[Hegemonia City-States Syracuse AAR/Story] Sikelia; Island of Ares [ON HIATUS]

[McScottish]

Is That a Knife in Your Back?, Part I – Winter, 3rd year of the 68th Olympiad (506 BC) to Spring, 4th year of the 68th Olympiad (506 BC)



“Et tu, Brute?” - William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Sandalled feet echoed along the corridor of the tyrants palace in Panormos, with one pair being different in that it was covered in knee-high boots instead. One, two, one, two, they marched down the wide space for what seemed like forever until they finally reached the doors of the 'audience chamber' – a former feasting hall vainly turned throne room – of Hieron of Surakoûsai.

At the door, like some frozen sentinels or the lion-headed and winged beasts of stone which the Medes seemed so very fond of, stood two hoplitai bearing aspides on which was painted the three-legged symbol of the mother-city, these warriors fresh from what most were now calling 'the womb of Sikelia' because it was where the first embryo of an idea for the conquest of the entire island had been 'born'.

With machine-like precision the two wordless guards, anonymous in their Korinthian helmets crested with horsehair plumes of the most unblemished white, stamped their polished bronze spear-butts – known to the rank-and-file as 'lizard stickers' – into the marble of the floor, cracks already beginning to appear after only a few months habitation by the man that called himself the sovereign of all Sikelia and the surrounding islands. While it was true that with the recent conquests of Selinunte and Entella, the vast wealth flowing into his coffers from trade with lands both far and near, and the might of his arms simply undeniable or without end, Hieron was indeed as close to a monarch as he could be he was nevertheless far from being a ruler of men.

“My lord,” growled Ainorix of the Ligoures, pushing open the heavy doors of the room beyond, his pale skin showing every heaving of his muscle beneath, “I bring with me Euaristos the Kretan and Adrastos of Lakedaimonia.”

There, sat on a throne of black rock mined from the island of Lipara and those thereabout – one of his more expensive items to trade with others – was Hieron of Surakoûsai in all his youthful and gloomy splendour. Flanking him, placed at the foot of the steps and with one on either side of the throne itself, stood four in total of the most dread xenoi that Euaristos had ever seen.

The tyrant, catching his look and smirking as he often did, still barely a man of nine-and-ten years, saw the expression on the face of his semi-autonomous envoy and laughed.

“Are they not magnificent?” He squawked, awoken from his melancholy as he often was if it meant taunting someone else, a hand grasping for one of the clay cups held on a wooden tray by a particularly attractive slave girl and lifting it to his lips before throwing back half the cup, “I tried to get Thrakians but all they had were Iberians, Keltoi, and Sikels. Well, we have plenty of Sikels on this island already, and enough of both the others serving us in our armies,” he used the 'royal us', referring to himself in plural terms, something he had picked up from a Persian herald, “but as you can see we made do and had these particular fineries bought here all the way from the edge of the world – Albion.”

With another wave of his arms, the Kretan noticing the scars of battle on them, Hieron had his cup refilled and allowed his four purchases to be admired for the moment.

Euaristos looked them up and down, noticing the sour look that Ainorix gave the four men who stared blankly back and unable to keep himself from smiling. They were indeed fine specimens, all good solid men with the shaggy hair, moustaches and trousers of the northern barbaroi. In spite of this there were a few differences between them and the Ligoures hired into service throughout Sikelia; the hair of these men was mostly that of fire, red and bright, their torsos bared to show their impressive physiques, and most unsettling were the swirling designs which marred their flesh from their face to their naval and probably even their legs. Each held a stout spear and at their waist a longsword of the Kelts design, needing a lot of room to swing but more than capable of cleaving a man from neck to groin with enough power behind it.

“So,” coughed Hieron, choking a little as his drink went down the wrong way, “to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Were you all not meant to be at Entella with my dear Uncle?” Though his words came easily and quick as mercury from his mouth, something behind those eyes made Euaristos flinch inwardly.

He had changed a lot since his time as a 'free man'; his Spartan regime of training and preparation for battle bringing greater strength to his body and causing his muscles to form like those of a true man, his flat stomach, arms and legs now defined in a way no-one could mistake for feminine, yet his slender frame, oddly long legs, and overall body-shape remained that of a woman. Not only this but his face refused to grow even the lightest layer of stubble, or his jaw became any squarer, his features undeniably still maiden-like. This was not helped by his hair, worn as long as that of the Albionites and wild Ligoures, the greater part of it tied around his head in a pleated design beneath his Kretan helmet, a design of helmet that wider spaces about the eyes, had no crest, and a higher ridge on the piece.

