The operation went smoothly. The militarized Temple of Athena had roughly twenty soldiers deployed for defense and patrol, but none had been recognized by the gods or carried a divine artifact. They were ordinary men trained according to the military standards of the age. Worse, they had no chance to form a Battle Formation and meet their attackers head-on. Instead, they were scattered on patrol throughout a building of complicated design.

For Lannor and Kassandra, both long accustomed to the tempo and conditions of superhuman combat, the gaps in their patrols were simply too wide and too numerous. Less than thirty minutes later, there was no one left alive in the entire Temple except those within the innermost sanctuary.

Standing before the sanctuary doors, Kassandra unconsciously spun her broken spear through a quick sword flourish, then returned it to the harness across her back. “Only this place left.”

The falconer tilted her head toward Lannor. The Witcher was still spotless from head to toe.

He said nothing, merely nodded to her and gently pushed the doors open. The two slipped inside without a sound.

At the same moment, voices carried from deeper within.

“Talk, you little bastard!”

“Tell us, who sent you snooping around Megara? Who sent you creeping up the mountain and into the Temple?”

The vicious shouts came from somewhere ahead. Judging by the voices, two men were interrogating one “little bastard.”

Kassandra’s jaw tightened. Something was wrong. She turned toward Lannor and knew from the look on his face that they had reached the same conclusion. What surprised her was that he did not look particularly worried. His expression said something closer to, That brat has gone too far again.

There was no time to dwell on it. Kassandra raised a leg and kicked hard.

Bang!

The kick tore the inner door from its hinges and sent it flying inward.

“Let her…”

Kassandra’s furious shout filled the sanctuary, the War Cry bearing down with crushing force. But before she could finish the words “let her go,” a small black shadow shot through the doorway.

Had Kassandra possessed even slightly less control, her broken spear would already have gone through it.

The little figure recoiled just as sharply, then recognition lit her face.

“Kassandra!”

Phoibe’s delight lasted scarcely a heartbeat. Something seemed to occur to her, and the blood drained from her face.

“Don’t look inside! Cover…”

Cover what?

Kassandra had already been left staring when Phoibe came darting out of the sanctuary on her own. Now she had no idea what the girl was talking about.

Phoibe grew more frantic, while the pounding steps of Athenian soldiers sounded from within.

Suddenly, a tall, powerfully built body swept both Kassandra and Phoibe into its arms. Lannor turned in the same motion, putting his back toward the shattered sanctuary doorway.

Almost at that exact instant…

Bang!

Blinding light and a deafening blast erupted inside the sanctuary.

The unnatural brilliance was enough to damage the eyes of anyone looking directly at it, leaving them temporarily blind. Worse was the noise, trapped within the sealed structure and hammering back and forth from wall to wall. For an ordinary person, it could rupture the inner ear outright.

Deafness would have been only part of it. The blast could wreck the body’s sense of balance, bringing vomiting, convulsions, and loss of muscular control.

The Witchers who had once lit a Dancing Star inside enclosed caves had paid in blood for that particular lesson.

Kassandra had never experienced an attack like this. For a moment she simply crouched within Lannor’s arms, blinking through the glare. Phoibe, by contrast, seemed rather more practiced.

Yet Kassandra could feel something else. Her peculiar “senses” did not seem particularly troubled by the assault.

“Phoibe, look what you’ve done!”

Lannor’s roar had the unmistakable tone of someone scolding a brat, though through their still-vibrating eardrums his voice sounded distant and strangely thin.

Even beneath the fading thunder of the explosion, the girl immediately protested.

“You never told me it’d be this loud indoors!”

For some reason, Kassandra nearly laughed.

She slipped lightly from Lannor’s arms and rushed into the sanctuary.

Just as she had expected, only two people were inside: a hulking Barbarian Warrior and another man wearing a fully enclosed metal helmet.

Ikanos.

Kassandra knew at once that this was her target.

She did not hesitate. Her hand swept behind her, tore the broken spear from its harness, and hurled it.

Ikanos had been clutching at his helmet. There was no question now that he too was one of those “chosen by the Gods.” His senses were beyond those of an ordinary man.

His arm snapped up to block Kassandra’s thrown spear. Illusory golden light burst from the point where spearhead met forearm.

The sharpened point failed to pierce flesh, but the golden glow around Ikanos’s arm dimmed considerably.

