by P. K. Lentz
This ghastly apparition laughed. “I must look awful.”
“No,” Demosthenes argued. “Very elegant.”
After accepting help which she may or may not have required to stand, Thalassia set to pushing corpses aside. “We have to find her.”
“I have Brasidas,” Demosthenes informed her. He looked back to where he had left the polemarch and was glad to find him yet lying there. All around, Helot rebels stood staring in disbelief at the walking corpse which was their rebellion's leader.
“Kill him,” Thalassia advised of Brasidas. Having found what she sought, she began wrestling it free.
“Soon,” Demosthenes pledged.
The body of Eden was more thoroughly mutilated than Thalassia's. Only in a few patches was her fine hair still golden; the rest was slick with gore. As more of her emerged, Demosthenes saw that her upper and lower halves were very nearly detached. Still, Thalassia took a bronze sword from one of the dead and drove it, without malice, ten or twelve times into her enemy's face.
“They're coming,” Thalassia said, heaving Eden's body over her shoulder and rising. She wobbled slightly, one of her thighs being largely shredded. She turned to face one of the cross-bow wielding Helots, a man who appeared somewhat less awestruck than his fellows. He was a man whom Demosthenes had met once or twice, not long ago.
“Antigonos,” she addressed him. “As we planned. Melt away. No pitched resistance. Yet. Their end comes soon.”
“Aye, stratega.” Rounding up his comrades, the Helot led them into the woods.
Stratega. Woman general. A made-up nonsense word, until today.
Demosthenes, meanwhile, dragged Brasidas over to Thalassia's horse, which had wandered into the woods to avoid charging phalanxes. Thalassia met him there and slung Eden onto the beast's back before taking Brasidas over her shoulder. The polemarch moaned, proving that there still was some life left in him in spite of fungus and blade.
Demosthenes thought Thalassia would next sling Brasidas onto the horse's back, but instead she kept the burden herself and said to Demosthenes, “Mount up.”
Opting not to question the stratega, Demosthenes climbed up behind the mutilated corpse. A season prior, it had been Thalassia's body slung in front of him on the desperate flight to Dekelea.
Today he rode at a steady canter, ahead of a distant Spartan war-chant while Thalassia moved swiftly alongside, carrying Brasidas, keeping up in spite of the butchered leg which caused her no pain. The army soon to arrive would find only its dead brothers and the head of its exiled king.
“Those Equals may have saved me,” she observed. “One of them, anyway, who threw his spear during the charge. It hit her and not me.”
“Fortunate,” Demosthenes remarked. “Andrea was hurt,” he added, intending no connection, only to inform. “I saw Styphon carry her away. I regret that he lived. But if he saved her, it is perhaps an acceptable trade.”
“Andrea tried to interfere,” Thalassia said, her tone one of regret. “I cut her, accidentally.”
“She loves Eden.”
“I know.”
They rode swiftly and in silence for a short while, sometimes on a small trail but more often through forest. Thalassia seemed to know her way.
“You gave them back their king,” Demosthenes observed when they were far enough from danger that they could let their pace flag.
“Doesn't matter,” Thalassia said. “I fed him well on the way here.”
* * *
22. Antigonos
Like nearly every living Messenian, whose forefathers long ago were conquered by Sparta, Antigonos had been a slave since birth. He undertook his daily labors not only for the survival and welfare of his family and town, as free men did, but also for the glory of masters to whom his life was worth only as much as the service he rendered. In his twenty-two years, Antigonos had largely avoided direct harsh treatment by his masters, but he had witnessed much of it: cousins given the lash until they nearly died; friends leaving the village at morning only to be found dead by night, sport for young Equals; maidens raped for the same reason. The life of any Helot was ever one of mourning and sorrow and impotent rage.
Antigonos had been present at King Agis's razing of Pylos, the city of Helots which had risen up under Demosthenes and thrown off Spartan rule. It had been a rare source of pride for Messenia.
Agis had emptied it of life, a lesson for any slaves who dared entertain notions of freedom.
