Gates of Fire (19 page)

This was so that, should the warriors perish, their family lines would not be extinguished.

An all-sire was a suicide unit.

A force dispatched to stand and die.

My customary duties upon return from training were to clean and stow my master's gear and look to, with the servants of the mess, the preparation of the evening meal. Instead this day Dienekes asked Black Leon for his squire to do double duty. Myself he ordered on ahead, at a run, to his own home. I was to inform the lady Arete that the regiment had been dismissed for the day and that her husband would arrive at home shortly. I was to issue an invitation to her on his behalf: would she and their daughters accompany him this afternoon for a ramble in the hills?

I raced ahead, delivered this message and was dismissed to my own pursuits. Some impulse, however, made me linger.

From the hill above my master's cottage I could see his daughters burst from the gate and dash with eager enthusiasm to greet him upon the way. Arete had prepared a basket of fruit, cheese and bread. The party was all barefoot, wearing big floppy sun hats.

I saw my master tug his wife aside beneath the oaks and there speak privately with her for several moments. Whatever he said, it prompted her tears. She embraced him fiercely, both arms flung tight about his neck. Dienekes seemed at first to resist, then in a moment yielded and clamped his wife to him, holding her tenderly.

The girls clamored, impatient to be off. Two puppies squalled underfoot. Dienekes and Arete released their embrace. I could see my master lift his youngest, Ellandra, and plant her pony style astride his shoulders. He held the maiden Alexa's hand as they set off, the girls exuberant and gay, Dienekes and Arete lagging just a little.

No main-force army would be dispatched to Thermopylae; that tale was for public consumption only, to shore up the allies' confidence and put iron in their backbones.

Only the Three Hundred would be sent, with orders to stand and die.

Dienekes would not be among them.

He had no male issue.

He could not be selected.

SIXTEEN

I
must now recount an incident of battle several years previous, whose consequences at this present juncture came powerfully to affect the lives of Dienekes, Alexandros, Arete and others in this narrative. This occurred at Oenophyta against the Thebans, one year after Antirhion.

I refer to the extraordinary heroism demonstrated on that occasion by my mate Rooster. Like myself at the time, he was just fifteen and had been serving, green as grass, for less than twelve months as first squire of Alexandros' father, Olympieus.

The armies' fronts had clashed. The Menelaion, Polias and Wild Olive regiments were locked in a furious struggle with the Theban left, which was stacked twenty deep instead of the customary eight and was holding its position with terrific stubbornness. To augment this peril, the foe's wing overlapped the Spartan right an eighth of a mile; these elements now began to wheel inboard and advance, taking the Menelaion in the flank. Simultaneously the enemy's right, which was taking the most grievous casualties, lost cohesion and fell back upon the massed ranks of its rearmen. The foe's right broke in panic while his left advanced.

In the midst of this melee Olympieus received a crippling lizard-sticker wound through the arch of the foot, from the butt-spike of an enemy spear. This came, as I said, at a moment of extreme dislocation upon the field, with the enemy right collapsing and the Spartans surging into the pursuit, while the foe's left wheeled in attack, supported by numbers of their cavalry coursing uncontested across the broken field.

Olympieus found himself alone upon the open “gleaning ground” to the rear of the onrolling battle, with his foot wound rendering him crippled, while his cross-crested officer's helmet provided an irresistible target for any would-be hero of the enemy's ranging horse.

Three Theban cavalrymen went after him.

Rooster, unarmed and unarmored, sprinted headlong into the fray, snatching a spear from the ground as he ran. Dashing up to Olympieus, he not only employed his master's shield to protect him from the missile weapons of the enemy but took on the attacking horsemen single-handedly, wounding and driving off two with spear thrusts and caving in the skull of the third with the man's own helmet, which he, Rooster, in the madness of the moment, had torn off the fellow's head with his bare hands as he simultaneously ripped him out of his seat. Rooster even succeeded in capturing the handsomest of the three horses, a magnificent battle mount which he used in the aftermath to draw the litter which evacuated Olympieus safely from the field.

