Kryptic ↟ Deimos

thirty-two: striking bone

EUBOEA AND ATTIKA rise from the water on either side of the pirate trireme. Five long days leads them to an abandoned wharf near the village of Dekelia and the border of Boeotia. It is here they will dock for Lesya to depart on the next bloody leg of her journey.

Tundareos approaches his sister at the bow of the Ippalkimon —she wanted to be left to herself after what happened in Megaris, yet it did her no good to dwell on the past and heartbreak. He could see a glint of something in her laurel eyes —a lurking danger that only surfaced during battle. Lesya is at war with herself and Enyo. She glances at Tundareos, not immediately dismissing his presence for the first time in days. Her fingers curl around the railing at the edge of the ship with a white-knuckle grip. "I have to break the Cult's hold on him."

He struggles with what to make of Deimos. A man in torment and fighting the same battle as Lesya, no doubt, but it's the way Deimos looks at her when they're together —fools in love, willing to go to the depths of Tartarus for one another. Tundareos doesn't want to believe Deimos is beyond saving, if only for his sister's sake, yet he cannot help but wonder. "Are you sure their claws have not struck bone?" Tundareos asks.

"If they have then I will pry them off," she grits out, fighting back the tears pricking at her eyes. Tundareos can see it in her eyes and hear it in her unsteady but determined tone —she is ready to walk down a dark path if necessary. "I love him, Tundareos," she breathes, and for a moment, her strength is gone, and he sees a broken girl —the same one who cried out for her brothers as the Cult stole her away from Athens. "I cannot lose him."

A faint smile pulls his scarred lips, his blue eyes shining seas of hope and love. He cannot fault her for hunting those who had stolen her innocence and trying to save the only person in Hellas who knows what it's like to be twisted into a weapon "I know," he tells her, gripping onto her shoulder. Tundareos skims the rocky landscape. Where Attika ends and Boeotia begins is impossible to tell, for they are both ravaged by the war. "Be careful." She nods but will make no promise. Turning, she embraces Tundareos holding fast to him for a long moment before turning to gather her bow and a repaired hunting spear.

The path to the central road spanning from Athens to Thebes is narrow and winding, cutting through the rocky landscape. If the weather remains fair, she should see Lake Kopais glimmering on the horizon before the next sunrise as Dekelia disappears behind a hill. At the edge of twilight, Lesya hears the thunder of hooves. Looking over her shoulder, she can make out the small party of riders bearing the sigil of Sparta.

As they draw nearer, her grip on the spear tightens —heart pounding. "I know you," one Spartan hoplite says, slowing his horse as a small group of soldiers approaches. The blades on her back are familiar for their ornate craftsmanship, but her copper hair unmistakable. Lesya looks up at the man, hesitant. "We fought together in Megaris," he notes. Warring on the Megarian battlefield was not a day he was likely to forget —it was his first true fight, his first time fighting alongside a demigoddess. "Our camp isn't far–" he points to the northwest "–you can have a hot meal and rest for the night."

"Lead on," she tells them, happy to accept their hospitality, for it is something she has not often experienced in her travels.

TIMOTHEUS RUBS THE raw skin of his wrists and ankles, having broken from his bonds after days, if not weeks, of capture. Though the ropes are gone, he remains caged like a beast. The Spartans are not kind to their prisoners of war —they make sure to keep his wounds fresh and little else. He prays for rain before he thinks of freedom. Leaning back, he grabs onto his ribs with a groan —a wound not tended. Head lolling to the side, he looks into the adjacent cage. His compatriot must've died during the night, the heat of the day having swelled the man's stomach —come the morrow, crows would have a feast.

A flash of copper hair catches his eye. He's sure his eyes are playing him for madman —he's only known one person in all of Hellas to have copper hair. Lesya. Timotheus grips onto the bars of his cage and stares at the woman sitting amongst the circle of Spartiates at the fire sharing a meal of stewed beans and flatbread —his stomach rumbles at the thought of something other than moldy bread and rotting fruit. "Lesya?" He croaks, hoping she will have heard the faint call of her name. "Lesya," he cries, reaching through the wooden lattice toward the fire.

She approaches the cage and crouches down, looking the Spartan prisoner in the eyes. Beneath the blood and grime and thick beard, Lesya recognizes her brother. "Timotheus," she breathes, laurel eyes wide. Reaching through the latticework, she grasps his trembling hands, holding them tight and steady. "What happened?" She shakes her head before he can answer. It doesn't matter what he'd done to garner capture —he will know freedom again this night. "I'll get you out of here." He's seen the glint in her eyes before when their swords first locked together in the Megarid.

"There's too many," he rasps, having counted no less than a score between the hoplites and the strategos. It would take an equal number of men for any hope of defeating them. Timotheus grips onto the cage. "Let me out," he insists, "I can help."

She shakes her head, in his current state, Timotheus would only get in her way. "I'll be back," Lesya assures him, reaching behind her to free her blades. The first fall silently, but the camp rises in alarm when the central tent catches fire. Men scream and wail, the clash of iron echoes in the night. Timotheus watches as she moves, a blur of copper and iron across the camp until none are left standing save for her.

"See?" Lesya motions toward the now silent camp with blood spattered across her face and staining her hands, panting. She sheaths the daggers in her hands on her back with her bow after slicing through the rope holding the door of the cage. "Not too many." Timotheus stumbles out, his face pale as he looks around. One woman against a score of Spartiates.

Timotheus huddles close to the fire, sipping broth off the stew before dunking a piece of flatbread. Lesya's gaze darts over him. He is a far cry from the leader she met in Megaris. A dark beard tinged with grey hangs to his chest and his hair, once close-cropped, falls before his eyes. The worst is how frail he looks, cheeks gaunt with sunken eyes from weeks of torment and malnutrition.

"I found Tundareos," Lesya notes, and her brother looks up from the bowl of stew, surprised to hear that name again after so long, "or rather he found me." Even before he was named a general for Athens, he and Kalanthe assumed Tundareos dead when he left during the night with nary a word. It never sat well with either of them what Leandros had done to their sister, but little Tundareos had been the one to act. "He's a pirate sailing under Xenia's command."

He huffs —a dry laugh at the thought of his brother as a pirate. "That is good to hear," Timotheus remarks, better a pirate than rotting at the bottom of the Aegean or as a Spartan prisoner. He finishes the bowl of stew and skin of watered wine, and as he rises, the blue-and-bronze of his shield catches his eye in the firelight. Now free, he does not wish to tarry any longer —it would not be long before scouts and messengers arrived to find the bloodbath. Lesya senses his unease, bringing one of the speckled mounts from a small pen to where Timotheus stands, holding his shield and kopis.

Timotheus tightens his grip on the horse's reins, steadying the beast and himself as he looks between his sister and the trampled path leading from the fort. Perikles is dead, as is his duty to Athens. He has no calling in Hellas any longer save for that of protecting his family. "Come with me, sister," he asks, though he already knows her answer by the iron resolve in her laurel gaze.

"I can't," Lesya says, shaking her head. "I have work to do still." She must carry the edict from Brasidas to the commander of the Spartan forces in Boeotia —and hope none of the other Spartans will suspect her of this slaughter. "Go to the dock east of Dekelia if you wish to see Tundareos–" a fleeting smile twists her lips "–his ship is there." Timotheus nods and spurs the horse to a quick trot, leaving his sister standing amidst the carnage she wrought upon his captors —for all the death and destruction, it feels like home.