Gates of Fire (34 page)

The ghastliness of the carnage that followed, His Majesty's own eyes may testify to. As the foreranks of the Persians fled in terror, the whips of their rearmen drove their reinforcing fellows forward. As when two waves, one crashing shoreward before the storm, the other returning seaward down the steep slope of the strand, collide and annihilate one another in spray and foam, so did the crash and wheel of the Empire's armies turn force upon force to trample by thousands those trapped within the riptide of its vortex.

Leonidas had earlier called upon the allies to build a second wall, a wall of Persian bodies. Precisely this now eventuated. The foe fell in such numbers that no warrior of the allies planted sole upon the earth. One trod upon bodies. On bodies atop bodies.

Ahead the Hellenic warriors could see the enemy stampeding into the whips of their own rearmen, charging them, slaying with spear and sword their own fellows in blood madness to escape. Scores and hundreds toppled into the sea. I saw the Spartan front ranks literally scaling the wall of Persian bodies, needing assistance from the second-rankers just to propel themselves over.

Suddenly the piled mass of the dead gave way. An avalanche of bodies began. In the Narrows the allies scrambled rearward toward safety atop a landslide of corpses, which fed upon itself, gaining momentum from its own weight as it tumbled with onrolling might upon the Persians, back down the track toward Trachis. So grotesque was this sight that the Hellenic warriors, unordered by command, but of their own instinct, pulled up where they stood and discontinued the press of their advance, looking on in awe as the enemy perished in numbers uncountable, swallowed and effaced beneath this grisly avalanche of flesh.

Now, in the night assembly of the allies, this prodigy was recalled and cited as evidence of the intercession of the gods. The nobleman Tyrrhastiadas stood beside Leonidas, before the assembled Greeks, urging them with what was clearly the passionate beneficence of his heart to retreat, withdraw, get out. The noble repeated his report of the ten thousand Immortals, even now advancing upon the mountain track to encircle the allies. Less than a thousand Hellenes remained still capable of resistance. What could these hope to effect against ten times their number striking from the undefended rear, while a thousand times their total compounded the assault from the fore?

Yet such was the exaltation produced by that final prodigy that the allies would neither listen nor pay heed. Men came forward in assembly, skeptics and agnostics, those who acknowledged their doubt and even disdain of the gods; these same men now swore mighty oaths and declared that this bolt of heaven and the unearthly bellow which had accompanied it had been none other than the war cry of Zeus Himself.

More heartening news had come in from the fleet. A storm, unseasonably spawned this prior night, had wrecked two hundred of the enemy's warships on the far shore of Euboea. One fifth of His Majesty's navy, the Athenian corvette captain Habroniches reported with exultation, had been lost with all hands; he had beheld the wreckage this day with his own eyes. Might not this, too, be the work of God?

Leontiades, the Theban commander, stepped forward, seconding and inflaming the derangement. What force of man, he demanded, may stand up before the rage of heaven? “Bear this in mind, brothers and allies, that nine-tenths of the Persian's army are conscripted nations, drafted against their will at the point of a sword. How will Xerxes continue to hold them in line? Like cattle as today, driven onward with whips? Believe me, men, the Persian's allies are cracking. Discontent and disaffection are spreading like pestilence through their camp; desertion and mutiny lie one more defeat away. If we can hold tomorrow, brothers, Xerxes' predicament will compel him to force the issue at sea. Poseidon who shakes the earth has already wreaked havoc once upon the Persian's pride. Perhaps the god may cut him down to size again.”

The Greeks, inflamed by the Theban commander's passion, hurled harsh words at the Kymean Tyrrhastiadas. The allies swore it was not they who stood now in peril, but Xerxes himself and his overweening pride which had called forth the wrath of the Almighty.

I did not need to glance to my master to read his heart. This derangement of the allies was
katalepsis,
possession. It was madness, as surely the speakers themselves knew even as they spewed their grief- and horror-spawned rage at the convenient target of the Kymean noble. The prince himself bore this abuse in silence, sorrow darkening his already grave features.

Leonidas dismissed the assembly, instructing each contingent to turn its attention to the repair and refitting of weapons. He dispatched the Athenian captain, Habroniches, back to the fleet, with orders to inform the naval commanders Eurybiades and Themistokles of all he had heard and seen here tonight.

The allies dispersed, leaving only the Spartans and the nobleman Tyrrhastiadas beside the commander's fire.

“A most impressive testimony of faith, my lord,” the prince spoke after some moments. “Such devout orations cannot fail to sustain your men's courage. For an hour. Until darkness and fatigue efface the passion of the moment, and fear for themselves and their families resurfaces, as it must, within their hearts.”

