Sword of the Spartan Read online

  Sword Of The Spartan

  by Mike Rogers

  Copyright © 2016

  by Mike Rogers

  For Shelly

  Prologue

  Long ago, Alexander, I was a slave to one of the bravest warriors that ever lived. He was a Spartan, like your master is now, and he placed me in charge of his weapons. He was a hard man, but fair. If you did your job well, you were rewarded. If you neglected your duties…well, he’d break out the whip. Not that he ever had to do so, because even amongst the slaves he was loved and deeply respected for his courage. His name was Anaxis Isocrates, and he was the last true Spartan. He alone did not bow to the might of Rome, and he became an outcast because of it. What happened to him, I do not know, but I am certain he died a warrior's death, as he highly desired.

  The story I want to tell you of him on this day is not one about great heroics or how many enemies he killed. No, this story is about the man behind the warrior.

  One night, after the army had marched all day and we finally settled around a campfire in our newly setup camp, my master Anaxis sat aside me and sighed deeply. The other men were drinking wine and boasting to one another about the heroic deeds they had done in the past and were putting wagers on the heroic deeds they would do the day after, but my master kept silent and simply stared into the fire, despite being the bravest warrior of them all and having surpassed his comrades in every possible way.

  One of the men around the fire, a young Spartan who had only seen a mere three battles, was so drunk that he forgot his place and shouted across the small circle of comrades at my master.

  "Why do you not join us in our happiness?" he asked. "Why sit there and sulk? Take a woman in your bed tonight and a pitcher of wine, for tomorrow we march to our next battle!"

  My master stared at the young man, but kept silent. This infuriated the young Spartan, who barely managed to get onto his feet.

  "You do us contempt by keeping your tongue! I heard all these wonderful tales about you, Anaxis, and yet here you sit, mute like a donkey! Are you the great warrior everyone talks about? I think not!"

  The drunken man now looked at the other men, who were obviously embarrassed in his place, and some even shook their head, knowing my master could easily break the young warrior in half.

  "What are you all staring at?! You think I speak untruthfully because I am drunk? On the contrary, I am quite lucid! So lucid I dare to say Anaxis is a coward! Why, just yesterday, after the battle was won, I saw him sink to the ground on his knees and cry like a little child! Big juicy tears rolled down his cheeks! Ha, great warrior my ass!"

  My master got onto his feet and the other men around the fire held their breath, afraid for what was going to happen next. But instead of the anticipated outburst of violence, my master quietly said, “You have no idea what you are talking about, young fool. I admit that I cry after each battle; I find no shame in that. For the reason I cry is one you will never have to worry about. I cry because I know that for every man I kill on the battlefield his spirit will visit me in my dreams that night and his face will haunt me for weeks to come. I cry because every night I get many visitors. You, on the other hand, will never get many visitors. You will be a visitor soon enough.”

  And then my master turned around and left the small group behind. The men all stared at his back and knew he spoke the truth. A good warrior has a few restless nights; a great warrior never has a normal night ever again.

  As the night went on, Trimidites the slave stared at the full moon and tried to remember the times before his master had been banished. How had it all begun? How had his master become so disappointed by the Spartan society and customs that he had rebelled in such a way?

  Trimidites started digging in his memory for the how and why and by the time the sun started to rise over Sparta he had remembered.

  It had all started when his master travelled to Epirus right after the third Macedon war.

  Something had changed him there. A full-blooded Spartan, he was never an amicable man. He was hard as steel and unforgiving because of his military training. But after Epirus, he had changed into a man much harder than a Spartan. Before Epirus he had been as hard as steel. After it, he had become as hard as stone. And before something is so terrible it changes a Spartan, it had to have been horrific…

  Chapter 1

  When Anaxis Isocrates had travelled to Macedon, it had just been put under the occupation of Roman forces. Legions had been sent there to silence the voices of protest that had followed the third Macedonian war. King Perseus of Macedon had had the foolish idea of taking on Rome. Perseus was an ambitious man and out for gold, women and land. And what better way than to take it from those weaker than himself?

