Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

Chapter Fifteen

The army of Lakedaemon marched out in twenty-one dif-ferent campaigns over the next five years, all in actions against other Hellenes. That pitch of enmity which Leonidas had sought since Antirhion to maintain focused upon the Persian now found itself of necessity directed against more immediate targets, those cities of Greece which tilted perfidiously toward playing the traitor, allying themselves in advance with the invader, to save their own skins.

Mighty Thebes, whose exiled aristocrats conspired ceaselessly with the Persian court, seeking to reclaim preeminence in their country by selling it out to the foe.

Jealous Argos, Sparta 's most bitter and proximate rival, whose nobles treated openly with the agents of the Empire. Macedonia under Alexander had long since offered tokens of submission.

Athens, too, had exiled aristocrats reclining within the Persian pavilions while they plotted for their own restoration as lords beneath the Persian pennant.

Sparta herself stood not immune from treason, for her deposed king, Demaratos, as well had taken up the exile's station among the sycophants surrounding His Majesty. What else could Demaratos' desire be, save reaccession to power in Lakedaemon as satrap and magistrate of the Lord of the East?

In the third year after Antirhion, Darius of Persia died.

When news of this reached Greece, hope rekindled in the free cities. Perhaps now the Persian would abort his mobilization. With her King dead, would not the army of the Empire disband?

Would not the Persian vow to conquer Hellas be set aside?

Then you, Your Majesty, acceded to the throne.

The army of the foe did not disband.

Her fleet did not disperse.

Instead the Empire's mobilization redoubled. The zeal of a prince freshly crowned burned within His Majesty's breast. Xerxes son of Darius would not be judged by history inferior to his father, nor to his illustrious forebears Cambyses and Cyrus the Great. These, who had vanquished and enslaved all Asia, would be joined in the pantheon of glory by Xerxes, their scion, who would now add Greece and Europe to the roll of provinces of the Empire.

Across all Hellas, phobos advanced like a sapper's tunnel. One smelled the dust of its excavation in the still of morning and felt its yard-by-yard advance rumbling beneath one in his sleep. Of all the mighty cities of Greece, only Sparta, Athens and Corinth held fast. These dispatched legation after legation to the wavering poleis, seeking to bind them to the Alliance. My own master was assigned in a single season to five separate overseas embassies. I puked over so many different ships' rails I couldn't recall one from the other.

Everywhere these embassies touched, phobos had called first. The Fear made people reckless.

Many were selling all they owned; others, more heedless, were buying. Let Xerxes spare his sword and send his purse instead, my master observed in disgust after yet another embassy had been rebuffed. The Greeks will trample one another's bones, racing to see who first can sell his freedom.

Always upon these legations, a part of my mind kept alert for word of my cousin. Three times in my seventeenth year the service of my master brought me through the city of the Athenians; each time I inquired after the location of the home of the gentlewoman whom Diomache and I had encountered that morning on the road to the Three Comers, when that fine lady had ordered Dio to seek her town estate and take service there. I secured at last the quarter and street but never succeeded in finding the house.

Once at a salon in the Athenian Akademe a lovely bride of twenty appeared, mistress of the household, and for a moment I was certain it was Diomache. My heart began to pound so violently that I must kneel upon one knee for fear of dropping to the floor dead faint. But the lady was not she. Nor was the bride glimpsed a year later bearing water from a spring in Naxos. Nor the physician's wife encountered under cloister in Histiaea six months thereafter.

Upon one blistering summer evening, two years before the battle at the Gates, the ship bearing my master's legation touched briefly at Phaleron, a port of Athens. Our mission completed, we had two hours before tide's turn. I was granted leave and on the run at last located the house of the family of the lady of the Three Corners. The place was shuttered; phobos had driven the clan forth to landholdings in Iapygia, or so I was informed by a loitering squad of Scythian archers, those thugs whom the Athenians employ as city constabulary. Yes, the brutes remembered Diomache. Who could forget her? They took me for another of her suitors and spoke in the crude language of the street.

The bird winged off, one said. Too wild for the cage.

Another declared he had encountered her since, in the market with a husband, a citizen and sea officer. The fool bitch, he laughed. To knot with that salt-sucker, when she could have had me!

Returning to Lakedaemon, I resolved to root this folly of longing from my heart, as a farmer bums out a stubborn stump. I told Rooster it was time I took a bride. He found one for me, his cousin Thereia, the daughter of his mother's sister. I was eighteen, she fifteen when we were joined in the Messenian fashion practiced by the helots. She bore a son within ten months and a daughter while I was away on campaign.

A husband now, I vowed to think no more of my cousin. I would eradicate my own impiety and dwell no longer upon fancies.

The years had passed swiftly. Alexandras completed his service as a youth of the agoge; he was given his war shield and assumed his station among the Peers of the army. He took to wife the maiden Agathe, just as he had promised. She bore him twins, a boy and girl, before he was twenty.

Polynikes was crowned at Olympia for the second time, victor again in the sprint in armor. His wife, Altheia, bore him a third son.

