The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  Instead, the modern Spartan warrior relied for protection on the shields of his countrymen. Zeuxippos gave him a newly fashioned design—three feet wide, with a prestressed hardwood core and a front of beaten bronze. While it was still common in those years to see individual insignias on shields, Antalcidas’ new model bore the emerging standard for the Spartan army, the bold red Λ, for “Lacedaemon.” His patron never explained why he could bear to part with his old spear and sword but not his original shield, but Antalcidas could well guess the reason: as the shield was worn on the left arm, it was designed to protect not only the wearer but also his immediate neighbor on the left. More than any other piece of equipment, then, the shield represented the sacred compact of each warrior with his comrades in the line. In Spartan houses it was not uncommon to find a sword used for gutting fish or a spear stuck in the ground to hold open a door. An old warrior’s shield, however, was always proudly displayed over the hearth.

  Voting for new members of a dining group occurred after the meal but before the wine flowed. Those wishing to advocate for or against the applicant were asked to state their case. Then bread was distributed to the diners, with a helot assigned to walk around the room with a bowl. Those voting for admission tossed one piece of bread into the vessel; those casting a veto squeezed the bread before dropping it. By the end, if there was even one pinched piece in the bowl the candidate was rejected—or in the vernacular, he was “bread-bowled.” The confidentiality of the voting varied from group to group, with some encouraging all to speak openly about their preferences, and others going so far to assure secrecy that they made the helot go around with the bowl balanced on her head, so no one could see the ballots already in it. A young man could stand for membership in as many messes as he cared, though news of rejection tended to get around, damaging his prospects elsewhere.

  Antalcidas had just returned from maneuvers in Messenia when he was surprised to learn that the Spit Companions had already voted on him. He was bread-bowled by a single ballot. Zeuxippos was more angry about the slight than Antalcidas, for he had sponsored his candidacy and spoken in favor of him before the vote.

  “Mark my words, if it’s the last thing I’ll do I’ll find out who insulted you!” the old man raged.

  Antalcidas’ knowledge of his servile origins had the effect of tempering his expectations. “No need,” he said.

  “I can’t think it was Isidas, or the king,” Zeuxippos went on, oblivious to Antalcidas’ presence. “Eudamidas owes me for admitting Herippidas. So it must have been Damonon, that little climber!”

  “No matter.”

  “Did you know that Damonon had been promised Thibron’s cousin? I only heard about it after you came to the table. But the veto is not supposed to be used for settling petty scores! Really, it is a scandal! What is this city coming to, I ask you, when our traditions are abused in this way?”

  “I see,” replied Antalcidas, unable to rouse himself to disappointment. Nor did he feel any particular sense of alarm, considering that the Companions was the only group to invite him as a guest. His indifference melted only later, when Zeuxippos told him the results of another vote: it seems that Isidas, Damonon, Eudamidas, and Co. did see fit to admit an old acquaintance of his. It was Frog—stupid, hapless Frog from his boyhood pack—that merited a place at that eminent table.

  Without membership in a dining group Antalcidas could not be nominated for the King’s Knights. He was likewise passed over for service in the Hidden Service, though the idea of creeping around by night for the privilege of ambushing helots never held much appeal for him. The possibility that he might unknowingly eliminate a member of his father’s family filled him with painful ambivalence.

  At this point Zeuxippos promised to find him another mess, but Antalcidas preferred to hear nothing more about it. He found himself daydreaming instead about life as a mercenary, traveling to Asia and Africa, hiring himself out to kings and tyrants to bring Lacedaemonian-style discipline to the foreigners. In his more grandiose moments he even imagined bringing his troops back to invade Laconia, at long last seizing the respect his countrymen begrudged him. No one would laugh then at his questions about diplomacy; Thibron’s exile would be a faint memory, and they would never, ever call him “Stone.”

  10.

