Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

XLI

The alarm sounded deep into the third watch. I was dead asleep, in the villa at which Telamon and I had been billeted, which housed a dozen other officers and their women. These staggered now into the street. “Is it a drill?” one bawled from a terrace. The harbor lay a quarter mile below; you could see fire ships pouring in over the chain and, in their flare, Athenian triremes pulling fast in two columns with tow arrows and flame catapults arcing fire in all directions.

We armed and raced down the hill. You know the city, Jason.

Mount Coressus overstands the eminence, her shoulders embracing the sprawl of suburbs spilling back from the port. The great seawall, the Pteron, spans the harbor mouth. Behind its base extend the commercial wharves, the Emporium, and beyond these the Toll, the inner fortifications, and the naval bastion, Huntress'

Hood. The river Cayster debouches, dense with silt, between the temple of the Amazons and the great square of the Artemisium, with the dredging works and the marsh on the south side, the cavalry grounds, and more suburbs outside the walls. These are all on hills and were all ablaze.

It was clear to any who understood Alcibiades' frame that this assault was his answer to Lysander's speech and a leap upon the main chance of Prince Cyrus' presence on-site. Given the audacity of his generalship, he could have landed every regiment he had or even called in his Thracians, heaven help all who must face them. “I'm not too keen on this,” I shouted to Telamon amid the waterfront crush, meaning I was in no mood to go epitaph-hunting for either side. “Let's find a rat hole and sit this son of a whore out.”

We cracked into a warehouse adjacent the Armorers' Lane. You could see the fire ships brilliant as daylight now; crewless galleys stacked with pitch and blazing like Tartarus. I had never experienced an attack of Alcibiades from the receiving end. It struck like a terror show of shock and thunder, and it was pasting the piss out of the Peloponnesians. Twelve-oared longboats towed their incendiary trailers at a furious clip, sidescreens up to shield the oarsmen from the missile fire of the defenders, so far conspicuous only by its absence. A jig of Spartan six-stickers hauled to intercept the lead towboat. We could see the attacker dump her line; two enemy sixes struck her just as her fire ship, loosed now, ploughed into the roadstead where a dozen Spartan triremes rode at anchor. The impact snapped the incendiary's booms; they crashed thunderously, dumping their cargo of pitch and sulphur onto the decks of the foe.

Now a second line of fire ships lit up astern of the first. The eruption of these, invisible heretofore, produced among the Peloponnesians a disseverment of the senses both palpable and paralyzing. “Don't mill about like bloody sheep!” A Spartan colonel waded into the press. “Launch ships, curse you!”

At this instant Lysander himself thundered into the lane, horseback, compassed by his lifeguard of Knights. We could see the colonel dash before him, informing him of his order. Lysander countermanded it. Peloponnesian infantry were pouring onto the site. Athenian pinnaces continued to rake the ship sheds, slinging pinwheels and hello-theres. Shall we rush the Pteron? the colonel cried to Lysander, meaning make for the seawall to repel the landing.

Lysander rejected this as well. One must give the bastard credit.

Any other of his race would have hurtled mindlessly into battle's maw, seeking victory or glorious death. Lysander knew better. As he had baited Alcibiades, now his rival baited him. Lysander would not bite. He hauled toward the Artemisium and the great parade ground fronting the city. “Draw back! Marshal on the square!”

Lysander had built walls dividing the residential quarter of Antenoris from the dockyards, an undertaking scorned even by his own officers as make-work and folly. Now one perceived its brilliance. The ramparts funneled seaborne attackers-those striking from the Pteron, as the Athenians had-onto the Exposition Road, quayside, with water at one hand and wall at the other. Here was a pen made for slaughter. All Lysander need do was wait.

Where Telamon and I hid had become no-man's-land. From seaward rushed the Athenians and allies; landside marshaled the Spartans and Peloponnesians. They would clash in the rock-hemmed pound before us, and our troops would be massacred. So futile, however, are all designs of war. At once sprang an overthrow from the last quarter Lysander could have projected, for the lone motive against which he could not contend.

This was Prince Cyrus, on fire for glory.

We heard hooves on the Lane of the Armorers; into the open thundered a cohort of Royal Persian Horse. The troop galloped onto the square of the Artemisium, parting the massed Peloponnesians. The prince reined in before Lysander. The lad himself was but seventeen and slight as a stalk, yet so fired by the nobility of his blood and the impulsion to emulate the deeds of his ancestors that he seemed lit as though aflame.

“The enemy is there, Lysander! Why do you hold?”

Meet him! Attack!

The prince wheeled and spurred. His Guard thundered at his heels. Peloponnesians and allies could not be held; the throng flooded onto the Exposition Road. Our warehouse sat right in its path. Athenian rangers who had advanced thus far now spun and bolted, slinging their brands into every eave and alley.

