Chapter One: His Wrath
Pelion did not know the name of the village burning some way down the trail from where he was standing, but he knew that he probably should. The deaths here should be remembered, their sacrifice as yet more fuel for the fire that would eventually burn down the barrier between worlds that prevented his Lord's return should be immortalised for the sake of posterity if nothing else. It was just that, since the Spartans had started north from Tryxis, there had been so many other villages just like this one that he was beginning to lose track.
Most of the small farming communities along the great northward road that connected Sparta and Delphi were virtually indistinguishable from one another, and Demosthenes' army had become so efficient at dealing with them that they had often passed them by before he even had chance to get a feel for the place. The army moved in two great columns when it was on the march, one acting as a vanguard force, the other a reinforcement division, while Pelion's own group of itinerant Followers trailed in the wake of both. When a village was sighted, the two columns of Spartans would swap roles, the vanguard delaying to deal with the village while the reinforcement division would leap frog it, in turn becoming the new vanguard.
Most of the villagers in these places were smart enough to know that when a Spartan force turned up on your doorstep, the most sensible thing to do was to quietly submit yourselves to them and let them be about their business. Demosthenes himself tended to travel with whichever column was acting as the vanguard for just this reason. He would quickly accept any surrenders offered to him and would occasionally leave behind a token force of between five or ten Spartans if the village seemed like one that might need a little 'reminder' every now and then of exactly who it was they had just sworn their loyalties to.
This particular village had not been one of the smarter ones. In fact it had proved to be the dumbest one so far when, for whatever reason, its inhabitants had chosen to resist.
Pelion normally rode with the Followers toward the rear of the Spartan formation, but on this occasion he had been riding beside Demosthenes at the head of the vanguard, both of them with their heads down and caught up in deep discussion. When the scouts had returned to the column and reported the village up ahead, Demosthenes had ordered his force to hang back before riding out with his small cadre of personal guards to magnanimously accept their unequivocal surrender. All the while, the reinforcement division began to adjust its march so that it would pass wide of the village's outskirts. As the Spartan King had approached the village on horse back, some overzealous village defender – probably the winner of the local archery contest at every summer fair and now only too eager to test his skill in a real battle – had put an arrow right through one of Demosthenes' guards eyes.
The Spartan had been dead before he had even hit the ground, and the village's fate had been sealed.
Demosthenes had pulled back to the safety of his lines to rally his forces and prepare to march on the village with his full strength. The effect would have been of a war hammer crushing a peanut. Before he had had chance to mobilise however, she had attacked the village instead.
Since she had joined them shortly after Tryxis, she had gathered about her a small group of soldiers, maybe a hundred or so, culled from the less desirable elements of Demosthenes' army and from those among the Followers accompanying Pelion who had some kind of martial experience. As they had marched, the numbers accompanying her had grown. Occasionally she would disappear out into the surrounding country, only to return later with bands of uncouth bandits and less than savoury mercenaries in tow. Now her force numbered almost two hundred and they stood in sharp contrast to Demosthenes' proud army. Ragged, unkempt, and often clad in mismatched armour, they radiated a different kind of energy and danger to the more understated Spartans.
So far this small force had been marching in Demosthenes' shadow, a part of his army but separate from it, seemingly insignificant next to the huge Spartan columns. Now, as they roared through the village, burning, looting and pillaging as they went, Pelion almost felt a sense of pride in their accomplishment. Demosthenes and his troops may have been their Lord's Strength, but these people; they were his fury, ready and waiting to be unleashed like a mailed fist against those who stood in such open defiance of him. If he squinted, Pelion could just make her out in among them, her lithe frame dismounted from horse back and leading her troops through the firestorm the village had become with an almost suicidal lack of caution. Wherever they went, villagers died, houses burned, and the air hung thick with smoke and ash.
"This is what you would have us unleash on the world?" Demosthenes called to him, gesturing back down the trail as he made his way back to the Spartan line. "We are here to bring order to Greece. Not to watch that thing of yours burn it to the ground!"
Pelion just glanced at him, then returned his gaze to the fires ahead of them.
"We are here to ensure His Return," he said evenly. "If we can do that, what will any of this matter? When our Lord is free this kind of suffering will become but a distant memory. You are a practical man are you not? And for a practical man, is such an end not worth any of the means taken to achieve it?"
Demosthenes' expression turned pensive and he shook his head slightly as he turned to stare at the village, all the while saying nothing. Pelion cocked an eyebrow at him.
"It troubles you doesn't it?" he said, and lifted his hands, lacing his fingers together and tapping thoughtfully at his lips. "Look at it another way then. Weren't you about to march your army in there to do the exact same thing she is doing now?"
