by P. K. Lentz
He stopped short of promising repayment, for there could be no certainty he would ever see Phormion again. With a last embrace and good fortune wished both ways, the two visitors slipped over the wall into the night and set course for Athens' necropolis, the cemetery of Kerameikos on the city's outskirts.
They moved cautiously and kept once again in shadows. Minutes into their trek, at the end of a dark alley, Thalassia stopped abruptly, set her back to a wall, pulled Demosthenes' body and mouth in close to hers, wrapping a leg around him. A sidelong glance told him why: a club-wielding Scythian guard patrolled the dimly lamplit street ahead. Athens had long employed the foreigners as police so that they might remain non-partisan and never serve as the private army of some tyrant or oligarch. It only proved how well the arrangement worked that the Scythians continued to keep order under the pro-Spartan regime.
The guard who squinted in their direction saw as Thalassia intended: a street-walker grinding her groin against a client. Before resuming his patrol, he waved his club at them in a warning to finish and move along,.
While their faces were close, Thalassia whispered, “Phormion was lying when he said no one knows who Omega is.”
“Does he know?”
“I couldn't tell from what was said. But I suspect he's with the resistance in some capacity.”
As the Scythian turned a corner, Demosthenes pulled back from the unexpected close contact and observed to Thalassia before they bolted across the lit avenue, “That guard might have asked to see your street-walker's permit.”
“Fortunate for him that he decided not to.”
* * *
Stealing up to a grave stele in Kerameikos cemetery was unlike sneaking into his house, for a stone which stood barely the height of a man's knees, surrounded by others of its like, was a rather more difficult thing to approach undetected. A different strategy was required.
There was a watcher posted here, swiftly located by Thalassia: another false beggar seated near the cemetery gate. They approached the man swiftly from two sides, shadows emerging from the night to loom over him. He yelped before Thalassia ordered him to hush or die and dragged him to his feet. Pushing him up against the gate's stone pylon by his throat, she relieved him of two objects which Demosthenes discerned in the darkness as a dagger and a syrinx. The latter, presumably, served as a means of signaling his masters in the case of just such an emergency as he now faced.
Thalassia cast his weapon into the darkness and slammed the reed pipes against the stone, smashing them. She asked her terrified prisoner, “How much will they pay you if you spot Demosthenes and he is caught?”
“H-half a mina,” the informer rasped.
“Did you take the job for love of Sparta or of money?”
“Neither,” he choked, clutching at the immovable fingers on his throat. “I... seek only... not to starve.”
Thalassia released the man, and he slid heavily to the base of the pylon.
“Here is the one you await,” she said. “You will sit here with me while he visits the grave of his murdered wife, as is his right. Give me no reason to kill you, and when he is done, you can run and tell your masters that Demosthenes has come. They will fail to kill or capture him, but perhaps you'll get your reward anyway. Does that sound a fair deal to you, shit-weasel?”
The breathless informer could scarcely nod swiftly enough.
“Go,” Thalassia said next, gently, to Demosthenes. “Take as long as you need.”
In silence, he left Thalassia and her charge and made his way past half a hundred graves to one which was not yet grown over, its soft earth yielding underfoot as he knelt to touch the engraved marble. It was difficult to discern in the darkness, but a combination of touch and fain vision told him that the relief on the stele showed a seated woman with one small boy in her lap and another standing behind the chair.
The former figure, though it resembled her not at all and was not meant to, represented Laonome; the latter would be her two sons by her first, deceased husband. The meaning was that the three now were reunited in Haides.
He knew, and could feel with his hands, that below the relief was an inscription, but neither eyes nor fingertips were up to the task of reading it in the deep of night.
He set his fingers instead on the face of the graven woman meant to be Laonome.