When the army returned to Lakedaemon after this campaign, Rooster's exploit was the talk of the city. Among the Peers his prospects were debated at length. What should be done with this boy? All recalled that though his mother was a Messenian helot, his father had been the Spartiate Idotychides, Arete's brother, a hero slain in battle at Mantinea when Rooster was two.

The Spartans, as I have noted, have a grade of warrior youth, a “stepbrother” class called a
mothax.
Bastards like Rooster and even legitimate sons of Peers who through misfortune or poverty have lost their citizenship may be, if deemed worthy, plucked from their straits and elevated to this station.

This honor was now proffered to Rooster.

He turned it down.

His stated reason was that he was already fifteen. It was too late for him; he preferred to remain in service as a squire.

This rejection of their generous offer enraged the Peers of Olympieus' mess and created an outrage, as much as the affair of a helot bastard could, within the city at large. Assertions were made to the point that this headstrong ingrate was notorious for his disloyal sentiments. He was a type not uncommon among slaves, prideful and stubborn. He sees himself as Messenian. He must either be eliminated, and his family with him, or secured beyond doubt of betrayal to the Spartan cause.

Rooster eluded assassination at the hands of the
krypteia
that time, largely due to his youth and to Olympieus' intercession, man-to-man among the Peers. The affair faded for the moment, rekindling itself, however, upon subsequent campaigns when Rooster again and again proved himself the boldest and most valorous of the young squires, surpassing all in the army save Suicide, Cyclops, main man of the Olympic pentathlete Alpheus, and Polynikes' squire, Akanthus.

Now the Persians stood at the threshold of Greece. Now the Three Hundred were being selected for Thermopylae. Olympieus would be prominent among them, with Rooster at his shoulder in his service. Could this treasonous youth be trusted? With a blade in his fist and himself a handbreadth from the
polemarch
's back?

The last thing Sparta needed at this desperate hour was trouble at home with the helots. The city could not stand a revolt, even an abortive one. Rooster by this time, aged twenty, had become a force among the Messenian laborers, farmers and vineyardmen. He was a hero to them, a youth whose courage in battle could have been exploited by him as a ticket out of his servitude. He could be wearing Spartan scarlet and lording it over his mean-birthed brothers. But this he had disdained. He had declared himself Messenian, and his fellows never forgot. Who knows how many of them followed Rooster in their hearts? How many absolutely vital craftsmen and support personnel, armorers and litter bearers, squires and victualry men? It is an ill wind, they say, that blows no one good, and this Persian invasion could be the best thing that ever happened to the helots. It could spell deliverance. Freedom. Would they stand loyal? Like the gate of a mighty citadel which turns upon a single tempered hinge, much of the Messenian sentiment focused its attention upon Rooster and stood ready to take its cue from him.

It was now the night before the proclamation of the Three Hundred. Rooster was summoned to stand-to before Olympieus' mess, the Bellerophon. There, officially and with the goodwill of all, the honor of Spartan scarlet was again offered to the youth.

Again he spurned it.

I loitered deliberately in that hour outside the Bellerophon, to see which way the issue would go. It took no imagination, hearing the murmur of outrage within and beholding Rooster's swift and silent exit, to read the gravity of the issue, and its peril. An assignment for my master detained me for the bulk of an hour. At last I found opportunity to scamper free.

Beside the Little Ring where the starter's box stands is a grove with a dry course branching in three directions. There Rooster and I and other boys used to meet and even bring girls, because if you were found, you could dash away easily in the dark down one of the three dry riverbeds. I knew he would be there now, and he was. To my amazement Alexandros was with him. They were arguing. It took only moments to see it was the clash of one who wishes to be another's friend and the other who rejects him. What was startling was that it was Alexandros who wanted to be friend to Rooster. He would be in calamitous trouble if he was caught, so immediately subsequent to his initiation as a warrior. As I skittered down into the shadows of the dry course, Alexandros was cursing Rooster and declaring him a fool.

