“Superior?” Eleriss asked. “No, I do not believe this.”
“What about him?” I jabbed a finger toward Jakatra; he’d pulled his sword free and was cleaning off the blood as calmly as one could imagine.
Eleriss didn’t answer the question. Instead he pointed at the fallen man. “He suffered the madness. He would have kept trying to kill us all if we hadn’t stopped him. He wouldn’t have understood any of it. What he saw… only he knew, but it was more merciful to end his life than prolong it.” Eleriss met my eyes, his clear blue-green ones solemn. “Jakatra saved your life.”
Yes, and he was the last person I wanted to be beholden to. I thought about sharing the plan I’d had to tear the long sword free with my whip, but I was deluding myself if I thought I could have survived that much power and rage on my own. “Yeah, thanks,” I mumbled in Jakatra’s direction.
A hand came to rest on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” Simon whispered.
“Dandy,” I said, though at the moment, I was wishing I was back at my parents’ house, doing something vapid like playing a computer game or watching kitten videos on the Internet.
Jakatra and Eleriss had a quick conversation, each pointing several times at the Spartan. I hoped the gist was that they couldn’t kill this one.
“Is this the last chance?” Simon asked.
“Yes,” Eleriss said, “he is the last one.”
“To do what?” Temi asked from the wall near the tunnel. It was the first thing she’d said since the Celt leaped out of his cubby. I wonder if she’d been as shocked by his death as I had.
“Yeah,” I said, “what is it you hope to do down here anyway?” And why was that monster so hell-bent on stopping you? I glanced at the tunnel again, wondering if it was even now licking its wounds somewhere and preparing for another attack.
Eleriss had turned his back and was typing again, but he responded. “Find someone who is capable of wielding the sword to protect your people from what is coming.”
“What is coming?” I mouthed.
“Jakatra and I are trying to nullify this jibtab, but we expect… many more. Your people will have to deal with them.”
“Why?” I croaked, then cleared my throat, trying to kick out the frog dangling from my tonsils.
“This is not our home,” Eleriss said. “Though I am intrigued by this world, Jakatra is a reluctant traveling companion, and he will not stay indefinitely.”
“No,” I said, “I mean why are all these monsters, jibtabs, whatevers going to be showing up?”
“That is… as your people say, a long story.” Eleriss raised a hand. “Stand back.”
I was still “back” from before, but given the way the last man had torn out of the alcove, I supposed a few more steps wouldn’t hurt. I tried not to look at the dead Celt as the lights came on, shining on the Spartan. Jakatra waited a few paces from me, his sword out. Temi took a few steps away from the wall, her spear at the ready. I couldn’t bring myself to remove my bullwhip from my belt or draw an arrow. I couldn’t understand all of what Eleriss had said, or more precisely what he had yet to say, but if this man was some kind of last chance for us-for humanity? — I didn’t want to greet him with weapons.
In the alcove, the Spartan’s eyes opened first, just as the Celt’s had. They were a deep brown that matched his olive skin and the wavy brown hair that fell past his shoulders. There was confusion in those eyes, but they didn’t seem to hold the madness that had afflicted the other man. I crossed my fingers, hoping I was right and not letting my emotions color my rationale.
When he was released from the invisible hold and his feet dropped to the floor, he landed in a crouch. He didn’t charge out the way the first man had, but he lowered his spear and pulled his shield into a defensive position in front of him. I remembered that the Spartans had been trained to attack en masse as a phalanx. This guy was all alone, a phalanx of one.
His dark eyes scanned the chamber, lingering for a moment on Jakatra, who hadn’t bothered to put the cap back on. The Spartan didn’t seem surprised by those pointed ears, only wary. Like the Roman, he’d seen people like these before.
Eleriss stepped away from the control panel and spread empty hands. He asked a question in his language, speaking slowly and enunciating the words. I thought about taking out my phone to record him, but we already had a sample some college computer was fumbling over.
I watched the Spartan’s face, wondering if he’d understand the strange tongue. He didn’t seem surprised by it, but he didn’t respond either. He wasn’t saying a word, simply studying everything and everyone around him. When his gaze landed on Simon and me, I could only wonder what someone from more than twenty-five hundred years in the past would think of us and our crazy garb. Next I wondered if I actually believed he was from twenty-five hundred years in the past, or anything that was going on around me for that matter. Maybe I’d wake soon and find it had all been a dream.
Eleriss repeated his question, then glanced at Jakatra as if to ask, “Why isn’t this working?”
The Spartan-I wished I knew his name-rose from his crouch. He was taller than expected of someone from that time period, six feet with his bare arms full of corded muscle. I’d guess him in his late twenties if I met him on the street, but something in his eyes made him seem older, like someone who’d seen far more than typical for his years.
He pinned Eleriss with a defiant gaze and spoke a sentence or two. Eleriss looked… confused. I hadn’t understood it either, but there was a familiarity to it that the other language lacked. I wouldn’t have guessed what it was if he weren’t standing in front of me in Spartan garb, but it had to be Ancient Greek. Too bad I’d only ever seen it in writing.
Eleriss kept asking the man the same question. He truly expected the Spartan to understand his language and respond in kind. When the Spartan spoke again, it was only to repeat what he’d said in his own tongue, something neither Eleriss nor Jakatra knew. The repetition helped me, and I thought I had the gist. I knew modern Greek, after all. Granted the language had changed a lot in two and a half millennia, but I’d studied the ancient language in school and thought I could get along fabulously with this fellow if he’d write things down for me. He ought to be literate. I was positive an Athenian would be, but I thought reading and writing had been a part of the Spartan Agoge too, even if the school had focused on creating warriors.
“He refuses to talk to you in your tongue,” I told Eleriss.
“Yes, that is being made clear to me.” Eleriss tilted his head, regarding me with new eyes. “Do you understand his language?”
“Some,” I said aloud. Very little, I thought.
“Really?” Simon asked.
I gave him a quick nod but didn’t say anything else. The Spartan was looking at me now, though it didn’t last long. He went back to scanning the chamber, his gaze returning often to Jakatra. He struck me as someone looking for a way to escape.
You don’t want to go out there, I wanted to tell him. He’d find the world exceedingly weird, and it would feel similarly toward him. I imagined the soldiers or police stopping him, or worse, him being hit by a car without ever knowing what one was.
“You must speak to him then,” Eleriss told me.
“Er?” Given time, I thought I could learn to communicate with him, but now? On the spot?
Unfortunately, every set of eyes in the room turned toward me, including the Spartan’s. I said the only Ancient Greek words that came to mind. “Ō ksein’, angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tēide keimetha, tois keinōn rhēmasi peithomenoi.”