Sword of Apollo (25 page)

“I think men believe in gods when things are going either splendidly or horribly. Anything in between and we have no use for them.”

Nikias didn't agree with Aristophanes's jaundiced view. He had always believed in the gods. In good times, bad times, and in between. The notion that they had been made up by men—like characters in a play—seemed inconceivable. What mind could have created Zeus and Hera, Dionysus and Athena, from its imagination?

“How did you hope to get back to Plataea with an army?” asked Aristophanes. “Logistically, I mean.”

“We brought silver with us from Plataea,” said Nikias. “All of the wealth left in our citadel. Our general, Zoticus, had planned on purchasing several vessels and loading them with grain and any willing volunteers, then going to the port of Kreusis near Plataea. But Zoticus is dead—killed by the Spartans on our way here. And the man who took his place—General Sarpedon—died of the sickness. I took it upon myself to make something happen.”

“Where is this silver?” asked Aristophanes.

“Distributed amongst the elders in the Plataean camp,” replied Nikias. “They will give me whatever I ask for. They trust me as the Arkon's grandson. But I seem to have let them all down again.” He chewed on his lips pensively, staring at the floor.

“Do you remember the night of the symposium?” asked Aristophanes.

“How could I forget?” said Nikias.

“The beauteous hetaera Helena naked and painted gold,” said Aristophanes, waving his hand in front of his face as if conjuring her life before his eyes. “Like a living and breathing Athena, come down from the Akropolis temple to bewitch us all.”

“No woman can compare to her,” said Nikias, and instantly felt guilty. Kallisto's dignified face flashed before his eyes. If the two women were standing side by side, whom would he pick to spend the rest of his life with? The mother of his children? Or the gorgeous concubine who had bewitched him like Kirke the witch had done with poor Odysseus?

“Where could she be now?” asked Aristophanes. “Where could she have gone?”

“I don't know,” said Nikias. “I went to her house. Her neighbors told me she's been gone for years.”

“She left the city about a month after you did,” said Aristophanes. “Both her and her little pert slave girl. The dark-skinned one.”

“Melitta,” said Nikias.

“Yes. That was her name.”

“Kleon, they say, was in a rage to rival Zeus,” said Aristophanes, stroking a finger across his cheek in a contemplative manner. “Helena was his favorite, you see. And she just vanished, like a conjuror's trick. The henchmen who had been guarding her house were found with their throats slit from ear to ear.”

“Really?” asked Nikias. “That is how it happened?” He smiled inwardly. Only Chusor and his pirate crew could have pulled off something like that. He was suddenly filled with hope that Helena and the girl Melitta—Chusor's own child whom he had conceived with Helena's mother—had escaped and were now safe, far from the citadel.

“Then you didn't know?” asked Aristophanes with a piercing look.

“I knew nothing,” said Nikias. “I already told you: I went to her home when I first got here. To try and find her.”

“But surely you have some idea. You were her lover.”

“How did you know that?” asked Nikias coldly.

“I mean—I meant—” Aristophanes broke off and shrugged. “I just assumed.”

Nikias turned away from Aristophanes and stared into space. “I made love with her. I was never her lover.”

“Then you don't know where Chusor took her?”

Nikias stared at his right hand—the hand with his missing little finger. The flesh where the finger met the hand was smooth and pink, and sometimes it itched fiercely. Men would do terrible things to other men to get what they wanted. They would maim, kill, and betray. And spy. He thought of Aristophanes's sly looks—the pointed questions about Helena and the crafty way the actor had gotten him to divulge the location of the Plataean silver that was to be used to purchase ships and grain.…

Nikias shot out his hand with the speed of a striking snake and grabbed Aristophanes around the throat. The actor's eyes bugged out of his head and he kicked like a frightened rabbit, striking Konon in the stomach, who awoke with a cry. “What's—hey! Nikias! What are you doing?”

Nikias leaned close to Aristophanes's terrified face. “I never told you about my friend Chusor,” he said with a low voice. “I never mentioned him to anyone in Athens except the spy Timarkos. You're one of Kleon's men. It wasn't a coincidence that you were thrown into this cell.”