The noble repeated with emphasis his report of the mountain track and the Ten Thousand. He declared that if the hand of the gods was at all present in this day's events, it was not their benevolence seeking to preserve the Hellenic defenders but their perverse and unknowable will acting to detach them from their reason. Surely a commander of Leonidas' sagacity perceived this, as clearly as he, lifting his glance to the cliff of Kallidromos, could behold there upon the rock the scores of lightning scars where over decades and centuries numerous other random bolts had in the natural course of coastal storms struck here upon this, the loftiest and most proximate promontory.

Tyrrhastiadas again pressed Leonidas and the officers to credit his report. The
demos
in assembly may elect to disbelieve him; they may denounce and even execute him as a spy; their reason may deceive itself and embrace a propitious prospect for the morrow. Their king and commander, however, cannot permit himself such luxury.

“Say,” the Persian pressed, “that I am an agent of intrigue. Believe I have been sent by Xerxes. Say that my intention is in his interest, to influence you by guile and artifice to quit the pass. Say and believe all this. Yet still my report is true.

“The Immortals are coming.

“They will appear by morning, ten thousand strong, in the allied rear.”

With a step the noble moved before the Spartan king, addressing him with passion, man-to-man.

“This struggle at the Hot Gates will not be the decisive one, my lord. That battle will come later, deeper into Greece, perhaps before the walls of Athens, perhaps at the Isthmus, perhaps within the Peloponnese, beneath the peaks of Sparta herself. You know this. Any commander who can read terrain and topography knows it.

“Your nation needs you, sir. You are the soul of her army. You may say that a king of Lakedaemon never retreats. But valor must be tempered with wisdom or it is merely recklessness.

“Consider what you and your men have accomplished at the Hot Gates already. The fame you have won in these six days will live forever. Do not seek death for death's sake, nor to fulfill a vain prophecy. Live, sir, and fight another day. Another day with your whole army at your back. Another day when victory, decisive victory, may be yours.”

The Persian gestured to the Spartan officers clustered in the light of the council fire. The
polemarch
Derkylides, the Knights Polynikes and Doreion, the platoon commanders and the warriors, Alpheus and Maron and my master. “I beg you, sir. Conserve these, the flower of Lakedaemon, to give their lives another day. Spare yourself for that hour.

“You have proved your valor, my lord. Now, I beseech you, demonstrate your wisdom.

“Withdraw now.

“Get yourself and your men out while you still can.”

THIRTY

T
here would be eleven in the party to raid His Majesty's tent.

Leonidas refused to hazard a greater number; he begrudged even this many, of the hundred and eight who remained of the Three Hundred yet in condition to fight, countenancing the inclusion of five Peers only, and that purely to give the party credibility among the allies.

Dienekes would lead, as the ablest small-unit commander. The Knights Polynikes and Doreion were included for their speed and prowess and Alexandros, over Leonidas' objections seeking to spare him, to fight beside my master as a
dyas.
The Skiritai Hound and Lachides would go. They were mountaineers; they knew how to scale sheer faces. The outlaw Ball Player would serve as guide up the cliff face of Kallidromos, and Rooster would take the company into the enemy camp. Suicide and I were included to support Dienekes and Alexandros and to augment with javelin and bow the party's striking power. The final Spartiate was Telamonias, a boxer of the Wild Olive regiment; after Polynikes and Doreion he was the fastest of the Three Hundred and the only one of the raiders unhampered by wounds.

The Thespaian Dithyrambos had been the force behind the adoption of the plan, conceiving of it on his own without prompting from Rooster, whom my master had not executed, after all, but instead ordered detained in camp throughout the second day with instructions to look to the wounded and the repair and replacement of weapons. Dithyrambos had lobbied strenuously with Leonidas in favor of the raid, and now, disappointed as he was not to be included himself, he stood to hand to wish the party well.

Night's chill had descended upon the camp; as the nobleman Tyrrhastiadas had predicted, fear now stood hard upon the allies; they were one rumor away from terror and one perceived prodigy from panic. Dithyrambos understood the militiamen's hearts. These needed some prospect to fix their hopes upon this night, some expectation to hold them steadfast till morning. Let the raid succeed or fail, it did not matter. Just send men out. And if indeed the gods have taken our part in this cause, well…Dithyrambos grinned and clasped my master's hand in farewell.

Dienekes divided the party into two units, one of five under Polynikes, the other of six under his own command. Each squad was to scale the cliff face independently, advancing across Kallidromos on its own to the rendezvous point beneath the cliffs of Trachis. This to increase the likelihood, in the event of ambush or capture, of at least one party getting through to strike.

When the men were armed and ready to move out, both parties presented themselves for final orders before Leonidas. The king spoke to them alone, without the allies or even the Spartan officers present. A cold wind had gotten up. The sky rumbled above Euboea. The mountain face loomed overhead; the moon, as yet only partially shrouded, could be glimpsed above the shreds of wind-torn fog.

