Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  "Our watchers in Athens say Brasidas marches here today with an army of six thousand. We are going to be under siege."

  "Haven't we been already?" the girl asked. She pulled herself up onto the battlement and settled there with wiry legs dangling. Demosthenes did not bother to offer her a boost, knowing his help would be rejected.

  "Almost," he said. He had learned by now not to try to speak to Andrea as he might any other child. "Until now we have had men–and women–slip back and forth from Athens and the coast. We have ambushed enemy troops who try to pass. But now we will have to shut our gates and keep them shut. No one in or out." He frowned. "Alkibiades will insist that you leave."

  The Spartlet scoffed. "He can't make me. Anyway, there are lots of women and children here."

  "They will be leaving, too."

  Andrea spat on the battlements. "Cowards."

  Demosthenes inhaled to scold the child, but instead expelled the air in silence.

  Andrea did not linger on the subject. "Why don't flies land on Thalassia's body?" she asked. She stared down at her swinging heels as they kicked the poured stone underneath her.

  "I told you not to go in there," Demosthenes chided her half-heartedly.

  The Spartlet flashed a little girl's version of her Spartiate father's scowl. "You don't know me very well, do you?"

  "I do. Too well." Demosthenes managed to tousle the top of Andrea's long hair before she jerked her head away. "I don't know why," he said in answer to her question. "Ask the flies."

  "Anyway, Uncle Alky said I could go in the shed," she said haughtily. "I washed Thalassia's body and anointed it and said prayers for her."

  Demosthenes said quietly, "That was good of you."

  Andrea's mood suddenly sank, and she said with a frown, "She was my favorite teacher."

  "You were her favorite student."

  Andrea clicked her tongue in reprimand, as her teacher often had done. "I was her only student!" Abruptly she deflated. "I miss her."

  "Me too." Demosthenes covered the Spartlet's small hand with his and was mildly surprised when she failed to snatch it away.

  She looked up, concern lighting her black eyes. "Any news of Eurydike?" she asked. "Or your wife?" The former was one of Andrea's favored playmates; the latter seemed to have been added to her inquiry in a rare show of sensitivity.

  "No," Demosthenes said.

  The admission pained him. On the day of the fall, he had sent a loyal man to Athens with instructions to take the two into hiding, but word had failed to come back of either success or failure. With full-blown siege imminent, the outcome now was likely to remain unknown. "They are safe," he said, but it was hope rather than certainty that he voiced.

  By the accounts drifting out, Athens had been treated as well as any conquered city could expect. Only the Pnyx and a few other symbolic civic sites had been razed. The democracy had been abolished and mass arrests made of individuals deemed a threat to the new regime. Four generals of the Board of Ten, Nikostratos among them, were en route to Sparta for trial and possible execution, another three imprisoned in Athens. Women and children were safe for now, though that could change with one word from Brasidas.

  "Finish your run," Demosthenes said to Andrea, and hoisted her down from the crenelated wall, depositing her on her feet before she had the chance to protest.

  Instead of dashing off, Andrea looked up at him. "Since you told me a secret," she said, "I'll give you one, too."

  "I would be honored," Demosthenes said, crouching level with her to receive it.

  "Uncle Alky likes to think he's Achilles, so he'd be mad if he knew," the Spartlet confided with a note of pride in her small voice, "but I've always thought the Trojans should have won."

  With a final sly smile she raced away, sandals slapping the walkway.

  ***

  In wave after wave of round shields bearing the crimson lambda, the dark tide which was the army of Brasidas spilled north. It washed over the forests and foothills and flowed around crags jutting from the green earth. It swamped the broad road from Athens, and by noon it would have lapped at the base of Dekelea's walls, but for the threat posed by about sixty men atop the wall with drawn bows. Some of the sixty were not even archers, but those below could not know that.

  Demosthenes stood on the walls, too, watching the army come. Beside him stood Alkibiades and a half dozen sub-commanders of the now-besieged force. They shared no words, for none could matter now. None likely existed which would suffice to convey the depth to which Athens' fortunes had sunk.

