“Hellenes are the world’s worst archers,” Battus whispered one day as we crept up upon a large, black-striped bull zorca. No matter how many times I told him we were Dorians, to the Nasamones, all the peoples around the Aegean Sea were Hellenes. “You want to know why they’re so bad? They pull their bow to the chest. No wonder they can’t hit anything. The Egyptians learned from us, that you can aim much better, and you can get much more distance, if you pull the arrow to your ear. Like this.”
I watched his arrow fly straight, the stone barb striking the large antelope right through the heart. It took only a few steps, then dropped to its knees. “All right,” I said as we walked across a field of waist high grass to where the zorca had fallen. “Show me how to make a bow. I want you to teach me how to shoot.”
Battus happily agreed. He removed the zorca’s horns and judged them a little short. He said the two horns together should come up to the archer’s shoulder, and these were a hand’s length too small, but he deemed them good enough for my first bow. After we’d returned to camp, he showed me how to shape a wooden hand grip that would serve as the bow’s core and hold the two horns together. It took him a long while, but he patiently carved the wood with his knife until each horn fit inside perfectly. Then he cemented them in place using glue made from bull’s flesh. Then he took thin strips of leather and glued them around the horns and grip.
“Too protect the bow from the weather,” he said, “the best bows, like mine, are sealed with shark skin.” But he said catching a shark could be tricky. When he was done he told me, “Now you have to construct an altar to your god. You need to leave the bow on the altar for seven days. Then you can use it.”
Out in the wilds I made a crude altar out of stones that I piled on top of one another. Then I dedicated it to Heracles by making a small clay statue of my ancestor and placing it in the center of the stones. Then we placed my new horn bow on top, hid it under elephant ears and left it there for the hero to imbue it with his power.
While we waited, Battus taught me how to aim and shoot using his bow. We practiced outside of camp, in the hill country south of the burned out villages where we couldn’t be seen by the Spartans. For targets, Battus set up a line of coconuts on a farmer’s low stone wall.
“Go ahead, give it a pull. It’s not as easy as you thought, is it? Keep pulling. All the way back to your ear. A little more. Now look straight down the arrow. Line it up on the coconut. You have to be able to see your arrow making a straight line right to the target. Okay. When you think you have it lined up, let go.”
Like throwing a javelin or a discus, learning how to shoot a bow took practice. There wasn’t a lot for two sixteen year old boys to do around camp, and Dorieus liked us supplying the men with fresh meat, so we were given plenty of freedom to come and go as we pleased as long as we brought something back for the cook pot.
Once Battus deemed my bow ready, the two of us had great fun hunting. We made a game out of it. We’d sneak up on an ostrich or antelope, aim and fire together, then see which of us made the better shot. Like the rest of the Nasamones, Battus fletched his arrows with white ostrich feathers, so I made mine with red rooster feathers so that we could tell our missiles apart. Of course, Battus was a far superior shot. He’d practically teethed on a bow. But as time went by, Battus admitted that I was improving.
Eventually one day Dorieus caught me walking outside of camp with my bow. Maybe it was the stress of the siege, but he flew into a rage. He said he could not abide his son carrying a coward’s weapon, and broke the horn bow into pieces and threw it into a watch fire. For the first time in months he punished me with a wooden cane across my back.
Afterwards, Battus felt badly, and said perhaps we could go in search of wild pigs, which would be more suitable for hunting with a javelin.
“No,” I said. “You’re going to show me how to make another bow. I want to find a bigger set of horns this time. Right for my size. Then we are going to catch a shark. It’ll be a much better bow. Only this time I won’t bring it near camp.”
Battus shrugged. “It’s your back.”
After twenty days of anxious waiting, the siege had become a contest of nerves between the Phoenicians in Oea and the Dorians camped outside their gate. We knew they were out of food by their desperate attempts to send men down their seaward cliffs on long ropes to fish. We put a stop to that by patrolling the area with ships. Still they held out. They must have known eventually Persia would come to their rescue.
