The Isle of Stone

15

The bombardment went on as dark clouds appeared over the Ionian and spread east, glowering over Sphacteria. Showing bottoms of grayish purple, the clouds seemed to groan with moisture; Doulos would have called their arrival the best evidence of rain in months. Sure enough, a thin, desultory mist fell, increasing the Spartans’ misery as they clung to whatever crevices gave them refuge. The mist became a downpour; rivulets formed immediately in the thin soil, scattering the cyclops bones Doulos had so carefully fit together. Meanwhile, some of the men removed their helmets, so useless against the arrows, and used them to collect precious rainwater. Antalcidas didn’t bother. For rain to fall now, when their fate was sealed, could only be some sort of divine joke at his expense.

The Athenian bowmen kept shooting. Those arrows that didn’t hit a Spartan were now sticking upright in the mud; looking at one of these, Antalcidas noticed that a message had been cut into the wooden shaft. It read, in clumsy letters, For the Acharnians, against the Lak-. The writer appeared to have run out of room before he could finish the taunt.

“Is this your virtuous stand, Antalcidas?” Frog called through the storm. “Tell us, do you feel like Leonidas now?”

“Shut up, trembler!”

“I’ll show you,” replied the other. “You and your brother have insulted me for the last time. I’ll show you…”

The rain fell for only a brief time. Soon an uncertain sun shone through, making the water beads gleam on the masonry and the ground with slicks of blood-soaked mud. A cry went up behind the Athenian lines, answered by another from the Messenians. Antalcidas did not always understand the Attic lingo, but the command sounded like an order to stop shooting.

The volleys ceased. A voice came to them then from below-one he did not recognize as belonging to either Cleon or Demosthenes.

“Lacedaemonians, this is your last chance!” the voice cried. “Surrender now, and we will let you carry your shields to the ships.”

So they would allow the Spartans to go down with their shields, thought Antalcidas. How desperate they must be to make trophies of us! And yet, how long before they confiscate those arms as they push us into the hold? He looked to the under-thirty who shared cover with him behind a block. He was making a brave face of it, but his fear was there to see, in the subtle trembling of his lips.

“Take heart, son,” Antalcidas told him. “It will be over soon.. and your family will have the honor of cutting your name into your tombstone.”

There was more murmuring from behind the enemy line. He heard the archers draw back their bowstrings-an act that was individually silent, but when done in numbers made a distinct sound, like a sharp intake of breath. Antalcidas put a reassuring hand on the under-thirty’s back: this, at last, would be it.

A memory seemed to seep out from within, from the core of his bones. Antalcidas was alone, hungry, trapped between blackness and a damp rigidity pressing against him. His brothers and sisters were whispering to him now from their stony cradles, dressed in only bits of scalp, fine hair, residues of blood scattered across the gorge. As their mothers lived their days on the plain, weaving their shrouds of forgetting, the children of Sparta collected in rising numbers against that hard teat…

Frog’s detested voice suddenly called out again.

“By the gods, Antalcidas, must all the Spartans die for your vanity?”

Then Frog did the inconceivable: breaking cover before the arrows flew, he waved his arms and shouted, “The Lacedaemonians will bear their shields!” The words pierced Antalcidas deeper than any arrow. Yet he did nothing at first, preferring to believe that he had misheard. There was also the possibility, as sweet as the memory of Andreia’s face, that the Athenians would do them all the favor of shooting Frog down.

There was no snap of the bowstrings. Instead, the other Spartiates around Frog gave up too, and more around the fort, until the post dissolved in confusion, with some of the men wandering around the ruins and asking, “Have we surrendered?” and others not waiting for confirmation, but throwing up their hands unsolicited. Before long most of the garrison had stood up, exposed in a way that made the Athenians stare up at them, openmouthed.

From their position on the left, Xeuthes and Cleinias looked at each other, captain and oarsman united in mutual amazement. Neither had to ask if the other had seen the Lacedaemonians behave in such disorder, so ordinarily, in a set-piece battle. Was it not common knowledge that Spartans never raise their hands in surrender?

Antalcidas burst from his hiding place, spear leveled at no one in particular. “Don’t listen to that man!” he cried. “All of you put your hands down! I’ll kill the next man who disgraces us…!”

But Frog had already let the Athenian hoplites inside the fort. There was a sharp struggle, metal crunching against metal, as Antalcidas and a handful of other diehards clashed with them. As the sound reached Cleon, he became alarmed, thinking perhaps that the enemy had drawn the Athenians into a trap. Demosthenes, on the other hand, was serene-his troops were now pouring into the fort, and most of the Spartans had already thrown their spears to the ground. The end was foregone.

It was the sixteenth day since Cleon made his promise to the Assembly. If he got word north to Elis by the next evening, he could have runners deliver the news to the archons before his twenty days were up.

The solution presented itself. Of course he would not do anything as crude as display the heads of fallen Spartiates. Instead, he would take the platform with a round object wrapped in burlap. He would defy expectation by refusing the wreath, and refusing it again, until the cumulative buzz over what he carried hit a fever peak, and he tore the burlap cover away. The captured Lacedaemonian shield would blaze in the rising sun, shining as a Spartan shield ought, the great crimson lambda splashed like blood against the polished metal. He would hold it over his head for all the time it took for the waves of acclaim to roll through the Assembly, and wash over him as they chanted his name-“Cleon, Cleon, Cleon…” Victory would then wing her way down from the clouds, bearing a crown of olive leaves for setting upon his head. Nike had the face of the little brunette chippy from the Chersonese who served the relish at his drinking parties; her feathers were dark too, like raven’s wings, and her chiton thinner, almost like a whisper, pressed down so flat by the wind that it cratered within that little dimple at her midriff. The goddess would give him that same little fetching smile the slave gave him when she finished blowing on his stubby flute…

His assurance restored, he turned to Demosthenes.

“As I told you, dear Demosthenes,” he said, “the Lacedaemonians have seen it our way.”