Sword of Apollo (5 page)

Suddenly the Persian envoy rolled onto his back, reaching for his sword, but Nikias bent over and grabbed his arm before he could pull the sword out of the scabbard, cutting through the muscle of his biceps. The Persian shrieked and clutched his arm.

“Stay!” yelled Nikias. He seized the Persian's sword and held the gleaming blade inches from the man's eyes. “Or the next stroke of this blade will blind you!”

The Persian squeezed his eyes shut and babbled, “I am an envoy of King Artaxerxes!”

“Quit talking,” Nikias said with disdain, and marched toward the pile of dead men and horses, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. The Median who was still alive got to his feet and drew his sword, clutching his stomach with one hand. He spat a mouthful of blood.

Nikias flung the dagger with a snap of his wrist. The blade flashed in the space between them, and then the startled Median clutched at the handle protruding from his chest. Nikias lunged forward, swinging the sword from low to high, and half of the Median's face and skull, from jaw to brow, popped off like a section of melon. The warrior stared at Nikias with his remaining eye, standing perfectly still, his brains exposed to the sun. Nikias's second stroke sent the rest of the Median's head flying into the dust.

 

FIVE

Nikias breathed hard, the blood pounding in his ears. The horse with the broken legs was still trying to roll over. Nikias put the wounded animal out of its misery. Then he checked all the warriors sprawled on the grass, making sure they were dead. The bull had done his work. Only one of the Medians yet breathed, so Nikias stabbed him through the heart with the sword. His grisly work done, he strode back to the Persian. The envoy had managed to stand up on his good leg and was hopping away in the direction the Tanagraean had gone. Nikias smashed him in the back of the head with the handle of his sword and the Persian fell to the ground, unconscious.

Nikias went to work stripping him of all his gear and clothes—the golden helm, his plate armor, his gold bracelets, and even his beaded slippers. All of these riches he tossed aside, leaving only the man's rings, until the Persian lay naked on the grass.

Grabbing the leather envoy pouch, Nikias slung it around his own neck. Then he knelt down and hoisted the man onto his shoulders and started jogging. He headed over the stone bridge. After a mile his legs started to ache, but he did not slow down. He was still three miles from the citadel. He had to get the Persian to Plataea so that his grandfather could question him and read the contents of the message.

His legs and back quickly started aching along with his legs. His body dripped with sweat. He thought of the terrible fate that awaited this Persian in Plataea. Nikias had endured the pain and terror of torture, and he did not wish that cruel destiny on any man—not even an enemy. But the lives of his people were at stake. If the Spartans and Thebans captured Plataea, every man left alive would be executed, and all of the women and children taken into slavery. The thought of his wife and their two daughters—and their unborn child as well!—turned into thralls and sex slaves filled him with a burning hatred that drove his legs onward despite the shooting pains in his back.

“Keep moving,” he told himself.

He thought of his failed quest to Athens that he'd set out on after the defeat of the Thebans. He'd gone to raise an army of mercenaries to help defend Plataea from the Spartans, bearing the gold that had been given to the traitor Nauklydes. He'd lost the gold in Athens, but he'd fallen in love with a young hetaera—a courtesan of Athens—and had made love with her, betraying Kallisto.

How strange the mind of a man, he mused. Even now, carrying this heavy burden, running from death, his thoughts fled helplessly back to that night in the temple of Aphrodite where he had made love with the ravishing Helena.…

A crow raced overhead, croaking loudly. Nikias glanced up and thought he saw a flash of white on the bird's tail feathers, but he was not certain. That strange bird seemed to follow him everywhere—a messenger of Apollo. It was the same crow that men in Plataea said landed on the corpse of Nauklydes after he had been given his tunic of stones.

“Hera's jugs!” he cursed as one of his knees buckled. He'd stepped in a depression—the opening to a rabbit hole. But he pressed on.

He remembered a game that he and his best friend Demetrios used to play when they were younger. They would take turns picking up a young bull to see who could carry it on his shoulders the farthest around the walls of the citadel. Nikias, in all of his attempts over the years, had only made it halfway round the circuit. But Demetrios—probably the strongest lad in the Oxlands—toted the docile bull around the entire two and a half miles, cheered on by the men in each guard tower, spewing his guts from exhaustion but refusing to give up.

