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indicating his rank. The metal was not as highly polished as Leonidas would have liked, another disadvantage of not having Xarxon with him on this trip.
    “You have the advantage,” Leonidas said as he set the helmet on his head, changing his appearance as his face disappeared in the shadows cast by the cheek guards—almost a skull like visage, the last thing many an enemy had seen.
    She bowed ever so slightly at the waist. “I am Cyra, priestess of the Oracle. I am to accompany you on this journey and task.”
    Leonidas grimaced slightly as if in pain. “I think not, priestess of the Oracle.”
    “I think so,” a voice behind him interjected.
    Leonidas turned and faced the Oracle. “I go to war. It is not a place for a woman.” To him it wasn’t an argument, just a fact.
    The Oracle didn’t agree. “You go to do more than slay other men. You go to fulfill a higher task. Cyra will help with that. She will bring the map back to me.”
    Leonidas had been wondering about that part of the Oracle’s plan, given that she’d said he would die in the coming battle. “An army on the march is no place for a woman.”
    “She is not just a woman,” the Oracle said. “She is a priestess.”
    “A priestess is not a warrior,” Leonidas began. “I don’t—“
    “She is my daughter.”
    “I don’t—“ Leonidas tried once more, but the old woman cut him off.
    “We are descended from Helen, whom Agamemnon led a great fleet across the ocean to Troy to rescue. Even your ancestors fought at Troy and many died. And our line goes back further than that. To Thera and before that to Atlantis until it was destroyed. Our aid is a valuable thing. Our enmity, a terrible curse.”
    Leonidas stiffened, not used to being threatened, especially by someone he could not draw his sword against. And the talk of this place Atlantis made him wonder. He had never heard of it. Thera he knew, having sailed past it. The island had obviously suffered a great disaster long ago. It seemed as if the Oracle’s people had lived with much misfortune over the years, which did not speak well of their forecasting abilities.
    “What is this Atlantis?” he asked.
    “A great land that once existed beyond the Pillars of Hercules.”
    “There is nothing beyond the Pillars,” Leonidas said. The furthest west he had been was to Sicily, part of Magna Graecia, where both Athens and Sparta had founded colonies that constantly fought with each other. There he had heard Phoenician sailors tell of the waters to the west and how, many miles in that direction, the Great Sea was closed in on both sides, ending at the Pillars of Hercules. They had said there was a gap between the pillars, but that only death and darkness lay through there. Of course the Phoenicians were a strange people, often offering their services to the highest bidder, but he saw no reason why they would lie about that.
    “There isn’t now,” the Oracle said. “Atlantis was completely destroyed by the Shadow and the few survivors scattered. All that remains is a boundless ocean, much greater than that which you have sailed upon.”
    Leonidas found that hard to grasp. The journey to Magna Graecia had taken several weeks, as the galley had tacked and been rowed along the coastlines.
    “This Shadow. Is it a God?” To Leonidas, gods were meddlesome creatures, who seemed to delight in tormenting men.
    “It is beyond what we know, so it might well be a god,” the Oracle said. “I only know its emissaries, the Valkyries. No one has ever seen one of the Shadows.”
    “Why do they seek to destroy us?” Leonidas asked.
    “That is also beyond what we know, but we do know it tries. Isn’t that enough?”
    Leonidas almost answered in the negative. He knew that an enemy’s motivation was critical in combat. Victory went not to the side that killed the most, but to the side that broke the other side’s will. A man defending his home was always a greater threat than a man marching in a