The Isle of Stone

1

They heard the flock before they saw it. The sound was like that of a second sea on the landward side-a rhythmic rising and falling of sibilant waves washing the island. When Antalcidas poked his head from beneath his cloak he saw a flickering cloud conceal the dawn. As the starlings came nearer, he made out their individual forms in the mass. Each was a black, pointed, busy thing, fluttering in synchronized fashion with the whole. Of their number he could not guess; the Lacedaemonians, who had little use for figures above ten thousand, could only look at the immensity and think, “Many birds.”

The fire had burned for three days, scorching the island from end to end. The Spartans had lost no one to the flames, yet stood bereft of cover, pregnable, on a smoking spit of ash. The provisions they had hoarded from the truce were ruined, as were whatever shields, cloaks, and spears were left in the fire’s path. As if smelling their vulnerability, the enemy ships made ever tighter circles around the island. Every man, from the youngest under-thirty to Epitadas himself, understood that the Athenians could now gauge their exact numbers from the heights of old Pylos. An attack would come soon.

But the misfortune of the Lacedaemonians presented an opportunity for the birds. Approaching in their hundreds of thousands, the starlings broke into two cohorts-one making for the vertical cliffs on the lee shore, the other directly for the Spartan camp. Along the cliffs, they intruded into the nesting holes of the swallows and doves, stabbing at whatever moved inside. The mothers fled by thousands into the air, flying over the bay and wheeling around to protest their nestlings’ slaughter. But they were still outnumbered by the frantic invaders, who flew in patterns alternating between chaos and unity, tips of beaks wet with blood, feathers gleaming an iridescent purple-black like the carapaces of beetles.

“This kind of bird,” observed Doulos, “is rare so far south, over water.”

“A foul portent,” said Frog.

“Foul for the Athenians.”

The starlings at the top of the island came to feast on the seeds that littered the ground after fire. The flock descended in a broad wedge, crowding onto the ashes. The birds in the vanguard pecked as others flew over them from the back, rushing for the uneaten seeds a few inches ahead. In this way the mass resembled a liquid wave that rolled forward but never broke. Now and again they would come upon some insect or lizard baked in its tracks, and a knot of inky opponents would gather around the carcass, picking it apart as the great black wave rolled on, leaving them behind until the contestants had split their prize.

The Lacedaemonians said nothing as the birds worked their way down the slope. The visitors took wing at last as they reached a line of sterile boulders, forming themselves into a pliant cloud that seemed to flash white and black as the birds, in choral unison, alternately exposed dark backs and pale bellies. Rising, they merged with the other cohort ascending from the cliff. The reunited host formed itself into a twisting tower, then a sphere, then a flattened disk as it flitted in indecision. By whatever reason moved them, the birds finally went south. A moment later they were over the Athenian base on Little Sphacteria. A pair of birds dove toward it, trailed by a game few, but when the majority refused to follow, the deviators reversed course and rejoined the mass. The flock was far over the water, halfway toward a double-humped mountain on the shore, when Antalcidas lost sight of it.