The lady Arete produced for Dienekes no more children; she had come up barren after four daughters, without producing a male heir.

Rooster's wife, Harmonia, bore a second child, a boy whom he named Messenieus. The lady Arete attended the birth, providing her own midwife and assisting at the delivery with her own hands. I myself bore the torch that escorted her home. She would not speak, so torn was she between the joy of witnessing at last from her line the birth of a male, a defender for Lakedaemon, and the sorrow of knowing that this boy-child, issue of her brother's bastard, Rooster, with all his treasonous defiance of his Spartan masters, right down to the name he had chosen for his son, would face the sternest and most perilous passage to manhood.

The Persian myriads stood now in Europe. They had bridged the Hellespont and traversed all of Thrace. Still the Hellenic allies wrangled. A force of ten thousand heavy in-fantry, commanded by the Spartan Euanetus, was dispatched to Tempe in Thessaly, there to make a stand against the invader at the northernmost frontier of Greece. But the site, when the army got there, proved undefendable. The position could be turned by land via the pass at Gonnus and outflanked by sea through Aulis.

In disgrace and mortification the force of Ten Thousand pulled out and dispersed to its constituent cities.

A desperate paralysis possessed the Congress of the Greeks. Thessaly, abandoned, had gone over to the Persian, adding her matchless cavalry to swell the squadrons of the foe. Thebes teetered at the brink of submission. Argos was sitting it out. Dread omens and prodigies abounded. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi had counseled the Athenians, Fly to the ends of the earth while the Spartan Council of Elders, notoriously slow to action, yet dithered and dawdled. A stand must be made somewhere. But where?

In the end it was their women who galvanized the Spartans into action. It came about like this.

Refugees, many brides with babes, were flooding into the last of the free cities. Young mothers took flight to Lakedaemon, islanders and relations fleeing the Persian advance across the Aegean. These brides inflamed their listeners' hatred of the foe with tales of the conquerors' atrocities in their earlier passage through the islands: how the enemy at Chios and Lesbos and Tenedos had formed dragnets at one end of the territory and advanced across each island, scouring out every hiding place, hauling forth the young boys, herding the handsomest together and castrating them for eunuchs, killing every man and raping the women, selling them forth into foreign slavery. The babies' heads these heroes of Persia dashed against the walls, splattering their brains upon the paving stones.

The wives of Sparta listened with icy fury to these tales, cradling their own infants at their breasts. The Persian hordes had swept now through Thrace and Macedonia. The baby-murderers stood upon the doorstep of Greece, and where was Sparta and her warrior defenders? Blundering homeward unblooded from the fool's errand of Tempe.

I had never seen the city in such a state as in the aftermath of that debacle. Heroes with prizes of valor skulked about, countenances downcast with shame, while their women snapped at them with scorn and held themselves aloof and disdainful. How could Tempe have happened? Any battle, even a defeat, would have been preferable to none at all. To marshal such a magnificent force, garland it before the gods, transport it all that way and not draw blood, even one's own, this was not merely disgraceful but, the wives declared, blasphemous.

The women's scorn excoriated the city. A delegation of wives and mothers presented itself to the ephors, insisting that they themselves be sent out next time, armed with hairpins and distaffs, since surely the women of Sparta could disgrace themselves no more egregiously nor accomplish less than the vaunted Ten Thousand.

In the warriors' messes the mood was even more corrosive. How much longer would the Allied Congress dither? How many more weeks would the ephors delay?

I recall vividly the morning when at last the proclamation came. The Herakles regiment trained that day in a dry watercourse called the Corridor, a blistering funnel between sand banks north of the village of Limnai. The men were running impact drills, two-on-ones and three-on-twos, when a distinguished elder named Charilaus, who had been an ephor and a priest of Apollo but now functioned primarily as a senior counselor and emissary, appeared on the crest of the bank and spoke aside to the polemarch Derkylides, the regimental commander. The old man was past seventy; he had lost the lower half of a leg in battle years past. For him to have hobbled on his staff this far from the city could only mean something big had happened.

The patriarch and the polemarch spoke in private. The drills went on. No one looked up, yet every man knew.

This was it.

Dienekes' men got the word from Laterides, commander of the adjacent platoon, who passed it down the line.

It's the Gates, lads.

The Hot Gates.

Thermopylae.

No assembly was called. To the astonishment of all, the regiment was dismissed. The men were given the whole rest of the day off.

Such a holiday had only been granted half a dozen times in my memory; invariably the Peers broke up in high spirits and made for home at the trot. This time no one budged. The entire regiment stood nailed to the site, in the sweltering confines of the dry river, buzzing like a hive.

Here was the word:

Four morai, five thousand men, would be mobilized for Thermopylae. The column, reinforced by four perioikic regiments and packing squires and armed helots two to a man, would march out as soon as the Karneia, the festival of Apollo which prohibited taking up arms, expired. Two and half weeks.

