The Reign of Olympus (Shadows of Olympus #3)

Chapter Twenty-Two

When I wake, a pale light floods the tent, and I am alone. Eros is nowhere to be seen. We will be on the move soon, if it is daybreak: down in the valley the men will be preparing to march. I rub my eyes. Last night, the pond, the moonlight, Yiannis…it all feels dreamlike and unreal, like the result of too much wine.

I feel a twinge of guilt. But then I remind myself that my meeting with Yiannis was coincidence, unforeseeable. Besides, this is not the old world of Sikyon, where a girl and boy could not sit alone together and talk. Nothing happened. At least…it was only the ghost of something. Ghosts and memories, that’s all.

I smooth back my hair, pin my chiton, and cross to the door of the tent. But before I have a chance to pull it back, I hear voices. Eros, and Nemese.

“She doesn’t understand,” he’s saying.

“Did you expect her to?” Nemese’s tone is matter-of-fact. I feel my jaw harden as I pull back the silk fabric and stride out. How dare he talk about me to her? My skin sparks with pride, and anger. Eros stands from his seat on the rock when he sees me. I search his face for signs of apology, but find none there.

“Are you ready?” he says, his voice crisp. I glare at him.

“As you see. You should have woken me.”

“You are mortal, you need sleep,” Nemese says, offhand. She hoists herself onto her white mare. “You will only hinder us without it.” She says it easily, casually; there is no barb in it. Perhaps that’s why it galls me so much.

Eros comes to my side and helps me onto Ajax’s back. I keep my eyes from his. I don’t trust myself to keep silent if I meet his gaze.

“The ships are closing in on Athens,” he says. “Half a day’s sail at most.”

Dawn light sparks on the eastern horizon over the blackish-green of the mountains. Already the formidable peaks have started to give way to softer hills, signaling that our destination is in reach. Soon we’ll be riding on the great wide shelf they call the Attic plains.

Last night has left me with much food for thought. Not just the unwise words Yiannis spoke as we parted. I cannot get his story of Messenia out of my mind. And something else, too: the image of Nikos keeps returning as we ride, swimming up from my thoughts as though to breach the surface of the water once more. He carried a knife. Zeus’s stolen knife? It cannot be.

Eros’s warm hands lie across my thighs, his grip loose on Ajax’s mane. What would he say, if I were to tell him? I don’t trust myself to speak of that vision without giving away more of last night. And anyway…Eros has no liking for my sister. If I tell him I saw her in a vision, and her son, a god-child, with the stolen blade, I fear what he would make of that. Whatever I’ve seen or imagined, it’s best I keep it to myself.

Slowly, the landscape opens up below us—brush and wild grass giving way to cultivated lands. The road the men are riding on becomes wider, and it seems to me the sound of their marching rings louder in the air. This is a well-trodden road, and the ground under their feet must be well packed from years of hooves and wheels and feet, pilgrims and traders and fortune-seekers. And armies, of course. Ahead, on the horizon, the famed Acropolis of Athens begins to emerge from the morning mist: the great, sacred rock, crowned with a gleaming Parthenon.

I glance back down at the regiments below us, and find myself thinking of last night again, and suddenly, of Yiannis’s brother. I had almost forgotten about my promise. I turn around, seeking Eros’s gaze.

“I meant to ask…that young man you promoted, the one from Sikyon—he has a brother here too, just fourteen. Could you do for him what you did for Yiannis?”

Eros hesitates.

“But what skill has this boy, at just fourteen? For what cause would he be promoted above men twice his age?”

I flush. “I’m sure he will be a great warrior one day. But I do not ask on account of his skill. I ask because I knew him; because he is young, and has suffered much already, and is in danger. On horseback, riding with the cavalry, he will be safer.”

Eros’s brows draw down.

“This is why you asked?” I can hear the censure in his voice. “Psyche, I thought he had done something to merit it. Is it fair to all the other men who risk their lives just as freely?”

The tone of judgment rankles me.

“ Fair ? What in any of this is fair ?” I glare at him. “Army rank is as much to do with wealth as anything else.” Something bubbles up in me. “And I will not have you lecture me about your keen sense of justice when Messenian slaves march in this army. How is that justice?”

Eros looks startled at first by the turn in conversation.

“I do not say that it is,” he says quietly. “But what the Spartans have inflicted on the Messenians did not come at my orders, nor at my father’s.”

“Sparta does nothing that your father does not sanction,” I snap.

“He did not forbid their actions, I admit,” Eros says. “But he did not cause them. The conquest of Messenia was hardly to his taste. He takes glory in battle, for blood shed in passion and honor. There is little to sing of in making slaves of farmers.”