Leonidas offered the parties wine from his personal store and poured the libations from his own plain cup. He addressed each man, squires included, not by his name, but by his nickname, and even the diminutive of that. He called Doreion “Little Hare,” the Knight's play name from childhood. Dekton he addressed not as Rooster, but “Roo,” and touched him with tenderness upon the shoulder.

“I've had your papers of manumission drawn,” the king informed the helot. “They'll be in the courier's pouch for Lakedaemon tonight. They emancipate you as well as your family, and they free your infant son.”

This was the babe whose life the lady Arete had saved, that night before the
krypteia;
the child whose being had made Dienekes under Lakedaemonian law the father of a living son and thus eligible for inclusion among the Three Hundred.

It was this infant whose life would mean Dienekes' death, and Alexandros' and Suicide's by their association with him. And mine as well.

“If you wish”—Leonidas' eyes met Rooster's in the gust-driven firelight—“you may change the name Idotychides, by which the babe is now called. It is a Spartan name, and we all know you bear scant affection for our race.”

This name Idotychides, one may recall, was that of Rooster's father, Arete's brother, who had fallen in battle years before. The name the lady had insisted upon giving the babe, that night of the rump court behind the mess.

“You're free to call your son by his Messenian name,” Leonidas continued to Rooster, “but you must tell me now, before I seal the papers and dispatch them.”

I had seen Rooster whipped and beaten any number of times upon our chores and details in Lakedaemon. But never till this moment had I seen his eyes well and fill.

“I am struck with shame, sir,” he addressed Leonidas, “to have extracted this kindness by extortion.” Rooster straightened before the king. He declared the name Idotychides a noble one, which his son would be proud to bear.

The king nodded and placed his hand, warm as a father's, upon Dekton's shoulder. “Come back alive this night, Roo. I'll get you out to safety in the morning.”

Before Dienekes' party had climbed half a mile above Alpenoi, heavy pellets of rain began to strike. The gentle slope had turned to cliff wall, whose composition was maritime conglomerate, chalky and rotten. When the downpour hit, the surface turned to soup.

Ball Player took the lead past the initial ascent, but it soon became apparent that he had lost his way in the dark; we were off the main track and into the bewildering network of goat trails that crisscrossed the steepening face. The party made up the trace as it went along, groping in the dark with one man taking his turn in the lead, unburdened, while the others followed bearing the shields and weapons. None wore helmets, just undercaps of felt. These became drenched and sodden, spilling cascades from their brimless fronts into the men's eyes. The climb became out-and-out mountaineering, traversing from toehold to handhold with each man's cheek mashed flat against the rotten face, while icy torrents sluiced upon him, accompanied by landslides of mud as the boulders and stones of the face released their hold, and all this in the dark.

For myself, my shot calf had cramped up and now burned as if a poker had been buried molten within the flesh. Each upward heave compelled exertion of this muscle; the pain nearly knocked me faint. Dienekes was laboring even more miserably. His old wound from Achilleion prevented him from raising his left arm above his shoulder; his right ankle was incapable of flexion. To top it off, the socket of his gouged eye had begun to bleed afresh; rainwater mingled with the dark blood, runneling through his beard and down onto the leathers of his corselet. He squinted across to Suicide, whose pair of shot shoulders made him slither like a snake, arms held low to his side as he writhed up the crumbling, mud-slick, rotting slope.

“By the gods,” Dienekes muttered, “this outfit is a mess.”

The party reached the first crest after an hour. We were above the fog now; the rain ceased; at once the night became clear, windy and cold. The sea rumbled a thousand feet below, blanketed an eighth of a mile deep in a marine fog whose cottony peaks shone brilliant white beneath a moon only one night shy of full. Suddenly Ball Player signed for silence; the party dropped for cover. The outlaw pointed out across a chasm.

Upon the opposite ridge, a third of a mile away, could be descried the tented throne of His Majesty, the one from upon which he had observed the first two days of battle. Servants were dismantling the platform and pavilion.

“They're packing up. For where?”

“Maybe they've had enough. They're heading home.”

The party skittered down off the skyline to a shadowed ledge where it could not be seen. Everything the men bore was soaked. I wrung a compress and wound it fresh for my master's eye. “My brains must be leaking along with the blood,” he said. “I can't think of another explanation for why I'm out here on this ass-fucked errand.”

He had the men take more wine, for the warmth and to deaden the pain of their various wounds. Suicide continued squinting across to the far ridge and the Persian servants striking their master's theater seats. “Xerxes thinks tomorrow will be the end. Bet on it: we'll see him on horseback at dawn, in the Narrows, to savor his triumph at close hand.”

