Spartans at the Gates (39 page)

Before Hypatos could walk away Nikias said, “I need a horse.”

Hypatos screwed up his forehead. “Horses are hard to come by, as of late. I've got an old nag down at the stables, but I only use her to pull the cart when I drive to Delphinium for the great market.”

“I need a
fast
horse,” said Nikias in a confidential tone.

Hypatos frowned harder and said, “I'll see what I can think of. Have patience. The gods always provide.” And cupping his hand to his mouth he called out, in a voice that was far louder than was necessary for the small room, “Karpos! Show young Nikias to the dining hall.”

A downcast slave of indeterminate age appeared from where he'd been lurking around the corner. He eyed Nikias sullenly and gestured for him to follow, leading him down a narrow hallway to an arched entrance. Karpos looked the same as when Nikias had first seen him ten years ago, when he and his grandfather had stayed at the inn for the first time. Karpos stopped at the entrance and gestured grandly for Nikias to enter the dining hall, a windowless room with a low ceiling. He counted six men at the tables drinking wine and talking amongst themselves, waiting for their meals.

“Find a seat,” said Karpos with a bored expression, “and I'll bring you wine.”

Nikias found a spot in the corner where he could sit with his back to the wall and keep an eye on the doorway. It felt good to sit down, and even though he was still on his guard, he let himself relax a little. But he kept one hand on his walking stick, just in case. He looked at each of the men in the room in turn, sizing them up. They all wore dusty traveler's clothes. And the only accents that he detected were either Athenian or of Oropos and Delphinium.

Karpos brought him a drinking cup and two jugs—one with wine and the other with water—then slunk out of the chamber. Nikias poured himself some uncut wine and quaffed it in a few gulps. In a few minutes the wine's magic started to take hold.

Slaves brought in plates from the kitchen, and Nikias was grateful when his meal was finally set before him: bread and cheese, olives, a steaming bowl of bean soup, and skewered lamb braised with garlic and mint. He ate greedily and in no time at all there was nothing left but an empty plate. He used the bread to sop up the olive oil and grease and, catching the attention of one of the serving slaves, called for another meal, even though he was already filled with a sense of peace and well-being.

Hypatos appeared at the entrance and cleared his throat for attention. “Listen, good travelers. I have a surprise for all of you. The great bard Linos has arrived in the citadel tonight after ten years of travel away from the Oxlands, and he has agreed to sing for you all tonight. I am greatly honored to have him under my roof.”

Nikias sat up and stared at the doorway eagerly. He had seen Linos perform when he was a boy. The man had passed by their farm and had performed the “Song of Troy” for his supper. He remembered the man as being very handsome—as regal as a king, with a black beard and a handsome face. But the person who slowly doddered into the room was bent with age and white of hair. Nikias realized, with embarrassment, that this was the same old man leading the donkey that he'd passed on the switchback road—the one who had said “Peace” to him but whom Nikias had so rudely ignored. He felt like a fool for suspecting this poor old wandering bard of being a spy.

Linos shuffled to the other end of the room and sat down. A slave brought him a leather bag and Linos opened it carefully, taking out a tortoiseshell harp. He tuned it softly, holding it to his ear and plucking each string. The men in the room quieted down and stared at him expectantly. All except one—a fat-faced oaf sitting next to Nikias who slurped his soup noisily and hummed under his breath. Nikias gave the man's chair a swift kick.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Linos is about to sing.”

The soup-slurping man shot Nikias an angry look, but when he saw the murderous expression in the younger man's eyes he smiled meekly and pushed his bowl away, wiping his mouth on the hem of his tunic and sitting up very straight on the bench.

Linos closed his eyes and held his pick to one of the strings, pulling it taut like an archer with an arrow in the nock. He snapped the pick and the string thrummed violently, a single note that filled the room with an ominous noise while at the same time his voice exhaled a throaty growl. And then his hand flashed on the strings, once, twice, thrice, and his nearly toothless mouth let forth a honeyed voice:

“Sing to me! Sing to me, Muse, of the man whose journey home

Is filled with twists and turns, blown time again off his course

After he had plundered the high walls of Troy.

