Young Warriors

by Tamora Pierce

  We Spartan women have a different attitude when it comes to spears.

  Lady Aithra shook her head. “Child, it’s true that you are beautiful. My son heard tales of your beauty from the lips of a score of travelers. Still, a proper woman practices modesty.”

  I wanted to laugh. A proper woman! Then I realized that I didn’t want to defy my captor’s mother, not when I needed her on my side. This was war; I needed allies. The battle lines were drawn the moment Theseus snatched me from my bed and galloped away with his gang of ruffians around him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, biting back my laughter, choosing my first weapon: false words. There is no dishonor in lying to a thief, and if Lady Aithra wasn’t the thief himself, she was his unwilling agent. “I—I spoke without thinking. I’m so tired and hungry!” I rubbed my eyes as though I were about to cry.

  Lady Aithra gave me such a look of tenderness and sympathy that for a moment I almost regretted deceiving her. “There, child, there, it’s all right,” she said, embracing me. Her hair smelled of sun and pine boughs and the sea. For an instant I missed my own mother dreadfully. “You’ll learn. I’ll help you.”

  That was my intention, to have her help me. She wouldn’t need to know that her idea of help and mine were as different, one from the other, as my brothers. Castor and Polydeuces are twins, yet as unalike as they can be and still claim the same birth. I suppose that’s why the wag-tongues claim that Polydeuces also had Zeus for a father, just like me.

  Theseus’ mother led me to her room. We were followed by several slave girls, all of them meek as mice, and by six guardsmen bearing tall bronze-headed spears. The sight of them was almost comical: were they supposed to defend a palace using weapons more suited to a boar hunt? Long spears are good enough in the open, but when a king’s dwelling is your battleground, you want something to hand that can be used freely between walls. No doubt Theseus gave them spears because it made a better show, to his supposed glory.

  The guards did not follow us into Lady Aithra’s room. I admit that I was afraid they might do just that. Theseus had made no secret of the fact that I was to be warded constantly. He put his faith solely in the number of men he had to serve him, not in their quality.

  Good. I could use that, too.

  The walls of Lady Aithra’s room were painted with scenes exalting her son. I walked slowly around the perimeter, studying them, pretending to be interested, acting as though this were the first time I’d ever seen or heard anything of my captor’s exploits.

  It was all a lie, of course, though this was war—my war for my freedom—and in war, lies are often called strategy. When Theseus and his brutish friend Perithos first came to call at my royal father’s house, it didn’t take them long before they launched into an endless boasting session. We all had to listen politely as those two regaled us with their tiresome tales of how Theseus was really the sea-god’s son; how Theseus defeated the cruel Procrustes; how Theseus overcame the wicked Sciron the Pine-Bender; how Theseus freed his mortal father, King Aegeus, from the evil spells of the Colchian sorceress Medea; how Theseus put an end to the Cretan tribute of seven youths and seven maidens by slaying the Minotaur, King Minos’ pet bull-headed monster, which devoured them.

  Theseus, Theseus, Theseus! It was a miracle that the brash Athenian kinglet didn’t go completely voiceless from singing his own praises. Only the rules of hospitality kept my father and the rest of us from laughing in his face. As if we were children, to believe in monsters!

  Lady Aithra watched me as I made my way around the room. She was smiling. I’m sure she believed everything her son told her, even when he told her that she’d given birth to a god’s child. Whether out of fear or love, she wouldn’t dare to contradict him.

  “Wonderful, isn’t he?” she said. “My boy, my dear boy. When I first held him in my arms he was so small, such a helpless little thing. I had no idea that he would grow up to be such a great hero.” I bit my tongue at that. My deliberate silence made her add: “You see now how fortunate you are to have such a husband.”

  “I had no idea.” I looked her right in the eyes so that she couldn’t doubt my sincerity, clasped her hands, and without her ever knowing it, sent my armor-bearer onto the battlefield to deliver the challenge to my enemies: “He never spoke of his accomplishments to me.”