“They'll kill you now, don't you know that?”

“Fuck them. Fuck them all.”

“Stop this!” I burst down between them. I recited what all three of us knew: that Rooster's prestige among the lower orders precluded him from acting for himself alone; what he did bore repercussions for his wife, his son and daughter, his family. He had cooked himself and them with him. The
krypteia
would finish him this very night, and nothing would suit Polynikes more.

“He won't catch me if I'm not here.”

Rooster had set his mind to flee, this night, to the Temple of Poseidon at Tainaron, where a helot could be granted sanctuary.

He wanted me to come. I told him he was insane. “What were you thinking when you turned them down? What they offered you is an honor.”

“Fuck their honors. The
krypteia
hunts me now, in darkness, faceless as cowards. Is that honor?”

I told him his slave's pride had bought his own ticket to hell.

“Shut up, both of you!”

Alexandros ordered Rooster to his shell, that term the Spartans use to describe the mean huts of the helots. “If you're going to run, run now!”

We sprinted away down the dark watercourse. Harmonia had both children, Rooster's daughter and infant son, packed and ready. In the smoky confines of the helot's shell, Alexandros pressed into Rooster's hand a clutch of Aeginetan obols, not much, but all he had, enough to aid a runaway.

This gesture struck Rooster speechless.

“I know you don't respect me,” Alexandros told him. “You think yourself my better in skill at arms, in strength and in valor. Well, you are. I have tried, as the gods are my witness, with every fiber of my being and still I'm not half the fighter you are. I never will be. You should stand in my place and I in yours. It is the gods' injustice that makes you a slave and me free.”

This from Alexandros utterly disarmed Rooster. You could see the combativeness in his eyes relent and his proud defiance slacken and abate.

“You own more of valor than I ever will,” the bastard replied, “for you manufacture it out of a tender heart, while the gods sat me up punching and kicking from the cradle. And you do yourself honor to speak with such candor. You're right, I did despise you. Until this moment.”

Rooster glanced at me then; I could see confusion in his aspect. He was moved by Alexandros' integrity, which pulled his heart strongly to remain and even to yield. Then with an effort he broke the spell. “But you won't influence me, Alexandros. Let the Persian come. Let him grind all Lakedaemon into dust. I'll jig on its grave.”

We heard Harmonia gasp. Outside, torches flared. Shadows surrounded the shell. Its blanket flap was torn open. There in the rude doorway stood Polynikes, armed and backed by four assassins of the
krypteia.
They were all young, athletes nearly on a par with the Olympian, and pitiless as iron.

They burst in and bound Rooster with cord. The infant boy wailed in Harmonia's arms; the poor girl was barely seventeen; she shuddered and wept, pulling her daughter in terror to her side. Polynikes absorbed the sight with contempt. His glance flicked over Rooster, his wife and babes and myself, to settle with scorn upon the person of Alexandros.

“I might have known we'd find you here.”

“And I you,” the youth responded.

On his face was written plain his hatred of the
krypteia.

Polynikes regarded Alexandros, and his sentiments, with barely contained outrage. “Your presence here in these precincts constitutes treason. You know it and so do these others. Out of respect to your father only, I will say this once: leave now. Depart at once and nothing more will be said. The dawn will find four helots missing.”

“I will not,” Alexandros answered.

Rooster spat. “Kill us all, then!” he demanded of Polynikes. “Show us Spartan valor, you night-skulking cowards.”

A fist smashed his teeth, silencing him.

I saw hands seize Alexandros and felt others clamp me; thongs of hide bound my wrists, a gag of linen stoppered my throat. The
krypteis
snatched Harmonia and her babes.

“Bring them all,” Polynikes ordered.

SEVENTEEN

T
here stands a grove upslope behind the Deukalion mess, where the men and hounds customarily muster before setting off on a hunt. There within minutes a rump court stood assembled.

