by Gary Corby
Anaxinos was somewhere in this disaster, but I didn’t know where, and if he was calling any orders then no one could hear him. I followed the example of Semnos. I jumped up to join Apollo on his plinth and I bellowed, “People of Delos! Women and old men to go north with Damon. Follow Damon. Go north. Now!”
I reasoned that the more people who were with Damon, the safer my wife would be. Besides, it was the right thing to do.
To my surprise, it worked. The villagers and the older of the priests immediately began to stream north. I could see their heads swivel as they looked for the village chief. Many couldn’t see him in the crush. But they knew the way to go and they followed it.
“You can trust me, Nico.”
My mother had Diotima by one arm. Meren the murderess had her by the other arm.
Diotima clutched my hand. “Nico, be careful.”
“You’re about to give birth, and you’re telling me that?”
“My baby’s going to have a father.”
“A mother, too.”
I kissed her. She kissed me. That was all we had time for before we had to go our separate ways.
I had no choice but to leave my detective wife in the midst of childbirth, in the hands of the two murderers she was about to denounce, while I went to retrieve a key that might very well get me killed.
All in all, I had had better days. I would have to hope that I lived long enough to see my child. I would have to hope Diotima lived long enough to give birth. I would have to hope my wife survived the birth. I would have to pray that our child lived.
I had all these depressing thoughts as I worked my way around the fight, running where I could behind the backs of the combatants, dodging swinging swords, thrusting spears, and the occasional sling bullet. From where I stood, all I could see were the backs of struggling men. The sailors of Paralos were so far into the action that I could barely see them at all. I could hear shouts though, and screams as men were wounded or died.
I guessed that there were three shiploads of attackers, matching the Phoenicians we had seen at sea. That suggested three hundred attackers on the ground here, give or take, assuming their commander had had the sense to leave a strong force behind to secure his ships.
Pericles had the trierarchs lined up and ready to attack. It would be fifty men against three hundred, and those fifty with no armor and only short swords. Luckily Pericles knew the ground, having been to Delos many times before.
I ran up to our Pericles, who was in the midst of calling orders.
“I have to secure the treasury door,” I told him. I avoided telling him why.
“That’s your problem,” Pericles said. “I’m taking these men to flank them on the left.”
“You don’t want to ring the treasury?” I said, surprised.
“No. That would be static defense with no cover. Outnumbered as we are, we’d die quickly. We must remain alive with maneuver to give the men from the ships time to arrive. If you need to secure that door, go quickly. The enemy will soon have the temple enveloped. They’ll start taking boxes.”
I nodded and ran. Pericles shouted to the trierarchs to march left.
Behind the trierarchs, the younger priests, and the middle-aged ones, and those of the village men in good shape stood in an awkward line, with grim expressions. They knew they wouldn’t last more than a moment against the professional soldiers of the Persian Empire. If the raiders broke past the navy men then it would mean their deaths, but they would not give up the Sacred Isle without a fight.
A hand clapped me on the back. I turned in surprise. It was Philipos.
“I’m the military man here,” he said.
I wasn’t going to argue with that.
“What’s our objective?” he asked.
“The Porinos Naos. I blundered, Philipos, I left the key in there.”
Suddenly I felt like the apprentice.
“Don’t worry, Nico, I’ll get you there.”
I chose the two priests of the nearby group that seemed least afraid. “You, and you,” I pointed at them. “Come with me.”
“Why should we?” the younger of the two demanded aggressively. Apparently I had chosen a stupid priest.
“Because you can stand there doing nothing useful, or you can help save your sanctuary,” Philipos told him. The older man gave the younger a nudge. The young priest nodded.
The priests and I followed Philipos, who strode purposefully across the battlefield. “Do you see the steps to the Porinos Naos?” he asked them.
“No,” they said in unison.
“Neither can I,” he said. “But they’re through that cluster of men there.”
“Yes. Of course,” the older priest said.
“We’re going straight there. Running.”
“Through the fighting?” the older man asked in dismay.
Philipos said confidently, “If you don’t look at the enemy, and you don’t threaten them, they won’t touch you. I promise. I’ve been in lots of battles, and a man in combat only cares about the men who can hurt him. Those Phoenicians and their Persian overlords have Athenian sailors with knives to worry about. They’ll think you’re frightened priests running away in a panic, you see?”
They looked dubious.
“Feel free to scream a little as you run through, if you like,” I added helpfully.
What I didn’t tell them was that I thought we’d be lucky if any of us made it.
“Oh, and another thing,” I said. “If you make it through and I don’t, could you please pull the key from the temple door and run away with it? Thanks.”
The priests nodded.
Philipos squared his shoulders and seemed to stand taller. “Are we ready? One, two, three, go!”
We ran.
