Kryptic ↟ Deimos

twenty-four: a song of the fates

"DON'T STARE TOO closely into the mist," Tryphena chides from the helm, watching as Tundareos and his sister peer into the heavy fog, "last time you almost drove us into the rocks chasing sirens." Lesya smiles, looking over her shoulder at the dark-skinned lieutenant as she helps man the rudder. For a brief moment, the lingering grey parts, allowing a glimpse of the Attikan countryside —patches of ash and toppled stone, yet the crimson banners of Sparta are nowhere to be seen.

A short while later, Tryphena calls to the crew, and the trireme jolts before falling still. The cool fog parts again, revealing the stone towers and wharf of Piraeus —the Ippalkimon docks near the Adrestia, tying off the mooring lines. The port is deserted in comparison to what it had been before. There are no bustling traders or hurrying slaves, nor sound —bar the sad tolling of a distant bell.

Lesya and Tundareos pace down the gangplank, joining Kassandra and Herodotus in surveying the desolation. Wagons sit parked as though abandoned in haste. Some on their sides with the contents spilled and pillaged. It takes a moment for the smell to sink it, an insidious and potent stench of decay. The gods have forsaken Athens, Lesya thinks as she looks up at the Temple of Asklepius.

The few sentries posted around the harbor wear rags over their mouths and noses. "Move along!" One of them shouts, gesturing toward the promenade running inside the enclosing sleeve of the walls protecting the road connecting Piraeus and Athens.

"We speak to Aspasia and Perikles and then we leave," Kassandra announces looking between the historian and Lesya —her brother standing at her side— before they set off on the promenade and through the grey mist. The path is different from the one they had taken nigh a year ago. The drone of flies, weeping, and plaintive chants fill the air.

Bulky shapes line the roadsides, Lesya guesses they are shanty huts of refugees, but ahead the fog breaks, and bile rises in her throat. The ramshackle shelters are long gone, in their place are serried piles of dead as far as any of them could see —thousands of corpses.

Some are soldiers, most are not. She stops, staring into the heap of cadavers —eyes shriveled or pecked out by crows, jaws lolling; skin broken and partly rotted or riddled with angry sores. Lesya has dealt out her fair share of death, leaving mangled corpses across Hellas, but nothing can compare to this —a dangling limbs, clumps of hair, dripping pus, blood, and seeping excrement. No wonder the Spartans abandoned the siege. Too many people cramped within the walls had cleared the way for the pestilence to rise and ravish the denizens and those fleeing to safety from the countryside.

The path of death does not diminish as they near the agora —the stench of burning flesh and hair is heavy in the air, as is dark smoke. Lesya watches as men and women shuffle past with cloths on their faces, bringing fresh dead to add to the piles —one of them drops the body of a young girl and staggers away, sobbing.

A troop of hoplites march by, pushing the sick aside. "Kleon," a woman starts, straightening after kneeling next to a heaping pile of dead. "He seeks to use this plague like a lever, to make the acropolis hill his own. He's bought the loyalty of citizen soldiers and has a demigod on his side." She coughs, the rattling sound muffled by a cloth, and stumbles away. Lesya's stomach drops, Deimos is still here.

"I'm going to find mater," Tundareos announces, doing well to hide his fear, though Lesya can still see it —one in three Athenians rests among the dead. Kassandra and Herodotus move along toward Perikles' villa. After a moment's pause, Lesya turns to follow her brother. She trails a step behind him, eyes downcast as she remembers what happened the last time she was here. More bodies line the streets. Some finely clothed and others stripped of their silk robes and jewels. Lesya's hands clench into fists. One in three, her mind echoes —she will not give herself false hope.