Nikias wondered if Demetrios was still alive. His father, Nauklydes, had sent him off to Syrakuse several years ago to live with a wealthy and powerful general called the Tyrant. Nauklydes must have known, even back then, that he was going to betray Plataea to the enemy, and so he had sent his heir to a city-state that was an ally of Sparta. Would Demetrios ever return home? If so, he would find that his sister and father were dead and that his family name was now poisonous to Plataean tongues.

He heard a sound that he'd been dreading: horse hooves trampling the ground behind him, coming from the direction of Thebes. The sun burst through a rent in the clouds, illuminating his place on the hilltop as if Zeus were shining a lantern on him from above.

He turned and saw a patrol of cavalry a quarter of a mile away, led by the Tanagraean guide. He counted five riders in a close pack bearing down on him, spears lowered. Thebans. There was nowhere to hide. Mustering all of his strength, he headed for a little hillock where a stand of ancient and gnarled olive trees grew. That's where he would make his last stand. When he got to the top, he let the Persian slip from his shoulders and arched his aching back. Then he drew his sword and crouched low, waiting for the moving wall of death, trying to catch his breath.

He thought of Kallisto and the girls. He wondered if she had a boy in her womb. Did it really matter? He would have loved another daughter just the same.…

“Young master!”

He caught sight of Mula clinging to the upper branches of the tree nearby.

“Mula!” spat Nikias in wrath. “Why didn't you go to the farm? Stupid boy! There's no reason you should die here as well! Run!”

“Master!” said Mula. “Lie down. Lie down on the grass.”

The riders were at the foot of the hill. The horses lowered their heads and climbed the slope. The spearheads of the Theban riders sparkled in the sun. He could see their faces now—Thebans wearing open-faced helms revealing their long beards. They carried notched shields of the Oxlands bearing the letter theta.

“Get down!” screamed Mula.

Nikias saw something rustling in the tall grass next to him. At first he thought it was a snake. Then he saw the snarling face of a lion and he started. The creature spoke to him in a harsh voice, “Get down, you mare-milking fool!”

Nikias dropped to the ground, flat on his belly as the Theban horsemen crested the hill.

The lion figure sprang from the grass. A hail of arrows sang with the thump of his bowstrings. The Thebans screamed and fell from their mounts, writhing on the grass as the poison coursed through their veins.

The Tanagraean had fallen off his mount in the confusion and tumbled down the hill, screaming in terror. Kolax shot him through the back of the head the moment he lurched to his feet, and Sly Eyes fell forward onto the grass, twitching in his death throes.

Kolax poked Nikias with the end of his recurved bow.

“You can get up now,” he said. “Good thing I decided to follow your trail from the farm.”

“I ran into Kolax,” said Mula, swinging down from the tree and running to the Theban horses, which were milling about nervously, and gathering up their reins.

Nikias stood on shaky legs and smiled at the barbarian lad.

“Thank Zeus,” he said.

“Don't thank
him
,” said Kolax, pointing at the sky. “Thank
me
. I'm the one who killed these Thebans.” He pulled out his dagger and went to work slitting the throats of the enemy warriors to make sure they were dead. “What would you do without me?” he muttered. “Saved you yet again.”

“Don't kill that one!” ordered Nikias, for Kolax was about to dispatch the Persian envoy. “He's a present for my grandfather.”

“Can I have one of his pretty finger jewels?” asked Kolax. He pulled off one of the rings before Nikias could reply, then dashed down the hill to the Tanagraen, kneeling by him and plucking the arrow from the dead man's skull. But Kolax reeled instantly, his face screwed up in disgust. “This one stinks!” he proclaimed, and spit on the ground as if ejecting poison from his mouth. “He shit himself when he died. He reeks of sickness.”

“Are you killing him or wiping his arse?” asked Mula.

“Ha, ha!” laughed Kolax, standing up and holding his belly. “Good one, Mula.”

“Come here and help me with this man,” said Nikias.