  That was all she needed to start talking. If I’d ever imagined that Theseus and his friend were the greatest trumpeters of his exploits, now I learned better. The hero’s mother must be the unchallenged victor in that contest. And could I blame her? Her glory days ended when her baby grew up and left her side. What else did her life hold now? Spinning, weaving, sewing, harrying her slaves? Theseus was her life.

  Listening to her gabble on so worshipfully, I gave thanks to all the gods that I would never be reduced to such a state. My life would be my own, not merely the mirror of some man’s grand deeds. (I know that even thinking such things is hubris, the great crime of pride. We are taught that the gods delight in punishing mortals for this above all other offenses, but that only happens in stories.)

  Make no mistake: I didn’t hold Lady Aithra at fault for how she was raised or what she had to do to make the best of her life. We Spartan women are the exception to the sad rules that govern the rest of Hellas. We’re given the same training as our brothers: taught to harden our bodies, to use the javelin, even to wield the sword if we show any inclination for it. My mother, Leda, still laughs when she hears the tales of how Zeus overpowered her in swan’s form. God or mortal, any swan that came within sight of Leda would learn that the Spartan queen still knew how to cast a spear and bring down a fat, white-plumed contribution to our dinner table.

  You don’t blame the prisoner for the prison that holds her, but if someone tries to shut you up in the same cage you have a choice: settle yourself on the bench beside her willingly or pick it up and use it to batter down the door and escape.

  I let Lady Aithra speak on uninterrupted until she stopped praising her son’s heroics and—as I knew she would—became nostalgic. The hero Theseus faded, the child Theseus filled her heart. “I wish you could have known him then,” she said, with the beautiful irrationality of doting mothers. It didn’t even enter her thoughts that when her son was a child, my parents weren’t even married.

  “Oh, so do I!” I cried, clapping my hands together. Then I gestured at the painted walls of her chamber. “What a shame that you have nothing like these pictures that could tell me more about his childhood. My own mother keeps a chest filled with keepsakes from when my brothers were small, but that’s just the custom in Sparta. You Athenians would never—”

  “As if I’d part with my son’s childhood!” Lady Aithra took real offense at what I’d deliberately implied. “And I will thank you to remember that I am no Athenian. I was the princess of Troezen once.”

  I’d stung her. I meant to do just that. When I was ten I’d escaped my nurse, stolen Castor’s clothes, and sneaked out of the palace to follow my father and his men on a great boar hunt. I watched how the hounds stirred the boar to a red-eyed fury so that it lost all common sense and charged straight into the hunters’ waiting spears.

  Lady Aithra almost dragged me from her room into another chamber, where the dust lay lightly over many wooden boxes, some painted, some plain. One of these was almost entirely free of dust and was elaborately decorated and carved. I heard Theseus’ tame guardsmen taking up their new positions in the hallway outside the storeroom just as Lady Aithra flung back that chest’s lid so that I could see what it held.

  I smiled. It held what I’d hoped it would: my freedom.

  Poor Lady Aithra. When I crooned and fussed and prattled over her son’s childhood things, she became my slave as surely as if I’d bought and paid for her. She saw nothing wrong with letting me linger in the storeroom. If only the place had boasted windows it would have suited my wishes perfectly, but you can’t have everything.

  I took my time over Theseus’ childhood trash, w
aiting for what I knew must come. Since Aithra was the woman responsible for the smooth running of palace matters until the king’s return, I knew it wouldn’t be too long before a domestic crisis would surface, demanding her attention. I was raised in a proper palace: I knew that such things happen on a daily basis, and frequently.

  I recognized the sound of running feet approaching the storeroom and rightly guessed what that meant even before one of the manservants came bursting in, begging for Lady Aithra’s help with a problem in the kitchen. By the time she turned to bid me come with her, I’d already slumped myself across the open chest as though I’d fallen asleep. I made sure to smile gently, as though lost in dreams of her precious son. She murmured something about how it would be a great shame to disturb me and how pretty I looked, sleeping there. (The shortsighted fool who thinks beauty isn’t a weapon will lose many battles.) Then she was gone, shutting the door after her.

