Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  "Form up on me!"

  Hearing him, Alkibiades took up the call. "You heard him!"

  Within minutes the bulk of Athens' citizen cavalry had regrouped, and over the snorting and braying of their steeds, Demosthenes belted out his simple orders. A third of their own number, perhaps a hundred men, was absent, he noticed. They were likely far ahead of the mass of men on foot in the race back to Athens to defend their homes. If they rode hard, maybe they would even succeed in carrying away whatever people or possessions were foremost in their hearts. By law the price would be charges of cowardice, the charge Demosthenes himself had beaten months ago. But the only verdict for these men was likely to be that imposed by their own souls, for at present it looked as though it would be some time before any jury again convened to try an Athenian. Demosthenes wanted to curse those hippeis who had gone, but knew that some of his anger came from envy. Perhaps their selfishness was worth the price.

  Those horsemen who remained, every one of whom had as much to lose if Athens burned this day, followed their hipparch east and south along the course of the infantry's spontaneous, disorderly retreat. At a place where the road bent sharply and the land dropped straight into the sea, Demosthenes gave a signal. The horsemen inserted themselves into the flow of running and shuffling footsoldiers, cutting off their paths and penning them in like sheep.

  "Hear me!" Demosthenes screamed over the heads of the trapped infantrymen. Every second, every word counted, for the human current was relentless and the pressure on its equine dam would build and build. "Look to the sky above Athens," he urged. "Look! Still just one fire! Your homes are not burning! Athens is not yet theirs, but it will be if you continue doing as your enemy wants! You think you run to save your wives when in truth you doom them! Yes, there are Spartans inside the Long Walls. Perhaps many, more likely just a few. Either way, the safety of Athens is not in her walls, it is in your hearts and your set spears, in this army! And as long as this army can kill Spartans, Athens will be free!"

  Some of the trapped men seemed to be listening. Others were focusing on finding a way through or around the barrier, only to be rudely shoved back by the cavalry. Demosthenes took one foot from the stirrup and kicked a man hard in the chest. The blow would have sent him to the well-trammeled earth but for the steadily rising pressure at his back.

  "None of you are cowards!" Demosthenes said. "You run to Athens knowing there is danger there. But it is the wrong danger, and now is the wrong time. I hold no office this day, but you have elected me twice before as strategos, and I ask you to follow me again now."

  Amongst the hurled curses and grunts of exertion, a few voices asked, "Where?"

  Demosthenes gladly answered. "To Dekelea! Come with me to Dekelea, and from there we will take back our city!"

  Somehow. Possibly.

  By now, the river of deserters had swollen into a lake behind the makeshift dam. The riders had already been forced to give ground to relieve the pressure, but now the choice came of whether to let the deserters pass or watch them crush each other to death into the mud. Demosthenes chose the former. The screen of cavalry parted, and the tide it had briefly contained burst forth.

  Demosthenes remained in the current, shouting frantically, "To Dekelea! Dekelea!" Alkibiades and others lent their voices, too, so that over the clatter of arms their collective demand, more of a plea, could be heard. They devoted some ten minutes to that thankless endeavor, then regrouped the cavalry a short distance inland

  For all the deaf ears upon which his entreaties had fallen, some had heard. By the time the body of footsoldiers clustered around the citizen cavalry stopped growing, it numbered some six hundred hoplites and peltastes. No army at all, by most measures, but it would have to do. Demosthenes was forming them up for the march when a clap of thunder split the western sky.

  It was not the thunder made by Zeus, but that made by men: the clash of shield walls. Paeans and battle cries were drowned out by the crash and then by screams of pain and the grunts and groans that marked the start of the pushing match. No Athenian who heard it from a distance could help but whisper a guilty prayer to Pallas on his countrymen's behalf, not even one who scarcely was able to believe in gods. When he had finished addressing the goddess he doubted, Demosthenes sent his miniscule army on its way to the mountains, with ten riders as escort, while six more of the cavalry went ahead at full gallop to round up a work force from among the population of Dekelea and begin dragging as many provisions as it could behind its gates.

