“Master, there is only one thing …” Her voice drifted off.
“Yes?”
“Crius. His hands. If there were something we could do to heal his hands, then he would be more use to you.”
“Of course. I’ll take him to see a surgeon. Where is he?” Leonidas looked around, surprised that he had not seen him earlier.
“He is mucking out the stables.”
Leonidas went out to the stables. The manure was being carefully heaped upon the bed of the ox-cart so that it could be hauled out onto the field. Pitching the heavy, soiled straw up onto the wagon was hard work for the little boy, particularly since his grip on the heavy pitchfork was awkward and uncertain. He was working naked, sweating and breathing hard.
“Crius!”
The boy turned around and grinned at once. He dropped the pitchfork and ran forward to throw his arms around Beggar. The bitch licked his face and wagged her tail in equal enthusiasm.
“Get yourself cleaned up,” Leonidas ordered. “I’m taking you into the city.”
Crius didn’t wait to be asked twice. He rushed out of the stable-yard and down to the river’s edge, Beggar running beside him. The river was still cold. Crius stopped when he was just knee deep, bent down, and plunged his hands into the water to splash it over his shoulders. Then he rubbed his hands and arms to clean them while Beggar frolicked about in the shallows. When Crius came running back, Beggar bounded after him, shaking herself dry as she came into the yard again.
Crius started chattering excitedly, “Can I ride on your horse with you? What are we going to see? Is there a market? Can we go to the temples?”
“We’re going to see a doctor.”
Crius went silent.
“Come on.” Leonidas tossed the boy the chiton he had left carelessly on a bench, and started for his horse. When he reached it, Laodice came out with a little satchel of things. Leonidas looked at her questioningly. “For you and the doctor.” Leonidas looked inside; it was filled with her apple tarts. He looked at her again, questioningly. “I can make more,” she insisted. Leonidas knew that she didn’t have unlimited supplies of the ingredients, especially not the expensive cinnamon; but he understood her need to thank him the only way she knew how.
Leonidas took Crius to the lochos physician and returned to barracks to stable his horse before going to the baths. He was met by Mantiklos before he had even dismounted. “I was about to come fetch you, sir! We’re under marching orders! Tomorrow at first light.”
“Why? Where? What’s happened?” Leonidas jumped down, catching the mood of excitement at once.
“Kythera. The Argives have landed troops on Kythera and are burning everything in their path.”
The island of Kythera and the eastern shore of the Malean peninsula had all once been part of the Argolid. Piece by piece over the centuries, Spartan blood and persistence had wrested them from the hands of Argos. The Argives wanted them back—every single rock, tree, and well.
Up to now, however, the Argives had confined themselves to hit-and-run raids, plundering isolated farmsteads and then setting them on fire, or capturing Lacedaemonian ships that had the misfortune to cross paths with Argive warships. Because Cleomenes was agitating for yet another campaign against Athens, however, the Council had decided to deploy only a single lochos to the Argive border. The idea was to discourage Argive incursions while keeping the bulk of the army in Sparta, ready to march north. As spring came and the campaign season approached, ambassadors had been sent forth to the allies in an effort to forge a majority in favor of war with Athens. The border with Argos had remained surprisingly quiet. Now they knew why.
“How many men are we sending?” Leonidas wanted to know.
Mantiklos shook his head helplessly. No one had told him. Leonidas searched around the courtyard for someone who might know and caught sight of his company commander, Diodoros, who was giving orders to the quartermaster. He waited politely until his commander was finished. As the latter turned to leave, Leonidas addressed him. “How many troops are we sending, sir?”
“Just two pentekostus for now. We’re to report back on the strength of the enemy and send for help if we need it.”
By dusk the next evening Leonidas’ hundred-man company was embarking on three small ships, one enomotia per ship. The ships, known as penteconters, were owned and manned by perioikoi and had just a single bank of oars and twenty-five rowing benches, unlike the three-banked triremes that had become masters of the seas in recent decades. They were painted bright colors with huge eyes flanking the battering ram, which lay in the wet sands as if looking out to sea. They were beached side by side on a sandy cove in the Laconian Gulf east of Gytheon.
Leonidas had not boarded a ship since his ill-fated adventure as a boy, and he was reminded briefly of that embarrassing episode; but this was very different. They boarded by unit in neat files that ascended from the beach to the deck of each ship by ladders reaching down from the high, curving sterns to the hard sand of the beach. The ladders were long, and they sagged and bounced under the weight of the men. Leonidas was glad that his armor and arms were being boarded as cargo.
The attendants, Mantiklos included, had to wade out into knee-deep water, holding their own and their masters’ equipment in bundles over their heads. Sailors hooked the bundles onto the end of a rope that was fed through a block and tackle at the end of the yardarm. At a signal, men on deck hoisted each parcel up above the rail, while other sailors swung the yard fore and aft so the bundle could be lowered onto the deck. This procedure had to be repeated hundreds of times. Night had come by the time they were fully loaded.