The message was effective. Antigonos, and all his fellow shield-bearers—who were little more than pack animals—had returned home broken of spirit.
He and others had heard of the polemarch Brasidas's intention of letting Helots win their freedom on the battlefield, fighting on behalf of the folk who had hunted their brothers and violated their sisters. There was little interest in such an arrangement. Rumors even spread that Brasidas wished to free all Helots, but none believed that. Even if it were true, surely it would be reversed by some later decree. Brasidas, even if he was powerful, was still only one man.
Not long after Pylos, Antigonos had been called up as a rower and shield-bearer for the King's invasion of yet another city built by slaves who had thrown off the Spartan yoke: Naupaktos, which had been free for at least two generations.
Antigonos went, for he had no choice. And just when he thought his miserable life was to end in the sea, victim to a Spartan defeat the sight of which was almost worth the price of his life, he had been pulled from the water by the victors, his kinsmen the Naupaktans. They had treated him well, sympathetic to the plight of all Messenians.
In Naupaktos, Antigonos had met a strange woman, Eastern in complexion, with blue eyes that saw through him and into his heart. She had put questions to him about Sparta, about his feelings toward his masters and what he would do to get back at them.
What was he willing to do to forever end the domination of Messenia?
He had given the right answers, it would seem, as had thirteen other captured Helots, for he found himself in a group of that size being trained in secret by that strange woman, whose name was Thalassia. She was partner to the Liberator of Pylos himself, Demosthenes, whom the fourteen met once or twice.
Thalassia treated them kindly, like nothing they were used to in a leader. She addressed them all by their names, needing to hear them only once to learn them. She was patient, and she laughed, and made the men wish to work harder to please her. For a while, she trained them in fighting and in deception, and then at last revealed their purpose.
The fourteen were to enter Lakonia and poison the granaries used to supply the messes of the Equals. The illness which the Spartans would contract was fatal and would continue to kill so long as they did not learn the cause of the plague and cease consuming the contaminated grain.
Not only men would be killed, but women and children, too, old and young alike with no distinctions drawn. Helots, too, unavoidably, would die.
After informing them, Thalassia had questioned them again, looking into their hearts as they answered. Were they willing? Would they waver?
All must have met her standard, for their number remained at fourteen. She had chosen well.
Their training continued. And then, a change: Demosthenes was abducted. Thalassia, now smiling not at all, informed them they were to leave sooner than expected and undertake still another task, one which sent their hearts soaring.
Not only were they to poison Sparta's granaries. They would foment a rebellion, bringing arms and armor provided by their cousins the Naupaktans and spreading news across Messenia that Sparta had suffered a second disastrous defeat at Naupaktos, with Equals slain by the hundreds. The defeat had not happened yet, but Thalassia pledged she would make it so, and the fourteen believed in her. Such news would inspire Messenia, helping to convince them that the time was ripe and Sparta was at her weakest.
She taught them new lessons: how to enter a village and find the right supporters who could in turn find others; how to conceal and
distribute the smuggled arms; how to convince others to revolt and to do so quietly, secretly, and then move on to repeat the same in another village; and if they failed to spark a truly widespread revolt, how at least to make it appear as one.
Dividing into four groups which would follow separate paths to Sparta, they embarked south across the Peloponnese with wagons laden with arms disguised as other cargoes and amphorae full of a thick, deadly, black paste. For now, they bid the one they called stratega farewell, but they were to meet her again outside of Sparta, bringing whatever following they had amassed.
Antigonos's group of three met with success in rallying men to the cause, and as they neared Sparta, it came time to fulfill the original purpose for which they had been selected.
In times of peace or war, Equals were not ones to heavily guard their granaries. Lakonia itself, the Spartan homeland, was under no particular threat. At the present time, with heavy losses suffered at Naupaktos and a second attempt on the place underway, there were no sentries at all. Creeping up to the granary at night with deadly amphora in hand, Antigonos mounted the steps to the top of the domed structure of brick and plaster and pulled open the hatch at its top through which grain was poured in by the Helots who harvested and dried it.
