by P. K. Lentz
He walked closer to Pan's boulder. As Styphon turned to track him, Eris leaped down from her green perch, landing with the lightness of a bird, a red raven.
The three stood arm's length apart, awaiting whomever would speak first. Styphon only knew it would not be he.
It was Brasidas, heavily: “There is no point in crafting lies. We've no choice but to go straight to the ephors from here and tell them all, just as it happened.” He directed his shrewd eyes at his fellow mortal. “Styphon, it is your loyalty to a king which brought us here. Will it keep you from doing as I ask?”
“No, polemarch,” Styphon replied, almost instinctively, to the man whose trusted aide he had been for a year.
A curt nod, nothing more, and Brasidas turned his attention to the being to whom was due, arguably, at least some measure the current glory in which he stood—a glory he could surely not help but to see threatened by the day's events.
“The girl said you were hurt,” he said to Eris.
“Damaged,” she corrected. A flick of the cloak exposed her pale, torn flesh long enough to let Brasidas look it up and down in neutral assessment.
“Go to your hideaway,” he concluded. “You should not be seen again in town until further notice.”
The instruction resembled more in tone a decisive suggestion than it did an order one might give a subordinate. Brasidas might be brave enough to play with fire when it came to Eris, but he was also sharp enough to know his limits. He knew that this fire also played with him.
With a twitch of her thin lips, Eris indicated acceptance.
“We are finished here,” Brasidas said next.
The polemarch's behavior since his arrival in the Ring only seconds prior had been a model of Spartan efficiency, in which grave matters were tended to without passion or a wasted word. Thus, in no time, Styphon found himself walking at his superior's side on the return to Sparta, whilst separately the Beast winged her way back to some secret lair, to lick her wounds and await the summons to wreak more destruction.
“You made an error of judgment,” Brasidas said mildly as they walked, “choosing Agis's side in the conflict to come. A shame I had no cousin to offer you.” He looked at Styphon down the bridge of his hawkish nose and smiled a seemingly genuine smile. “But then, it was not relation by marriage that prompted you to action, was it? It was blood. You worry for Andrea.”
Styphon let his silence confirm the observation. A well-reared Equal was not generally inclined to admit to worrying about anything.
“If it were in my power, I would give your girl back to you,” Brasidas said with an air of honesty. Neither were Equals inclined to admit that something was not in their power. “I wish I could even tell you that Eris's interest in her was for the best, or at least harmless. But she is not for men to fully understand, much less to control. I have accepted that. She is a weapon, yes, but one which must be wielded carefully, or not at all.
“You see why. Today the weapon was provoked and wielded itself. Now I am left to clean up her mess and a chart a course around thirty-six dead Equals, all with families whose righteous anger will be directed largely at me. I admit, I cannot be sure how it will turn out.”
While Styphon listened to the polemarch's frank speech, he recalled what Eris had told him at the scene of slaughter. Brasidas wanted him alive. For what purpose?
* * *
News of the massacre had already reached Sparta by the time of their arrival. There was shouting and chaos and much directionless running, such that the city's normally reserved streets rather resembled a henhouse at feeding time. All knew that some tragedy had struck, but few yet were aware of its cause or extent. Styphon and Brasidas lanced their way through the crowds (the latter forced to brush off several attempts to elicit more information) to the simple, blue-painted structure which served as the office of the ephors.
Two of these highest officials of the city had already convened when Brasidas and Styphon entered the building; two more made their appearances shortly thereafter; while the fifth and last was learned to be away at the hunt.
Brasidas said nothing at all, standing with Styphon at his shoulder until all four available ephors presented themselves, at which time all other men were ordered out and the door shut.
Almost. A hand adorned with an iron ring stopped the door, and Agis entered, alone and without word. Brasidas did not spare the king a glance, which made it somewhat easier for Agis to cast, as soon as the ephors' gazes allowed, a discreet look at Styphon. In it was not in threat, neither accusation nor recrimination; what it showed, if anything, was a distinct lack of confidence in the outcome of this day. The look said, or so Styphon interpreted it: You tried. The failure was not yours.