The instant Kassandra saw that her spear had failed to penetrate, every instinct warned her away.

Too late.

The ability that let her teleport to her broken spear had already taken hold. Her lithe body dissolved into motes of golden light, streaming toward Ikanos. As Kassandra reformed beside him, she raised one hand and neatly caught the broken spear as it rebounded away.

She threw it again without the slightest pause.

The spear flashed across the room and punched into the throat of the hulking Barbarian Warrior five paces away. Kassandra vanished with it and appeared beside the dying man.

At the place where she had stood a heartbeat before, two double-edged Daggers crossed through empty air. They were shorter even than ordinary Greek short swords, yet their polished edges were so keen that every line gleamed like a mirror.

Trouble.

Kassandra knew it immediately.

Even setting aside the Divine Artifact he carried, this Mercenary named Ikanos was only a fraction slower than she was.

Fortunately… she had not come alone today.

Aard Sign!

Bang!

Air compressed beneath a force born from nothing, then slammed into the metal helmet with a brutal clang.

Across the room, Lannor had just released Phoibe from his arms. He turned, raised one hand, and relaxed the Sign his fingers had formed.

The Witcher had already seen Kassandra’s broken spear fail to pierce even the skin of Ikanos’s arm. He had no reason to imagine the Ammunition hidden in his bracer would strike harder than her spear.

So he had deliberately widened the impact area of his Aard Sign.

The blast caught Ikanos’s entire helmet. The force actually flipped him halfway over in the air before his leather-armored back crashed against the floor.

From inside the helmet came a muddled groan, the first sound the unseen man had made.

It was the equivalent of having one’s helmeted head smashed against a wall, enough to leave an ordinary man with a severe concussion. For people like them, however, it bought no more than a few moments of confusion.

Kassandra had no intention of granting him even those.

Golden light gathered along the blade of the broken spear in her hand, as though some unseen force were being drawn into its edge.

Then she came at him like an eagle dropping on prey, sliding to her knees beside Ikanos. She raised the broken spear, its golden light flashing, and drove it straight into his neck.

Wet flesh parted with a sharp squelch.

The golden light surrounding Ikanos shattered. Arterial blood burst from his neck and painted a long streak across the Temple floor.

Not a difficult assassination.

It was over.

Behind her, Lannor rapped Phoibe sharply on the forehead with a knuckle.

The girl looked up at him. His expression promised nothing pleasant.

“All right, young lady. Now we can discuss your problem.”

Kassandra pulled her broken spear from Ikanos’s neck and flicked it through a light sword flourish. The blood flew clean from the weapon, leaving not a single drop clinging to it.

“Easy. Far too easy for the money. Maybe I ought to start hunting more Mercenaries.”

Muttering to herself, she searched Ikanos and came away with a heavy purse stuffed full of Drachma, the payment Athens had given him when he accepted the job. Now, naturally, it was no longer his concern.

Kassandra also took Ikanos’s fully enclosed metal helmet, the source of his formidable protection. After clashing with the broken spear and finally being breached, however, its sheen had faded considerably. Even so, the helmet should still fetch a handsome sum of Drachma. Neither the Athenian nor the Spartan army would turn away a divine artifact.

Her Spartan childhood had once taught her to prize honor above nearly everything else. Years spent wandering from place to place had knocked some of that rigidity out of her, leaving her considerably less stubborn than a proper Spartan. So Kassandra tucked the helmet beneath her left arm, carried the purse in her right hand, and strolled toward Lannor, who was still lecturing Phoibe.

“Catch.”

Smack.

Without even turning around, Lannor caught the purse out of the air.

“The assassination wasn’t difficult, but you helped, so you get a share.”

Put that way, Lannor saw no reason to refuse.

The Witcher glanced back toward the corpse now stripped of its helmet. The Hireling Soldier who had used his wits and careful planning to make life miserable for the Spartan forces throughout Megaris was younger than Lannor had expected. Kassandra had closed the dead man’s eyes. Before that, Lannor suspected those eyes had remained stubbornly open.

A man like Ikanos had ambition, ability, intelligence, and resolve. Perhaps he had seen this war as his road to Athens citizenship, a stepping stone toward reinventing himself as a politician.

Now his body lay senseless on the cold marble floor of the Temple of Athena.

“Don’t think too much about it, Lannor.”