Demosthenes shot him a poisonous glance.
"There is war," he snarled, "and then there's just butchery. This is not the former. It is very much the latter."
With that he turned to one of the nearby captains on the line.
"Caracticus," he ordered. "Your men will march on the west flank. I will take the east. We'll cut off the survivors heading north then sweep south and meet up with the forces already engaged. Understood?"
Caracticus, a man of average build – or at the very least, average by Spartan standards – and a seemingly permanent sour expression shot Pelion a glance then turned to Demosthenes and dropped to one knee, his fist across his heart.
"It will be done Great King," he said, then turned and made his way off down the line to relay his orders to his troops.
"That plan sounds like an awful lot of work," Pelion said. "Why not just move on?" he nodded toward the village. "Sheappears to have things well in hand."
"Thanks to her, my options now are limited," he paused, looking across the village with a disgusted sneer on his face. "There's no saving this place now. All that's left is a mercy killing, quick and painless."
With that, he turned and made his way off down the line in the opposite direction to Caracticus, barking orders as he went. Soon the whole column was in motion and the air around Pelion was filled with that growingly familiar bass rumble of thousands of feet on the march.
Overhead the early afternoon sun had passed its zenith less than an hour before, and the shadows cast by the troops were beginning to lengthen as it began its descent toward the western horizon. As the final troops passed by him, Pelion noticed a couple of their shadows twitching and jumping erratically, and a slow smile spread across his face.
"Did you hear all of that?" he said aloud to the empty air. "Despite your many and varied assurances, I'm beginning to think your man doesn't have the stomach for this after all."
One of the nearby shadows twisted strangely, then coiled upward into the air, forming a pitch black seething mass that quivered momentarily, only to suddenly split evenly down the middle and go cascading back away after the soldier that had originally cast it. In its wake it left a single figure, tall, clad in dark robes with a hood that shadowed the wearers face and carrying a long hafted, silver bladed sickle.
"He is His Strength," the tall figure said, his voice hollow, as if someone had scraped every last trace of emotion from it. "Your doubts do not make that fact false."
"Oh come now Mortius," Pelion snorted gesturing toward the village. "Surely even you can see by now that my concerns were entirely justified."
Mortius cocked his head beneath his hood.
"How so?"
"A village of what? Maybe a hundred people," Pelion said, gesturing back toward the flaming buildings. The carnage was almost at an end now. Demosthenes' men would arrive too late to do much beside bury the dead. "Perhaps even less than that, and he was preparing to send in over a thousand men to finish it."
"A show of overwhelming force," Mortius replied simply.
"Or a coward's tactic to avoid even the remotest possibility of losing his precious troops," Pelion shot back. "There will be sacrifices demanded before this is through; of all of us. What will he sacrifice? One of his men? How about a hundred? Or a thousand? What about his entire army? Just how far do you think he's really willing to go in order to see this through to the end?"
Mortius stood silently for a moment, apparently lost in thought, and corners of Pelion's mouth turned upward in a victorious smile.
"You have no more faith in him than I it would seem," he said.
"And what of you then?" Mortius countered archly, his tone causing Pelion to scowl.
"I have sacrificed more than you can imagine," he hissed defensively.
"Don't play your righteous card with me," Mortius said, a note of derision creeping into his otherwise emotionless monotone. "You have played it once too often. I know exactly what sacrifices you have made and they would be great indeed were you not the person you are."
"Believe whatever you will," Pelion said. "My faith will not be found wanting."
"Faith in our Lord, or faith in yourself?"
"I am His Faith," Pelion said with a shrug. "My faith in Him and my faith in myself are the same. One cannot exist without the other."
Mortius turned to look back in the direction of the village.
"And her then," he said.
Pelion's frown deepened.
"What about her?"
"What sacrifices will she have to make? Can you be sure she'll even make them?"
Pelion smiled again.
"Maybe we should go ask her and find out?" he said, starting toward the village. "She's not the type to shrink from a challenge."
Mortius said nothing. Instead he simply strode past Pelion down the trail toward the village.
Pelion watched him for a moment, then gave a satisfied nod to himself and set off after him. He took great delight in watching the other man bristle at his barbed comments about the woman. Mortius, more than anyone, despised her. She seemed able to get under his skin like no one else alive. Even Pelion himself had a harder time of trying unsettle the shadowy figure.
