Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  "Release them now! They have no place here!"

  Brasidas refused to mirror his adversary's fury. "I will gladly let them go," he called back evenly. "You know the price. Open your gates."

  For that moment, Demosthenes stood alone. There were no ranks of defiant Athenians arrayed on either side of him atop Dekelea's walls. There were no walls at all, and no Dekelea. There was only Brasidas and his two hostages.

  "You can have me," Demosthenes returned resolutely. "For execution. Just let them go."

  "That is not the trade at hand."

  "The body you want, too! Have it!"

  Demosthenes finally cast off the reassuring hand of Alkibiades when the latter began to utter a syllable of protest. Brasidas fell silent, and for an instant Demosthenes let himself hope that this new exchange was being considered.

  That hope was dashed when Brasidas only repeated, "Lay down your arms and throw open your gates."

  "I cannot give that order! These men would not listen to me if I did. I lead here only by consent. Take me, and take the body. That is all I can give!"

  Brasidas drew the sword from his hip and stepped forward. Demosthenes lunged instinctively, as if he could step off the high wall and stay the Spartiate's arm. But he could not. He was helpless, moreso than ever he had been. All his effort won him was a sharp impact on his hips where they struck the edge of a battlement.

  Drawing up behind the bound prisoners, Brasidas poised his blade in the air above Eurydike's head.

  "I am not without mercy," he said. "I shall kill only one of them. But which? Most Athenians love their whores more than their wives, I am told. But not you, I think. Am I right?" His sword point drifted right to hang over the bowed head of Laonome. "She has your spawn in her bowels. An heir, if you're lucky, since you will soon be in need of one." The blade slipped lower, stopping alongside Laonome's round belly. "Or maybe I'll just relieve her of the burden."

  "Let her go!"

  Even as Demosthenes cried out, a Thracian storm knocked Brasidas back a step. Eurydike, whirling, aimed the hooked, claw-like fingers of her bound hands at the Spartiate's throat. Brasidas easily dodged the attack, and a second later the threat was nullified by a second Equal whose thick arms yanked hard on the rope fastened to Eurydike's neck. Her back arched unnaturally, her legs flew out from under her, and she slammed into the earth. Brasidas came forward, laughing, and he loomed over her, putting the point of his sword to her cheek.

  A pace away, Laonome raised her eyes skyward. She sobbed, and her imperfect lips moved in inaudible prayer.

  "Goodbye, Little Red."

  The latter, a pained whisper, came from Alkibiades, who like Demosthenes knew precisely what Eurydike had hoped to gain by her rash action. She had suffered no illusion of being able to kill Brasidas, but rather only hoped to make herself the one he chose to murder.

  Yet Brasidas's hovering sword did not cut.

  "Styphon!" the polemarch barked, laughing. Only then did Demosthenes realize that one of the party's spear-wielding Equals was Styphon. His face had been averted as though in disapproval. "Do you have any use for this little beast?"

  "No, polemarch," Styphon answered stiffly.

  Heedless of the negative, Brasidas wrenched Eurydike's rope lead from its holder and thrust it at Styphon. "Take her anyway. Enjoy her. Tame her if you can, kill her if you must."

  Obediently Styphon accepted the rope, and Brasidas set his now-free hand on Laonome's neck. She tried and failed to jerk her head away.

  "Will none of you raise a hand to stop him!" Demosthenes cried desperately over the battlements at Brasidas's entourage. "What has become of Sparta's honor!"

  "You can stop me yourself," Brasidas shot back. He spared not even a sidelong glance to search for signs of mutiny among his men.

  Coming up behind Laonome, Brasidas yanked her body in close to his. His hand found her breast and squeezed. Laonome tried futilely to stop him with her bound hands, but her struggle ceased when the edge of a short sword grazed the soft underside of her chin.

  "What say you, Athenian?"

  "I say why kill her when you can kill me instead!" Demosthenes' answer was earnest and given without hesitation. "Why cut a woman's throat when you can cut your enemy's? She is no threat, but my death means–"

  Brasidas's sword arm slid sideward. Blood gushed around his blade and down over Laonome's dress. Her bulbous form slumped heavily into the dirt, spindly limbs flopping lifelessly.

