Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) by P. K. Lentz Read Free Book Online Page A

out of blood.  If you keep your shields
high and heads down, then before this day is done we'll have our
chance to show these fucking sons of whores how real men
fight!”
    The Spartiates answered with a chorus of
roars, pretending they believed the empty words any more than did
their speaker.  The exhortation given, Styphon dismounted the
stockade wall and crossed over the scattered stones of the fallen
interior walls on a straight path for the fort's rear corner, where
dwelt, assuming she'd not flitted away on whatever current had
brought her, Thalassia.  He threw back her rag curtain and
found her still there.  
    “Could you defeat the Athenians?” Styphon
demanded without preface.
    Thalassia reclined with her back against the
corner, one bare arm resting on a bent knee just as bare.  Her
scarlet cloak hung open, only just obscuring her femininity.
 Judging by her open posture, which changed not a bit on
account of Styphon's entrance, she didn't much care about what was
covered and what wasn't.  In that, at least, she reminded him
of a Spartan woman.  Scattered around her were kernels of
barley and clusters of honeyed poppy seed, the shrapnel of her
bestial, daylong rampage through what was left of the camp's
provisions.
    She raised her head from the stone and
looked up with interest.  Styphon hung on the movement of dark
lips that stood pregnant with promise. 
    When finally they moved, their speech
disappointed.
    “Possibly...” Thalassia said.
 “Probably.  But there would be no honor in that for
Sparta, would there?  And if I'm going to continue helping
you, that's not how it will work.  I can't do everything
myself.”
    It was just as well, Styphon thought.
 He had felt shame in even asking, having been driven to it by
the desperation of seeing defeat looming so near.  Who knew,
anyway, if she really could fight an army?  She might claim
so, but then laughter-loving Aphrodite had joined battle on the
plains of Troy only to swiftly wing her way back to Olympos in
tears.
    “But you can still win,” Thalassia said.
    Styphon tried not to let hope swell in his
breast.  Like Thalassia's every promise, he knew it could not
but come with some heavy price attached.  
    Still, he could not help but ask, “How?”
    “Fight dirty,” she said matter-of-factly.
 “Ask the Athenians for a truce, then use it to find and
slaughter their archers.  Agree to meet with their generals,
and when you get close to them, cut their throats.”
    Were Styphon's mouth not bone dry, he might
have spat.  Instead he hissed his disgust through clenched
teeth.  But in truth, he wondered.  Instinctively, such a
course was repellent, but Spartans were not above, as Thalassia put
it, fighting dirty.  Had not Kleomenes burned a sacred grove
when thousands of fleeing Argives took refuge there, with no harm
done to his reputation?  But then Styphon was no king and had
no other glorious deeds to his name to overshadow the
inglorious.
    The choice between being remembered as the
first Equal ever to consign his comrades to chains and one who had
dishonored a sacred truce to assassinate enemy generals was not a
particularly hard one.  Yet questions of Fate muddied that
water.  A battle was not a war.  Could Sparta win this
day, instead of losing, as Fate demanded, but still emerge
victorious in the greater conflict?  Thalassia might claim to
know, but only the gods did.
    If Styphon could be certain of just one
thing when it came to this creature before him, this golden-skinned
bitch that the sea had belched up, it was this: she was no fucking
goddess.
    “Whatever happens, do not forget the thing
you have promised,” Styphon reminded her.  “Andrea.  She
dwells with the widow of her mother's brother.”
    “I will not,” Thalassia said.  “But if
you make good choices today, there will be no need.”
    She suddenly looked up over the low inner
wall of the ancient fort.  Styphon did likewise and saw
nothing, but soon