Acting the part of a terrified man was quite easy. I reached the back of our line and actually elbowed one of our men out of the way. At a party it would have been rude, in a mêlée it was suicidal. I came face to face with a Phoenician with a deep black beard, dark olive skin, ringleted hair, and a big sword edged with blood that he held aloft in his right hand.
I stared at the Phoenician and held up my hands in surrender. He stared at me in surprise. I kicked him in the nuts.
His nuts were armored. There was some sort of bronze plate beneath his tunic. Pain shot up my leg. I’d kicked him with the same foot that I’d hurt when I walked into the wall, on the night Geros died.
All that saved me was that the man’s armor had dug into his groin, doing sufficient damage that he took a step back. I swore, favoring my good foot. He raised his sword to drive it into me, but the man I’d elbowed had recovered his balance and drove his dagger into the back of the man who was about to stab me.
I didn’t wait to see him fall. I took two steps forward and tripped over a body sprawled upon the dirt. I skidded in his large pool of blood. The dead man must have been killed by one of the sailors from Paralos, because I came eye to eye with a throat that had been opened by something sharp. I could actually see the tubes inside.
I rolled over, only to see a soldier stand above me with a spear.
He drove it down at my neck.
I grabbed it with both hands—how I’ll never know—and struggled to keep it from entering my throat. The sharp leaf-shaped point was so close that I went cross-eyed staring at it. I had the spear by two hands and tried to push up and sideways. But my killer was a big man and all he had to do was lean down hard. I was doomed.
Philipos flew from nowhere, straight into my attacker. They rolled sideways into the legs of two Persian troopers, both fully armored. Those two saw what was happening and drove downwards with their weapons. Other Persians saw Philipos stricken on the ground. There wasn’t a thing I could do. A dozen blades went into an honest man of Athens. The last word I heard him scream was, “Nico!”
Philipos was gone. I would have cried, but there was no time. Somehow I had to get myself out of here, surrounded as I was by the men who had killed him. Still lying flat on the ground, I pulled a leather helmet from the dead body of a Phoenician. I struggled with the straps, and it seemed to take forever. Then I knelt to lift the body of the helmet’s former owner over my shoulder. I stood with a heave and staggered toward the Persian rear.
“Wounded man!” I croaked in Persian, and the enemy soldiers in their back row looked at me, saw that I held one of their comrades, and to my relief they moved to let me past. The swathes of fresh blood covering the front of my tunic must have helped.
I made it to the steps of the Porinos Naos. There was the key, still sticking out of the key hole, and there was the enemy. Two of them—Persian by their appearance—were in the act of opening the door. They turned to see me as I laid down my load.
“Wounded man,” I said in Persian. These two Persians would probably take me for a Phoenician speaking their language. “Need help?”
“No.”
They turned back to their task of turning the key to raise the bar. I heard the now familiar clunk and the door swung open.
I knifed the first man from behind, in the right kidney, slit the throat of the second man before he could react, then returned to finish the first.
At that moment the two priests arrived—from the dirt on their hands and knees I guessed they had crawled all the way. They saw me, a figure in a Phoenician helmet and covered in blood, with fresh corpses at my feet, shrieked, and turned to run.
“It’s me!” I said in Greek. I had to take the chance. I removed the helmet so they could see my face. They looked nervously at the death around them, but they stayed.
“Right, men,” I said confidently. “I want you to go inside, throw down the bar, and then load as many of those treasure boxes as you can against the door on the inside.”
“Lock ourselves inside a small temple with a fortune in gold that’s being attacked by hundreds of men? Are you insane?” The younger priest’s intelligence hadn’t improved since he’d last spoken.
I said, “If you go in there and block the door, you might be the only ones still alive by tomorrow morning, and you will have saved for Hellas the treasury that will save our country. Does that seem like a good idea to you?”
They both nodded.
“Right. In you go.”
They jumped in, swung shut the door, and I heard the bar fall. I waited until I could hear boxes being pushed into position against the door. Those boxes were so heavy with metal that even a battering ram would have a sorry time trying to break in. For the first time I felt confident. Confident at least that even if every Athenian in the sanctuary grounds was killed, the men from the ships would still have time to get here and overpower the raiders.
I could have saved myself by going in with the priests, but I had something more important to do. I was on the wrong side of the battleground from my wife. I looked across the sea of struggling men.
The sailors from Paralos had taken fearful casualties. They had thrown themselves into the fight to buy time, armed only with their daggers, and they had paid the price.
Men were beginning to arrive up the path from where the Athenian fleet was beached. I felt a surge of relief. Each new arrival was armed with the boarding axe so beloved of navy men. Those axes wreaked terrible damage upon an unarmored man. I knew, having once fought with one myself. They would not do much against a fully armored hoplite, but these raiders from Phoenicea were all in light armor. The tide was turning our way.
