Sword of Apollo (42 page)

But he could not bring himself to tell this part of the tale.

He stood up and put both hands on Demetrios's shoulders and looked into his eyes. “She died very quickly. In her sleep. And I performed her burial service myself after your father was slain.” The first part was a lie, of course. But the story of Penelope's burial was the truth, and Nikias's voice carried with it the conviction of this important and sacred deed. Demetrios smiled faintly and kissed him on the cheek.

“You are my brother,” he said. “And my father's burial? Who performed that?”

“My—my grandfather, of course,” said Nikias, picturing Nauklydes's ruined body dumped from a cart in the no-man's-land between Plataea and Thebes. Left to rot like a dead dog for his traitorous act.

For a moment Nikias thought that he saw a shadow pass across Demetrios's face. But then he nodded and said, “Of course. It is only proper that Menesarkus should bury his former shield man. My father told me once that he'd had a vision in his youth that Menesarkus would stand over him as he breathed out his last breath.”

Nikias pictured his grandfather standing in front of Nauklydes in the agora after all of the stones had been thrown and Nauklydes's face was obliterated: his lower jaw completely gone, his left eye turned to pulp, his nose smashed, his head caved in … and yet he clung to life, wheezing through one nostril. Menesarkus stood over him, hour after hour, until Nauklydes finally died. Nikias's grandfather had loved Nauklydes like a son, and his betrayal broke his heart.

“My grandfather was there when he died,” said Nikias, in plain truth.

Demetrios looked at Nikias curiously. “But I thought that you said your grandfather had been taken prisoner by the Spartans when my father was killed at the battle at the gates.”

“Eh?” said Nikias, his heart racing with the realization he had been caught in a lie.

“You told me,” said Demetrios, with a glint in his eye, “that when the Thebans attacked your farmhouse and set it on fire, Menesarkus took the women to the roof. They were able to escape before the flames consumed the house, but Menesarkus had to jump into the chimney to save himself. And that's where he was still trapped when the Spartan prince Arkilokus found him the next day and took him back to the Spartan camp. They kept him there for two days. That would mean that Menesarkus could not have been at the battle where my father died—the morning after the sneak attack.”

“I meant that my grandfather was there when your father was
buried
,” said Nikias briskly. “I misspoke.” But he silently cursed himself for blundering this part of the tale.

Demetrios regarded him with a piercing look, then cocked his head to one side. “All that matters is that my father was given a proper burial,” he said. “I had a terrible dream—about the time of the sneak attack, I now reckon—in which my father's bloody shade came to me and told me that his corpse was unburied.”

“Strange,” said Nikias, and crossed his arms to hide the bumps that had appeared on the skin of his forearms. “I had a dream about you,” he added quickly. “When Eurymakus was torturing me. I dreamt that you had brought me to the golden fleece. It kept me from losing my mind. I felt as though we were connected somehow. As though you were truly there. Then Eurymakus told me that you had been killed and the thought nearly drove me mad.”

“And yet here I am,” said Demetrios. “I'm harder to kill than a cockroach. Or
you
, it would seem,” he added with a laugh.

 

NINE

“Come now,” said Demetrios cheerfully. “I'll take you on a tour of my domain.” He strode out of the cave and Nikias followed. Demetrios's retinue—a score of scowling men—fell in behind as Demetrios wended his way through the labyrinth of carved paths, like eerie alleys in some strange underground city. Men were hard at work in various places, cutting limestone blocks and dragging them to the hoists, and the air was filled with the constant, cacophonous noise of their labor: pounding and scraping … the spectacularly slow harvesting of stone.

Despite the fact that he had been reunited with his old friend, Nikias was depressed. He had hated lying to Demetrios, and recounting the events of the preceding years had weighed heavily on his soul. He thought of Kallisto and his daughters with worry and sorrow … and when a vision of Helena appeared before his eyes, he felt a stab of profound guilt.

“How did you become the Quarry Lord?” Nikias asked as they walked.

“I killed the old Quarry Lord,” said Demetrios. “I challenged him on my first day. It wasn't hard. I'd been trained in the pankration by the great Menesarkus of Plataea, after all.”

Nikias glanced at Demetrios. He thought that he'd detected a hint of scorn when Demetrios said his grandfather's name. Or had he just imagined it?

