Spartans at the Gates (24 page)

“Tell me about your adventures,” Nikias asked. “Or have you been guarding grain ships all these years?”

Phoenix smiled. “I've killed thrice as many men as you, dear cousin, since shipping out to sea.”

Nikias knew by the serious look on Phoenix's face that he wasn't making an idle boast.

“The truth is we spend more time with spears in our hands than oars,” continued Phoenix. “I was in the great battle off Sybota two years ago—the biggest sea battle since the Persian invasions. We sent twenty ships to aid the Korkyrans against the Korinthians. Nearly a hundred and fifty boats were in the water for each side, filled with enough hoplites to burst the planks. We came hull to hull with the enemy. Animal rage and brute force were swapped for seamanship. It was murder and chaos.”

Phoenix took a long drink and stared at the table with a faraway expression.

“I heard that the enemy speared the survivors of ships that had sunk,” said Nikias. It was a serious breach of the rules of war that had infuriated the Athenians—the killing of helpless fellow Greeks as they trod water in rough seas. And the rumor of it had come all the way to Plataea.

Phoenix nodded. “The Korinthians went mad with bloodlust after the battle. They even killed their own allies by mistake, such was their blind wrath. Both sides claimed victory in the end. But neither of us won.” He paused then said, “The Skythian guards watch over Athens, keeping everyone in line. Well, we mariners do the same thing, only it's all of the islands in the Delian League that we have to worry about.”

Nikias was stunned. “You mean you've been fighting Athenian allies too?”

“We call them mutinous city-states,” said Phoenix. “Those who refuse to pay their taxes, or who make eyes at the Korinthians or Spartans or Persians … or any of our growing list of enemies. The League is in trouble, and that's one of the reasons this whole Plataean situation is so bad. Do you see now why Perikles can't let Plataea go? It will turn into another shit-pot.”

“What's the shit-pot?” Nikias asked.

Phoenix looked at him incredulously. “Potidaea?
The
shit-pot? It's a city-state in the north that wanted to back out of the Delian League and go with Sparta. There are thirty Athenian triremes up there blockading their harbor—preventing help from Sparta or Korinth. We're building a counter-wall around the entire citadel while four thousand of our hoplites and a host of Skythian archers guard the place night and day. Perikles is not going to give up until he's starved the shit-pot into submission.”

Nikias sat back and touched his aching left eye. It was swollen almost shut from a blow he'd taken from one of Kleon's henchmen. “And now the Spartans want to do to us what Athens is doing to this Potidaea.”

Phoenix nodded in agreement. “It's a tangled rope, that's for sure. But at least you've got the Bull of Plataea. And we've got Perikles. Without them we'd both be in a sinking boat.”

“Captain.”

The mariner Phoenix had sent from the wineshop had returned with a canvas bag. He set it on the table.

“Excellent!” shouted Phoenix, opening the bag.

It was filled with theatrical masks—the cheap kind bought from a street vendor and worn at parties where the sole purpose was to get drunk and screw anonymously. Phoenix laughed as he pulled out a mask and put it on. He now resembled a pug-nosed satyr with a leering mouth and wrinkled brow. He reached in again and took out a giant phallus with low-hanging testicles, and wrapped this contraption around his waist.

“I don't have time to waste at a satyr party,” said Nikias, annoyed.

Phoenix tossed Nikias a mask—the beauteous face of the god Dionysus, leader of the satyrs.

“We're not going to party
here,
arse-brains,” said Phoenix, jumping on the table. He cupped his hands to the mouth of his mask and shouted, “I need twenty volunteers to go brothel-diving in Athens with me and my dear cousin!”

Mariners pushed and shoved each other out of the way to get to Phoenix first. He started tossing masks and phalluses to his men and soon they were ready for action. Phoenix led them out the door, followed by Nikias, disguised in his Dionysus mask and mariner's tunic, wine cup in his hand.

“Now you're just another drunken oarsman on shore leave,” said Phoenix as they walked toward the entrance to the Long Walls with a gang of raucous mariners in their wake.

