Chapter Thirty-Two
Before I can think better of it I run from the tree’s shelter, moving as quietly as I can, until I throw myself through the tent opening and scramble for a place to conceal myself. It’s quiet in here, like the eye of the storm. I try to listen for footsteps, but all I can hear is the pounding of my heart.
Our bed: it’s the only thing big enough to hide me. And if Deimos comes in here, perhaps it will block me from view long enough for me to duck back out under the tent walls. I drop to my hands and knees, crawling to take shelter behind it. My heart won’t stop battering. Not so loud, though, that I can’t hear the cold voice on the wind outside.
“Where are you, brother?” it sneers. “No time to be shy.”
I swallow the bile in my throat, and inch backward a little further.
“Quiet, is it not, Xanthos?” He must be speaking to the horse; I hear its hooves alongside his footsteps. “I had not expected a welcome party, but all the same…”
They’re getting closer. It seems to me he must hear my heart battering, it sounds so loud.
“Brother, I know you have something of mine. I know you took it.” The voice gets silkier, more poisonous.
“You want it for yourself. But I know it was you, brother. And I will have it back.” His tone changes then, becoming louder, more imperious: “ I call you, blade of the Cyclops. Blade of Olympus, first to be forged, I call you to me.”
I catch my breath. The blade? Zeus’s blade? But why does he seek it here?
Why does he think Eros has it?
The footsteps are coming closer. I hear the horse snort impatiently, echoing his rider. I inch a little further backward. I know Deimos cannot see me from outside the tent, and yet it feels as though he must. But as I shuffle backward, knees bare against the ground, a flash of heat sends a shooting pain across my skin. I stifle a gasp as the heat sears again. It’s the earth itself: the earth is burning. But it’s just this one patch, and I manage to move free of it, my knees trembling, tears forming in my eyes. All that matters is that I do not give myself away.
“They are not here, Xanthos,” the voice comes again, frustration sharp behind the scorn. “Look—they have gone to save their sniveling mortals from the sea. The fools. They should know by now, the Fates are not on their side.”
So he has spotted them somewhere, out over the seas. I don’t know what to think. If it’s true that he does not have the blade, at least he cannot kill Eros.
But why is he without the blade? None of this makes sense.
I hear the heavy shift of a saddle. Then comes the thick sound of beating wings, and the walls of the tent shudder in the wind they make. I crouch where I am until the sound fades, until the air is still again. Has he really gone?
When I finally go to stand, a burst of pain sings out from my knees. I look down. The skin is scalded, red and raw. I don’t understand. When I put my hand out to the patch of earth, I can still feel the heat: not scalding any longer, merely warm. Then I notice the earth has been disturbed. Freshly turned. Something has been buried in this spot, and recently.
I grow still, my breathing shallow, not sure whether to leave it be.
Dig, says a voice inside me. Which part of me it comes from, or if it’s even part of me, I can’t tell. Maybe the voice is coming from the earth itself. There’s nothing here to dig with: finally, with a deep breath, I plunge my hands into the soil. I scrabble in the still-warm dirt, my hands shaking, hardly knowing what I’m doing. But as soon as my fingertips touch it, a dreaded certainty comes over me. I find purchase, and tug. It spills out of the earth easily—as though it wanted to be found—and all I can do is stare.
I’ve seen its like before. I’ve seen its twin before. So similar to my mother’s blade—only the jewels on the hilt are different. My hand wraps around the carved hilt and slowly I unsheathe it, and lift it in the air before me. It seems to glow a little in my grip.
It heard him calling. The surge of heat, the glow. It wanted to be found. I stare at it in disbelief: the most powerful object in Olympus. The one that started all of this tyranny and bloodshed. But what is it doing here?
My head spins. No one else steps foot in this tent. Eros is the only one who could have hidden it here. But when, how? And why ?
I think back to what I heard from Dimitra this morning. Deimos’s attack in the Underworld was unsuccessful, even though he surely ought to have succeeded. The blade was enough to take two of Cerberus’s heads—not to mention the life of the immortal guard. So what kept him from taking Cerberus’s final life, and breaking into the realm of souls beyond?
Perhaps he was not the only god in those dark tunnels last night.
I don’t know how Eros could have managed to get the blade from his brother, but if he did, he would have had the advantage returning to the surface. Deimos has only one wing, and without his horse, he cannot move so fast.
But even say all this is true. Say Eros was not with the troops last night at all, but instead in the passages of the Underworld, chasing his brother. If so, why did he go alone, in secret—and why is the blade here , instead of back on Olympus, in Zeus’s hands? Question after question I can’t answer. An angry pulse beats at my temple.
He spoke of loyalty: his loyalty to Zeus; the importance of restoring the blade to its rightful owner. He acted as though it was the only thing that could save us. Loyalty . It’s something I’ve never doubted in him, something I’ve even thought he had too much of. But if he were loyal to Zeus at all, surely Zeus would have the blade by now. So what does that make Eros?
A liar? A thief? A traitor?
I burn with betrayal. The secrets I’ve been keeping, the ones I felt so guilty about, melt away. They’re nothing. They’re no betrayal at all, compared to this.
Does he mean to seize power on Olympus; is that what he keeps the blade for? Does he too mean to challenge Zeus for the throne?
