Spartans at the Gates

by Noble Smith

  “It goes well,” said Chusor. “I have a team of a hundred men working day and night. The old tunnel that leads to the graves is almost clear and has been supported with beams. It won’t cave in again. New passages are being made as well. These can be used to thwart Spartan miners who might dig under the walls to make them collapse.”

  “Good,” grunted Menesarkus. He knew all about sappers and the undermining of walls. He had been at the second siege of Sardis—a brutal siege that had lasted for months. The Athenians who had been leading the attack on the citadel had dug deep down under a section of wall, causing the entire bastion to collapse like a child’s sandcastle. Menesarkus had been in awe of the terrible sight—a sturdy wall turned to a pile of rubble … a gaping hole in the city’s defenses like a huge hole in a bronze breastplate. He looked at Chusor and thought, “Thank the gods this capable man was sent to us in our time of need.”

  He saw something out of the corner of his eye—a flash of white in the foothills of the mountains. Snapping his head around, he saw a horse picking its way down the slope toward the citadel. He felt the blood drain from his face.

  “That’s Photine!” said Chusor. He shielded his eyes from the sun, staring at the horse with a grimace. “Nikias’s mare!”

  “But where is the rider?” said Menesarkus. “Where is my grandson?”

  “Men on the road!” called out one of the lookouts standing nearby.

  Menesarkus and Chusor stared east in the direction that the lookout pointed; they saw a line of carts pulled by Helots. The Spartan slaves, with their squat bodies and dark, bowl-shaped haircuts, were yoked to the carts like animals. Menesarkus counted ten carts.

  “What are they bringing?” asked Chusor.

  “I can’t see what—”

  Menesarkus stopped short as he caught sight of a line of twenty naked men, roped at the neck and ankles, shuffling along behind the carts. And marching behind these prisoners was an army of the enemy—at least five hundred men strong.

  “Spartans!” cried several voices from along the walls and watchtowers.

  The Helots pulling the carts stopped just out of bowshot range of the citadel. The roped men came to a halt behind them, and they stood with downcast heads, full of shame, Menesarkus thought, looking like children who been caught doing something bad and were now getting punished. The enemy hoplites fanned out in a phalanx formation and stood still.

  A lone Spartan stepped from the mass of carts, prisoners, and warriors and made his way up the road toward the gates, striding alone and without a hint of fear. Even from this distance Menesarkus recognized the familiar gait of his old comrade from the Persian Wars. The man whom Menesarkus had fought in a pankration match in Sparta: a match without rules, fought in the Spartan way—a match in which he’d bitten off the Spartan warrior’s nose to force him to release his death grip on Menesarkus’s balls.

  Drako the Skull.

  The Spartan general sauntered right up to the gates and pounded on the oak planks as if he were knocking on the door to Menesarkus’s farmhouse.

  “What do you want?” Menesarkus called down unceremoniously.

  Drako craned his neck toward the voice. “Ah, Menesarkus,” he said. “The fortress of the Three Heads is taken. We bring your dead so you can bury them.”

  “Gods, no!” uttered the lookout. “Those are Plataean corpses in the carts!”

  “Shut up!” hissed Menesarkus. He scratched his beard and peered into the distance, in the direction of the Three Heads—the fortress guarding the narrow pass through the Kithaerons. This was a disaster! The Spartans had succeeded in taking a fort the Plataeans had always thought was impenetrable. With this crucial stronghold in Spartan hands, Menesarkus realized with a sinking heart, the Plataean emissaries would not be able to return from their mission to Athens by the shortest path. And neither would Nikias, for that matter. They would have to take an alternate route by sea that could take many days or even weeks.

  “I’m coming down, Drako,” Menesarkus said in a booming voice, then turned and clambered down the stairs to the ground level, followed by Chusor. His knee ached with every step.

  When he got to the bottom of the tower he went out the door and paused in the area in front of the gates. The throng of men had stopped work on the interior bastion wall and were milling about near the sally port door that was locked and guarded by armed warriors.

  “Open the door!” commanded Menesarkus. “Let me through.”

