She walked into a stand of fir and juniper and felt the shade in there drape across her—blissful invisibility and coolness. The air was spiced with the tang of pine and the soft carpet of fallen needles felt pleasant to walk on. Up ahead, she saw a clearing with a splash of blue waves beyond. The shore. Giddiness rose in her breast like a scented smoke, intoxicating her with the oh-so-close promise of success as she stepped into the clearing.
The slow, steady sound of a pair of hands clapping halted her in her stride, sending the fear of all the Gods through her.
“Excellent, excellent,” a voice said.
Kassandra turned her head toward the figure sitting on a fallen log in the clearing’s tree line. He was a gull of a man, sporting thin brown hair combed forward, his body swaddled in a pristine white robe, streaked with a vivid silver stripe, his scrawny neck and wrists dripping with bracelets. A rich man, she realized instantly, and not of this island.
“The Cyclops of Kephallonia is seldom relieved of his hard-won treasures,” he said, his chest shaking with a chuckle.
Kassandra shivered. There was something about his tone—overly familiar, assuming. And the way he looked at her, his eyes combing her body. It was not a carnal look, but it was desirous and lustful all the same.
“Rest your hands from your ax. You have nothing to fear from me.”
Kassandra did not let her gaze waver, refused to blink, and certainly did not set down her stolen ax. Ikaros swooped down just then to perch on her shoulder, shrieking at the stranger. Like a hunter, she took in every scintilla of her peripheral vision. There were no others in the tree line, she realized. But she noticed something else: downhill, at a small inlet, a boat was moored just off a timber jetty. The hideous gorgon head on the sail stared up at her as crewmen on board hoisted it up to the spar.
“Who are you?” she said through clenched teeth.
“I am Elpenor of Kirrha,” he replied calmly.
Kirrha? Kassandra thought. The gateway to Delphi, the home of the Oracle. She felt a great urge to spit.
“I came looking for you because I heard great things about you—the Misthios of Kephallonia,” Elpenor continued.
“You have the wrong person,” she growled. “There are several mercenaries on this island.”
“None with your skills, Kassandra,” he said with the timbre of a tombstone rolling into place. “Preternatural speed of mind and body.”
She reached up to prize the stinking leather helm from her head and tossed it into the nearby grass, her hidden braid of hair spilling loose across her chest. “What do you want with me? Speak plainly, or I will lodge this ax in your chest.”
Elpenor laughed, his bony body shaking with amusement. “I want to offer you a vast sum of wealth, Kassandra. More than twice the value of that obsidian eye you took from the Cyclops.”
She moved a hand to her purse, checking the eye was still there. It was. Twice as much again? Such riches would allow her to pay off the Cyclops, then buy a good home for Phoibe. More, it would break the chains of poverty that kept her on this island. She could go anywhere, do anything. The notion thrilled her with terror and wonder. Then, when she saw how he rapaciously eyed her bare arms again, she stiffened and stared down her nose at him. “I do not lie with men for money. Besides, you are old and I might break you.”
Elpenor cocked an eyebrow. “It is not your body I want, not in that way, at least. I come to offer you a bounty, in return for a head.”
“You already have a head of your own,” Kassandra sneered.
Elpenor half smiled. “The head of a warrior. A Spartan general.”
Kassandra felt the world shift under her feet.
“They call him the Wolf,” he said.
Kassandra steadied herself, ignoring the streaks of sweat stealing down her back. “Generals bleed like all other men.” She shrugged. “Spartans too, despite their misplaced conceit.”
“So you accept the contract?”
“Where is he?”
“Across the sea. In the most coveted land in the Greek world.”
Kassandra’s eyes narrowed. She followed his gaze, past her shoulder and off to the east. She thought of the haze out at sea and the constant train of Athenian galleys, tacking around into the Gulf of Korinthia, to bolster the siege of… “The Megarid? He’s in the Megarid?”
Elpenor nodded. “In the tug-of-war between Sparta and Athens, the city of Megara and its narrow strip of land are the rope. Athens wants the twin ports to complete its naval noose around Hellas. Sparta wants the land to use as a bridge into Attika.”
Kassandra took a step back and spluttered. “So he’s inside the Athenian blockade?”
“The Wolf and his troops marched overland from Lakonia, and are now headed for Pagai, Megara’s western port.”
“Why do you want him dead?” she asked.
“The war rages and… the Wolf is on the wrong side.”
She shot him a cold look. “How do I know you are on the right side?”
He lifted a purse from his robe and shook it. The thick clunk of drachmae sounded from within. “Because I am the one paying you.” He tossed the bag of coins toward her. She plucked it from the air, pleasantly surprised by its weight. “Do as I ask, Misthios, and you shall have ten times this.” He smiled in a way that drained all humor from his eyes.
She glared at him. “I’ll need a boat to run and pierce that blockade. Give me yours and I will accept,” she said, flicking her head toward the gorgon-head galley. In truth she had only once before been to sea as a misthios—circling Kephallonia in a rotting old trade cog to bring stolen hides to one of Markos’s contacts.
“My sails cannot be seen in the vicinity when it happens, Misthios,” Elpenor said with an air of finality.
“But without a boat, the contract is void. Athens wore down all of her allies’ fleets years ago—forced them to pay into the treasury of the Delian League so she could swell her own navy. There are few seaworthy galleys left in private hands, and none on Kephallonia that would be fast enough to cut through a blockade.”
Elpenor’s nose wrinkled. “Is it too much for you, Misthios? Have I overestimated your skills?” When she hesitated to answer, he rose and turned from her, taking a step toward the trees and the track leading downhill toward his boat.
“Nothing is too much for me, old man,” she called after him. “You’ll have the Wolf’s head in good time.”
He halted, looking back over his shoulder with hooded eyes. “Good. Come and find me at Pilgrim’s Landing in Kirrha, once it is done.”
She trekked along the shoreline, heading back toward Markos’s vineyard. The strange Elpenor’s parting words danced around in her thoughts like a falling sycamore seed. Right now, that all seemed misty and unreal. Kirrha, she had never been to. The Wolf, she had never met. Beyond Kephallonia’s coastal waters, she had not ventured. Not for twenty years. What a fool, she chided herself. Why can’t you learn to say no to suspect contracts? Markos and his wretched schemes and now this death trap of a job. She laughed aloud and the sound surprised her. “This Wolf is safe. I will never get off this damned island.”
She trudged on for a time. After a while, she rounded a rocky cape and came to the pale sand of Kleptous Bay. She stopped to fill her drinking skin by a coastal brook, then lifted it to slake her thirst, but it never reached her lips.