They walked in silence, down the trail in the wake of Demosthenes' troops. The two flanking forces had acted in perfect concert, and by the time Pelion and Mortius reached the edges of the village, the Spartans were already in among the buildings, causing her forces to draw back. Cavalier and deadly though they might be, they knew better than to challenge the solid wall of Spartan phalanxes descending upon them. Still, despite his lack of experience in battlefield strategy, Pelion was gratified to see that his earlier assessment of the battle – if the massacre that this one had clearly become could even be called such – had not been wrong. The first attack had already put most of the locals to the sword, and those that were left were now being rounded up on the small common at the village's centre.
Even with such a small village, Pelion was amazed at the sheer carnage her force had wrought in such a short space of time. There were bodies strewn about the streets, left bloodied and beaten where they had fallen, sightless eyes either staring off into the distance or closed forever more. Mortius seemed unfazed by the devastation, passing silently between the corpses and dragging skittering and leaping shadows in his wake like some grim spectre of death itself.
When they reached the village centre, they found Demosthenes and his men already there with the remaining villagers neatly arrayed in a single row and kneeling in the dirt before them, watching all that was taking place with fearful gazes. She was there too, leaning nonchalantly against a dry stone wall with her sword propped up beside her, it's blade slick with blood. Demosthenes himself was standing beside her, red faced with fury and haranguing her for her unprovoked charge. For her part, she just looked bored by the whole affair.
"...without orders you broke formation and endangered every soldier holding your flanks!" Demosthenes was saying as Pelion and Mortius came within earshot. "It was reckless! Foolhardy! Completely irresponsible. Were you one of my men I'd-"
"But I'm not one of your men," she said, sounding completely uninterested as she brushed a lock of blonde hair back behind one of her ears and narrowed her eyes, not looking at Demosthenes but instead at the line of kneeling villagers. "It's probably for the best too. If I'd been forced to listen to your ceaseless prattle day in and day out for as long as this march has been, one of us almost certainly wouldn't have made it to this point alive." She turned to look at him for the first time, her eyes shining devilishly. "Feel free to use your imagination as to just which one of us that would actually be."
Demosthenes' gaze turned hard.
"Are you trying to threaten me?" he said.
She grinned in that shark-like way she had.
"Who said anything about trying?"
Demosthenes just stared at her for a few more moments, then glanced up and over her shoulder toward Pelion and Mortius. She noticed his change in focus and followed it, her eyes lighting up at the sight of them.
"Well, well," she said, her stare locking on to Pelion first "If it isn't my favourite religious zealot..." her eyes moved to Mortius and she clapped her hands together in mock delight. "...and you've brought along your comedy sidekick! How thoughtful of you! A little light entertainment always goes down well after a hard day's slaughter."
"You find me amusing?" Mortius said, his usually calm, collected voice almost a growl.
"Hilarious actually," she replied, her voice suddenly deadpan. "Can't you tell?"
Mortius took a threatening step forward.
"You're testing my patience-!" he all but snarled.
"Wouldn't have bothered if I'd known how little of it you-"
"ENOUGH!" Mortius suddenly barked with such fierceness that even Pelion and Demosthenes took a nervous step back from him. Pelion had seen Mortius wield that sickle he carried before and he did not envy anyone who found themselves on the receiving end of it.
The blonde woman did not so much as flinch under Mortius' fury however. Instead, she stooped and swept up her still bloodied sword.
"Sensitive isn't he," she said as an aside to Pelion that caused Mortius to stiffen angrily. It was all the old priest could do to hold back a smirk.
"He has been quick to anger of late, it's true," he nodded.
"You will explain yourself at once," Mortius snapped sharply, cutting into their back and forth.
The grin on the woman's face disappeared.
"Explain myself?" she said, her expression darkening as she spoke. "Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. I don't think I'll be doing that."
Mortius straightened to his full height so that he towered over her imperiously.
"I was not offering you a choice," he said, his voice low once more. "You will tell me why you disobeyed orders. Why you broke ranks without permission, and assaulted this village out of turn."
"How about because I'm not some witless lackey who's spine turns to water at the merest sight of you?" the blonde woman retorted. "No one commands me Mortius, understand? No one. Not you; not your puppet king over there, and not even Cronus who you all esteem so highly. I'm not some dog of war to be unleashed. When I fight it's for my reasons, and my reasons alone."
"And this time then?" Demosthenes said from behind her and she glanced back at him over her shoulder. "If that's true, and since you haven't involved yourself before, why fight now?"
"The march is almost over," she said. "Delphi's not that much further, and if they don't already know we're coming, they will do before we reach them. Ithius and his allies will see to that."
Demosthenes' eyes narrowed at the mention of the escaped Helot leader but he remained silent.
"It's time to stop pretending you're some honourable saviours out to save the world," she continued. "You're not messiahs, not champions of the disenfranchised and downtrodden. You're conquerors, plain and simple. It's time you all started acting like it. Sow a little fear and chaos. Leave a trail of scorched earth in your wake and make it known what happens to any who resist; that they will be purged with fire and sword to make way for this new world you're all going to build."