  A raw, piercing sound filled the sky over Dekelea, resounding in the space between Demosthenes' ears. Only minutes later, with cold stone under him, abrading his skin as he struggled to escape the tangle of men's limbs fighting to restrain him, did he realize that the source of the persistent sound was his own throat.

  Silencing the cry, he broke from the restraining arms and threw himself against the battlements.

  "BRASIDAS!" he roared. "Hear me, murderer, and know this! From this day, I have but one purpose. I will kill Spartans until it scarcely seems worthwhile to lift my arm to slay another! And only then, when your wretched kind is all but extinct, will you kneel before me and become the last! This I swear by every dark god that lurks in the earth! Do you hear me, Brasidas! You have doomed your city!"

  Whirling, Demosthenes did not watch or listen for Brasidas to reappear and make reply. He strode off, shoving men from his path and descended the stair from the battlements into Dekelea with but one destination in mind.

  On his heels, Alkibiades grabbed his arm. "Demosthenes!"

  He ripped his arm from the youth's grasp. "Take command," he bid him.

  "No." Alkibiades grabbed him again, with both arms, forcing Demosthenes to a halt. "You are not thinking clearly. I know that you–"

  "You know nothing!" Demosthenes broke loose once more and resumed his march. Alkibiades trailed after. "Thalassia lied to you. Before she came, you were fated to be remembered forever, for both good deeds and bad. You want the chance to make it so again? It is yours. Embrace it. As for me, I have never been more clear of purpose."

  "Lied...?" Alkibiades echoed dully. His steps slowed, and he ceased his pursuit through the dirt streets of the mountain village. "What will you do?" he shouted at Demosthenes' back, to no reply.

  Hardly a minute's walk brought Demosthenes to the shed housing Thalassia's corpse. Drawing his sword, he sliced the thick rope holding it shut, and he entered. The small room, lit by shafts of light that seeped through the wall boards, did not smell of death but rather of dirt and olive oil and musty wood. Thalassia's mutilated body lay on the earthen floor of this, her mausoleum, shrouded in a white cloth that was pink in spots where it had soaked through. Kneeling, Demosthenes peeled back her shroud. In the space around her eye, the lines of her Mark seemed to eat the light, as did the great, gaping wound between chin and shoulder that had nearly severed her head. Bridging the gap was the thick single braid, deliberately placed, which came up from behind her head to cross her collarbone and end near her heart.

  Andrea had cleaned and anointed the corpse, but there was not much anyone could do to make the star-girl look whole again. She made a grisly sight: head hanging on by a shred of flesh, one arm a dark red stump, and much of her formerly smooth skin sliced to ribbons, such that little skin even was visible. Her appearance was little changed since her death three days prior, but that in itself offered hope, for her body had not gone the way of normal corpses, growing pale and stiff. But for her horrific wounds–which had begun to ooze a sort of clear liquid–Thalassia might have been merely asleep. She was healing, but her recovery would clearly be slow, likely much longer than Dekelea could hope to hold out in a siege.

  Thalassia's face was largely intact, and it was to this that Demosthenes addressed his words, delivered as he lay down beside her on the dirt floor.

  "You are a weapon," he said, "unlike any this world has known. You chose me to wield you in my war, as you would wield me in yours. Exairetos, you called me once in my dreams. Chosen One. But I was hes
itant. I wielded you badly. No man possessed of a heart should ever wish to wield to its full potential a weapon such as you are. But now... now, I have no heart. Laonome–" His throat clenched around the name, as if to squeeze her tight in denial of her absence. "Laonome has taken it with her to Hades. Unburdened of it, I can do what must be done."