  His first step in his ambitious plan had been to marry Laodike, the daughter of the Asian king Seleucus IV. He increased his army and forged many alliances across the Greek peninsula. For a while everything went well, and Greece became powerful and prosperous again.

  But those were exactly the two things Rome could not abide.

  Perseus was well on his way to force the Romans out of Greece and yes, even to become an important rival and threat to Rome. So the Romans did as they had always done: they made war.

  Using King Eumenes II of Pergamon, they made sure war erupted in Greece. Pergamon and the Romans conspired together to destroy Macedonia, but at first they failed.

  Perseus won the first struggle: the battle of Larissa, where he faced the army of Publius Licinius Crassus.

  Wise as he was, the king offered a peace treaty to the Romans, which was refused. The Romans could make no profit from peace, only from war.

  Another Roman army was soon to be defeated in Illyria. Perseus desperately tried to convince other Asian rulers to help him in this struggle, to finally put a stop to the madness that was Rome, to the corruptness, the greed and the audacity. But none came.

  Not even his father-in-law sent out an army to help.

  Soon after, Perseus was defeated by the legions of the Roman consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus at the Pydna. Perseus was deposed and his dignitaries taken to Rome to serve as spectacle for a Roman victory parade.

  Macedon was torn apart, divided into four Roman republics, each one having to pay tribute to Rome. To make sure there would be no uprisings, Paullus had 500 Macedonians executed because of their opposition. He exiled many more to the barbaric regions beyond Greece and confiscated their belongings. His soldiers, not content with their small share of the plunder, started to rebel. Paullus kept them quiet by letting them sack Epirus and 70 other towns. Over 150,000 people were enslaved, 40,000 more killed and numerous women brutally violated. The region never recovered from this brutality. And then to make the insult complete, Paullus renamed himself Macedonicus, the conqueror of Macedonia.

  Anaxis had visited Epirus right after it had been sacked and had seen the Roman legion with its brutality. He returned to Sparta a changed man.

  He went to the king upon his arrival and told about the Roman brutality and delivered a fine speech on how Sparta allowed this to happen to fellow Greeks. The king turned a deaf ear and sent Anaxis away.

  After that incident he'd neglect his duties, training and would sit around for days in front of the fireplace with a cup of wine. One night, having spent several days like this, he lifted himself out of his chair and dropped the bronze cup onto the floor. I immediately rose from the couch in the corner of the room to pick it up, but he gestured me to leave it.

  I'll never forget what followed.

  He turned to me and stared deep into my eyes. His stare was unforgiving, unyielding, hard and cold as steel, in short: Spartan. He silently said, “Tomorrow I leave.”

  The unexpected words needed a few moments
to sink into my drowsy mind and stir up any sort of emotion. Feeling too sleepy to fully comprehend the meaning of his words I was so bold as to ask him whereto.

  He didn't answer. He simply nodded and walked towards his small bedroom.

  Before he entered it, he stopped in the door and said, “Make sure you have an entire travel pack standing ready for me and a horse. Also a donkey with provisions. It will be a long voyage.”

  I was surprised at this because it was rare for my master to travel far without even reporting it first to the council. Still, as a slave I had no rights, and so I kept my tongue. Today I wish I hadn't. I should have asked and forced an answer out of him. It would have prevented so much death and anguish! But it is too late today. It has happened. That night proved to be the start of a catastrophic war for Sparta…

  …and Rome.

  Chapter 2

  When the next morning arrived, my master, Anaxis Isocrates, awoke not only to find his own horse waiting but also mine. It was not common for me to accompany him on voyages, but this time I was intent on not letting him leave on his own. I had a bad feeling about this trip, and I was certain he needed my help. I had packed my own bags and prepared a horse and mule for myself, taking additional spears and other gear. My master gave me a cold stare and waited for my explanation as he found me sitting on my horse.

