The Marathon Conspiracy (36 page)

“Come on, Rollo,” I said. I tugged on the bear’s chain, but he didn’t move. I tugged harder. The bear didn’t budge. I pulled with all my might. Rollo looked at me with contempt.

“What do you want?”

It was Ophelia. The girls had gathered out back, ready to run, and they’d watched me free the bear.

“I’m taking Rollo into that fight,” I said. “We’ll lose without him.”

“He won’t go with you,” Ophelia said. “But he will with me.” She took hold of the chain and said gently, “Come along, Rollo.”

The bear lumbered after her.

I couldn’t take a child into a battle. But I couldn’t not take the bear. I drew my breath, drew my dagger, and took the lead.

“Where are we going?” Ophelia asked.

“Aeschylus and Zeke are surrounded,” I told her. “We’re going down the west side of the sanctuary, past the Sacred Spring, and
through the gap between the temple and the stoa. The buildings will hide us from view until we’re right on top of them. We’ll hit them from behind before they see us.”

I didn’t know if Rollo would fight, but I did know that having a giant bear at your back was a good reason to run away.

The raiders had left two men at the bridge. They saw us first. One yelled, the other turned, and both leveled their spears and came at us.

The first man thrust his spear at me with both hands; he put his weight behind it and sent the sharp metal tip straight at my stomach. He grinned as he tried to kill me; if he connected I’d soon be seeing my bowels.

His technique was correct but slow. I swiveled my hips a heartbeat before the spearhead could skewer me, and at the same time I used my free left hand to bat away the shaft, hitting it just behind the spearhead with my open palm.

The spear slid right past me. The look of surprise on the spearman’s face made me laugh.

It was a trick Pythax had taught me. Now I was turned side-on to my enemy for minimum profile, and my knife hand was at the forefront.

The spearman had expected resistance when the spear sank into my body. He wasn’t braced to stop. He practically ran onto my upraised blade. It took him in the throat.

I breathed a thanks to Pythax. A year ago, that attack would have killed me.

The second man, meanwhile, had made the mistake of running at Ophelia. The bear didn’t even break stride. Rollo clubbed Ophelia’s attacker with one of his massive paws. The man flew backward to land on his behind, and blood splattered where the bear’s claws had scarred him. The raider dropped his spear to scramble backward with both hands, then, when Rollo kept coming at him, the raider picked himself up and ran across the bridge, down the road, and into the darkness.

“Quick,” I said to Ophelia. I was astonished she hadn’t shown fear, but with that bear beside her the girl was fearless. We passed between the Temple of Artemis and the stoa to see Aeschylus and Zeke hard pressed. Diotima was a dark figure on the roof behind them. She stood to shoot, which exposed her. As I watched, a man threw a spear her way, but Diotima didn’t flinch. She shot back. The raider was ready; he blocked her shot with his upraised shield. But that didn’t save him. As the arrow hit his shield a figure shot out of the darkness and dragged a short blade down his unarmored arm.

It was Gaïs. She was using her speed to run at the enemy, slash them, then run out of range. Gaïs wielded a priestess knife, the same type that Diotima carried. Those knives were very short, but they were sharpened to slit the throat of a sacrifice in an instant.

They were working as a team. Diotima was pinning the armored men with her shots, and Gaïs was slashing the immobilized targets. Gaïs couldn’t kill an armored man with her knife, but it’s hard to fight when your arm’s shredded.

“Now!” I pulled on Rollo’s chain, and this time he followed me.

Rollo lumbered into battle. His giant paw came down upon the first of the raiders and crushed him to the ground. His next swipe tore off the armor of the next man in line. The man was spun around and he came face to face with the hot breath of a giant bear. The man screamed, dropped his spear, and ran. His shield impeded his running, so he flung it away. He disappeared over the bridge and round the bend, and we never saw him again.

Rollo roared. The other raiders noticed that a bear was about to kill them. They turned as one to confront the new threat.

Zeke and Aeschylus didn’t waste the opportunity. They both plunged their blades into the backs of attackers. The rest didn’t wait to die. They followed their comrade over the bridge and probably out of Attica.

Now my only fear was that Rollo might take down my own side.

The gods must have been on our side, because the bear turned toward the man who’d caused it all. Glaucon had no one to protect him.

Glaucon ran, pursued by the bear.

