Spartans at the Gates (5 page)

Nikias quickly surveyed the scene. Brown Beard and One Eye were dead. The raider with the missing incisors—dead. The raider with the whip-lashed neck—dead. The one with the crushed larynx—dying. And two who'd been thrown from their mounts lay motionless on the road.

Seven Dog Raiders were either dead or dying. He'd whittled them down to five. Those were good numbers. He snapped his whip over and over again, terrifying the horses.

The commander had remounted but was having trouble controlling his bucking horse because of his broken arm. The other four horsemen were having the same difficulties with their spooked mounts.

Nikias lowered his whip and glanced down. The Dog Raider whose throat he'd smashed with his heel had turned purple about the face, his eyes bulging from his head. He glared at Nikias with a look of profound hatred as he tried to suck in air through his destroyed windpipe.

The dying man's horse—a giant black gelding—came over and sniffed its master's head. The animal trembled, blood trickling down its haunch from where Nikias had struck it with the Sargatian whip. The horse stared goggle-eyed at Nikias out of one side of its big head, its reins dangling tantalizingly just out of reach. If only he could grab the reins. He could mount the animal and ride it back to the Three Heads!

He glanced at the five Dog Raiders up the road. They were an arrow shot away, spinning in circles, cursing at their frightened horses.

Nikias took a slow step toward the gelding. But the instant he moved his foot the horse flinched and whinnied angrily at him, snorting. It wheeled and kicked out with its hind legs, and then ran away, tossing its head as it went. It disappeared into the fog, heading north in the direction of the mountains. Nikias swore under his breath and turned to face the mounted Dog Raiders. The five men had finally gotten their horses under control and were lined up in a row, ready to charge with their javelins pointed at him.

Nikias clenched his teeth and breathed through his nose. He realized that all fear had left him.

“Come on!” The shout was ripped from his throat. “Die like your brothers!” He felt his skin tingle with excitement. His heart swelled. He suddenly felt powerful. Unbeatable. It was a sensation that he had experienced recently in battle. His grandfather called it “the ikor of the gods”—the sensation that the blood of the Olympians coursed through a warrior when his life was balanced on the edge of a knifepoint, making him potent … making him fierce and strong. He cracked the whip and the enemy horses reacted again with terror, bucking and rearing. Nikias could plainly see fear in the eyes of the raiders. They were hesitating. They didn't want to attack him. Nikias laughed and sprinted toward them—

And then a black blur rushed past from behind and slammed him to the road on his back. It took him a few seconds to realize that the black gelding had come back, running past him, kicking out with one of its back hooves as it passed—an act of revenge for the whip blows. If the hoof had hit him in the head it would have broken every bone in his face. But the horse had caught him on the thick pectoral muscle on his right breast.

Yet the animal's blow had done damage.

He rolled onto his stomach and fought for air, staring up the road in a daze. He saw the black gelding galloping crazily toward the four Dog Raiders. The other horses danced aside to let the enraged gelding pass, and then the beast was gone, bolting up the road in the direction of Athens.

Nikias felt the trembling in the ground before he heard the hooves. Many horses. Coming up the road from the direction of the mountains. He realized why the gelding had returned.

It was being chased.

He heard the distant war cry of a Dog Raider from that direction and his stomach sank. The horsemen who'd gone after Kolax … they must have killed the barbarian boy and were now returning to rejoin their brethren. Nikias was trapped like a wild boar—hemmed in between two packs of hunters.

Nikias shot a glance at the Dog Raider commander, who glared back at him malevolently. The raider cupped his hands to his mouth and answered the approaching riders with a full-throated scream.

“Hera's jugs!” spat Nikias. He got to his feet with a great effort and stood there swaying. He would die standing up. That's what his grandfather would have done. He might even take one or two more of them to Hades with him. He pulled back his arm and readied his whip. But his arm was shaking uncontrollably now. From behind he could hear the fast-approaching horses—their hooves pounding the hard road like thunder. They would be on him in seconds. Driving their spears into his body.

The Dog Raider commander ordered his men to attack, while he stayed back from the fray. The four remaining horsemen charged toward Nikias, their black capes flying, javelins raised.