Not only this, but he had become more confident within himself, yet Hieron still caused him no small amount of fear. A fear, Euaristos had often told Adrastos, which he dreaded would never leave him until the day he died.

“We were at Entella, and remained there long after the battle was one before coming back,” spoke Adrastos, never afraid of a Surakoûsan or any other living man or woman, “but we saw things on the field which could be better answered by yourself.”

This was perhaps one of the longer speeches that the usually laconic Lakedaimonian had ever made, even the Kretan being taken slightly aback by it. Yet Adrastos was correct, some things could not be simply explained away.

“How much did it cost?” Questioned Euaristos as he narrowed his eyes, one hand resting lazily on the hilt of his kopis and drawing looks from the men of Albion surrounding his self-proclaimed ruler, “how much?”

What followed, for at least ten minutes, was the hollow laughter of the Surakoûsan tyrant ringing in his ears.

************

Dionysios of Surakoûsai, Uncle of Hieron, brother of Tisandros, and youngest son of the great oligarch Epikydes, looked up from the table at which he sat within his tent to make sure that all those he had gathered before the forthcoming battle would know what they must do once it commenced. He was a man of five-and-twenty years now, hardened to war and battle and far from the flighty and arrogant boy he had once been, praised as a welcoming leader and benevolent ruler of his poleis in the north-east tip of the island, a man whose mere presence on the field was worth a thousand spears, now making sure that all his lochagoi understood their commands.

“We shall smash them,” he had claimed easily, “first we destroy their army of pet barbarians, then when Dorieus comes from Entella to relieve them they shall taste the same bitter fate.”

The plan of the elder strategos had been a simple one, to use the layout of the battlefield to his advantage – a large rock formation at the centre once down from the ridge on which the army now camped, sparse forest on the left flank and open plain on the right – he would put his hoplitai of varied origins on the right flank and his cavalry on the left, intending to smash apart the flanks of his enemies once they were disrupted by the terrain. Simple. It also worked.

Euaristos remembered it clearly, the chill winters air nipping at his flesh, the cold bronze helmet and thorax causing his body to shiver as he waited beside Adrastos for the fighting to commence, both companions part the first rank of a lochos of full Surakoûsan citizens amounting to nearly ninety men. These were six-and-eighty men that had been hardened from almost constant campaigning, easily the match of all but the elitist enemy forces. Now they would face Dorieus of Lakedaimonia, the last remaining strategos of Spartan blood left on the island, a warrior who trained himself and his personal guard constantly and greatly revered the Gods, a man who was not at all bad but who would have to die for the good of Surakoûsan domination.

“Do not worry,” Adrastos whispered to his friend in the hushed moment before a battle, his crimson cloak left aside this day lest he be seen as one of the enemy, “you need only remember to keep formation and remain with me. Forget who leads us, for this day at least.”

The Kretan would never forget though, for Dionysios was the man that had had his lover cut down from behind like a dog. There was a hatred that burned within the very soul of Euaristos which would never be fully satisfied, this so-called man having left a hole the size of a fist through the love-struck and violated heart of an unknown but would-be assassin.

“Aye,” grunted Euaristos as he shifted his hands grip on his doru, feeling the rough hemp which served as a counter against sweaty palms and taking a deep breath, “here they come.”

From their vantage point on the ridge the Surakoûsan army could see everything that moved in the lower ground below, the force of Naxians, Katanoi, Surakoûsai taking a collective breath. The largest part of the assembled army were Sikels who served as hoplitai with the Hellenes, somewhat of a wedding gift from Agathokles of the Sikels, about five-hundred natives-turned-Greeks who bore the lion-covered head of Herakles on their shields and cried sounds of war in their native tongue. They outnumbered the smaller contingents, which was no real problem, those civilised savages quite as good at war as their Hellenic overlords.

Out of the trees ahead, and flowing around the central rock formation, jutting from the ground like some giants arousal, came a horse of foreigners that the remaining Lakedaimonian colonists had spent the last of their gold on to hire. Some six-hundred Ligoures with nearly three-hundred Iberians and a vast swarm of psiloi and enfranchised slaves to make up the numbers. Now they split into two groups on each flank, and if they had ever believed they could win...then they were wrong.