  “But Arkon!” protested the guard. “There’s a Spartan—”

  “Open the damned sally port,” barked Menesarkus. “There’s only one Spartan out there.”

  “But you’re unarmed!”

  Menesarkus whacked the guardsman on the side of the head with his staff. “Weapon in hand,” he said.

  The guards unbarred the door and Menesarkus stepped outside the walls and went straight up to Drako, stopping a few feet away. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time.

  “There are forty-three bodies,” said Drako. “They all died fighting. None were put to death, as you will clearly see from their wounds. We took another twenty-one Plataeans prisoner.” He gestured with his thumb at the roped and naked men standing listlessly in front of the Spartan phalanx.

  Menesarkus was speechless. The dead Plataean warriors were a hard loss, but to see twenty-one prisoners in the clutches of the Spartans was worse. “And what are you going to do with our brothers?” he asked at last.

  “I will trade them,” said Drako.

  “Trade them for what?” asked Menesarkus.

  “Prince Arkilokus.”

  “Are you still missing your precious royal?” asked Menesarkus in a mocking voice. “Perhaps he went whoring in Thebes.”

  “Come, Menesarkus, old friend,” said Drako. “Do not lie anymore. There is no place else he could be. He foolishly went riding alone that day. Your men must have captured him.”

  Menesarkus smiled wryly. “And if I had your prince, why would I trade him for a mere twenty-one men? That’s not a fair trade at all for a man who must be worth his weight in gold.”

  “If you wish to see your men again,” said Drako, “you will give up Arkilokus. Otherwise those warriors will be sent to Sparta as slaves and you will never see them again.”

  “I’ll make you a bargain,” raged Menesarkus, spit flying from his mouth in fury. “I’ll trade you Arkilokus’s ten fingers and toes and his cock for those twenty-one men. One piece of the prince per man.”

  “You would not do such a thing to your own grandson,” said Drako.

  “He may be my flesh and blood,” said Menesarkus. “But he’s a Spartan. And I’ll skin him alive with my own knife if I must.”

  The two men locked eyes. Drako cocked his head and raised one eyebrow. “I do believe you would skin Arkilokus alive,” he said with admiration. He turned his head and whistled. The Helots started pulling the carts toward the walls.

  “Stop the Helots!” said Menesarkus. “Tell your slaves to leave our dead where they are. We will carry them into the city in honor. And if you do not leave me the prisoners, I will go get you Arkilokus’s signet ring right now with the finger attached to show you that I am serious, and then you’ll have your proof that I’ve got him.”

  Drako smiled and, turning to his men, held up one hand, giving a quick signal in Spartan battle code. Twenty Spartan warriors drew their long daggers and moved menacingly toward the prisoners, and Menesarkus suppressed the urge to cry out. Each of the Spartans grabbed a prisoner’s bound hands with one hand, raised his blade … and cut through the bonds, setting the Plataean free.

  Menesarkus swallowed the lump in his throat and forced himself to breathe again.

  “I intended to give them back all along,” said Drako with a mirthless smile. “And now I know that Arkilokus lives and is your prisoner. Take care of him, Menesarkus. When we storm the citadel we will expect to find him alive and unharmed. Or else every single man, woman, and child in Plataea will
pay for his one death. For that is how much a Spartan prince is worth to us.” He turned around and marched back toward his waiting hoplites.

  Menesarkus cursed himself for an old fool. Drako had played him like a harp. He’d used the threat of sending the prisoners to Sparta merely as a ruse to trick him into revealing that he did indeed have Arkilokus.

  “Open the gates!” he ordered.

  The gates slowly opened and Menesarkus turned to look into the citadel. Thousands of men and women were now standing there, staring at him with anticipation.

  He looked back toward the Spartans. The enemy and their Helots were already marching away, back toward the Persian Fort.

  The survivors of the Three Heads started pulling the corpses of their brothers from the carts, carrying them across the field and laying them in front of the gates. Many of the freed warriors were weeping, and almost all had bloody wounds, but they did not rest until they had brought all of the dead to the walls of Plataea.