The site is a grisly one. Rude kennels extend beneath the oaks, with their game nets and chase harnesses hanging beneath the eaves of the feeding stations. The mess kitchen stores its slaughtering implements in several double-locked outbuildings; upon the inner doors hang hatchets and gutting knives, cleavers and bonebreakers; a blood-black chopping board for game fowl and poultry extends along the wall, where the birds' heads are whacked off and topple to the dirt for the hounds to scrap over. Piles of plucked feathers collect as high as a man's calf, rendered sodden by the blood drippings of the next luckless fowl to stretch its gullet beneath the chopper. Above these along the runway stand the bars of the butchery with their heavy iron hooks for the hanging, gutting and bleeding of game.

It was a foregone conclusion that Rooster must die, and his infant son with him. What remained yet at issue was the fate of Alexandros, and his treason which, if published throughout the city, would work grievous harm at this most peril-fraught hour, not only to himself and his station as a newly initiated warrior but to the prestige of his entire clan, his wife, Agathe, his mother, Paraleia, his father, the
polemarch
Olympieus, and, not least of all, his mentor, Dienekes. This latter pair now took their place in the shadows, along with the other sixteen Peers of the Duekalion mess. Rooster's wife wept silently, her daughter beside her; the baby squalled, muffled, in her arms. Rooster knelt in his cord bonds, on his knees in the dry high-summer dust.

Polynikes paced impatiently, wanting a decision.

“May I speak?” Rooster croaked in a throat hoarse from having been throttled on the way to this summary arraignment.

“What has scum like you to say?” Polynikes demanded.

Rooster indicated Alexandros. “This man your thugs think they ‘captured'…they should be declaring him a hero. He took me captive, he and Xeones. That's why they were in my shell. To arrest me and bring me in.”

“Of course,” Polynikes replied sarcastically. “That's why they had you bound so tightly.”

Olympieus addressed Alexandros. “Is this true, son? Did you indeed place the youth Rooster in custody?”

“No, Father. I did not.”

All knew that this “trial” would not last long. Discovery was inevitable, even here in the shadows, by the
agoge
youths who stood sentry over the night city, their patrols doubled now for wartime. The assembly had perhaps five minutes, no more.

In two brief exchanges, as if the Peers couldn't divine it themselves, it became clear that Alexandros had at the eleventh hour attempted to persuade Rooster into rescinding his defiance and accepting the city's honor, that he had failed and that still he had taken no action against him.

This was treason pure and simple, Polynikes declared. Yet, he said, he personally had no wish to defame and punish the son of Olympieus, nor even myself, the squire of Dienekes. Let it end here. You gentlemen retire. Leave this helot and his brat to me.

Dienekes now spoke. He expressed his gratitude to Polynikes for this offer of clemency. There remained, however, an aspect of half-exoneration to the Knight's suggestion. Let us not leave it at that, but clear Alexandros' name entire. May he, Dienekes requested, speak on the young man's behalf?

The senior Medon assented, the Peers seconding him.

Dienekes spoke. “You gentlemen all know my feelings for Alexandros. All of you are aware that I have counseled and mentored him since he was a child. He is like a son to me, and a friend and brother as well. But I will not defend him out of these sentiments. Rather, my friends, consider these points.

“What Alexandros was attempting this night is nothing other than that which his father has been trying since Oenophyta, that is, to influence informally, by reason and persuasion, and out of friendly feeling, this boy Dekton called Rooster. To soften the bitterness he bears against us Spartans, who, he feels, have enslaved his countrymen, and to bring him around to the greater cause of Lakedaemon.

“In this endeavor, Alexandros has not this night and never has sought any advantage for himself. What good could come to him from enlisting this renegade beneath Spartan scarlet? His thought was alone for the good of the city, to harness to its use a young man of clearly demonstrated vigor and courage, the bastard son of a Peer and hero, my own wife's brother, Idotychides. In fact, you may hold me to blame along with Alexandros, for I more than once have referred to this boy Rooster as my by-blow nephew.”

“Yes,” Polynikes put in swiftly, “as a joke and term of derision.”