“How I have missed you,” he said. “More than that, I miss what might have been. But I am no more the same man you knew. Part of him died when you did, and the rest... drowned. I have done things that would scarcely make you proud, and I shall do many more. I would tell you I intend to avenge you, and I will do that a thousandfold. I will make of Sparta a necropolis to dwarf this one. But not in your name, for I know you do not care. Even if you were in the arms of the gods, and not consigned to endless oblivion, you would not care for vengeance. You would only wish for me to be happy. Would that I could grant you that. But it will not happen. With luck, one day I shall be... satisfied. That is all.”
The words had poured from his tongue with hardly a thought. Now that they trickled to a stop, there were but two things left to say, and one act to complete.
“I love you,” he said to the stone profile which was not hers. “Goodbye, forever.”
Removing the carved dolphin from his chiton, he dug a small hole in the soft, cold earth which held Laonome, set the token inside, and covered it over.
Wanderers and fugitives could have no possessions, least of all sentimental ones.
Rising, he turned his back on the grave and moved at speed to rejoin Thalassia.
She dragged the informer to his feet, gave him a shove, and bade him, “Deliver your message.”
As he sped off into the night, rightly grateful to leave Karameikos with his life, Demosthenes said to Thalassia, “Please go to her grave and read it for me.”
With no hesitation, no word or look of complaint, she disappeared into the necropolis. Knowing she would have no trouble catching up, Demosthenes passed through the cemetery gate and started on the path for their next destination.
Hardly a minute later, she was a black presence at his side.
Quietly, as they crept, she spoke the words that had been chosen by either Phormion or the gravestone's sculptor: “I await having you by my side, husband, to comfort me. But please do not hurry, since where you are is the far better place.”
Demosthenes' eyes stung as they watered briefly before the night air dried them. He had never managed to recall Laonome's precise last words to him, so these words which had never passed her lips in life would have to do.
“Thank you,” he said to Thalassia, pausing beside her in a shadowy nook, their backs to a wall. “Now let us see to leaving this city bloodier than we found it.”
He shared a look with Thalassia, and found a starlit grin and eyes that hungered for slaughter.
* * *
10. Twenty-Four
It was deep in the night that they killed their first Spartans in the city of Athens: a pair of them guarding the main gates of the jailhouse. Thalassia took one and Demosthenes the other, she cutting the throat of hers before the man even knew that death was upon him, while Demosthenes charged his, witnessing surprise light his face in the glow of a nearby oil lantern, while his hand went to his sword a scant second before he was run through.
By the time Demosthenes had pulled his blade free and spit in the face of the softly groaning corpse-to-be, Thalassia was vanishing over the top of the jail's perimeter wall. Moments later, there came from within the jail's courtyard the sound of the timber bar (which normally required two men to shift) being removed, after which one of the two bronze-clad wooden doors swung open wide enough for Demosthenes to pass through.
Inside, a dark form lay on the ground, Thalassia's second victim of the night: an Athenian guard with his neck broken. The sight caused Demosthenes no hesitation, no second thoughts. Whoever stood in their way would die. Those who remained could sort the bodies by citizenship later.
&nb
sp; They proceeded to the jail's administrative building, where a kick from Thalassia quickly splintered the wood around the iron lock. The Athenian in the dimly-lit anteroom beyond appeared to have been half asleep, but at the sound of the breach he flew to alertness. He had no time to rise from the bench on which he had reclined before Thalassia was on him, straddling the bench with one immovable arm wrapped around his skull, her other pressing a blade to his throat.
“Quiet,” she advised rather than commanded him.
Demosthenes stooped to face the guard, who had wisely opted against resistance. “Every prisoner in this place will walk free tonight,” he said. “You can help us open the cells, or we can leave you here choking on your own blood and do it ourselves. I will give you a moment to decide.”
“Don't kill me,” the man pleaded. “I'll help. I know who you are. I voted for you.”
Demosthenes looked to the man's captor, who affirmed the truth of the speaker's assertion by releasing her grip. He sat rubbing the neck he had narrowly avoided having opened.
“What is your name?” Demosthenes asked.
“Karpos.”