  Scant weeks later he saw his first combat on the borders of Arcadia. That rustic backwater, situated in the heart of the Peloponnese, had long been dangerous ground for the armies of civilized Greeks. The Lacedaemonians maintained a string of satellite towns, such as in Sciritis and Thyreatis, that acted as buffers against incursions by Arcadian raiders. These places were populated by noncitizen Nigh-dwellers who kept their local autonomy in exchange for their military service. In the last two centuries or so, which counted as “recently” in the Spartan mind, a policy took shape that sought to reduce Arcadia, like Messenia, to a helotized province. This ambition was never a matter of open discussion in the Gerousia or in the elite messes—the campaign just seemed to gather momentum on its own, as ambitious Spartiates were drawn north to take part in the manifest destiny of their people.

  But Arcadia did not resemble the gently rolling arable of Messenia. Its periphery was torturous, with mountains stacked shoulder to shoulder, slashing and unpredictable rivers, and winding valleys so steep they seemed submerged in perpetual shadow. It was a place where to take a wrong turn on a path was like sinking in the sea; over the years entire columns of Spartiates and Nigh-dwellers had gone down certain tracks, never to be heard from again. Inside its sentinel peaks the Arcadian landscape was lush, sun-dappled, somnolent. The meadows were innocent of buildings or the plow, the grottoes fathomless and haunted, the old trees decorated with frightful faces by anonymous carvers. It was confidently held that tribes of talking wolves dwelled there, and Amazons, and Centaurs; some said that goat-footed Pan, ever ready to afflict intruders with lust or terror, still gathered reeds for his beloved syrinx along Arcadian streams.

  The Arcadians themselves were notorious for their independence. It never seemed to occur to them to concede defeat when armies came to burn their settlements; their talent for treachery made all invaders feel perpetually surrounded. The few individuals the Lacedaemonians managed to helotize turned out to be liabilities, either running away or inciting the Messenians to defiance. It was fortunate for those Spartiates who coveted estates in Arcadia that their plan of conquest was never officially debated. If it had, it would have become obvious how bad the idea was.

  Antalcidas was blooded at last in a haphazard action in the north of Sciritis. He was part of a border patrol of thirty-two other recent graduates of the Rearing that included, by chance, his old packmates Redhead and Cheese. In command was a young Spartiate named Praxitas who was anxious to make his reputation on the frontier, but whose single accomplishment so far was to grow his beard to a precocious length. Antalcidas, by contrast, had a growth of only a few fingerwidths, and had yet to be elected to a dining group.

  A messenger from the Sciritan town of Asea encountered them on the road. Someone had stolen a dozen head of oxen from the pastures. When the Nigh-dwellers set out to find them, they were am-bushed by Arcadians with slings. A handful of Sciritai were killed, and the thieves were still in the vicinity.

  “How many are there?” Praxitas asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure.”

  “Sounds like a job we can handle,” Praxitas concluded.

  As the Arcadians had not even bothered to remove the cowbells from the rustled oxen, they were not hard to find. They were making their way up a narrow track into the mountains. The ragged group of twenty or so, dressed in everything from goatskins to stolen tunics of the Nigh-dwellers, seemed high-spirited as they turned to defend the herd. The distinctive crimson and bronze of the Lacedaemonians did nothing to faze them. Praxitas, who had led the patrol so far with a look of iron determination, was somehow surprised as the Arcadia
ns took up positions to use their slings. It fell to Antalcidas to summon the attendants to bring up the troops’ shields and spears. Doulos, who seemed a full foot shorter than any of the other helots, straggled to deliver his master’s panoply.

  “By the gods you are slow!” Antalcidas chided him as he took up his arms. The logical rejoinder, of course, was that hoplites had attendants precisely because it was a burden to carry the equipment for long distances. But helots, alas, did not make rejoinders.