With each passing day our allies became more fidgety. They complained about everything. Bringing in supplies was costing them a fortune. The Phoenician fleet could appear at any moment and destroy their navy. The farmers among them were missing the harvest. The mood was getting ugly. After thirty days, it was borderline mutinous.
“I’ve been against this siege from the start,” King Arcesilas of Cyrene fretted. “The Great King is on his way. I’ve seen him in my dreams. And he’s coming with a lot more than Carthage and Phoenicia. He’s bringing half of Asia with him. Babylonians. Egyptians. Armenians. Strange tribes from the ends of the earth. They say his Indians ride strange two-legged dogs into battle that breath fire. If the Persians attack us here, we’ll lose everything. The ships. The men. The booty.”
Arcesilas had initially enjoyed the campaign, especially sacking the small Macae villages around Oea. Unlike Dorieus, Arcesilas and his allies from the Pentapolis had no qualms about selling the natives into slavery. They’d made a fortune. Now that the Macae natives were not so easy to catch, the king had lost all interest in the siege.
Arcesilas’s brother Clearchus who ruled in Cyrene’s port city of Apollonia, nodded and added, “If they don’t hit us here, they’ll attack us at home. One by one they’ll burn our fields and sack our cities. They dig holes under the walls. Or they use thousands of slaves to build a great mound of earth right up to the gates. And then they slaughter all the people or relocate you to some barren steppe in Bactria. It’s time we pack up and…”
“We haven’t even fought a battle and you’re ready to run,” Leonidas said cutting in. “Our men are well fed. Well rested. Well trained. You’ve seen their funeral pyres. They’re starving to death. They can’t hold out much longer. The fortress will soon be ours.”
King Arcesilas sat on a pile of pillows and was attended by two nude slaves, one a boy and one a girl, who responded fearfully to every snap of his fingers. “We have plenty to eat now, but you Spartans forget. Our ships have a three day sail back to Apollonia. When the Phoenician navy arrives they are going to cut our supplies. The gods preserve the poor captain they capture at sea. He’ll end up burnt alive. You don’t know these Easterners like we do. They’re not civilized like us,” he said fondling his slave girl’s bare arm. “They’re barbarians.”
After forty days our native allies began to drift away. The Giligammae were nomadic people by nature. They weren’t used to staying in one place very long. They began wandering back to their people to tend their cattle and their flocks. Now when the war council met, the Lacedaemonians and the Therans were the only voices that wanted to stay. The men of Sicily, Crete and Cyrenaica all wished to get back to their farms. The rest feared the appearance of a monstrous Phoenician fleet at any moment.
Eventually Dorieus lost his temper. While he and the Spartans dressed simply, never more than a simple crimson chiton and sandals, he was surrounded by kings and generals who cared more about their profits and their fancy clothes than they did capturing Oea. “I have never seen a more craven-hearted passel of cowards. You swore an oath to follow the Spartans wherever we led. You encouraged us to push the Macae and the Phoenicians away from your lands. We honorably fulfilled our word. Now we are at war. We have kicked the bee hive, and instead of swatting the enemy, you want to run away like a bunch of frightened little children.”
Trying to smooth our allies’ nerves, Thessalus cleared his throat and said, “We know you want to get home to your families. We do too. But you
have to understand. We are the strongest as long as we remain together. Once the army breaks up and the fleet disperses, you are all going to be the subject of separate reprisals. Each one of you will face the combined might of Persia on your own. It is wiser to meet the barbarians here, where we can defeat them in one great battle.”
After fifty days, King Arcesilas and his allies had worked themselves up into such a state of fear, without telling Dorieus they slipped away in the middle of the night and sailed for home and the safety of their high walls. I followed my father as he stomped through the empty camp along the shore where we found the fleet and men of the Pentapolis, Crete and Syracuse had vanished, leaving behind only the Lacedaemonians, five hundred Therans, and about the same number of Nasamones.