 

FIVE

By the time Kolax got to the fort where he'd seen the raven he was panting like a dog. He hid in the shadows of a building across the street from the entrance, trying to catch his breath. He thought about the strange vision of the giant arrow and the viper. He sensed danger now.

Two Athenian warriors stood on either side of the fort's double doors. And some watchmen paced the crenellated battlements above. Kolax wondered what this place was. A barracks? Some sort of armory?

He saw five Skythian archers saunter toward the entrance with three prisoners in tow—drunk men linked together with ropes around their necks and their hands manacled behind their backs.

“The place must be the city jail,” he thought.

His eyes darted from one archer's face to another, looking for his beloved papa. But none of them even closely resembled his father. In fact this gang of Skythians was a butt-ugly lot with unkempt topknots and dirty orange beards.

The jail's front doors opened and three other Skythian archers exited the building. They stopped short when they saw the group with the prisoners. One of them laughed, pointing at the drunks, and said with a Bindi accent, “Nuri dogs! Did you find some new bedmates to fondle and braid your greasy beards?”

“Cistern-arsed Bindis,” spat one of the Nuri archers. “Get yourselves some old Greek men and offer them your shaved hindquarters.”

The Nuri archers laughed uproariously at this insult, but the Bindi warrior who'd called them dogs threw down his bow—a sign he was ready to fight to the death in a duel of long knives. The challenged Nuri smiled and tossed his bow onto the street, then started rolling up his sleeves.

Kolax crouched low and watched with anticipation. He hadn't seen a death duel in a long time. He wanted to see this Bindi pull the Nuri's intestines out and trample them in the dirt.

The Athenian guard on the battlements of the fort had been watching all of this, and now he called down to the inner courtyard. In no time at all a huge figure emerged from the fort. All of the archers in the street stopped what they were doing and shrank back, cowering before this giant Skythian.

He was taller by a head than any archer in the street, and his red-bearded face was set in a grimace of rage. The hair of his topknot was so pale it almost appeared white in the Athenian sun, and it stood high atop his handsome head like a horse's thick mane, making him seem even more colossal.

Kolax realized that tears were streaming down his cheeks. He'd recognized his father's wheat-white hair the instant he'd walked out the door. The raven—the canny raven!—had led him to his papa, Osyrus of the Bindi.

Osyrus pulled a whip from his belt and held it aloft, dangling it there as though it were a wicked snake. “The next one of you sheep ticks to start a fight,” he said in a low voice charged with menace, “will taste my leather. These blood feuds end now. There are no tribes inside the walls of Athens. Now get back to your duties or I'll tie you all to the boards.”

The Bindis went on their way down the street with spiteful backward glances while the Nuris entered the jail, shoving their prisoners.

Osyrus remained in the street, coiling his whip around his fist.

Kolax reacted without thinking. He ran across the lane and hurled himself at his father, wrapping his arms around his waist, crying with joy.

A powerful blow to the side of his head sent Kolax reeling. He stumbled backward and fell on his rump, looking up to see his father staring at him with an expression of horror.

“Dirty slave!” hissed Osyrus in Greek, and snapped his whip with an ear-popping crack.

Kolax touched his face and felt warm blood pouring from his cheek. He tried to speak but all that came out was a strangled sound. His eyes bulged in frustration. His mind reeled. He grabbed his long hair with both hands and pulled it back to reveal his face, grinning hopefully.

“Papa!” he yelled.

Osyrus recoiled, muttering the Skythian word for “insane,” shielding his eyes with his arm so as not to be tainted by the sight of a lunatic. Warriors of the Grasslands feared little, but they had a profound terror of madness, as though it were infectious. Osyrus turned and disappeared into the fort.

Kolax leapt up and tried to run in after his father, but the guards at the door barred his way with their long clubs. One of them jabbed him in the stomach with the butt of his stick and yelled, “Get away, rabid mongrel, before we castrate you!”

Kolax walked backward on shaky knees. It felt as though the bones had been pulled from his legs. The delayed pain from the lash of the whip seared his cheek like fire. He staggered down the street, went around a corner, and collapsed against a wall, growling with exasperation.