Kassandra seemed to have read something in the Witcher’s face. Her voice remained casual.

“He had plenty of potential, sure. His strength and reactions were nowhere near their peak yet. Maybe he’d have picked up a few more Divine Artifacts later. But however promising his future looked, there’s no point wondering how formidable he might eventually have become. His goal conflicted with ours, he crossed paths with us today, and now he’s dead. That’s all. Dead potential isn’t potential.”

“I’m not getting sentimental.” Lannor waved a hand at her. “It’s just a shame. I would’ve liked to see how strong he could eventually become.”

He turned away from the corpse.

“Now, back to the matter at hand, Miss Phoibe.”

The Witcher caught Phoibe by the back of her collar just as she was trying to slip away and hauled her back in front of him.

“Go on, then. Tell me what exactly you thought you were doing.”

Faced with those amber cat eyes, the girl drew her neck in and gave him an awkward grin.

“I, I helped just now too! … Right?”

She had started with admirable confidence, but by the end her eyes had already strayed guiltily toward Kassandra.

Kassandra’s smile turned distinctly wicked.

“Well, everyone else in this Temple had already been killed by the two of us. There were only two men left in this room. And even with that little ‘unexpected complication,’ those two lasted less than twenty seconds against Lannor and me. But if you think you helped… hmm. In a way, I suppose you did. You certainly gave us something to unwind over after the work was done.”

“Hey! Kassandra!”

Dangling from Lannor’s grip like a kitten caught somewhere it had no business being, Phoibe glared at Kassandra and complained.

Kassandra had long since come to regard herself as one of Phoibe’s caretakers, so the girl’s indignation bothered her not at all. Instead, she looked at Lannor with open curiosity.

“She came shooting out of there pretty fast. Like a lynx. Care to explain?”

Lannor scratched his cheek. He suddenly felt rather like some street rogue who had taught another man’s child all the wrong things.

“Uh… I taught her a few things while I had the chance. She’s talented. Learns quickly.”

“And that thing that went bang? The loud, bright one?”

“A little something I gave her for self-defense.”

“Hah. Only you could call that a ‘little something.’”

Kassandra’s teasing left Lannor with nothing useful to say.

Phoibe, however, seemed afraid that if Kassandra kept at him, Lannor might stop teaching her and refuse to give her any more Dancing Stars. She hurriedly interrupted before the conversation could go any further.

“I’ve been asking around the city these past few days, so I figure Ikanos started noticing me a while ago. Then today, well, I thought I’d sneak in and scout the place ahead of time for you, see what the layout was like and everything. And then…”

Her voice dwindled. Phoibe lowered her head.

Lannor gave two humorless chuckles, his smile never reaching his eyes.

“You’ve certainly got nerve. I haven’t even taught you how to infiltrate somewhere silently, and you’re already practicing on your own.”

“I had the Dancing Star you gave me! If you two hadn’t grabbed me just now, I’d definitely have gotten away! And with what you taught me, those Athenian soldiers couldn’t catch me anyway!”

Lannor opened his mouth, then stopped.

Annoyingly enough, the girl had a point.

Phoibe’s extremely light weight, coupled with her natural talent, made Lightfoot come easily to her. Her running speed was nowhere near that of a modern athlete, but it was more than enough to leave a handful of Ancient Greece Athenian soldiers behind.

“Enough, Lannor. Stop scolding her.”

In the end, it was Kassandra who intervened and persuaded him to let the matter go.

“She was born to go looking for adventure. Otherwise she never would’ve followed us away from Kephallonia. I half suspect that even if neither of us had agreed to take her, she’d have found a ship on her own and sailed off anyway. That’s simply her nature. At least now she only takes risks when she knows she has a way out. That’s already more sensible than I was at her age.”

Lannor shook his head and released his grip on the back of Phoibe’s collar. The little girl dropped lightly to the floor.

“Fine. You’re her guardian anyway.”

“Not just me.” Kassandra nudged Lannor’s arm with her elbow, grinning at him. “You said you’d look after her too. That makes you her guardian as well.”

Phoibe’s gaze immediately became rather peculiar. She looked from Kassandra to Lannor, then back again, her eyes narrowing slightly in thought.

Afterward, Lannor and Kassandra searched the Militarized Temple that Ikanos had used as his command post. They found a list of the remaining spies planted inside the Spartan military camp, along with records showing where the rest of the grain had been hidden.