Unstoppering the jug, he upended it and let the viscous, foul-smelling paste, which he was careful not to touch, fall down into the hatch in mud-like globs to spread on the kernels within. When it was empty, Antigonos's comrade poured in a sack of fresh grain to cover the poison, and then, carefully, by moonlight, the empty but still dangerous vessel was placed into the grain-sack and the hatch closed. Their purpose discharged, the enemies of Sparta escaped into the night to repeat the feat elsewhere.
The sludge was alive, the stratega had told them. In a small amount of time, it would grow and spread, infecting the grain underneath almost invisibly, such that the Helots who scooped kernels from the hopper at the granary's base were unlikely to notice anything amiss. Nor would those to whom they served it find it distasteful.
Victims of the poisoned grain would cough and sweat and grow weaker and weaker by the day, until they died, all the while continuing to eat of the food which harmed them, ignorant of the illness's cause, thinking it to be from gods, not men.
When they had treated three granaries thus, it was time. With almost a hundred men following, they went to the meeting place from which they would threaten Sparta herself.
Antigonos had no children yet. And he would not, he vowed, unless they were to grow up as free men and women.
* * *
23. A mad universe
Their destination was a spot in the woods distinctive only for the presence of a second horse, tethered to a tree, from the branches of which hung two packs. Underneath, a sword and cross-bow leaned against the trunk.
Thalassia laid Brasidas down, and Demosthenes dismounted.
“You'd best kill him soon,” she advised, “or the fungus will.” She pulled butchered Eden from the horse's back, depositing her on the ground, and tethered the beast beside the waiting one. Fetching a knife and returning to Eden's corpse, she knelt to begin fresh butchery.
“Her Seeds?” Demosthenes asked.
“Yes.”
“You'll destroy them?”
“Yes. But...”
She drove the knife into Eden's leg and began slicing, searching for the metal spheres which might be embedded anywhere within her enemy's flesh. They contained her mind, her memories, her essence, and any one of them, given time, could become a new Eden.
“But what?”
“I'm sure she's hidden one away in a secret place. As I have. And I'm almost as sure that Andrea knows where.”
“You mean we'll need to go back and make her tell us.”
Thalassia paused in her bloody task and looked up. “Are you suggesting we torture an eleven year-old girl? One who saved your life?”
“No,” Demosthenes said quickly. “No. For all we know, she's dead already.”
Dragging unconscious Brasidas to the base of an elm, he left him there briefly while he fetched the cross-bow and two bolts. After loading one, he 'stood' Brasidas up against the bark, raised his limp right arm over his head—and fired a bolt at close range through the wrist, into the wood.
The captive screamed and twisted, but the bolt held while Demosthenes repeated the procedure on Brasidas's left arm. His scream faded into a pulsing, involuntary groan until he opened his eyes and remembered discipline.
“Do you have a spare bowstring?” Demosthenes asked of Thalassia, who persisted in her own bloody endeavor.
“In one of the packs.”
Demosthenes found it where she said and brought it with him, along with yet another bolt, to stand once more before Brasidas, who glared with intense hatred from bloodshot eyes which he could but barely open halfway.
“The power which came to us, you and I...” the defeated whispered. His voice was low and hoarse. “We could have shaped the world! I tried. But you... you are a small man, Demosthenes. You have no vision. She is wasted on you!”
“If by vision you mean the desire to control the destinies of others, then you are right, I lack it,” Demosthenes answered. “I saw only what was in front of me. My family, my city. I wanted only peace and happiness. You took them from me.”
He glanced at Thalassia, who looked up and met the glance knowingly with her undamaged eye. The same words, more or less, had recently passed the lips of the woman presently mutilated.
“I understand why you killed Laonome,” Demosthenes went on to his victim, as he passed the bowstring under Brasidas's chin and around the trunk of the elm. “You wished to break me. It worked. I probably would have destroyed myself. But you overlooked at least one thing. Probably many, but this is the most important.”