  “Hold up your heads,” Menesarkus said to the naked warriors, his voice strained with emotion. “Any honor you lost at the Three Heads you will regain in the coming siege. Thank the gods you’ve been blessed to live to fight the enemy another day.”

  As he stood watching the men he heard the sound of a horse’s hooves on the rocky ground behind him. He turned and saw Photine walking toward him, breathing hard through her nostrils, tail swishing in agitation, a wild look in her eyes. But she seemed to recognize Menesarkus and bowed her head slightly as if in greeting. She still wore her bridle but the reins had been torn loose. And her haunch was streaked with blood from a wound that looked like claw marks. It had been three days since Nikias had left Plataea on his foolhardy quest to Athens, and now his horse had returned riderless, apparently having come over the Kithaerons from Megarian territory. What had happened to the lad? Had he been killed by a mountain lion? Attacked by Dog Raiders?

  “Come … come here, girl,” Menesarkus said in a voice breaking with emotion. He reached out a trembling hand to seize her noseband, but she whinnied and tossed her head, then bolted in the direction of their ruined farm. He glanced over at Chusor, who stood next to him, watching Photine disappear down the road. Then the smith hung his head low and went back into the citadel.

  TWELVE

  Nikias stood on the shore of the Piraeus harbor amidst an armada of beached black warships: a dozen triple-decked galleys as big as temples, and twice as many sleek dispatch ships with single masts sat on the rocky shore. The triremes were built with copper-covered rams projecting from their prows like strange beaks, and all had ornate eyes painted on their prows: the sight of these beached ships brought to mind a throng of forlorn sea monsters that had been stranded at high tide.

  “They bring them on to the beach at night to keep the hulls from becoming waterlogged,” said General Agape at Nikias’s side. “The fir planks soak up water and make them slow. A triple-decker can lose two and a half knots speed if it’s left in the water overnight. Now the Persians make their hulls out of the wood of…”

  Nikias rolled his eyes and tried to ignore the older man’s voice, listening instead to a multitude of noises: the cries of birds, the shouts of men, the sounds of hammers and adzes from the nearby shipyard, and the splash of waves. There were thousands of men at work unloading sacks from a massive grain ship that had just arrived from Sicily.

  General Agape had been talking nonstop since Nikias had met up with the Plataean emissaries at the port half an hour ago. Back in Plataea the young people referred to the man as “General Windbag” because he never seemed to stop talking or offering advice.

  Nikias was relieved that Krates, the other emissary whom his grandfather had sent to Athens, had virtually ignored him since they had come face-to-face on the beach. Agape had been flabbergasted but pleasantly surprised to find Nikias in Athens, but Krates had been furious and scornful, promising him that Nikias’s grandfather, the Arkon, would flay his hide for running away from Plataea and interfering with the mission. Nikias and the weather-beaten stonemason had never gotten along. Even when Nikias was a little boy Krates had treated him with disdain, calling Nikias arrogant and a bad influence on his friends.

  “Ah, the triple-decker’s crew is all assembled now,” said Agape. “Observe this maneuver now, lad. It’s a thing of beauty.”

  Nikias watched as a crew of three hundred oarsmen moved into position on either side of one of the ships, gripping the hull along the waterline and pushing it the two hundred feet into the bay with a magnificent ease and efficiency. The noise of the wood scraping on stones cut through the air, and then the ship was in the water with a great splash. The crew climbed on board, swarming over the sides like insects, moving to their seats along the three decks and taking hold of the oars. Within thirty seconds of the warship moving onto the water the oars stroked backward in unison and the ship moved away from the shore.

  Nikias turned his gaze farther up the beach to where a smaller crew carried a fifty-man dispatch vessel to the water. Nikias could see Phoenix standing on the ship, barking out orders.

  “That one is a scrupulous captain,” said Agape, pointing at Phoenix. “You’ll notice his men are carrying the boat so the hull does not get a single scrape.”

  “That’s my cousin Phoenix,” said Nikias.