Countless cities he saw, and learned the minds of many men

Many agonies he suffered, homesick, heartsick on the wine-dark sea

Fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.”

Before long Nikias realized he was watching Linos through a mist of tears. He listened raptly to the “Song of Odysseus,” the tale of that unhappy wanderer struggling for so many years to make his way back home to Greece from the shores of Troy. He was carried away to far-off lands, brought to life by the bard's words and music: to Kalypso's cavern, and the land of the Aethiopes; to high Olympus, where the gods argued about the fates of men, and Odysseus's home, where his worthy son cursed the horde of suitors who had come to win his mother's hand, longing for the return of his magnificent father.

Linos played for two hours straight before pausing briefly to take a drink. But no sooner had he sipped from his cup than the men in the room were already calling out for more. Nikias glanced around and saw that Hypatos stood in the back of the room, smiling. And surrounding the innkeeper were all of the servants and slaves under his roof: they had all been allowed to listen to the bard. Even the sullen old slave Karpos was there, a dreamy look on his face. Linos the bard had cast a spell.

“My father had the same power to enchant,” Nikias mused sadly. Aristo would have been another Linos, if he had not fallen in battle.

Linos played for another two hours or so before his voice became thin and weak and he begged to stop for the night. The men in the room pleaded with him to continue, but the bard's voice was spent. The room erupted into applause. Nikias waited until the other guests had gone off to bed and then went up to Linos and shyly made his introductions. The old man smiled at him enigmatically and said that he remembered visiting his grandfather's farm.

“Where are you going next?” Nikias asked.

“To Plataea,” said Linos. “I have some business to attend to there before I die.”

Nikias laughed, and then realized that the old man was not joking. The smile faded from his face. “What do you mean?”

“I'm sick,” said Linos. “My heart tells me it isn't long now.”

“But you can't go to Plataea,” said Nikias. “The Spartans guard the road. I am going to go by way of the mountains. It's a hard path, but you'll be safer with me.”

Linos laughed softly. “Kindly offered, young Nikias. But I have no fear of Spartans. It is true that they have no use for poetry in their bleak country, but they would not harm an old wandering storyteller like me. I am too feeble to go traipsing through the mountains at my age. And my poor old girl would balk at such an effort.”

“Your poor old girl?”

“My donkey,” said Linos. “She's on her last legs too.”

*   *   *

Karpos led Nikias down a dark corridor, holding a burning lamp to light their way. When they got to the door at the end of the hall the slave took out a ring of keys and unlocked it. He entered, setting the burning oil lamp he'd been holding on the table. Then the slave jerked his thumb at the pot in the corner and said, “For your convenience,” before leaving the room and shutting the door behind him.

Nikias slid the bolt on the door, locking it. He picked up the lamp and inspected the room. There was one window, high up on the wall, but it was shuttered and locked. The only furniture was the bed and the table. He relieved himself in the pot, then set the lamp on the floor by the bed and lay down on the mattress. Leaning over, he blew out the flame and the room was cast into utter darkness. It had never felt so good to lie down on a bed. He felt as though his body weighed as much as the giant statue of the hero Androkles back home. He felt himself floating.…

He dreamt he was in the Cave of Nymphs with Kallisto, making love. And then he looked over to see Helena watching them from the corner. She was naked and unadorned. Nikias invited Helena to join them, and together the three became entwined, rolling on the floor of the cave, seeking out each other's mouths and nipples, writhing like eels. And then Nikias looked up and saw his best friend Demetrios standing over them, holding the golden fleece. But the sheepskin dripped with blood.

“I'm coming home,” said Demetrios, his handsome face breaking into a smile. “I bring healing treasure.”

Demetrios laid the fleece on the fire and smoke poured forth into the cave, filling it with black vapor. Nikias started choking. He heard someone outside the cave screaming—

“Fire! Fire!”

Nikias awoke in the dark chamber. He was on the floor and his eyes burned from smoke. He got up and fumbled for the door ring, panicking because he couldn't breathe.

