Page 14 of Eryx

The man seized Axios by the wrist before lifting him up and tossing him to the floor. “See this thief!” he exclaimed.

The surrounding men laughed.

“Caught another one,” one man said. “What will it be this time?”

“I think ten lashes will teach him a lesson.”

No.As if knowing I was about to intervene, Axios looked at me and shook his head. But how could I not? How could I stay in the shadows, doing nothing, as my friend was whipped like a beast?

“No,” he mouthed.

With each lash given to him, I felt the echo of it in my chest. Axios only cried out for the first two, and then he gritted his teeth against the pain and held his silence. His eyes drifted to me near the doorway as he lay on the table, back exposed and bleeding.

I would’ve rather endured fifty lashes—a hundred—if it meant he wouldn’t have to suffer them.

Later that night he lay on his stomach in the barracks, breathing heavily. Any small movement caused him pain. I yearned to pull him against me and take away that pain, but there wasn’t a place on his body that wasn’t bruised or flayed.

“Axios, why do you refuse my help?” I whispered, gripping his wrist. It was the one place I could hold him without it causing him even more discomfort.

My friend was hurting and hungry. And he wouldn’t let me do anything to help him.

He didn’t respond.

“You do not know how much it ails me to see you this way, my friend,” I said, staring at the back of his head.

“Leave me be, Ery.”

I flinched at his words and the cold tone he used to say them. Had I wronged him? I’d only wished to comfort him, but maybe my overprotectiveness had irritated him?

I was silent a moment. Life went on around us. Creatures from outside the barracks sang. A gust of wind blew against the outside walls. Boys shifted in their sleep. Life went on, and yet I felt frozen.

“As you wish,” I answered and turned over.

Chapter Three

Mount Taygetus dominated most of the western skyline. Axios and I walked along a dirt path after a long day of training, and I took the moment to gaze up at the massive formation of rock and earth.

Father once told me a story about the mountain. Spartans were tested the moment we came out of our mother’s womb. As babies, we were brought before the council and carefully examined, ensuring we were healthy and strong. If proven worthy, the infant moved to the next test of being lowered into a bucket of wine. If the babe screamed or cried, he was seen as weak and would be taken to the helots—slaves who worked the Spartan estates—and made a slave himself. If he passed, he’d be allowed to return to his mother.

As for the ones with birth defects? Well, Father told me that the infant would be tossed off the mountain.

“When the moon’s highest in the sky, sometimes you can hear the infant’s cries coming from Mount Taygetus,” Father said, tucking me into bed. “Their souls are trapped in the chasm, unable to depart from this world.”

“Is that true, Father?”

He answered with a smile.

I had started telling Axios the stories Father had shared with me. My companion eagerly listened to them, even if he laughed at the ones he believed to be absurd. Like the one about Adonis.

“You lie,” Axios said with a scoff. “That did not happen.”

“It did so,” I said with a grin.

He shook his head and kept walking.

The sun beat down on his tanned skin, and I couldn’t help but admire the small dip of his back as he trailed in front of me. The close examinations of him had begun earlier that year. I’d found myself observing him a bit longer than necessary, staring at the nearly imperceptible patch of freckles on his cheeks or the soft curve of his stomach when he stretched. He had grown taller over the years, but he still had a boyish roundness to his face.

Axios wandered off the path to stand beneath a shaded tree. Following him, I leaned against the tree trunk.