Conditions aboard the penteconter were very crowded. Each enomotia numbered roughly thirty-two hoplites; with their attendants and support helots, that made for close to one hundred men. All had their equipment, and both men and parcels had to be kept out of the way of the oarsmen. They were literally crammed into every corner, and they sat or stood between the banks of oars and crowded together on the quarterdeck and the foredeck. Leonidas worked his way to the bows and swung a leg over the side to sit astride it. This freed him from the press of people around him and gave him a better view.
The careful planning that had gone into even this simple operation became evident as the tide came in and started to float the now-heavy penteconter off the sand. As part of the crew shoved and pushed the ship down the beach, a wave came in and the whole vessel rolled drunkenly. At a shout the sailors scrambled to get back aboard the vessel and the oars started to bite into the water, oozing the ship into the bay.
One of the other penteconters had gotten away already and was leading, while the third was still loading. There was a brisk breeze and the swells were running quite high. Whitecaps curled here and there in the darkness, and the snout of the penteconter churned the dark seas white as it cut and battered its way forward.
Before long the first men started to feel sick and tried to squeeze their way to the railing. Some made it, others didn’t. There was considerable cursing as the vomit splattered on other men and the deck, making it unsafe and slippery as well as vile-smelling. Others followed Leonidas’ example and scrambled onto the railing itself—although this was hardly a safe perch as the ship rolled and pitched its way forward.
Leonidas concentrated on the horizon. He was amazed by how clearly it could be seen despite the darkness. It was a cloudless night, and the stars were so bright that they turned the heavens a distinctly lighter shade of blue than the heaving seas, much less the ominous shore. The bow-wave was a brilliant white—just like the white caps and the snows of Taygetos that one could see looming out of the darkness behind them. On the shore, the occasional smudge of orange marked a farmhouse or a village where torches, lamps, and hearth fires burned.
Gradually Leonidas became aware that something dark blotted out the stars to starboard, and then he realized that it was edged with white. It could only be the island of Kythera itself. It loomed up sharply with steep, uninhabi
ted slopes. The captain swung the bows to starboard to steer a course directly between the island and the Malean peninsula. This meant they were running broadside to the waves, and the rolling of the penteconter became alarming to the landlubbers crowded on her decks. Here and there men lost their footing and slipped and fell, now and then taking others with them, accompanied by a short spasm of violent cursing. For the most part, however, they were packed so closely together that they had no room to fall down.
At last the bows swung to starboard yet again, and the little ship surged on a series of waves that overtook them and passed them by, leaving them wallowing in the trough before the next wave lifted them up and pushed them forward for another few yards. The oars occasionally bit into air, but they made good progress, and soon a long, white beach was visible before them. An island started to shield them from both wind and waves, and the captain ordered every other oarsman to rest as he slowed the ship down to a crawl. To their left, one of the other penteconters was also cautiously nosing its way forward.
A sudden swirl of white in the darkness off to starboard alerted Leonidas to danger. Rocks and reefs stretched far out into the bay. A sailor scrambled up the mast and sat astride the yard, shouting instructions down to the helmsman. They maneuvered cautiously into the bay, approaching the shore at a decorous pace until they were about two hundred paces away. Here the penteconter pivoted around neatly, and then the oarsman backwatered the ship toward the shore. One of the deck officers shouted, “Get inboard! On deck! Now!”
Leonidas and his companions barely managed to get their feet on the deck before the stern of the ship struck the shore with a loud crunching and creaking. Everyone was thrown forward. Leonidas would have lost his footing if they hadn’t been pressed so closely together. The ship crunched to a stop. The waves broke around her bow and swept up the beach to the hissing sound of frothing water and tumbling, clacking stones turning over on themselves.
The Spartan officers took over from the seamen. Even before the oars were fully shipped, the hoplites were ordered over the side. Leonidas was one of the first to scramble up over the railing and drop onto the stony beach below. He fell into water that was still bitterly cold and came up to his groin, sucking at him and trying to pull him back down the beach as it retreated. He had to struggle to keep his footing on the rolling, shifting stones, and for a panicked moment he thought he would fall.
Around him others were dropping into the water with loud splashes and the same kind of flailing about. From the deck overhead someone was shouting at them to move out of the way. “Get ashore, you idiots! Move up onto the beach!”
Leonidas started slogging through the foam, fighting against the undertow. How did men ever do this wearing armor and carrying their arms? How could you slog up a beach defended by an enemy? Indeed, how could they be sure the Argives weren’t here? Leonidas looked around in the darkness, expecting a phalanx of Argives to emerge any moment. Fortunately, it didn’t.
Instead, more and more Spartans splashed into the water and waded up onto the shore. As the three ships, all of which were now beached, became lighter, their crews followed the soldiers overboard to haul them fully out of the water. When the ships were completely beached, the helots began offloading the equipment.
Gradually, order started to vanquish chaos. The hoplites formed up by unit. Roll call was taken. Arms and armor were brought. They were ordered to kit up and did so wearily, their attendants helping with hands clumsy from lack of sleep. It was approaching dawn and they had been up nearly twenty-four hours straight. They were all tired. Leonidas thought of the times in the agoge when they had been made to stay on their feet all day and all night, marching, standing watch, marching again. It had seemed sadistic at the time. Now he was thankful for it.