As we stood looking across the once busy East Harbor that was now empty, Dorieus told his remaining captains, “We will give it ten more days. If they don’t surrender by then—we go home.”
For eight days the Oeans stayed behind their strong walls. We knew they were dying of starvation from growing number of black plumes of smoke that filled the sky as they cremated their dead.
Finally on the ninth day their iron gates screeched open and their soldiers poured forth from the fortress like ants from a nest and formed up outside their walls.
Our ships and our camp were in the East Harbor. Dorieus had us assemble on the beach and prepare to meet the unorganized rabble of scarecrows carrying shields and spears forming up outside the Punic Gate. Nor did they come out from under the shadow of their walls. The towers and dragons teeth behind them were lined with archers.
Our men formed up the shieldwall with the Spartiates on the right wing, our Lacedaemonian hoplites in the center and the Therans on the left. The field before the walls was narrow, but plenty wide enough for our men to form up a thousand shields across and four ranks deep.
We were just about to begin marching forward, when the Therans on the left flank shouted out in alarm. Looking west I saw the horizon dotted with long, narrow warships with their masts stowed, moving toward us under oars. They looked like a fleet of wooden water bugs. I quickly counted over a hundred triremes fanning out slowly across Oea’s West Harbor.
6. Blood and Slaughter
I have no interest in food and drink,
but only in blood and slaughter
and the agonized groans of mangled men.
Homer, The Iliad
A ragged cheer rippled down the Oean line. No wonder they’d come out from behind their walls. From their high perch they’d undoubtedly seen the relief force coming before we did. They thought they had us surrounded. If we turned to meet the Phoenicians, the Oeans would fall on our rear.
“Now what?” Celeas asked.
My father was at his best on days like that one at Oea. “We finish what we started. We attack immediately. Take the city. Then man the walls against the Persians.”
“We need to get word to Arcesilas,” Thessalus said.
“And warn our people at the wadi,” Leonidas added. He’d recently married a sister of Phile named Eumelia and although he publicly supported Dorieus, he was not silent about the fact that he missed his pretty young wife.
Dorieus nodded and said to Leonidas. “Take your lions and run for home. I would give you a warship, but I can’t afford to give you the men to man her. If you run all night—you can get to the wadi before the enemy.”
Leonidas looked stricken. “I’m not leaving. Kleo can go. I’m staying here with you.”
Dorieus smiled and clapped his brother’s shoulder. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.” To Kleombrotus, he said, “You’ve got to lead our women and children to safety. If we die here, someone will have to get them back to Lacedaemonia. And it should be an Agiad. Go. Carry what you can from the wadi. Bury the rest. Lead them through the desert to Euesperides. Then get word to Arcesilas. Have him gather the army. They need to march as soon as possible. If he balks, you threaten to kill him and his family. You do whatever it takes. I am counting on you.”
With a complete lack of emotion Kleombrotus turned and whistled to his men. I watched them trot off the field heading east toward the wadi. A part of me wished I was going with them.
Dorieus grabbed my arm. As his squire I was always at his side. Speaking quickly, he instructed, “Go to Gobrias. Tell him to take the helots to the East Harbor and burn our ships. Burn the warehouses. The docks. Anything they can’t carry. Then they are to gather up everything in camp. All our supplies. The herds. The flocks. Then they are to rejoin us. Wait! Then I want you to go to Chafik.” Battus’ father. “Tell him to spread his archers out across the West Harbor. They are to delay the Phoenicians for as long as possible. But they are not to stand up against them. Missile fire only. All they need do is slow down the Persians advance so we have time to take Oea. Go! And stay with Gobrias! I want you back here safely.”
I ran off to find Gobrias. Although not a true officer, he was the acknowledged head man among our lightly armed helots. Cleomenes had used Dorieus’ departure to send with him all of the Laconian and Messenian helots he suspected of sedition, and all those of size or strength who could one day cause trouble. Although some had disappeared when we landed in Libya, most had stayed and many would earn their freedom. Several did that day.