  Demosthenes, with the bulk of the Athenian horse, remained behind. They took up a position behind the Athenian right wing and there waited for the worst to happen. If and when it did, if the diminished army of Athens under Nikostratos crumbled and fled the field at Eleusis, a screen of cavalry might at least deter pursuit. And perhaps some of the army's tattered remnants could be steered to Dekelea.

  Long minutes wore on, the air thick with clashing iron and grating bronze and groans and wails and soaring hymns and coarse insults.

  "Those were some fine words back there," Alkibiades said over the echoes of the not-so-distant battle. "And here I thought star-girl came up with all your speeches." Feeling in no mood for chatter, much less levity, Demosthenes made no reply. The youth's exquisite eyes, keen readers of men's minds, fell to the carcass slung over the front of his friend's saddle, and he changed his tone. "It'll be tough if you have to fight with star-girl in your saddle," he remarked dourly. "You should have sent her on ahead to Dekelea."

  Demosthenes answered resolutely, without sparing a glance for speaker or object: "She stays with me."

  Alkibiades' chestnut mane, darkened by blood and grime, bobbed in understanding.

  Any further one-sided conversation was cut short by a triumphant cheer. None among the citizen cavalry were foolish enough to believe that the triumph in question could be that of Athens. No matter how poorly Brasidas's army might have fared, it could not have broken so quickly. Such a swift end to the battle could only mean a Spartan victory.

  A lone rider atop a nearby ridge, from which a portion of the plains of Eleusis were just visible, kicked his horse and sped down the hill bearing news which came as no surprise: the Athenian right had begun to turn. Grim minutes later, a clattering sound arose, and the first wave of retreating hoplites appeared, streaming over and around the gentle hills at a full run. Most had their shields, some spears, while others had cast one or both down in the knowledge that speed was now life. No one could blame them. The puncturing of a phalanx marked the end of a battle. There was no point in heroics, no descent into single combat as had been witnessed on the fields of Troy in bygone days. War these days was a test of cities, not of individuals, and today Athens had been judged unworthy.

  The cavalry spread thin to act as a screen which might let their countrymen pass and then close up swiftly to block pursuit. As the fighters' retreat brought them within earshot of the line of horse, Demosthenes called to them with his familiar refrain.

  "To Dekelea! To Dekelea!"

  Men ran by in droves, a thousand of them or more, and they ran with no single purpose in mind except escape. Many were likely headed for their homes in the rural demes to become civilians again, since that's what they all truly were, and simply to pray that Sparta declined to impose the kind of brutal retribution to which the gods and the unwritten laws of war entitled them.

  Demosthenes kept up the rallying cry until his throat was raw. Following the lead of Alkibiades, he even began to lie: "Regroup at Dekelea! Nikostratos commands it!"

  At last, hot on the heels of their vanquished foe, a band of Peloponnesians appeared, screaming victory. Their shield blazons, Demosthenes noticed immediately and with relief, were not the uniform crimson lambda of Lakedaimon but rather a colorful menagerie of beasts and gods that marked them as men of Corinth or Arkadia or some other Spartan subject or ally. No surprise, since had they been Spartiates, they likely would not have made the mistake of breaking formation to pursue a broken
foe blindly into the unknown, perhaps to learn too late of the presence of heavy cavalry, as was the case today.

  Man by man, the pursuers saw their mistake, slowed, stopped, and turned back.

  "Hold!" Demosthenes told his men. For although the enemy hoplites were in disarray, they were atop a hill and could quickly enough form a wall of spears. These Peloponnesians had tasted victory enough for one day, it seemed, for they chose the path of discretion and withdrew, vanishing from sight down the rear face of the hill over which they had come. After giving them some time in which to change their minds and attack, and Athenian stragglers more time to find their way east, the citizen cavalry of Athens turned their mounts north to take the advice they had been screaming for some time at any of their countrymen who would listen.

  To Dekelea.