Telamon and I peered about our coop. Paint. Our rat hole was a hive of pitch and encaustic. We flushed from this covert the instant she exploded. I felt hair and beard erupt; flaming turpentine spewed upon me. I careened into the lane, beating at the flames with my cloak, but it, too, was drenched with oil and blazing. Telamon pitched me into a mound of pumice, annexed to a construction site, moments before the hordes overran it. A Peloponnesian sergeant rounded upon us, beating at us with his staff to join the affray. My entire left side had been incinerated; I could not see nor feel of my face aught but charred meat. Telamon defended me. “By the gods, this man cannot fight!” He drew on the sergeant. “Go!” I propelled him, before he got himself arrested or worse.

Down the Exposition Road prince Cyrus galloped with the troops from the Artemisium, above thirty thousand, while Lysander in fury drove his Knights in the youth's train, to deliver the lad from his own mad valor..

Polemides continued his narration, to which we shall return.

However, his object for the remainder of this action was clearly neither to participate nor to report, but to preserve his life. Let us shift narrators, then.

It was the younger Pericles' assignment, under Alcibiades, to command the wave of assault ships succeeding Antiochus', those vessels which Polemides recounted as breaching the harbor chain and carrying the assault to the waterfront. I have drawn already from these logs, given me by his wife after his trial following Arginousai. In addition she placed in my care several of the journals Pericles penned in those hours, for his children, that they might not credit the slanders of his accusers, and also, I believe, to preserve his reason during that ordeal, whose chronicle I shall relate in its course. But to return to Ephesus, and Pericles' journal: The plan was Alcibiades', drafted in a single night by the trierarchs and squadron commanders working under his direction.

Its impetus was receipt of the transcript of Lysander's address at the Games. Here was the Spartan's rejoinder, final and beyond appeal, to Alcibiades' overtures of alliance. He would slug it out to the finish, would Lysander, putting his faith less in God, as Alcibiades observed, than in the impatience of the Athenian electorate. Lysander understood this monster as well as his rival.

Victories in the hinterlands, even the sack of mighty cities, would not slake the beast's rapacity, not now, inflamed as it was by expectations of its all-conquering commander. Alcibiades must attack, and attack Lysander. No meaner object would serve. The monster would have its enemy's head, or his who failed to produce it.

Such was the strategic objective. Tactical were three: to raze the shipyards and repair facilities; to destroy or carry off as many battleships as possible, in as spectacular a manner as possible; to capture the Pteron and despoil its superstructure. The assault was an amphibious operation comprising twelve thousand four hundred troops, ninety-seven capital ships, and a hundred and ten support vessels. It involved the coordination of eleven assault elements across a front of twenty miles. Forty-six objectives were assigned. The signal rolls were as thick as your wrist.

Preliminary movements had commenced two days prior. A squadron of twenty-four under Aristocrates and another of twenty-eight under Adeimantus embarked from Samos, manned not by conventional crews, but by armored infantry doubling as oarsmen, with slingers and javelineers, as many as the vessels could bear without betraying their numbers by their draught, prone topside behind sidescreens. Aristocrates' squadron made southeast as for Andros, Adeimantus' north to the Hellespont. Both permitted their movements to be observed by Lysander's lookouts on Mounts Coressus and Lycon. They stood out to sea, beyond sight, doubling back on the second night to land their companies, Aristocrates in the planters' country between Priene and Ephesus, Adeimantus north at the resort colony called the Crook, deserted in this season on account of the Etesian winds.

The horse transports crossed by night from Samos and Lade, putting ashore at an inhabited cove called the Crescent. Alcibiades commanded these. Detaining all who might dash ahead with the alarm, the units proceeded by back tracks across country, linking with Adeimantus' companies landed at the Crook. From there Alcibiades advanced on the city. So swiftly were all pickets overwhelmed that he was into the suburbs before any warning apprised Lysander.

Aristocrates' companies landing to the south not only cut the causeway by which reinforcements could be brought up from the city but released the canal gates, flooding the plain. They cut the chain at Fort Cylon. Swimmers captured the twin islets, the Yolk and the White, which comprised the suspensors of the cable. By this time the first incendiaries were lighting up the suburbs.

Erasinides' marines broke apart the gate north of Exposition Road.

Antiochus' battleships swept past Cylon into the harbor. My twenty-four lay-to seaward of the chain. Should Antiochus be repulsed, we would form the bulwark through which he would withdraw. Should he signal the advance, we would strike in his wake with everything we had. Bonfires at Cylon and the Yolk lit the channel. No more need be told of the ravagement than this: the blazes set upon the shipyards, seawall, and Emporium were on such a scale that their flare could be seen from Chios, sixty miles away.