The force would total twenty thousand men, twice the number at Tempe, concentrated in a pass ten times narrower.

Another thirty to fifty thousand allied infantry would be mobilized behind this initial force, while a main force of the allied navy, a hundred and twenty ships of war, would seal the straits at Artemisium and Andros and the narrows of the Euripus, protecting the army at the Gates from flank assault by sea.

This was a massive call-up. So massive it smelled. Dienekes knew it and so did everyone else.

My master humped back to the city accompanied by Alexandros, now a full line warrior of the platoon, his mates Bias, Black Leon and their squires. A third of the way along we overtook the elder Charilaus, shambling home with painful slowness, supported by his attendant, Sthenisthes, who was as ancient as he. Black Leon led an ass of the train on a halter; he insisted the old man ride. Charilaus declined but permitted the place to his servant.

Cut through the shit for us, will you, old uncle? Dienekes addressed the statesman affectionately but with a soldier's impatience for the truth.

I relay only what I'm instructed, Dienekes.

The Gates won't hold fifty thousand. They won't hold five.

A wry expression wizened the old-timer's face. I see you fancy your generalship superior to Leonidas'.

One fact was self-evident even to us squires. The Persian army stood now in Thessaly. That was what, ten days to the Gates? Less? In two and a half weeks their millions would sweep through and be eighty miles beyond. They'd be parked upon our threshold.

How many in the advance party? Black Leon inquired of the elder.

He meant the forward force of Spartans that would, as always in advance of a mobilization, be dispatched to Thermopylae now, at once, to take possession of the pass before the Persians got there and before the main force of the allied army moved up.

You'll hear it from Leonidas tomorrow, the old man replied. But he saw the younger men's frustration.

Three hundred, he volunteered. All Peers. All sires.

My master had a way of setting his jaw, a fierce clamping action of the teeth, which he employed when he was wounded on campaign and didn't want his men to know how bad. I looked. This expression stood now upon his face.

An all-sire unit was comprised only of men who were fathers of living sons.

This was so that, should the warriors perish, their family lines would not be extinguished.

An all-sire was a suicide unit.

A force dispatched to stand and die.

My customary duties upon return from training were to clean and stow my master's gear and look to, with the servants of the mess, the preparation of the evening meal. Instead this day Dienekes asked Black Leon for his squire to do double duty. Myself he ordered on ahead, at a run, to his own home. I was to inform the lady Arete that the regiment had been dismissed for the day and that her husband would arrive at home shortly. I was to issue an invitation to her on his behalf: would she and their daughters accompany him this afternoon for a ramble in the hills?

I raced ahead, delivered this message and was dismissed to my own pursuits. Some impulse, however, made me linger. From the hill above my master's cottage I could see his daughters burst from the gate and dash with eager enthusiasm to greet him upon the way. Arete had prepared a basket of fruit, cheese and bread. The party was all barefoot, wearing big floppy sun hats.

I saw my master tug his wife aside beneath the oaks and there speak privately with her for several moments. Whatever he said, it prompted her tears. She embraced him fiercely, both arms flung tight about his neck. Dienekes seemed at first to resist, then in a moment yielded and clamped his wife to him, holding her tenderly.

The girls clamored, impatient to be off. Two puppies squalled underfoot. Dienekes and Arete released their embrace. I could see my master lift his youngest, Ellandra, and plant her pony-style astride his shoulders. He held the maiden Alexa's hand as they set off, the girls exuberant and gay, Dienekes and Arete lagging just a little.

No main-force army would be dispatched to Thermopylae; that tale was for public consumption only, to shore up the allies' confidence and put iron in their backbones.

Only the Three Hundred would be sent, with orders to stand and die.

Dienekes would not be among them.

He had no male issue.

He could not be selected.

Chapter Sixteen

I must now recount an incident of battle several years previous, whose consequences at this present juncture came powerfully to affect the lives of Dienekes, Alexandros, Arete and others in this narrative. This occurred at Oenophyta against the Thebans, one year after Antirhion.

I refer to the extraordinary heroism demonstrated on that occasion by my mate Rooster, Like myself at the time, he was just fifteen and had been serving, green as grass, for less than twelve months as first squire of Alexandras' father, Olympieus.

The armies' fronts had clashed. The Menelaion, Polias and Wild Olive regiments were locked in a furious struggle with the Theban left, which was stacked twenty deep instead of the customary eight and was holding its position with terrific stubbornness. To augment this peril, the foe's wing overlapped the Spartan right an eighth of a mile; these elements now began to wheel inboard and advance, taking the Menelaion in the flank. Simultaneously the enemy's right, which was taking the most grievous casualties, lost cohesion and fell back upon the massed ranks of its rearmen. The foe's right broke in panic while his left advanced.

In the midst of this melee Olympieus received a crippling lizard-sticker wound through the arch of the foot, from the butt-spike of an enemy spear. This came, as I said, at a moment of extreme dislocation upon the field, with the enemy right collapsing and the Spartans surging into the pursuit, while the foe's left wheeled in attack, supported by numbers of their cavalry coursing uncontested across the broken field.