Even Pelion frowned at that last part.
"Our new world?" Mortius said, noting the same choice of words Pelion had. "Not yours?" He glanced over at the old priest. "It looks like we have our answer then."
"What?" the woman said arching an eyebrow at the pair of them, "You thought I was like them?" she gestured up the trail and out of the village toward the robed Followers who were just now coming into view. "Just another of Cronus' brainwashed masses?"
"They are His loyal Followers," Pelion said softly. "There is nothing they would not do for him."
"Would they die for him?" the woman asked.
"The truest of them," Pelion nodded. "If need be, yes, without hesitation."
"Would any of you?"
"Absolutely," Pelion replied, but both Mortius and Demosthenes remained worryingly silent. The blonde woman grinned.
"What's the matter?" she gloated. "Cracks starting to show?"
"If you aren't in His service then what is to stop me from gutting you here and now?" Mortius spoke, trying to change the subject.
She turned to look at him, her grin widening.
"My dear Mortius," she smiled. "You're most welcome to try, but you might find me harder to handle than you were expecting."
"I've dealt with you before," Mortius answered matter-of-factly, causing the woman to laugh.
"In a manner of speaking, yes, I suppose you have. She is me after all."
"Callisto is so much more than you," Mortius said, his voice completely flat once more but somehow still able to twist like a knife. "You're not even a person. You're just a shade; a walking, talking reflection of bitterness and hate."
As he spoke, the woman's expression changed, her smile disappearing to be replaced by a look of absolute, all consuming fury.
"If that's all I am, it's because that's all she is!" she spat viciously. "We areone and the same, Callisto and I, and I intend to prove it. Your Lord Cronus has promised to help me do precisely that." She shot Demosthenes a venomous glare. "You asked me why you have me at your side? A business arrangement. Nothing more. So long as your Lord honours his side of the bargain, and while it serves my interests to hold up mine, you have my sword. Does that answer your question well enough?"
"Well enough and more," Demosthenes said dryly, glancing at Pelion as he did so.
At that moment, two soldiers appeared at Demosthenes' back. One was Captain Caracticus, straight backed and all rigid military formality. The other was a curious one. His body language was a study in submissiveness, his hands hanging at his sides and his head bowed slightly so that he was not looking any of them in the eye. There was something about him though, an air that spoke to Pelion of hardness and defiance. This man was not half so cowed as he wanted to appear to be, and Pelion could not help but notice the absence of his Lord's symbol, the bloodied sickle, about the other man's person. He was one of Demosthenes' Spartans then, but not like Caracticus. Not a loyal Follower.
Had Pelion had his way, such men would have all been ordered back to Sparta days ago. After Sentos' betrayal and escape at the Helot camp, and then the subsequent difficulties he had posed Demosthenes at Tryxis and beyond, there were rumblings among those that did not ascribe to the teachings of the Followers that perhaps this war of conquest they were embarking upon was a fool's errand; a distraction from the true Persian threat that still loomed large beyond the borders of Greece. Demosthenes argued that it was strategy to keep them with the army. He was fond of quoting the old axiom about keeping enemies closer than friends, and said that to send them back to Sparta may even result in a rebellion taking the city from him. Pelion did not see that that even mattered. Their future did not lie behind them, but before them. Sparta itself was the past. Its part in this battle was done, and in Cronus' new world its petty hierarchies would be irrelevant. Far greater glories awaited them, but Demosthenes did not seem to be able to see that.
"Great King..." Caracticus said, and his voice jarred Pelion back to the here and now.
"Yes Captain?" Demosthenes said without looking at the man. His eyes were still fixed on the blonde woman.
"You gave orders to be informed when we had finished rounding up the survivors."
"You have them all?"
Caracticus nodded.
"As best as we are able to tell, yes."
"Very well then," Demosthenes said, and nodded his head toward the woman. "Up until now you've been content to sit back and let me and mine do the hard work. That ends now. You started this. Now all that remains is to see if you can finish it."
"To see if I can get my hands dirty you mean?" the woman said, and cocked her head. "What makes you think they were ever clean?"
She glanced past him at the two soldiers.
"Kill them," she said. "All of them. Right now."
Caracticus only flinched slightly, but the other man looked openly taken aback.
"But Geat King-" he began only for the woman to cut him off.
"Don't ask him!" she snapped, stalking up to the Spartan soldier, her sword twitching between her fingers as she glared at him. "He's not in charge here. He all but said as much. I want them dead, and you and your captain here are going to do it for me. If you won't bring me their heads, then I'll start with yours and collect the rest myself!"