T
HE SANCTUARY LOOKED
like every battlefield after the fighting was over. Aeschylus and Zeke both sagged to the ground. The fight had taken it out of the old men, but they’d given a display that would have done credit to men half their age.

I picked up Callias in my arms—he was disturbingly light—and carried him into the stoa where Doris had set up an aid station. Gaïs was already sprinting for Brauron as fast as her incredibly swift legs could take her to bring the doctor.

Before she left, I’d said, “You did well, Gaïs, in that attack.”

“Well, I had to do something. That idiot Sabina was going to stand there slack-jawed while those men attacked us.”

“You’re not insane,” I said, wondering.

“Of course I’m not.”

“I thought you might be pretending to be mad as part of some subtle plan to catch the killer.”

Gaïs looked at me strangely. “What sort of a crazy person would do that? No, I’ve got a much better reason for making people think I’m touched in the head. Can you think of a better way to avoid having to get married than to say crazy things and run through the woods naked? Besides, it’s fun.”

“Glaucon got away,” Diotima said.

“We can pick him up easily,” Callias said. He lay propped up against a column with a bad headache and a wet rag pressed to the gaping wound in his skull. “Now that we know who to look for, he can’t get away.”

Aeschylus walked up to me, slowly. “If you ever tell anyone that I fought alongside a Persian,” he said, “I will personally tear out your entrails.”

“Your secret’s safe with me, Aeschylus,” I said, barely suppressing a grin.

“Good.” He turned on his heel and walked away.

Doris ran over, her chiton picked up to let her run. “Has anyone seen Aposila?” she asked.

Aposila was missing.

“Who last saw Aposila?” I shouted, then when no one replied, I realized the answer was me. She’d picked up the axe after me and run into the battle.

Dear Gods. Had Aposila followed her daughter to Hades?

I ran to where the bodies of the raiders still lay and pushed them over. Aposila wasn’t underneath.

One of the smallest children pointed down the road.

I started running. Diotima wasn’t far behind.

Rollo had bailed Glaucon up against a tree. That was where Aposila had found them.

Aposila held a bloodied axe in her hands; at her feet was the splayed body of Glaucon. She’d split him almost down the middle, from the top of his head through the neck and halfway down his chest before the ribs had brought the axe to a halt. She was covered in blood. Drenched in dripping red.

“For my Allike,” she said.

Then she dropped the axe, buried her face in her blood-red hands, and wept.

“W
HAT HAPPENS TO
the bear?” Thea asked the next day.

“The bear goes wherever Ophelia goes,” Diotima said, and Gaïs nodded. She understood. For the first time ever, the two of them had agreed on something.

“Ophelia can’t take a bear home with her!” Sabina objected. “What would her father say?”

“She isn’t going home. She’s staying here,” Gaïs said. “No, let me rephrase that. Ophelia’s already home. She’s priestess-born; it’s obvious.”
Unlike you, Sabina
, were the words Gaïs didn’t say, but we all heard.

“You don’t rule here,” Sabina snapped at Gaïs.

“Oh yes, that’s right,” Thea said. “Let me fix that. Gaïs, kneel.”

“What?” Gaïs said, perplexed.

“I said kneel before me, girl. The games are over for you. It’s time to do some real work.”

Gaïs stammered. “High Priestess … no. You can’t do this … I can’t do this …”

Thea said, “We all saw, when the crisis was upon us, how you commanded and everyone else obeyed.”

“I only said what had to be done,” Gaïs protested. “And I only said it because no one was doing it.”

“Welcome to management,” Thea said to her.

Gaïs slowly went down on her knees.

Thea placed her hands on Gaïs’s head. “By the power given me by the Goddess, I name you, Gaïs, the High Priestess of Artemis
Brauronia. May the Goddess ease your path, because the girls certainly won’t.”

Thea removed her hands. Gaïs, still kneeling, looked up at her.

“That’s it?” Gaïs said. “That’s the entire ritual? You’re completely altering my life with thirty words?”

“I’m making this up as I go, child. Which pretty much sums up how I’ve ruled here for the last twenty years. If there’s a special ritual for this, I don’t know it. I got the job myself by default. The old High Priestess never had a chance to pass on a thing to me. Compared to mine, girl, your handover is a luxury.”

“Shouldn’t we be doing this in the temple, in the presence of Artemis?” Gaïs said.

