XXI
DISASTER ON EPIPOLAE
Ten thousand went up at the second watch of the night, heavy infantry and marines packing four days' rations (for we were meant to take the counterwall and hold it), with ten thousand missile troops in support. That left no force at all, except the sailors and the general crowd, to defend the perimeter against a counterattack aimed at the fleet. The game, Demosthenes believed, was worth the gamble. He massed all he had and threw it at Gylippus.
I felt confident the assault would succeed; what struck terror was concern for my cousin. He was no soldier, and anything could happen up on those rocks, particularly in the dark and in a unit of dismounted cavalry untrained in armored assault and in no shape to hump that hill. Worse, Simon's commanding officer, Apsephion, a moron we both knew from Acharnae, had, seeking to play the hero, succeeded in getting his boys slotted in where the action would be hottest-the western approach via Euryalus, the Park Way, where the slope was most exposed and the enemy position most heavily fortified.
They would be in the third wave, my cousin's horseless cavalry, under the general Menander. Lion and I were in the first, the left wing, behind the Argive and Messenian heavy infantry, eleven hundred in all, with four hundred light troops, darters of Thurii and Metapontum, in support. The center, once it re-formed up top, would be all-Athenian, the tribal regiments of Leontis and Aegeis, both crack units with their own peltasts and incendiaries.
On their left were the mercenary troops, including Telamon's Arcadians, supported by two hundred Corcyrean marines serving as javelineers, then another picked Athenian regiment, the Erechtheis. Linking this to our wing were four hundred Andrian, Naxian, and Etruscan marines armored as hoplites, my own among them, with a hundred Cretan archers and fifty darters of the Messapian tribe of Iapygia. The heavy units would assault the walls, with the missile troops immediately to the rear, firing overhead to clear the ramparts.
Topside, the troops' name for Epipolae, is several hundred feet up, crumbly white limestone with scrub oak and fireweed, sheer on three sides except the west, where it is steep but climbable.
There is a racetrack called the Polyduceum at this end, the last flat space of any scale, and upon this the assault troops marshaled during the first watch of the night. A light-armed force of two hundred rangers had already started up the Heights. It was their job to rope the face and secure the precipice.
The night was hot and dark as a tomb. The troops had been awake all day, keyed-up and impatient; few had slept for fear the previous night. Each man packed fifty pounds in shield, helmet, and breastplate and another forty of ironmongery and kit, for our orders were to take the counterwall and rebuild our own. We had all our masons and carpenters with us. Now massing on the marshaling ground, men sheeted sweat, crapped out at all postures, pillowing their heads on shields, stones, and each other's sprawling limbs. Many discarded helmets, for the heat and vision in the dark; others shed breastplates and greaves. The god Fear had made his entrance. Across the field one descried men evacuating bowels and emptying bladders.
"It's starting to smell like a battle,” Lion observed.
Our cousin Simon appeared. He had spotted us passing and got leave to call. He was decked in full panoplia, including helmet with horsehair crest. “What happens now?”
“We wait.”
I introduced him round; he knew Chowder from Athens and Splinter, another of our mates, from Phegae near Marathon. “What do you call this?” the latter inquired, indicating Simon's top-brush.
“Affectation,” prompted Chowder. They teased Simon, laughing from nerves.
“Is it hot,” Simon spoke, “or just terror?”
“Both.”
I unballasted his helmet for him.
“Are you scared, Pommo?”
“Petrified.”
Among Lion's notes is this observation: When soldiers seek to name the object of their terror, they rarely cite its true source but some unrelated or even ludicrous corollary.
My cousin had become obsessed with the dread that Lion or I would be slain tonight and not he. This would be infamous, he portrayed, as he deserved it and not we. He was already making vows to change his ways.
“No one's dying,” my brother assured him.
“Right,” seconded Chowder. “We're all immortal.”
When the call came down, I tugged our cousin apart. “It'll be hot Topside; you'll be sweating. Don't take wine, understand?
Only water. Eat every chance you get or you'll cramp. And don't be ashamed to crap yourself. We'll all be scraping mud off our thighs by sunrise.” We could hear the guidon bearers passing the word to assemble; all must form up and dress the line. “You'll be fine, Simon. So will we. We'll take our wine later, with victory.”