  Antalcidas had just fitted his headgear, a conical bronze helmet of the “pilos” shape, when the first shots from the Arcadian slings flew past his ear. The Lacedaemonians instantly assembled in close order, locking their shields to present an unbroken front of metal. The slingers concentrated on this target, popping stones off the yard-wide faces of bronze like raindrops in a summer downpour. Crouching behind, the hoplites looked to Praxitas, who issued no orders but stared into the cave of his shield as if expecting a voice to emanate from it.

  “Praxitas, what’s the plan?” asked the shakeyvoiced Redhead.

  “Stay here, until they run out of stones.”

  Redhead looked to Antalcidas, who said nothing. It was obvious to all—except Praxitas—that the hill the Arcadians held was carpeted with a supply of smooth rocks perfect for slinging. To directly contradict a commander in the field, however, was a grave offense that, in the chaos it invited, brought deeper shame than losing the battle.

  All this suddenly changed when a stone cracked through Praxitas’ shield. The shot only just penetrated, and bounced weakly off the horsehair brush of his helmet. The shock, though, seemed to sink their commander deeper into a state of immobility. Antalcidas risked a peek around his shield: one slinger had fired at them from twenty yards, and more were edging closer. In a few minutes their shields would be of no use.

  “Praxitas, what do we do?” a man asked from the end of the line.

  “Should we attack?” asked another.

  “Don’t be a fool! Any closer and the stones will go right through!” snapped a third.

  “If we wait any longer they will anyway!” Cheese retorted.

  “Praxitas!”

  Fragments of wood and metal flew from the rims of their shields. Antalcidas looked to Praxitas, who had opened his mouth like someone trying to remember a long-forgotten tune. Without thinking, saying nothing but a short prayer to the Twins, Antalcidas burst out the line and charged with spear lowered at the nearest Arcadian. The slinger, who was dressed in a goatskin tunic festooned with freshly severed human ears, was winding up his next throw when he saw Antalcidas. He fired a low shot that Stone somehow anticipated and hurdled. As the other slingers stood frozen, unwilling to shoot so close to their comrade, Antalcidas closed and buried his spear in the slinger’s chest.

  There was a pause on both sides as the tableau lingered: the slinger run through, his weapon hung limply at his side, as Antalcidas stood there, perfect in his thrusting form. With his eyes locked on the terrified, flashing whites of his victim, he gave the requisite twist of the spearhead, which made a sound like the crack of walnut shells as the metal tore gut and tendon. Antalcidas heard distant cheers, and the whistle around him of more stones from the Arcadians. Nothing hit him as the rest of the Lacedaemonians followed up his attack, forcing the enemy to fire from on the run.

  They took down a second Arcadian who stumbled over a rock. The rest escaped, but it hardly mattered—all the cattle were recovered, and the patrol could display two dead thieves for the satisfaction of the Nigh-dwellers of Asea.

  Antalcidas had long imagined how he would feel after he had taken his first adversary in battle. The achievement left him more puzzled than thrilled: in killing his man, he had snuffed out a life with as much claim to air and water and the light of the sun as his own. And yet there were no trumpets, no exultancy, no feasting on the soul of the vanquished. The moment lacked even the occult electricity of animal sacrifice, pregnant with mystery. Killing a man, he found, was hard work, like slaughtering an ox, but without the reward of yielding a good meal in the end.

  The other young men, with the exception of Praxitas, stood around eyeing Antalcidas in sidelong fashion. Their expressions were of bemused wonder, as if they had seen a lesson in training perfectly and unexpectedly proven useful in real life. A rush on the double, after all, was the standard counterstroke to a missile attack. They had heard this tactic described during the Rearing many times, but in the instant it was most necessary only one of them, Antalcidas, remembered it.

  Yet when they got back to the city, the agreed version had somehow changed. Their examiner was Alcander, the elder who had, years before, joined his colleagues to save the infant Antalcidas from the Taygetos gorge. As the old man peered over the top of his staff, Praxitas described how, after his shield was holed, it was none other than Praxitas himself who ordered the slingers charged on the double. His platoon-mates stayed silent, but Alcander must have sensed their discomfort. He spoke for the first time, asking, “Antalcidas, son of Molobrus, tell me: do you agree with Praxitas’ version?”