Behind me I heard the auletes order the advance. With our Theran hoplites singing the paean, the shieldwall began to trudge toward the Oeans standing outside the Punic Gate.
While Gobrias and his helots ran off to the beach I went to find Chafik among his tall warriors. They were a fierce looking band with their bodies painted red with clay for war. They had bones through their earlobes, wore helmets made of crocodile skulls and headdresses sporting long white ostrich feathers. Chafik wore a leopard skin tunic and Battus had his lion skin pelt over his shoulder. Some carried long ostrich skin shields and spears, but most were armed with their long bows and stone-tipped arrows.
I delivered my father’s orders to the Nasamones, leaving out the part that I was supposed to stay with Gobrias. Instead I said to Battus, “I will get my bow.”
“Wait,” Battus said. From a small pot hanging from his side he took a handful of red clay and smeared it beneath my eyes and across my chest. “Now you are one of us.”
With five hundred half naked Nasamones I ran down the hill through the burned out upper village toward the West Harbor. Along the way I fetched my new bow and red feathered arrows where I’d hidden them outside of camp.
As the Nasamones ran they made a loud, repetitive, warbling sound in their throats, reminding me of the sound cicadas make on a hot summer day. I found myself joining them, mimicking their strange war cry. We broke through the palms and fanned out across the sandy beach. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the harbor filled with Phoenician triremes. The big ones were 114 paces long by 14 paces wide. Their three banks of fir sweeps moved in well-practiced precision. The bronze ram beneath the water line on the prow of the lead ship plowed through the crystal blue water. With each long pull of its 170 oars the oculus painted eyes on the bow drew closer. So close, I could hear their drums keeping time for their rowers, and their keleustes barking orders at the thranites, zygites and thalamians in the benches.
Glancing over my shoulder at the East Harbor I saw the first signs of black smoke began to curl upwards. The helots were snatching up firebrands from our watch fires and tossing them upon the decks of our triremes, transports and the wooden docks. While they turned the East Harbor into a roaring inferno, behind us the Spartiates marched through a hail of arrows toward the Oean line standing in the shadow of their great walls.
Alongside Battus, Chafik and the men of his clan I ran to the water’s edge. “Don’t get your bow string wet,” my friend warned. Water would loosen the cow gut.
A couple of over eager warriors loosed their arrows, but they fell short, landing harmlessly in the sea. Dorieus would have yelled at the men to hold their fire, but Battus’ father merely stood with his great ox
bow notched and ready. Unlike the Lacedaemonians, the Nasamones had no officers, nor did they separate their men into units other than their familial tribes and clans who naturally grouped together. Instead each man was on his own. He fought and would even leave the battle whenever he felt the urge. Nor was there any dishonor in leaving.
All the men around me kept their eyes on Chafik. When he deemed the lead Phoenician trireme within range he drew his ox-horn bow to his ear and let fly. It flew straight and true, dropping one of the warriors crowded into the bow of the ship. With that the Nasamones began firing, filling the clear blue sky with their white ostrich feather trimmed arrows. Some of our missiles struck the men in the benches. An oar on the starboard side flailed, fouling the stroke, and then trailed limply in the water. Oars banged on the port side as well.
Bending my new bow, hearing the horn and sharkskin creak, I pulled one of my red-feathered arrows to my right ear, took aim over the shields of the warriors massed in the front of the ship and let go. The string thrummed. Without stopping to see whether my missile scored a hit, I grabbed another arrow from where I’d jabbed them point first into the sand.
Our archers poured hundreds of arrows into the lead Phoenician ship, until it looked like a porcupine. Eventually the oars stopped all together, and the great trireme nearly veered into a great Carthaginian galley rowing furiously along its port side. I followed Battus as he changed his aim to the new target. In a matter of three bow shots we’d crippled the Carthaginian. Likewise the men spread to our left and right across the beach were keeping up a deadly fire and had stopped four additional vessels.
The Wandering King Page 10