The Isle of Stone

10.

By nightfall, the Lacedaemonians were still in possession of the heights. Demosthenes had sent his men up in continuous waves, hoping to wear out the defenders by weight of numbers. The Lacedaemonians fended them off with spears, and if those broke, with swords. Some lost their swords too, and fought with shields or stones; most had spent so much time striking at metal armor that, for hours after, their hands vibrated like struck bells.

At sundown Demosthenes called off the assault. He had already sacrificed more than a hundred men to inflict only a few enemy casualties. He couldn’t use his archers when his infantry attacked the fort, and when they weren’t attacking, Nestor’s tough old walls gave the Lacedaemonians cover.

Cleon, unmussed and undaunted, demanded a night attack. Demosthenes restrained the temptation to laugh in his face, calmly explaining that the Spartans were masters of night fighting. “We have the advantage,” he said, “and so we must have the strength to be patient.”

“Then forgive my ignorance, my dear Demosthenes, but how do you propose to supply five thousand men for a patient siege on a barren island?”

Demosthenes dismissed him with a toss of his head. It was, however, the most perceptive question Cleon had asked since his arrival.

The captain of the Messenian exiles, Protesilaus, came with an answer. Dressed in a set of armor that seemed thrown together from corpses found on a dozen battlefields, he towered over little Cleon, who had a reflexive mistrust of anyone he had to look up at. What the Messenian had to say, though, delighted him.

“The Lacedaemonians need incentive to give up. Give me fifty archers and you’ll have their heads-or their surrender-by nightfall tomorrow.”

“How do you propose to accomplish this?” asked Cleon.

“We’ll circle around behind them. We can use that bunch of rocks to defend ourselves, then use the archers to make things hot for them.”

Demosthenes glanced at Leochares, whom he understood to have some experience with the Messenian. But Leochares just shrugged.

“By what path,” Demosthenes inquired, “do you think you’ll ‘circle around’?”

“There is no path,” came the easy answer. “That’s why they won’t expect it. But we can scale around on the cliffs, just below where they can see us.”

“In the dark? With equipment?”

“It can be done. We’ve done it before.”

“You’ve done it here?”

“Not here. In Aetolia, Phocis, Achaea. Worse places.”

“Perhaps. But as for my men, I won’t risk-”

“Fifty archers are too many for you to defend,” interrupted Cleon. “Can you manage with twenty-five?”

“If we must.”

“Good. Then we expect to see you behind the fort by sunup tomorrow.”

Protesilaus, exultant over his new prominence in the campaign, flew away to assemble his party. Demosthenes could hardly look at Cleon. He wanted to knock the party-favor helmet off his head, smack the ignorant smile from his lips. But instead, he had to content himself with sarcasm.

“Yes, I see now how you trust my judgment,” he said.

“I expect you want to hit me,” Cleon replied, smiling. “But what is there for us to lose? At most, we’re out a few archers and some bad-smelling pirates. Let him try.”

Demosthenes’ face cracked into a grimace.

Lost in the canyons, some of the Athenians tried to climb straight up the jagged walls. The ones that didn’t plunge to their deaths were picked off by the Aetolian slingers, who made a game of it. He could hear his men scream until they hit bottom; their bodies made a wet, popping sound as they struck, exploding like overfilled wineskins.

Cleon clapped a reassuring arm around Demosthenes. “And don’t look so sick, my friend! It is not for our sake that we take risks, but for the People. Athens demands action!”