  Suspecting betrayal, Praxitas stared hard at Stone. For unless someone had fed the truth to Alcander before the examination, why would the old man invite Antalcidas, in particular, to confirm his story?

  Antalcidas stepped forward at attention. His eyes shifting to Praxitas and back, he gave his unswerving reply:

  “I support my commander’s account.”

  “But is it true?” the other pressed.

  “It is true.”

  To which Alcander smiled, but said nothing more.

  On those rare occasions when he was not training or on the march, Antalcidas visited his homestead. It was not in him to wax sentimental for pretty landscapes as such; the pastoralism of the citified Romans was still far in the future, and modern romanticism centuries beyond. Still, he felt a certain reassurance in the placement of a great oak on the south wall of the house, where it cast a cooling shadow and, as necessary, presented a more inviting target for the Thunderer than his thatched roof. The line of cypresses along the ridge suggested the comforting image of a mightly phalanx on the march. Though the lands were not extensive, he had an unusual variety of flora on them. In addition to the grain fields, there were stands of palm, pomegranate, myrtle, poplar, and laurel; the scents of basil, purple thyme, and rosemary wafting from the hillside, oleander from the stream bottoms and, in between, acanthus lofting their spires like upturned spears.

  As the manager of the property lived in the helot village beyond the hill, no one was staying in the farmhouse. Antalcidas found himself wandering through its rooms, inwardly decorating it with a wife and children. His spouse was the blond girl he had glimpsed in the festival chorus—though it had been so long, and his look at her so brief, that he could not be sure his image was more invention than reality. The effort to conjure her appearance frustrated him; what perishable things, he found, were memories of faces.

  As he came out into the daylight he saw, in the distance, a litter borne by four helots. This was certainly his mother on an inspection tour of her estate. Since the testy encounter at Orthia they had not spoken; their only communication was to pass legal documents for the gift of his portion, and over the state registration of Doulos’ transfer to his use. And while what she had told him of his parentage was never far from his mind, it didn’t preoccupy him. As all Lacedaemonians were taught, such things were in the nature of unalterable facts that, like Fate itself, were profitless to dwell upon.

  He did wonder about his mother’s influence when he was finally elected to a mess. He was admitted to the Hill Wolves, a club of deep antiquity that was long past the height of its prestige. Still, it did boast one recent member of great renown: Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, hero of the battle against the Persians at Plataea. To be sure, this man later fell in with barbarian ways, and so disgraced himself that he was forced to take refuge from punishment in the Brazen House. The ephors, unwilling to violate the sanctuary, ordered
him walled into the temple alive. So momentous was Pausanias’ victory at Plataea, however, that he was posthumously rehabilitated and given a fine, named tomb.

  If Damatria had anything to do with Antalcidas’ election, it could not have been due to her alone. One of the better known of the Wolves was Alcander—the elder who had questioned him after the Arcadian affair. On his first night as a member, Antalcidas was embarrassed when Alcander retold the story in terms favorable to him. Meanwhile he could not help but notice that Praxitas, for one reason or another, was never granted another unsupervised command.

  These were the thoughts that immersed him as he walked along the road to the army’s encampment. At first he didn’t notice a solitary figure waiting for him at the wayside, leaning against a tree. Antalcidas’ hand found its way to his sword as the stranger, dressed in the billowing black cloak, stepped out of the shadows.

  “Antalcidas,” the other said.

  The voice, though deepened with age, was unmistakable.

  “What do you want?”

  “Is that any way for an Equal to greet a brother?”

  “I’m not an Equal yet.”

  Epitadas flicked his head sideways as if to say that his elevation was only a formality. And in fact, with Antalcidas’ membership in the Hill Wolves, he was right.