Spartans at the Gates Read Free

us!”
    â€œGo back! He’s tricked us.”
    Nikias took another step toward Photine. She let forth a neighing scream, then bolted past him, galloping up the road in the direction of the mountains and home.
    â€œI’ll never see her again,” he thought. He wondered what his grandfather would say when he saw her running riderless in the fields in front of the citadel.
    He reached behind and grasped the bow and quiver that were slung on his back. But his heart lurched as he realized the bow was broken—it had snapped when he had fallen off Photine. He tossed it aside angrily. He had to think of a way to hide! And then he thought of a plan. A crazy idea, but it might just give him a chance.
    Working fast, he bent over one of the Dog Raider’s corpses and traded his own short gray cape for the warrior’s black cloak. He pulled off the man’s helm and squeezed it over his head, then hunched over the man’s body, kneeling with his back to the approaching riders. He stared at his dead father’s signet ring on his middle finger—a boxing Minotaur carved from jasper.
    â€œSteady,” he said to himself. “Stay calm.”
    But his brain screamed at him to run. And his hand trembled.
    He heard the sound of approaching riders. Keeping his back to them, he stole a glance over his shoulder and saw eight riders enter the killing grounds. They reined in, stopping fifty paces away from him. The raiders eyed the scene warily, but none dismounted.
    â€œWhere is he?” asked one of the Dog Raiders.
    â€œCome,” said Nikias, gesturing at the corpse and imitating the enemy’s harsh accent. “I killed him.”
    Nikias waited without turning around, hunched under the black cloak. His heart beat wildly. He listened hopefully for the sounds of feet hitting the road. But the only noises he heard were horses puffing air through their cheeks.
    The Dog Raider who’d spoken before gave a malicious laugh and spat, “Clever. But none of us has pretty blond hair like you, beardless one.”
    Nikias felt as though his stomach had been pitched down a well. He’d forgotten to tuck his long hair under the helm!
    He thought of his beloved, Kallisto. She would never know what happened to him now. The thought filled him with despair. There was no chance of escape. But he wouldn’t let the Dog Raiders torture him. He glanced down at his belt and saw his long dagger in its tooled leather sheath.
    â€œThere’s an artery in your neck,” his grandfather had told him when he was a boy, instructing him never to let himself be taken alive by Dog Raiders or Thebans. “Slice your neck there and you’ll soon be dead.”
    He would take a few of them down first, though. “I am Nikias, son of Aristo of the Nemean tribe,” he said under his breath, readying himself for death, forcing back the urge to piss himself with fear.
    He got up slowly, letting the whip uncoil as he stood, and turned to face the Dog Raiders. He saw the black-robed horsemen lined up in a semicircle, far out of range of his whip, with their javelins and bows raised, and their dark eyes regarding him with hate from under their helms.
    His gaze flashed to a warrior seated on a dun-colored horse in the center of the pack. He had a long, black, forked beard, like a satyr. And he stared down the shaft of a tautly strung bow, a glinting bronze arrowhead pointing directly at Nikias’s head.
    â€œStand still,” ordered the Dog Raider commander.
    Nikias didn’t have time to make a move. An arrow, unloosed by one of the other riders, slammed into his gut and his knees buckled. He hit the road in a heap and lay there, blinking, trying to breathe, but his lungs wouldn’t work. He felt as though he’d been punched by a Titan’s fist. He lay very still, with the sound of his heart throbbing in his ears, his mind dazed.
    â€œWho shot that arrow?” shouted the Dog Raider