“Besides, Barsine isn’t really a bitch,” said Matthias.
“Maybe she isn’t on her good days.” Eurydice shrugged. “She comes across a little snotty on paper though. Whatever. I suppose it’s better than cooling my heels here.” She started picking out some of the scrolls, tossing them into a satchel. Then she scooped up the gears and threw them in as well. After which she turned to the desk and began rummaging through it.
“We don’t have all night,” said Matthias.
“I don’t need all night,” snarled Eurydice. “Just another few minutes.”
“You won’t even get that,” said a voice. They all whirled as part of the wall slid away to reveal a hidden corridor. Several Athenian archers stood in that doorway, their bows trained on the three who stood within. A weaselly looking captain stood beside them, laughing.
“And here I was thinking it was going to be a slow night,” he said.
“Demetrius,” said Eurydice. “You bastard.”
“I won’t deny that,” said the captain.
“You’ve been spying on me the whole time I’ve been here.”
Demetrius smiled. “One peephole and one false door: I’m surprised it took a clever girl like you so long to figure that out.”
“Fuck me,” snarled Eurydice.
“You know how much I’d love to. Now are your would-be liberators going to drop their weapons or am I going to have my men use theirs?”
Lugorix had already calculated the distances and vectors. They’d been caught on the far side of the room. He knew he could down at least one of them by hurling Skullseeker but the rest would then take him and Matthias out with a burst of bolts. He bent down and put the axe on the floor. Letting go of it felt like cutting off his own limb. Matthas had already done the same with his sword.
“A wise choice,” said Demetrius. “Now let’s wake up Cleon. I love it when he’s in a bad mood.”
Cleon had the look of a man who was irritable even under the best of circumstances. And being woken up in the middle of the night clearly didn’t qualify. The Viceroy of Syracuse, the Exalted Ambassador of the People of Athens, and the Guardian of the Western Ocean had a host of other impressive titles, all of it in mockery of his actual appearance: he was short and old and fat, with rheumy eyes that nonetheless gleamed with animal cunning. He stood in his audience chamber, still clad in his sleeping gown, his bodyguards flanking him while he inspected the results of the abortive raid on the Ortygia. The weapons of the intruders had been stacked at his feet, and Lugorix and Matthias had been corralled off to one side, bows pointed at their backs while Demetrius the guard captain looked on, a self-satisfied smile plastered on his face. Eurydice stood in front of Cleon, her arms crossed.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked her.
“I wasn’t,” she replied, her voice dripping with contempt. “These two showed up on my door and said let’s go—what was I supposed to do?”
“Not try to escape.”
“Well, that’s an interesting choice of words, Cleon. ‘Escape.’ And all this while you’ve been calling me a guest.”
“Save your word games for someone with the time to tolerate them.” Cleon stalked over to Matthis and Lugorix. “So… the Greek traitor and the Gaulish barbarian have come to Syracuse.”
That wasn’t quite what they’d been expecting him to say. “You know who we are?” asked Matthias.
“Scum,” said Cleon. “That’s what you are. But yes, I know what your game is. Working for a certain Persian witch. How much did she pay you to break into my palace?”
“Two talents,” said Matthias. Lugorix’s jaw dropped; it was all he could do not to punch his friend right there and then. Matthias caught his look and tried to backtrack. “Um…though it’s not like she actually paid us. She just promised us that once we’d—”
Cleon laughed. “It’s a scant fraction of what Aristotle’s work is worth.” He thought for a moment. “Does she know that the great man is dead?”
“No one knows,” hissed Eurydice. “You’ve kept it secret rather than admit to the world that you no longer have—”
“Be quiet,” said Cleon. Then, to Matthias: “Does she know?”
Matthias shrugged. “She told us nothing about that,” he said.
“So you thought you’d leave here with his daughter instead?”
“Better than doing it empty-handed.”
“You should never have come at all.”
“How do you know who hired us anyway?” asked Lugorix.