As they came charging forward to get to grips with their enemies, a few psiloi hurling javelins and launching lead bullets as they ran, the Rhodians – mostly men that had surrendered and not been slaughtered when the Rhodian colonies had been taken – sprinted from the ranks of the Surakoûsan host with their slings already whirling. Whipping a shot off and then quickly moving to a different spot was how they fought, spreading out to lessen damage to themselves, the heavy infantry and cavalry to their back watching with whoops and cheers as missiles of stone and lead fractured skulls, pulverised limbs and lodged into an eye, the skill of the Rhodians honed over years of practice which did not go to waste.

Moments later a trumpet blared, the feet of the hoplitai moving on the spot, Ionians and Dorians pounding the ground of Ares flat with their feet, an order from the lochagoi commanding each of the formations of bronze-clad killers bring shields up and spears to bear like a hedge of bristling iron.

What happened next swept over Euaristos like a wave, men charging and thrusting their spears deep into flesh, shields hammering into Keltoi and psiloi who had only rags to protect them, pulling his own arm back and launching it forwards more time than he could count as his formation drove through the press of enemy warriors until they finally broke through the back and were forced to pivot about. On either side of them came the Naxians and the Katanoi singing a paean of victory to the Gods, the Sikels still formed on the ridge as a reserve if they were needed, with the heavy cavalry of Surakoûsai and Dionysios himself sweeping through the right flank of the Lakedaimonian lapdogs and sweeping them away in a hammering of hooves and cleaving of flesh from bone, most of the horsemen carrying a short spear and a kopis to hew down any that stood in their way.

It is told in many writings of Hellas that the barbarian nations are hot to war but also swift to cool, and so it was true, the Ligoures and Iberians broke as quickly as they attacked and began to stream back towards Entella as fast as they could. Many would not make it, for the Greeks were in a killing mood, pursuing with a lust for blood that would not be seen in conflicts Greece herself but which in Sikelia were commonplace and rarely commented on, especially when sticking the backs of savages full of holes instead of true-blooded citizens of the Hellenic poleis.

Another host of trumpets announced the arrival of Dorieus, his logades and those mercenaries and helots that he could gather from the now diminished garrison of Entella. Woe to him, for he was far too late, his allies were torn apart like a rabbit thrown to the dogs and he and his were alone in this fight.

Like the true Spartan he was he refused to retreat, urging his men forward and up the ridge where he had espied Dionysios and his hand-picked horsemen on their own. Yes, he thought, he would take the head from the body and finish this battle. It was unfortunate that the men he had bought with him, the majority slaves or men who fought for coin, followed the example of their countrymen and very soon broke to be chased down by cavalry or vengeful hoplitai.

Not so the full-blooded Spartans though, men who had no fear of death and even sought to die, men who worshipped Ares as closely as one could worship the God of war and slaughter, men who under the direction of Dorieus stormed the ridge upon which Dionysios was finishing off the last of a group of helots. Though he had but a few men with him, no more than seventy, the Spartan leader surged forward and were in among the milling ranks of the horsemen before they were able to flee.

“Salpinktes sound the trumpet!” Screeched Dionysios above the sound of clashing arms and dying horses, swaying away from the lunge of a spear and splintering the shaft with his own blade, his arm sweeping about him desperately, “do it, bring forward the reserves! Now!”

Sound the trumpet did, the entire force of hoplites now reformed facing the melee involving the two commanders, its blast ringing like a death knoll but getting no response from reserves or otherwise.

No-one moved, not the Surakoûsan cavalry that had retired to a safe distance, nor the Sikels that stood silently by and watched, or the grouped hoplitai that had fallen silent. Only the wind and the sound of wounded and dying men could be heard, Spartans going about their deadly work as Dionysios worked with gritted teeth to barge through the mass and flee. It was not to be though, a spear tip gouging a hole in his unprotected thigh as others glanced from his bronze thorax, a xiphos impaling one of his feet and another eight-footer rebounding from the collar of his armour to strike between his helmet and protection, forcing itself through the flesh of his throat and wrenching his lifeless body from his horse as the weapon was withdrawn.