The signal came. We went up in column. Even at this hour heat radiated off the west-facing stone, which had been baking all afternoon. There were three tracks, each wide enough for one man; switchbacks turned so tight you could reach up with your capped spearpoint and tap the shields of the column snaking ahead across the face. We could hear shouts and fighting two hundred feet above; word came to advance at the double, as if we could. Up we went, clinging to the roped face, humping full kit plus tool packs and gear bags, shortsword and dagger, nine-footer in the right fist, ox hide skirt beneath the shield to deflect ironheads, plus leathers and battle pack with bread, wine, and waterskin. Sweat slathered; one cooked inside his carapace.
By the time our unit reached the top the rangers and lead units had driven the enemy from the Labdalum fort. We surged onto the flat, remarshaling. “Party hats off!” our captain bawled. We chucked the cornel plugs that protected our mates from getting stabbed accidentally, exposing the spearpoints' steel.
The table atop the Heights measured three miles east to west and just under two at the waist. We must cross it the long way and cross it fast. “Dress the line!” “Take your water now.” Of Pandora's original sixteen marines we had lost nine to disease and action over two years, added ten from depleted units and lost seven of those. Our current eleven had been subsumed under an Etruscan platoon whose captain, though past fifty, was a fire-eater with wrists thick as anchor ropes and hams like an ox. He could lift a mule, they said, though I never saw him do it. “She'll be raining iron soon, lads. Keep the ranks tight, ass hole to belly button, and you might live to chase pussy another day.”
The line stepped off at slung shields. We had dreaded the Labdalum fort, but it had fallen with barely a fight. The front surged forward. Terrain was raw, ascending, broken with dry courses and defiles. In a way it was worse than cleared fields of fire.
Branches caught the bowl of your shield; brush snarled your stride; it was impossible to advance on line. Squads first, then entire platoons faltered to regroup; gaps opened, filled by units from the wing or rear. We saw flames ahead and heard cries.
A whistle cut the darkness. Three Athenian rangers materialized, identified themselves by the password, “Athena Protectress,” and were conducted to Demosthenes' post of march, somewhere off to our right. Our Etruscan dashed off to find it. Men gulped water and dumped rations. Here he came back. The first manned defensive position lay a quarter mile ahead: a stone outwork with a palisade. Forms and timbers had been laid for construction of the wall; the enemy had torched them-that was the blaze we saw-but the wood had gone up too fast, tinder-dry in the heat, and the rest our lads had busted apart. Still the foe was there. He was waiting. The rangers were hard characters, faces blackened, wearing pilos caps and armed only with rabbit-stickers and the Lacedaemonian sickle, the xyele. They were tired now and scared; they wanted wine. Who didn't?
Lion and I set our two files at six and five, with the pair of us up front. It was so hot, sweat coursed from beneath armor with an audible flush; you could hear it sluice onto the limestone, like a dog pissing. When we wrung our undercaps, the liquid gushed as from a sponge. A marine made to ditch his helmet. Our Etruscan cuffed him. “Do you want your brains bashed in?�
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Lion would not let our men loosen their breastplates or rest except on one knee. Wine they could have; we all needed it. Fear was on us now. You could hear it, like a comber at the base of a cliff, as the skins passed hand-to-hand and each ranker gulped the liquid courage which is never enough and, with that breathless overhaste all soldiers know ran through his prayers and superstitions, fingered the charms pended within his shield's bowl and chanted his magic phrases. “Whatever happens, don't break apart. Shield-to-shield all the way to the top.” Lion tugged our eleven about him. “Who runs, better see me dead first.” He meant he would kill that man himself when he got back.
The word came: step off.
I could hear my brother hyperventilating beside me.
“You little lion.”
“Take it to hell.”
The ranks pushed off in silence. The slope was wide now, broken by patches of scrub spruce and fennel. The formation achieved a pace, maintaining the line. Our tread crunched on coals.
Where was the foe? We had gone a hundred yards. One fifty.