Olympieus found himself alone upon the open gleaning ground to the rear of the enrolling battle, with his foot wound rendering him crippled, while his cross-crested officer's helmet provided an irresistible target for any would-be hero of the enemy's ranging horse.

Three Theban cavalrymen went after him.

Rooster, unarmed and unarmored, sprinted headlong into the fray, snatching a spear from the ground as he ran. Dashing up to Olympieus, he not only employed his master's shield to protect him from the missile weapons of the enemy but took on the attacking horsemen single-handedly, wounding and driving off two with spear thrusts and caving in the skull of the third with the man's own helmet, which he, Rooster, in the madness of the moment, had torn off the fellow's head with his bare hands as he simultaneously ripped him out of his seat. Rooster even succeeded in capturing the handsomest of the three horses, a magnificent battle mount which he used in the aftermath to draw the Utter which evacuated Olympieus safely from the field.

When the army returned to Lakedaemon after this campaign, Rooster's exploit was the talk of the city. Among the Peers his prospects were debated at length. What should be done with this boy?

All recalled that though his mother was a Messenian helot, his father had been the Spartiate Idoty-chides, Arete's brother, a hero slain in battle at Mantinea when Rooster was two.

The Spartans, as I have noted, have a grade of warrior youth, a stepbrother class called a mothax. Bastards like Rooster and even legitimate sons of Peers who through misfortune or poverty have lost their citizenship may be, if deemed worthy, plucked from their straits and elevated to this station.

This honor was now proffered to Rooster.

He turned it down.

His stated reason was that he was already fifteen. It was too late for him; he preferred to remain in service as a squire.

This rejection of their generous offer enraged the Peers of Olympieus' mess and created an outrage, as much as the affair of a helot bastard could, within the city at large. Assertions were made to the point that this headstrong ingrate was notorious for his disloyal sentiments. He was a type not uncommon among slaves, prideful and stubborn. He sees himself as Messenian. He must either be eliminated, and his family with him, or secured beyond doubt of betrayal to the Spartan cause.

Rooster eluded assassination at the hands of the krypteia that time, largely due to his youth and to Olympieus' intercession, man-to-man among the Peers. The affair faded for the moment, rekindling itself, however, upon subsequent campaigns when Rooster again and again proved himself the boldest and most valorous of the young squires, surpassing all in the army save Suicide, Cyclops, main man of the Olympic pentathlete Alpheus, and Polynikes' squire, Akanthus.

Now the Persians stood at the threshold of Greece. Now the Three Hundred were being selected for Thermopylae. Olympieus would be prominent among them, with Rooster at his shoulder in his service. Could this treasonous youth be trusted? With a blade in his fist and himself a handbreadth from the polemarch's back?

The last thing Sparta needed at this desperate hour was trouble at home with the helots. The city could not stand a revolt, even an abortive one. Rooster by this time, aged twenty, had become a force among the Messenian laborers, farmers and vineyardmen. He was a hero to them, a youth whose courage in battle could have been exploited by him as a ticket out of his servitude. He could be wearing Spartan scarlet and lording it over his mean-birthed brothers. But this he had disdained. He had declared himself Messenian, and his fellows never forgot. Who knows how many of them followed Rooster in their hearts? How many absolutely vital craftsmen and support personnel, armorers and litter bearers, squires and victualry men? It is an ill wind, they say, that blows no one good, and this Persian invasion could be the best thing that ever happened to the helots. It could spell deliverance. Freedom. Would they stand loyal? Like the gate of a mighty citadel which turns upon a single tempered hinge, much of the Messenian sentiment focused its attention upon Rooster and stood ready to take its cue from him.

It was now the night before the proclamation of the Three Hundred. Rooster was summoned to stand-to before Olympieus' mess, the Bellerophon. There, officially and with the goodwill of all, the honor of Spartan scarlet was again offered to the youth.

Again he spurned it.

I loitered deliberately in that hour outside the Bellerophon, to see which way the issue would go.

It took no imagination, hearing the murmur of outrage within and beholding Rooster's swift and silent exit, to read the gravity of the issue, and its peril. An assignment for my master detained me for the bulk of an hour. At last I found opportunity to scamper free.

Beside the Little Ring where the starter's box stands is a grove with a dry course branching in three directions. There Rooster and I and other boys used to meet and even bring girls, because if you were found, you could dash away easily in the dark down one of the three dry riverbeds. I knew he would be there now, and he was. To my amazement Alexandros was with him. They were arguing. It took only moments to see it was the clash of one who wishes to be another's friend and the other who rejects him.

What was startling was that it was Alexandros who wanted to be friend to Rooster. He would be in calamitous trouble if he was caught, so immediately subsequent to his initiation as a warrior.

As I skittered down into the shadows of the dry course, Alexandras was cursing Rooster and declaring him a fool.

They'll kill you now, don't you know that?

Fuck them. Fuck them all.