  He raised a hand and touched Thalassia's cheek, which was not warm, but neither as chill as a corpse's should be. His finger traced the sinuous, black curves of her Mark. "When you rise again, we shall wield each other and each take our righteous vengeance. We shall become that terrible, beautiful, destructive force of which you spoke on the day you died. I will rip out Brasidas's heart, just as he did mine, and squeeze the blood down the throats of Sparta's ephors. I will see his unburied corpse fed to dogs while his restless shade is raped by Furies. You will strip the meat from Eden's bones and smash her every Seed. Sparta shall be erased from this world, and after it Roma, that future generations will not live under her yoke. And then..." He exhaled through tightly clenched teeth. "And then I shall let myself sink into Hades and rest with Laonome."

  He raised himself from the floor and set to preparing for the chosen course of his fate. Some time later, he exited the shed, stripped of the black scale armor with its patch of spun bronze that had saved his life at Amphipolis. His sword remained belted at his hip, and a coil of rope was slung over his shoulder. He dragged behind him Thalassia's body, which he had wrapped tightly in canvas and strapped to a makeshift bier. He walked west with this burden, and his passage did not go unnoticed; word began to spread, mostly in whispers, of poor, bereaved Demosthenes' emergence. It must eventually have reached Alkibiades, perhaps on the new commander's own instruction, for he came running up, dressed in his glittering armor, just as Demosthenes reached Dekelea's western wall.

  "Where are you headed, my friend?" Alkibiades asked, his voice filled with condescension. "I fear you may plan something rash."

  "How often has someone said exactly those words to you?" Demosthenes returned, without halting.

  "Quite often," the youth conceded. "Usually they are right."

  Reaching the base of a bastion, Demosthenes entered and began dragging Thalassia's bier up the stairs.

  "You aren't leaving town, are you?"

  "Yes. Try to stop me, and I will kill you."

  "If you do, the Spartans will kill you."

  "I will get past them."

  Alkibiades took the dragging end of Thalassia's bier and lifted it, helping to carry her up the stairs. "And what can you accomplish?" he asked. "There are two of you, and one is dead."

  "Two are dead," Demosthenes corrected. "And she is Athens' only hope of regaining freedom. She must not fall into Spartan hands. It is too dangerous to keep her here."

  At the top of the wall, they lay down Thalassia's body. "I see the folly of arguing with you at present," Alkibiades conceded. "Where will you go?"

  Demosthenes sank to the rough surface of the liquid stone, his back against a battlement. "Even if I knew, I would not say," Demosthenes answered. "When and if this town falls, you could be made to talk."

  Or you might elect to, he declined to add.

  "Very well," Alkibiades said glumly. "I suppose all that remains to say is, 'May Zeus protect you, my good friend.'"

  "And you," Demosthenes responded hollowly.

  With a smile full of pity, Alkibiades, in his shining armor inlaid with ivory and gold, vanished down the stair to resume command of the tattered remnants of Athens' army. Demosthenes sat on the wall for hours, now and then choking on tears but mostly only staring blankly, waiting for full darkness to descend, that he might more safely make his escape.

  When it came, he secured his rope to a battlement, tied the other end to Thalassia's bier and lowered her down. Then he descended the rope himself, untied the bier and began dragging it west at a run over the rocky ground, making for the thickest part of the wood that surrounded mountainous Dekelea. The invading army would soon fully invest this countryside, dig an encircling ditch, and put the town fully under siege. But Brasidas had only arrived today, and so, apart from a small Spartan patrol that forced him briefly into hiding, Demosthenes found his passage unopposed. He reached the woods and continued into the mountains, into hiding, bearing behind him the weapon with which he intended to achieve nothing less than the total annihilation of the man and city which had stripped him of all in his life that had been good. Although Demosthenes of Athens was dead, he walked on, while from the distance, soaring over the battlements of a doomed mountain refuge, came the raised voices of Spartans singing hymns to victory.

  END

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  The story continues in SPARTAN BEAST.

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Sincere thanks for reading Athenian Steel. I am an independent author with no professional marketing wizards working to convince people to read my books. Therefore, if you enjoyed this book and would like to see many sequels, please consider returning to its product page on Amazon (link below) or other store from which you downloaded this book and sparing just a few moments to leave a positive review. It’s the best marketing possible, and it’s priceless. Thanks again, and happy reading.