“We do not joke here tonight, Polynikes.”

There was a rustle among the leaves, and suddenly, to the astonishment of all, there into the slaughtering space advanced the lady Arete. I glimpsed a pair of barn urchins escaping into shadow; clearly these spies had witnessed the scene at Rooster's shell and dashed at once to relay it to the lady.

Now she came forward. Wearing a plain
peplos
robe, with her hair down, summoned no doubt from bedtime lullabies just moments previous. The Peers parted before her, taken so by surprise that none could momentarily find voice to protest.

“What is this,” she demanded with scorn, “a skull court beneath the oaks? What august verdict will you brave warriors pronounce tonight? To murder a maiden or slit the throat of an infant?”

Dienekes sought to silence her, and the others did as well, with declamations to the effect that a woman had no business here, she must depart at once, they would hear of nothing else. Arete, however, ignored these utterly, stepping without hesitation to the side of the girl Harmonia, and there seizing Rooster's infant and taking him into her arms.

“You say my presence here can serve no purpose. On the contrary,” she declared to the Peers, “I can offer most apposite assistance. See? I can tilt this child's jaw back, to make his assassination easier. Which of you sons of Herakles will slice this infant's throat? You, Polynikes? You, my husband?”

More declarations of outrage ensued, insisting that the lady vacate at once. Dienekes himself voiced this in the most emphatic terms. Arete would not budge.

“If this young man's life were all that were at stake”—her gesture indicated Rooster—“I would obey my husband and you other Peers without hesitation. But who else will you heroes be compelled to murder in addition? The boy's half brothers? His uncles and cousins and their wives and children, all of them innocent and all assets which the city needs desperately in this hour of peril?”

It was reasserted that these issues were none of the lady's concern.

Actaeon the boxer addressed her directly. “With respect, lady, none can but see that your intention is to shield from extinction your honored brother's line,” and he gestured to the squalling boy-child, “even in this, its bastard form.”

“My brother has already achieved imperishable fame,” the lady responded with heat, “which is more than can be said for any of you. No, it is simple justice I seek. This child you stand ready to murder is not the issue of this boy, Rooster.”

This statement appeared so irrelevant as to border upon the preposterous.

“Then whose is he?” Actaeon demanded impatiently.

The lady hesitated not a moment.

“My husband's,” she replied.

Snorts of incredulity greeted this. “Truth is an immortal goddess, lady,” the senior Medon spoke sternly. “One would be wise to consider before defaming her.”

“If you don't believe me, ask this girl, the child's mother.”

The Peers plainly granted no credence whatever to the lady's outrageous assertion. Yet all eyes now centered upon the poor young housewoman, Harmonia.

“He is my child,” Rooster broke in with vehemence, “and no one else's.”

“Let the mother speak,” Arete cut him off. Then to Harmonia: “Whose son is he?”

The hapless girl sputtered in consternation. Arete held the infant up before the Peers. “Let all see, the babe is well made, strong of limb and voice, with the cradled vigor which precedes strength in youth and valor in manhood.”

She turned to the girl. “Tell these men. Did my husband lie with you? Is this child his?”

“No…yes…I don't…”

“Speak!”

“Lady, you terrorize the girl.”

“Speak!”

“He is your husband's,” the girl blurted, and began to sob.

“She lies!” Rooster shouted. He received a vicious cuff for his efforts; blood sprung from his lip, now split.

“Of course she would not tell you, her husband,” the lady addressed Rooster. “No woman would. But that does not alter the facts.”

With a gesture Polynikes indicated Rooster. “For the only time in his life, this villain speaks the truth. He has sired this whelp, as he says.”

This opinion was seconded vigorously by the others.

Medon now addressed Arete. “I would sooner go up bare-handed against a lioness in her den than face your wrath, lady. Nor can any but commend your motive, as a wife and mother, in seeking to shield the life of an innocent. Nonetheless we of this mess have known your husband since he was no bigger than this babe here. None in the city surpasses him in honor and fidelity. We have been with him, more than once on campaign, when he has had opportunity, ample and tempting opportunity, to be faithless. Never has he so much as wavered.”