  V. ELEUSIS 8. Dekelea

  No roads led directly to the mountain village of Dekelea, and so they rode hard through open country, over hills and fields and farms. Whenever they passed a village, they sent a pair of men to spread word of what had happened and ask for weapons and food to be brought to Dekelea as quickly as possible for the inevitable siege. Before long, they caught up with the band of six hundred would-be deserters sent ahead. Rather than racing on by, they kept pace with the infantrymen, as much to ensure they did not change their minds along the way as to protect them from ambush.

  Along the way they encountered a trio of scouts of the prodromoi, the light horse, and exchanged news. The Theban cavalry, the scouts reported, had stayed close to the main Theban body, which presently was investing the Attic town of Phyle. It was good news which meant that for now, at least, the way to Dekelea was clear.

  At the foot of the steep, pine-covered Parnes mountains, the ground became rough and the going more difficult, but the column did not slow. With no sign of pursuit and not a soul in sight, the sense of immediate danger began to fade. Into the void rushed feelings of loss and despair that were visible in the men's faces and their hollow eyes. Demosthenes tried to keep his own eyes on the mountains, for if they sank to the vaguely human-shaped mass draped in front of him, he began to think of Thalassia as she had been in life, which in turn brought on thoughts of home, of Laonome and Eurydike, whose fates he did not know and surely would not for some time.

  In the end, it did not matter much where he kept his eyes, for he thought of them anyway, and the thoughts sat like a lump of lead on his chest. The weight numbed him, preventing him from feeling anything; he only acted. The events unfolding were unreal, dreamlike. But then, what had the last two years been to him if not training to exist in unreality, to live daily with madness surrounding and infecting him and all he touched as surely as the great plague, and as deadly.

  As the procession made its way ever higher into the hills, Alkibiades drew up to ride alongside him. He said sadly, "She was the perfect being." His melancholy gaze was on Thalassia's corpse. "Both hard and soft at the same time."

  Demosthenes expelled his grief in a sigh and begrudged the ward of Perikles his attention. "Mostly hard," he observed. He lied.

  "She had thick armor, to be sure," Alkibiades said. "And some manly traits. But at her core, she was a woman." He smiled. "Just as we all have some woman in us. She was showing hers more and more until–" There was no need to finish. He looked up from her gently jostling corpse and said abruptly, "You must know that she loved you."

  Demosthenes left the assertion unanswered.

  Alkibiades went on. "She never said so. Just call it my well-drawn conclusion as a student of the human... and human-like heart."

  "What I shall call it is horse shit," Demosthenes grumbled at him. He had the strange and utterly unfounded feeling that Thalassia could overhear them even now, with cold ears concealed by gore on a head that barely clung to its spine.

  Alkibiades' shrug was not one of concession. "Suit yourself," he said. "I'm sure it was coincidence that I always seemed to wind up with bruises shortly after your name came up."

  "She picked my wife, for fuck's sake," Demosthenes said, defying his better judgment by arguing. "And could not have done a better job of it. Right before she moved out."

  The self-professed student of the human heart laughed sharply. "Oh, please," Alkibiades scoffed. "You don't see? She got sick of you refusing to touch her, so she put you off limits. The problem with that strategy is that she resembles me in a way. We always want most what we cannot have. Not only that, though. I think she genuinely wanted you to be happy, which is what I call–"

  "Shut up," Demosthenes hissed.

  "–love."

  Bowing belatedly to the rebuke, Alkibiades sighed and changed the subject. Almost. He mused philosophically, "Socrates says love is a form of madness."

  The last word rang in Demosthenes' ears.

  "I said it first, though," Alkibiades continued. "He borrowed it from me. I wonder how he fared today. He was positioned in the center. I can guarantee you he was one of those who stood his ground."

  Demosthenes gave these comments no reply. After riding in silence for some minutes, gazing out at the forested peaks and valleys, Alkibiades renewed his efforts to make conversation. His subject yet again was Thalassia.

  "Damn, I wish I could have seen star-girl fight!" he lamented. "Must have been a beautiful sight." As before, he was undeterred by lack of reply. "Do you think she will return?" He answered himself: "I don't. That's how it goes with stars that shine brightly. Or star-girls. Like Achilles, they burn out in their prime and go to join the gods. I intend do the same."