Cleon looked up at the taller man, laughed scornfully. “So the barbarian knows how to speak Greek. Wonder of wonders—”
“You had spies in the house of Demosthenes,” said Lugorix. “Didn’t you?”
“What makes you say that?” asked Cleon.
“Most likely way for you to know so much about us,” said Lugorix. “Or you interrogated his surviving servants.”
“We took what steps we needed to. Demosthenes was a man who craved power. He couldn’t stand to be without it. So he conducted his very own foreign relations. And fell prey to the coils of this Persian witch. All of which is playing into Alexander’s hands.” Cleon gestured at one of the open windows. “He’s out there even now, you know. Coming west with an army so large it beggars description. And you two are his unwitting dupes.”
“Barsine hates Alexander,” said Matthias. She’s working day and night to bring him down.”
“She’s working for him, you moron.”
“Alexander conquered Persia! So why would Barsine—”
“Zeus almighty! Do you realize how many Persians are now working for Alexander? Do you realize who sits on the throne of Persia? Who serves in Persia’s armies? Troops who accept the new order, that’s who! Troops in the pay of Macedonia!”
“Barsine is different,” said Matthias.
“Barsine is the worst of all,” said Cleon.
“How can you say that?”
“Because she was fucking Alexander!”
Matthias lunged forward at Cleon, only to be restrained by the viceroy’s bodyguards. Cleon laughed. “My poor little lovestruck soldier. Alexander has so many ways of conquering his foe. And Barsine fell for the oldest one of all. He met her in Persepolis and seduced her in Babylon and she was loving every moment of it. And then he sent her out into the world to do his bidding and now you’re doing hers. Is this really coming as a surprise?”
“May you rot in Hades,” snarled Matthias.
“You’re the one who’s going to do that,” said Cleon. “For slaying the soldiers of Athens. For lifting your hand against her viceroy. For stealing her property—”
“Oh, so now I’m property?” said Eurydice.
“Now you’re going to shut the fuck up,” said Cleon. He turned to his bodyguards. “Take Eurydice back to her room and take this man”—he nodded toward Matthias—“to the cells until I can think of a punishment fit for the likes of him.”
“What about the Gaul?” asked one of the archers.
“A quick death,” said Cleon. “Execute him.”
The archer drew back his bow; Lugorix tensed himself to lunge one way or another. He knew he was done for, but he was damned if he was going to make this easy. If he could beat the first round of bolts, he might be able to get in among the archers and then people beside himself would die.
But all of a sudden people were dying all around him.
Afterward, Lugorix and Matthias would try to piece together what had happened—would argue over the precise sequence of events. They both agreed that something burning had shot through the window and detonated behind the bodyguards, knocking some onto the floor and setting some of them on fire. After that it got hard to see; Lugorix thought that was because everybody was still partially blinded by the light of the explosions, but Matthias swore that a strange mist was getting into everybody’s eyes—something that was really more like gas than smoke and that added to the confusion by dint of its peculiar smell.
But Lugorix said that was really the stench of burning bodies—and there were certainly enough of those, as absolute pandemonium gripped the room.
Lugorix was intent on taking advantage of it. He stormed forward, grabbed an archer just as that man fired—the arrow sailed into the back of one of the man’s comrades even as Lugorix grabbed his victim’s neck and twisted. There was a snapping noise and Lugorix threw aside the grostesquely flopping body, ducked down onto the floor himself. Getting low seemed like the best way to live longer. He couldn’t see a thing, but arrows were flying everywhere—he could hear them whirring past him, could hear the thwack! noise as they smacked into flesh. Lugorix crawled forward over a couple of bodies—his hands grasped along the floor.
And closed around that oh-so-familiar axe.
“Skullseeker,” he muttered like he was talking to a lover. No longer would he skulk like a dog. He got to his feet and strode forward—straight into an Athenian. This close Lugorix had no problem seeing him—and cleaving him in two with a single sweep of the axe as he stormed past him and reached the wall. Turning alongside it, he made his way toward what he hoped was the door.