They heaved the unconscious prisoner onto a horse, laying him sideways with his midsection across the horse's back. They worked fast, tying his wrists to his ankles under the horse's belly so that the Persian was strapped to the animal like a load of baggage. Then Nikias, Mula, and Kolax mounted the other three captured horses and galloped swiftly toward the citadel of Plataea.

 

SIX

A strangled cry broke from Menesarkus's lips as he lay facedown and naked on the stone floor of a darkened chamber. At the same time he kicked out—a great jerking thrust of his leg that struck a wooden armor stand looming in the corner of the room, bearing his bronze armor and helm. The tree and its burden toppled, crashing to the floor with an enormous clatter that echoed in the small room. The light from a single lamp cast a gleam on the Bull of Plataea's bronze helm where it wobbled on its side on the floor; it seemed to throb like a living thing in the flickering glow.

A moment later a frantic knock sounded on the chamber's door.

“Arkon! Are you well?”

Menesarkus pulled off of his wife, Eudoxia, where she lay unclothed and sprawled on his robe beneath him, her long hair splayed out behind her like silver wings. He remained on hands and knees for a moment, panting from exertion, staring down at her, enraptured by her beauty, stunned into speechlessness by the power of his orgasm. Even though Eudoxia was approaching her seventh decade of life, the constant labor on the farm had kept her body svelte. Her breasts, though certainly much longer by her own admission, had remained comely. And her face, in his opinion, had become more and more alluring with every season since they had first met, so many decades ago.

He still burned for her.

“Arkon? Are you well?”

“I am well, damn you,” said Menesarkus gruffly. “Go away,” he added. “I merely tripped and knocked something over.”

They were in his private and windowless chamber in the government offices in the citadel of Plataea. There was only one door into the room, and Menesarkus had made sure to bar it before they had started their love play. Menesarkus slept at his house in the citadel to be close to the government offices, while Eudoxia stayed on the farm, managing all of its many affairs. For two years and more they had been sleeping apart. And they hated it.

The door ring on the other side of the portal made a scraping sound.

“Go away, Hesiod!” he yelled at his secretary. He could picture the young man outside the door, with his ear pressed to the wood, a concerned expression on his meddling face.

“If you're certain, Arkon…”

“As certain as a punch in the face. Now leave!”

After he heard Hesiod's departing footsteps, he sighed and cast his big body down next to Eudoxia, floating … floating …

She propped herself on one elbow and ran a slender hand over Menesarkus's hairy barrel chest, smiling at him with her dark eyes full of mischief.

“After fifty years you still destroy me,” he said, staring at her with one eye. He scratched his black beard, which was streaked with white stripes, and let forth a great yawn that split his wide and handsome face. His jaw crunched loudly as he closed his mouth—the result of one of his old pankration injuries.

“I think you dented your armor,” said Eudoxia, smiling.

“You dented my
balls
,” he replied.

“Oh, you are still such a foulmouthed boy!”

“You love it when I talk like that,” he said with a grin. “You probably thought about all the dirty things I would say on your way from the farm. And you! Sneaking off to meet me here in the citadel like a teenage girl! Did you tell Kallisto and Phile that you had to come to the market again? Or did you tell them the truth—that you were hunting for Bull meat!”

She cuffed him on the side of the head. “You're the one who taught me to be a sneak,” she said, laughing girlishly.

“Remember when you stole away from your father's house?” he asked, his eyes shining. “A few nights before the battle with the Persians … I propped you up in the bough of that one tree that had been split and blackened by lightning. And I fell on my knees, blind with lust, and pledged to worship forever at the altar of your honeyed loins. I swore to kill every Persian in the Oxlands so that I could come back to your side.”

Eudoxia put her mouth close to his ear and said, “I died a hundred times that day, wondering if you would return to the citadel. And when I saw you walk back through the gates … my heart swelled and I thought it might burst from joy.”

“I couldn't wait to shower you with Persian gold,” he said with a laugh.

She covered his mouth with her own, kissing him hungrily, then got on top of him. “I wasn't done yet,” she said, and pressed her heavy breasts against him. “When you kicked over your armor, I was almost to the top of the mountain.”