeness they could only have spent the last few minutes crawling on their bellies through the tall grass of no man's land.
Demosthenes was first to reach the ring of slick, matted grass in which the two butchered bodies lay. He picked out Thalassia by the crown of crushed purple iris petals scattered about her head. Both corpses were riddled with gastraphetes bolts, which also sprang at varying angles from the earth all around, like a miniature forest. Two shafts sprouted from Thalassia's torso while one had passed through her neck, half severing it before burrowing into the ground underneath. Coming up to her, Demosthenes grabbed the bolts one in each hand, yanked them out and set to lifting her. Heedless of the hot gore that immediately coated his skin, he worked hands under and around her.
When he heaved, her well-greased body slipped back to the earth. The oncoming Spartans, eight of them at least, were seconds away, yet glancing behind him, Demosthenes found no equivalent motion in the Athenian lines.
"What are you waiting for?" Demosthenes cried frantically back at them, waving a hand gloved in sticky blood. Seeing him, Nikostratos turned his cheek and put his arms out to either side in a restraining gesture, instructing the men on the hill not to move.
Spitting one of the many curses which, when she lived, had flowed copiously from Thalassia's dirty mouth, Demosthenes tried again to achieve a grip on the corpse. This time he hooked the fingers of one hand under the waist of her Amazonian corselet and wrapped the other arm around the neck, the skin of which felt against his bicep like a slice of rare lamb. He heaved, the body rose up, and blood, if blood was what truly ran in the veins of the star-born, ran in rivulets down his arms, dripping from his elbows onto his thighs and coursing down his breastplate of iron scales.
Thankfully, her enhanced body was no heavier than a mortal woman's. He threw it over his shoulder and, without stopping to look at the charging Lakedaimonians who were almost upon him, he spun and ran.
His first step faltered, sandal sliding on blood-greased blades of grass, and the body slipped from his shoulder. He caught it before it hit the earth, recovered his balance and mounted the slope at a run. He could hear the grunting breaths of the Spartans, and imagined, at least, that he felt their footfalls shake the ground. He could hardly spare a look, but knew they must have reached the battle site by now. One or more of their number would stop and return to Brasidas with the body of Eden, but the evidence of Demosthenes' ears said the rest were chasing after him, and Thalassia's corpse. Their general had no intention of letting Eden's trophy slip away.
He channeled his every drop of strength into his thrusting legs, hammering the earth with each step to ensure firm footing and a strong push up the hill. Up top, at the hill's crest, a sanctuary still too far off, his countrymen began to cheer him on, but still offered no help. Seconds later that changed when Straton pushed to the fore, knelt, and leveled his gastraphetes. A dozen or more archers followed his lead, but all held their fire for fear of hitting the comrade they meant to aid. And so, barely halfway to the safety of the Athenian lines, carrying a load on his back that the Spartans were not, and wearing iron armor to their leather, he knew he would be caught. He cursed himself again for not having mounted Phaedra for this task.
He could think of only one course of action, and he took it: he dove, landing hard in the grass alongside the warm, wet sack which was Thalassia, and as he hit the earth, he heard Straton shout the command to fire. Sharp bolts cut the air over his head, and from downslope came at least one groan. Demosthenes scrambled on hands coated in greasy blood to right himself, rise and draw his sword.
He succeeded in time to face five long-haired Spartans at a full run, twenty paces off and just now drawing their own blades and raising a war-cry. Standing astride the mangled body they came to claim, Demosthenes set himself for the attack.
Before it could come, the earth rumbled with a rhythmic pounding that his ears knew well. His eye caught motion and he threw a glance toward it in time to witness a stream of horsemen: the citizen cavalry of Athens, spilling out from the Athenian right and thundering along the slope.
Two of the charging Spartiates slowed in their headlong rush, fell to silence and hung a moment in equivocation before rejecting their city's warrior code and taking flight. When yet two more fearless Equals opted to turn tail, a fresh war-cry came from behind and Demosthenes risked a second look over his shoulder. A line of spears was surging forth from the Athenian center, in defiance of Nikostratos' orders, charging headlong down the hill to the aid of the countryman whose actions they must have thought crazed. Battles over corpses were fought in the bard's songs, but not on today's battlefields.
The last two steadfast Spartans, realizing they were alone, bent their paths to loop back and flee at top speed, but for them it was too late. The foremost rider of the citizen cavalry rode one down and skewered him with his lance. Two more horsemen pursued the second fugitive, who eventually turned to face them in a futile stand which ended with his body crumpled on the hillside, a pair of lances protruding from his chest.