  “Master, I have a feeling you will be needing the services of your weapons master on your journey, so I have taken the liberty of packing your spare weapons.”

  Anaxis mounted his horse and looked me directly in the eyes.

  “Next time you ask.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I replied, happy to get off so easily. In reality, I had counted on the fact that Anaxis would never send me away, for we had known each other our entire lives. I had been his weapons master my entire life, my father had been for his father and my grandfather had been for Anaxis' grandfather. My family had an excellent reputation when it came to weapon duties, and I was not about to let it fall onto me to shame the family. My master would leave with me or not at all, or so I had determined. I think Anaxis understood, for he never touched the subject of my rebellious conduct ever again. Slaves had been killed for less…

  We rode off to the harbor of Sparta, followed by the curious gaze of other Spartans who wondered where we were headed. Children ran along our horses, displaying their fitness and laughing as they overtook us. In reality, we did not ride very fast, for we had a long way to go and needed to conserved the horses' strength. While I laughed at the children's behavior, Anaxis remained silent and stared grimly in front of himself. When we reached the shores of Lakonia, we got clogged up in the local traffic. Several carts with grain were blocking the stone path to the harbor and we had to wait in line until we passed a broader piece before we could pass the column. To my agony, I noticed that the cart before us belonged to a Spartan named Stirgos. He was the master of a slave girl named Minerva, the most beautiful woman in the world, or at least she was to me. I had met her during the winter when my master had paid a visit to Stirgos on his farm outside Sparta and had taken me along. Minerva had tended to the horses and since I had been placed in charge of putting them in the stable of the farm I met her there. I fell in love on the spot. She had long blond hair, emerald green eyes and ivory white skin. She was taller than any Spartan save for Leonidas or perhaps Hercules himself and had the most delicious barbarian accent to her Greek. Apparently she came from the barbaric lands to the far north of the Byzantine, and Stirgos had just recently bought her at the Athenian slave market. After that encounter we kept seeing one another, and recently we had even begun talking about marriage. Of course this would mean my master and Stirgos would have to come to an agreement, which I did not believe to be a problem for our masters were best friends since childhood. Still, I had not had the nerve to tell my master of our relationship and with the voyage ahead of us I feared it might be a long time until we'd meet again. I had sent word to her the night before of our departure and had asked her to wait for me.

  But now that the cart with Stirgos' crest was here, my heart jumped at the possibility of seeing her one last time. I praised the goddess Aphrodite for what happened next because the canvas covering the sacks of grain on the cart suddenly loosened and fell to the ground. Anaxis stopped his horse and shouted to the cart's driver that he had lost something on the road.

  The driver, an old corpulent, balding slave named Serpiditos shouted at the cart in front of him at one of the younger slaves to go fetch the canvas. To my surprise, Minerva appeared from behind the cart and stooped over the canvas. My breath stopped as our eyes met and her mouth fell open. Immediately I glanced at my master and Minerva understood she had to keep her silence in front of Anaxis. She placed the canvas on the cart and seated herself on top of it, giving me a secret glance whenever she could.

  After having driven for a few minutes, Anaxis softly said, “You should go to her, you know. Zeus knows when you'll see her again.”

  I turned my head and stared at him in surprise. Typical for him he kept staring in front of us, silently cursing the slow progress of the carts. Just as I was about to turn my face back to Minerva, he looked at me and said, “You’re wondering how long I've known.”

  Now it was my turn to look in front of me, as I felt I was blushing.

  “I've known since the day you met her. You were silent all the way home and that's very unusual for you. I've never met such a talkative slave as you, Trimidites. Not to mention you gave me two different sandals the morning after and the wrong cloak. A man in love is a man confused. This is why you’ll never see me in love.”

  I gathered all my courage for what I was about to say and after a few minutes managed to squeeze out of my dry throat, “We'd like to marry.”