  Before the waves of enemy fighters had even stopped appearing on the horizon, a lone long-haired Spartiate came forward from the black mass armed with a herald's wand. He stopped in front of Dekelea's gate and called up in a voice barely audible over the din of the assembling horde behind him, "I would enter!"

  "Fuck off!" Alkibiades shouted back down.

  "I offer generous terms of surrender!" the Spartan came back, unperturbed.

  "Shoot them out your ass!"

  "I would enter!" the Spartiate repeated. Then, "You need open your gate only a crack."

  After grinning at the Spartiates doubtless accidental pun, Alkibiades turned from the battlements to throw a questioning look at Demosthenes. The ward of Perikles had found time to polish his gear and stood resplendent in his breastplate of enameled bronze.

  "Let him in," Demosthenes reluctantly agreed, and wasted no time heading for the stairs.

  A cluster of sub-commanders accompanied him to the village's south gate, where they gathered ten paces behind the heavy double doors of bronze-clad timber. Thirty hoplites lined up with their hands on the gate to hold it in place in the event of trickery, and at Demosthenes' command they pulled one of its halves open just enough to let a man pass. The Spartan herald slipped through, and with a creak and a crash the massive door slammed quickly back into place.

  The Spartan came forward. Well before he completed his advance, Demosthenes knew his identity. Though he had not seen the face in a year, he was well accustomed to a smaller and pleasanter version of it. Alkibiades recognized the man, too, and was the first to speak his name in cool greeting.

  "Styphon."

  Forgoing acknowledgment, the Spartiate announced loudly, so his voice echoed off the expanse of pristine wall behind him.

  "What you are doing here is pointless! Athens has capitulated, and her new government has ordered an end to resistance." Styphon drew a curled parchment from his belt and tossed it into the dirt, where it remained. "Simply leave your arms and armor behind, and come out. No harm will befall you, and none shall be subject to arrest!"

  His ringing words gave way to total silence, which Demosthenes allowed to persist a few moments before answering. He spoke, as Styphon had, at a volume intended to let any Athenian within earshot hear clearly.

  "Any who might have taken you up on that offer have already gone to their homes. We keep no man here against his will. So if that is all you've come to say, your work is done."

  Styphon was unfazed by the rebuff and by the chorus of muttered agreement which followed. He returned in a more conversational volume, directly at Demosthenes, "You ought to reconsider. The consequences will be harsh, and I would as soon not witness them. Attica has seen enough bloodshed. It is time for peace."

  "Then go home!" someone shouted.

  Ignoring the outburst, Styphon nodded at Demosthenes. "To you and him"–he indicated Alkibiades–"Brasidas offers exile. Take your families with you and never set foot in Attica again. In exchange, he demands the corpse."

  He did not need to specify which.

  "Before you reject this offer," Styphon added heavily, "think hard about those who are not protected by these walls."

  Demosthenes spat. He felt both fear and anger, but let only the latter show, as he spoke words which he hoped passionately were true.

  "I have heard such threats once before, outside the jail in Melite," he said. "They were empty then and empty now. Bras
idas knows he will not long command respect if he murders wives and children. That is not the Spartan way. If you are half the man I believe you to be, you will be first in line to put a knife in him when he descends to that."

  "You have never known me," Styphon countered calmly. "Even less do you know Brasidas." He shrugged his wide shoulders, then raised the volume of his voice again for all to hear. "You have heard our offer! No one need suffer if you just pile your weapons and walk out. You have one hour!"

  He turned his back to Demosthenes and faced the closed gate and the thirty Athenians arrayed in front of it. The faces of those men failed to give any hint of whether or not they were tempted by the envoy's terms.

  "There is one more matter I would raise with you," Alkibiades said to Styphon's back. With a show of reluctance, Styphon turned, and Alkibiades called out, his voice soaring over the village, "Andrea, show yourself!"

  Almost instantly, a small figure stepped out from behind the thick corner post of a stockade fence attached to a nearby dwelling.

  "Come here," her guardian said. His were the only eyes which did not follow Andrea's straight-backed march to his side, where she inserted herself between him and Demosthenes. "Do you recognize this man?"