“I—I had to,” said Aristophanes in a choking voice.

Nikias let Aristophanes go and stood up quickly, breathing hard.

Aristophanes clutched his throat and gagged. Tears poured from his eyes as he took a ragged gasp. “He'll … he'll stop at nothing to find her,” he said at last. “His man said he would cut off my prick and make me eat it if I didn't do his bidding.”

“You sneak!” exclaimed Konon, glaring at Aristophanes. His ingenuous face wore a grimace of disgust. “And I thought Nikias was being a poor sport just now.”

“I'm sorry,” said Aristophanes, on his knees like a supplicant. “Don't hurt me.”

“I'm not going to hurt you,” said Nikias icily, going to the portal and slamming it with his palm so hard that the door rattled as if it might burst from its hinges.

“I've got to get out of here,” he said. “Let us out of here!” he yelled.

There was no answer to his shout, and he slammed the door again before turning back to Aristophanes. “Were you working for Kleon that night? At the symposium?”

“No,” said Aristophanes. “Not when I came. But by the time I left they had convinced me to spy for them. Fear is a great persuader.”

All of a sudden from outside the window came the sound of shouting in the lane running past the jail.

“What's going on?” asked Konon.

“Help me get up to the window,” Nikias said.

Konon stood beneath the small window and planted his legs, then Nikias got on his back and peered into the street. It was dark now and he saw burning torches coming toward the jail. There was a crowd of at least a hundred men, and they were shouting something.

“What are they saying?” asked Konon.

Nikias realized, with a cold thrill, that the crowd was shouting his name as they marched: “Nikias! Nikias!” He got down off Konon's shoulders and looked around the chamber with a hunted expression.

“They're shouting your name,” said Aristophanes.

“Who are they?” Konon asked Aristophanes.

“How am I to know?” came the nearly frenzied reply.

“Kleon's men?” said Nikias.

“Why?”

“Maybe they've come to string me up in the agora and stone me.”

“Gods!” uttered Konon.

The noise got louder and louder. They could hear the men assembling directly on the other side of the wall. The shouting became more savage. “Get him out!” voices started calling amidst the chanting of Nikias's name. “Pull down the wall!”

Something rattled on the bars of the window: a grappling hook attached to a heavy rope. The rope went taut and the bars vanished in a cloud of dust, along with a section of wall. Sledgehammers pounded on the stones. Nikias's heart throbbed in his breast. He backed away from the outside wall and shouted at Aristophanes and Konon to do the same.

“When the wall comes down, both of you make a break for it,” Nikias said.

“Watch out!” screamed Aristophanes as a huge section of the wall exploded and toppled inwards, strewing rubble at their feet.

Nikias clenched his fists, ready to spring.

A head shot through the opening—a dark face with eyes peering into the gloom of the cell.

“Diokles!” shouted Nikias.

“Hello, Nikias,” said Diokles, grinning. “Time to go now.”

 

NINE

It was an army of young Athenian men who marched toward the agora—more than two hundred bearing cudgels and old shields torn from the walls of temples or taken from their fathers' dusty storerooms. Nikias had lost sight of Konon and Aristophanes in the crush. They'd disappeared amongst the throng of drunken revelers. Diokles had vanished as well, but not before telling Nikias that Chusor was waiting for him at the docks and would see him soon.

Most of the Athenians were screaming their heads off as they marched down the street from the jail, bearing Nikias on their shoulders. But a few started singing a song in full-throated voices, and the others soon took up the words:

“To Plataea—Plataea! To set our brothers free!

To Plataea—Plataea! To save democracy!”

The shuttered windows of houses opened briefly as they passed, then slammed closed again. Nobody wanted to deal with this kind of intoxicated rabble. Nobody had the energy anymore. Best to let the young men have their fun. In the morning the streets would be covered in their puke and blood, and then everything would be quiet for a while.