Stop this! I burst down between them. I recited what all three of us knew: that Rooster's prestige among the lower orders precluded him from acting for himself alone; what he did bore repercussions for his wife, his son and daughter, his family. He had cooked himself and them with him. The krypteia would finish him this very night, and nothing would suit Polynikes more.

He won't catch me if I'm not here.

Rooster had set his mind to flee, this night, to the Tem-ple of Poseidon at Tainaron, where a helot could be granted sanctuary.

He wanted me to come. I told him he was insane. What were you thinking when you turned them down? What they offered you is an honor.

Fuck their honors. The krypteia hunts me now, in darkness, faceless as cowards. Is that honor?

I told him his slave's pride had bought his own ticket to hell.

Shut up, both of you!

Alexandras ordered Rooster to his shell, that term the Spartans use to describe the mean huts of the helots. If you're going to run, run now!

We sprinted away down the dark watercourse. Harmonia had both children, Rooster's daughter and infant son, packed and ready. In the smoky confines of the helot's shell, Alexandras pressed into Rooster's hand a clutch of Aeginetan obols, not much, but all he had, enough to aid a runaway.

This gesture struck Rooster speechless.

I know you don't respect me, Alexandras told him. You think yourself my better in skill at arms, in strength and in valor. Well, you are. I have tried, as the gods are my witness, with every fiber of my being and still I'm not half the fighter you are. I never will be. You should stand in my place and I in yours. It is the gods' injustice that makes you a slave and me free.

This from Alexandras utterly disarmed Rooster. You could see the combativeness in his eyes relent and his proud defiance slacken and abate.

You own more of valor than I ever will, the bastard replied, for you manufacture it out of a tender heart, while the gods sat me up punching and kicking from the cradle. And you do yourself honor to speak with such candor. You're right, I did despise you.

Until this moment.

Rooster glanced at me then; I could see confusion in his aspect. He was moved by Alexandras' integrity, which pulled his heart strongly to remain and even to yield. Then with an effort he broke the spell. But you won't influence me, Alexandras. Let the Persian come. Let him grind all Lakedaemon into dust. I'll jig on its grave.

We heard Harmonia gasp. Outside, torches flared. Shadows surrounded the shell. Its blanket flap was torn open. There in the rude doorway stood Polynikes, armed and backed by four assassins of the krypteia. They were all young, athletes nearly on a par with the Olympian, and pitiless as iron.

They burst in and bound Rooster with cord. The infant boy wailed in Harmonia's arms; the poor girl was barely seventeen; she shuddered and wept, pulling her daughter in terror to her side.

Polynikes absorbed the sight with contempt. His glance flicked over Rooster, his wife and babes and myself, to settle with scorn upon the person of Alexandras.

I might have known we'd find you here.

And I you, the youth responded.

On his face was written plain his hatred of the krypteia.

Polynikes regarded Alexandras, and his sentiments, with barely contained outrage. Your presence here in these precincts constitutes treason. You know it and so do these others. Out of respect to your father only, I will say this once: leave now. Depart at once and nothing more will be said. The dawn will find four helots missing.

I will not, Alexandras answered.

Rooster spat. Kill us all, then! he demanded of Polynikes. Show us Spartan valor, you nightskulking cowards.

A fist smashed his teeth, silencing him.

I saw hands seize Alexandros and felt others clamp me; thongs of hide bound my wrists, a gag of linen stoppered my throat. The krypteis snatched Harmonia and her babes.

Bring them all, Polynikes ordered.

Chapter Seventeen

There stands a grove upslope behind the Deukalion mess, where the men and hounds customarily muster before setting off on a hunt. There within minutes a rump court stood assembled.

The site is a grisly one. Rude kennels extend beneath the oaks, with their game nets and chase harnesses hanging beneath the eaves of the feeding stations. The mess kitchen stores its slaughtering implements in several double-locked outbuildings; upon the inner doors hang hatchets and gutting knives, cleavers and bonebreakers; a blood-black chopping board for game fowl and poultry extends along the wall, where the birds' heads are whacked off and topple to the dirt for the hounds to scrap over. Piles of plucked feathers collect as high as a man's calf, rendered sodden by the blood drippings of the next luckless fowl to stretch its gullet beneath the chopper. Above these along the runway stand the bars of the butchery with their heavy iron hooks for the hanging, gutting and bleeding of game.

It was a foregone conclusion that Rooster must die, and his infant son with him. What remained yet at issue was the fate of Alexandros, and his treason which, if published throughout the city, would work grievous harm at this most peril-fraught hour, not only to himself and his station as a newly initiated warrior but to the prestige of his entire clan, his wife, Agathe, his mother, Paraleia, his father, the polemarch Olympieus, and, not least of all, his mentor, Dienekes. This latter pair now took their place in the shadows, along with the other sixteen Peers of the Duekalion mess. Rooster's wife wept silently, her daughter beside her; the baby squalled, muffled, in her arms. Rooster knelt in his cord bonds, on his knees in the dry high-summer dust.