It wasn’t. It was the window. From it he could see the battlements and lower towers of the Ortygia. Guards were already running along those battlements, sounding the alarm. Beyond them was the sprawl of Syracuse. Fires had broken out in several places in the city. Lugorix drew in a deep breath of air—it was getting hard to breath in that room—and then drew his head back in and continued fumbling his way along the wall. In short order he reached the door. A man was dimly visible in that doorway, though Lugorix was too blinded to see his face. But he wearing an Athenian uniform. The Gaul drew his axe back.
And stopped as the man turned around.
It was Matthias. He had an Athenian’s sword in one hand, Eurydice’s hand in the other.
“You moved fast,” said Lugorix. Matthias grinned like the cat that ate the canary.
“How’d you get in here in the first place?” asked Eurydice.
“Through the water gate.”
“That’ll be totally blocked off by now.” She thought a moment. “Act like you two are escorting me.” Then she let go of Matthias’ hand, led both him and Lugorix down the corridor with a purposefulness that made Lugorix wonder who was rescuing who. She clearly knew the palace’s layout. She took them through a series of side-corridors, back-passages and storage rooms that were clearly off the main avenues of traffic. Occasionally they hung back at intersections while squads of guards rushed past them. Shouts and orders echoed all around. The fortress was in a state of considerable upheaval. And the situation back at Cleon’s chamber seemed to be the least of it. There seemed to be a major incident going on at the gates to the fortress. Lugorix reckoned that Agathocles was the man behind that. Perhaps it was a diversion. Or perhaps they were the diversion. They were passing through a weapons-storage room when—
“There,” said Eurydice.
“What?” asked Lugorix.
“That’s how I’m leaving,” she said, pointing at an oxybeles—a large crossbow, mounted on a wheeled platform.
“You want us to fire you into the city?” asked Matthias.
Eurydice didn’t bother to answer. She bent down, squeezed herself under the platform, clung onto it. She was all but invisible—only her foot stuck out.
“Now let’s hit the front door,” she said.
Lugorix and Mathias looked at each other, shrugged—began pushing the oxybeles out of the room, heading in the direction where the noise of soldiers shouting was loudest. The oxybeles attracted much more attention than Eurydice had. But it was far more likely to be allowed out of the fortress than she was. One more ramp took them into a courtyard that bordered the main gatehouse. The gate itself was open. Lugorix and Matthias pushed the oxybeles through it—
“Yikes,” said Matthias.
Lugorix knew the feeling. It was only now that he could see just how narrow the peninsula connecting the fortress to the city was. It was more of a bridge, really—a winding ramp that sloped steeply downhill, battlements on either side, another gatehouse at the bottom, at the entrance to the city. Soldiers were moving at speed down the ramp.
“Let’s do this,” said Matthias. He started pushing the oxybeles onto the ramp. The apparatus immediately began rolling away from him. Lugorix dashed past it, stepped in front of it before it could gain much speed. His eyes met those of Matthias.
“Idiot,” he said.
“How was I to know it was going to start rolling so quick?” protested the Greek.
“By thinking,” said a voice from under the oxybeles.
Lugorix started walking down the ramp, letting the oxybeles press against his back to keep it from sliding past him. Matthias grasped its rear—tugged on the platform to lessen the load. But Lugorix was doing most of the work. As he walked the oxybeles carefully forward, he was scanning the city toward which they were descending. Many of the buildings along the dockside had now caught fire; it looked like whatever civil disturbance was going on was largely concentrated in the districts nearest the harbor. Which would make sense if the goal was to funnel troops out of the Ortygia and into the city and in so doing allow the three within to escape. But what Lugorix hadn’t expected was the scale of what was taking place.
“You there,” said a voice—stentorian, commanding. It was coming from the gatehouse they’d just left. A sergeant-at-arms stood there. Lugorix half-turned—continued to walk the oxybeles down the ramp as he responded.
“Yes?”
“Where do you think you’re going with that?”
“Our lord Cleon wants more firepower to deal with the rabble.”
