Kryptic ↟ Deimos

thirty-nine: the precipice

THE EAGLE BEARER returns, blood painting her cloven spear and spattered across her leather armor and face. She falls to one knee where Lesya and Deimos lie, and when Lesya turns her gaze upward, she knows the deed is done. Kleon is dead. Another pillar of the Cult of Kosmos felled —another step closer to ridding Hellas of their taint. The fighting is all but done with Athenians fleeing toward the beach, abandoning their dead and wounded to the field. Cries of the Spartan victory ring out in the air, but as Lesya beholds Deimos and the dead littering the ground around them, she cannot help but think this is a pyrrhic victory.

Brasidas limps over, blood sluicing down his arm and leg, though he knows he would have fared far worse against Deimos. "I owe you my life," the general remarks, humbled —he would be dead if not for her intervention, twice over. Hubris almost claimed him. Lesya nods, accepting the general's thanks, but her attention is quick to return to Deimos.

Kassandra and Brasidas look down on the felled champion, broken arrow rising from the center of his back, his head turned and resting in Lesya's lap. It's haunting to see Deimos at ease like this. All the anger and pain held in his furrowed brow and dark eyes vanished. They see him as he is —broken. "You should both leave," Lesya tells them, her fingertips following the sharp line of his jaw, "I can manage him."

The two Spartans share a look, a silent understanding between them. They do not doubt Lesya's strength —had watched her cleave men in two— but the battle is over, and she is beaten and bloody. "We'll help you take him into the city," Brasidas announces.

HE GROANS AT the sharp pain in the center of his back and turns his head, eyes opening to narrow slits as he glances around the nigh barren room. His armor is gone, piled in a corner, and next to the pallet of linens and pillows where he lays is a basin of water —once white strips of linen now stained red hang limply from the edge. Then he finds her, sitting near the door of the stone-and-mud hut with his sword draped across her folded legs, working to polish the blood and grime from the gleaming silver sword —her hair shining like flames in the setting sun. Deimos watches her, afraid she will be gone if he closes his eyes again. "Lesya," he gasps, lifting his hand, reaching out.

Lesya looks over her shoulder, then sets aside the Damoklean sword and goes to him. He tries to sit up, the grimace of pain clear on his expression. "Don't," she breathes, pushing down on his shoulder. Deimos has been hurt before, but she's never seen him like this —vulnerable. He sucks a long breath, hands clenching into fists at his sides. She sees the budding question in his eyes. "Kleon," Lesya answers before he can ask the question on his tongue.

His face twists in anger and betrayal; she can see the promise of revenge appear in his dark eyes. Neither of them will have the satisfaction of watering their blades with his blood, though. "He's dead," she tells him. Kassandra had made sure of that during the waning battle. "Move your toes," Lesya demands. Deimos looks at her with furrowed brows, and she rolls her eyes —almost having forgotten how stubborn a patient he was. "Men have lost the ability to walk by being struck in the back," she reminds him.

"I'm fine," Deimos hisses, sitting up, and then the next words on his tongue vanish when he beholds her in the light. Lesya's face is a myriad of cuts and bruises. It's a cruel reminder of mortality. That she —and even he— will soon fade in time no matter if the people in Hellas once thought them deities. The linen wrapped around her forearm is blossoming red, the cut below weeping again from fussing with him. He can only think of two other times when she'd been like this —vulnerable. Deimos reaches for her, the backs of his fingers brushing over her cheek and back into her copper hair.

On instinct, she turns her cheek into his hand —can feel the callouses on his fingertips and the scar in his palm. Lesya sighs, weary from the battle and the last weeks. "Alexios," she breathes his name as a quiet prayer, but his hand falls away from her cheek, and his face twists in anger.