Polynikes paced impatiently, wanting a decision.

May I speak? Rooster croaked in a throat hoarse from having been throttled on the way to this summary arraignment.

What has scum like you to say? Polynikes demanded.

Rooster indicated Alexandros. This man your thugs think they 'captured'… they should be declaring him a hero. He took me captive, he and Xeones. That's why they were in my shell. To arrest me and bring me in.

Of course, Polynikes replied sarcastically. That's why they had you bound so tightly.

Olympieus addressed Alexandros. Is this true, son? Did you indeed place the youth Rooster in custody?

No, Father. I did not.

All knew that this trial would not last long. Discovery was inevitable, even here in the shadows, by the agoge youths who stood sentry over the night city, their patrols doubled now for wartime. The assembly had perhaps five minutes, no more.

In two brief exchanges, as if the Peers couldn't divine it themselves, it became clear that Alexandros had at the eleventh hour attempted to persuade Rooster into rescinding his defiance and accepting the city's honor, that he had failed and that still he had taken no action against him.

This was treason pure and simple, Polynikes declared. Yet, he said, he personally had no wish to defame and punish the son of Olympieus, nor even myself, the squire of Dienekes. Let it end here. You gentlemen retire. Leave this helot and his brat to me.

Dienekes now spoke. He expressed his gratitude to Polynikes for this offer of clemency. There remained, however, an aspect of half-exoneration to the Knight's suggestion. Let us not leave it at that, but clear Alexandras' name entire. May he, Dienekes requested, speak on the young man's behalf?

The senior Medon assented, the Peers seconding him.

Dienekes spoke. You gentlemen all know my feelings for Alexandros. All of you are aware that I have counseled and mentored him since he was a child. He is like a son to me, and a friend and brother as well. But I will not defend him out of these sentiments. Rather, my friends, consider these points.

What Alexandros was attempting this night is nothing other than that which his father has been trying since Oe-nophyta, that is, to influence informally, by reason and persuasion, and out of friendly feeling, this boy Dekton called Rooster. To soften the bitterness he bears against us Spartans, who, he feels, have enslaved his countrymen, and to bring him around to the greater cause of Lakedaemon.

In this endeavor, Alexandros has not this night and never has sought any advantage for himself.

What good could come to him from enlisting this renegade beneath Spartan scarlet? His thought was alone for the good of the city, to harness to its use a young man of clearly demonstrated vigor and courage, the bastard son of a Peer and hero, my own wife's brother, Idotychides. In fact, you may hold me to blame along with Alexandros, for I more than once have referred to this boy Rooster as my by-blow nephew.

Yes, Polynikes put in swiftly, as a joke and term of derision.

We do not joke here tonight, Polynikes.

There was a rustle among the leaves, and suddenly, to the astonishment of all, there into the slaughtering space advanced the lady Arete. I glimpsed a pair of bam urchins escaping into shadow; clearly these spies had witnessed the scene at Rooster's shell and dashed at once to relay it to the lady.

Now she came forward. Wearing a plain peplos robe, with her hair down, summoned no doubt from bedtime lullabies just moments previous. The Peers parted before her, taken so by surprise that none could momentarily find voice to protest.

What is this, she demanded with scorn, a skull court beneath the oaks? What august verdict will you brave warriors pronounce tonight? To murder a maiden or slit the throat of an infant?

Dienekes sought to silence her, and the others did as well, with declamations to the effect that a woman had no business here, she must depart at once, they would hear of nothing else. Arete, however, ignored these utterly, stepping without hesitation to the side of the girl Harmonia, and there seizing Rooster's infant and taking him into her arms.

You say my presence here can serve no purpose. On the contrary, she declared to the Peers, I can offer most apposite assistance. See? I can tilt this child's jaw back, to make his assassination easier. Which of you sons of Herakles will slice this infant's throat? You, Polynikes? You, my husband?

More declarations of outrage ensued, insisting that the lady vacate at once. Dienekes himself voiced this in the most emphatic terms. Arete would not budge.

If this young man's life were all that were at stake-her gesture indicated Rooster-I would obey my husband and you other Peers without hesitation. But who else will you heroes be compelled to murder in addition? The boy's half brothers? His uncles and cousins and their wives and children, all of them innocent and all assets which the city needs desperately in this hour of peril?

It was reasserted that these issues were none of the lady's concern.

Actaeon the boxer addressed her directly. With respect, lady, none can but see that your intention is to shield from extinction your honored brother's line, and he gestured to the squalling boy-child, even in this, its bastard form.

My brother has already achieved imperishable fame, the lady responded with heat, which is more than can be said for any of you. No, it is simple justice I seek. This child you stand ready to murder is not the issue of this boy, Rooster.

This statement appeared so irrelevant as to border upon the preposterous.

Then whose is he? Actaeon demanded impatiently.

The lady hesitated not a moment.

My husband's, she replied.

Snorts of incredulity greeted this. Truth is an immortal goddess, lady, the senior Medon spoke sternly. One would be wise to consider before defaming her.