With his breath catching in his throat Euaristos looked to Adrastos, his mouth hanging open behind his helmets mask, “what has just happened?” He croaked, having seen the entire thing along with one-and-a-half-thousand others, his knees going slightly weak as his mind processed what had just happened. Something broke then in him, though the Gods know what, a guttural growl much deeper than his usual voice rising in his throat and his body filling with the daimon of fury and his legs beginning to move forward by themselves.

Adrastos tried to grab his friend by the arm but Euaristos was too far forward and he flailed at air, the Sikelian born Spartan following in the wake of his comrade and pupil. Little did they realise that they would begin and avalanche, a ripple through the army that broke the silence like a hammer striking an anvil, the entire mass of bronze, flesh and wood cascading down the ridge to tear apart the surviving Spartans and give them that most glorious death that they thirst for. Dorieus was dead within minutes, his men’s bodies all about him in a pile, those of the enemies they had killed stacked high all around in a morbid circle.

Nearly two-thousand Lakedaimonian allies had lost their lives, a sparse force of a couple of hundred retreating to Entella and barring the gates, pure Spartan blood spilt in a useless sacrifice – their homeland in mainland Hellas consisting only of Messenia, the rest under the heel of the Argives – and soon the Surakoûsans, under a newly 'nominated' strategos, the young Antiphemos of Gela, would storm Entella anyway. It was unavoidable.

For Euaristos the result was displeasing to say the least, and he soon he began to think through events, turning to Adrastos and asking him fetch Ainorix. Once the Ligurian had joined them he demanded to return to Panormos.

Someone had wrenched his vengeance from his grasp, one way or another, and he knew just who it was...

[McScottish]

Just to prove that Dionysios is truly dead...

[McScottish]

Is That a Knife in Your Back?, Part II – Winter, 3rd year of the 68th Olympiad (506 BC) to Spring, 4th year of the 68th Olympiad (506 BC)



“Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception.” - Sophocles

When the laughter finally subsided, the vivid flashback fading once more into the recesses of the Kretans mind but the emotions rising once more to the surface, Hieron squatted on his seat like some sort of human vulture and ran a hand over his smooth chin. Through his eyes could be seen the inner workings of one that had taken to the role of a tyrant with little difficulty and even now played the game like one many years his senior, some would say like a master.

“You see much, and know much as well,” he chuckled, his lips peeling back into a sneer, “so let me answer your question and clear mind of all doubts and cobwebs of illusion, yes?”

Euaristos watched patiently as Hieron rose from his stooped position, taking long strides across the space between them until the younger man stood face-to-face with the foreigner that he both loved and loathed in equal measure. Slowly he narrowed his eyes, looking for any sign of anything within his opposites, Euaristos giving away nothing that he felt or fought against. Not even the urge to pull his blade free and stick it in the gut of the man that had denied him his personal revenge.

“The lochagoi were each given enough gold for themselves and their men,” he began matter-of-factly as the four Albionites formed a four-cornered box about their employer, “it took more gold to convince the cavalry, aristocrats as they are, but eventually they too came about to my way of seeing things.” For a moment he paused, putting a finger to his lip and tapping thoughtfully before going on, “the Sikels were given to me by Prince Agathokles and, as a firm ally, would do almost anything I tell them too...only the personal guard of Dionysios did not realise their part in all this, that of dying with their leader. Please, do not ask me how long it took or how much effort went into everything, bribing an army and keeping it quiet is a complex and laborious affair.”

So there it was, the truth straight from the mouth of the one that had planned it, no hint of remorse for a blood-relatives slaying or for the penalty that it may bring down on him from the Gods.

“Of course,” continued the despot, “Antiphemos, brother of Andromenes of Gela, was planted within the ranks to be raised up as strategos after the death of Dionysios. Perhaps my greatest piece though it making Herakleides the new polemarchos of those poleis on the island, a firm oligarch he may be, but a better puppet I do not think I could have found among the rich and powerful of Sikelia.”

He stopped, as if catching something in the look that Euaristos now wore, studying the beautiful face of the older youth and taking a step back. Something down the back of Hieron's spine shivered, and his eyes went unbidden to the curved weapon at his targets side as he proceeded out of arms length and into the middle of his tattooed guards.

“Have I pained you, my love?” Came his mocking bark in a flash of insight, “did I steal your fire as Prometheos stole it from the Gods on Mount Olympus? Are there nothing now but simmering embers, embers which burn deep down now not for Dionysios, the man who first wronged you, but for me as the second man of power to do so?”