The four Equals who had fled were run down next, an easy sport given the distance from their lines. But the ones who had quickly borne Eden away were long gone by now, and her body with them.
As Athenian hoplites converged on Demosthenes' position, swarming around to set up a belated defensive wall, the leader of the horsemen brought his mount to a halt a few feet away. The look on the finely sculpted features visible between the gleaming chee
k pieces of Alkibiades' helmet was uncharacteristically grave. His glittering eyes mourned as he gazed down on the butchered remains of the body he had lusted after from the moment he had first seen it in his friend's megaron.
"Star-girl." He spoke the made-up word not mournfully, but as if gently reprimanding his playmate.
Alkibiades had only learned of Eden's existence days ago, but had not begrudged his two partners the secret they had revealed to him only when it could be kept no longer. Even now, he remained unaware of the existence of the third of their kind, Lyka. However faithful a friend he seemed to be, however useful he proved himself, there was an indelible blemish upon Alkibiades in the form of an act of betrayal which might now never occur, but would have had Fate been allowed to run its proper course.
Of course, of that blemish he knew nothing either.
"Thank you," Demosthenes said to him blankly. The danger past, he stooped, found his grip at the edges of Thalassia's corselet and heaved her corpse onto his shoulders. Gummed and drying blood caused his arms to itch, while fresh streams of it rolled hot down his neck.
"You want help?" Alkibiades asked.
"I have her."
They started walking together up the hill toward the Athenian lines, Demosthenes slowed by his burden and Alkibiades keeping pace astride his mount. Around them, the men who had rushed to their aid returned to the lines, too, not a few throwing questions which Demosthenes was forced to ignore.
He posed a sullen question of his own to Alkibiades. "How fared your mission?"
Alkibiades tossed his head at Brasidas's host. Pausing and twisting, Demosthenes followed the gesture and picked out against the sky a sight he had failed to notice while engrossed in Thalassia's death and the retrieval of her corpse: three plumes of black smoke rising from somewhere behind the Spartan lines.
"Well done," Demosthenes commented absently. But his mind was elsewhere. Only now, as mayhem faded to quiet, could he begin to process Nikostratos' dire pronouncement of minutes ago.
Spartans were inside the Long Walls.
It meant they had found some way to foil the world's foremost navy, the foundation on which Athenian empire was built. There could be no doubt as to who had helped them to achieve such a feat. Seasons ago, he had seen with his own eyes drawings of strange ships which were an improvement on current designs, and he had rejected them. Yet, even had he foreseen the necessity of making the trireme obsolete, the democracy would have scoffed, and Athenian shipbuilders would have considered even the suggestion an affront.
Not so in Sparta, whose navy rarely ever matched the success of her land forces. In retrospect, the plan of Brasidas and Eden was almost shamefully obvious. He should have seen it. The lumbering katapeltai were a threat, certainly, but not the most dire one, and Brasidas's march across the Megarid, the expected path of attack, was not quite a diversion, but almost. And it had worked: nearly every able body that Athens could field stood here, ten miles from the city. Perhaps some or all of the cavalry could swiftly withdraw, but that was a decision for a general to make. And as that bitch Fate, who refused to accept defeat idly, would have it, Demosthenes was not a general this year.
Perhaps seeing defeat written on his face, Alkibiades urged, if somewhat spiritlessly. "It's not so bad. Sure, star-girl is gone, but no more siege engines, right? And we still outnumber Brasidas, even when the Thebans are counted. Probably."
Under his load of dripping, leather-clad flesh, Demosthenes laughed bleakly. "You have not heard."
"Heard what?"
They crested the hill, reaching the spot where a silent Nikostratos and the rest of the Athenian line had turned as one to stare east at a dark line which slashed the sky from horizon to clouds. Billowing smoke.
Athens was burning.
V. ELEUSIS 7. The Battle of Eleusis
The sight failed to shock Demosthenes. Perhaps he had seen and learned too much to be shocked anymore. Instead he felt numb as he secured Thalassia's corpse over Akmos' saddle, her sopping, disheveled braid pelting the earth with crimson droplets. He heard Nikostratos issuing orders. They were the right orders, at least: stand fast here, the whole army staying intact on the plain of Eleusis. The other choice was a tempting one, to split the force and send relief back to Athens, but that was likely just what Brasidas wanted. Almost certainly, the moment those maneuvers began, his army would surge across the frontier. The Spartan attackers' ready spears and lambda-blazoned shields would then meet an enemy line in disarray, and defeat for Athens would be all but assured.
There was no choice but to stand firm for now, then fall back to the city only when victory was won here on the frontier. In the best case, if victory were swift, which it would not be, that meant leaving homes and loved ones at the mercy of whatever force had penetrated the Long Walls for, what? Four hours, probably more.