Kassandra now had more than enough to take back and claim credit for the job.

On the cliffs, the outline of the Spartan camp was picked out by a ring of burning torches. Sentries stood at their posts without expression, their vigilance never slackening. Some of the mountain folk sat in trees or on high ground overlooking the countryside. They were professional javelin throwers and watchmen assigned to the outer perimeter. Though not pure-blooded Spartan citizens, they were Soldiers, and that still earned them respect.

Inside the camp, Spartan Soldiers sat around the fires, breaking now and then into low, heavy laughter. Some sipped the pitifully thin black broth from their Kausos Jars, while others honed the edges of their spears. A few sat naked as their Slaves carefully rubbed oil over bodies that were hard with muscle and hollow with hunger, then scraped away the grime with strigils.

Stentor sat beside the central fire, exhausted, ravenous, and unable to settle. Sleep had refused him, so he had risen from the darkness and come to the flames with several other sleepless Soldiers, hoping to grind away the remaining hours of the night. “Sing me something by Tyrtaeus,” he muttered. “One of his war songs.”

Two Soldiers opposite him, both Spartan citizens by birth, coughed and cleared their throats. Then, in voices that could have frightened carrion birds from a battlefield, they began one of the war songs composed three hundred years earlier by Sparta’s greatest Bard.

It was one of the rare occasions on which Sparta had shown genuine excellence in the arts. The Athenians of the time had even found it absurd. In their minds, Spartans had never cared for art and never would. Spartans knew how to take lives with weapons. That was all.

Stentor’s already grim face turned ashen before the song was halfway through.

“Stop. Stop before the great man’s Phantoms climb out of the Underworld and tear out your tongues. Enough. Don’t sing another word.”

He lowered his gaze toward the Adrestia, clinging to the shoreline below like a limpet. That infuriating Hireling Soldier had been here for nearly two weeks.

She had done good work, Stentor could not deny that. Yet she had plainly received proper Spartan training, only to abandon its honor and mix it freely with every dirty fighting trick a Hireling Soldier could learn.

He could not bring himself to like her.

There were, however, worse matters to concern himself with now.

The increasingly persistent rumors had proved accurate. Athens’ Perikles had dispatched a powerful force of Heavily armored infantry southward, intending to break Spartan control over this land. Soon the Spartan army would march north to meet them.

Sparta’s allies had already been summoned and were preparing for war. Around the camp, some men spoke of Athens’ heroes, others argued over the enemy’s likely numbers, while still more whispered that Sparta was certain to lose. Morale had sunk badly, gnawing at the army much like the hunger twisting endlessly through their bellies.

Rapid footsteps sounded outside Stentor’s tent.

His head snapped up.

“Guards!”

A figure stepped into the firelight and continued toward him. Stentor rose, his hand already moving for his Short sword, when the figure stopped and tossed something heavy in his direction.

It struck the ground beside the fire. The sackcloth wrapped around it split open, revealing a finely crafted Full-Covered Metal Helmet.

“Divine Artifact,” one of the Spartans breathed.

In a nation that had carried the worship of war to its extreme, a Divine Artifact was something every Spartan dreamed of possessing.

The figure came closer. Stentor lifted his head and found Kassandra staring back at him, one eyebrow raised, her expression proud and utterly assured.

That look again.

A gaze more Spartan than those of proper Spartan citizens.

Stentor hated seeing it in the eyes of an outsider.

“Hireling Soldier?” he growled.

“Ikanos, the man planting spies and stealing your army’s grain, is dead. That’s his Divine Artifact. There’s still blood on it from where his neck opened.”

As though she could not see the hostility in Stentor’s eyes, Kassandra sat down beside the fire.

“I recovered more than ten wagonloads of grain they stole. You and your Soldiers can finally eat properly before the Athenians attack. Put some strength back into yourselves.”

Stentor rose. Relief and resentment pulled his features in opposite directions.

“So you saved us? Saved Sparta’s entire campaign in Megaris? Is that what you’re saying?”

His restraint snapped.

“Do you expect us to bow to you now? Shower you with gratitude?”

“I only ask to meet The Wolf of Sparta,” Kassandra said softly, watching the flames.

Stentor’s stare remained fixed on her profile as firelight moved across it, bright one moment and dark the next. Silence stretched between them. Then he gave a sudden laugh.

