Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 3

were the ones who sent us into the battle, caused the trouble in the first place, but history tends to salute the grand gestures and forget the trivial losses, such as myself.
    The whole mess began with a war between Stageira, my home, and the city-state of Athens. They laid siege to us, and Brasidas, the ruler of Stageira and my commander, fought back. Simple enough, no? Unfortunately, Brasidas chose to take his battle strategy from his personal oracle, Ligia, a mystic from the far islands, who wore a heavy cloak and covered her face even in the hottest weather. She was a soothsayer, a fortune teller and a sorceress; the kind that would turn a man into a pig for as little a slight as a sidelong glance. Everyone feared her, even the king, which is undoubtedly why he followed her idiot advice and sent our army down out of the hills to fight the Athenians on the plains.
    Let me share something about battle. When you're outmanned, you look for ways to reduce the effectiveness of your opponent's forces. It worked for the Spartans when Xerxes came calling, and we had a lot more than three hundred soldiers shoring up our defenses. We were doing a fine job ambushing the Athenian raiding parties as they floundered into our olive groves. We had food, we had water, we had the high ground. We had time. We didn't need to suit up and march out onto the stony ground to be surrounded by enemy charioteers and cut to pieces. Still, that's what Brasidas commanded, all based on Ligia's prediction that "the battle would be short and victorious" for Stageira if we did.
    I had to give her credit, though. She came to the field with us, cloaked and mysterious and confident. That confidence lasted right up until the first cavalry charge, when their horses ran full-on into our front lines and ground our best men into the rocky soil. We fired arrows, but their numbers were too great. Each chariot had a driver and a spearsman, and the spears decimated our ranks as the horses forced their way through. Ligia's assurance withered, and she wrung her hands and twitched nervously as the enemy drew nearer to our position. My friend, Diomedes, took a spear to the chest and collapsed at my feet, his life bubbling red and frothy from his lips. I looked down at him and knew I was facing my own end. I raised my shield in futile defiance and prepared to die of trampling, but I had a final thing to say first.
    " Thanks for nothing, you hideous, Hades-cursed bitch! " I'm paraphrasing, naturally; the insult was a little longer in Ancient Greek, but you get the idea. Ligia wasn't pleased. Not at all. In that instant, anger overtook worry; she forgot to be afraid and furiously ripped off her cloak and mask. For a single moment, I saw the mass of snakes crawling about her head. I saw her blood red lips and white eyes, as white from edge to edge as the purest marble. For just a moment, I heard her scream of rage, all of that energy directed right at me. Then…
    Time stopped. Everything became utterly still. There was movement around me, but I was no longer a part of it. I could hear, but it no longer affected me. I could see, but only out of a single eye, and my vantage never shifted. I was living, yet not. Alive, but somehow dead, too. I chocked it up to being knocked insensible and watched as history unfolded.
    There was a furious commotion. Horses reared, men quailed with fear and shock, and Cleon's forces fell into complete disarray. Ligia put her cloak back on and led our remaining men to a great victory against the Athenians and saw her prophecy reach its fulfillment. The battle was short, and Stageira was victorious. All hail, blah blah blah. I never figured on being such an intimate part of the solution, but then, being turned into living stone isn't the kind of end result you can really predict.
    I had never been the most god-fearing Greek, but I had studied enough to know that the woman I'd upset was probably descended from a gorgon. I'd never heard that being turned into stone was anything other than a death sentence, but here I was, pondering my life, frozen in time. Ligia convinced Brasidas to make me, and my fellows, part of a temple to Hecate, her patron goddess, and there we stood; a testament to the power of the gods and the rashness of men.
    This was not a happy existence. Ligia knew I was alive, somehow, knew that all of us retained a bit of our divine spark. All except Diomedes, who had fortunately died before getting stuck in limbo with the