This was corroborated with emphasis by the others.

“Then ask him,” Arete demanded.

“We will do no such thing,” Medon replied. “Even to call his honor into question would be infamous.”

The Peers of the mess faced Arete, solid as a phalanx. Yet far from being intimidated, she confronted the line boldly, in a tone of order and command.

“I will tell you what you will do,” Arete declared, stepping squarely before Medon, senior of the mess, and addressing him like a commander. “You will recognize this child as the issue of my husband. You, Olympieus, and you, Medon, and you, Polynikes, will then sponsor the boy and enroll him in the
agoge.
You will pay his dues. He will be given a schooling name, and that name will be Idotychides.”

This was too much for the Peers to endure. The boxer Actaeon now spoke. “You dishonor your husband, and your brother's memory, even to propose such a course, lady.”

“If the child were my husband's, would my argument find favor?”

“But he is not your husband's.”

“If he were?”

Medon cut her short. “The lady knows full well that if a man, like this youth called Rooster, is found guilty of treason and executed, his male issue may not be allowed to live, for these, if they possess any honor whatever, will seek vengeance when they reach manhood. This is the law not merely of Lykurgus but of every city in Hellas and holds true without exception even among the barbarians.”

“If you believe that, then slit the babe's throat now.”

Arete stepped directly before Polynikes. Before the runner could react, her grasp sprung to his hip and snatched forth his
xiphos.
Maintaining her own hand upon the hilt, she thrust the weapon into Polynikes' hand and held the infant up, exposing its throat beneath the whetted steel.

“Honor the law, sons of Herakles. But do it here in the light where all may see, not in the darkness so beloved of the
krypteia.
”

Polynikes froze. His hand sought to tug the blade back and away, but the lady's grip would not release it.

“Can't do it?” she hissed. “Let me help. Here, I'll plunge it with you…”

A dozen voices, led by her husband's, implored Arete to hold. Harmonia sobbed uncontrollably. Rooster looked on, still bound, paralyzed with horror.

Such a fierceness stood now in the lady's eye as must have informed Medea herself as she poised the steel of slaughter above her own babes.

“Ask my husband if this child is his,” Arete demanded again. “Ask him!”

A chorus of refusal greeted this. Yet what alternative did the Peers possess? Each eye now swung to Dienekes, not so much in demand that he respond to this ridiculous accusation, as simply because they were flummoxed by the lady's temerity and did not know what else to do.

“Tell them, my husband,” Arete spoke softly. “Before the gods, is this child yours?”

Arete released her hand upon the blade. She swung the babe away from Polynikes' sword and held him out before her husband.

The Peers knew the lady's assertion could not be true. Yet, if Dienekes so testified, and under oath as Arete demanded, it must be accepted by all, and by the city as well, or his holy honor would be forfeit. Dienekes understood this too. He peered for a long moment into his wife's eyes, which met his, as Medon's image had so aptly suggested, like those of a lioness.

“By all the gods,” Dienekes swore, “the child is mine.”

Tears welled in the lady Arete's eyes, which she at once quelled.

The Peers murmured at this defilement of the oath of honor.

Medon spoke. “Consider what you are saying, Dienekes. You defame your wife by attesting to this ‘truth' and yourself by swearing to this falsehood.”

“I have considered, my friend,” Dienekes responded.

He restated that the child was his.

“Take him, then,” Arete directed at once, advancing the final pace before her husband and placing the babe gently into his grasp. Dienekes accepted the bundle as if he'd been handed a litter of serpents.

He glanced again, for a long moment, into the eyes of his wife, then turned and addressed the Peers.

“Which of you, friends and comrades, will sponsor my son and enroll him before the ephors?”

Not a peep. It was a dreadful oath to which their brother-in-arms had sworn; would they, seconding him, be impeached by it as well?