“Well, Karpos, tell us where the other guards are posted and who among them is sympathetic, and then lead the way.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, three guards including Karpos were on their side, while five more lay bound and unconscious, their lives spared as a favor to the three who helped. The doors to every cell in every block of the compound were thrown wide, their occupants set free. Common criminals shared quarters with the political prisoners of the tyranny and innocents rounded up in mass arrests, men and women alike, and since there was no time to sort them out, all were set loose and directed to exits at the prison's rear.
“Leave the city if you want to stay free,” Demosthenes told as many as he could, brushing off their expressions of gratitude. “Go to your kin in the country.”
While the last doors were unlocked (or in Thalassia's case, broken) a trumpet wailed somewhere outside the prison walls. The cause was all but certain: someone had found the Spartiate corpses flanking the main gates.
“Everyone out!” Demosthenes urged the prisoners and cooperative guards alike. “Unless you're ready for a fight.”
Everyone did leave, including Karpos, who wished good luck to the last two who remained inside the prison walls, two who stood side-by-side, cloaks shed, swords drawn, in the prison courtyard just inside the closed but unbarred main gate.
“You said you don't fear for your life when I'm around,” one said to the other. “I appreciate the sentiment, but some fear is healthy.”
“Then I am plenty healthy,” the other returned.
It was true: his heart raced at the knowledge that those bronze-clad doors, from behind which came the sounds of a crowd gathering, would shortly be thrown open, and in would charge some great number of armed and armored men, probably Equals. And here he stood in just a layer of linen.
“I'm not worried,” Thalassia said.
“Death is but an inconvenience to you.”
“I meant about you.” She looked over at him, and Demosthenes saw lantern-light flicker over a network of black lines on her right cheek, her Mark of Magdalen, which had not been present moments ago. The blue eye at its center studied him, and her dark lips formed a thoughtful smile.
With a quick motion she tucked both of her swords under one arm and produced a small, round tin from which she removed the lid. Into it she dabbed the thumb of her right hand, which came out black with kohl. The hand went to Demosthenes' face, where it touched him above the brow and traced a downward path over his right eyelid, stopping just below the cheekbone. It repeated the motion on a diagonal over the same eye. The result, Demosthenes could only surmise, not having a mirror handy, was a black, Xhi-shaped analog of Thalassia's Mark.
“War-paint,” she said approvingly.
With a final smile, she faced the doors and set herself, a sword in each hand, to meet the imminent attack.
Through the bronze-clad wood and over the prison walls, they heard a barked command to advance. The doors were shoved open by what turned out to be unarmed slaves, who immediately retreated into the night, leaving the way clear for what waited behind: a phalanx of Equals six men wide—as many as could fit abreast through the doors. The front rank bore their full panoplies of war: helmets and leather breastplates, lambda-blazoned shields, and eight-foot spears. Behind them stood six more, and six more, and six more just the same. Twenty-four shields, twenty-four spear-blades, twenty-four short swords hanging ready in reserve, arrayed against two with only swords and whose flesh was all but bare.
In the recent past, Demosthenes had joked quietly with himself or Thalassia about having gone mad. Here was sure proof that he had.
“I can take twenty,” Thalassia said. “You all right with four?”
“Cocky bitch,” he returned without rancor, knowing that her estimate was probably not far off. A man of excessive pride would be ill-suited fighting alongside Thalassia. He would kill himself trying to keep up.
Thalassia knew pride well, for she expressed a great deal of it herself, and could prod expertly at that of men who shared the affliction. She exercised that ability now, as the Spartan phalanx stood motionless, staring hard over their shield rims at the enemy revealed to them.
“What's the matter?” she taunted. “You bitches afraid you can't handle a little girl and a man wearing makeup?”
There was no movement in the phalanx but for the slight swaying which proved its component parts were flesh and not bronze. Then one man among them, standing in the second rank gave himself away as the officer present by bellowing in the voice of command: “Eíphoi!”