“A weakling has no place standing before a Spartan general. So here’s what I’ll do, Mercenary. I’ll give you a chance. The Athenian heavy infantry will soon arrive to contest Megaris, and I’ll recommend you for the coming battle. You’ll have the chance to fight in this glorious struggle, to earn the honor of a Spartan Soldier while still nothing more than a Hireling Soldier. Simple enough.”

“Win glory in battle, earn your reward, and meet the Blood Wolf!”

He had expected Kassandra’s knees to weaken and cold sweat to bead across her skin. Fighting within the crush of battle lines was nothing like the solitary skirmishes of Hireling Soldiers. The difference in brutality was beyond comparison.

Instead, Kassandra surprised him again.

“I’ll fight.”

No hesitation. No tremor.

The camp erupted in cheers for the woman’s courage and fearlessness.

* * *

Only a few days later, the Spartans performed their pre-battle sacrifice inside the camp.

Below the cliffs, the legendary Athenian heavy infantry column marched across the land of Megaris, its passage raising a long serpent of dust into the air. In accordance with the customs of war, they too were conducting their pre-battle Priest. Neither side would interfere with the other’s rites. To do so would be sacrilege against the Gods.

The Spartans offered a sheep to the Gods. Their Priest drew a blade across the bleating animal’s throat. When it finally stopped moving, he announced that the Gods were very pleased.

“Enough, Barnabas. The way you keep telling Kassandra to ‘take more bread’ and ‘carry more water,’ you’d think you were an old hen fussing over a chick.”

The Adrestia drifted through the shallows. Lannor leaned against the gunwale, watching two vast clouds of dust rising from the distant beaches, and reached out to stop Barnabas from pacing anxiously beside him.

“Kassandra may be a Mercenary now, but she was raised Spartan. She’s strong. You believe yourself that she’s no ordinary mortal, don’t you? So neither you nor Phoibe needs to worry this much.”

“But this is war, Lannor! War!”

Barnabas’s thick white hair bristled around his head like a lion’s mane. His concern for Kassandra was genuine.

“That is Ares’s Divine Power made manifest in the mortal world! Even if Kassandra has tamed the Bird of the Gods, even if her body is no mortal body, still…”

Barnabas looked at Lannor.

“But why aren’t you going to help her, Lannor? Even on a battlefield, having someone watching your back is better than standing alone. Besides, you also…”

You are no mortal either.

Barnabas had finally asked the question that had been lodged in his chest for days, ever since Lannor said he would not accompany Kassandra onto the battlefield.

Lannor remained leaning against the gunwale, silent, his eyes fixed on the battlefield along the shore.

“I’m not going to rush blindly into a battlefield, Barnabas.”

Lannor spoke calmly. There was such distance in his voice, as though he had placed himself entirely beyond the struggle, that Barnabas found himself wondering whether the thing standing before him truly belonged to the mortal world at all.

This was a war engulfing the whole of Greece, dragging everyone into its grasp. By all reason, no one should have been able to stand apart from it.

Yet Lannor’s face and voice said otherwise.

“Yes, the Delian League led by Athens is hardly anything good. Athens’ democracy exists only for its own city-state, and even there, only for that small handful who possess citizenship. Athens is the great Slave master of the Mediterranean Sea. Its civilization and art are built on squeezing labor from Slaves. Even its supposed allies are forced to pay league dues, money Athens then uses to strengthen itself.”

He kept his eyes on the distant shore.

“But does that make the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta any better? No. Sparta itself is practically the model of classical militarism.”

Barnabas and Phoibe stared blankly at Lannor as he watched the battlefield and spoke in that same even tone. Much of the language pouring from the Witcher meant little to either of them, but they could grasp the shape of what he was saying.

That only made the way they looked at him stranger.

“To me, there’s no justice in this war. It’s two dogs tearing at each other for supremacy over the Greek world.”

The Witcher turned his back on the killing and roaring along the beach and faced the stunned Barnabas and Phoibe.

“Kassandra is my friend, but she has a purpose in taking part in this war. She needs to be here. She’s determined to complete her own ‘The Odyssey’ through it, and I believe she’ll finish that journey.”

“But I have no reason that compels me to take part, and no desire to join this dogfight. I might get along perfectly well with Spartans or Athenians as individuals. But once they join their armies and become representatives of two city-states fighting for hegemony… heh.”