Without realizing it we have come abreast of Nemese and her mare. It infuriates me that she should be part of this, and the more so when I see she’s watching the whole conversation with interest.

“What you describe is hardly unique to Sparta,” she adds. I want to snap at her to stay out of this, but even angry, I have enough sense not to argue with a goddess of retribution.

“Such merciless exploitation is not just what Sparta does, but what humans do. Even the people you come from-”

“The people I came from were village people!” I turn on her, my caution thrown to the wind. “They were farmers, not fighters. They were not like this.”

“The people you came from were men,” she says. “The difference is they were powerless men. Give them power, and give their neighbors none, and see what appetites they develop then.”

I shake my head. She cannot tell me what we would have been; I know only what we were. And we were not what she describes.

“Psyche,” Eros says more gently. “The Spartans were my father’s people long before the conquest of Messenia, and will be long after, when Messenia expels its oppressors and raises its walls once more. When a god is bound to a people for so many centuries, the two are not easily divided.”

“You know,” Nemese adds, “the Messenians have a god of their own. They worship Zeus; he is their patron. So if you mean to lay blame at the foot of a god, perhaps Ares is not the only one to look to.”

I breathe hard, trying to summon my words, but it seems they have abandoned me. I know I’m right. I know what’s happening in Messenia is wrong. But it feels like every argument I try shifts its shape, dodging me and changing perspective. How can something so simple be so complicated? I turn back to Nemese.

“And what of your role? Where is the justice for what Messenia suffered—where is their retribution?”

She holds my gaze for a while, then looks away. If I didn’t know better, I’d imagine I saw regret on her face. But I don’t believe she cares for the Messenians at all, one way or another.

“It is not so easily calculated,” she says finally. “I am a god of retribution, not redress, or reparation. Those are very different remedies. Would you have me heap new suffering on old?” She gestures at the road below, at the phalanxes forging their steady way along it. “Some of these Spartans boys are hardly men yet. They do what their generals tell them. Should they die in the mud, now, for what their forefathers have done; for what men with greater power have ordered?”

I turn away from her, looking out over the river of men below, and try to find a response. But my thoughts are interrupted. A rumbling noise, distant but unnerving, travels through the air.

“What’s that?” I turn to Eros. Some instinct makes my heart quicken.

The distant thunder grows louder, and the ground starts to tremble under us, as though the mountain has come alive. Fear cuts through me. The rumbling is coming from deep within the stone, reaching toward the surface like there’s a beast within it struggling to get free. Eros and Nemese glance at each other. Small rocks are shaking loose from beneath where we stand. Before my eyes, they tumble down the mountainside—slow at first, then faster. Down below, faint under the roar of falling rock, I hear the shouts of the men: horror; panic. I know exactly what’s happening. It’s what happened to Sikyon. It’s what killed Yiannis’s parents, and little Hector, and countless innocent others.

“You have to stop this!” I shout to Eros. “You have to help them!” But he and Nemese have already dismounted; they are at the edge of the gorge in moments.

“You take the left side. I’ll take the right,” Eros is saying. They take a wide stance; I watch Eros hold out his hand, the way it trembles in the air, outstretched. I do not know if he has the strength yet to stand against something like this.

Up ahead, only a few leagues away from us, the tumbling scree and rock has turned into boulders. I watch helplessly as they hurtle down the side of the gorge, a relentless, crushing tide tumbling into the valley. Ahead of us, the whole pass is caving in, and like a wave, it seems to be rushing toward us. The vibrations are getting worse underfoot, threatening to shake not just shale but great sheets of rock free from the walls below us.

Please , I find myself whispering—to whom or what, I cannot say. I watch Eros’s outstretched hand, and Nemese’s mouth as she brings forth some incantations I cannot hear. And though we seem to hover on the precipice of disaster, the seconds pass, and it does not get any worse. The earth still trembles and shakes; loose stones still plummet toward the bottom. But what has happened up ahead, the caving-in of these mountain walls, is not happening here. I stare at Eros and Nemese, their strained postures, their bent heads. They’re holding the landslide at bay. And all I can do is stand here and watch, useless, as the clouds of dust drown out the sun and the rumbling, slowly but surely, starts to recede once more. The thunder is a rumble. And then, finally, it is gone. The silence it leaves behind is so thick it feels almost unbearable.

When Eros finally turns around, his face dust-streaked, I see what the effort has cost him. That new, bright glow from the past few days is gone. He looks gaunt somehow, the strain still working the muscles of his face. He meets my eyes; neither of us speaks.

I stare at him some moments longer, and then my gaze moves past him, out over the ridge, down to the valley floor. I turn Ajax for the cliff path, click my tongue and dig my heels against his flank.

“Psyche!” Eros stares. “Where are you going?”