The ships were serried in banks, four or five deep. She saw the knots of white-tuniced peltasts aboard the two nearest triremes turn from the blockaded land to behold the tiny vessel speeding toward their flotilla like a mouse charging a pride of lions. They shouted and pointed, their commander barking at them to lift their javelins and take aim. Kassandra looked back at Barnabas and his men, ready to tell them to turn around, that it had been a mistake. Maybe they could swing north or south and land on either side of the Korinthian Gulf. From there it might only take them a month or so to pick their way overland to Pagai and—
“Kybernetes,” Barnabas roared before she could say a word. “Turn… turn… turn!”
Under the shadow of the galley’s scorpion tail, the coal-skinned helmsman named Reza grabbed onto the twin steering oars, his mighty shoulders shaking with effort, leaning left to edge the boat to the right. He roared with the strain, until two crewmen rushed to add their weight to the mix.
With a hiss of churning water, the galley tilted sharply to the right, slicing through the waves. Kassandra grabbed hold of the rail for balance. A sheet of water leapt over her, soaking the deck too, and she saw the loosed javelins of the Athenian peltasts sail harmlessly into the churn of the Adrestia’s wake. The galley rolled level once more and Kassandra gawped at the lone Athenian trireme ahead, side on to the Adrestia’s prow. Barnabas had spotted it through all the other boats: a weak spot in the blockade.
“Aaand: O-opop-O-opop-O-opop…” the keleustes chanted faster and faster, passionately punching a fist into his palm as he strode along the spine of the deck. Every repetition of the sound saw the oarsmen draw back, brought the Adrestia up to ever-more-incredible speeds… the bronze beak speeding toward the flank of the lone Athenian galley. Kassandra’s eyes widened, and the Athenians’ faces dropped. “Brace!” Barnabas roared.
The world exploded in a roar of crumpling timbers. Kassandra felt her shoulders nearly leap from their sockets as the Adrestia lurched, and the sky darkened for a moment with clouds of kindling. Through a chorus of screams the Adrestia cut, the two halves of the broken Athenian galley swinging open like doors, the great mast falling, the crew clinging to timber poles for dear life. The commotion fell away as rapidly as it had risen.
Kassandra gazed back at the chaos of foaming waters and groaning wreckage, sure the rest of the Athenian fleet would fall upon them.
“They won’t follow,” Barnabas said. “They won’t risk getting too close to the shore to catch one small boat.”
The shore, she thought, looking toward the shingle bay and bluffs of Pagai. A flurry of icy thorns pricked her heart as she realized there was no excuse now. She was here… and so was he. She scoured the coastline, heart thumping. Nothing.
The ship drew in to a deserted stretch of shore, sliding onto the shingle. Kassandra leapt down onto the bay, staring along the deserted hinterland. Where are you, Wolf?
A desperate gasp nearby sent a jolt of fright through her. An Athenian warrior, from the ship they had halved, scrambled through the shallows and onto the shore, panting, spitting, his blue-and-white exomis sopping wet. All along the coast she saw more—hundreds of them, swimming in from the wreckage. Some used their shields as floats, and most were armed too. Those on the other boats out in the blockade raised a distant cheer. For a moment, it seemed that the Athenians had an unlikely foothold on the bay.
Until, from the pine woods, a crimson pack poured forth.
Kassandra dropped down behind a thicket of gorse and watched as a Spartan lochos—a regiment of some five hundred men, one-fifth of the ever-rarer purebred Spartiates—emerged from the trees. They went with their crimson cloaks flowing, their beards and hair tied tight in braids, jostling like ropes as they marched in barefoot lockstep toward the shoreline. Their helms dazzled in the late-afternoon sun, their bronze-coated shields streaked with blood-red lambda icons, their spears leveled like executioner’s fingers, pointing accusingly at the washed-up Athenians.
They fell upon their prey in silence, faces bent in malice, spears licking out to pierce chests, bursts of blood misting above the fray, screams rising from the stricken. Those Athenians still swimming in or crawling through the shallows on all fours were mercilessly bludgeoned with the bronze butt spikes on the base of the Spartan spears. When a band of seven or so Athenians dared to put up a fight, there was one among the Spartans who moved like a nightmare unleashed. Kassandra saw only glimpses of him, his whipping red tribon cloak, his head and face obscured by an old-style Korinthian helm, his spear flashing in the late-afternoon sunlight. Every one of the seven fell to him, riven. Within moments, the hundreds of survivors of the rammed ship were but a flotsam of cadavers, bobbing in a bloody soup. Silence befell the bay, leaving just the sound of the waves lapping gently on the shore.
She saw him in full at last, and knew it was the Wolf, for he wore the trappings of a generaclass="underline" a transverse plume—blood-red like his gore-sodden cloak. She stared at the T of shadow at the front of the helm, seeking out the face, memories of the past scourging her like whips of fire. Her heart hammered, the Leonidas spear seeming to shudder and vibrate in her grasp.
The men around the Wolf raised their spears to him. “Aroo!” they boomed once, solemnly.
The sheer aura and number of these warriors doused her in cold reality. Now was not the time to strike. She let go of the spear and drew her cloak over it, and the fire within settled. She watched as the Wolf moved toward a younger officer and clasped a hand to his shoulder. “You fought well, Stentor,” she heard him say. With that, the Spartan general, her father… her quarry, turned and left the bay, heading toward a path that wound up the coastal bluffs, a few men walking by his side.
Kassandra looked back over her shoulder, seeing Barnabas watching anxiously. Wait here, she mouthed to him, then rose from behind the gorse and approached the Spartan soldiers. The one named Stentor noticed her first and stepped over to block her path.
He was a little older than her: at least thirty, she guessed, given that he seemed to be an officer. He stared at her, impassive, his inky beard ringing thin lips, his nose like a blade. He was strong and lean… perhaps too lean—the tolls of battle and hunger? His mouth twitched, loaded with acid words of challenge, until he noticed the Adrestia, moored nearby, then glanced to the dead Athenians, and then across the water at the floating remains of the ship. “You… you halved that galley?” he concluded, the statement punctuated by the nearby stretch and snap of sinew as a vulture plucked an eyeball from a dead Athenian’s head.
“It was in my way,” Kassandra replied, matching his laconic tone.
She noticed a glint of respect in his eyes and followed his prideful glance up to the top of the coastal bluffs: up there, the Wolf now stood, looking over the bay, his cloak fluttering in the fiery light of sunset. He rested his weight on a bakteriya staff.
She realized she had been staring at him just a little too long. And so did Stentor.
“What do you want with the Wolf?” he snapped, his voice suddenly dripping with suspicion.
Kassandra feigned nonchalance. “I come to… serve him.”