  He might have shared further musings, but Demosthenes, staring blankly ahead at the wooded, uneven ground and the horde of aimless, defeated souls shambling over it, finally managed to shut him out.

  ***

  By late afternoon, the gravel-faced walls of Dekelea were in view. Thanks to the outriders, the villagers were expecting the band and met it with food, fresh water and words of encouragement. The storehouses were already stuffed with provisions, the villagers informed, and still more were en route from the surrounding country, but that morsel of good news failed to raise anyone's mood. The hastily gathered remains of Athens' defeated army numbered a thousand by now, but that was not nearly enough. They marched, with stooped shoulders and precious little hope, through fresh-cut gates into the remote, fortified village where they were to make their stand.

  Dekelea was hardly more than a waystation on the trade route from Athens to the coast., its unplastered, single-story houses of wood and brick a far cry from what city-dwellers were used to. None knew how long their stay here might last. Much-needed rest might have changed their outlook some, but there was no time for that. For one thing, a barracks would have to be built, which meant felling trees and dragging them in from the surrounding wood. After their ten-mile hike wearing bronze armor in the afternoon heat, men were slumping to the ground exhausted, only to rise again mouthing curses when their leader divided them into work crews for the accomplishment of that task and others. Demosthenes joined a crew himself, and lent Akmos as a draught animal, though not before he and Alkibiades had reverently removed Thalassia from his saddle, wrapped her loosely in linens and laid her out in an old tool shed already stripped of its contents by the work crews.

  In the shed, Alkibiades cleaned her bloodied face with a damp cloth, exposing her tattoo-like mark of Magdalen. Her serene features were marred by deep slashes hopelessly packed with trail grime. He stared down at her, bent and kissed her parted, half-mangled lips. "Goodbye, star-girl," he whispered, and rose. "Do you want to say anything?"

  "I do not speak to corpses," Demosthenes snapped.

  Alkibiades drew up the linen shroud over her face, but as they were leaving Demosthenes' conscience stopped him, and he looked back.

  "I have only met two servants of Magdalen," he said to the lifeless shell on the dirt floor. "But I say without any doubt, the one who betrayed them is worth all the rest combined."

  With those words of tribute, he left behind the silent, mutila
ted remains of a thing that the sea had coughed up one day: a seeker of vengeance, a meddler in space in time, a spreader of madness, the star-born benefactor of a city whose defeat her aid had only hastened.

  Chaining the rickety door of her unfitting mausoleum, Demosthenes threw his aching heart into making Dekelea an Attic thorn in Brasidas's grasping claw.

  V. ELEUSIS 9. A Spartan's Duty

  A fast drumbeat of footfalls slapped the smooth tops of the walls of silent Dekelea. Demosthenes stood behind the battlements staring southward over evergreens and crags boldly lit by a violet dawn. As the wearer of the sandals pounding the poured stone drew up to him, their rhythm slowed and ceased.

  "Hello, Andrea," Demosthenes said, failing to feign good cheer. "Men are trying to sleep. Maybe you could run barefoot."

  It was the morning of the third day since the fall of Athens. Two days ago the Spartlet had shown up at Dekelea of her own accord, having taken a horse and ridden from Alkibiades' country estate. Either her Lakedaimonian heritage had bequeathed her a natural military mind or Alkibiades had had been schooling her in the ways of war. Likely both.

  "Maybe they should wake up earlier." It was a Spartan answer, and Andrea reverted to her native Doric dialect to deliver it.

  Demosthenes permitted himself a dry chuckle. "Maybe so."

  "What's wrong?" the Spartlet asked. Her dark eyes missed little.

  "Can you keep a secret for just a little while?" Demosthenes asked. "Until I have a chance to tell everyone?"

  Andrea's answer was a reproachful glare. Demosthenes had been the target of such a look plenty of times before, but from paler eyes. The behavioral resemblance to her tutor was probably no coincidence. Sighing at the similarity, he shared with Andrea, a child of the enemy, the fresh news which had him so worried: