Legacy of Blood (16 page)

‘What's Lernos doing?' asked Orpheus.

Lysander saw the Spartan at the far end of the beach where the pebbles gave way to sand. He was crouching to examine the ground, then jumped up and came running back with a frown.

‘Is something troubling you?' asked Aristodermus.

Lernos stroked his chin. ‘Footprints. In the sand. Someone has been here recently.'

‘You said smugglers used this cove.'

‘Yes,' said Lernos. ‘You're probably right. Are we ready to move?'

Aristodermus turned to face them. ‘Take your weapons, boys.'

Lysander fastened on a still-wet cloak, along with his sword and helmet, then took a spear and shield from the pile in the sand.

Lernos addressed them, pointing back up the beach. ‘The tunnels are reached up a narrow gully at that end. It's pitch black inside, so stay close to the man in front, and don't get lost. There are several other smaller passageways that lead off the main branch. It's like King Minos' Labyrinth down there.'

Lysander's mother used to tell him the stories of the maze built under the palace in the kingdom of Crete. A monster lurked down there, half man, half bull, and it feasted on human flesh. He'd stopped believing in such tales before his tenth year.

Aristodermus was speaking to Moskos in whispered tones.

Their tutor addressed them. ‘The marines will stay here and try to repair the ship. We'll reconnoitre the city, then form a plan of attack. Are you ready, Spartans?'

‘Ready!' Lysander shouted with the others.

They marched along the beach, with Lernos leading alongside Aristodermus. The sun was up now, behind thin hazy clouds, and it was beginning to warm
Lysander's back. It looked like they were heading straight towards a mound of boulders, but a sandy path, lined with long grasses, opened up leading upwards and inland. On one side a steep rocky wall rose up, with boulders strewn around its base. Lernos led them between the rocks until Lysander saw a dark opening. It was triangular, about as tall as him, and barely two paces wide at the base. It looked completely innocuous, and if Lernos hadn't said, Lysander would have assumed it was nothing more than a minor cleft, terminating quickly.

‘Lysander, stay at the rear with Orpheus,' barked Aristodermus. ‘Make sure he doesn't get left behind.'

Lysander stood outside the mouth of the cave with his friend, while the others filed through. When it finally came to his turn, he stooped under the lip of the tunnel mouth. Immediately, a cold draught enclosed his body.

‘Keep your hand on my shoulder,' he said.

Orpheus did as he asked. For the first few paces, the other boys were like ghosts in the shadows, but then darkness set in, and Lysander strained his eyes in the pitch black.

‘It's tall enough to stand upright,' Lernos' voice echoed along the line. ‘Keep close to the boy in front, and everything will be fine.'

Lysander straightened up, and followed the sound of the shuffling feet ahead, dragging his fingers along the slimy wall. It reminded him of the blindfold exercises he used to do with his grandfather.
You have to trust
yourself to the darkness
, Sarpedon had said.

Orpheus's hand fell off his shoulder, and Lysander turned.

‘What's the matter?'

‘I tripped over something. It's fine.'

Lysander reached out and found his friend's arm.

‘Come on, we can't fall behind.'

Lysander thought he could hear the other boys ahead, and hurried along, keeping a firm grip on Orpheus's arm, using his other hand to feel ahead. He thought about calling out for them to wait, but the others would laugh at him if he did.

A dim light approached.

‘It must be the way out,' said Orpheus hopefully.

But something about the flickering told Lysander it wasn't natural daylight. It wasn't the tunnel exit.

‘Wait.'

They froze, with their backs against the cave wall, as the light grew stronger, illuminating the tunnel wall, which glistened with moisture.

‘Where did they find a torch?' said Orpheus.

Lysander heard a noise to their side, and turned to see a stocky man carrying a flaming torch. He wasn't a Spartan.

‘Who are you?' he said, reaching for his sword.

The man circled them, as two others approached from ahead, each carrying a torch as well, with unsheathed swords glinting gold in the flickering flames. Where was the rest of their squadron?

‘Help!' Lysander cried. ‘Back here!'

The man grunted a few words in a language Lysander didn't understand. The short man took a step in and Lysander saw him swing an arm. Lysander lifted his sword, but the blow was too strong. A club hit him on the side of his head.

‘No!' he heard Orpheus cry out.

The ground rushed up to meet Lysander as he toppled forwards, pain tearing through his skull. He put his hands out to break his fall, but it was too late; his face smashed into the hard rock floor.

‘Wake!' said a voice in heavily accented Greek.

A hand slapped the side of his face, and the first thing Lysander saw was a blade. He tried to move away, but there was a great weight pinning him to the floor. One of the men swam into focus, kneeling on his chest. He had long dark hair hanging loose and his thin nose looked like the beak of an eagle.

Lysander felt for his short sword, but it was gone. They must have taken it.

The man cleared his throat and spat into Lysander's face. Despite the cold underground, Lysander felt sweat prickle over his body, as fear opened his pores.

‘Orpheus?' Lysander said.

‘I'm here,' replied his friend weakly. Lysander twisted his neck and saw that Orpheus was against the cavern wall. Two men held his shoulders and arms back, while another stood in front, holding a broad dagger in the flames of his torch. There was no sign of the other Spartans.

Four enemies.

Only two of them: unarmed.

‘What do you want?' he said to the man, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

The man nodded to his friends, and the one with the torch handed it down to Lysander's captor. The man played the flame back and forth over the length of his arm, close enough to be uncomfortable.

Lysander turned away, unable to watch as the man grinned and brought the torch closer. It felt like the flames were ants, burrowing into his flesh just above the armour that covered his forearm.

The smell of singed hair filled the tunnel, and Lysander's body shook with the effort of not crying out.

Only when the man handed the torch back did Lysander dare look. A patch of his skin was red and blistered, with clear fluid dripping from the skin.

If only he knew what these men wanted, perhaps he could bargain with them.

Orpheus cried out in agony, and Lysander smelled burnt flesh. The man with the torch was pressing the heated blade against his friend's upper thigh.

‘Stop!' begged Lysander. ‘Punish me instead.'

The man took the knife away, then held it over the flames again. Tears of pain streamed down Orpheus's face.

‘Let them,' he said through his teeth. ‘I'm no coward.'

The man with the blade looked at Lysander without pity, then placed the blade across Orpheus's other leg. His friend writhed against the hands holding him, but there was no way he could escape.

They don't want anything from us
, Lysander realised.
They only want to hurt us.

One of the men punched Orpheus in the stomach and he tumbled forward into a ball.

‘Orpheus!' Lysander shouted, but his friend was gasping for breath. The men all laughed.

The man who had been torturing Orpheus knelt behind Lysander's head. He brought the knife close to Lysander's face, hovering with the point over his eyes. Lysander turned his head away and felt a searing pain as the blade was held against his earlobe. It felt like his whole ear was being slowly ripped off.

This time he did cry out, and without shame.

There must be a way out!

Brute force wouldn't work, but if he lay here, they'd surely torture both him and Orpheus, until they were no longer capable of fighting back.

What had Aristodermus said?

Rest when you can. Fight when you have to. Adapt.

The knife was lifted from his ear, and Lysander felt blood ooze along his neck. He let his head roll to the side, and played unconscious.

The men made grumbling noises at their fun being cut short. Lysander felt the pressure on his chest lessen a little.

This is my chance.

He jerked with his legs and bucked his hips upward, then used his arms to lever the man over his head and into his tormentor with the knife. He twisted on the floor, and kicked out at one of the standing men, sweeping his legs from underneath him. The torch fell to the ground and flared.

From the floor, Orpheus drove his elbow against the thigh of the other man who had been holding him. He dropped with a howl.

The scarred man and his stocky friend gathered themselves and ran at Lysander. He sidestepped to keep one blocking the other, and kicked the armpit of the man holding the dagger. The blade clattered to the ground and Lysander dived for it. As his hand closed around the hilt, someone stamped on his back. Lysander swung the blade, and drove it into the knee of his attacker, the man with the loose hair. He screamed and fell backwards, clutching his leg.

Lysander saw two others barrel into Orpheus, and then the flash of a blade as one of them stabbed Orpheus's breastplate. The world seemed to slow as the dagger pierced the metal. The armour was only good for deflecting glancing or weak blows, not a direct attack.

Orpheus let out a moan as blood gushed up around the hilt.

Lysander stumbled backwards.

‘No! No! No!' he heard himself mumbling.

He ran towards the two men, but the other attacker scythed into his side, sending him crashing against the cave wall. He saw Orpheus sink to the ground, his hands fumbling at the wound to his chest.

Lysander swung a punch at his attacker, but it was poorly aimed, and had no power. The others joined in, kicking him in the ribs and stomach, and all he could do was cover up his head with his elbows. A blow caught him on his broken nose, and white pain exploded through his head.

He fell on to his back and clutched his face. The men all laughed.

Through his fingers Lysander saw the flash of a sword blade and there was a sickening crunch. The chuckling stopped dead, replaced with a scream. Something landed on Lysander's leg, and he looked through his blurred watering eyes. It was an arm – the fingers still gripping the hilt of a knife.

As the man stared in terror at his missing limb and the blood pumping from the wound, the other three were looking out into the cavern at the three entrances, gabbling to each other. One held a dagger, and the other two had Orpheus's and Lysander's swords. No one looked at Lysander.

The man with the missing arm moaned on the ground.

There was movement from one of the tunnels and a shield spun out, striking the lead Tarantian in the thigh, and doubling him over. A scarlet-cloaked figure
charged in its wake from the darkness. For a moment, Lysander dared to believe that it was Orpheus. Was his friend alive?

But it was another face that came into the arc of torchlight.

Prokles.

He was carrying a sword that dripped black in the gloom, and he drove it upwards through the stomach of the distracted enemy, grunting with the effort. One of the other men swung his sword at Prokles, who deflected the blade with the guard on his arm, then punched the attacker in the face with the back of his fist. Lysander heard his jaw crunch. Prokles was wearing a wooden knuckle-duster.

Lysander sprang up, and tackled the legs of the other Tarantian. He felt an elbow dig into his back but ignored it, lifted the man off his feet and ran him into the opposite wall, driving his shoulder into the man's stomach. He collapsed at Lysander's feet.

Lysander put an arm around his neck from behind, seized his chin with the other hand, and yanked the head around as hard as he could. The neck snapped like a twig, and the man went limp.

Prokles had finished off the man with the broken jaw, and was pulling a sword from his chest. The scarred man was lying face down in a pool of blood. Only one was still alive, and he was crouched against the cave wall, clutching torn rags to the awful wound at his shoulder, his face bloodless and ghostly pale. His eyes
flitted from one of them to the other.

‘What shall we do with him?' said Prokles, picking up his shield.

Lysander was speechless. Orpheus was surely dead. But Prokles had saved him. The boy who had been his enemy since day one in the barracks. The boy he'd called a coward just a few nights before.

Prokles raised his sword over the cowering man.

‘No!' shouted Lysander.

Prokles turned and gave a confused look. ‘He'll tell others about us.'

‘Take him back to Aristodermus. He might be useful.'

Prokles hesitated. ‘You're right,' he said, after a moment. He jerked his sword in front of the bleeding enemy. ‘On your feet.'

The man understood, and shuffled groggily to his feet. Lysander went to Orpheus's body. His friend's eyes were open, but lifeless, his lips slightly parted. Lysander felt as though his stomach was being turned inside out, and he lowered his forehead until his skin touched Orpheus's brow.

Orpheus was the first Spartan ever to have shown him kindness, a boy who knew how it felt to be an outsider. He had taken Lysander under his wing in the early days of the agoge, and protected him from the others. But what he'd shown Lysander more than anything was that the red cloak didn't have to mean cruelty; it could mean honour, and nobility.

‘I'm to blame,' said Lysander. ‘I said I'd look after him.'

‘We have to go,' said Prokles. ‘The others will be waiting.'