Nikias was filled with a curious sense of elation mingled with unease. He was grateful that these Athenians had got him out of jail and that they were willing, at least for this exciting moment, to defy their families and leaders and head out on a dangerous journey—a journey from which they might never return. But how long would they stay loyal to such a cause? The voyage around the Peloponnese was treacherous enough. But that was nothing compared to what waited in store for them in the Oxlands. And none of these young men, Nikias reckoned, had ever been in battle—let alone faced a dreaded Spartan phalanx. Would Nikias be able to lead them all the way back home? Would they listen to him? How was he to find ships? Who would be the captains? Nikias knew nothing about the sea, except that he was one of the most worthless mariners in all of Greece—the last voyage he'd made he'd been sick as a dog for two days running.

“Nikias!”

He caught sight of Konon a few paces away, jostled by the crowd and trying to get his attention. “I have to find my grandmother, tell her that I'm coming with you!” he shouted above the din.

Nikias cupped his hands to his mouth. “You don't have to come, Konon!”

“I wouldn't miss it for the world!” Konon shouted back, smiling with a kind of overwrought glee; then he turned and blended into the crowd.

The mob headed across the agora toward the Temple of Hephaestos where it sat on a little hill. They were joined by others who had been waiting in the shadows—evidently this was the place they had agreed to congregate after freeing Nikias from the jail. The ones who had been toting him along set Nikias down on his feet.

“To the temple steps!” they cried. “He's waiting!”

Nikias climbed the stone path that led to the temple, wondering who could be waiting for him there. There was another group of men standing on the steps—broad-shouldered mariners bearing torches and long oars. One of these sailors stepped forth and Nikias shouted, “Phoenix!” He rushed forward, embracing his cousin in a bear hug.

“Cousin,” said Phoenix. “It seems like I'm always saving your skin.”

“So this was
your
doing!”

“You lit the flame with your speech the other day.”

“So what happens next?”

“Watch and listen.”

The crowd gathered in front of the small temple, shoulder to shoulder, and after everyone was assembled, Phoenix held up his hand for silence. The voices became subdued and Phoenix looked from man to man for a time, as though taking stock of each of their characters.

“You have waited long enough, young warriors of Athens!” exclaimed Phoenix. “For years you have been forced to hide behind the walls of our city. But now is the time to show your worth! Now is an opportunity for heroism! The great admiral Phormion is already on his way to the fortress of Naupaktos in the northwest with a fleet of twenty triremes.”

Nikias had never been to Naupaktos, but he knew that from there it was only a few days' pull across the Gulf of Korinth to the Plataean-held port of Kreusis. And from there he could run to the citadel of Plataea in less than an hour!

“Many of you know that he departed a month ago,” continued Phoenix, “sent by Perikles to disrupt enemy shipping in the Gulf of Korinth. More ships were supposed to join him to bolster his forces, but Kleon has failed to make good on that promise. And so Athenian warships sit rotting in the sheds, and our brave brothers stand idle on the shores, dying of disease. Listen to me! There are five triremes ready to depart for Naupaktos tonight, commanded by veteran mariners! But we need strong backs and even stronger hearts to help pull the oars! Who will come with us? Who will take the sea road tonight and help fight the enemy?”

There was a murmur from the crowd. Some were smiling, while others looked unsure.

“You're actually leaving
tonight
?” asked a slender beardless lad near the front row.

“Yes, tonight!” said Phoenix. “Within the hour! Did you think this adventure tonight was nothing more than a lark? We seek only those who fear not death! Only those who crave glory. The rest … you can stay behind and gather firewood for the dead.”

There was a long silence. The young men stared back with eyes shining in the torchlight. Many wore startled expressions. Some looked downright scared. A drunken riot in the streets was one thing—a chance to free Nikias of Plataea from jail and smash some heads. But the prospect of a very real journey, of leaving behind their families and friends for war with the Spartans—a journey that would begin this very night … well, that was a shock for many of them.

Nikias was about to speak when somebody pushed through the throng and came out into the light. It was Aristophanes, looking frightened but determined. Nikias was surprised to see him still there. He thought that he had slunk off to report to Kleon's whisperers a while ago.