  “I know,” Anaxis said. “Why else do you think I wanted to leave you behind? I had already bought her from Stirgos, and she was supposed to arrive on the farm next week.”

  My heart sank into my feet as I heard this. I felt tears welling up out of desperation, and I am sure Minerva felt the same.

  Anaxis placed his strong left hand on my shoulder and said, “Turn back. I will not think you any less a man because of it. Besides, where I am going I have very little use of a weapons master.”

  I looked at him and saw the determination on his face.

  “You are going to war.”

  It was a rhetorical question, but he answered nonetheless.

  “Yes.”

  I straightened myself and said boldly, “Then you will need a weapons master all the more. To abandon you now would be against everything my family has ever stood for.”

  Anaxis nodded. “Indeed. This is why I did not want you to join me in the first place. What I am planning will go against everything any Spartan has ever believed in.”

  That answer puzzled me. I wondered what my master was planning to do that could be so severe.

  Again he advised me to go to Minerva and this time put some force behind his words by riding to the front of the caravan, trying to see why they moved so slowly.

  I never told Anaxis how happy I was for having those few minutes with Minerva but I am certain he knew. He was not the man to let me miss out on happiness simply because he could. I was after all, in all things, his slave, which meant I had no rights whatsoever. But to Anaxis I was much more. I was his friend. A friend with considerably less rights, I'll grant you that, but a friend nonetheless. It is a matter of considerable difficulty to explain, but there is a symbiotic relationship between a Spartan and his weapons master. It takes a great deal of confidence to allow a slave to carry your weapons and even hand them to you in battle. A weapons master has the dangerous task of handing his master a new spear when it breaks during combat, and he is exposed to a great deal of dangers in this process. But also his master is in considerable danger. He could abandon his master for instance, and let him die, or he could stab the spear in his master's back and have the same effect.

  But enough on the re
lationship between master and slave. For as soon as I had said my tender goodbyes to Minerva my master reappeared and without looking at me ordered to move ahead of the caravan. I deliberately stayed several meters behind my master so that I could turn around and stare at Minerva as the distance grew. I am certain Anaxis knew, but he did not care. He simply drove his heels deeper into his horse and accelerated.

  After riding for a while we arrived at Sparta's harbor, where we went to see an old comrade of Anaxis. Without giving me any sort of explanation, Anaxis had asked the harbor master where the old man's ship had docked and walked towards it. When I say old, I mean old in the literal sense of the word. I was introduced to a man named Mistra, a toothless—save for perhaps one half-rotten specimen—bald old man. Despite his baldness he had a long grey beard, which was cluttered with food and ale. I remember that aspect best of his figure, for the rotting food and alcohol gave off a putrefied smell that could knock an ox dead. I am rather certain of this, for the distance between the man and our horses was no less than ten paces at our first encounter, and I remember distinctly that my horse staggered at the smell and went through its rear legs, tossing me off. The poor animal never quite recovered from the ordeal and I had to exchange it for a new one. Preferably one without the ability to smell…

  Mistra was a sailor—and by that I am giving the man more credit than he deserves, for he was a downright scurvy pirate of the worst kind—from the region of Iberia. He had met Anaxis many years before on a trip from Rome, of which the details were unknown to me. Amicable as the pirate was, he invited us to join him on his trip to the harbor's brothels and inns, only to have us pay for his "entertainment" and quite exuberant tab as it turned out he "forgot" his purse aboard his ship. Anaxis paid the bills with a smile on his face. It had been too long since he had smiled and I dared not to interrupt his fun, but I wondered at the relationship between the two totally different men. One was a rigid Spartan, military in just about everything, from breathing to taking a crap, whereas the pirate was…well, basically a pirate. He pinched what his eye fell on, screwed every whore he met and drank every sort of alcoholic beverage they served him. If that meant it was lamp oil, he drank it.