Read Spartans at the Gates Online

Authors: Noble Smith

Spartans at the Gates (7 page)

Chusor had never heard his own situation put so bluntly before. Menesarkus was right, of course. And it made him sick at heart. “Such is my fate,” he said, staring gloomily at the vase behind Menesarkus.

Menesarkus followed his gaze to the jar. “Herakles could not beat Antaios by throwing him to the ground,” he explained, gesturing at the painted image, “because it was the
earth
that gave Antaios his strength. So Herakles had to change tactics and trust in the gods. The solution was simple, really.”

“All he had to do was lift Antaios off the ground,” said Chusor.

“And then Herakles could squeeze the life out of him,” put in Menesarkus with a wicked gleam in his eye. “These Spartans … all
we
have to do is get
them
off their feet, and then we can crush them.”

“Why am I here, Arkon?” asked Chusor. “What is your proposition?”

“Haven't you figured it out?” asked Menesarkus with a sly smile. “I am offering you citizenship as a Plataean.”

Chusor stood up as though he'd been stung by a wasp. Wine sloshed from his cup, splattering the stones. This was an offer of a treasure more valuable to him than a mountain of gold. Citizenship! To no longer live as a paltry freed slave, or a lowly
metic,
but rather a full-fledged citizen of a city-state that was in league with the great Athenian Empire. A gift once given that could never be taken away and would serve as a passport anywhere in the empire, even were Plataea to fall.

“Do you toy with me?” he asked.

“I would never toy with such a man as you,” said Menesarkus. “But this gift I offer you comes at a
very
high price.”

 

FIVE

Nikias and Kolax had been riding hard for many miles with a strong wind at their backs. It felt like the hand of a friendly god pushing them toward Athens.

The fog had burned away completely to reveal the rocky and barren terrain of this region: Attika. Hardscrabble hills and parched fields waiting to be plowed and sown; many hues of brown under a bright blue and cloudless sky. The landscape reminded Nikias of a desiccated old man. It was as though the fog, like a white death shroud, had been pulled away to reveal a dried-up old corpse.

Nikias glanced at the barbarian boy riding a few strides ahead—always a few strides ahead in an impatient manner that irked the Plataean. The Skythian kept looking back at him and frowning as if to say, “Can't you go any faster?”

The truth was that Nikias could not. But he didn't want to admit this to Kolax. His recent injuries were preventing him from keeping up with the boy. His right shoulder, injured in the fall from Photine, felt as though it had been branded with an iron. And the place where he'd been kicked in the chest by the black gelding hurt more now than it had an hour ago. It throbbed with every hoofbeat, radiating a dull ache through his torso and into his spine. He longed to come to a stop and lie down under the shade of a tree.

He could sense his horse was at the end of her limits too. He was on one of the Dog Raiders' mounts—a lithe gray mare that had been the only animal to escape injury from his Sargatian lasso in the chaos of the fight. She was fast, but a little too small for Nikias's heavy build. And she was getting tired. He would have to stop soon to let her drink and nose around for some food.

“How much farther to Athens?” asked Kolax.

The barbarian boy had asked this question so many times that Nikias had lost count. Kolax was anxious to be reunited with his father—an archer in the employ of the Athenian police force. But the truth was that Nikias didn't know the answer. He was in a daze.

“Have to stop soon,” he said. “Need to rest.”

“Rest?” scoffed Kolax. “I've got a bag of gold and I'm on my way to see my papa! No rest for me!”

After Kolax had saved him from the Dog Raiders, Nikias had given the boy half of the gold to carry, thinking it better to split the treasure between them in case they were attacked again. He was beginning to regret the decision, however. The boy might just leave him in the dust and head off to Athens on his own. Or cut his throat.

No. That was a foolish notion. Kolax was as loyal as a dog. “I'm being mistrustful,” he thought. He touched his head with the back of his hand. His forehead burned and he sweated profusely. He realized that he had a fever.