According to two of the most influential men in Sparta, it was beginning to seem, rightly or wrongly, that Styphon, the once-disgraced son of Pharax, could do no wrong.
The ephors were the only men in Sparta not obliged to descend briefly to one knee in the presence of their king, and so they did not. Styphon knelt, and was surprised to see Brasidas, beside him, remain standing. Perhaps because of the urgent nature of the meeting, the offense went unmentioned, if not unnoticed.
In response to a demand made by the eldest ephor to know what in the Thunderer's name had transpired, Brasidas explained. “One man present—nay, one man alive—was witness to this day's events. I propose that he tell of them first, in his own words, before we assail him with questions.”
The proposal meeting with no objection, not even from frowning Agis, Styphon spoke simply, with blank eyes and stony expression, of the trap laid on the road to the training ground and Eris's subsequent slaughter of her would-be assassins, who were mostly members of Agis's personal guard.
By the time his account drew to an end, Agis listened with the set jaw and hard, defiant glare of a man who knew he could not deny his actions, yet would refuse to regret them or call them a crime.
The ephors, after absorbing the witness's story with reactions varying from anger to disgust to dismay to sagacious composure, posed their questions. Above all, they wished to know precisely whether Agis had been the one to set the plot in motion.
After appearing to be forced to contain himself for a short while, Agis rumbled, “Of course the idea was mine. Sparta must be rid of that blight upon our city.” He aimed a finger at unperturbed Brasidas, who spared him not a glance. “She drives us to our doom with black promises whispered in this one's ear. He shapes them into words, and a few slightly impressive deeds, by which to convince even such wise men as yourselves to put our city's fate in his hands. But his are not the hands which grip the reins—at least his are those of an Equal—our city is in her hands, those of a woman and an outsider, hands which even before today had tasted of Spartiate blood. Now they positively drip with it. Thirty-six of our best went to their graves today, their lives laid down for a noble cause: that of seeing us set free from a man-eating enchantress, a Siren whose false song would lead us to sheer destruction!”
Agis paused to expel a deep breath, which somewhat diminished his fury, but not his conviction.
“I do not envy you lot your decision,” he went on. “You have sided with Brasidas of late, and thus with his witch, and it is never easy to admit that one is wrong. But if I may offer my advice as a king of some years to men only just elected to power a few months ago: you had best put vanity aside and think in simpler terms, as do the men waiting outside for you to put their minds at rest. Many of them are kin of the men we are soon to bury with honors. What they will see, if you make the wrong choice, is a torrent of citizen blood spilled and the murderess who spilled it walking free.” Agis nodded at the still impassive Brasidas. “And there stands the one who brought her into our midst. He refuses even to look at me because he knows I am right.”
It was clear to Styphon, and likely to all, that Brasidas's refusal to give the king his gaze had nothing to do with any such admission; rather, quite the opposite.
Agis waved
a hand in the polemarch's direction. “I have said my piece. I leave you now to your deliberations that I might go tend to the more important matter of consoling wives and mothers and counseling sons against taking rash action in pursuit of revenge, in the hope that their leaders will give them the satisfaction they deserve.”
Red cape billowing, the Eurypontid king of Sparta stormed out of the meeting place of the ephors who served as the check on his royal power. After a moment spent staring at the oaken door slammed behind him, and perhaps absorbing his advice, the ephors returned their attention to Brasidas. Before any spoke to him, however, the eldest addressed Styphon, thanking him for his testimony and inviting him to leave the chamber.
Styphon obeyed, leaving Brasidas with them, and went outside where he pushed his way through a thronging crowd of men and women wheedling him for answers which they knew he was not free to give. He walked until he was at last alone and then put his back to the nearest wall of sun-warmed plaster, where he sank to the earth.