Why had he acted so harebrained? There was no way his papa could have recognized him after these four long years, especially when he was dressed like a slave. He had to show his papa the tattoo. That would fix everything. The instant he saw the gryphon his papa would know who he was and embrace him. All he had to do now was figure out how to get into the jail.

He walked around the walls of the fort until he came to an empty alley on the opposite side. This uninhabited area—between the wall of the jail and the city bastions—was used as a garbage dump. The reek of rotting food and human feces made him gag, but the benefit of the stench was that there were no guards nearby.

He found a section of the jail's wall where the bricks were loose, leaving hand- and footholds. He climbed up the ten-foot-high barricade and dropped down the other side into a small alcove stacked with wood for cooking fires.

He heard a strange sound: men crying softly … like miserable shades trapped in the Underworld. And mingled with this mournful sound was the caw of a raven.

He crept around the corner and came face-to-face with a sight that snatched the air from his lungs—a courtyard filled with X-shaped wooden whipping stands on which a dozen men were tied spread-eagled, their backs flayed open like raw meat. Some had been dead for days and were in various states of decay. One was nothing but a skeleton, picked clean by the carrion birds. He realized that this was where the Athenians tortured their prisoners and left them to die. These were “the boards” his papa had threatened to tie the archers to if they had disobeyed him.

He couldn't see any guards in the courtyard—they'd left the prisoners who were still alive on these contraptions to roast in the heat of the afternoon sun.

Telemakos the raven was perched on the top of one of these torture racks, standing guard over a slumped body strapped to the wooden X. The bird stared at Kolax as he approached and bobbed his head as if to say, “Yes, yes, this one!”

Kolax recognized the bard's hair and felt a lurch in his guts. The skin of Andros's back looked like it had been slashed from side to side with a knife five or six times, but he knew the wounds had been made by a Skythian whip.

He crept to the other side of the wooden X so he could see Andros's face. The bard's lids were squeezed shut in agony and he whispered something to himself over and over again. Kolax touched him on the hand and Andros's eyes popped open to reveal whites that had turned red from burst blood vessels.

“Kolax?” he asked in a dazed whisper, speaking with great effort. “How did you find me?”

Kolax pointed at the raven. “I followed your bird and climbed over the wall.”

Andros clenched his teeth as pain wracked his body. Then he said, “The Athenians are going to kill me.”

Kolax raised his eyebrows and asked, “Why?”

“They have mistaken me for someone else,” said Andros. He cocked his head to the side and said, “The ropes.” And a moment later added, “Your knife.”

Kolax moved without thinking. He unsheathed his knife and cut the cords holding Andros's hands and feet to the wooden X. The bard slumped to the ground and exhaled—a sound of mingled agony and pleasure. Kolax helped him stand and guided him with the raven hopping along behind.

“I knew Zeus had sent you to me at the temple,” said Andros, his body shaking as though from chills.

Kolax led him back to the alcove with the woodpile and stacked some logs to create makeshift steps to the top of the wall. He gestured for Andros to escape over the top.

“Aren't you coming?” asked Andros, confused.

Kolax shook his head. The bard was too weak to argue and crawled on his hands and knees up to the edge of the wall. He glanced down at Kolax one last time.

“We'll meet again, one day,” he said. “And I will pay you back for saving me.”

Then he rolled over the side of the wall and was gone. The raven flapped to the top of the wall and looked the Skythian boy up and down before launching himself into the air and flying away.

Kolax hoped the raven would lead Andros to safety.

He stole back into the courtyard and found the door that led to the rest of the prison. He crept down a long hallway, knife held out in front. He smelled cooking and realized that he was near the kitchen. His heart pounded. He was so close to his father. After all these years. All he had to do was show him the tattoo—

He heard a sound and turned on his heels. A thin slave boy stood behind him holding a bucket. The child took one look at the knife-wielding, bloody-faced Kolax and screamed at the top of his lungs.

Kolax pushed past him and ran down the hall. An Athenian guard dashed around the corner and Kolax reacted instinctively—slamming his knife into the man's leg so hard that the blade embedded in the bone. The guard screamed and lashed out with a club, catching Kolax in the back of the head. The Skythian boy swooned and collapsed on the stone floor.