Chapter 3 - THE DRAIN BENEATH THE WALLS
The drainage channel was too small for dignity.
Leandros crawled on hands and knees through black water while rats moved along the stones beside him.
Myrine crawled ahead.
Nikias behind.
No torch.
No light except narrow cracks where day entered through broken grates.
The smell became a physical thing.
Human waste.
Rotting fish.
Dead animals.
Something sweet and sick beneath all of it.
Leandros gagged until there was nothing left in his stomach.
Myrine whispered,
“I’m going to die in shit.”
Nikias answered from behind,
“Then at least you will die historically.”
Leandros stared back into darkness.
“You make jokes now?”
“I am adapting.”
They heard men above.
Timon’s archers.
Boots.
Voices.
One shouted,
“Check the channel!”
Nikias stopped.
The sound of an iron grate opening echoed behind them.
Leandros whispered,
“Move.”
They crawled faster.
The passage narrowed.
Myrine squeezed through first.
Leandros followed.
His shoulders scraped stone.
Behind, Nikias cursed.
“I’m stuck.”
Leandros twisted around.
“You are not allowed.”
“Useful instruction.”
The archers entered the tunnel.
Torchlight appeared far behind.
Nikias exhaled and forced himself through.
His tunic tore.
Skin scraped from his shoulder.
He did not stop.
Ahead, the channel sloped downward.
Water deepened.
Myrine slipped.
Leandros caught her.
Then the floor vanished.
All three dropped into a wider tunnel.
Cold water swallowed them.
Leandros surfaced choking.
Myrine screamed his name.
He found her by sound.
Nikias surfaced nearby.
Torchlight moved closer.
Leandros felt along the wall.
No ledge.
The current pulled south.
Toward the marsh beyond Piraeus.
“Swim,” Nikias said.
“In this?”
“You prefer archers?”
They moved with the current.
The tunnel ceiling lowered until Leandros could barely keep his mouth above water.
Myrine began panicking.
“I can’t.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You can.”
“I can’t!”
Leandros grabbed the back of her tunic.
“Then I can for you.”
He kicked.
The water pulled harder.
Behind them, one archer entered the pool.
Another shouted that they were insane.
Maybe they were.
Leandros stopped feeling his feet.
The tunnel opened suddenly.
Gray daylight.
They spilled through a stone mouth into reeds and shallow marsh water.
Leandros dragged Myrine onto mud.
Nikias crawled beside them.
All three lay breathing.
Piraeus rose behind.
The Long Walls stretched north toward Athens.
Beyond the marsh, open countryside.
Enemy country.
Spartan patrols somewhere beyond the hills.
Nikias looked back at the drain.
“No one follows.”
Myrine sat up.
“How do you know?”
A scream echoed from inside.
Rats exploded from the opening.
Then silence.
Nikias stared.
“Maybe they did.”
Nobody investigated.
They moved into reeds.
The sanctuary Nikias knew stood half a mile west on a low stone ridge.
Small.
Dedicated to Artemis.
Abandoned before the war when refugees crowded toward the city.
Its roof sagged.
The altar had been stripped.
No priest.
No food.
But a spring ran behind it.
Nikias did not let them drink immediately.
He boiled water first in a bronze basin left by pilgrims.
Leandros watched.
“Does boiling kill plague?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say that often.”
“Because I know very little.”
“Then why do people call you physician?”
Nikias looked at him.
“Because patients dislike hearing how little anyone knows.”
Myrine drank after the water cooled.
Leandros did too.
It tasted of smoke.
Still better than the drain.
They remained hidden through afternoon.
From the ridge, Leandros could see the road between the port and countryside.
Spartan soldiers appeared near sunset.
Six.
Then twelve.
They did not approach Piraeus.
They watched.
The enemy knew disease was inside the walls.
Why risk swords when fever fought for them?
Myrine whispered,
“They’re waiting.”
“Yes.”
“For everyone to die?”
Nikias answered,
“For Athens to become weak enough.”
Leandros stared at the soldiers.
He had grown up hearing stories about Spartans.
Disciplined.
Cruel.
Fearless.
Now they looked human.
Men who kept distance from plague.
One removed his helmet and scratched his head.
Another urinated beside a tree.
No monsters.
That was disappointing.
Monsters were easier.
At dusk, someone entered the sanctuary.
Leandros raised a broken altar stone.
Nikias held a knife.
Myrine hid behind a column.
A figure appeared.
Old woman.
Bent.
Carrying a basket.
She looked at them.
Then at their weapons.
“Poor welcome.”
Her name was Dione.
She lived in a hut near the marsh.
Widow of a fisherman.
Refused evacuation into Athens because she hated crowds.
“Wise,” Nikias said.
“Lucky,” she corrected.
Dione brought onions.
Salt fish.
Two eggs.
Myrine stared like she had found treasure.
Dione examined them.
“From city?”
“Yes.”
“Sick?”
“No.”
“Yet.”
Leandros liked her immediately.
She listened while Nikias explained Timon.
“Blood cure,” Dione said.
She spat.
“Men used to sell sea water as medicine to sailors.”
Nikias smiled.
“Did it work?”
“They died richer in hope.”
That night they ate.
For the first time since Thaleia’s illness, Leandros felt almost full.
It frightened him.
Comfort now felt like a warning.
Dione showed them an old fisherman’s path around the marsh.
It could reach farms south of the port.
From there, boats sometimes crossed to Salamis.
“Can we leave Athens?” Leandros asked.
Dione stared.
“Athens is larger than walls.”
“What does that mean?”
“Citizens carry the city with them. Usually badly.”
He frowned.
“I mean physically.”
“Maybe.”
“Will boats take us?”