  She didn’t leave me alone—it’s a mistake to believe that a sentimental woman must also be stupid. When I opened my eyes just a hairsbreadth, I saw the slave girl she’d left behind to guard me. I sat up so suddenly that she uttered a squeak of alarm and nearly fell off the chest where she’d perched.

  “Quiet,” I said, even as I strode toward her and knocked her to the ground. I kept my voice low. “Another sound out of you and you’re dead.” I saw her mouth open, as if to shout for the guards outside the door. That wouldn’t do. I seized her hair with one hand, her throat with the other, and hauled her up. How ludicrous we must have looked! She was at least three years older than me, and taller, but she’d been fed a slave’s diet of scant food and plentiful fear. She couldn’t even imagine a life beyond the miserable one she knew. I took her terror and made it into my second weapon.

  “If you call the guards, they’ll find me asleep; they’ll think you’re crazy. Consider this, too: spoil my plans and I’ll be forced to become your queen. Do you really want a queen who’s got reason to hate you?”

  She shook her head violently, then managed to stammer out: “P-plans? Wh-what plans, Lady?”

  “What plans do you think?” I replied. “I mean to have my freedom. Help me and I’ll give you yours as well.” And I explained what I had in mind.

  I don’t know whether she consented because she wanted to be free or simply because she was used to taking orders; I didn’t much care which it was, so long as she worked with me. I stripped off my gown and threw it at her before plunging into the chest holding Theseus’ things. Garments flew everywhere. We dressed ourselves in record time—I as a young man, in one of Theseus’ boyish castoffs; she as me. It took longer for us to arrange our hair to suit our disguises. I wished aloud that Lady Aithra had seen fit to give her little boy a helmet and a sword.

  “You can use a sword?” The slave girl stared at me in awe, as if I really were the daughter of Zeus the Thunderer. I nodded, and a strange look came into her eyes. Without another word she led me to a corner of the storeroom where someone had piled up old cloaks too damaged to be of further use as garments. A mouse took fright and scampered away when she jerked back one of the cloths.

  Swords. Not many—maybe ten in all, none of them much larger than my father’s hunting knife, some hiltless, all notch-bladed and battered and dull—but swords. My hands were shaking as I rummaged through them, seeking one that looked as if it wouldn’t bend double if it struck something hard. I looked up at the slave girl: she was grinning.

  “Lord Theseus ordered Thales the smith to use these to make new weapons. Thales argued that this batch of bronze was defective, to be so badly scarred after so little use. Our king hates being contradicted almost as much as he hates having to pay for decent weapons for his men. His own sword and spear are of the best, but as long as he has plenty of other people’s sons to throw into battle, he doesn’t care how poorly they’re armed.”

  Quantity over quality again. Yes. I’d gotten the measure of the man right enough. “Thales disobeyed Theseus?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer: the evidence was in my hands.

  The slave girl chuckled. “Thales is no fool. These swords are merely what’s left after he secretly sold off the rest of the pile in order to get a decent grade of bronze for the king’s men.”

  “Lucky he left us these,” I said, standing. “He wouldn’t have happened to keep a defective helmet around, too, would he?”

  He hadn’t. Ah well, I’d had more than my fair share of good luck already; no sense tempting the gods. I nosed around the storeroom until I found a discarded brazier from the winter months, the inside still thick with smut. Soon my face was no longer recognizable under the greasy ashes. I was ready for war.

  The slave girl broke out of the storeroom screaming bloody murder, racing past the startled guards. I followed hot-foot on her trail, giving voice to my brother Polydeuces’ most bone-shivering battle cry. The old sword in my hand would have shattered like a perfume flask under a horse’s hoof if I’d used it, but I didn’t have to. Not yet. The guards saw Helen running away, saw their lives on the line, their necks paying the forfeit if she escaped. All but one of them took off after her. That one turned to face me, holding his ground.

  “I am Polydeuces, son of Tyndareus of Sparta, son of Zeus the Thunderer, king of the immortal gods!” I bellowed, brandishing my blade the way I’d seen my brothers do when they practiced with their trainers. “In the name of the gods, I challenge you to single combat, the combat of heroes!”