  “And he is the one who introduced you to General Perikles?” asked Krates with disdain.

  “Yes,” said Nikias. “He’s the captain of Perikles’s own ship—the Sea Nymph.”

  “Hmmph,” said Krates under his breath. Nikias reckoned Krates must be fuming that their mission to Perikles had failed. The Athenian general had refused to give the Plataeans permission to parlay with the Spartans, and then he’d sent them packing.

  “Your meeting was illuminating, then?” asked the old man.

  “Perikles is a great leader,” Nikias said.

  “He told you nothing of import? Anything you would like to share with us?”

  “No.”

  “And yet we are to be delivered to Delphinium with such urgency,” said Krates in a scoffing tone. “In Perikles’s own personal dispatch vessel? This is such a high honor for a pair of old emissaries who were given no more than ten minutes of the general’s precious time and sent away like naughty schoolboys.”

  Nikias shrugged. He wasn’t about to reveal to Krates the message that Perikles had given him to deliver to his grandfather. He felt proud that he had been selected by the Athenian general to bring this information—a message that Perikles had entrusted to him and not to the emissaries.

  “We were told this dispatch vessel can make seventy sea miles per day,” said Agape. “It’s one of the fastest in the fleet.”

  “It’s two and a half days of hard rowing to Delphinium if we’re lucky,” said Krates. “If this weather holds. And then we’ll have two days of hard riding to Plataea near enemy territory.”

  “Nikias is a good rider,” said Agape. “He won’t slow us down, I’m sure. Even with one arm in a sling.”

  “That’s not the point I was getting at,” fumed Krates.

  Nikias glanced behind him where the six Plataean cavalrymen who had escorted Agape and Krates to Athens stood. They were dressed in tunics, holding their light armor and weapons in leather sacks. He was glad these warriors were with them. He’d known all of them his entire life and they were battle-hardened hoplites and good riders. Nikias would not have relished the notion of riding near Theban territory with just Agape and Krates. They had both been capable warriors in their primes, though Agape was a little stout to be a fast rider, and Krates was in his late eighties and becoming feeble.

  “We can go now,” said Agape, pointing at the dock that stretched into the bay. The dispatch vessel had rowed over to the dock and waited for the Plataeans to board.

  Krates walked quickly on his bandy old legs toward the dock, followed by General Agape. Nikias fell in line with the cavalrymen. One of them, a man in his early thirties named Teuker, flashed a smile at N
ikias behind his black beard.

  “So what happened to your arm, Nik?” he asked.

  “Photine,” said Nikias, shamefaced. The other riders laughed.

  “That white mare of yours will get you killed one day,” replied Teuker.

  “But she’s the fastest thing in the Oxlands,” said another one of the cavalrymen. “I couldn’t keep up with you when you charged the Thebans!”

  A big warrior named Alexandros slapped Nikias on the back. “I’m glad you’re with us,” he said. “Nikias brought us luck against the Thebans,” he announced to the others, “and he’ll bring us luck on this journey back home.”

  Nikias was pleased. Krates might be scornful of his presence in Athens, but these warriors were glad to have him.

  “Why did you come to Athens, anyway?” asked Teuker under his breath. “Did your grandfather send you on a special mission?”

  “Long story,” said Nikias. “I’m just glad to be going home.”

  “Have you ever been on a lengthy sea voyage?” asked Teuker.

  “No,” said Nikias. “Just on a little sailboat in the Bay of Korinth. Like that one,” he added, pointing to a small, dilapidated sailboat an old fisherman was pushing from the shore into the water.

  “You might not be so glad an hour from now,” replied Teuker.

  As Nikias walked across the gangplank with the others Phoenix grabbed him by the arm and hissed in his ear, “Stay out of the way, cousin. And don’t fall overboard.”

  Nikias made his way down the aisle between the two sides of the Sea Nymph’s oarsmen. He recognized most of the men—Phoenix’s crew from the inn. They stared straight ahead, sitting stone-faced, as if steeling themselves for a long fight. He noticed that every mariner had his cushion under his arse and this made him smile.