Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) Read Online Free PDF

the wrath of the one she served.
 Though Epitadas' order to kill her was common knowledge by
now, the men all concurred, at least outwardly, with Styphon's
choice to defy it.  Even if some few of them thought it was
better to be rid of a woman's unlucky presence, none wished to bear
the ritual impurity of having done the deed himself.
    Not that any five of them combined would
necessarily be capable of killing her, only Styphon knew.  But
he did not tell them that, for such a claim would rightly cause
them to question his grip on reality.  And so Thalassia lived,
sitting in seclusion behind her curtain and devouring barley cakes
as quickly as Styphon could sneak them to her from the store of
rations which, if she was to be believed, would soon be unneeded.
 Another day passed and another night fell, a night that to
all but one Spartan on Sphakteria was no different then the seventy
before it.  To that one, who knew this night to be their last,
little sleep came, and when it did it was plagued by dreams of
vengeful gods, and monsters from the mists of legend.
    Early the next morning, Styphon heard by way
of messenger that the Athenians had sent to the island with a
demand for surrender in exchange for mild treatment of all
prisoners until such time as a general settlement could be reached
between their cities.  Thalassia had foretold that just such
an offer would be made.  Naturally, as no powers of oracle
were needed to foresee, Epitadas refused.  Styphon chose that
moment to send his own messenger from Nestor's fort to the main
body of troops at the island's center with the suggestion that the
demand for surrender, coming so soon on top of the arrival of
reinforcements, erased all doubt that an attack was imminent.
 The runner returned Epitadas' terse reply:
"The  phylarch 's opinion is noted."
    Night fell on the second day since
Thalassia's arrival, and the gods and glittering stars looked down
upon Sphakteria and dared a mere mortal man to stand alone against
their divine order.  Laying on his back on the cold earth,
Styphon gazed up with heavy eyes and heavier heart.  As night
wore on, meager rations combined with lack of sleep caused his
thoughts to meander.  In his visions he saw Alkmena, smelled
the scent of sage in her dark curls and looked down upon the
shallow white depression in the small of her bare back as she lay
face-down on their marital bed, awaiting him
    He saw Alkmena's grave, white as her skin
but far colder, a block of stone set atop a mound of distant
Lakonian earth, watered with women's tears.  As Alkmena hadn't
died in childbirth, her stone was unmarked, as any man's would be
if he died outside the battlefield.
    Realizing he was drifting off, he roused
himself.  His hand went instinctively to his waist in search
of the copper horn which tonight was to be Fate's unlikely
instrument.
    It was gone.  He sat bolt upright and
searched around him in the darkness, palms frantically brushing the
rocky soil, but to no avail.  There was nothing around but the
scattered bodies of slumbering Spartans, dark hulks barely
distinguishable from the weathered rocks which jutted up all over
camp.  Rising, Styphon picked a path through both sets of
obstacles in the direction of Nestor's fort.  Sleep fled his
limbs, and he moved with the speed and urgency of a man certain of
his destination.  
    Seconds later, he thrust back the curtain of
rags.  Behind it, wrapped in her cloak, Thalassia perched
owl-like on a fallen wall stone, all of her weight on the
ash-coated toes that peered out from beneath the crimson cloth's
tattered edge.
    Sudden as his arrival had been, he failed to
surprise her.  Not only that, she knew why he was there, and
proved it by opening the cloak and exposing a hand blue-tinged by
moonlight.  In it was clutched the copper horn.
    "Give it to me!"  Styphon lunged at
her.  To his surprise, Thalassia made no effort to thwart him,
allowing him to snatch the instrument from her open