If you don't believe me, ask this girl, the child's mother.

The Peers plainly granted no credence whatever to the lady's outrageous assertion. Yet all eyes now centered upon the poor young housewoman, Harmonia.

He is my child, Rooster broke in with vehemence, and no one else's.

Let the mother speak, Arete cut him off. Then to Harmonia: Whose son is he?

The hapless girl sputtered in consternation. Arete held the infant up before the Peers. Let all see, the babe is well made, strong of limb and voice, with the cradled vigor which precedes strength in youth and valor in manhood.

She turned to the girl. Tell these men. Did my husband lie with you? Is this child his?

No… yes… I don't…

Speak!

Lady, you terrorize the girl.

Speak!

He is your husband's, the girl blurted, and began to sob.

She lies! Rooster shouted. He received a vicious cuff for his efforts; blood sprung from his Up, now split.

Of course she would not tell you, her husband, the lady addressed Rooster. No woman would.

But that does not alter the facts.

With a gesture Polynikes indicated Rooster. For the only time in his life, this villain speaks the truth. He has sired this whelp, as he says.

This opinion was seconded vigorously by the others.

Medon now addressed Arete. I would sooner go up barehanded against a lioness in her den than face your wrath, lady. Nor can any but commend your motive, as a wife and mother, in seeking to shield the life of an innocent. Nonetheless we of this mess have known your husband since he was no bigger than this babe here. None in the city surpasses him in honor and fidelity. We have been, with him, more than once on campaign, when he has had opportunity, ample and tempting opportunity, to be faithless. Never has he so much as wavered.

This was corroborated with emphasis by the others.

Then ask him, Arete demanded.

We will do no such thing, Medon replied. Even to call his honor into question would be infamous.

The Peers of the mess faced Arete, solid as a phalanx. Yet far from being intimidated, she confronted the line boldly, in a tone of order and command.

I will tell you what you will do, Arete declared, stepping squarely before Medon, senior of the mess, and addressing him like a commander. You will recognize this child as the issue of my husband. You, Olympieus, and you, Medon, and you, Polynikes, will then sponsor the boy and enroll him in the agoge. You will pay his dues. He will be given a schooling name, and that name will be Idotychides.

This was too much for the Peers to endure. The boxer Actaeon now spoke. You dishonor your husband, and your brother's memory, even to propose such a course, lady.

If the child were my husband's, would my argument find favor?

But he is not your husband's.

If he were?

Medon cut her short. The lady knows full well that if a man, like this youth called Rooster, is found guilty of treason and executed, his male issue may not be allowed to live, for these, if they possess any honor whatever, will seek vengeance when they reach manhood. This is the law not merely of Lykurgus but of every city in Hellas and holds true without exception even among the barbarians.

If you believe that, then slit the babe's throat now, Arete stepped directly before Polynikes. Before the runner could react, her grasp sprung to his hip and snatched forth his xiphos. Maintaining her own hand upon the hilt, she thrust the weapon into Polynikes' hand and held the infant up, exposing its throat beneath the whetted steel.

Honor the law, sons of Herakles. But do it here in the light where all may see, not in the darkness so beloved of the krypteia.

Polynikes froze. His hand sought to tug the blade back and away, but the lady's grip would not release it.

Can't do it? she hissed. Let me help. Here, I'll plunge it with you…

A dozen voices, led by her husband's, implored Arete to hold. Harmonia sobbed uncontrollably.

Rooster looked on, still bound, paralyzed with horror.

Such a fierceness stood now in the lady's eye as must have informed Medea herself as she poised the steel of slaughter above her own babes.

Ask my husband if this child is his, Arete demanded again. Ask him!

A chorus of refusal greeted this. Yet what alternative did the Peers possess? Each eye now swung to Dienekes, not so much in demand that he respond to this ridiculous accusation, as simply because they were flummoxed by the lady's temerity and did not know what else to do.

Tell them, my husband, Arete spoke softly. Before the gods, is this child yours?

Arete released her hand upon the blade. She swung the babe away from Polynikes' sword and held him out before her husband.

The Peers knew the lady's assertion could not be true. Yet, if Dienekes so testified, and under oath as Arete demanded, it must be accepted by all, and by the city as well, or his holy honor would be forfeit. Dienekes understood this too. He peered for a long moment into his wife's eyes, which met his, as Medon's image had so aptly suggested, like those of a lioness.

By all the gods, Dienekes swore, the child is mine.

Tears welled in the lady Arete's eyes, which she at once quelled.

The Peers murmured at this defilement of the oath of honor.

Medon spoke. Consider what you are saying, Dienekes. You defame your wife by attesting to this 'truth' and yourself by swearing to this falsehood.

I have considered, my friend, Dienekes responded.

He restated that the child was his.

Take him, then, Arete directed at once, advancing the final pace before her husband and placing the babe gently into his grasp. Dienekes accepted the bundle as if he'd been handed a Utter of serpents.