  The Spartlet answered in a voice that belied her stature, "He is my father, and he means to kill us all."

  Her guardian smacked her lightly on the back of her head. "Answer the question as asked."

  Andrea grated, "Yes."

  "You owe your father respect." Then Alkibiades addressed Styphon, whose reaction to the sight of his offspring could not be read. "I ordered her out of Dekelea, but she hid until the gates were sealed. I agreed to let her stay and help however she could, but now that her father is present–"

  Foreseeing what Alkibiades intended, Andrea pleaded quietly, petulantly, "No."

  "–he can be trusted to take her to safety."

  Styphon stood unspeaking. The black eyes beneath his heavy brow failed even to shift down to the defiant face of the girl in question.

  Andrea's jaw set. "I won't go."

  "You will do your duty," her guardian insisted. He looked hard at Styphon. "If he'll have you."

  A heavy silence settled between the gathered Athenians and the lone, stone-faced Spartiate as the latter pondered his decision. A minute later, and still without his black eyes having settled on the girl, he delivered it with a nod.

  "No!" Andrea's high-pitched shriek echoed off of Dekelea's walls. She whirled, and her little arms flew up to wrap around Alkibiades' ornate breastplate. "Uncle, please!" She pressed her cheek hard against the bronze.

  Alkibiades set a hand on his ward's shoulder, bowed his head and said, "It's Spartan blood in you, girl. His blood. You owe him obedience. Have I not taught you that much? Do as he says. If the gods let me live, I'll see you again when all this is over."

  Andrea sniffled, drew a shuddering breath and detached herself from Alkibiades. She hardened her flint black eyes, raised her chin high and met the bracing gaze of her guardian as if drawing strength from it. After holding that posture for several heartbeats, she turned and aimed a blanker stare at the father she barely knew, but so resembled. Then in the steady, shade-like gait of a condemned man walking to the garrote, she went to unblinking Styphon and took a place by his left hand, facing the Athenian contingent. Side by side they stood, Spartiate and Spartlet, but there might as well have been a wall between them for all the notice they took of each other. Maybe Styphon was aware, or maybe Demosthenes only imagined, that behind the little girl's laconic mask, she was choking on tears.

  One who knew him well could see the pain in Alkibiades' bright eyes, too, as he sent away the ward he had raised for longer than a year: his little monster, first pupil in the secret school he had hoped to found with Thalassia and his friend and mentor Socrates. But now Attica was under the Spartan heel, his star-girl was a corpse, and wise Socrates had gone down in the Athenian center at Eleusis with a spear in his belly.

  Alkibiades' dream was dead, but he steeled his gaze and stood fast with the gentle hand which had been on his Spartlet resting now on the hilt of his sword.

  "You have our reply," Demosthenes said to Styphon. "Now go and tell Brasidas that if he wants us, he can fucking well come in and get us."

  The undiplomatic utterance prompted a flashed smile, if a melancholy one, from Alkibiades, who recognized the shade of Thalassia speaking through him. Other Athenians took up assailing the enemy envoy with jeers of their own, and so under a hail of curses, Styphon wordlessly turned his back and marched to the closed gate. A pace behind, Andrea followed mechanically, keeping her gaze straight ahead. On Demosthenes' signal, the heavy double doors were heaved open just a crack and the Spartiate slipped through first. After a barely perceptible moment of hesitation, his daughter followed.

  The door thumped shut, but before even the iron reinforced timber bars were set back in place, Alkibiades had fallen back from the crowd to stride off into the unpaved streets of empty, hopeless Dekelea alone.

  V. ELEUSIS 10. Vengeance Is Sworn

  The sun was a violent red disc pouring blood over the western peaks when the Spartan army finished arraying itself before the walls of Dekelea. To the south, Brasidas's Peloponnesians were a dark forest of men and spears standing just out of bowshot, while northward, deeper into the mountains, a Theban force blocked the narrow pass through which in peacetime flowed a large percentage of Athens' grain supply. A foreign force that seized Dekelea could choke the life from Attica, and in a never-would-be world, that had happened; here, instead Attica was already in foreign hands and Dekelea the last resort of its defenders.