Alcibiades at this time, one learned later, was very nearly losing his life in the following manner. His cavalry had swept through the suburbs, outpacing Adeimantus' infantry, and were making for the northern gate to link with the marine companies landed on the Pteron by Antiochus and Erasinides. They had a guide, Alcibiades' troop did, who led them through the maze of lanes and alleys which constitute that quarter. They emerged to a square.

Astonishingly a corps of women had seized this choke point and, barricading its lone egress with benches and overturned wagons, made bold to defend it. These were no Amazons but dames of the district, marshaling to preserve their hearths and infants.

The women attacked Alcibiades' cavalry from the rooftops, hurling tiles, bricks, and stones with fabulous daring. Nor did they give back beneath the return volleys, but kept up a din of such profane contumacy as, the troopers testified, evoked sterner terror than any phalanx of Spartans or horde of shrieking savages.

Alcibiades himself was struck by a brick on the shoulder. The blow fractured his collarbone; he must be assisted from the fray by Mantitheus, fighting as ever at his side. Alcibiades, as was his habit, fought helmetless; a handsbreadth more and the missile would have staved his skull.

In the city, the foe's battalions swept along the Exposition Road.

Now came the struggle for the Pteron, the great seawall upon which men and horses and ships were dueling, it seemed, for every yard. Scaffolding ascended on both flanks, all pine and all blazing.

Cofferdams abutted the final furlong, spiked with construction debris, brick and timber, mortar sleds, pumpworks, and great piles of iron fittings which made them jagged death pits. Horses and men were tumbling into these in numbers as ghastly as they were uncountable.

Antiochus made signal: “Advance!” I had stationed Calliope at the left of the line, to pass close abeam of the Pteron to evaluate the situation. We returned signal and kicked off.

The riot upon the seawall was absolutely spectacular.

Alcibiades with the cavalry and heavy infantry had punched through now, though we did not know this yet from our vantage.

Their lane of advance down Exposition Road had been blocked by masses of the foe, a hundred shields across and what looked like a mile deep. Some four or five thousand of the enemy, including cavalry, had got aboard the seawall before Alcibiades and Adeimantus and now hacked and heaved toward the Windlass House at the extremity. They were going for the cable, to reseal the harbor and trap the vessels inside. Defending the final furlong of seawall were the Athenian marines who had taken the Quay and cut the chain. Flanking these, Erasinides' engineering vessels had set themselves broadside against the seaward palisade and were applying winch and tackle to the enemy's submerged stakes while simultaneously disembarking more marines from transports moored outboard hull-to-hull. Passing the terminus of the Pteron aboard Calliope, I could see in the van of the foe a personage magnificently mounted and appareled, compassed by a guard of knights.

This could be none but Lysander.

At once I determined to strike for him, forswearing all other objects. I resolved to sacrifice my own life and all my crew if I must.

I signaled to my second, Lycomenes, aboard Theama to take the squadron forward on his own, then made to Damodes, trierarch of Erato, these signals: “Follow me” and “Land marines.”

I could see Damodes, called the Bear, upon his sternpeak. He, too, had spotted the foe and hopped with frenzy to get at him. As these turns eventuated, Antiochus' Tyche, within the harbor, had had her stem staved and must withdraw. He brought her out stern-first, backing water, and now approached the Pteron from the landward side. To moor a triple against a twenty-foot seawall is no mean feat in broad daylight. Under fire Calliope came in like a garbage scow helmed by a drunk. Antiochus simply rammed Tyche stern-first between two cofferdams and, slinging the last of his hello-theres, mounted behind a screen of fire.

The struggle aboard the Pteron had reached that state of compaction where even the most elementary tactics may not be implemented, such is the press of mayhem. The enemy had five thousand on the wall, massed shield-to-shield, with thousands more pressing from the land. The main of our cavalry fought dismounted now, as the foe in his swarm carved the horses out from under them. These unfortunate creatures wailed in agony upon the block, hooves thrashing, wounding others, while more struggled in the water, drowning. My foot slipped mounting a dam and I fell hard, all my weight plus armor, beating my helmet crown-first into the stone. I blacked both eyes and tore thumb's web so that it still has not knitted. In this shape I clambered at last onto the Pteron, seeking the Spartan.

It was not Lysander but the prince.

Cyrus of Persia, who had sworn to break up his very throne to bring low the might of Athens. Cyrus! Cyrus!

Our men cried his name and hurled themselves at the champions who defended him. The prince's knights dueled with breathtaking valor, the riders' prowess exceeded only by that of their mounts, specimens trained to maintain cohesion flank to flank and to rear and strike both with fore hooves and the spiked armor on their chests. The look in their eyes I shall never forget.