Swords. Covered by the protruding blades of those behind them, the men of the front rank laid down their spears, their wall of overlapped shields parting just enough to let the shafts pass, then filled their empty right hands with the drawn short swords which were better suited, or so they believed, for such close combat as was to come.
At a second barked command, the front six began a slow, steady advance, while behind them the second rank repeated the act of trading spear for sword.
“Let's do this,” Thalassia said, and she launched herself into what for any other man or woman, not least one dressed in nothing but the flowing long chiton she had slit from hem to waist, would be a headlong charge into death.
But this day it was Death who wore the gown and bore twin swords wide in the shapely, outstretched arms of a demi-goddess ready to usher men's shades into Haides' cold embrace.
Death charged, and her chosen companion, Demosthenes, followed without hesitation or thought for the odds. He went without pride, too, a lack which kept his path firmly within her wake, since to strike off on his own and go right where she went left would have meant the end of him. Thus, from a few paces behind, he witnessed the first blood shed as Thalassia ducked under the strokes of the two Spartans at the end of the first rank, sprang up within arm's reach of either and cut their two throats above shield rims. They were dead but did not know it yet, still standing as Thalassia used their shadeless bodies as shields which hung from her arms as she charged on into the oncoming second rank, bowling two men over before crushing one's face with a planted heel and dipping her sword's tip into the other's heart as though his leather breastplate were a layer of tilled soil and her sword a planter of seeds.
She had already killed these four, leaving Demosthenes almost wishing he could stand idle and watch, such a sight was his partner to behold on the killing field, when he hit the bleeding phalanx in the same spot. The front line was turning right to envelop the intruder, even as she killed another, but two Equals stood ready and waiting, facing Demosthenes and separating him from his tiny army's deadlier half.
He had never before charged two ready hoplites, much less Spartiates, and much less in a battle he had picked, with a sword his only armament, wool chlamys wound around left arm in lieu of hoplon, skin all but bare, la
cking even faith in Pallas as his armor. The Demosthenes who had died at Dekelea likely would never have conceived of such an act, but this one did, and in a black corner of his mind, the corner which celebrated slaughter and only fully brightened at the sound of death groans, he knew why.
He charged because she was on his side, and short of Eden, or overwhelming force, or a trap, or something more than these two dozen men could offer, Thalassia was unstoppable, and therefore so was he. Screaming the name of no goddess or city, but just letting loose a roar befitting those painted, unarmored warriors of the north whom he presently must have resembled, he joined the fray.
His sword batted aside that of one Equal, his whipped cloak entangling the sword arm of another, and he threw his weight into the joint where two bowl-shaped shields overlapped. The shields gave way just enough let him through, where he released his cloak and grabbed instead the long hair of the man to his right, whose sword arm posed the most imminent threat. Equals wore their hair thus as a deliberate insult to their enemies of whom they supposedly had no fear, and now it was used to its intended purpose: Demosthenes pulled, and the man's head came back, exposing his neck, which Demosthenes hacked into once before sending his blade into a backhand swing that blocked the other's renewed attack. Whilst Athenian steel grated on inferior bronze, Demosthenes ducked close and shouldered aside the enemy's hoplon to deliver a fist to the face which sent the second man staggering back.
These two were not his only opponents, of course; more swarmed around him, even as Thalassia made more corpses of the rear ranks and drew the bulk of deadly attention to herself. But with the removal of those two—the second of which he finished with a stab to the groin as he fell—nothing else stood between him and Thalassia, whom he joined at the bronze-clad doors of the prison gate. Were he fighting alongside any other, such a position would be untenable: back to a wall and surrounded by a dozen men (for Thalassia's toll by now was at least ten).
With a flashed smile, Thalassia welcomed him to her corner of the small battlefield, then gave him her back, entrusting him with its defense. He accepted the task, and after blocking a few attacks with a hoplon plucked from arm of a slain Spartiate, he wounded a man in the knee, sending him back, then took the eye of the Equal who shifted into his place.