“I reckoned I could last for a couple of months with the poor rations they were giving us,” continued Demetrios, “and then someone from the Upside who was stronger would come in and slay me in my turn. So I concocted a plan.” He spoke in a loud voice—as though to say to his men, “We have no secrets between us.”

Nikias looked around at the gang prisoners. Most stared at Demetrios with respect, while a few frowned at Nikias with suspicion. “What kind of plan?” he asked.

“I told the prisoners that we must refuse to cut stone until they upped our rations,” said Demetrios. “I told them that we might all starve to death, didn't I?”

The men muttered and smiled.

“And things went hard for the first month,” said Demetrios. “Many
did
starve, but we held out. It's all economics, my friend,” he said, slapping Nikias on the back. “The war between the Spartans and Athenians is all about resources. Nothing more. Oh, men on the Upside like Perikles and the Spartan kings might blather on about the glories of war and the oaths and the gods and all of that rubbish. But we in the Pit know the truth. Half of the men here were the enemies of Pantares—merchants and mariners who defied the oligarchs of Syrakuse and lost. But those same rich and powerful men finally gave up and promised us more rations. We get the wheat, meat, and wine, and they get their precious limestone. As long as they keep building, we eat. We live another day. We live to get revenge.”

They had come to a stop by a wall pockmarked with many deep orifices. It reminded Nikias of a dead tree that had been riddled with holes from a woodpecker, only these dark openings were about as broad as a man's shoulders.

“Welcome to the honeycombs,” said Demetrios.

Nikias realized that men's feet protruded from the holes. Prisoners had been stuffed into these narrow man-made fissures face-first … crammed so tightly that there wasn't enough room to budge an inch from side to side, tighter than a tomb. He shuddered as the memory of the secret tunnel in Plataea came rushing back to him. The tunnel had collapsed around him, dousing his lantern, and he had been stuck for a time, buried underground in the darkest place he had ever know. And it terrified him.

The reek of human waste wafted from the holes.

“Why are they in there?” Nikias asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“They are being punished,” said Demetrios. “They are lawbreakers. Men who steal from their brother quarrymen, or refuse to work.”

All at once Nikias remembered that Diokles had been taken to the honeycombs before Nikias had fought the two quarrymen to the death. The Helot had already been in here for, what? Five or six hours? Stewing in his own shit and urine. Barely able to breathe in the stultifying space. “Where is my friend?” he asked, running to the wall and searching for the Helot's dark feet. He found them and put his hand on one of Diokles's heels and a muffled cry came from within the hole. He grabbed Diokles's ankles and started to drag him out, but someone bulled into him, knocking him down. Demetrios stood over him, smiling dangerously.

“What are you doing, Nik?” Demetrios asked in a toneless voice.

“You can't keep him in there—he'll go mad!” said Nikias, springing to his feet.

“It's the law of the quarry,” said Demetrios. “Your friend didn't want to fight and you had to kill for him. I spared his life but he must be punished for indolence. If you try to pull him out again, my men will slay you both.”

Nikias tore his eyes away from Demetrios's chilling gaze and stared at the men in his entourage, who were glaring back, ready to attack. He looked back at Demetrios. Gone was the best friend from his youth—standing before him was the Quarry Lord, and he expected to be obeyed.

“How long must he stay like that?” Nikias asked.

“We'll give him a few days to ponder his misdeed,” said Demetrios.

“He's a skilled digger,” said Nikias. “He was a slave in a Spartan ore mine. He escaped during an earthquake. He could be of use to you.”

“We'll come back to him in a few days,” came Demetrios's icy reply.

Nikias realized there was nothing that he could do, and although he burned with fury, he had learned to mask his anger in the last couple of years. He'd learned to wait and bide his time. He forced himself to smile and said, “You're the Quarry Lord. You rule here.”

“The
law
rules here,” said Demetrios sternly. “Not Demetrios.” Then his dark look faded and he smiled good-naturedly. He gestured at one of the holes and said, “Let's see how our old friend the Admiral is doing.” Two of his men went to a hole near the floor of the quarry, grabbed a man by the ankles, and dragged him out. He was as stiff as a piece of wood pulled from a lumber pile. They rolled him onto his back and Nikias recoiled at the sight. The man was emaciated, his hair lank. He was covered with his own filth and stank horribly, and his legs and torso were covered with sores. His eyes stared vacantly into nothing and his body trembled and twitched. He had been a stately-looking man once, Nikias supposed, but his face was gaunt and haunted, the eyes sunk into his skull. He could not tell if he was young or old.