The Witcher’s last sound was a quiet scoff.

“In short, it’s an unjust war. Call me cold if you like. Call me whatever you please…”

Lannor pushed himself away from the gunwale, walked across the deck alone, and lifted the hatch. He dropped down the ladder into the hold.

“I don’t fight unjust wars. That’s simply the kind of man I am.”

The hatch slammed shut.

On deck, Barnabas and Phoibe stared at each other.

From the beach came the same earth-shaking cries of men killing and dying. Yet somehow, both the old man and the little girl found that battlefield, a battle destined for histories and songs, less staggering than the hatch still trembling in front of them.

Barnabas swallowed, his Adam’s apple shifting beneath the wrinkled skin of his throat.

“Ha… haha…”

A strained laugh escaped him. His single eye drifted uncertainly toward Phoibe.

“Is it just me? I keep thinking… he really doesn’t seem like a… ‘man’ who belongs in this mortal world.”

The usually restless, cheerful girl had gone strangely still.

She nodded calmly.

For the first time, Barnabas thought she looked a little like Lannor.

“Who knows, Barnabas? Who could truly know what the creators of the universe are like?”

She looked toward the closed hatch.

“Anyway, I can accept his reason for not wanting to go onto the battlefield.”

* * *

Behind Kassandra, an unarmored Spartan Soldier raised a pair of auloi. The paired pipes descended from the corners of his mouth before splitting at their ends like ivory tusks.

He drew a deep breath and blew.

A low, tremendous drone rolled from the instrument and spread across the plain.

The clash between the two forces of heavy infantry was over within an hour.

Kassandra had been the brightest presence on the battlefield.

The light of Divine Artifacts flashed around her. At first, several Athens officers, confident in their own strength, had tried to gut the woman who had dared set foot on the battlefield and seize her Divine Artifact for themselves.

After Kassandra slaughtered several fully armed, powerfully built Athens officers in succession, they began avoiding Falconer instead.

It did them little good.

The broken spear blazing with golden light and the burning curved Blade still found the throats of Athens officers across the battlefield.

With so many commanders dead, the Athenian soldiers lost the men holding their ranks together. Their heavy infantry line began to give ground under the pressure. Then it buckled.

Then the whole front collapsed.

The defensive line disintegrated. Athenian Soldiers threw away their Shields and fled in panic. Boeotian Cavalry swept in from one flank to finish the rout, while mountain folk poured from the other, hurling javelins into the few Athens formations that still held together.

High upon the cliffs, the Spartan Blood Wolf commanding the battlefield thrust an arm toward the army below and roared.

“Do you see how the Athenians fear us? Cowardly Perikles hides himself inside the Parthenon Temple, spending his days among playwrights and philosophers. He knows the Athenians will not hold Megaris much longer, and Athens itself will be the next city to fall before us!”

The allied troops erupted in celebration.

The Spartan Soldiers fell silent.

That single roar had been indulgence enough. They planted the butts of their Spears lightly into the earth and drank quietly from their waterskins. Only a few exchanged words, their voices barely above whispers.

Fight, kill, then win.

To Spartan citizens, that was duty, not achievement. There was therefore nothing to celebrate.

A Soldier descended from the ranks surrounding The Wolf of Sparta and approached Kassandra.

“You’re the Hireling Soldier?”

Kassandra looked up at him and nodded.

“The Wolf of Sparta is pleased with your performance today. Once we return to camp, he wants you to meet him.”

From the corner of her eye, Kassandra saw Stentor staring at her. Anger had darkened his face.

“I’ll go at once.”

Aboard the Adrestia, Barnabas and Phoibe had watched the Spartan victory and Kassandra’s dazzling performance. The two cheered themselves hoarse and threw their arms around each other.

Then the old man who had spent most of his life at sea abruptly recovered his senses.

“Men! Rest your rowing arms! Check the sails and rigging! We need to be ready to take someone aboard and sail at a moment’s notice!”

Phoibe stared at Barnabas, plainly confused. The old man had no choice but to explain.

“Phoibe, my little mate, you haven’t forgotten why Kassandra came here, have you? She accepted a contract to kill the Blood Wolf for money! Right now is the best chance she’ll ever have to get close to her target. Once she makes her move, we’ll have to run for our lives right under the Spartans’ noses!”

“B-but he’s her father, isn’t he?”

