Sword of Apollo (8 page)

All of the Plataeans on the wall stood in utter silence. The only sound was the whistling wind and the distant clamor of some crows bickering with a flock of gulls near the cemetery outside the western wall of the citadel.

“What's the Arkon doing?” asked Hesiod, for Menesarkus had stopped near one of the grave mounds and was staring down at the ground, pushing something with the butt end of his staff.

“I don't know,” said Nikias. “Maybe there's a snake in the grass.”

Menesarkus glanced back toward the tower as if he could hear Nikias speaking, then turned and continued on his way toward the Spartan king, who had already come to a stop midway between the Spartan and Plataean burial mounds, which lay side by side. Nikias could make out the regent's face from this distance. He was a little younger than his grandfather and had long grayish brown hair and a thick beard of the same color.

The Arkon and the king spoke for a few minutes. During that time Menesarkus nodded his head and spoke little. At one point in the conversation Arkidamos made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the whole of the mountain looming behind them.

“Satyrs' pricks!” cursed Leo. “What is he saying?”

Nikias glanced at Linos, who raised his bushy gray eyebrows as if to say, “I don't have any idea.”

The two leaders conversed for a few minutes longer. And then, without warning, their conversation ended abruptly. Menesarkus and the king simply nodded to each other, then turned and walked in opposite directions—the Spartan striding to his hoplites, Menesarkus limping back toward the Plataean cavalry.

“That's all?” asked Leo.

“Spartans are not known for being verbose,” said Linos dryly.

When Menesarkus got to his horsemen he paused by General Zoticus and spoke to him quietly. The general nodded, then called up to the tower, “Bring the Spartan prisoners. All but Draco.”

In a little while the prisoners appeared on the path below the wall: a score of lean and naked men with shaved heads. They marched in file on stiff legs, squinting in the sunlight. They had been kept in cramped, dark quarters, and their long hair had been cut to rid them of lice. They were led by their jailers—forty or so strong and grim-faced Plataeans who had guarded the Spartans day and night since they had been captured. The Spartans had not been treated cruelly: there had been no beatings or torture. But they had not been allowed freedom of movement, and their rations had been less than they were used to. And so they were in a weakened condition.

Menesarkus went up to the Spartan prisoners in turn and shook their hands. Each of the Spartans looked him in the eye and nodded. And then the Arkon of Plataea released them from their bondage, saying:

“Go in peace.”

The Spartans walked slowly up the hill, between the burial mounds, and thence rejoined their brothers on the hill. When they got to their king they lined up in a row, bowing in unison. At a word from Arkidamos, twenty men in the front rows of the Spartan lines took off their cloaks and gave one to each naked prisoner, who clasped it around his neck. Then the freed men fell in with the ranks, blending into the sea of red.

King Arkidamos took one last look at Menesarkus, then marched past his men and headed up the goat path that led into the forest. Then the Spartans started to break from the phalanx in an orderly manner, following their king and vanishing into the trees.

 

TEN

Nikias, Linos, and Hesiod found Menesarkus standing alone with his back to the southern wall, leaning on his staff, watching as the last of the Spartans departed the field. Zoticus and the four hundred horsemen had spread out and moved a little farther up the hill, away from the citadel—ready to ride to action if the Spartans returned. But the enemy was gone … at least for now.

“What did the king say to you?” asked Linos.

Menesarkus ignored his question and asked, “What is the bare minimum number of warriors it would take to man the walls of Plataea? To hold off a sustained siege—a siege meant to starve a city into submission.”

“What does—”

“How many?” cut in Menesarkus. “We've spoken of this before but you always dither about the number. Tell me, Linos.”

Linos peered up at the twenty-foot-high limestone wall rising behind Menesarkus. “Six hundred warriors,” said Linos. “Two hundred standing watch on eight-hour-long watches.”

“And how long could those men last with the supplies that we have now?”

“Almost three years,” said Hesiod, chiming in.

Linos nodded. “Young Hesiod has been paying attention during our tallies.”

“Three years,” repeated Menesarkus. “Yes. Those were my calculations as well.”

“What did the king say, Grandfather?” asked Nikias, bursting out with impatience. “Did he threaten to besiege Plataea?”