Suddenly a crock of flaming naphtha pealed out of the dark and shattered, slinging fire. “There they are!” an enemy voice cried ahead.
With a shout the line bellied forward, elevating shields to high port. Fire flared underfoot, embers and brands of the foe's blazes.
The hair of one's legs caught and sizzled; already terror made each man edge right, to the shelter of his mate's shield. “Upfield!” Lion bellowed. Advance straight!
Now each hunkered and fanned at the trapezius, seating the nasal and cheek pieces of his helmet against the sweat stain at the upper rim of his shield, eye slits alone exposed for vision, or such purblind daze as the infantryman calls by that name, and locked bronze to bronze, bracing to receive the onslaught that must come, and soon. We could hear the first projectiles ringing off aspides fore and aft. Each man's left shoulder set into the concavity at the upper rim of the shield. Simultaneously his right fist, clutching his nine-footer at the upright, seized as well the hempen grip cord at the right of the inner bowl and, using the shaft of his spear as a brace, secured it by its two iron collars to the outboard edge of the shield, locking it against the concussion to come. Every sinew from heel to crown tensed within the swinging, lengthening stride.
Now came the storm of rock and bullets. “On, boys! They're only pebbles!” “Courage, men! Strong knees!”
As a trekker on the crestline plants his soles and leans, shoulders drawn, into a hailstorm, so the attackers' ranks waded against the gale of stone and lead.
“Who'll be a brave man?”
“Who'll strike the foe first?”
Ahead in the fire-flare: archers.
“Toothpicks!”
Ironheads drummed into the bronze facings of the shields, caromed off the upright spears above. The aspides of the front ranks filled like quill cushions with the enemy's shafts, which ripped through the bronze to bury in the oak chassis beneath, thick as a kitchen cutting board and as impenetrable. One heard the rebounds clatter at his feet and the misses screaming overhead.
“Keep moving!” Lion bawled. All were shouting now, as men called upon heaven and advanced into the rain of death.
Here came moonrise.
We could see the rampart ahead.
“Javelins!”
The marine at my shoulder cried once and dropped. Now descended the fusillade of sheathed ash. There was no wind, so the shafts came on warhead-foremost, no deflection. Lion went down beneath a thunderous strike. “I'm all right!” He hauled to his feet beside me. A second hit. I fell. “Get up, you son of a whore!”
The line is everything.
Terror must not break it; one must not flee.
The line is everything.
Fury must not break it; one must not dash forward.
The line is everything. If it holds we live; if it breaks we die.
“I hate this! I hate this!” Lion was roaring. The enemy broke before we hit them. Our line poured over. Men were cheering.
“Shut up! Break up the fires!”
The Etruscan rallied our mob into a perimeter against counterattack. Exhaustion hit like a maw!. You could hear helmets clatter against the limestone and the crash of shield and kit as they fell.
“On your feet! Facing out! Stay in ranks!”
We had taken the first fort. The second took two more hours, and nearly broke our backs with heat and fatigue. Of six fallen in our platoon, only two were lost to wounds. The others were groin and hamstring pulls, broken bones, mishaps of weariness and thirst, plunges into defiles in the dark. We were all cramping terribly. All construction gear had long since been dumped; we would send parties for it later.
Rumors pealed along the line. Our companies attacking from the Circle fort had been routed; Gylippus had led another five thousand from the city; he held the counterwall, the final position we must seize and occupy. True or not, this report fired the troops with vigor. Nail that beansucker and Syracuse is taken. We slugged water and wine and strapped up to move.
This second bastion was not yet Chalk Hill, not the linked series of redoubts the foe had built last autumn when he drove us off the Heights, but a new one, higher-walled and at the peak of a steeper slope. The enemy had thousands here; it must be stormed.
He had cleared fields of fire to two hundred yards and spiked this expanse with bales of faggots, doused with pitch. Mounds of thorn had been piled on both flanks to channel attackers into the missile troops' killing zone. These our incendiaries set ablaze. A yellow moon burned through the haze. The order came to hold till the obstacles burned down. But the troops could not contain themselves, from fever for the fight, fear of Gylippus' reinforcements, or apprehension spawned by their own blood-sapping fatigue. The ranks piled unordered into the inferno, using shields to plough apart the blazing packets, while the enemy concentrated fire on the avenues down which the Athenians, Argives, and allies now advanced.