“Father? Heh.” Barnabas gave a bitter smile. “I don’t know what Kassandra will decide in the end, but we’d better be ready to run.”

In the end, Kassandra returned to the Adrestia.

Barnabas immediately urged the crew to raise sail and put Megaris behind them, as though Hades himself were at their heels. Beneath the hull, the blue swells of the Aegean Sea broke into white foam against the ship’s sides.

Back on shore, the Spartan camp, which had only just begun to stir with something resembling good cheer after the victory, was now filling with confused shouts and growing commotion.

Barnabas watched the coastline recede behind the Adrestia. Only when it had begun to shrink into the distance did he draw a heavy breath. His chest still felt tight as he turned toward Kassandra.

A patricide.

Had Kassandra truly killed her own father?

Was one of those tragic figures from an Athens playwright’s drama now standing beside him in flesh and blood?

“Did… did you really kill Nikolaos? Your father?”

From the moment Kassandra saved his life, Barnabas had been ready to give his friend a lifetime of loyalty. Yet faced with the crime of patricide, a sin despised by the Gods themselves, he could not stop himself from asking.

Phoibe looked at Kassandra with the same uncertainty.

Since coming down from the cliffs and boarding the Adrestia, Kassandra had not spoken a single word.

“He wasn’t my father.”

Her voice was hard and certain.

“Nikolaos wasn’t my father.”

Barnabas and Phoibe both swallowed.

They thought those words were Kassandra’s attempt to make peace with what she had done, a lie offered to herself after killing her own father.

Kassandra saw their faces and finally understood. She waved a hand.

“I didn’t kill him, and I’m not saying that to make myself feel better. He was my stepfather. He trained me. He raised me. He hurt me too, but when I saw how old he’d become… I still couldn’t do it. So I beat him instead, took his Spartan War Knife and his helmet. Those things matter as much as life itself to a Spartan Warrior. They’ll be enough to prove the job was done.”

Barnabas let out a long breath. Phoibe followed a heartbeat later.

“Ah. That’s much better. We haven’t made an enemy of Sparta, and you haven’t committed patricide.”

Whatever the culture, killing one’s own kin ranked among the foulest of crimes.

As Kassandra’s friends and family, Barnabas and Phoibe had desperately hoped she had not allowed rage to drive her that far.

With her explanation, the weight hanging between them vanished almost at once.

Kassandra laughed freely and reached out, clapping Barnabas on the shoulder before patting Phoibe on the head.

“Thanks for worrying. It’s good having you two around.”

Then Falconer turned, her spirits restored, and noticed that someone rather conspicuous was missing from the deck.

“Wait… where’s Lannor?”

Barnabas and Phoibe stiffened.

Under Kassandra’s questioning, the two haltingly repeated what Lannor had said while watching the battlefield.

“I don’t think you should blame him, Kassandra.”

By the end, Barnabas was choosing every word with care, trying to keep any crack from opening between Kassandra and Lannor.

“What he said makes sense. A decent man would naturally want to stop an unjust war, but if no one can stop it, and he doesn’t have a reason or purpose for joining it the way you do, then there’s nothing wrong with refusing to take part when neither side is any good… right?”

“I think so too,” Phoibe murmured in support.

Both watched Kassandra cautiously, expecting anger.

Instead, Falconer’s expressionless face suddenly broke into a smile.

“No. I’m not angry.”

Kassandra’s shoulders loosened.

“If Lannor had stayed away from the battlefield because he was afraid, I’d call him a coward. But he thought about it, made his own decision, and followed his own will by staying away from a battlefield he wanted no part of. I respect that.”

She spread her hands with a helpless smile.

“And you’re all right. From what I’ve seen in Megaris alone, the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League are both willing to do whatever it takes for supremacy. If I weren’t a Mercenary who makes her living from chaos, if this war hadn’t dragged me onto the road to finding my family… ah, I think I’d stay away from this struggle too. There’s neither justice nor fairness in it.”

“Whoo!”

Barnabas clenched a fist and punched it into the air with a delighted shout.

“So my two esteemed friends aren’t at odds after all? Now that’s good news.”

“Whether it’s good news can wait.” Kassandra stepped up to the command position on deck and called out to the crew. “For now, we’re going to Phokis! I’ve got the Spartan Blood Wolf’s helmet, and Elpenor’s enemy is dealt with. It’s time our wealthy ‘employer’ paid us!”