  The doe-eyed leader of those holdouts was dead on his feet, a restless shade hovering in front of the shed which housed dead Thalassia. Would that he needed as little sleep as she did, barely one night out of every six. But Demosthenes was mortal and did need sleep, and he itched, too, all over the scalp under the hair which once had been blond but now was a helm of flat, grime-encrusted tendrils, and on the jaw covered by five days' worth of beard.

  Why did he keep ending up here, at her shed? Wherever in Dekelea he was headed, his feet seemed to choose a path that took him past it. Its door was tied shut with a thick rope; perhaps he hoped each time he passed to find that rope hanging broken and Thalassia leaning casually on the wall with her supple neck unbroken.

  But the door was always locked, and Demosthenes resisted whatever macabre impulse it was that urged him inside to see if he might find some way to awaken Athens' fallen champion in her adopted city's hour of need. But she had done her part... more than her part, and earned her rest.

  "Demosthenes!"

  He was standing with his back against the wall of a house opposite the shed, half asleep on his feet, when he heard his name shouted from the walls.

  "Here!" Demosthenes answered swiftly, before he could be tempted to remain in hiding and sleep. He forced his legs to bear him out into the open space of Dekelea's main north-south road. There, looking toward the village's south gate, he saw his summoner: Alkibiades, waving him over from atop the wall. Coming alive again, or managing to make it seem that way, Demosthenes picked up his pace and soon was climbing the nearest stair to mount the protected walkway on which Alkibiades waited.

  "A party approaches," Alkibiades said when he was within earshot. His manner was strangely subdued, even guarded. "Brasidas is among them."

  Demosthenes replied swiftly, "Tell Straton to fill him with arrows, herald's wand or no."

  Alkibiades hesitated. "I... don't think you'll want to do that."

  Certainly, the habitual blasphemer's reluctance could not have come from any unwillingness to violate a sacred protection. He must have had other reasons, but rather than asking for them, Demosthenes brushed past Alkibiades and sped to the battlements. There, on the rocky ground below, midway between the dark line of besiegers and Dekelea's sheer walls, a spear-studded group of ten or so figures advanced. Squinting to see the band against the
sunset, Demosthenes realized that the foremost two figures were unarmed.

  They were not even men, but a pair of women, and they walked reluctantly on rope leads held by a Spartiate walking a few paces behind. Sackcloth obscured their heads. The female on the right was slight of build, with a short chiton of soiled linen covering a minimal expanse of her pale flesh. The other wore the long dress of a citizen woman, pleats stretched taut over a bulging abdomen.

  As paralyzing terror overtook Demosthenes, Alkibiades appeared beside him and set a hand on his shoulder. He might have thrown it off, but his limbs would not respond.

  The advancing party drew to a halt within easy shouting distance. The hooded prisoners' leads were jerked, and the two human shields marching with hands bound in front of them stumbled and twisted, but managed to stay upright. At the party's center was a figure who wore nothing to distinguish himself from any other of the long-haired Equals around him. It was this man, Brasidas, who spoke.

  "Everywhere there is celebration at the news of Athens' defeat!" Brasidas bellowed. "The world is set free from the yoke of empire! Nothing that happens at Dekelea today, or any day to come, can reverse the spread of liberty! In that spirit of celebration, I give you one final opportunity to lay down your arms and–"

  Rage built up in Demosthenes' tired limbs and spilled over the battlements in the shape of a roar which drowned out the Spartan general.

  "Let them go!"

  Brasidas aborted his speech. He might have smiled as he gestured to the Spartiate holding the rope leads, who obediently stepped forward and pulled the canvas sack from each prisoner's head. Coppery curls tumbled from one, light brown locks from the other. The two blinked in adjustment to the twilight and cast bewildered looks all around as they came to grips with their surroundings. Finding one another, they clung close, but it wasn't long before their fearful eyes went to the wall, and up it to find the husband and master whom they could not have failed to comprehend, now more than ever, held their lives in his hand.

  Demosthenes could not long return their stunned gazes. Guilt turned his shocked eyes instead to the women's captor.