He heard later in the day, along with the rest of Sparta (following investigation of the scene and the return of the fifth, absent official) the ephorate's official account of what had transpired. Though lacking in detail, it more or less adhered to actual events.
Of more import was their verdict on the parties involved.
Agis, acting as lawful king with the interests of his people at heart, had done no wrong in attempting to assassinate a foreigner whom he deemed an enemy. Likewise Styphon, his only living accomplice, bore no guilt.
Eris, having killed thirty-six Equals, was inescapably a murderer. A sentence was handed down, the only sentence there could be. Death, even if all knew that no lives would be wasted in so foolish an endeavor as attempting to carry it out. In effect, it meant she was no longer a welcome presence in Sparta.
But the ephors could not be seen to hand down no punishment at all, and so Brasidas, as the host and sponsor of the guilty foreigner, in accordance with the nearest precedent, was deemed partly responsible for Eris's actions.
Brasidas would not die, however; he would merely be stripped of his position as polemarch and confined indefinitely to the bounds of Lakonia, not to venture abroad for any purpose, including war.
It was something of a humiliation, but Styphon, when next he saw Brasidas, detected no bitterness in the deposed polemarch. He did not act as a man defeated, though it was possible he merely hid his displeasure well. More likely, Styphon sensed, Brasidas had suggested his own punishment to the ephors, and maybe Eris's too, behind the closed door of the ephorate, and thus was not disappointed with the outcome.
It even occurred to Styphon, in a moment of horror, that perhaps King Agis had all but known that his assassins would be slaughtered, making of the she-daimon a presence which could no longer be tolerated in Sparta.
By now, Styphon had learned that the minds of men like Brasidas and Agis worked in ways that it was far better for lesser men such as himself, unburdened by the curse of greatness, not to understand.
* * *
7. Spectacle
The mood in Naupaktos was one of mourning when Demosthenes returned to it. By now, all knew the sad fate of Pylos, defeated by Sparta, ending not only its short-lived freedom but also its existence as a Messenian city. Agis had put to death every male of age in Pylos and loaded the women and children onto ships to be sold abroad. On the heels of that news came word that Argos had capitulated to Spartan demands. The formal end to Argive independence yanked an ancient thorn from the Spartan paw and completed her domination of the Peloponnese.
Three days hence, the vote was to be held on whether Naupaktos would also yield. If the result was as most expected, it would be last vote held by the Naupaktan democracy.
On the voyage from Corinth, Kleon had laid out his plan for rallying the city to war, and on arriving in Naupaktos, they wasted no time in carrying it out.
At dawn, the three conspirators dressed in their new war gear. For Kleon that meant his shining, inlaid breastplate and leg-greaves to match, while the other two had made purchase in Corinth of less extravagant arms and armor. Demosthenes wore a plain breastplate of bronze which had been scrubbed down to mostly remove a layer of tarnish. Its lower chest had been patched, with reasonable skill, to cover a six inch-rent which marked, almost undoubtedly, the site of the wound which had killed its prior owner.
Being a woman, Thalassia had been somewhat more difficult to accommodate. While the panoplies of Amazons like the one she had worn at Eleusis might be common in the collections of men like Alkibiades, they were not easily found in marketplaces, even ones as rich and extensive as that of Corinth. She had made do, in the end with a stiffened leather corselet onto which thin, rectangular plates of iron had been stitched. It had been made to fit a youth or a man of slender frame and as such made no accommodation for the wearer's breasts, which in Thalassia's case were not anyway of the type to overflow; leaving the uppermost laces in back a touch loose served sufficiently. In lieu of shield, as defense against blades she was not to face this day, she wrapped rawhide strips around her arms, extending up past the elbow. The resulting look was masculine, but few would mistake her for a man, even one barely out of adolescence, if only on account of the naked thighs which bore those subtle differences of shape and tone that could and did betray the owner's sex. Then there were the women's sandals, the high laces of which slithered up shapely calves in dueling spirals to meet in the hollow behind her knee.