No. Even as betrayed as I feel, I can’t quite believe that. I may not know him as I thought, but surely I know him well enough to say that much. He is not the voracious type. He is proud, but for a god, he has little desire for conquest, for power at any price.
At least, so I thought.
I look down at the knife in my hands, its blade sharper than glass. I feel ill just looking at it. It does not feel like my mother’s blade. Or perhaps the difference is, when I held that blade, I held it innocently. I did not know then what I know now. I had not seen the bloodshed it could cause.
I sit back on my heels. Improbable, unthinkable though it seems, this blade is in my hands now. But what am I supposed to do?
What I’m supposed to do, the most obvious course, is to alert Zeus. There is no temple to him here, but if I went to one of Athena’s and offered up the right words, brought the blade to the sanctum, surely word would reach him? I would have to take off the Shroud, of course: it would be little use calling down his attention while I am cloaked from the gods’ sight.
But say I do that. Say he hears me, and comes to claim his blade. The gods do not trust me. When he heard my story, would he even believe me? The moment he saw me with the blade, would I not risk my own death? And if he did hear me out, how could I tell him the truth? If I do, it’s Eros who will be destroyed. They’ll send him to Tartarus along with his brother.
I turn the blade over in my hands. So I cannot tell Zeus the truth…and I cannot fathom a lie that would satisfy him.
Should I bury it back where I found it, then, and wait to confront Eros? But I still don’t know his intentions, and whether I should trust them. And besides…
I sheathe the blade again and hang it from its leather string around my neck, letting it rest against my chest under my chiton , and walk out of the tent. The wind whips at me as I go to the cliff’s edge and look out to sea. Poseidon’s forces are drawing nearer and nearer, forcing the Athenian ships back. Soon, very soon, they will make landfall on the beaches of Phaleron. How many more men will die, once they do? The Athenians will be crushed. The Spartans who even now are flooding the beaches, their defenses at the ready—what have they done, that they should die for this? And Poseidon’s men, too, the fleets from the Cyclades. They may be our attackers, but among those ranks there are surely men just as young, men just as innocent as Timon. If I bury the blade again, what hope is there of ending this battle?
I stare out at the beaches, the flash of armor from the legions of Spartan men. The churning water with its warring ships.
What would it take to stop this war? Not just to end it the way victory ends it, but to stop it—to call a halt before any more lives are lost? Is such a thing even possible?
The blade lies against my chest, warm and heavy, a dark thing.
I think of how the gods have trained us mortals: pray, worship, obey. But it seems to me that Zeus has trained the gods just as well. The Olympians all believe in his claim to the throne. They believe that without him, order will crumble, chaos will reign. But what justice is there in his realm now—not just for mortals, but even for the gods themselves? Why should so many live in fear of him?
I do not say Poseidon’s rule would be better —but I have no reason to imagine it would be worse. Perhaps it is time for a change. The longer a tyrant rules, the harder they are to topple.
I turn away from the water, and search the slopes of the summit for a familiar black horse. Am I mad? Perhaps.
“Ajax.” I approach him. “Will you take me to the beaches of Phaleron?”
*
The road is wide and straight, like a road to the end of the world. Ajax flies down it as though Hades himself is at our backs. Dust flies up from his hoofs, and the steady gallop seems to echo a rhythm in my heart. It’s a chant of the dead. The names of the lost. There have been so many.
Hektor.
Father.
Nereia.
Timon.
And how many more? Bodies on the road to Nafplion, bodies in the seas of Atlantis; bodies and more bodies. Ajax’s hooves pound the earth.
Hektor.
Father.
Nereia.
Timon.
When our pace finally slows, the beaches are in sight, thronged with phalanxes of Spartan men. In the middle of the beach stands a single olive tree, taller than any I’ve seen—it’s Athena’s olive tree, the one she planted here when she founded the city. But now, with the invasion looming, it doesn’t look like the symbol of strength it once was.
And there, in the waters beyond, are the boats. They’re close now, close enough to hear their din: thousands of oars bursting against their locks; the shouts of commanders, the cries of the men. The Athenians are moving fast in their retreat. The Spartan army will give them cover as they land. The first of the boats are already racing through the shallows, and once they disembark they will join the ranks of Spartans in a final defense from the land.
We gallop down the last incline, but at the sound of Ajax’s stride, the nearest soldiers turn. They hoist their spears as I yank the reins tight, and Ajax swerves to a stop.
“What is this madness, woman?” One man with the look of a general moves forward. “Do you wish for death? Get to your home and lock the doors.”
I’m still panting from the ride, but I catch my breath long enough to answer.
“You must let me through. I mean to strike a bargain with the sea-god himself.”
The men stare at me. Some are angry, others begin to laugh—the harsh laughter of those who already smell death in the air.
“Return to where you came from, you mad creature,” one says.
But ahead, as the Athenian ships make landfall and their men flood the beaches side by side with the Spartans, the enemy fleet is coming into view. Their sheer scale is breathtaking—white sails ranging across the horizon, end to end. But one ship in the middle rides in front, seeming to lead all the rest behind. And in its prow stands a boy: slight of build, golden-haired, with something gleaming strung about his neck.