Menesarkus smiled out of the corner of his mouth and said, “On the contrary. He said nothing about a siege. He asked to
borrow
our citadel.” He patted the rough stone wall behind him and grinned.

Nikias gave a nervous laugh. His grandfather did not say funny things very often. And this seemed a strange moment to make a joke.

Linos seemed to agree with him, for he scowled and said, “This is no time for jests, Arkon.”

“I'm not jesting,” said Menesarkus, a serious look in his eyes. “Those were his very words. ‘We wish to borrow Plataea.' King Arkidamos told me that he knew that it was impossible for us to break our alliance with Athens, so he asked if Sparta might simply
occupy
Plataea until they have defeated the Athenians. We move out, they move in, they wage war and conquer all of Greece, and then we simply come back like returning swallows. He even offered to pay us rent.”

“Rent?” laughed Linos. “Absurd!”

“Is he insane?” asked Nikias.

“All Spartans are mad in their own way,” said Menesarkus. “But this one was completely lucid. He believes that this plan is a solution to both of our problems. There is a stipulation, however: we must abandon the city
completely
. We cannot leave any warriors behind to man the walls. And if any of our people try to make their way to Athens while Plataea's walls are still manned by our men, then the Spartans and their allies will set upon our women and children in the open country and slaughter them.”

“How much time did he give us to abandon the citadel?” asked Linos.

“A week,” said Menesarkus. “He said that the eclipse was Apollo's way of warning us.”

“It's an absurd proposal,” said Linos. “The Athenians would never give refuge to our people if we just abandoned the strongest city-state in Greece outside of Athens and gave it to their greatest enemy. Where does he expect us to go?”

“The Spartan king did not offer any counsel on accommodations,” replied Menesarkus sharply. “He expects us to leave the citadel. Where we go afterward is of no concern to him.” He paused and chewed on his lower lip contemplatively. “The eclipse fills me with great foreboding,” he said at last. “Something horrible is going to happen.”

“But did the king threaten a siege if we did not comply with the terms?” asked Nikias.

“I told you,” said Menesarkus testily, “he avoided the subject altogether. And that is what worries me. I think that the Persian prisoner was telling the truth about the size of the army that the Spartans will bring to the Oxlands. That was no invasion force up on the hill,” he said, pointing his staff at the place where the two thousand Spartan hoplites had stood just a few minutes ago. “Those warriors were merely the king's royal guard. Arkidamos came to try and stop a costly siege—quite possibly of his own accord, in contradiction to the orders of his ephors. And so he offered us this unusual way out of our dilemma. Technically we would not be betraying Athens, because we would not be fighting for the Spartans.”

“It's a path that we cannot possibly take,” said Linos.

“Of course not,” replied Menesarkus. “The Spartans may break their oaths as it suits them, but we may not. Our alliance with Athens is carved in stone. If we hand over our citadel to them, we will never get it back. We will be a people without a city. Vagabonds on the road. Exiles.”

“So what did you tell him?” asked Nikias.

“I said that we would consider his proposition,” said Menesarkus. “And I gave him our remaining Spartan prisoners as a show of good faith. General Draco, as you could see, was not amongst the released men. He I will keep to the bitter end, along with that Persian messenger.”

“One week,” said Linos under his breath.

“Yes,” said Menesarkus. “We have one week to get the aged, the women, and the children, and those not fit to defend Plataea to the safety of Athens. Eighteen thousand people.”

In his mind's eye Nikias saw his pregnant wife and their two little girls, his sister, and grandmother, walking to Athens: a hard journey that would take at least three days on foot with so many people carrying their baggage. The Plataeans would have to take all the supplies that they could hold, for they couldn't show up empty-handed in Athens, a city already bursting with refugees from the countryside.

His stomach sank and he was overwhelmed by a feeling of dread. Anyone who fled to Athens would have to go over the mountain pass, then down the other side of the range and through Athenian lands that were now occupied by Spartan and Megarian raiding parties. The Plataeans could easily be caught out in the open and slaughtered like animals. The walls of the citadel looming up behind them seemed so high … so strong. To make their families leave such a powerful stronghold and put them in that kind of danger seemed like folly.