After another mile the road wended its way through a flatter area—there were fields on either side of the road that had been cross-furrowed to kill the weeds. In the distance, to the right, he could see a single farmer plowing with a bony ox, preparing the field for spring planting. Probably millet, Nikias considered with the eye of a farmer. That's what he would grow in this cracked rocky ground that was so unlike the verdant Oxlands, where you could practically scatter seed in the red earth without plowing and know it would come up strong.

The cart ruts were deeper on this part of the road than they had been closer to the mountain range. If he were to step into one of these tracks his leg would go in all the way up to his calf muscle. He wondered how many years men had moved along this road. A thousand? More? He could see a little cluster of farmhouses on top of a low hill surrounded by trees and vineyards. It looked like a happy place to live. And easily defensible from enemy attack.

“But I thought that our home was safe from attack,” he thought. “And I was wrong.”

His mind wandered, lulled into a sort of waking sleep by his fatigue and the rhythm of the galloping horse. A vision of his mother, standing at her loom and singing, flashed before his eyes, and he felt a stabbing sensation in his gut. She was dead now, murdered by Thebans on the night of the sneak attack. After Nikias had escaped from the citadel through the secret tunnel, he had gone straight to his family's farmhouse and had found it in smoldering ruins. The Theban called Eurymakus, who had a blood feud with Menesarkus, had tried to wipe out Nikias's entire family.

The next morning Nikias had come face-to-face with Eurymakus in the battle in front of the gates of Plataea, when the Theban reinforcements had clashed with the Plataean cavalry that Nikias had led from the border garrisons. But the Theban spy had fled in the confusion of the battle.…

“Where is my mother's shade now?” Nikias thought morosely. He should have been at the farm on the night of the invasion. He would have saved her.

She had not received a proper cremation and interment. For her body had been consumed in the inferno that had obliterated their home. Nor had she been given a funeral feast. Would her shade be angry? Confused?

Nikias's father, Aristo, had died on a battlefield when Nikias was six, and his grandfather had brought the corpse back home in a cart. It didn't take much effort to recall that memory. He could see his father's body in his mind as clearly as the day it had happened. Aristo's long, lean body laid out like a plank, almost blue and drained of blood from a terrible spear wound to his abdomen—a wound from which no man could recover. His grandfather had found his only son on the battlefield with his face buried in the dirt, hands frozen in the act of pushing dirt to either side of his face. He had smothered himself to stop the terrible agony.

“He looked as though he were shouting to the Underworld that he was on his way,” Menesarkus had said.

Nikias had been allowed to help wash his father's corpse. He'd even been given the honor of placing a silver coin in his father's hand to pay the Ferryman who would transport him across the river Styx. After that his father had been wrapped in his best robe, and then burned on a bier. The ashes and bits of bones were collected and stored in a funeral jar painted with Aristo's image: a beautiful man with long limbs holding a tortoiseshell harp and staring into space with sad eyes. He had been a poet and a runner, one of the fastest in the Oxlands. “Not meant for the battlefield,” his grandfather had said several times over the years. Not with disgust or anger. Just regret. But Nikias had always bristled at this description of his father. Who
was
meant for the battlefield? It seemed, in Nikias's opinion, that whether or not you survived was based almost solely on pure luck.

His grandfather had an answer for that too. “Some men are born lucky, others seize luck by the balls and take it. Others can't buy luck even if they have a cartload of gold.”

Nikias had kept his father's funeral jar and tortoiseshell harp in his bedroom. Both had been destroyed in the fire. His mother's remains were mingled in the cinders of the abandoned farmhouse as well. There was nothing left of her body. No hand in which to place a silver Plataean coin for the journey to the Underworld.

“The Athenians put the Ferryman's coin in the mouths of the dead,” he mumbled aloud. Nikias also knew that the poor kept money in their mouths when they went to market.

His mother had told him this when he was a child. She'd come from Athens. She'd been poor, but so very beguiling. His parents' marriage had been arranged, but Aristo had fallen in love with her the moment he'd seen his bride. At least that's what his mother had told him.

