Koioptisys
In Sparta, malformed children are unnecessary. If a child is deemed unfit to fight for the state, it is tossed on a hillside and left to starve to death. Aniketos was born with neither of his arms functioning. Unable to reach out to his uncaring mother, unable to pick up what little food he might be given, and unable to ever hold a sword or shield. The council didn’t give him a second glace; one look was all they needed to know he was worthless.
The infant was thrown roughly under a large, strong tree covered in leaves that shielded him from the rain. He cried out for his mother, but she had vanished. Aniketos wailed, and wailed, unable to even crawl because of his useless arms, for three days.
A tall man walked by, noticing the child on the ground. He looked at the baby, and sighed. He sat by Aniketos, but the child could not see him, and so the tall man could offer no comfort. The tall man simply sat, and watched, and listened to his cries. After one more day, a scouting party from a small neighboring town passed by. A woman in the group heard Aniketos’s screams, and rescued him from under the tree; she took him in as her own, for she could not have any children. Nobody asked the tall man any questions, or so much as glanced at him. He disappeared as quickly as they had come.
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Six years dragged by. The town Aniketos was brought into was fiercely at odds with the Spartans, and the fear and hatred of them seeped into every inhabitant. The woman who took the boy in explained to him how and why he was abandoned. It would be expected that Aniketos hate the Spartans as the rest of them did, but instead, he grew to hate himself, to hate his body for being so useless. He could not prepare food. He could not water plants. He could not so much as sow seeds. He was as a lame horse, or a cow that produced no milk. Not so much a person as a burden. These thoughts had all rushed in shortly after he was once again visited by the tall man. Nobody besides Aniketos noticed the tall man; and nobody seemed to hear their conversations. The tall man told the young boy that his name was Koioptysys, and they could talk about anything Aniketos could think of. Aniketos was often left alone for hours and hours at a time, and he spent all that time talking with Koioptysys. Then, it happened.
On Aniketos’s seventh birthday, Spartans attacked their village. His caretaker grabbed him by his limp arms and dragged him into a stone cottage by the gates. She carved a hole out of the wood door, so that Aniketos could see when it was safe to go out, and quickly left to vainly fight against the Spartans. Koioptysys sat on a messy cable in the cottage, whispering to himself. Kneeling in front of the door, Aniketos pressed his dusty face to the splintered door’s porthole, and watched.
Every man, woman, and child were taken, to be used as slaves. Each who struggled were stabbed in the gut, shot with arrows, and beat to death, their bodies left in the dirt. Every single person who had been kind to Aniketos was dragged out of the town by their hair or cruelly slaughtered within his sight. Those captured were tied up and loaded into carts. The yells and screams bounced around the child’s head, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the porthole for even a second. Only a few in the town surrendered quietly. After a few hours, the screaming stopped, and only the sound of laughter could be heard as the Spartans collected the few things of value from the houses. Koioptysys had suddenly grown erratic and insane; he echoed the screams Aniketos had heard, and prevented the boy from speaking or thinking logically, keeping him afraid. Suddenly, though, Koioptysys stopped, and stared at the door. A yell broke the silence, just as Aniketos looked through the porthole once more.
He saw his caretaker, beaten half to death, dragged by a broken arm towards a cart full of other prisoners. She managed to pull her legs under her, and she leapt up at the Spartan dragging her, headbutting him in the chin. Another soldier stepped forward, and mercilessly stabbed her in the gut. She collapsed to the ground, grabbing at the hole in her stomach. The soldiers kicked her aside, climbed onto their horses, and rode away, dragging their captured prisoners.