Our brigade was second from the front. The first hundred hit the wall. Its face was stone, bristling with stakes. From the crown the enemy rolled boulders. We turtled up, shields across backs, tearing at the stones with our bare hands. The light troops raced up behind. You could hear their shafts and sling bullets shrieking overhead. A boulder from above hit me square in the spine, pounding me into the spiked wall. The stones were knitted too tight to tear. “Climb!” all were shouting. A body fell on me. Some whore's son drilled by our archers. I tried to mount, keeping him on my shielded back. The bugger came to life! I felt fingers claw my sockets and heard the scrape of a blade seeking my throat. I jammed the flange of my helmet down, sealing the seam against the cuirass, and rose with the strength of terror. He went limp, shot by his own from above.
“Climb!” Lion was screaming beside me. I saw, or felt, his stumpy form clamber up the face. Shame seized me. I mounted beside him. The defenders were dumping flaming pitch on us. Up we went. They backed before their own blaze. Our javelineers poured volleys into the enemy atop the wall. As I hit the crest, a man rose before me swinging a gut-cutter; I lowered and butted him. We plunged entwined. He had no helmet; I bashed in his skull with my bronze. I heard cheering. The second companies surged past, spewing sweat and spit as they fell on the backs of the fleeing foe. I sank to all fours on the smoking stone.
“Lion!”
“Here, brother!”
We jacked helmets back, enough to confirm each other's survival, and collapsed from relief and exhaustion.
The moon stood full up now. The men rallied, surging over this second fort. “Get up, get up!” We must not yield to fatigue, not while the counterwall stood and Gylippus had time to fortify it with more troops. The men had been climbing and fighting four hours. The night had not cooled one iota. The troops' tongues hung like dogs.
We heard Argive accents. A colonel of the elite Thousand burst from the darkness. He was closing up the line. “One more rock to take!”
The call came for officers. Lion was puking
and cramping, so I went. Demosthenes was there. His brigade had started up before ours, against the fort at Labdalum; either he or we were completely out of order. His lieutenants directed the men to eat, but who could choke down bread absent wine or water?
The troops are spent, sir, one captain reported. The third wave is still behind us, mounting from Euryalus; should he hold here and let them take the advance?
Demosthenes stared as if the man had gone mad.
“The moon is up. We take this shithole now.”
A colonel said he didn't know if his men could do it.
“The men don't tell you what can be done,” Demosthenes roared.
“You tell them!”
The commander could see his officers were reeling. They had all drunk too much wine, and though fear and exertion had sweated most out, yet the grape's fire had taken a toll on the blood, like a two-day drunk, bringing on that state of bone-weariness that no measure of will may overcome.
“Gather, cousins.” Demosthenes mustered the officers like a father his sons. “I know the men are exhausted. Can you think I don't feel it too? But we must seize the Chalk Fort. No other outcome is acceptable.
“If we fail tonight, Gylippus will drive us off the Heights tomorrow. Then we're back where we started, and worse because the enemy will believe nothing beyond his power. But the Chalk Fort taken this night turns all in our favor. The counterwall will fall; the city will be invested. Brace up, men. We can't give the foe time. Finish him now and get this trick over!”
But Gylippus did not wait for our attack. Putting the counterwall at his back, he led his troops straight for the marshaling Athenians. We heard their paean and raced back to our places. Lion already had our marines moving. I fell in and swam forward.
The enemy was massed in uncountable numbers. Our ranks closed; the armies crashed together. A melee ensued that could be given the name of battle by its scale only. No one could swing a sword, such was the press of bodies. The nine-foot spear was useless. One dropped it where he stood, fighting instead with the shield as a weapon, struggling simply to take your man's feet out or stick him Spartan-style with the short thrust and draw. Any part of the body that bore armor became a weapon. One fought with his knees, driving them into his man's testicles, with elbows fired at the throat and temple, and heels against those fallen on the earth.
Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War Page 19