Where the two ends of the bowstring met, Demosthenes wound them many times around the spare cross-bow bolt, which he then twisted until it was snug around the tree and the throat of Brasidas. The result was a garrote, the traditional means used on the stauros when a relatively quick death was desired. Its handle was a few inches from the condemned's left ear, so that is where Demosthenes stood.
“She is not a weapon,” he continued. Brasidas had no choice but to look upon the witch in question. “Neither was Eden. The only one in your city who recognized that was a little girl. That's why you had no say in the future of your city, and she did. Well, almost.”
He cranked the bolt, and Brasidas began to choke.
“A weapon cannot heal your spirit when it has been broken,” Demosthenes said. “A sword cannot put new life into a heart that has died.” He turned the bolt again. “When hope is lost and death a breath away, no spear, even had it wings, would ever fly to its wielder and turn defeat into triumph.”
Another turn, another choking gurgle.
“A weapon does not console, or confide, or sympathize, or caress, or make one laugh when the hour is blackest. She is not a weapon.”
Another sharp twist. Brasidas's lower half spasmed.
“Knowing that, I have the final say on your city's future. And that is...” Twist. “...that it will have none. A few years from now, there will be no such thing as Equals. Lykurgan law will be a memory. The ones you currently call slaves will dwell in your houses and worship in your temples. Or they will tear th—”
“He died five seconds ago,” Thalassia interrupted.
Looking into his victim's eyes, Demosthenes saw that the life was gone from him.
Vengeance was taken.
Releasing the handle of the garrote, Demosthenes walked away from the tree turned execution stauros to settle onto the ground beside Thalassia. She paused in her grim work to lay her much-abused head on his shoulder and nuzzle him. He laid his cheek on her bloody scalp and returned the brief gesture, after which she returned to hunting Seeds, of which she had so far extracted two. The engraved spheres of gore-specked black metal sat on a flat rock nearby.
“I'll help.” Demosthenes took
up a knife and did just that.
By the time Thalassia declared the job finished, as night was beginning to fall, she had found three Seeds in total, Demosthenes responsible for none.
She led them to a nearby lake to wash, taking the Seeds with her, lest they be lost.
“Be glad it's dark,” she joked on the shore as she shed her armor. “It's probably best if you don't see me undressed for a few days.”
They bathed efficiently in water which felt chill only to one of them, then emerged and dressed in the fresh garments which had been in Thalassia's packs: for Demosthenes, a soft, well-made chiton with blue embroidery at the collar and hem, and for her, a dress of pale green like sea-foam, the color which suited her best and was her favorite. There were dark gray cloaks for them both, which in Thalassia's case served to hide the worst of her injuries.
A glimpse by moonlight told him she was right, as ever she was in most things: her unclothed flesh was a sight he was best spared. She was, at least for now, a corpse that walked.
“If you ask me to feel this,” she said, “I'll find your least useful part and rip it off.”
Once they were dressed, they sat on the lake's edge, Demosthenes on the side of her that showed him an unmarred profile and a working eye.
“Athens?” she said after a while.
“I suppose. But I do not think I wish to stay and be part of restoring the democracy. They can manage without me. They will have Kleon, after all.”
“Alkibiades is chief tyrant there now,” Thalassia reported. “He crushed the resistance and got Thrasybulus executed. He worked with Sparta. Will you kill him for it?”
Demosthenes sighed. “I suppose I'll decide when I see him. First we should visit our old blacksmith friends for some arms and armor of good Athenian steel. And after that, I thought... perhaps on to Roma. If you still would see it destroyed.”
Thalassia was silent a moment, then smiled. “I suppose I'll decide when I see it. But let's take the long way there, via an island or two. Sandy places with lots of warm, oiled bodies with golden brown skin, and girls who want to braid my hair. No blood or fire or fungus. A few days ago, I massacred more men than I ever thought I was capable of. Really, you should have seen me. I have no regrets and would do it again, but... not soon, if I can help it. It's not what I want. Right now, I want to make friends who won't be killed by the choices I make. I want to sit on beaches and just be sea-thing for a while. It will be amazing. I'll invent surfing and bikinis and who knows what else.”