Nikias's heart throbbed in his chest. His ears roared. Soon he would be caught in the maelstrom. Crushed and speared. Trampled. Pounded to blood and shit and dust.

And then something curious happened. A thing his mind could not fathom at first. He heard a sound like a hummingbird flying past his ear from behind. The face of the enemy rider closest to him was struck by an arrow and he fell from his mount.

Three more arrows buzzed over Nikias's head, one after the other, and three other charging Dog Raiders fell from their mounts, the last toppling into the dirt almost at Nikias's feet.

Four riders felled in a few heartbeats!

He caught a glimpse of the Dog Raider commander, a dumbstruck expression on his face, kicking his mount. The horse jumped off the road into the gully, where he vanished.

Then the world became a rush of noise and a swirl of dust as the pack of horses that were coming from behind rushed by Nikias on either side, passing so close that their coats brushed his shoulders. Only one of these horses bore a rider—a boy wearing the embroidered coat and leggings of a Skythian. He reined in, breaking from the pack, and turned, trotting back to Nikias. His long red hair was tied in an elaborate topknot that bobbed like a horse's tail as he trotted around the scene of carnage, guiding his horse with his knees alone, holding his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, seeking out more men to slay.

“Did you see that?” shouted Kolax gleefully in broken Greek. “One, two, three, four! I did that at full gallop. Four in a row!” His horse, a small Theban mare of Persian blood that Kolax had captured on the battlefield two weeks before, lifted its hooves daintily, stepping over dead men and pushing air through its nostrils with a prim expression on its long face.

“One of them got away,” said Kolax, pointing in the direction that the Dog Raider commander had gone. “Should I chase him?” He let forth his perfect imitation of a Dog Raider war cry—the same cry he had just used to trick the enemy as he'd charged up behind Nikias, driving the pack of horses.

Nikias shook his head. “No.” He slumped to his haunches, trembling violently. “Let him go. We have to keep moving toward Athens.”

Kolax leapt off his horse, wrapped his bow around his neck, and stowed the arrow he clutched in his hand in the lidded quiver at his back. Then he was on his knees, a knife gleaming in one hand, moving from one black-clad Dog Raider to the next, slitting their throats to make sure he'd done his job, then yanking out the arrows, clutching the gory things in his fist. The cart tracks carved into the white road were soon running red—gutters filled with blood.

“Counting those eight I killed earlier who chased after me,” said Kolax proudly, “that makes twelve for the day. Twelve of these Fur-heads! Wasn't that funny how I herded their stupid horses?” He stood over the warrior whose throat Nikias had crushed. The man was still wheezing ever so slightly, in the final stages of death from asphyxiation.

“This one isn't quite dead,” said Kolax, glancing at Nikias with a hopeful look.

There came a sudden gust from the north, and Nikias could smell the faint scent of pine borne on the wind. He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nostrils, savoring the fact that he had slipped from the hands of the god of death yet again.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kolax gesturing impatiently at the dying Dog Raider at his feet.

“This Fur-head needs help to the Other World,” said Kolax.

“He's yours,” he said, giving an exhausted wave of his hand.

Kolax smiled and bowed slightly at the waist, as if Nikias had offered him a modest but respectable gift. With a rapid movement he bent over and sliced off the Dog Raider's head with a few strokes of his long dagger. He held it up and looked into the face of the dead man.

“Not so fierce now,” he said in a chiding tone. He tossed the head high into the air, counting quickly from one to eleven as the head spun against the sky, spurting blood.

“Thirteen,” said Kolax under his breath as the Dog Raider's head slammed onto the road.

 

FOUR

“The Gates of Pausanius are shut by the Arkon's orders! No foraging this morning!”

“You heard him, now back off!”

Chusor stood amongst a throng of irate people milling about near the city's gates. Most mornings men and women were allowed to venture outside of the walls to seek firewood and hunt for game. But today guards were shoving people back from the two massive oak-and-iron portals that were shut and barred.

“I need to retrieve something from my farm!” yelled a man.