“Kill him!” Antiochus bellowed from Tyche's stern.

Now through the mob punched cavalry and heavy armor, Alcibiades and Adeimantus. Marines pressed about, crying that they had Prince Cyrus trapped. At once an alteration overcame our commander both wondrous and profound. Though beneath his breastplate his clavicle had been fractured, as we learned later, such an injury as would carry away any man with incapacity and pain, he straightened and elevated his eighteen-pound shield upon that forearm above which the bone had been shattered.

He went after the prince. So did everyone. We were driven, all, before that tide which was the mass of flesh and armor being propelled toward the Pteron's extremity by the advancing press of Spartan and Peloponnesian reinforcements surging from the shore.

Now came Lysander at these battalions' fore. He called to Cyrus to make for him. Break through, I will preserve you! A space separated the two, packed shield-to-shield with Athenian marines, such orphans as myself off marooned men-of-war and our commanders, Alcibiades and Adeimantus with the last of the cavalry. Ships roared, afire port and starboard; warhorses' muzzles seemed to belch live steam; men's cries ascended in a din ungodly.

“Do you see, men of Greece?” Alcibiades cried toward the foe. “A Spartan fights at the barbarian's shoulder!”

“For freedom from thou, prideful villain!” Lysander bawled back.

The Spartan dug his knees into his mount and slung, so proximate across the press that the shaft of his javelin traversed barely thrice its length before seating with thunderous concussion upon his enemy's shield. Alcibiades took the stroke flush on his shattered arm. The warhead tore through the bronze and split the oak beneath, penetrating to a handsbreadth of his flesh.

“He is wounded!”

Men of both sides cried in exigency, Spartans and Persians rallying to press for the kill; Athenians and allies closing yet more densely, if that were possible, to erect a wall of their own flesh before their commander. An infantryman at Alcibiades' side elevated before him the shield his strength could no longer bear.

Darts transfixed the hero's back. Shafts riddled Alcibiades' mount.

Clouds flew about his head.

Lysander's knights heaved upon him. Alcibiades slung his ax across a sward of plumes and pike blades. I myself was within feet of the Spartan, so close I could see his beard beneath the cheek pieces of his helmet, as he beat the weapon apart with his shield.

“Sling there, Lysander!” Alcibiades bellowed, indicating Prince Cyrus. “Sling there and stand with Leonidas!”

He meant of course the Spartan king who had fallen with such valor at Thermopylae, two generations past, defending Greece from the Persian.

Lysander frothed with fury. “Can you court the crowd even now, thou actor!”

“He is here, thy king Leonidas-and marks thou traitor to Greece!”

Our marines made a last rush for Cyrus. Missiles rained from ships and seawall; prince and knights fell back. uKili him!”

Antiochus trumpeted above the melee. The youth gave place toward the Pteron's end, driven by the Athenian press.

“Men of Persia,” Cyrus cried in his tongue (or so it was translated for us later), “it is up to you now to decide if your prince will live or die.”

Without a heartbeat's demurral Cyrus' champions flung themselves and their steeds upon the spearpoints of the Athenians, driving these back by their magnificent sacrifice and creating an interval for their master. Cyrus spurred. Prince and mount broke through, lapped in deliverance by the bronze of Spartan knights.

Here came the terminal push. Mass against mass, each division straining to hurl the other into the sea. All utterance ceased. Men did not shout or even groan. Even the horses no longer made cry, but that sound arose which constrains all who have known battle to start from their slumber in terror.

The foe were too many, we too few.

We fell back. The ships took us off. The assault was over.

Alcibiades got off aboard Tyche. Men pressed about him, Antiochus recounted to me later, motioning toward the conflagration and acclaiming his triumph.

He rejoined nothing at that hour. Only past dawn ashore at Samos, bathed and bound by the surgeons, did he summon to his side, in confidence and apart, Adeimantus, Aristocrates, Antiochus, Mantitheus, and myself. We must take thought now, he admonished, for our lives apart from him.

“With this night,” he said, “my star has fallen.” There is an anecdote of Lysander in the aftercourse of the battle. It is recounted that on remuster at the Artemisium, when reports accounted forty-four of eighty-seven triremes burned or destroyed, with the shipyards, repair works, and all construction ramparts of the Pteron, he was confronted not alone by Prince Cyrus, who must account the produce of his father's gold, but by representatives of the Spartan ephorate, technically his superiors, who chanced to be present from the home government.

“And what do you call this, Lysander?” these officers demanded of their admiral, indicating the ruin of the port.

“I call it what it is,” Lysander is said to have replied. “Victory.”