Kryptic ↟ Deimos

four: a brother's love

TWO FORT SENTRIES fall silently on her blades with ease. Enyo hauls the corpses to a thick patch of shrubbery against the white-stone walls. The polemarch's chambers are in the center of the fortress and will be heavily fortified —stealth must be her ally. She drives one of her blades up into the hoplite's back, hand reaching around to muffle his alarmed shout. Pulling back the blade, he falls to his knees and Enyo grips his head, turning his neck with a quick twist until it snaps. The remaining guards fall similarly —quickly and silently. They never even know she's there.

The Athenian polemarch sits at his desk, heavy armor piled in the corner for the night —he's answering correspondences from Athens and their general, Perikles. Enyo takes a deep breath and enters the room, keeping low and to the shadows. She moves to strike, but the polemarch knows he's no longer alone by the rustle of air and the flicker of his tallow candle. He turns and throws up his sword, deflecting the blow meant for his neck.

He freezes in place. Swords locked together—looking as though he's seen a ghost. Enyo is frozen too, eyes wide and full of fear. The polemarch's hair and beard are almost black, but what makes her stop is the scar running through his left brow back up to his hairline. My brother had a scar like that she thinks he tripped headfirst into a heap of vases in the agora as a boy when we were playing tag. His eyes are a haunting memory of a life she was meant to forget. "Sister?" The polemarch whispers, disbelieving —his sister was the only person he'd ever known to have copper hair and laurel eyes.

Enyo stumbles —it feels as though she's taken a blow to the gut. "Timotheus?" She asks, voice quivering. He nods, lowering his blade. Enyo does the same.

Timotheus discards his blade completely, shaking his head. "We," he starts, running his hand down the length of his face, "pater said you were dead." Leandros knew the girl would not survive the trials set before her. But she had, and now Lesya is one of the wraiths Timotheus's men speak about around the fire at night. Her face twists at the mention of the bastard who'd chosen her to be the sacrificial lamb.

"Tundareos went searching for you," he tells her. As soon as Tundareos was old enough to be considered a man, he left Athens aboard a merchant ship determined to find his sister. Timotheus hopes the gentle reminder of her brothers is enough to bring some semblance of emotion to her ire-hardened expression. It doesn't. Enyo is full of unbridled rage and looks like a feral animal —trapped in a snare. "What did they do to you?" He whispers, but she does not respond. The polemarch lifts his chin. "You're here to kill me," he surmises from the blood on her hands and blade.

Clenching her jaw, she moves to the open window glancing over the fortress. The fort is silent still —no one has discovered the bodies. "Give up your position and leave the Megarid," Enyo tells him. It should be easy to kill him. Timotheus has played no part in her life for more than a decade —until tonight she'd all but forgotten her sheltered childhood in Athens. "They'll send another in my place if you don't," she warns him. Deimos would not show the same mercy she had. "Give me your seal."

Reluctantly, he draws the gold medallion from his robes and undoes the knot in the leather thong. Something tells him she needs this seal more than he does. A seal meant little though when a battalion knew one's face and voice. Enyo snatches the seal from her brother's hand. She glances down at the medallion, nodding her thanks before turning and leaping from the window. "Lesya!" Timotheus shouts. Three stories below she emerges from a stack of straw and races back into the night.

IN ONE HAND is the polemarch's seal, in the other is the bloody head of an Athenian soldier —it already started rotting during the return trip. Four cultists are gathered around the pyramid, discussing something quietly, but her entrance into the Sanctuary shifts their attention. She throws down the head —it rolls to the feet of one of the robed figures— and tosses the gold seal to another. They nod in approval and speak the praises of their willful champion. Enyo bows with a flourish, turning to leave the Cave of Gaia —her work done.