“And I have to check on my flock on the mountain!” fumed another.

“Arkon's orders!” said one of the guards. “Now clear off!”

The crowd dispersed with dark looks, but they obeyed.

Chusor said an oath under his breath and glanced up at the mountain looming above the city. He could almost feel someone watching him from up there. How was he going to make his assignation now? There was no other way out of the citadel except through these gates. A secret tunnel did exist—Nikias had found it on the night of the Theban attack—but it had caved in, nearly burying the lad alive.

The sound of heated voices made him turn. He saw a crowd gathering near the statue of the hero Androkles in the center of the agora: the square in front of the gates. The statue was the figure of a young man raising a leaf-bladed sword toward the sky—the symbol of Plataea's democracy. Two debaters stood face-to-face in the shadow of the monument. Chusor wandered across the agora in that direction.

Thousands of inhabitants from the countryside, fleeing their homes after the Spartans had invaded the valley, had set up makeshift dwellings in the agora. Many people had removed the valuable doors and shutters of their farmhouses and brought them here, using them to fashion crude lean-tos. Some had even toted their beds and furniture, anything made of wood—a scarce resource in the Oxlands—for fear that the Spartans would rip them from their unprotected homes and use them for firewood. It was a sight that depressed Chusor. What would happen if the Spartans did indeed besiege this place? How long would all of these people remain civilized in the face of overcrowding and starvation? How long until they were at each other's throats?

He had seen the aftermath of a year-long siege in Sicily. It was a terrible sight to behold.

“—but as I have argued so many times before, brother,” one of the debaters was saying derisively as Chusor got nearer to the statue, “breaking our allegiance with Athens and offering earth to the Spartans makes us nothing more than their dogs. We might as well change our name from Plataeans to Helots!”

“And as I have reiterated countless times, my dear brother,” responded the other, eyes wide with frustration, “Sparta does not want us to be their slaves. They merely require our neutrality. I don't understand why this fact seems to elude your brain.…”

Chusor had always been fascinated by public debates, even as a child growing up in Athens. There was nothing more civilized, in his opinion, than two citizens having a contest of words and ideas rather than a battle of brawn. One of the highest honors of being a citizen was the right to debate in this way, both in public and in the Assembly Hall. An honor he, Chusor, would never get to have, because he'd been born a slave—a citizen of nowhere.

“And I suppose you would rather Perikles of Athens make all of our decisions for us in this time of great crisis? Eh? Perikles the king?”

“Perikles is no tyrant. Athens is the general. And we are the hoplite. It is as simple as that.”

“There is nothing simple about this situation, brother. I would remind you of the words of the noble orator…”

Chusor glanced around at the faces in the crowd. He saw resignation. Boredom. They were quickly losing interest. They'd all heard the arguments countless times over the last two weeks. The issue was an ox beaten long after it had died. Tensions would not be diminished until the Plataean emissary returned from Athens with Perikles's answer: whether or not they would be given permission to sign a peace accord with the Spartans.

Chusor hoped Perikles would agree to the Arkon's request, if merely to give the Plataeans time to stall the Spartans and build up the city's defenses. That would give Perikles enough time to raise an army to send to Plataea's aid as well. But he reckoned the Athenian leader would deny the request. If Plataea were to be allowed to sever its alliance with Athens, then other city-states, already rebellious, would secede also, and the Athenian Empire would start to crumble.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted three city guardsmen, wearing light armor, striding toward him from the direction of the jail.

“Chusor!” one of them called out. “Just the man we're looking for.”

Chusor knew all of the guardsmen—they were Arkon Menesarkus's handpicked warriors: grizzled veterans of many campaigns.

His heart started pounding. Had someone caught the messenger pigeon and found his note? It was unlikely, and even if they had they would not be able to read his coded message. But still, he had to suppress a sudden urge to run away, back to his smithy, and lock himself in the storeroom with Diokles. He glanced toward the gates. They'd just been opened for a troop of cavalry to enter. The horses and men were dusty from the road. The gates were quickly shut with a loud clash, and heavy beams inserted into iron slots to lock them into place.