He glanced again, for a long moment, into the eyes of his wife, then turned and addressed the Peers.

Which of you, friends and comrades, will sponsor my son and enroll him before the ephors?

Not a peep. It was a dreadful oath to which their brother-in-arms had sworn; would they, seconding him, be impeached by it as well?

It will be my privilege to stand up for the child, Medon spoke. We will present him tomorrow.

His name as the lady wishes shall be Idotychides, as was her brother's.

Harmonia wept with relief.

Rooster glared at the assembly with helpless rage.

Then it is settled, said Arete. The child will be raised by his mother within the walls of my husband's home. At seven years he will enter the Upbringing as a mothax and be trained as any other blood issue of a citizen. If he proves worthy in virtue and discipline, he will when he reaches manhood receive his initiation and take his place as a warrior and defender of Lakedaemon.

So be it, assented Medon, and the others of the mess, however reluctantly, agreed.

It was not yet over.

This one, Polynikes indicated Rooster. This one dies.

The warriors of the krypteia now hauled Rooster to his feet. None of the mess raised a hand in his defense. The assassins commenced to drag their captive toward the shadows. In five minutes he would be dead. His body would never be found.

May I speak?

This from Alexandras, advancing to intercept the executioners. May I address the Peers of the mess?

Medon, the eldest, nodded his assent.

Alexandros indicated Rooster. There is another way to deal with this renegade which may, I suggest, prove of greater utility to the city than summarily to dispatch him. Consider: many among the helots honor this man. His death by assassination will make him in their eyes a martyr. Those who call him friend may for the moment be cowed by the terror of his execution but later, in the field against the Persian, their sense of injustice may find an outlet opposed to the interests of Hellas and of Lakedaemon. They may prove traitor under fire, or work harm to our warriors when they are most vulnerable.

Polynikes interrupted with anger. Why do you defend this scum, son of Olympieus?

He is nothing to me, Alexandros replied. You know he holds me in contempt and considers himself a braver man than I. In this judgment he is doubtless correct.

The Peers were abashed by this candor, expressed so openly by the young man. Alexandros continued.

Here is what I propose: let this helot live, but go over to the Persian. Have him escorted to the frontier and cut loose. Nothing could suit his seditious purposes more; he will embrace the prospect of dealing harm to us whom he hates. The enemy will welcome a runaway slave. Them he will provide with all the intelligence he wishes about the Spartans; they may even arm him and allow him to march beneath their banner against us. But nothing he says can injure our cause, since Xerxes already has among his courtiers Demaratos, and who can give better intelligence of the Lakedaemonians than their own deposed king?

The defection of this youth will work no harm to us, but it will accomplish something of inestimable value: it will prevent him from being viewed by his fellows in our midst as a martyr and a hero. He will be seen by them for what he is, an ingrate who was offered a chance to wear the scarlet of Lakedaemon and who spurned it out of pride and vainglory.

Let him go, Polynikes, and I promise you this: if the gods grant that this villain come before us again on the field of battle, then you will have no need to slay him, for I will do it myself.

Alexandros finished. He stepped back. I glanced to Olympieus; his eyes glistened with pride at the case so concisely and emphatically put forward by his son.

The polemarch addressed Polynikes. See to it.

The krypteis hauled Rooster away.

Medon broke up the assembly with orders to the Peers to disperse at once to their berths or homes and repeat nothing of what had transpired here, until tomorrow at the proper hour before the ephors. He upbraided the lady Arete sternly, admonishing her that she had tempted the gods sorely this evening. Arete, now chastened and beginning to experience that quaking of the limbs which all warriors know in the aftermath of battle, accepted the elder's chastisement without protest. As she turned her path toward home, her knees failed. She stumbled, faint, and had to be braced up by her husband, who stood at her side.

Dienekes wrapped his cloak about his wife's shoulders. I could see him regard her keenly while she struggled to reclaim her self-command. A portion of him still burned, furious at her for what she had forced him to do tonight. But another part stood in awe of her, at her compassion and audacity and even, if the word may be applied, her generalship. The lady's equilibrium returned; she glanced up to discover her husband studying her. She smiled for him. Whatever deeds of virtue you have performed or may yet perform, my husband, none will exceed that which you have done this night.

Dienekes appeared less than convinced.

I hope you're right, he said.

The Peers had now departed, leaving Dienekes beneath the oaks with the babe still in the crook of his arm, about to hand it back to its mother.

Medon spoke. Let's have a look at this little bundle.

In the starlight the elder advanced to my master's shoulder. He took the infant and passed it gently across to Harmo-nia. Medon examined the little fellow, extending a war-scarred forefinger, which the boy clasped in his strong infant's fist and tugged upon with vigor and pleasure. The elder nodded, approving. He caressed the babe's crown once in tender benediction, then turned back with satisfaction toward the lady Arete and her husband.

You have a son now, Dienekes, he said. Now you may be chosen.

My master regarded the elder quizzically, uncertain of his meaning.

For the Three Hundred, Medon said. For Thermopylae.