“There’s the bear,” Diotima pointed out, and everyone turned to look at Rollo, who stared back in calm equanimity. If Artemis did inhabit the body of the bear—and all the legends said it could be true—then the Goddess clearly didn’t object to Gaïs as her new High Priestess.

Gaïs said, “High Priestess … Thea … I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ll have Doris to help you with the day-to-day running. She’s been doing most of the work for years now anyway.” Thea added, gently, “And if I read the signs right, you’ll have Ophelia to support you in the years to come. I can’t begin to tell you, dear, how important it is, to have someone there for you.”

“You’ll be here, won’t you?”

“You don’t need your predecessor looking over your shoulder. I’m retiring. You’ll need a new maintenance man. Zeke’s retiring too.”

Well, that surprised no one.

“Away from here?” Gaïs asked.

“Yes.”

“Stay with us, Thea,” Gaïs said.

“No.”

Gaïs said, “Doris should be High Priestess.”

Doris laughed and shook her head.

“She’s not a leader,” Thea said. “Doris knows this about herself, child. At Delphi they have a saying inscribed in the stone:
Know thyself
. You’ve never been to Delphi, have you? You’d better go before you get too settled in here. The Pythoness at Delphi is your peer now. It’s always good to know your professional colleagues. You won’t be alone, Gaïs. Doris will be here to help you for as long as you need it, which I suspect won’t be long.”

I nodded at that, and so did Diotima. Knowing Gaïs as we now did, even though she couldn’t read, we knew she’d memorize every part of the running of Brauron before the month was out. In two months she’d be making changes to protect the sanctuary as she thought best.

But still Gaïs tried to avert her fate. She said, “Thea, I’m not worthy.”

“In the attack, your first thought was to protect the sanctuary, not yourself,” Thea said.

“Of course it was.”

“You’re worthy.”

Sabina said, “High Priestess, you can’t mean this. The girl’s ignorant.”

Thea grinned. “Oh, but I do, Sabina. I know what you’re thinking, that you were next in line. But there’s no line here; there’s only excellence, or the lack of it.”

Sabina turned on her heel and walked out, without another word.

“It’s unworthy of me, but I confess I enjoyed that,” Thea remarked.

Gaïs said, “Sabina wants the job. She’ll cause trouble.”

“Sabina whines a lot. Deal with it,” Thea said without a trace of sympathy. “Anyway, she’s bound to die eventually, and then you’ll have some peace. In the meantime she’s an honest treasurer, which is more than you can say for most types like her.
Trust me, child, once Sabina realizes she has no hope, she’ll fall into line.”

I
KNEW SOMETHING
Thea didn’t, and this was the time to deal with it. Diotima and I left Thea’s office, which was also her bedroom, and would soon be the bedroom of Gaïs. We left the old High Priestess and the new with their lieutenant Doris as they talked in animated fashion about sanctuary administration.

We went in search of Sabina and found her by the edge of the Sacred Spring. She stood there, staring into the waters.

“It was all for nothing, Sabina,” I said.

She looked up, startled. Her eyes were red. “What? Oh, it’s you.”

“What did those young people do that they deserved to die? Why, Sabina?” Diotima said.

“Glaucon killed them.”

“Glaucon killed Allike,” I said. “But it was you who made it possible. Out of all the children in this place, how did Glaucon know which two had found the scrolls? Your note didn’t give their names, Sabina, and even if it had, how would he recognize two girls among many? Someone must have pointed out the victims. That person was you.”

“You’re guessing—”

“Almost the first thing you said to us, as soon as we met, was that you’re a trusted assistant of the Basileus. I thought it was a boastful claim at the time—I still do. I’ve since met the man and I know he’d never trust a woman with money—but you’ve been sending reports to his office, haven’t you? The assistant who received them at the other end was Glaucon, and he, no doubt, sent you back instructions. Of course you knew each other. You’re even both treasurer types. You’re probably the only person here at Brauron that Glaucon knew.”

“Proves nothing,” Sabina said shortly. “It’s not a crime to know a killer.”

“But it’s a crime to be a killer. Glaucon can’t have killed Melo, Sabina. He was in Athens then. I know it because I saw him there. But we
know
Glaucon murdered Allike, and we
know
Melo’s death was related, and we
know
it was someone at the sanctuary who did it.