“But if he said nothing about a siege, Grandfather,” Nikias said at last, breaking the dreary silence, “if the king made no threats, then we might just be jumping out of our skins for no good reason. Subjecting our people to attack on the road. It could be a trick to expose us.”

“Do you remember what the Persian said to Linos?” asked Menesarkus. “About the Spartans making a wall around Plataea?”

Nikias nodded.

“When King Arkidamos and I were speaking just now,” Menesarkus continued, “he asked me to see the logic of his proposition. His plan, he told me, was so simple a child might understand it. ‘You can't see the forest because there are so many trees in front of you,' he said to me, and then he waved his hand at the forest on the mountainside.”

Nikias recalled seeing the Spartan king make that gesture. “What does that—”

Suddenly and violently Menesarkus slammed his staff into the earth. “The king's thoughts were bent on the thousands of trees covering our mountain,” he said. “The trees that he had just passed through. Zeus let me see into my enemy's mind at that moment. His plan was revealed to me! They're going to cut down the forest and use the trees to build their own wall around our citadel. A wall of stone would take years to erect. But”—he pointed to his staff—“a wall of trees, with enough men laboring night and day, could be put up in a matter of weeks. They would have us trapped, like badgers in a hole. The Spartans are patient. They would be willing to wait over a year until our citizens were feeding on rats and then … worse.”

Linos cursed under his breath. Hesiod's eyes got bigger as he evidently contemplated Menesarkus's words. They all knew what Menesarkus meant. Citizens of cities under siege had been known to eat human flesh to stay alive. Nikias looked around, imagining a wall of timber surrounding Plataea, cutting it off from all help … his people feeding on the corpses of the dead.

“Six hundred Plataean warriors will stay behind,” said Menesarkus suddenly. “The rest will go to Athens to protect our people: all of the women, children, and aged.”

“But they'll be massacred on the road,” said Nikias.

Menesarkus looked at Nikias and his eyes narrowed. “We'll create a diversion.”

“Impossible,” said Nikias with exasperation. “We can't hide our people in a…” He fought for words. “… in a magical mist.”

“We would need Zeus himself to cover us with a cloak as big as the sky,” added Linos bitterly.

“Yes,” said Menesarkus, his eyes flashing with sudden insight. “That's it. A gigantic cloak. We need to create our own eclipse of the sun. And then General Zoticus and the cavalry—and you, Nikias—will help lead our people to Athens under its protection.”

Nikias shook his head, utterly perplexed. “What are you saying? You can't make an eclipse!”

“Apollo has sent us a message,” said Menesarkus. “It is always wise to obey the gods.”

 

ELEVEN

This was not the first time that Chusor the smith had been as drunk as a satyr at dawn, and he reckoned it would not be the last. But this morning, with the ship bucking on the waves, and the overpowering scent of fried squid congealed in a bowl next to the sleeping alcove filling his nostrils, he wished that he had not been so self-indulgent last night. The eclipse that had occurred yesterday had filled him with dread.

But his lover, Zana, refused to drink alone. She was a stern mistress as well as the captain of their trireme—the
Spear of Thetis
. And despite the ominous eclipse, they had had a victory to celebrate: the capture of two Phoenician merchant ships laden with wheat. Those ships, now manned by some of the
Spear
's own crewmen, sailed close behind them. The convoy was on its way to an island where the crew of the marauding ship had its stronghold—the place where their families lived in safety while they pillaged the seas. After a day of rest and the restocking of food and water they would take the grain another sixty miles to the port of Piraeus.

The Athenians, who were trapped behind the walls of their citadel while the Spartans ravaged their lands, needed a constant supply of provisions to feed their people. Because of the ingeniousness of the Long Walls—the six-mile-long barricaded roadway that led from the walled port of Piraeus all the way to Athens—the Athenians were not about to starve inside their citadel. They ruled the seas with their fleet of three hundred triremes, and could ship in supplies from their island empire or faraway Egypt. But they still relied on marauders like the
Spear
to disrupt enemy shipping. And Zana's ship had been given a license by General Perikles himself to capture any vessel that was not an ally of the Delian League, from the Inland Sea to the shores of Ionia.