TWO FORT SENTRIES fall silently on her blades with startling 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 her blades up into the hoplite's back, hand reaching round to muffle his alarmed shout. Pulling back the blade, he falls to his knees and Enyo grips onto his head, turning his neck with a quick twist until it snaps. The remaining guards fall similarly —quickly and silently.
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. 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 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. 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 amber 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 "–father 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' 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 hay 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'd already started rotting during the return trip. Four cultists are gathered around the pyramid, discussing something quietly —her entrance into the Sanctuary shifts their attention. She throws down the head —it rolls to the feet of one robed figure— 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.
Several sets of heavy footfalls echo from an antechamber before she is free. Nisos picks up the severed head and spits on the ground in disgust. "This is not Timotheus!" he roars, tossing the head aside —it splashes in the water. "You were meant to kill the scum!"
She turns to face the man, not letting the dread she felt show. "He bore the seal of the polemarch," Enyo refutes, pointing to the Cultist holding up the golden medallion.
Nisos laughs at the pitiful excuse. "You don't remember your own brother's face?" He sneers. Timotheus was a cunning tactician —Leandros had known with his son at the head of a division it would take longer for Kosmos to have their war. It was Nisos' cruel sense of irony that leads him to send Timotheus' own sister to be the executioner. "You are a blade," he reminds her. "You have no family." It's almost a taunt. "You do as you're told and failures will be punished."
One of the Cultist steps in to interject —Deimos will have your head if you harm a single hair on hers— but it is too late. Enyo withdrawals her twin blades with a grim smile —no one but Deimos could best her in combat— she would face no punishment unless they could bring her to her knees. She steps forward, crouching like a predator —ignorant to the guard approaching her from the back. He swings the flat of his battle-ax into the side of her head and she crumples to the ground.
Nisos binds Enyo's hands to a stout wooden post and tears the back of her dark exomis open. The flesh of her back is a pale, smooth canvas —unmarred— and he will be the artist of torment. He unfurls a whip barbed with shrapnel and cracks it against her back. Enyo jolts forward, tears stinging her eyes but she will not give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry or beg.
The second lash comes as quickly as the first, biting deep into her flesh and tearing. She can already feel something warm sliding down her spine. Nisos pauses and frowns at the strip of grey wool still tied at her back. He nods toward one of his vanguard and the brute cuts off the stained breast-band. A third stroke falls against her shoulder blade. Enyo presses her forehead against the wooden post —nails digging into the rope binding her wrists.
After the tenth lash, Enyo loses count —her body numb with pain. She can't grip onto the rope any longer and holding her head up is nigh impossible. But she remains silent throughout the penance for her failure. An eternity later her arms slip down the post. "Get her out of my sight," Nisos spits. The vanguard drag her from the cave to the champion's villa and toss her into the courtyard like a used cloth.
Thunder rumbles in the distance then erupts with a loud clap. The sky opens up in a torrent. Unable to stand, Enyo watches the water around her turn the pale mosaic tiles red. Cool rain soothes the burning and stinging, but each small impact against the broken skin of her back adds another layer of pain. She lays there, weeping —hoping her brother's life is worth this torment.
HEAVY FOOTFALLS STIR Enyo from an uneasy rest. She turns her head and catches a glimpse of a dark exomis identical to her own —but this one is not stained with blood. "Deimos?" There's no response, but she knows it is him by touch alone. He curls his hands beneath her arms, moving her from the courtyard into the bedchamber and eases her back down where a pillow rests under her head.
The flesh on her back is torn open in long, crisscrossing gashes that have yet to scab over and still ooze blood. Deimos knows what these marks mean. "You never fail," he utters, hands rough against the broken and swollen skin. Yet when he takes in her wounds for a second-time rage festers within him. "Who did this?" He asks —hand hovering over the worst of the gashes, he can feel heat coming from it. These wounds need to be cleaned and bound, she's already gone too long without care.
"Nisos," Enyo gasps, turning her head to meet his burning gaze.
"I'll return with supplies," he rasps. It's partly a lie. Deimos may return with bandages and salves, but he will also return with fresh blood on his hands.
Two of his knuckles are busted and swollen when he returns carrying a basket of ointment, bandages, and cider vinegar. He doesn't have to say anything. Enyo already knows Nisos is either dead or wishing he was. The man was crueler than Alektor ever was and incompetent with any other task besides torture. The Cult will not have lost much with his death.
"Here," Deimos says, offering a strip of leather to bite down on knowing the pain would get a lot worse before it lessened. Preventing these wounds from festering is paramount. He has seen too many scratches kill men before. He dilutes the vinegar with water and straddles her thighs, then he douses her back with the pungent solution. Enyo screams. Legs flailing. Fingernails tearing into the linen pillow covering.
He rises and returns with a washbasin, a rag, and a sponge. Wringing water from the linen rag, he lays it is across her lower back and wipes away the blood. They had to look after one another now. She'd always tended his cuts and bruises and could stitch a wound so well it left nary a scar. These lashes cannot be stitched, though and only the gods know when they will heal.
Deimos cleans the dried and new blood from her sides, then helps her sit upright. Her face is screwed into a pained grimace, chest heaving. Blood has dried on her stomach and breasts, too. Enyo watches as he begins scrubbing away the flaking blood on her belly with a damp sponge. The hitch in her breath when the back of his hand brushes the underside of her breasts is involuntary —his dark eyes flick up to hers, but they are closed. "Why couldn't you just kill him?" He asks, trying to ignore how her nipples harden beneath his palm as he gently washes away the blood.
"I–" Enyo starts, breathless, recalling the night the Cult took her —her mother and brothers wept. She grips onto his wrist and opens her eyes. "He recognized me and I froze," she admits. If Timotheus never turned around, she could have done the deed without hesitation. Lesya she can still hear her brother and mother crying out her name. Deimos pulls his hand free and reaches for the ointment made by the young physician, Lykaon. He smooths the salve over her inflamed and broken skin and wraps her torso in wide strips of linen.
Enyo slumps forward, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Instinct wants him to rest a hand on her back, but he thinks better of it and clenches his hands into fists at his side. A few moments later, she's asleep —he can tell by the even rise-and-fall of her chest and the slow puffs of air on his neck. Deimos sighs and lays back, letting her use him as a pillow. Her hand bunches into the dark linen of his chiton, anything to keep him close. He bends his arm, threading his fingers into her hair and turns his head. Always so peaceful when she sleeps Deimos thinks, using his free hand to brush away the copper waves stuck against her cheek. Only the gods can help the next fool who thinks about laying a finger on you.