“This one was an unfortunate Syrakusan admiral who lost a sea battle with some Karthaginians,” said Demetrios. “His fellow citizens put him on trial and he was found guilty of negligence. They sent him here, and he did all right at first. He won his fight handily and so earned the right—like you—to live, and he set to work pounding stone like a good man. But word came to me from my whisperers that the Admiral was trying to undermine my authority. Called me a tyrant behind my back.”

Demetrios squatted by the Admiral and looked him up and down, shaking his head sadly. “Now look at him.”

“How long has he been in there?” asked Nikias, aghast.

“Three weeks at least,” said Demetrios. “A little too long, I think. I forgot about him. Now I think he's overcooked. We'll be sure to remember your friend the Helot, though.”

Nikias stared in horror at his friend—at the callous way he was talking about this human being—a man who had once been an admiral, a skilled seaman and a leader … a man who was now crushed and ruined. Nothing more than a shell. He had seen something in Demetrios's face and manner just then that reminded him of someone else—a man who had tried to take control of Plataea and who had stood in front of its citizens in the Assembly Hall, full of self-importance and hubris, and acting very much like a tyrant. That man had been Nauklydes, Demetrios's own father.

“Take the Admiral to the infirmary,” said Demetrios brusquely. “Give him some water.”

The quarrymen who'd pulled him from the hole easily lifted up the Admiral's skinny body and carried him away. Demetrios put his hand on Nikias's back and said jovially, “Come on. I've got something to show you.”

Nikias followed Demetrios in a daze. When they stopped he looked up and saw they were standing outside of the great gash in the side of the quarry—the Ear of Dionysus.

“Stay outside,” Demetrios commanded his entourage, then he led Nikias into the cool dark cave that was lit by a few oil lamps sitting on the floor and in wall niches. Once they were deep inside Demetrios whispered, “Remember the Cave of Nymphs?” And his voice seemed to fly and hiss around the chamber like a living thing, twisting and flapping and hanging in the air overhead.

“Of course,” said Nikias, and his words joined Demetrios's, bouncing and echoing above. Nikias thought of the Cave of Nymphs—the place where he and Kallisto had first made love. It seemed so long ago now. Like something that had happened to another man in a different life. A character in a bard's song. That cave was very different from this expansive place. The Cave of Nymphs was small and welcoming … a place of refuge and secrecy. “We used to hunt the Minotaur in there when we were boys,” said Nikias, and the word “Minotaur” morphed into a beast-like growl.

“The Tyrant has a place above where he listens,” said Demetrios in the barest whisper, and his words seemed to soar upward to the top of the cave. “He can hear everything we say.” He grinned and put a finger to his lips, then sucked in his breath and shouted in his loudest voice. “Hello, Pantares, you greasy goat-stuffing pimple on a satyr's prick!”

Nikias stopped his ears with his hands and grimaced as Demetrios's voice reverberated like a storm throughout the cave. Demetrios picked up a lamp and gestured for Nikias to follow him through a fissure in the rock and passed down a narrow corridor. They walked in silence for some distance until they came to a wall of stone. At the bottom of this wall was a small opening that led into a dark horizontal shaft. They were now far from the Ear of Dionysus—probably a hundred feet away, straight into the heart of the mass of limestone. When Demetrios spoke his voice was muffled.

“Interesting that Barka told you to tell me that he listens at the Ear at noontime every day. That may come in very useful.”

“Useful for what?” asked Nikias. He was growing agitated in this confined space. He didn't know why Demetrios had brought him here and he was loath to ask, for he realized that he was now afraid of his friend. He had thought that there had been a cord that had connected them all of these years—like a golden rope crafted by a god. But now he realized that that notion was an illusion. Demetrios was not the same person that he had once been. Or perhaps he was
exactly
the same person, only amplified by what had happened to him here in Syrakuse. His soul had become twisted, like the sound of his voice flying about in the Ear of Dionysus.