Free Chicks in Chainmail by Esther Friesner

anything." Of the gods, he'd spoken lightly, slightly. Now his words came from the heart.
    Men with clubs, men with spears, a few men with full hoplite's panoply like that which Phye wore, fell in before the chariot and led it up toward the heart of the city. "Just like you planned it," the driver said in admiration. Peisistratos preened like a tame jackdaw on a perch.
    Phye stared up toward the great buildings of wood and limestone, even a few of hard marble, difficult to work, that crowned the akropolis. They were hardly a stone's throw from the flatland atop the citadel when a man cried out in a great voice: "Rejoice, Peisistratos! Lykourgos has fled, Megaldes offers you his daughter in marriage. Athens is yours once more. Rejoice!"
    The driver whooped. Unobtrusively, Peisistratos tapped Phye on the corselet. " Athens shows Peisistratos honor!" she called to the crowd. "Him Athena also delights to honor. The goddess brings him home to his own akropolis!"
    At the man's news and at her words, the cheering doubled and then doubled again. From under the rim of her helmet, she looked nervously up toward the heavens. Surely such a racket .would draw the notice of the gods. She hoped they'd note she'd spoken of Athena in the third person and hadn't claimed to be the goddess herself.
    Past the gray stone bulk of the Hekatompedon, the temple with a front a hundred feet long, rattled the chariot. At Peisistratos' quiet order, the driver swung left, toward the olive tree sacred to Athena. "I'll tell the people from the rock under that tree," the tyrannos said. "Seems fitting enough, eh?"
    "Right you are." The driver reined in just behind that boulder. The horses stood breathing hard.
    Peisistratos hopped down from the chariot. He was nimble, even if no longer young. To Phye, he said, "Present me one last time, my dear , and then you're done. We'll put you up in the shrine for the night"—he used his chin to point to the plain little wooden temple, dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon, standing behind the olive tree—"get you proper woman's clothes, and send you back to Paiania in the morning." He chuckled. "It'll be by oxcart, I fear, not by chariot."
    "That's all right," Phye said, and got down herself. She was tempted to tall deliberately, to show the crowd she was no goddess. But she had taken on the outer attributes of Athena, and could not bring herself to let the goddess fall into disrepute from anything she did. As gracefully as she could, she stepped onto the rock.
    "See gray-eyed Athena!" someone exclaimed. Phye's eyes were brown. The Corinthian helm so shadowed them, though, that people saw what they wanted to see. Thinking that, she suddenly understood how Peisistratos had been so sure his scheme would work. She also discovered why he spoke of an adoring crowd as sweeter than wine. Excitement flowed through her as the crowd quieted to hear what she would say. She forgot the squeeze and pinch of armor, the weight of the shield, everything but the sea of expectant faces in front of her.
    "Athena delights in honoring Peisistratos!" she cried in a voice so huge it hardly seemed her own.
    "Let Athens delight in honoring Peisistratos. People of Athens, I give you—Peisistratos!"
    She still had not said she was Athena, but she'd come closer, for closer, than she'd intended. She got down from the boulder. The tyrannos hopped up onto it. Most of the roar that rose from throats uncounted was for him, but some, she thought, belonged to her.
    He must have thought so, too.. He leaned down and murmured, "Thank you, O best of women. That was wonderfully done." Then he straightened and began to speak to the crowd. The late-afternoon sun gleamed from his white mantle—and from the crown of his head, which was going bald.
    Phye withdrew into the temple and set down her spear and shield with a sigh of relief. She was out of sight of the people, who hung on Peisistratos' every word. She did not blame them. If he accomplished half, or even