  The guardsman’s face was hidden by the cheek plates and nasal of his helmet, but I think he wasn’t much older than the slave girl now wearing my gown. When he lowered the tip of his spear for battle, I saw it was shaking. I had no helmet, no shield, no armor to cover me, yet my shouted challenge alone had thrust fear into his heart. Thus I learned a new lesson of words and war.

  Then the butt end of the haft knocked into the wall at his back; he couldn’t get it level with my chest and had no room to pull it back to fling at me. I didn’t wait around to see if he could puzzle out the problem at hand: I attacked.

  My sword was useless as a sword, but there was no one present to judge me for using it . . . creatively. I ducked beneath the shaft of the guardsman’s unwieldy spear; came up just past his line of sight, where the right-hand cheek plate of his helmet blocked his vision; and drove the pommel hard against the side of his head. He staggered, still holding tight to his spear.

  That was a mistake. If he’d dropped it, he would have had his hands free to draw his own blade. Even a good knife would have been a better weapon against my sorry sword. I howled like a wolf and gave him another thump in the head before he could think of doing that. I struck him hard enough to send his helmet flying. That did make him drop the spear, but by then he was too dazed to do more than scrabble after it on the floor. I leaped over his hunched body, kicked the weapon beyond his reach, and gave him one sharp kick at the point of his chin. His teeth clattered together loudly enough for me to hear them just before my sword-turned-club slammed down right on top of his skull. He crumpled at my feet.

  I don’t know whether I killed the man or not. I like to think I only knocked him senseless. With his helmet gone, I could see I’d been right, that he was very young. It’s a heavy thing to carry the weight of dead men, especially those whose beards have hardly sprouted before they’re shipped away to war; it’s a burden best left to cold-souled kings. I took his helmet and the shortsword at his belt, then ran to catch up to the other guards.

  Thanks to the helmet, no one could see my face and I was able to make my voice pass for a stripling’s. “To the gates! To the gates! The Spartans are upon us! The sons of Zeus have taken the palace!”

  O gods, how many lies flew from my lips that day! And yet I think that words more often win wars than spears and swords. The gods witness, words begin enough foolish battles. I know I am beautiful, but if idle tongues hadn’t spread tales of how my beauty was the greatest in all Hellas, would Theseus have come troubling my father’s house? He might have seen m
e, thought I was a pretty little thing, and gone back to guzzling wine and bragging about his own accomplishments if not for the words “Helen is the fairest.”

  Words made me his prize; words freed me. The guards put more faith in their ears than their eyes when they heard that the god-born Spartan princes were in the palace.

  The slave girl heard my shouts and seized the opportunity. She raced through the palace by routes she knew best, darting through the kitchen, finding the chance to snatch a burning brand from the cookfire and trail it over anything flammable in her wake. The other guards and I found smoke fouling our way, the palace in an uproar. She’d spread my battle cry along with the fire. There wasn’t a man or woman in Theseus’ halls who wasn’t convinced that Castor and Polydeuces had come to carry back their stolen sister. They were all equally convinced that my brothers were Zeus’ own.

  Who can fight the thunderbolt? It falls from heaven and shatters all in its path. Common sense topples as easily as roof tiles, for in all the time that slave girl and I rampaged through the royal palace, not one of the guardsmen paused to ask himself why Helen would be running away from her rescuers.

  Well, “Helen” didn’t run away forever. While the guards and I were pounding along a smoke-wreathed passageway bordering the palace courtyard, I glimpsed the slave girl cutting across that open space.

  “There she goes!” I cried, purposely gesturing with my sword so that I knocked one of those stupid boar-spears into a wide arc. It slammed into the rest, and soon the guards were enmeshed in a clattering confusion, spears knocking one against the other, feet sliding and stumbling as they strove to stay upright, curses tangling with the cries of panic all around them. They’d almost gotten themselves sorted out when I renewed my shouts of “There! There! After her! Lord Theseus will have our heads if she gets away!” I flagged them down a side passage before taking off myself in the right direction.