The ridge saddle was broad and level; with Ball Player in the lead, the party made good time for the next hour, following game trails that wove among the scrub sumac and fireweed. The track ran inland now, the sea no longer in sight. We crossed two more ridges, then struck a wild watercourse, one of the torrents that fed the Asopus. At least that's what our outlaw guide guessed. Dienekes touched my shoulder, indicating a peak to the north.

“That's Oita. Where Herakles died.”

“Do you think he'll help us tonight?”

The party reached a wooded upslope that had to be climbed hand over hand. Suddenly a swift crashing burst from the thicket above. Forms shot forth, invisible. Every hand flew to a weapon.

“Men?”

The sound receded swiftly above.

“Deer.”

In a heartbeat the beasts were a hundred feet gone. Silence. Just the wind, tearing the treetops above us.

For some reason, this serendipitous find heartened the party tremendously. Alexandros pushed forward into the thicket. The earth where the deer had taken shelter was dry, crushed and matted where the herd had lain, flank-to-flank. “Feel the grass. It's still warm.”

Ball Player assumed a stance to urinate. “Don't,” Alexandros nudged him. “Or the deer will never use this nest again.”

“What's that to you?”

“Piss down the slope,” Dienekes commanded.

Odd as it sounds, the feeling within that cozy copse evoked a hearth of home, a haven. One could still smell that deery smell, the gamy scent of their coats. None of the party spoke, yet each, I will wager, was thinking the same thought: how sweet it would be, right now, to lie down here like the deer and close one's eyes. To allow all fear to depart one's limbs. To be, just for a moment, innocent of terror.

“It's good hunting country,” I observed. “Those were boar runs we passed through. I'll bet there are bear up here, and even lion.”

Dienekes' glance met Alexandros' with a glint. “We'll have ourselves a hunt here. Next fall. What do you say?”

The youth's broken face contorted into a grin.

“You'll join us, Rooster,” Dienekes proposed. “We'll take a week and make an event of it. No horses or beaters, just two dogs per man. We'll live off the hunt and come home draped in lionskins like Herakles. We'll even invite our dear friend Polynikes.”

Rooster regarded Dienekes as if he had gone mad. Then a wry grin settled into place upon his features.

“Then it's settled,” my master said. “Next fall.”

From the succeeding crest the party followed the watercourse down. The torrent was loud and discipline got careless. From out of nowhere arose voices.

Every man froze.

Rooster crouched in the lead; the party was strung out in column, the worst possible lineup to fight from. “Are they speaking Persian?” Alexandros whispered, straining his ears toward the sound.

Suddenly the voices froze too.

They had heard us.

I could see Suicide, two steps below me, silently stretch behind his shoulder, slipping a pair of “darning needles” from his quiver. Dienekes, Alexandros and Rooster all clutched eight-footers; Ball Player readied a throwing axe.

“Hey, fuckers. Is that you?”

Out of the darkness stepped Hound, the Skirite, with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

“By the gods, you scared the shit out of us!”

It was Polynikes' party, pausing to gnaw a heel of dry bread.

“What is this, a picnic?” Dienekes slid down among them. We all clapped our mates in relief. Polynikes reported that the outroute his party had taken, the lower track, had been fast and easy. They had been in this clearing a quarter of an hour.

“Come down here.” The Knight motioned to my master. “Take a look at this.”

The whole party followed. On the opposite bank of the watercourse, ten feet up the slope, stretched a track wide enough for two men to pass abreast. Even in the deep shadow of the gorge, you could see the churned-up earth.

“It's the mountain track, the one the Immortals are taking. What else can it be?”

Dienekes knelt to feel the earth. It was freshly trodden, the passage no more than two hours old. You could glimpse on the uphill side the ridges where the marching soles of the Ten Thousand had caved the hill in, and the slides on the downslope from the weight of their passage.

Dienekes chose one of Polynikes' men, Telamonias the boxer, to retrace the track their party had taken and inform Leonidas. The man groaned with disappointment. “None of that,” Dienekes snapped. “You're the fastest who knows the trail. It has to be you.”

The boxer sprinted off.

Another of Polynikes' party was absent. “Where's Doreion?”

“Down the track. Taking a snoop.”

A moment later the Knight, whose sister Altheia was Polynikes' wife, came loping into view from below. He was
gymnos,
naked for speed.

“What happened to your dog?” Polynikes greeted him merrily. “The little fellow has shriveled into an acorn.”

The Knight grinned and snatched his cloak from where it hung upon a tree. He reported that the track ended about a quarter mile down. There an entire forest had been felled, probably this very evening, immediately after the Persians had learned of the track. The Immortals had no doubt marshaled there, on the freshly cleared ground, before setting out.

“What's there now?”

“Cavalry. Three, maybe four squadrons.”

These were Thessalians, the Knight reported. Greeks whose country had gone over to the enemy.

“They're snoring like farmers. The fog is soup. Every nose is buried in a cloak, sentries too.”