The eastern horizon paled and the stars were fading away. At a shout, the first enomotia started forward, to the distinctive clank of bronze on bronze as the aspis carried on their backs jostled against one another. But then they started singing, and the clanking of hoplons was drowned out by the chorus of men.
Leonidas was in the second enomotia, and their turn came next. They were marching in four-by-eight formation, the commander in the front rank on the right. Leonidas, as one of the youngest men in the unit, was in the middle, sandwiched between men more experienced than he.
They marched northwest along the shoreline toward what appeared to be a small city or fortified town. The town was apparently still sound asleep, and Leonidas mentally derided the fools for their poor watch. With Argive troops operating on the island, they should have had men manning the walls, ready to challenge any approaching force, regardless of the hour of the day. How could they be so certain that these three hoplite formations were their own?
The singing of the first company faltered and died away. Then the front ranks of Leonidas’ own enomotia fell silent. Leonidas glanced to his left and then to his right. He knew the men beside him intimately after eighteen months in the same thirty-two-man unit. They were Sperchias, from his own age cohort, and Aristandos, who was just a year older. Aristandos was a bit of a braggart and a showoff who thought he was destined for command and fame. Sperchias was more modest, but with a wonderful wit and a sunny temperament. The looks they gave Leonidas, however, were identical, and they reflected his own thoughts: something was wrong.
They passed between the square crenelated towers that flanked the gates, and the smell of charcoal was strong. All that was left of the heavy gates were the hinges. They entered a ghost town. Everything in it was black with soot if it had not burned to ash. Nothing lived. Not even a stray cat or dog. They drew up in what had once been a broad square. The very temples were blackened from the smoke of the fires, and the roofs had caved into the sanctuaries. Diodoros, their company commander, ordered them to stand at ease, and with the three enomotarchs went from building to building around the square. When they were finished, they were ordered to march out again.
They set up camp outside the walls with great care. None of them were in doubt anymore that they were at war.
The hoplites were given ample time to rest and eat, because their commanders wanted intelligence before moving in any direction. Most especially they wanted to establish contact with the Heraklid Company, which had set out several hours ahead of them but had landed on the western shore of the island. While one of the penteconters was sent back to the mainland for provisions, the other two were sent on reconnaissance along the coast, with the primary task of locating the Argive ships. Meanwhile, helot scouts were sent out into the countryside to try to find locals who could give them information.
By noon intelligence started to flood into the Spartan camp in the form of shepherds, fishermen, and farmers who seemed to crawl out of the earth itself. They came filthy, hungry, exhausted, and full of tales of horror. There were a few women or children among them, but these were clearly terrified beyond tears and lamentations. Even the children were eerily silent—too terrified to cry anymore.
The Argives had landed more than a week ago. They had landed on this beach, but not with penteconters or triremes. They had come disguised as merchants and had set up an open market not far from where the Spartans now camped. The unsuspecting townspeople had come out to shop. They had left the gates to their city wide open behind them. The Argives had slipped men, still dressed as merchants, into the city. Then abruptly they threw off their friendly demeanor, drew their swords, and started killing people fast and furiously. Only rarely had anyone been able to defend himself. Some people, those telling the story, escaped into the surrounding hills. From here they had seen how the Argives plundered the town haphazardly, putting to the torch anything that did not gratify their immediate wants and needs. Anyone who fell into Argive hands, regardless of sex or age, was killed. The girls were usually raped first, but they were killed afterward. The Argives were taking no prisoners.
Horrifying as the tales were, however, they were not very helpful. The Spartans needed to know where the Argive
s were now, but all these survivors could tell them was that they had sailed away. One or two told of trying to get to relatives in other towns, but said they had turned back when they saw smoke in the sky, indicating the Argives had gotten there first. They felt safe here, because there was nothing left that would entice the Argives to come back.
Brotus was with the Heraklid Company, which landed on the west shore of the island. Here they went ashore in the narrow mouth of a steep gorge and toiled their way up from the shore single file along a narrow, stony path. They found no evidence of Argive incursions except some slaughtered cattle, until they reached a fountain house cut into the side of the slope near a natural waterfall. The Argives had evidently taken the place by surprise, presumably in the early morning before news had gotten out about their presence. There was no evidence of any kind of resistance, indeed no male victims at all. All the corpses were female, women come to fetch water.
The women had evidently been rounded up, collected in one place, and then forced to strip. Their clothes were all together in a single heap. They had then been collectively ravaged—old and young, pretty or plain—before being killed. By the state of decay, the Spartans calculated that the massacre had taken place at least two days earlier. Now flies feasted, particularly in the eyes, mouths, and bloody crevices between the legs of the victims.
Brotus found the sight of all these naked women, sprawled around with their legs apart, fascinating. He was particularly drawn to one woman. She was not the youngest of the victims; in fact, she was matronly with enormous breasts. She lay draped backward over a wall, and her breasts hung down in the wrong direction. He circled back to get a second look at her because the sight quickened his loins. He decided to ask Lathria to hang like that off the edge of the bed next time he visited her.
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