She sighed, turning her head to him. “No, I mean… what is he like, as a father?”
Stentor’s iron shell crumpled. She saw for the first time a boy within the man’s eyes. She understood him in that one look. He said nothing in reply. As quickly as his visage had changed, it returned to that cold, hateful mien. On the pipes blared, and Kassandra knew there would be no more talk. So she almost leapt when he did at last reply.
“He is strong. Caring too. A good father, I would say. Yet there are times where it seems that he does not believe so. Times when a distant look comes over him. A sadness descends like a cold mist.” He laughed once—his Spartan demeanor slipping again. “But we all have regrets, I suppose.”
“Aye, we do,” Kassandra replied, her heart hardening, glancing over at the Wolf. And some will be set right soon enough.
The dreadful moan of the pipes fell away. The Athenian jeers and bawdy cries settled too.
Many hundreds of officers on both sides cried for the advance. Like a great arm sweeping across a tabletop, the Spartans and their allies set off at a pace that surprised Kassandra. It was a lockstep walk, yes, but a rapid one, and in utter silence too. While the allies sang or shouted, the Spartans were mute, staring, hateful. The distance between the two lines shrank rapidly. Kassandra saw the Athenian taxiarchy coming for them—a band of hoplites in cloud-white tunics, the right shoulders sapphire blue. Their taxiarchos was bedecked with a plumed attic helm and an ancient bronze thorax and white-leather boots chased with gold, and he led a trilling war cry as they drew closer.
“Elelelelef! Elelelelef!”
Kassandra’s heartbeat sped like a runaway horse. Now the answer to Stentor’s question Afraid? was most definitely yes. She stamped with every footstep, determined not to give in to the prickling dread as the Athenian spear tips drew closer, closer, and then…
Crash!
The lethal points scraped on her shield, driving the breath from her, some speared or swished near her head, some going for her shins. All along the lines, a mighty din of iron and bronze rang out, like metallic fangs gnashing. Some men thrust their lances to displace an opponent’s shield, allowing the comrade by their side to spear the foe in the ribs. Hundreds fell in those first few moments like this, gurgling wet cries and the slap of freed guts hitting the ground ringing out over the deafening fray. A spear scored across Kassandra’s cheek, slashed free a loose lock of her hair. She felt her own hot blood sheet down her face, smelled and tasted it on her lips. The Athenian taxiarchos speared rapidly at her, seeing her as a weak link. Fixed in the wall of Spartan hoplites, all she could do was stay behind her shield and lance back at her opponent.
“Look—the Spartans bring a bitch to the fight!” the officer roared gleefully just as a horrific stink of loosened bowels wafted across the battle lines, accompanied by a hot mizzle of blood. The man’s spear snapped thanks to his efforts, and so too did many hundreds more on both sides. With the gnashing fangs broken, the opposing lines surged together until the shields clashed with a dull thunder. Kassandra found herself nose to nose with the Athenian officer, she and every other Spartan now locked in a shoving match against their numerically superior foe.
“I’m going to cut off your dugs, Spartan bitch,” the Athenian officer snarled, his spittle flecking her face. “Then drag your corpse behind my horse for a mile.”
Stentor was right by her side, his face black with blood.
“Draw your sword, Misthios,” he snarled, doing so himself and ramming his short blade into the throat of the Athenian against whom he pushed. Kassandra saw the taxiarchos move to strike her first, but her lightning-sharp reactions won out: she drew the small curved blade given to her that morning and rammed it, hard, into the bragging taxiarchos’s eye. The man’s boasts became a pained shriek and then he was gone. Another Athenian quickly took his place and the two sides remained locked, pushing and shoving for their lives until, with a series of wet, dying howls, the moment came. The Athenians slipped back a step, then two. The brave songs of war turned to screams of despair. Their numbers had failed to overcome the famous Spartan will. The lines disintegrated, great swathes of Athenians speeding away, throwing down their shields. Kassandra felt the great pressure fall away. Stentor laughed as the Boeotian horsemen raced in from one flank to ensure a rout, while peltasts streamed along the other flank, raining javelins on the few Athenian regiments that still held fast.
“The dance of war is almost over,” Stentor boomed triumphantly. “See how the Athenians fear us? Perikles flees to cower in his Parthenon, surrounded by playwrights and sophists. He knows Athens’s days in Megara are numbered. And Athens itself will be next!”
But as the bold projection rang out, Kassandra saw something just along the Spartan line: the Wolf, injured and separated from his kinsmen and surrounded by four hardy Athenians. No, he is mine! she roared inwardly. Without a moment of hesitation, she lurched forward, bringing her shield down on the back of one Athenian’s head, stabbing a second in the flank. He fell like a stone. The third Athenian leapt and tensed to thrust his spear at the Wolf. The spear never left the Athenian’s hand as Kassandra hammered her sword into his ribs, cracking through his exomis, skin, gristle and bone, plunging into one lung. He fell in paroxysms of agony, taking the blade with him. The Wolf finished the final attacker with a blow of the shield boss to the face—breaking the foe’s nose, then sending a swift and expert swipe of his spear across the man’s throat. The Athenian fell away, head jerking, tongue lolling.
Kassandra flopped to her knees, panting, her hands devoid of weapons and the Wolf right in front of her. He stared at her for a moment before his men surrounded him. In that solemn, eerie way, they once again lifted their spears and made the dust-bowl battlefield shake with a mighty, “Aroo!”
While the allies exploded in continued celebrations, the Spartans fell silent, that one cry their only extravagance. They merely planted their spear butts in the dust and took quiet drinks from their waterskins, a few speaking in muted tones.
To kill or die for our homeland, Nikolaos had once told her, that is our job. We do it without pomp or spectacle.
One group calmly stripped a few Athenian dead of their armor, digging spears into the dust in an X-shaped frame, then decorating it with the enemy breastplates, helms and shields. In the end, it had the look of a four-headed Athenian hoplite. A simple, silent stele of victory. Flies gathered over the carpet of ripped corpses in a growing drone, and carrion hawks began to descend.
A soldier emerged from the Wolf’s circle of men. “You are the misthios?”
She looked up, nodding.
“The Wolf was impressed by your efforts today. When we draw back to the Pagai camp, he requests that you come to him,” he said.
She saw Stentor watching from the corner of her eye, his face dark with fury.
That evening, the air was thick with that sulfurous stench that precedes a storm, and the skies began to crackle and groan, eager to explode. Kassandra said little as she returned from battle and climbed aboard the beached Adrestia. Shrugging off Barnabas’s attempts to examine her cuts and bruises, she simply snatched up her half lance, tucked it away in her belt and turned to stare up at the coastal bluffs, the Spartan camp and the nearby promontory to which she had been summoned.
“I will return soon,” she growled. “Be ready to sail at haste… Our lives will depend on it.”