* * *

That night, after leaving Megaris behind, a Thunderstorm swept across the Aegean Sea.

Neither stars nor moon showed through the sky. Heavy black clouds hung low over the water, and only the occasional bolt of lightning splitting down from the higher cloudbanks could illuminate the world for a heartbeat.

Some of the crew aboard the Adrestia began to pray. They had spent long years at sea, and under Barnabas’s influence had grown accustomed to calling such weather “Zeus and Hera quarreling.”

Below deck, Kassandra squeezed into Lannor’s cabin.

Cabins aboard the inland-sea vessels of this age were cramped. Every ship sacrificed living space without mercy to claw back another measure of room for cargo. So even though Lannor was nominally one of the ship’s captains, his quarters were hardly spacious.

When Kassandra entered, she found him adding material to that obviously expensive Armor of his. He was fitting additional metal protection over several connecting sections, enlarging the Armor to accommodate his steadily growing frame.

Kassandra was a confident woman. Her Spartan upbringing had even left her with a streak of arrogance.

Yet Lannor’s body remained something she simply could not make sense of.

He did not grow like an adult.

He grew like an infant fresh from its mother’s womb, changing from one day to the next.

The Witcher heard her enter but did not even turn his head.

“I brought a jug of wine. Want a cup?”

Lannor pointed toward a ceramic amphora set off to one side while his hands finished the last small adjustment.

Then he turned.

Kassandra was standing in the doorway with another ceramic amphora in her own hand.

She shrugged.

“Looks like we had the same idea.”

That night, Lannor and Kassandra each emptied an entire amphora of wine.

Lannor’s abnormal metabolism left him feeling almost nothing. Kassandra, however, was already pleasantly unsteady. Whatever power ran through her body, it apparently offered no protection against alcohol.

With Lannor alone, the easy laughter and carefree manner she wore on deck during the day had disappeared.

“Do you… hic… do you understand how I’m feeling right now, Lannor?”

Like any drunk, Kassandra draped one arm over Lannor’s shoulder and leaned close enough that their faces nearly touched. With her other hand, she thumped herself on the chest as though she might tear her heart out and show him the hurt inside.

“More or less.”

The Witcher could feel the soft warmth of her breath against his face. The scent of wine mingled with the smell of Kassandra’s hair, and somehow it was not unpleasant.

“You didn’t kill your adoptive father, so part of you is relieved. You’re glad you didn’t let your anger control you. But what happened to you as a child isn’t something you can simply put down, so another part of you regrets not killing him when you had the chance… heh. Just imagining that mess is enough to give anyone a headache.”

He glanced at the empty amphora in his hand.

“So there isn’t much I can do. I can drink with you, that’s about it.”

Kassandra stared rather blankly at Lannor’s profile while he calmly picked apart everything twisting inside her. An unexpected warmth settled somewhere beneath the wine.

It felt good to be understood.

“I can’t let Phoibe see me struggling with this. She’s always looked up to me. I don’t want her seeing me this weak. And I can’t tell Barnabas how miserable I feel either. He’s the first mate, the one the crew deals with directly. If I start hesitating in front of him, the men will lose their nerve too.”

Her voice softened.

“You’re the only one I can be like this with…”

Apparently searching for somewhere more comfortable, Kassandra let her head fall against Lannor’s shoulder and nestled closer.

The Witcher merely lowered his eyes to the empty ceramic amphora in his hands.

“Get some proper rest, Kassandra.”

“If only for tonight.”

* * *

June had brought punishing heat to the harbor town of Kirrha. Sunlight flashed painfully from the sea, while the pale mountains inland were almost impossible to look at beneath the glare.

The winding paths across the slopes were crowded with pilgrims climbing toward Delphi. They had come to seek one of the region’s most famous inhabitants, Greece’s renowned Female Seer and Oracle Bearer, the Pythia who guarded the wisdom of Apollo.

Merchants shouted themselves hoarse, hawking “sacred” statues and every variety of trinket to passing travelers. Local children leapt from boat to boat, selling cool drinks to anyone parched enough to pay.

A litter draped in golden curtains moved through the crowds at the private docks like a boat fighting upstream. Its owner was Elpenor, a wealthy Merchant of some local renown.

One thin hand idly bounced a bulging purse.

It was the “bone” he intended to throw to the thugs and ruffians around the harbor, enough to