Both knew it to be true, there was no hiding it, Adrastos tensing beside his friend and Ainorix stepping aside from them both with a neutral expression on his moustached face. Euaristos neither tensed nor moved aside, mostly because he was uncertain what Hieron, surrounded by four armed and burly men, would do. As much as the Kretan wanted to hack down the arrogant and tedious scrotum, even he knew that it would be impossible to do before being cut down himself.

“Now,” smiled Hieron as he opened his hands, “get on your knees Kretan,” yes, he enjoyed the look of confusion that crossed Euaristos' face to be replaced with a rising anger, his Spartan ally glancing about and keeping one hand on his short-bladed sword. By the time Adrastos heard the approach of the hoplitai behind him it was nearly too late, sweeping around to receive the butt-end of a spear into his conditioned gut before a cudgel descended on the back of his head and sent him to the floor with a clatter of bronze and flesh. To his credit he had managed to draw his blade, and had been about to strike the first man when the second blow took his consciousness from him, even outnumbered he would have been a danger.

Euaristos stood alone, watching with horror as his comrade-in-arms was knocked senseless, now twisting this way and that to watch as the four blue-tinged men and the hoplitai that had been guarding the doorway encircled him to form a sphere of bristling spears all pointing at him.

Bastard!

He would kill him...he would kill him.

“I said kneel!”” demanded the tyrant, giving a nod to one of his men and clapping his hands gleefully as a wooden shaft took Euaristos across the back of the knees and sent his sprawling to the marble floor, another man stepping in and delivering a blow across his jaw that bought the iron taste of blood to his tongue. Two more stepped forward and wrenched his sword and helmet from him, leaving him on all fours and spitting crimson wrath from his mouth.

For a moment, bleary-eyed and unfocused, Euaristos could only prop himself up onto his knees. At an unseen command another blow was struck, someone grabbing him from behind and delivering a strike to the side of his head which turned his vision white and made stars appear in the room that was already well-lit with daylight. The hand did not remove itself however, two more gripping his shoulders on either side as Hieron skipped effeminately over and slowly removed his loincloth from beneath his chiton, his arousal already beginning to manifest itself.

“Hah!” laughed the defiant victim, “you would defile me with that thing? Smaller than my smallest finger?”

Hieron was not phased by such talk though, walking forward until his genitals dangled before the Kretan – small as they actually were – giving a small cough and then unleashing a stream of urine that would cause more than just a psychical stain on the kneeling islander. No, he really had no idea what shallow grave he dug for himself that day, a grave that Euaristos willed with all his might to see to light as soon as possible.

“Aaaaah, now does that not feel good? A nice warm refreshment for my favourite polis piece of all, the man that bought other cities into alliance with my own and has been used by me long before this moment ever happened. Now open your mouth, I know you can play the flute and you do seem so inviting.”

What happened next is best left unsaid, but needless to say that Euaristos had no real way of fighting it, if he tried to move he was only held in place or shoved forward by rough hands and if he attempted to bite anything then death would probably have come swiftly.

How can one take revenge on a wrong if one is a corpse?

It lasted longer than either had been expecting, and when it was all over Hieron went and retook his place on his throne of black stone. Smooth and almost delicate to look at. Leaving Euaristos covered in unspeakable fluids and with a very bitter taste in his mouth. Adrastos had not even stirred, truly drifting in the blackness of his own mind, but continued to breath raggedly.

“You are still a slave, Euaristos of Krete, whether you would be one or not,” reminded the far more relaxed Surakoûsan, “but since it would be a shame to waste such talent as your own, I will not kill you or your Lakedaimonian friend here, though by rights of him being our enemy I really should,” a show was made of deep thinking before Hieron slapped a hand to one arm of his throne and clicked his fingers, “I intend to take what outlying territories that the Phoenikians still possess. For this reason, and that of commerce, I am sending a fleet to Sardinia. You and your friends, all of you, will travel under guard and remain there once the island is taken. It is almost the size of Sikelia, so you should be welcome back in...oh...a decade or so.”

There was no smile on any face in the room as Hieron gestured to his guards, who stepped forward to cease the two Greeks and the Ligurian “get them all out of my sight.”

[McScottish]

I'll get this back up and running when I have the time, never would desert it. Too much to do...too much.