I rolled over the dead man I had carried to the temple, and quickly unlaced the leather he wore. I put this on myself, and tied it loosely. Then I pulled the all-important key from the treasury door and shoved it beneath the armor. Now with a spear in my hand I took a last look at the treasury door, then strode north.
I went unmolested. I ran slightly east of north, trying to act like a soldier carrying a message, going deeper into their rear but thinking to round their flank to the outside and make my way north to find Diotima.
The route I needed took me further to the east than I guessed. It occurred to me that the raiders must have landed very close to Karnon’s house, where Marika and her two sons were. I hoped they were all right. Persians are not above slaughtering the innocent. I especially hoped that Karnon’s sons hadn’t taken it into their heads to charge at boatloads of landing enemy. If they were as brave as their father, they might have done that very thing. But Marika was a sensible woman; if she had a chance she would have bundled herself and her boys into a hiding place. At least, I had to hope so.
Pericles had made progress. The ad hoc unit of combined navy captains had descended upon the enemy from the direction I was running towards. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, then began a strong run.
I soon reached the edge of the battle. I came across an Athenian and a Persian locked together in a death struggle, rolling over and over on the hard ground. I left my spear in the back of the Persian and kept running, bursting through the line before anyone saw me coming.
This almost got me killed. A Hellene sword thrust at me, and only the leather I was wearing prevented me from taking a sword to the chest.
“Athenai! Athenai!” I screamed, and I tore off the helmet and threw it aside so my own people wouldn’t destroy me.
“Let him through!”
The command came from Pericles. I hadn’t noticed him until that moment.
I didn’t stop. I kept running. I passed by all the other treasury houses and the temples. I hurdled the low wall without pausing. I ran the path to the Lion Terrace.
By the time I got there I could barely breathe. I bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air.
The villagers who waited there, the women and the few children and the old people, watched me as if I might hurt them. But Moira came up to me.
“They’re by the lake,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
We hurried to the lake’s edge. There was no one there but Damon, looking very distressed.
“Nico,” he said.
“Where’s Diotima?” I cut in.
Damon pointed out over the water.
“She’s in the lake?”
“On the barge, Nico,” Damon said. “We had to get her off the island.”
“Why?”
“The proscription against giving birth,” he reminded me.
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I said, incredulously, “There are a hundred dead bodies back there in the sanctuary, and you’re worried about one tiny baby?”
“Not me,” he said. “Diotima. She insisted.”
That sounded like my wife. “She would,” I said morosely.
“I couldn’t let her go to the emergency eject system,” Damon said.
“No, of course not,” I agreed. The dinghy was on the other side of the island. Even to reach it would require getting past the raiders.
“There was no point carrying her to the Athenian triremes. All the sailors are in the battle.”
“They are now,” I agreed.
“That meant the only place not on the island that we could possibly reach was the lake, and there was the barge. It’s a nice, big platform.”
“But isn’t the lake part of the island?” I asked.
“A lake’s like a small sea, right?” Damon said, reasonably.
“I suppose . . .” I said dubiously.
“So if she’s on the barge, then she’s not on the island. That’s logic, right?” he said. “I rowed them there myself, Nico.” He put a consoling hand on my shoulder. “If the raiders reach us, it’s the safest possible place on Delos right now.”
That was a very good point. Damon had not known how the battle was going. If the raiders had come to the Terrace of the Lions, then those on the ground would have been i
n great danger, but a woman in the middle of the lake would have been left alone. Damon had done the right thing.
“Thank you, Damon.”
Then I heard it, a heartrending scream of pain.
I flinched. We all three stared at each other, Moira, Damon, and me. We were all thinking the same thing, but none willing to voice it.
“How long has she been screaming like that?” I asked.
Damon shrugged.
There was silence, for a long time, then another scream, longer and much worse than the first. I thought that nothing ever screamed like that except in the face of imminent death.
That was my wife who had screamed, and now she was silent. The silence was more unnerving than the screams. I willed her to scream again, so that I would know she was still alive. But there was nothing.
I walked out into the water. “Nico! What are you doing?” Damon said.
“I have to see what’s happening,” I told him.
“But she’s giving birth, man. That’s woman stuff.”
“I don’t care.”
I still wore the Phoenician armor. I unlaced it as I waded and dropped the leather in the water.
I began to swim when the water reached chest height.
A suspicious voice upon the barge called out, “Who is it?”
It was my mother who called. It was dark, and all they could see in the water was an approaching man.
I said, “It’s me, Mother.”
I hauled myself up onto the barge. Phaenarete simply stood there, shoulders drooped. She looked exhausted.
Meren was crouched at the other end, busy doing something I couldn’t see.
In the middle of the barge was a pallet made of old blankets, and clothing. The Hyperboreans had taken whatever they could find and then donated the clothes they were wearing to give Diotima a bed.
Diotima lay there. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful. She opened one weary eye, then the other.