Demosthenes was smiling now, seeming to take some small measure of pleasure in the soldier's obvious discomfort.
"Do as she says Orestes," he said.
"But they've surrendered!" Orestes protested. "They're unarmed—"
"AM I NOT YOUR KING!?" Demosthenes bellowed, rounding on him and causing the other man to collapse to one knee in the dirt. "Remind me again, Orestes, what is the penalty for disobedience?"
"A hundred lashes Great King," the soldier said immediately. "And if such disobedience is allowed to continue?"
"Execution, Great King."
Demosthenes nodded and laid a hand on the Orestes' shoulder.
"Fool me once, Orestes," he said, his tone now a quiet warning. He turned to Caracticus "I take it you will see this carried out?"
Caracticus straightened and nodded.
"It will be done, Great King."
Demosthenes was already turning away, the momentary drama all but forgotten.
"See that it is," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Caracticus bent to take Orestes by the arm and haul the younger man to his feet. A hang dog look of utter defeat had settled across Orestes' features as he turned away from them and began to shuffle dejectedly away.
"Orestes," the woman called out, her tone taunting and conversational at the same time. "I've changed my mind."
"You don't want them killed?" the soldier said, his face almost pathetically hopeful as he turned to look at her.
"Oh no," she laughed. "I still want their heads on sticks, but I have a special mission for you." She pointed at the bedraggled line up of survivors, picking out a particularly decrepit looking old woman. "That old woman. You're to bring her to me."
"Why do you want her?" Demosthenes asked, frowning.
"That's my business," she said. "And certainly none of yours. Needless to say I have my own plans, and I've just decided she will play a part in them. That's all you need to know."
"And the rest?" Orestes asked bitterly. "How do you want them dealt with?"
The woman paused thoughtfully for a moment, then gave a shrug as if their deaths were not really that important. "Tell your Captain he should feel free to indulge himself."
Orestes said nothing, merely glowering at her before turning and walking away.
"Quite the monster you've conjured up, Pelion," Demosthenes said and the woman turned and winked at him.
"Your priest didn't make me," she said, "Callisto did. Remember that the next time you come up against her. Maybe then you won't underestimate what she's capable of."
With that she too turned and strode off after Orestes, her head held high and her every step oozing self confidence.
Pelion stood quietly, watching her departing figure.
"What do you think?" Demosthenes said, walking up to stand beside Mortius.
"She can't be trusted," Mortius replied.
"She's perfect!" Pelion breathed, not really listening to them, and more for his own benefit than theirs.
"Perfect!?" Demosthenes said, unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice. "She's insane!"
Pelion shook his head.
"Not insane," he said. "Don't you see? She's focused, with a goal so singular that nothing, not you or I, and certainly not Callisto or any of that motley band she surrounds herself with will be allowed to stand in her way until she gets what she wants."
"But what does she want?" Mortius replied.
"The same thing we do," Pelion said. "For it all to end. Why else would she be here?"
Demosthenes gave a disgusted snort.
"Believe what you will about her," he sneered. "She's a rabid dog and that's it. We'd all be safer if she was just put down here and now."
Like Orestes and Caracticus before him, he turned and strode off leaving only Mortius and Pelion standing behind him.
"He's a fool," Pelion said, turning to face Mortius. "He has no imagination; no vision for what come after this little war of his."
"And you think she does?" Mortius replied, his tone only slightly incredulous.
"She doesn't have to!" Pelion said. "Isn't that the beauty of hatred? Of righteous anger? It doesn't need to worry about what comes after. Leave that up to the heart to imagine, the head to plan, and the arm to carry out."
"You're saying we should just let her loose and watch the world burn?"
Pelion sighed.
"I'm saying we let her be the cleansing fire she was always meant to be. Let her be His champion the way Callisto is theirs. She can be His anger and His hatred unleashed against the lies and hypocrisy the Olympians have wrought. You are His Soul, I am His Strength, and Demosthenes – may the Titans save us – is His Strength. Why not add a fourth to our little number? Why not let her be His Wrath?"
Mortius stood silently for a moment.
"We do need something to call her..." he grudgingly admitted.
Pelion smiled.
"As I understand it, 'Callisto' is already taken."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A smaller update with the now traditional chapter one villain viewpoint chapter. This was actually a lot of fun to write as up until now I've only written 'mean' Callisto (the doppleganger) interacting with Callisto herself. Actually getting to write her interacting with the other villains was great and a welcome change of pace to all the angst of her interactions in part 3. Anyway, read on and I hope you all enjoy it.