And her hair, as ever, gave her away. She was in the process of pulling it back tightly behind her head and fixing it there with a bone fibula when Kleon came up and pulled the fibula's pin from her hand.
“Do not hide your femininity,” he said.
Demosthenes scoffed at the idea that Thalassia, who was as likely to adorn herself with 'shiny things' as she was to put one through a hoplite's throat, might ever be guilty of such an aim.
“We wish firstly to attract attention, and secondly to inspire the imaginations of men,” Kleon explained melodramatically. “The more exotic the specimen we put before them, the more readily both can be achieved.”
To Demosthenes' mind, if ever there was excuse for her to wear her Mark, here it was. And he would have suggested as much, if Thalassia had not, unsurprisingly, been of like mind. Presently she caused the Mark of Magdalen to appear on her cheek and brow.
Kleon, who had not been warned, examined the dark, sinuous lines in wonderment before smiling and proclaiming his judgment: “Yes, yes! Good!”
To this barbaric adornment she added a thick application of kohl, the end product of which were a pair of black-rimmed eyes with irises pale blue like a winter sky, of a kind men might see in nightmares staring back at them from either the gloom on the far shore of Styx, if not on the face of the one who sent them there. To Demosthenes, who felt with reasonable certainty that he would never be subject to a death-glare from those eyes, they held only perverse invitation to activities pleasanter than killing and dying, if just as primal.
As if Thalassia could sense the barest stirrings of arousal as easily as she could lies, which maybe was the case, the eye near the center of her web-like Mark delivered a wink visible only to him.
Dressed thus, swords at hips, halfway equipped for a battle still far off, they went out into the streets of the port, where quickly they drew stares. It was not unexpected, in fact Kleon desired it, such that by the time they reached the agora of Naupaktos by an indirect route they might walk at the head of a gathering cloud of curious onlookers.
It was a risk bordering on folly for fugitives heretofore in hiding to so increase their profile, but they had discussed it the prior night and concluded the risk worthwhile. Open war would erupt soon enough, and so if some few of the Messenians who saw them this day were not true Naupakatans but turncoats looking for pardons from Sparta, so be it. They could hardly have hoped to avoid detection forever, and anyway were that their aim they might be in Italy or Ionia or Egypt by now.
As they m
ade their way like two slowly moving statues behind their brightly shining guide toward the center of town, following a path not unlike that of water circling a drain, Kleon's intention of attracting a large following became reality. Rather than trusting in men's natural curiosity, the practiced worker of crowds encouraged them with smiles and waves and invitations which revealed nothing of his intent. Owing to his magic, the trio reached the marketplace at the head of a small army. Some were youths and women and slaves, but most looked to be citizen males past the age of majority—wielders of votes, the only audience of import. At the agora, the ranks swelled, since such an army could hardly enter an already crowded market unnoticed.
They ended their march at a place called the Orchard, which at one time in the distant past it had undoubtedly been. Now it was a dusty expanse of gently sloping hillside facing the streets full of vendors where the denizens of Naupaktos were accustomed to hearing speakers of all sorts. While the crowd washed up on the hill like the breakers of a tide, the three who had caused the deluge ascended the stair-like trail etched into the earth by generations of feet to mount the square patch of dirt that was the natural place from which to address this sea of upturned faces. There they formed a triangle, with Kleon standing at its front, and waited in perfect silence until a satisfactory hush settled over his audience.
Then, through the beard he had chosen to keep, since it seemed to be in fashion among the Naupaktans, the demagogue raised his booming voice and addressed the crowd. He appealed to their pride, of course, and their Messenian heritage, likening the ex-slaves to himself, a mere tanner's son raised up by hard work. He spoke of what they had to lose by giving in to Sparta, and how they were a match for any Equal, who were, after all, only mortal men like them.