From the evidence in the eastern sky, at least one fire burned already, though the smoke was too sparse to represent a general conflagration. But four hours, four hours spent at arms with backs turned on wives and offspring, was a long time. A great many fires could be set in that time. The temptation to race home and protect one's own was strong, in Demosthenes no less than in any other man. Gods, how he longed to go to Laonome's side, to sweep her and Eurydike onto Akmos's back and take them to safety, wherever that was. But down that path lay certain disaster. The army of Athens would be run down piecemeal and dashed against the very gates it had failed to defend. The horde on the frontier would be the hammer, the city walls the anvil.
All that prevented that outcome now was discipline, and already that was showing cracks. Demosthenes, standing among the commanders on the hill's crest, saw the army begin to unravel well before messengers started bringing news that city-dwellers were falling back from the line, first by ones and twos, and then in droves. Emboldened by that sight, or perhaps giving up hope because of it, or maybe just drawn into the herd in a phenomenon well known to any observer of democracy, others followed. A trickle soon swelled into a flood, and within half an hour the road home was awash with bronze helmets and brightly painted shields moving east in a chaotic but determined swirl.
At Nikostratos' urging, Demosthenes and others of the cavalry rode into the seething mass to try rallying men back to their posts. Some were persuaded, but the greater number were beyond reason. When words failed to stop the tide, the would-be shepherds of men resorted to lashing out with flats of swords, but it was a hopeless fight. The numbers overwhelmed them. Short of killing friends and cousins (as indeed a few raging country-folk urged) there was nothing to be done.
It was the reverse of the first seven summers of the war. Then, it had been the rural citizens whose homes and farms were ravaged while city men led by Perikles urged restraint on them. Now, as then, the city held sway. The retreat was unstoppable. Accepting that, Demosthenes extricated himself from the throng. Over the swirl of heads and spear blades, Alkibiades called out to him, but whatever few syllables he spoke were lost in the din of the bronze snake clattering its way to Athens.
He was persistent, though, and finally Demosthenes heard:
"Dekelea! Dekelea!"
Alkibiades was right. The mountain town was farther off than Athens, but its freshly built walls presumably remained uncompromised. There was a small risk that the Thebans had already taken Dekelea, and a greater one that they blocked the path from here to there, but it was their only hope. The mass flight now unfolding all but ensured that this day would end with Brasidas the master of Athens. However much it weighed on the heart, which now resided in Demosthenes' throat, to stake Laonome's life, and the lives of a thousand wives, on the chance that Brasidas would show the city restraint, retreat to Dekelea was now the only choice.
Fording the human river atop Akmos with Thalassia's lashed form draped in front of him in the saddle, jostling with each move, Demosthenes rode to where Nikostratos stood alone on the hill. His perpetual cloud of aides and unit commanders had scattered in the effort to restore control,
and now the junior general gazed blankly, resignedly out over the plains of Eleusis.
When he reached the general's side, Demosthenes stared, too, for the invasion had begun.
Brasidas's force was on the move, marching double time, shields and glinting spears bobbing above the tall grass, collective voice raised in a slow war chant which belied the speed of their charge into glory.
"Fuck."
The inelegant remark earned Demosthenes a disapproving glance from Nikostratos, whose mood was already foul. Ignoring it, he said to the strategos urgently, "We have no chance here. We must get as many men as we can to Dekelea."
"Too late for that." Nikostratos' knuckles were white on the shaft of his yet unused ash spear. Drawing a deep breath, he came to life, whirling and setting vehemently to the task of rallying his diminished army.
"We stand fast here!" he screamed. "Stand fast, do you hear me! Stand fast!"
There was no telling how many men remained in the ranks to heed his command. Rather than waning, the exodus seemed to be gaining in strength, with more and more men making the late decision to join it in the belief that their cause now was hopeless with the army in such a shambles.
Maybe it was. But it was the chaos itself more than the dwindling numbers which posed the greater threat to Athenian hopes. So greatly had Brasidas been outnumbered when the morning began that even now the Athenian force could not but still be larger than his. But an army was only as strong as its discipline, and that of the Spartans was legendary while discipline this day had failed Athens utterly.
Leaving the general, Demosthenes galloped back down the slope to the road behind the hill, where Alkibiades and a small fraction of the citizen cavalry persisted in the effort to stem the tide of shirkers. The rest of the hippeis had given up and now sat astride their mounts in clusters on the hillside awaiting instruction. Donning his white-plumed helm, Demosthenes gave it.