Spartan Gold

“He’ll have more people. Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

“He must think we’re on the right track,” Remi said. “He’s come to claim his prize.”

At that moment there was only a handful of people who knew this cave was the likely hiding place for the columns: Sam and Remi, and Bondaruk and whoever was with him. Bondaruk couldn’t allow them to get out alive.

Sam said, “Then he’s going to be disappointed. Come on.”

They zigzagged their way through the stalagmites to the opposite wall and checked each tu

They slipped through the fissure and followed the bend. Remi tripped and fell; she rolled onto her butt, rubbing her knee. Sam helped her up. “I’m okay,” she said. “What was that?”

An object on the floor glittered in her headlamp. Sam walked past her and picked it up. It was a straight, narrow sword about two feet long. Though heavily tarnished, spots of bright steel showed along the blade.

“This is a Xiphos, Remi. It was carried by Spartan infantrymen. My God, they were here.” He shook himself from his reverie and they continued on.

The tu

“No, thanks.”

After twenty feet the tu

“Dead end,” Remi said.

“Not quite.”

Where the wall met the floor there was a horizontal split. Sam crouched down and shined his headlamp inside. It was barely eighteen inches high. Cool air gushed from the opening.

“That might be the other entrance,” Remi said. “I’ll check it out.”

“Too risky.”

Behind them a voice echoed down the tu

“Bondaruk, Kholkov, and two others,” Sam said.

“I’m going,” Remi said.

“Remi—”

“There’s less chance of me getting stuck. If I do we’ll need your strength to get me back out. Don’t worry, I’ll just go in a few feet and see what there is to see.”

Sam frowned, but nodded.

She took off her pack and harness. Sam knotted one end of the rope to her ankle and she dropped to her belly and crawled into the split. When she was up to her ankles Sam put his mouth near the opening and rasped, “That’s far enough.”

“Hold on, there’s something just ahead.”

Her feet disappeared and Sam could hear her scrabbling over loose rock. After thirty seconds the sound stopped. Sam held his breath. Finally he heard Remi’s whispered voice: “There’s another cavern, Sam.”

He took off his own pack and belt, stacked them atop Remi’s, then jammed the Xiphos between the packs. He clipped on the rope and gave it a tug. The bundle disappeared through the slit.

“Okay, now you,” Remi called.

Sam lay flat and wriggled into the opening. The sides and ceiling closed around him, brushing his elbows and the top of his head.

Then, behind him, a noise.

He stopped.

Footsteps pounded down the tu

“There he is!” a voice said. “I’ve got them!”

Sam scrambled forward, hands clawing at the floor, boots pushing off the sides.

“You! Stop!”

Sam kept going. Ten feet away was another slit; silhouetted by her headlamp, Remi’s head appeared. Her hands came into view, then a carabiner, at the end of her rope, clattered across the floor toward him. He grabbed, kept crawling. Remi began hauling the rope hand over hand.

“Shoot him!” Kholkov shouted.

There was a roar. The tu

Sam rolled over and sat up. Remi crouched beside him and lifted his pant leg. “Just a crease,” she said. “An inch to the right and you wouldn’t have a heel.”

“Small miracles.”

She pulled the first-aid kit from her pack and quickly wrapped the wound with an elastic bandage. Sam stood up, tested the leg, and nodded his approval.

From inside the slit came sounds of crawling.

“We need to block it,” Sam said.

He and Remi looked around the cavern. None of the stalactites was narrow enough to break loose. Something near the right-hand wall caught Sam’s eye. He jogged over. He picked up what looked like a pole, but quickly recognized it for what it was: a spear. The hardwood shaft was amazingly well preserved, coated in a lacquer of some kind.

“Spartan?” Sam asked.

“No, the head is shaped wrong. Persian, I think.”

Sam hefted the spear, sprinted back, and pressed himself against the rock beneath the split. “Turn around and go back,” he shouted.

No response.

“Last chance!”

“Go to hell!”

The gun boomed again. The bullet thunked into the opposite wall.

“Suit yourself,” Sam muttered. He popped up, cocked his arm, and jammed the spear into the opening. It struck something soft and they heard a gasp. Sam jerked the spear back out, then ducked down. They waited, expecting to hear their pursuer calling to his comrade, but there was only silence.

Sam peeked his head up. A man lay motionless a few feet inside the slit. Sam reached in and grabbed his gun, a .357 Magnum revolver.

“I’ll take it,” Remi said. “You’ve got your hands full. Unless you want to part with your poker.” Sam handed her the revolver and she said, “It’ll take them a while to get him out.”

“Bondaruk won’t bother unless he has no other choice,” Sam predicted. “They’re trying to find another entrance.”

They looked around to get their bearings. This cavern was kidney shaped and smaller than the main one, with a twelve-foot ceiling and an exit in the right-hand wall.

Sam and Remi searched among the stalactites but found no other man-made objects.

“How many Persians and Spartans did Bucklin say survived?” Sam asked.

“Twenty or so Spartans and thirty Persians.”

“Remi, look at this.”

She walked over to where Sam was standing beside what looked like a pair of stalactites. They were hollow, their sides reaching up like flowstone flower petals. The spaces inside were perfectly cylindrical.

“Nothing in nature is that uniform,” Remi said. “They were here, Sam.”

“And there’s only one place they could have gone.”

They walked to the wall and ducked into the tu

“Seems solid enough, but . . .” He looked around. There were no stalactites to rope onto. “My turn.”

Before Remi could protest, Sam stepped onto the bridge. He stopped, stood still for a few seconds, then made his way across. Remi joined him. They wound their way through a tightly packed forest of stalactites, then stepped into an open space.

They stopped short.

Remi murmured, “Sam . . .”

“I see them.”

Caught in their headlamps, the Karyatids lay side by side on the floor, their golden faces staring at the ceiling. Sam and Remi walked forward and knelt down.

Cast with immaculate care, the women’s golden torsos were draped in robes so finely detailed Sam and Remi could see tiny creases and stitching. On each woman’s head rested a laurel wreath; each stem and leaf and bud was a work of art unto itself.