“Get out!” yelled Karpos's voice from somewhere outside the door, followed by frantic screams.

At last he found the door ring, but it burned hot to the touch. He slid the bolt, unlocking the door, and wrapped his tunic around the door ring, pulling hard. But the door would not open. It had been blocked from the outside! Nikias pounded on the door, calling out for help, but nobody replied. The smoke was getting thicker. He felt dizzy.

All at once the shutters on the high window flew open. “This way!” called a young man's voice. Someone was outside the window, holding up a torch so he could see.

Nikias grabbed the table and pushed it up against the wall, then jumped on top of it and clambered out the window, landing on the stone pavers on the other side. He was in the alleyway at the back of the inn. Two men stood over him. One was an enormous man covering his face with a cloth to filter out the smoke. Nikias recognized the face of the other in the torchlight—Priam, the young guardsman who had taken his weapons at the gates of Tanagra.

Nikias choked and gasped for air. “Thank—thank you.”

The bigger man shifted, quickly raising something above his head. “You're welcome,” he said with a familiar voice—a deep, callous voice that sent a shock wave of terror through Nikias's brain.

Axe!

Before Nikias could react, the warrior Axe swung a club downward, smashing Nikias on the side of the head with a devastating, skull-rattling blow, and the world went black.

 

EIGHT

Eurymakus could not take his eyes away from the gift that the one god had delivered to him—a gift that lay in chains on the floor of a windowless undercroft beneath the streets of Tanagra, unconscious and mumbling deliriously.

It had been less than two weeks since Eurymakus and Nikias had fought at the gates of Plataea. Eurymakus had felt such heartache in the aftermath of that defeat. A soul-crushing desolation like he had never felt before. It had been worse than the blinding sorrow he had felt after Menesarkus had murdered his brother Damos in the pankration championship. But how quickly life could change when the hand of Ahura Mazda was at the tiller of one's Ship of Destiny. For lying helpless at Eurymakus's feet was the wily Nikias himself—heir to General Menesarkus, scourge of Eurymakus and Thebes!

Eurymakus wished that Axe had not struck Nikias so hard in the head. He was concerned that Nikias might have suffered brain damage, or that he might never awake from his insensate condition. For the Theban whisperer wanted Nikias to be fully aware when the torture began. Eurymakus was an expert in inflicting pain—he'd trained with the king's own torturer in the prisons of Persepolis, where the art of agony had been perfected by centuries of practice. Eurymakus had skinned men up to their necks and thrown them in holes filled with hungry rats. He'd snapped bones and yanked teeth, burned out eyes and sliced off noses and genitals.

But those efforts had been meant to merely punish and maim a man's body. The most valuable thing he had learned how to do was to destroy a man's soul. He had taken the stoutest and most defiant warriors and turned them into gibbering apes who would eat Eurymakus's shit when commanded to do so. To do something like that meant taking one's time. And that was what he planned on doing with Nikias.

He squatted by the pankrator, setting down an oil lamp by his head, then pulled the young man's long hair back from his face so he could study his strong features in the flickering light.

“Of course, your body will be ruined by the time I'm done with you,” Eurymakus said softly. “No fingers with which to touch your beloved, no teeth with which to chew delicious food. Lipless and earless. A hideous mockery of what you once were.” He saw Nikias's eyes moving rapidly behind his lids, as though he heard what was said but was unable to speak.

“I will, however, leave one of your eyes intact,” continued Eurymakus in a cheerful voice. “So you can see the expressions of utter horror on the faces of your fellow Plataeans and kin. But by that time there will be nothing much left of your mind but a shrieking, sickening agony that never fades, for you will be mad. And then I will send you back to Plataea so that your grandfather can look upon you, and his heart will wither in his breast.”

Eurymakus felt a twinge in his guts—a sensation of excitement mingled with expectation.

Just then Nikias shifted and mumbled something in his sleep. Eurymakus leaned forward, listening.

“The name,” said Nikias, barely audible.