  –PK Lentz

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  A SAMPLE OF

  THE PATH OF RAVENS

  (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1)

  1. Abyss

  With the Great Host of Asgard I stand, ready for battle. To my left and right are peerless Einherjar, mighty Valkyriar, and every man and woman of the Aesir and Vanir capable of wielding ax, spear, or sword. Leading us is Tyr, son of the All-Father Odinn. Two more Odinnsons stand among us. A fourth has fallen already to our innumerable, world-devouring foe.

  It will devour this world next, should our Host fail. We know not from whence our enemy came. It knows no reason, no purpose but the annihilation of life, and its onslaught has made allies of the bitterest foes. Within the ranks of the Great Host this day are towering frost giants and the undead thralls of the exiled sorceress Hel, forces more accustomed to challenging Odinn's rule than heeding it. My own people stand with the Host, too, wanderers between worlds, mistrusted Interlopers in these eight realms. Of all who were summoned this day, only the fighters of Svartalfheim have declined to take the field. The sons of Odinn have sworn that once the threat is past, they shall be made to pay for their refusal.

  If the threat passes, and if any sons of Odinn survive it. If Odinn himself survives. Those things are hardly certain. For I have drunk of the Well of Mimir, and its waters granted me four visions of the future. One thus far has come to pass. Three remain. The worst of them.

  It was not always thus. I was not always sworn to serve Odinn and Asgard. A short while ago, I had not yet heard of Baldr or Tyr, of Freya or Loki, for I was not born of their folk, the Aesir and the Vanir. Two lives have I lived, in two worlds. My second life has brought me here, to a battle which may be the last this world ever knows, its Ragnarok.

  It was a short while ago, but seems an age, that I had sight in both of my eyes. I did not know at the time of my second birth in a place called Hades that my name was Thamoth. I had no name then, no past, no inkling of who I was or what path I would tread.

  ***

  My first breath sends fire down my veins. Muscles tighten inside the limbs of a body I did not know until this moment that I possessed. The pain drags me up from an abyss of nothingness into—what?

  I know not.

  Pain fades, body remains. Owning flesh is familiar, yet there is something alien about the arms and legs and head that seem not to have been mine until mere heartbeats ago.

  Mind is just as new as body. But I do have thoughts, and I sense that I am not new to thinking. I just have not done it lately. Long ago, perhaps, before—

  Sleep? Oblivion? Something must lie beyond that abyss from which I came. But my freshly functioning mind cannot delve deeply enough to retrieve
from it so much as a broken shard of memory.

  I know I must have a name, but it is lost somewhere in that pit from which I came.

  I know I must have a home, but I cannot think what it is called or what it looks like.

  I have a mouth. Warm, heavy breaths rush past its dry lower lip. If I tried, I think I could speak. I know words.

  One stands out from all others. Wellspring.

  It causes my newly started heart to skip a beat, though I cannot guess why. Is this my first memory?

  The other words which fill my head are different somehow. Their forms, their sounds, are alien, yet I grasp their meanings anyway. A vague sense tells me that these other words did not arise with me from the abyss. Here, at the surface, wherever here is, the words of an unfamiliar language waited, embedded in the tongue that goes with these unknown limbs, this flesh and blood and bone and breath that are mine and yet not mine.

  I have eyes. I open them.

  2. Cave

  The red surface before me teems with dark, flitting shapes. I lie on my back, and the shapes are shadows set to dancing by the flickering red light cast on an irregular surface. Rock. I remember that I have a head and that heads are attached to necks which can be turned left and right. I employ that function to take in more of this place where my body finds itself.

  I am not alone. Just beyond what I may now conceive as arm's reach, I see another man. The harsh red glare lights his profile as he sleeps serenely with arms by his sides. On my other side the same sight is repeated. All around me lie the dark, still forms of men, all similarly dressed, with arms and legs bare and torsos covered by dark armor, feet clad in high-laced sandals.

  I do not know my name or where I have come from, but I gather based on their garb that these men are warriors. Reason, which I also find I possess, tells me that if I have awakened among warriors, I must likewise be one. Such conjecture fails to ring either true or false. I do not know myself.