He hoped his mother had found her way to the Underworld. Perhaps the Ferryman would give her passage for free, enraptured by her beauty. And then she would search the Land of the Dead, drawn by the sound of her husband's playing and singing. Would his parents still love one another if they were reunited? Could the dead hold each other? Make love as shades? How terrible to be nothing more solid than a fog. A mere vapor craving life.…

The sound of laughter startled him from his grim reverie. He glanced to the left of the road and saw a small olive grove. Some boys were beating the trees with long sticks to shake out the last of the harvest. A pair of toddlers, barely able to walk, were picking up the fallen olives and gleefully tossing them into a basket.

“Stop,” said Nikias, pulling back on the reins and coming to a halt. Kolax stopped, too, trotting back to him.

“What is it?” asked Kolax.

“There's a road marker,” Nikias said, sliding off his horse's back. When his feet hit the ground his brain exploded in a blinding flash of pain. Bending over, he took several ragged breaths to compose himself, and then clutched the horse's reins, walking the animal over to a statue by the road: a stone head with long curling beard and hair stuck onto a rectangular column. A phallus protruded from the center of the block of marble, pointing the way to Athens like a fat finger.

Kolax walked his horse over and looked the strange statue up and down. His lips curled in an expression of haughty disdain. “What's he so happy about?” he asked, pointing at the stone erection with his bow.

“It's a herm statue,” said Nikias.

Hearing a high-pitched screech, he looked up: an eagle soared high in the sky overhead. The messenger of Zeus! This was a good sign.

“What does the stone say?” asked Kolax, pointing at the words etched on the marker.

“Ten miles to Athens,” said Nikias. He couldn't hide the weariness in his voice. He could barely speak.

“Then let's go! Let's go! To Athens!” cried Kolax enthusiastically.

“I have to rest,” said Nikias softly. “And my horse is going lame.” He looped his mount's reins around the statue's erection, adjusted the straps on his small pack, then stared across the field, past the olive grove, to a cluster of farm buildings in the distance. Suddenly the world swam before his eyes. He slumped to the ground with his back against the cool north side of the marble statue. He shut his eyes.

“Are you taking a nap?” asked Kolax. “Great Sky-God! Are you joking?”

Nikias ignored him, his thoughts drifting. He thought back to several days before he'd departed Plataea. His grandfather had ordered him to meet him at his offices. Thinking that he was being summoned for a tongue-lashing, Nikias had been surprised when his grandfather led him down a dark hallway to a portal guarded by armed men.

“There's a man in this room,” Menesarkus had said. “And he's worth his weight in gold.…”

“Nikias!” said Kolax urgently.

Nikias shook himself from his reverie and opened his eyes. “What?”

“You were about to swallow a fly,” said Kolax.

Nikias scowled at him, then got slowly to his feet, taking the horse's reins from the herm statue. He started walking in the direction of the farmhouses, leading his mount.

“Where are you going?” asked Kolax.

Nikias tripped in one of the cart ruts, falling onto his knees. The reins slipped from his fingers, and the Dog Raider's horse bolted instantly and galloped across the road, heading north, away from the direction of Athens. Even Kolax was caught off guard by its sudden act of escape.

“Stupid horse!” cried the Skythian as he kicked his mount and took off in pursuit.

“Wait!” yelled Nikias, struggling to his feet. “Leave the horse! Come back, you idiot barbarian!”

But Kolax ignored him, whooping madly as he chased the fleeing animal across a field, churning up a cloud of dust. Nikias watched with helpless fury as first his horse and then Kolax and his mount disappeared over the crest of a hill and vanished from sight. Nikias staggered up the hill, but by the time he got to the top Kolax was far away—a tiny dot riding hard in the distance, chasing another dot heading north. Nikias turned toward Athens. From this high vantage point above the road he could clearly see the Athenian citadel ten miles to the southeast. The Temple of Athena, where it sat atop the Akropolis, was plainly visible even from this distance. The brightly painted building shone in the sun like a beacon. He was so close now.

He waited on the hill for the longest time, sitting on his haunches, focused on the temple, shivering with chills. At first anger boiled within him. But then it changed to concern. And then finally a wave of despondency overcame his soul. The Skythian boy was gone. Something must have happened to him. He would not be gone so long otherwise.

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