“If they believe you bring sickness, no.”
Myrine looked at Nikias.
“Can you prove we don’t?”
“No.”
“Then nobody will.”
Dione shrugged.
“Correct.”
The old woman slept near the doorway with a fish knife.
Leandros woke before dawn to whispering.
Nikias and Dione.
“You cannot keep the children here,” she said.
“I know.”
“Spartans will search once they think refugees use the marsh.”
“I know.”
“You have somewhere?”
“No.”
Dione sighed.
“Good physician.”
Leandros sat up.
Nikias noticed.
“You should sleep.”
“You should stop making plans around me.”
“Fair.”
Leandros joined them.
“What does Timon really want?”
Nikias looked toward Myrine.
“Certainty.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is.”
Nikias rubbed his hands.
“He lost his wife. Maybe children too. He believes survivors’ blood may protect others.”
“Can it?”
“I have no evidence.”
“But maybe.”
“Maybe is how dangerous men begin noble crimes.”
Leandros thought of the archers.
“What would he do?”
“Bleed exposed survivors. Compare blood. Give it to the sick perhaps.”
“That sounds like something physicians do.”
Nikias looked offended.
“Some physicians do foolish things with confidence.”
“Could it help?”
“Could kill them.”
Leandros looked at Myrine sleeping.
“How much blood can a child lose?”
“Not enough to satisfy desperate men.”
That decided it.
They would not return.
At dawn, Dione took them to her hut.
It stood hidden by reeds.
A small boat rested nearby.
Too small for sea crossing.
Enough for marsh channels.
She had fishing nets.
Food for perhaps three days.
Then hoofbeats came.
Dione froze.
Spartans?
No.
Athenian cavalry.
Five men.
One carried Timon’s servant insignia.
Leandros’s stomach dropped.
“How?”
Nikias looked toward the sanctuary.
“Smoke.”
The boiling fire.
A simple mistake.
Dione cursed them all.
“Into boat.”
They climbed.
Dione pushed off.
Reeds closed around them.
Cavalry reached the hut.
Men shouted.
One fired an arrow.
It struck water.
Another arrow cut through reeds.
Myrine flattened herself.
Dione paddled with terrifying strength for an old woman.
The marsh channels twisted.
Horsemen could not follow directly.
But men moved along the banks.
One shouted,
“Leandros! Myrine! Timon wants only to speak!”
Leandros shouted back,
“He brought archers last time!”
Dione hit him with the paddle.
“Do not answer hunters.”
Fair.
They reached a wide pool.
No cover.
Horsemen appeared on both banks.
Trapped.
Nikias stood.
“Take me.”
Leandros grabbed him.
“No.”
“They want my records too.”
“Then they’ll take all of us.”
Nikias looked at Dione.
“Other channel?”
She pointed.
Blocked by fallen reeds and mud.
“Too shallow.”
Myrine stared at the water.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Push.”
They did.
Waist-deep mud.
The boat became lighter.
Dione forced it through.
Arrows fell.
One struck Nikias in the upper arm.
He cried out.
Leandros held him.
Blood spread.
Myrine pushed harder.
The boat crossed the mudbar.
Water deepened.
They climbed back.
Dione paddled.
The horsemen disappeared behind reeds.
Nikias broke the arrow shaft.
“Do not pull the head.”
Leandros nodded.
“How bad?”
“Pain means alive.”
“That sounds like something Dione says.”
“She is wiser.”
By midday they reached another hut.
Abandoned.
Nikias treated the wound.
Dione heated a blade.
Leandros held Nikias down.
Myrine looked away.
The arrowhead came out.
Nikias screamed once.
Then fainted.
Dione wrapped the arm.
“Physicians bleed like everyone.”
Leandros looked at the blood.
Timon wanted survivor blood.
Everyone wanted something from bodies now.
Labor.
Food.
Sex.
Medicine.
Evidence.
Athens had become a city where being alive made you valuable to the wrong person.
Near sunset, Damon arrived.
Alone.
Leandros raised the knife.
Damon stopped.
“I deserved that.”
“How did you find us?”
“Dione.”
Leandros looked at her.
She shrugged.
“I send fish to soldiers. Soldiers gossip.”
Damon’s face was worse.
Bruised.
One eye swollen.
“What happened?”
“Timon.”
Nikias woke enough to curse.
Damon sat.
“The Council gave him authority.”
Leandros stared.
“For blood?”
“For emergency medical collection.”
Nikias laughed painfully.
“Collection.”
Damon nodded.
“He has a list of households with survivors.”
Myrine went still.
Damon looked at her.
“Your names are on it.”
Leandros felt cold despite the evening heat.
“How many?”
“Forty-three people.”
“Children?”
“Yes.”
Nikias tried sitting.
“Where are they taking them?”
Damon hesitated.
“Temple of Asclepius near the city.”
Nikias stared.
“What?”
“It has water. rooms. guards.”
“A healing sanctuary turned into a prison.”
Damon nodded.
“Timon says it is necessary.”
Leandros looked toward Athens.
His mother had died because men wanted to burn infected houses.
Now surviving illness made people prisoners too.
Sick or healthy.
Athens found a reason to own both.
Damon continued.
“And there’s worse.”
Nobody wanted worse.
He gave it anyway.
“People heard survivors’ blood protects against plague.”
Nikias closed his eyes.
“Who told them?”
“No one knows.”
“Someone knows.”
Damon looked toward the city.
“Mobs are hunting anyone believed to have recovered.”
Leandros stared.
“For blood?”
“Yes.”
Myrine grabbed her arms.
Damon’s voice became quiet.
“They are cutting people in the streets.”
May you like
The plague had made the dead worthless.
Now it was making the living into medicine.