“Does he really?” said another voice. Its owner stepped out of the shadows behind the sergeant-at-arms. It was Demetrius, the guard captain. Beside him was Cleon, looking seriously pissed.
“Shit,” said Matthias. He leapt onto the oxybeles-platform, swiveled the oxybeles itself around so that it pointed directly at Cleon—pulled a trigger that sliced through a rope, unleashing the compressed energy of the weapon. There was an enormous twanging noise as a giant bolt shot from the oxybeles. Cleon was already hurling himself aside with a speed that belied his girth, but Demetrius wasn’t so quick. The bolt lifted him off his feet, hurled him backward. He never made a sound. But the soldiers who were rushing up behind him did. They swarmed down toward the oxybeles screaming bloodlust.
“Time to go,” said Lugorix. He scrambled around behind the oxybeles and gave it a hard shove as it began rolling down the ramp unchecked. Then he gripped the back of it, running behind it, giving it some more momentum before leaping on. He steadied himself on the rear, grasped the edge of the platform, looked back up at Cleon. The Exalted Ambassador of the People of Athens was on his feet again, entirely beside himself with rage. He screamed curses and insults as his soldiers ran after the accelerating oxybeles-platform. But they were quickly left behind as the contraption careened down the ramp. Lugorix grinned.
And then a hand appeared right in front of him. He grasped it, helped its owner onto the platform.
“I figure the time to keep a low profile’s over,” said Eurydice.
Lugorix nodded. The wind tugged at his hair. They were going faster than any horse could carry them, and they were still gaining velocity. Eurydice took in the steepness of the ramp, ran her eyes along its sinuous length.
“You know,” she said, “this was a really stupid move.”
“You’re the one who wanted to use this thing,” said Matthias.
“Not in this fashion.”
“Small comfort now,” shot back Matthias.
“How about both of you shut up,” said Lugorix.
The planks holding the accelerating platform together were starting to creak alarmingly. Soldiers leapt out of the way to avoid getting run over. Ahead of them the ramp sloped to the right, curving down toward the lower gatehouse.
“We need to throw our weight to the right,” snarl
ed Eurydice. “Now.”
The three of them did just that. Lugorix swung himself as far off the right-hand side as he could, holding onto the oxybeles itself, feeling the platform tilt to the point where it seemed it was about to tip altogether. The platform scraped against the left-hand wall, ripped along it, careened down what remained of the ramp and shot through the lower gatehouse. Stunned soldiers stared as it whipped past, into the streets of Syracuse. Which were far too narrow and winding to allow them to slow down. Ahead of them was a nasty-looking wall.
“Hang on,” said Eurydice.
“Oh shit,” said Matthias.
The crash that followed was as loud as it was spectacular.
Chapter Twelve
Back from black: Lugorix swam slowly upward through the layers of awareness. He was dimly aware of pain in his head, of some kind of overwhelming heat that waxed and waned at odd intervals. Shadows hovered over him. Someone was mopping his brow, telling him to rest. But the resting had gone on for eons. Then at last light flickered above him, shimmering through all that dark. Gradually more sounds began to suffuse his brain. Chief among those noises was a hammering. It got louder. And louder. And then—
“He’s awake,” said a voice.
Lugorix wasn’t so sure about that. He opened his eyes, but all he could see was a blurry haze.
“Can you hear me?” said the voice.
“Yes,” said Lugorix.
“Turn your head.”
Lugorix did.
“Move your left foot.”
Lugorix did. Several more instructions followed. A hand grasped his wrist, checked his pulse. A light weight fell on each of his knees, checking his reflexes.
“He possesses full mobility,” said the voice.
“Of course I do,” said Lugorix.
“Then I shall leave you, my lady.”
“I’m not a lady,” replied Lugorix.
“That’d be me,” said Barsine.
Lugorix focused on the shadowy form that was sitting on the edge of the bed. He squinted as that form resolved itself into the features of the Persian noblewoman. He realized he’d been dreaming about her. He wondered if this was a dream too.
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